Slashdot Mirror
Design Guru Critiques Apple Retail Store
xdfgf writes "Paco Underhill, CEO of Envirosell, gives an overview, and explains aspects, of the floor plan of the SoHo Apple store. Quote from the article: 'If success lurks in details like those, it explains why Apple CEO Steve Jobs spends half a day each week with a 20-member design team, hashing out tweak after tweak in each of his 53 retail stores. In one session, the group agonized over three types of lighting to get Jobs's iMacs to shine just as they do in glossy ads.'"
As an architect, design consultants make my blood boil. While Mr Underhill may have spent hours in the local mall, noticing that people wander counterclockwise, a list of rules to follow does not a good design make.
His suggestions- glass staircase scares off the oldsters, an "In Stock Now!" sign so people could tell it was a store, and putting more tchochkes at the checkout to get those impulsive spenders- all reek of items that would work well in a supermarket. I'm sure this guy makes millions getting retail corporate sheep to follow his dogmatic design rules (and they are dogmatic- I would hardly call some behavioral observations "science", no matter what the title of his book is.) but if he could step back and realize the kind of people Apple is marketing towards (at the very minimum, a group of people who appreciate good design) then he would know that those people who aren't afraid of a Unix-based operating system sure as hell aren't going to be afraid of a glass staircase. These people will be annoyed by cheap signs littered throughout a space trying to grab your attention (the architectural equivalent of a blinking banner ad) and the few coffee cups at the checkout counter trying to squeeze an extra four dollars out of you while you are waiting in line to spend two thousand.
This is the kind of genius that thinks they should put some kind of pricing special into their ads (Order now and get the Yao Ming/Mini Me combination Powerbook/bobblehead free! Operators are standing by!)
Strange how he picked an atypcial store to analyze. Most Apple stores are one floor. In any case, one hopes there's more to his analysis than just the 7 points he mentions, especially since the Apple Store apparently fails five of them. (But a concession stand in an Apple Store? What, instead of free Evian?) Nevertheless, Apple Stores are, even by the author's own account, a success, so you have to wonder if perhaps the rules are flawed. It may be precisely because Apple Stores are so different that people are intruiged by almost everything in the store.
As a side note, I have to wonder how many females traverse the glass staircase in skirts or dresses.
...Probably none, actually.
If you want to make an Apple shine, just do like in the grocery store business.
Spray wax on them.
"In one session, the group agonized over three types of lighting to get Jobs's iMacs to shine just as they do in glossy ads." Over three? You mean, uh, four?
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
I think the thing that the designer doesn't quite get the concept of the store. It is meant to feel helpful and minamilist. You end up wanting to buy a product simply because you don't feel that you are being forced to buy something and thus you feel that you are buying by choice and with your defenses down.
Walking into an Apple store is akin to walking into a luxury car show room. Nobody talks prices or tries to sell you anything, until *you* want to, yet the product for sale is presented there and you buy it because you know you want it and that you feel you are being treated with due respect, rather than a jerk who will accept the salesman's forced pitch.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
But the main reason I like it is the fact that it is not cluttered with all impulse buys everywhere. There is pleanty of room to look around and see what they are selling and actually stop and look at it without feeling that I am getting in the way of other people (Like I do at the grocery store). As well the store is well lit so I can see things clearly. Oddly enough I seem to go from the left to the right. I first look at the powerbooks and PowerMacs then I go around the other way. Its more of a relaxed shopping experence and a not in your face thing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
geez Pudge, you could at least credit Macslash somewhere in your articles when they beat you to the punch by a whole friggin' week. Your headlines are eerily similar too.
Triv
Anyone notice the twin comments in discussing Apple's risk in opening Apple stores? Specifically that the Mac user base hasn't grown in ten years, and that the market share has flatlined at 3%. Now unless the total number of computer userers hasn't changed at all in the past ten years, there's just a little something incompatable with those statemtents.
Paco talks a lot about making changes to the inside of the store. But for me (and I am primarily an x86 user), as soon as I walked into the Apple store at some mall in Cincinnati, the product pretty much spoke for itself. I walked around, drooling over the pretty ibooks, running my finger round and round the static flywheel on the ipods, gawking at the humongous flatpanel displays. I wanted one of everything in the store.
My point being, has this Paco guy ever seen Apple's products? I think all they need to do is get people to come into the store in order to sell stuff. Granted, this doesen't mean you want crack vials lying on the floor or something, but you get my drift.
Gateway contracted the Cow to design their Gateway Country stores.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I thought that was in Apple stores.
they are treacherouss theifss, nasty Hobbtisess... live in nassty burrows with Windowsess And smelly green gardenss too, and the sick blue sky... ah! Poor Smeagol... nassty Hobbitsess...
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Put it on Mr Underhills tab...that's what I always say
Right... the pristine, minimalist design of an Apple store would be SO enhanced by glowing neon "In Stock!" signs. An Apple store isn't a friggin' Wal-Mart. And a concession? Please. "Hi, welcome to the Apple store! Do you want fries with that?"
Did this guy even go INTO the store? I mean, c'mon...
Anyone think they will be putting in Wi-fi for public access anytime soon? I am guessing most stores don't have a theatre like this SOHO one, but maybe integrating a small cafe where you can access your email and behold the Mac's around you. What stipulations would you want to incur? Must be using an airport card, must buy something (if only trivial), or must have had a purchase/repair previously?
:)
Won't affect me unless I move out of the middle of Missouri though.
On a different note, I LOVE going to our University Bookstore's computer department just to look at the Mac's there...that makes me want to own one of everything alone. Maybe it is the product more than the store! But maybe the store is a great vehicle for understanding the product.
Actually, you can't stand under the stairs
It occurred to me the other day that Apple is steering us towards the shiny (brushed) metal future that countless science fiction books, movies, TV shows, movies and conceptual art has foretold.
The clean look that surrounded factious HAL's world in 2001: A Space Odyssey is becoming Apple's reality.
The stores are just an extension of this; they have managed to create, as others have pointed out, an environment that is conducive to buying because it doesn't seem designed for selling. Yes, it shows off the products, but it doesn't show them off the obvious here's-the-damn-product way that car showrooms do, and it doesn't layer products on shelves like Wal-Mart (and most everyone else). It just sets the products up the ideal space you would want to use them, a sterile (yet warm and comfortable) studio somewhere overlooking the flying-car future of New York.
It reminds me of Gerhard Richter, the fussed-over German painter, who lives in such an environment: homely sterility.
But what Apple does is pretty much impossible for any else to replicate: They are able to create such an environment because they not only dictate what is sold (Wal-Mart does this) but because they make (i e design) most everything they sell. Additionally they set the most-always-followed president for the design of products that accompany what they make: Their human interface design stretches beyond the software that runs on their OS, it encompasses most every product and most every product box that they sell.
Because of this kinetic link not just between what they make and what they sell but what other people make for them to sell, Apple is uniquely able to create the Apple Store, something no Windows PC maker could because of the mesh that makes up not just their software or hardware world, but any front-end retail attempts.
Look, I love Apple products--I really do. But Jobs has always suffered from missing the forest for the trees, and this latest example is just another clear indication of that. "Making sure the light was just right so they glowed just like they should?" Meanwhile: the processor speed is becoming more and more of a factor, third party developers are only barely on board, and when they are their support is lackluster, Apple's strategy for penetration into vertical markets and turnkey solutions is represented by some powerpoint slides, and they haven't given raises to the employees for two years. The attitude still is: if you don't get it, it's not worthwhile trying to convert you.
Apple needs to keep its eye on the ball, and while the design details make for an impressive presentation, you're at least partially selling to a market that knows how to evaluate on the basis of third party benchmarks to price ratio. While design aspects are, I think, part of what makes owning an Apple a special experience, I think the resource of time is being squandered on those concerns and left the meat of the consideration go begging.
The core of the problem: to buy a Mac, you spend more to purchase a machine with less speed, and will work with fewer third parties. All the nice lighting in the world won't fix that, and so I wish they spent that 4 hours a week thinking about improving those things instead. However, in the long run, that's undoubtedly harder--and it requires that Apple folks work with partners, and they are often too self-righteous to do so.
--
$tar -xvf
The glass stairs he talks about aren't really such a big deal -- they are translucent rather than transparent, and that's only apparent because there are lights shining up from underneath. I've been in buildings that promote a sort of adrenaline rush -- seven stories with metal grating for each floor, for example -- and the stairs in Apple SoHo do not qualify.
According to a rumor I've heard, when the store opened for the first time, the manifold legions of press rushed inward. The architect for the glass stairs was standing nearby and audibly panicked at the sight of them stampeding toward the stairs.
"People drift to the right when they enter a store, then circulate counterclockwise."
Then shouldn't they be designing these stores for the *clockwise* traffic of us Apple users?
Anyone from countries like Japan, Australia, or UK care to offer any insight? Do you walk to the left when entering a shop?
PC/Mac user sees switch/other ad on TV
Said user goes to store.apple.com or calls 1-800-APPLE to get more info
User realizes how much better their life coul dbe if they owned one of these products
User also sees on-line or is told over phone their is an Apple store X miles away
User hops into car and goes to store where they THEN see the product for the first time
User say to themselves "WOW a 17" Powerbook or 23" Cinema Display is AWESOME" and then proceeds to purchase and take home said product on the spot.
This is how it went down for one of my friends before they 'switched' - just needed to touch it and feel it before slamming down the Visa.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I concur entirely. This was basically the same experience that I had in buying my TiBook, and one of my friends just concluded in buying a new 12" Powerbook.
Apple's advertising is as good as it gets, and people want their products. Physical stores exist so people can check to make sure the product really exists, and really looks as damn sexy as they thought it would.
The type of person who buys an iMac at the retail Apple Store (as opposed to a custom-built machine from the online Apple Store) doesn't know what "megahertz" means. Maybe they know what a G4 is, maybe not. In their case, lighting that makes the product look as they've seen it before could actually help. The fact remains that Apple's human engineering has always been peerless, and their retail stores are no exception. The stores draw in people who maybe have never seen a Mac in person before, or at most saw one at the crowded, crappy CompUSA.