Practice Design

Reflections on speed

2007-07-11T13:22:00.000+03:00

I am now spending a 4 week summer holiday and have tried (at least) temporarily to make some adjustments to my everyday practices. I have tried to put focus on doing things thoroughly (not always quickly), and have engaged in basic practices that represent a kind of opposite to the hassle of work life and technology; basic things as wood work, handicrafts, preparing food from basic ingredients, watching plants grow, reading thick books. That is probably what most Finns do during their holidays, but nevertheless it made me reflect on the “normal” life that is very different and supposedly more efficient. Is speed really important?

I saw yesterday a historical documentary in TV about autobahns in Germany. The commentator said something like “progress requires fastness”. This commented related to problems the Germans had with people driving rather to slow than to fast on autobahns, and this creating problem for other drivers. Basically, autobahns were a means for increasing the speed of the whole country both concerning trade and warfare. In the beginning, citizens were not able to keep up with the speed. Highways, technology, fast food, fast internet and many other technological innovations has increased the speed of our lives (the lives of those people that engage in these fast practices – many people are not).

Trivial innovations

2007-07-10T22:12:00.000+03:00

Innovation is currently a buzz word in Finland. As usually, buzz words are inprecise and hard to define. Innovation is usually referred to something new that results in economic success for the innovators. An invention as such is not an innovation. This seems to be the most important content of the innovation discussion.

Innovation has become the strategy for Finland to compete on a global market. The new government recently elected has emphasized the need for Finnish companies to be innovative. The word innovation is mentioned over 20 times in the program for the next 4 years laid out by the government. The term innovation is followed by a whole myriad of complex rhetoric of innovation landscapes, innovation politics etc.

A small country as Finland needs to focus on being innovative. In the day to day talk about innovation, it is seems that the word innovation and invention is mixed, although the differences of these words are often pointed out. Invention is a novel thing that is believed to have practical value in the everyday life, whereas an innovation has a practical value in the everyday life of consumers or business and is thus worth money, and give return on investment. Innovations become a part of the everyday life of people and companies.

Technologically speaking the innovation may not be the most sophisticated. It is more important that the innovation is used, and is optimal in its way it is put into practice in everyday life. Here we can find the most challenges in Finland. Finns seems to be quite successful in coming up with new inventions, whereas the simple practical applications that move everyday life forward is more problematic to achieve. We get lost in complexity, whereas innovation in most case requires simple solutions that move everyday life forward.

2007-02-24T17:55:00.000+02:00

http://www.bplusd.org/uploads/bplusd_landscape_2007.pdf

Check this out!
Jess McMullin's blog on the intersection of business and design.

The link is a map of players in the market in the intersection between business, design and innovation.

2007-02-13T22:31:00.000+02:00

http://blogit.kuluttajatutkimus.fi/asuminen/

This is a project concerning "the economy of everyday life" and habitation I am involved in. You can find my abstract for an article that I am planning to write on new views on market definitions (In Finnish).

The argument (not yet developed): Competition is not situated in the exchange between buyers and sellers, but in sociocultural terms as competition of meanings, time and relevance in everyday life.

I recommend the article by Penaloza & Venkatesh (2007) in Marketing theory 6 (3), 299-316 as food for thought on the concept of market in sociocultural terms. The article is unfortunately impossible to find in any database for the time being.

Talouselämä article

2007-02-06T20:29:00.002+02:00

The article that I wrote together with Professor Pantzar in Talouselämä last friday (in Finnish)

http://www.talouselama.fi/docview.do?f_id=1105516

2007-01-25T22:32:00.000+02:00

My interest is in looking at business and marketing in a consumption oriented manner. For instance, industry structures according to classical thinking about competition arranged according to production mechanisms (instead structures of everyday life) is fun to question.

It is many ways very difficult to propose a new industry structure as consumption practices are interlinked in different constellations depedning on different circumstances. This makes it hard to actually conclude, which kind of companies are in competition with each other from the perspective of everyday life.

My colleague Hedy Kapri came up with one division that seems interesting (I made some additions in italics):

- Homes
- Wealth management
- Health care
- Free-time and play
- Using art
- Working
- Eating and drinking
- Travelling
- Routines
- Communication

This is, of course, not the only way to depict the market in a consumption oriented way, but interesting to consider. In which industry are you in?

Practice Forum 191206

2006-12-19T22:36:00.000+02:00

Vectia arranged together with Kulta project today a forum for discussion on practice theory. Elizabeth Shove, Matt Wattson, Mika Pantzar and I spoke at the event. The objective of the event was to engage business people in the discussion about the opportunities to use practices as the unit of analysis when analysing market phenomenon.

8.00-8.15 Welcome! (Oskar Korkman)
8.15-8.45 Practices and consumption: UK experiences (Elizabeth Shove, Matt Wattson)
8.45-9.00 Discussions
9.00-9.20 Practice Design - possibilities to integrate the approach into everyday marketing (Oskar Korkman)
9.20-9.30 Discussions - can this be applied? how could this be applied?
9.30-9.50 Commentary (Mika Pantzar)
9.50-10.00 Ending the event

Participants from the following companies attended: Nokia, Huhtamäki, Fazer Bakeries, Fujitsu, SOK, Elisa, Atria, Kone, RAY, YIT, Neste Oil. The atmosphere was great! Practice theory is the future! The participants provided great comments, which helps to develop Practice thinking further.

Practice theory can/ and should have implications on how we discuss:

MARKET DEFINITION: markets as practices
MARKET INSIGHTS: ethnographic insight and historical practice analysis for understanding practices as markets.
MARKET MAKING: the objective of the company is to construct practice- not please customer needs.

The economy of everyday life and branding

2006-12-13T21:47:00.000+02:00

Competitive advantage in the economy of everyday life is about being and becoming an integral part of everyday practices. For instance Google is a good example of this. "Googling" has become a practice of everyday life. That is the ultimate achievement of branding.

Branding is not about being in the top of the minds of people, but rather to be an undivided and normal part of life. That is a big difference?

2006-12-10T19:44:00.000+02:00

The brand new yearbook of "Kuluttajatutkimuskeskus" (In finnish).

http://www.kuluttajatutkimuskeskus.fi/files/4966/vuosikirja2006.pdf

The first part of the book focuses on practice related contributions. I wrote a piece on my dissertation called "Aikuisten imitointi ja muita käytäntöjä ruotsinlaivalla" (Adult imitation and other practice onboard of cruise vessels).

ECR Finland Annual Seminar 21.11.2006

2006-11-21T16:57:00.000+02:00

I spoke today at the annual ECR (Efficient Consumer Response) Seminar.
http://www.ecr-finland.com/tapahtumat.html

The promise of efficient consumer response is to develop supply chains in order to fulfil consumer wishes better, faster and with less cost. The ECR initiative involves both retailers and producers.

A couple of reflections and points of presentation:
- Focus of the collaboration in the supply chain has been on efficiency (less cost)
- Need to focus also on top line growth through innovation
- Innovation should start from understanding the everyday life of people, and how retailers and producers can jointly improve everyday life of people
- Innovation should not be radical from a consumption perspective, but help the customer to improve routines related to everyday life

Some enterntainment ; )

2006-11-14T22:38:00.000+02:00

Nick Cave - As I Sat Sadly By Her Side

2006-10-30T15:48:00.000+02:00

I got inspired Ulla-Maaria's statements of handicrafts, and stated a similar manifest (draft) of the economy of everyday life.

THE ECONOMY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

People are foremost practitioners of their everyday lives
People want to maintain structures, and habits, and see many times technology and services as disruptive
People also innovate their everyday life, and find it valuable to create new forms of living
Companies can support their customers everyday life, but are not in most cases centralized, and important
Companies take the everyday life of people as the starting point for their business, and aim to “normalize” themselves to fit into it.
Current market logic is not adapted to serve the economy of everyday life.
A market logic that takes practice of everyday life as the unit of analysis, and object for activities is needed.
The economy of everyday life can be the basis for voluminous, stable and faster income, but also for more well-being and democracy.

This is only a draft and will now be tested, and hopefully discussed with you ; )

Adult imitation

2006-10-29T23:13:00.000+02:00

During my studies of cruises as practice i identified
the practice of adult imitation that appears to
be suprisingly valuable for children onboard of the
vessel. Adult imitation refer to a form of play in which
children "become independent" and "participate in
adult doings". You can see from the image below
a child who used her adult-like handbag
in very symbolic terms when shopping. For me the
use of handbags was one way of constructing an
imitation of adulthood.

I just bumped into this picture, which reminded
about my dissertation.. This study was done already
in the winter 2005/2006.

Work and Play

2006-10-28T11:19:00.000+03:00

Ulla-Maaria Mutanen has an interesting article in the Finnish Design Yearbook 2006 on the importance of play. I could not agree more about the point that both production and consumption are discussed with terms of work, whereas play is assumed non-productive, not important and naive. This makes us use concepts describing work-like activities when trying to conceptualise both production and consumption in processual terms. At least In my ethnographic studies, I can very clearly see that people are players, not workers, in their everyday life. Especially men ; ).

Ulla-Maaria has a really interesting blog, especially the stuff about handicrafts fascinated me. This all is a part of Consumer 2.0 movement. Knitting as a creative (not productive- comparison to above) practice is interesting.

http://ullamaaria.typepad.com/hobbyprincess/

Elisa and ethnography

2006-10-28T00:33:00.000+03:00

The Finnish tele operator went public on the 25th of October, this wednesday about a large program for studying their customers' practices with the help of ethnography. Over 400 employees have been trained to do fast ethnography, and will do that before christmas. The objective is to create a "architecture of everyday life" that can be used as an starting point for business development. An article saying this was published at least in Hufvudstadsbladet the 26th of October on page 16-17. I commented the program in the role of being the coordinator for this program.

Idea®2006

2006-10-27T23:51:00.000+03:00

Some notes about today.

Idea®2006 was held today at Marina Congress center.
I was kindly invited to participate in a panel discussion about future trends in marketing. The following person participated in the discussion:

Marco Mäkinen, strategiajohtaja, SEK & Grey
Anne Lehmuskoski, markkinointijohtaja, Nordea Pankki
Juha Voutilainen, markkinointijohtaja, Markkinointi-Instituutti
+ me

Please see the link for other parts of the program (only in Finnish).
http://www.mark.fi/html/idea2006/

I introduced the idea of "the economy of everyday life", and the importance for understanding mundane consumption as a basis for marketing decisions. I was also trying to point out both paradigmatic and methodological changes this withholds.

The panel was enthusiastic to discuss the theme, and I would say that the 45 minute panel was mainly focusing on this topic. I also got some very positive comments concerning the topic from the audience (500 marketers in Finland attended the event). At least 10 of the participants told me personally about their interest in the topic. Especially ad and design agencies seems to be eager to find new perspectives to more traditional perspectives to marketing.

I got really even more thrilled with the concept of "the Economy of everyday life", "Arkitalous" in Finnish, and discussed the topic with two of the people I highly respect. Professor Kaj Storbacka was really of the opinion that this concept could bring new perspective to marketing. Also Professor Mika Pantzar commented the wording by saying that the content of "economy of everyday life" is in english literature usually referred to as a "moral economy".The concept of moral economy may not be the best one. "Arkitalous" would perhaps describe the domain in better ways. Let us see what we will do about this.

I already changed the title of my book according to this discussion into "the economy of everyday life - designing consumption practice", and feel quite satisfied with this change, although it might have some consequences for the content of the book.

I spoke also at a Vectia Forum (an event arranged by the firm I am a partner of) together with my colleague Heli Arantola, who released her book on customer insight earlier this week. She talked about strategy work, and the needed insight for being agile in competitive environment. I claimed and reasoned that the understanding of consumption practice would perhaps function as a platform for scenario work concerning different forms of consumption. I claimed that practice may be a rather stable platform for having FORESIGHT if one decide to build holistic and historical insight of certain practices in given environments. This is now something I will put more energy on in the future.

2006-10-25T01:32:00.000+03:00

This is the model I have been working on. The point with the model below is to center the practice and develop a kind of new 4P model (which is not 4ps, but anyway) that start from the notion of an existing practice, and the ways the company can support/empower/ reconfigure the current practice.I have found this very useful. I will add some cases later.

Market share vs. Practice embeddedness

2006-10-21T18:37:00.000+03:00

Market thinking, as it is used in most places, namely as a definition of which products, geographies and customers the company is involved in does not give a very innovative approach to finding new market opportunities.

This has been discussed quite often in different context; one should try to find new ways of depicting markets, and the real opportunities there are in a market. One suggestion is that market share is only relevant when doing comparisons with competitors in the same industry. More important for long term growth would be to build a sort of embeddedness in the consumption practices one can vision as a lucrative market.

Embeddedness is measured by presence and relevance, whereas market share is purely a reactive measure of how succesful one has been in a given industry structure. This may sound as theorizing, but yet (I have seen it) as an crucial question for many businesses today.

2006-10-21T15:06:00.000+03:00

Still working on my book on practice oriented marketing.

The working title is now:

EVERYDAY LIFE AND MARKETING
Designing consumption practices

.. and the table of contents (for now)

PROLOGUE 3

WHO SHOULD READ THIS? 4
THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK 4
IMPORTANT REMARKS 6

INTRODUCTION: FROM NOUNS TO VERBS 7
PRACTICE FOCUS AS AN ALTERNATIVE 8
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES FROM THE APPROACH 13

QUESTIONING THE LOGIC OF MARKETING 16
FROM MARKETS AS CUSTOMERS TO MARKETS AS PRACTICES 18
FROM PLEASING CUSTOMER NEEDS TO INNOVATING NEW FORMS OF PRACTICES 20
FROM PERSONALITIES TO PROCESSUAL MARKET UNDERSTANDING 21
FROM THE “VOICE” OF THE CUSTOMER TO ETHNOGRAPHIC UNDERSTANDING 24

PRACTICES BROUGHT INTO FOCUS 26
PRACTICES – DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPT 27
THE EVOLUTION OF PRACTICES 30
CONSUMPTION PRACTICE IS EMBEDDED WITH VALUE 32
CONCLUSIONS 33

THE ECONOMY OF EVERYDAY LIFE 35
VOLUME, STABILITY AND UNREVEALED OPPORTUNITIES 36
MARKETS IN PRACTICAL TERMS 38
SEGMENTATION OF CUSTOMERS, OR PRACTICE 42
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NEW MARKETS 44
ALLOWING THE MUNDANE TO APPEAR 45

SERVING PRACTICES, NOT CUSTOMERS 48
SERVICES AS IMPROVED PRACTICES 48
THE PROBLEMATIC CONCEPT OF BENEFIT 51
CUSTOMER TAKING ON PRACTICES 53

PRACTICE DESIGN™ 55
FITTING ELEMENTS OF CONSUMPTION TOGETHER 57
Tools/ toys 58
Image/ competence 60
Physical space 62
Customer involvement 63
PRACTICE DESIGN – THE WORKING PROCESS 65

SUMMARY: A TOOL OR PARADIGM? 66

ENDNOTES 67

2006-10-01T18:39:00.001+03:00

The point I have tried to introduce is that services and products are always used in practical situations. This would mean that there is also a need to understand customers in practial terms as "practitioners" of their lives.

The more I reason around this theme, the more clear it becomes that the consumer is in most companies constructed in very abstract terms. Consumers, and customers seems to be something that is impossible to discuss about in direct and concrete terms.

Is that really the case, or is it rather a matter of the perspective and mindset of marketers? In many of my projects, I have been suprised by the clarity a practice approach can bring. Consumers are maybe not after all fragmented and paradoxical mixture of ideas and value, but
in many cases parts of unified practical arrangements, possible to understand and build upon.

WORKSHOP IN LONDON TODAY!

2006-09-15T02:10:00.000+03:00

I had an excellent opportunity to meet some great professionals in marketing and design today in London concerning the relevance of practice theory for practitioners. Elizabeth Shove had an excellent introduction to the theme, after which the practical implications were discussed.
I told also about my cases, and the ways I have applid the approach in consulting assignment.
Overall very inspiring for me to discuss about practice theory in a UK context.

I was especially eager to hear the about the view of companies as Intel and Unilever that uses extensively ethnographic approaches in their research.

I had to leave early, but it the conclusion appeared to be that the practice approach is interesting and well worth considering as an alternative to other paradigms. One conclusion was clearly that practice focus is not a tool, but a perspective.

Simon from Intel promised to make notes, so I will review those when I get them an perhaps post another reflection on the event.

Is fragmentation of markets a real problem?

2006-08-31T00:09:00.000+03:00

Companies today are, after selecting and defining a market segmenting the market into smaller groups of customers that they then choose to serve. Market segmentation can be done in numerous ways, and is usually used in a way that explain the differences in the market in relation to the specific services and products the company is marketing.

One excellent article, and the rationale behind market segmentation was published by Journal of Marketing in 1956. The article was written by Wendell R. Smith, and explain that market segmentation, in those days, was an increasingly important tool be used for markets in which the company needs to accept that there are divergent needs. Before, firms were accustomed to strive in production for standardization and mass production.As Wendell R. Smith writes: “Segmentation is based upon the developments on the demand side of the market and represents a rational and more precise adjustment of product and marketing effort to consumer or user requirements. In the language of the economist, segmentation is a disaggregative in its effects and tends to bring about recognition of several demand schedules where only one was recognised before.”

As already discussed before there has been two different developments in marketing thought that has had its effect on the way segmentation is done. First, customers have been seen in increasingly more complex terms that has had the effect that more specific extraordinary needs and characteristics have been seen in customer bases. Second, companies have seen an increasingly urge from the customer side to be involved in the process of “production” to customize their services. These theme is currently referred in the literature as co-production meaning that both customer and provider is involved in the process of production that should result in value co-creation. Both of these developments has resulted in perhaps more fragmented marketing strategies, in which offering differentiation and personalisation is the core idea.

Differentiation and personalization is the antithesis to standardization, which stresses differences in the customer base. Nevertheless, complexity is in most companies a problem, and as 70% of 900 executives claims that excessive complexity causes costs, and also hurting profits. In those terms it is evident that it would be beneficial for companies to serve universal needs rather than fragment themselves into a range of needs that varies between different customers. Numerous publications, however, claim that differences between people are becoming larger, which in the final analysis requires the company to adapt to these differences. The market appears fragmented, especially if use customer as the unit of analysis, and basis for segmentation of the market. According to practice theory, people form their identities, needs and wants in practice. While people move between different practices, they appear from a company perspective very hard to understand, almost schizophrenic as they can change their views depending on what they are in the process of doing. Another problematic feature with most market segmentation is that they aim for a description of customers in a non-contextual manner. Customers are in that way presented on a general level as being of certain nature. Such descriptions may not be possible to do.

The fragmentation and contextual nature of customer behavior makes market segmentation rather difficult overall as a starting point for business development. One could, however, argue that difficulties with customer segmentation is not a “real problem”, but mere a problem of perspective. As discussed in this blog, being customer focused may be problem in contemporary society, but there are opportunities to see consumption, and segment markets in more stable and understandable ways. The way to approach to this is to simply de-emphasize the fragmented nature of customers, and turn the view on the market to more universal nominators that would help the company to focused on those issues that can constitute in practical terms a market for the company.

http://www.onniblogi.net/

2006-08-20T20:45:00.000+03:00

The presentation held by Mika Pantzar and me is shortly discussed in Onniblog (in finnish). Look up also some interesting links to other blogs (Christian Lindholm, Former user experience guru at Nokia, and Marko Ahtisaari etc.)

Why is consumption practice important to understand from a company perspective?

2006-08-18T18:56:00.000+03:00

Companies should take, not an reactive mode towards social and material dynamics, but a constructive role. Historically companies have been active in empowering and developing practices further, and will certainly do also so in the future. As this blog propose, it would be necessary for the company to understand and redeem a practical role in society. Hence, it is proposed that market can be viewed as practical, the service a company can actually be depicted as certain improvement of practices, and also innovation in a final analysis can be seen as innovation of social practices.

It is, however, important to first understand the dynamics of how practical life occur in the world, and maintain a necessary respect when trying to orchestrate the architecture of everyday life.

Practices are both the enabler and obstacle for business. In practice focused marketing, the practices of everyday life become the market that restricts and enables company involvement. Restriction in the sense that the prevailing practice in a certain practice can not in very few cases be radically changed. That means that technological solutions should in most cases not strive to change a practice, but more or less make the already existing practice work better. The technology planned is a failure, if it does not find its place in a certain practice. On the other hand a new tool or toy that is integrated into a practice and has made it more valuable will constitute a great market for the company.

One should also keep in mind that practices are formed not designed. practices are always developing in a historical manner in ways that may be hard to predict and understand. In many cases companies have been enforced to take the role as a provider of material, which then later has been transformed into clearly defined tools and toys by the customer. SMS is a good example of a tool that was first designed for a completely different practice than it finally ended up in. SMS was made as a tool for “keeping things in order” for business men, while the heavy use is happening as a form of “social play” for youth. In that way, it is hardly possible to design everyday life in all cases. And if it would be, practice design would be a highly dangerous tool that could be used by companies for unethical purposes.

A market viewed as a collection of practices needs to be approached in a comprehensive manner. In order for companies to be able to have an impact on the practical life of people and thus create a business, the company should be able to empower the practice in many different ways. As will be discussed later, the company should have their own practice for developing tools or toys, and also material for the customer to maybe design into a tool or toy. The company should have possibilities to affect the images and competence involved in the practice, and maybe also in some cases the physical spaces in which the customer is using the other elements.

2006-08-15T21:20:00.000+03:00

KULTA the modeling of customers’ changing needs

(KULTA kuluttajien muuttuvien tarpeiden mallintaminen)

A project on modeling customer’s changing needs was kicked off today in Vierumäki. The project is a collaboration between Helsinki University, National Consumer Research Centre, and Helsinki University of Technology, and a number of companies.

Mika Pantzar and I had a presentation on the possibilities to use “practices as a basis for segmentation”. The argument was that practice segmentation would be a possibility to integrate markets rather than fragment them. I put below some of the slides that we used.

Mika Pantzar was in his part of the presentation stressing the dynamics of practices. How proto practices change into practices, and become at some point ex- practices.

He was also discussing amongst other things how practices come together into practice systems in which different practices are combined. This was illustrated with a magnificient animation ; )

This part of his work is developed together with Elizabeth Shove

My part of the presentation was on the research on cruising practices I did for my dissertation. I presented some ideas of how perhaps traditional segmentation and practice segmentation could be combined into a framework for managing companies in a consumption oriented manner.

I also presented some cases of companies that have approached the market in "search of universal and mundane practices" that through small practical improvements has proved to be very succesful businesses.

Our aim is to develop these thoughts into an article in the near future. This is, however, very much work in progress. The discussions in the workshop helped us in many ways to develop the thinking further. Thanks. I promise to answer or ask Mika to answer all further questions about our presentation. Feel free to post comments.

2006-08-09T22:01:00.000+03:00

I referred in the earlier post to my doctoral dissertation. Here it is.

http://brunnen.shh.fi/portals/pubmanager/pdf/155-951-555-905-7.pdf

This was finalised in february 2006. I have used the mindset and method in several projects after this, and got very interesting results.

The basic logic of my thinking in the dissertation is the following:

- value is formed in consumption practices
- markets and services cannot be understood as "customers" or characteristics of customers, but should be seen as practices
- my empirical study was done on "cruise consumption" as an ethnographic study

I am in the process of writing a popular book on the same issues called "Practice Design" (working title). I am planning on developing the ideas for my book in this blog - I am very grateful for any ideas for the book...

Practice theory in DESIGN!!

2006-08-08T23:57:00.000+03:00

Designers apply/ plan to apply practice theory!

This is also very new and exciting! I have not seen any publications in the field of taking a "practitioner" approach to practice theory before. A group of people in UK have a project called "designing and consuming: objects, practices and processes". They are approaching social practices from a designer perspective!

http://www.dur.ac.uk/designing.consuming/events.html#Anchor--Worksh-32410

I could not unfortunately participate in the workshops they had, but this is something you should keep an eye on. In the last workshop in the beginning of the summer they created a "Manifesto" for Practice Oriented Product Design (POPD).

http://www.dur.ac.uk/designing.consuming/wkshpjul06/popd%20manifesto.pdf

I am approaching social practices from a marketing perspective, which is a little bit different from this, but the basic philosophy is the same. Because of my background as a management consultant, I am focusing on a x-functional approach to markets rather than on "product design".

Below, an interesting entry in a blog concerning the differences between UCD (User Centred Design) and POPD. For those who do not know, UCD is probably the most interesting field of user oriented design this far. The problem with UCD is that it is still very much about "usage" and not "life practices". See the link below. The text is an excerpt from the blog.

Design Conferences

"In UCD the general approach is that users are creative and experts of their own living and doings. Methodologically, UCD typically picks methods from ethnography, but it was seen to be problematic that theories that inform ethnographic methods are not borrowed. Instead, theoretically UCD simply assumes that it is possible to design object-human relations. Finally, it was seen characteristic to UCD that it focuses on single product and, respectively, single user. Now, POPD is, of course, different. Shove told us to forget about the user and think about the practice instead. Practice was defined as a process of integration resulting in structural arrangement. Practice as an entity, in other words, is the focus of POPD, instead of user or product. Practice consists of integrated elements, which are material, image and skill. For reasons we can only guess, the POPD is interested in innovation (product innovation emerges when there's innovation in practices). On the other hand, the focus of POPD is on the routine ways of doing (which is not contradictory claim but they should elaborate their notion of practice in any case). POPD therefore acknowledges that "we are all POD's (practice oriented designers)", which, I think, outlines their focus group nicely: everybody and everything."

When I did my doctoral thesis, I was very much inspired by UCD. For instance books and articles by Karen Holzblatt is interesting and inspiring. But now after many years of pondering, I can see very clearly that there are possibilities to go beyond what UCD has promoted now for decades (I have not actually a clue when it started). From users to socially and culturally embedded human beings! Another important inspiration was activity theory, which I will return to in another post.

2006-08-07T23:29:00.000+03:00

This is me.

Networked Economy - Bo Harald

2006-08-07T22:22:00.000+03:00

Networked Economy - Bo Harald

Bo Harald has a very good point in his blog when mentioning that there is a need for effective learning in the market space, in order for "new practices" to come alive. Excellent point highlighting the biggest problem in marketing. Marketers are not putting emphasis on understanding how social phenomenon occur, but feel in many cases that it is more important to tell about the features of their products and services. His case of building systematically and long-term e-banking consumption practice for Nordea's (largest bank in Nordic countries) clients is a good case, of how people are prepared to take on new practices (if the practice at hand is valuable per se).

Concerning learning, I would especially put emphasis on "mundane learning" through imitation. Formal learning is out, as nobody seems to be prepared to open a for example a manual anymore. Professor Mika Pantzar has some good points about this. There is for sure need of more "thinking" in this field. I guess Teemu Arina's blog is a part of the developments happening in the field of pedagogics.

2006-08-03T22:30:00.000+03:00

Elizabeth Shove is involved in a lot of interesting stuff on consumption practices.
She is professor in Sociology at Lancaster University. Check out this.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/staff/shove/shove.htm

Here can you also find the work she has done together with Mika Pantzar on Nordic walking, digital photography and floorball.

This is not very managerial, but it is easy to see how companies could utilise these kind of studies.

2006-08-03T22:18:00.000+03:00

The more I read traditional marketing literature, the more evident is that marketing cannot match the needs of firms if it uses customers as its starting point, and object for activities.

My suggestion is that companies should service practices, instead of customers. This helps companies to bec0me less fragmented in the operations. Customers are very different, whereas practices can in many cases be universal.

For instance, the practice of listening to music, is a practice that is served very well by Apple (Ipod and Itunes). The practice related to this is not specific for certain segments, but an universal practices that a big portion on the population in the western countries are more or less involved in. The notion of mass practices gives an opportunity for mass products.

I am writing something on this, and searching for similar cases as Apple. Any ideas? Are there other companies that have been able to empower some universal behavioral logic, and does not need to fall into fragmentation and differentiation of products. Help needed.

2006-07-31T18:31:00.000+03:00

In the previous post I mentioned that social practice could be put in the centre for marketing activity. Practice theory has received a lot of interest in different disciplines recently, but the discussion has been rather slow in marketing, especially marketing management discourse.

See the following web page on a conference in Mykonos on the theme held earlier this summer. http://www.egosnet.org/os/os_summer_workshop_2006_call.shtml

I also put in the text here.

"We are currently witnessing a renewed interest in 'practice' in several social science areas, among them organizational and management studies, science and technology studies, professional/workplace discourse studies, and sociological theorizing about the character of society and human action. For example, in the strategy-as-practice subfield within organizational studies, we see a growing interest in what particular organizational members actually do to realize strategic practices. A practice-based approach has also been central for understanding organizational knowing and learning among scholars who see these as collective activities. In philosophy, practice has emerged as an important element in such otherwise different philosophical approaches as phenomenology, pragmatism, and Wittgensteinian philosophy developed from the tradition of analytic philosophy. These various areas of renewed interest provide grounds to consider and explore - as a recent collection of essays suggests – the ‘practice turn’ in social theory inspired by various philosophical and social theoretical traditions and resources, among them phenomenology and hermeneutics, ethnomethodology, activity theory, actor network theory, and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus. Given this intellectual lineage, it seems appropriate to speak of a ‘re-turn to practice.’

Various theoretical traditions inform empirical studies of practice and the many aspects of what people do. These include Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and the pragmatism of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, among others, both of which naturalize Hegel's concepts of consciousness, work, and tool. Both approaches concern changes in practices, their mediation through artifacts (a focus shared with hermeneutics), and cultural retooling in reconstructing the environment and in organizational change. Both also propose interventionist and experimentalist approaches to studies of human practices. Other theoretical traditions have examined the fundamental basis for human interaction - commonsense reasoning procedures, methods, protocols - and the moral accountability of action, both of which also bear upon the realization of any practice. Two such traditions arise from the work of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel’s classical ethnomethodology. Yet another theoretical lens for critical studies of practice arises from the work of Foucault where, for example, a relational conceptualization of power/knowledge illuminates such ‘effects’ as gendered workplace practices.

These and other studies also suggest that practice-focused empirical research needs to draw upon anthropological-ethnographic and sociological-participant observer methodologies for accessing and generating data. These enable researchers to get ‘close to where the (inter)action is’, thereby seeing human beings in ‘real-time’ as they instantiate a practice. This is the route for understanding "organization as it happens" (to paraphrase Boden). Such an approach suggests that it is only through intimate observation that we can access organizational members' situated use and collective manipulation of an array of tools, technologies, objects, vocabularies, and complex bodies of knowledge in realizing a 'practice'. It is an approach that seeks to ground theorizing in what it is that people actually do, rather than beginning with theories abstracted from action. In this, it takes as its point of departure - at times explicitly and consciously, at times by implication - a phenomenological emphasis on lived experience, a hermeneutic emphasis on meanings embedded in linguistic, physical, and action artifacts working symbolically, and/or a critical theoretical emphasis on power."

This just as background for those interested in practice theory. There are also some interesting papers on the websites that was presented at the conference.

2006-07-31T18:20:00.000+03:00

Anti customer orientation

Customer centricity, customer focus, customer orientation etc. are all concepts that are used frequently in companies today. The assumption is that it is the good, and right thing to put customers in the centre of the analysis, planning and implementation of marketing activities.

Postmodern marketers, and others, also practitioners are frustrated by the fragmentation of customers. Customers are extremely hard to track, understand and use a stable platform for planning activities. What a customer is now, can in the next moment be something different.

Therefore, it is here in this blog suggested that perhaps it is not the right thing to use customers as the starting point for marketing activities. Consumption practice may be a more stable, and even predictable starting point for being market oriented. Social practice, or consumption practice refer here to certain "ways of doing" in the customer spaces. Thus marketing is not about serving certain segments of customers, but certain segments of "doings".