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Pokémon Go, Amazon
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Everything is a platform. by Michael Schrage
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HBR / Digital Article / Pokémon Go, Amazon Dash, and the Future of User Interaction
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Pokémon Go, Amazon Dash,
and the Future of User
Interaction
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Everything is a platform. by Michael Schrage
Published on HBR.org / July 14, 2016 / Reprint H030GF
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Sustainable success requires the right touch; sustainable digital
success requires the right touchpoints. Already the fastest-growing
mobile game in U.S. history, Pokémon Go’s astonishing popularity
highlights how profoundly touchpoints — any interaction between your
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customer and your offer — define and design user experience. Much
of Go’s global appeal comes from an augmented reality sensibility
that literally and figuratively transforms real-world environments
into digital playgrounds. Touchpoints brilliantly coalesce into “touch
surfaces” and “touch constellations.”
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But Pokémon Go’s accelerating success shouldn’t obscure that
touchpoint transformation is becoming a transcendental design driver
for UX across industries. Traditional UX definitions barely mention
— let alone describe — “touchpoint design.” But it’s increasingly clear
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that touchpoints are becoming platforms in their own right.
Amazon’s Dash buttons offer a superb minimalistic example.
Individually, they’re simple, dedicated, and disciplined to a specific
outcome. Collectively, they represent both a platform and a portfolio of
options and outcomes for easy and convenient purchase. With apologies
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to Nintendo’s Pokémon designers, Dash buttons similarly augment
physical reality.
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As one reviewer insightfully observed, “Dash is really an augmentation
of existing hardware. Rather than plucking down ten of these in a
column, like a control panel, they go where they make sense. The one
for ordering more coffee goes on your coffeemaker. The one for ordering
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more laundry detergent goes on the front of your washing machine. Put
the battery one on the gaming console, and the Red Bull one on the mini
fridge.” Touchpoint form follows touchpoint function.
My current favorite example comes from Net-a-Porter reaching out to
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my wife. The company was running a sale and sent her several colorful
promotions encouraging her to shop one more time. Nothing clever
there. But the last mobile message came with a touchpoint inviting
her to look at what goodies were left in her size. In other words, this
touchpoint encouraged and facilitated a bespoke search. Of course she
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checked.
Simply calling this a clever promotion or thoughtful UX or engagement
marketing misses the (touch)point. My wife received a highly specific,
highly targeted, contextually relevant invitation to touch something
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that could save her time as well as money. Of course it’s part of Net-a-
Porter’s larger UX, but what’s perceived and experienced in the moment
is a value-added touchpoint.
Four concurrent Ps make touchpoint transformation work. Touchpoints
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become:
Purposes. Networked digital technology has turned the touchpoint
from a “point of contact” to an explicit “point of purpose.” The focus
is on a desired or desirable outcome. Something happens that matters.
Like Lego and Raspberry Pi, targeted touchpoints easily assemble into
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platforms that can deliver personalized results. This holds as true for
Tinder as for Snapchat filters.
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Prompts. They nudge, encourage, and invite the user to touch them,
to take a specific action. Please swipe me/press me/click me and
something good will happen. This is as true for augmented reality
games as for new Jimmy Choos.
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Probes. Touchpoints let users access more information and insight
about the larger experience. Ideally, users learn just enough to decide
whether they want to do — or play, or order — more. (Note that an
individual Amazon Dash button isn’t a probe, but the Dash Button
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platform/portfolio surely is.)
Perspectives. Touchpoints provide novel perspective; they enable users
to see and experience the service from different views and angles. These
perspectives can be visual or informational. Pokémon Go’s augmented
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reality and Snapchat filters are perspective creators. They make it
easier to appreciate or understand the probe or prompt the touchpoint
proffered.
Aligning these four Ps, or turning them into a virtuous cycle
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of touchpoint personalization and customization, will increasingly
become one of digital media’s important UX design challenges.
This will prove as important for mobile devices as for home/office/
workplace environments. Successfully creating and enabling simple
microinteractions that generate macro results should inspire next-
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generation design and designers.
My own curiosity and concern around purposive “purposes-prompts-
probes-perspectives” centers on the chatbot future. Chatbots, whether
spoken or swiped, represent precisely the kind of medium where
clarity and simplicity of touchpoints will prove essential to quick, high-
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impact interaction. How machine learning and artificial intelligence
will sculpt and shape those touchpoints remains a great unknown. But,
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as Pokémon Go’s success overwhelmingly suggests, humans will want
bots that make touchpoints playful and play-touching.
This article was originally published online on July 14, 2016.
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Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for
MS Digital Business, is the author of the books Serious Play (HBR Press),
Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (HBR Press) and The
Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press).
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Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
