1 1 FEMALE VALUES AS INNOVATION DRIVERS FOR BETTER USER EXPERIENCES INFINIT Lyle Clarke, Concept Manager, B&O

2 2 THE INITIAL IDEA FOR B&O  Learn to bring ‘Wife Acceptance Factor’ into products with Interaction design.  B&O has worked with the concept of ”Wife Acceptance Factor” for many years  Interaction design is an increasingly important part of product offerings

3 2 THE BIGGER OPPORTUNITY FOR B&O  From ‘Wife Acceptance Factor’ to 'Wife Addiction Factor'  Females have more influence on spending inside the house than men  The 'benefits' approach to value matches B&O's brand ideal  Focusing on high value 'benefits' is more rational than competing in the global race of feature list check boxes.

4 3 IN PRACTICE  Introduce the Female Interaction principles with all new team members, followed by the target female persona - Aesthetically aware, seeks identity through aesthetics  Focus on HER benefits in Concept and Design phases  Deemphasising the product itself - Focus on actual benefits to deliver and the social context of use in scenarios.  Question old-fashioned ‘male’ features - Identify and remove features only there because a ‘typical’ male user would expect them  Add features that complement ‘her darlings’ - Rather than trying to be one of the darlings  Set the requirement of what is good enough and who we are trying to serve, as a young professional, aestheically aware female  Talk about the female persona using the product in her social context, with engineers, again, and again and again.

5 6 EXTERNAL RESULTS  Market success with females  ‘this is the first product from B&O I’ve ever considered buying.  Significant improvement of first time use of new product releases  In reality, many of the people buying these products are the same people who have always bought them... But they are getting a much better experience than they could before  Marketing and communication has become much more social benefit oriented

6 3 IN PRACTICE  Share the research with the stakeholders,  keep bringing it up time and time again - so it becomes part of the project DNA and part of what you stand for.  Concept briefs shold explicitly list benefits for her - technology as a tool  Design briefs should highlights gender aspects, and include benefits from female perspective as key success criteria  Explicitly go into how the product should be perceived and used by women – rather than talking about a genderless (but really, MALE, functionality)  At every working session, start with the benefits first, especially the social / family benefits... and then afterwards show the concept, design or whatever concrete problem/solution we we are working on, on the table.

7 3 NOT A QUICK FIX - A CHANGE IN MENTALITY NEEDED  A lot of time and effort needed to help people on the project understand what we are trying to help the female customer achieve.  Once something has been done, it is tough to ask for it to be redone but in a new and unfamiliar way.  The more people involved on the project the harder it becomes to keep the female interaction focus  The more systems, both infrastructure and human learnt processes that are supporting the previous designs, the bigger the challenge  If you do not communicate well enough people will try to ‘fix’ the parts of the project that are different from normal, speedily undoing the work done previously.

8 5 SIGNS THAT A MENTALITY CHANGE IS SPROUTING  New concepts have benefits to women as key features.  The female personas are widely used when discussing solutions  Words like ‘Darlings’ entering the internal language  Some new user interaction research and concepts include gender (and age) perspectives.  In some teams it is acceptable to tease colleagues for ‘forgetting the females’

9 11 NUTURING THE MENTAL CHANGE  Firstly, the thoroughness of the research and data behind it is crucial to getting buy in internally with key stakeholders.  Stay ahead, invest in female interaction understanding BEFORE the ‘default-male’ auto-pilot starts  Pay attention to the balance of the discussion and intervene with reminders to consider the female target personas.  Female interaction expert DICTATORS are needed.  Democracy in consumer electronics design does not favour females.

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