Video Ezy and Rental Interface Affordances
Interfaces are everywhere, more common in the world around us than we often acknowledge. We interface with our fridge, our television, our car and probably our toilet. It’s the point where our physical lives touch underlying technologies. We interface with a book through the technologies of language and writing. We interface with our computer through a keyboard or mouse. We interface with businesses through their point of sale. We interface with the world through our senses of touch, taste, hearing, sight and smell. The world is a mesh of interfaces – sparking sciences of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and studies in areas such as usability, ergomics, and cognitive psychology.
A key part of how we interface with the world has to do with a concept called affordances – does it look like what it does, like you’d expect from a doorknob or an elevator button? This is a major factor why some of the items you purchase are psychotically difficult to use. But onto my example:
Last week I went into Video Ezy to rent a couple of new release videos and they have changed their system. The old system has the shiny DVD cases on display and when one is taken there is an orange holder DVD case that doesn’t represent an available video. In simple terms, there is an instant affordance of the availability of videos for the customer as they traverse the shelves. It’s obvious. And it’s also a system that worked rather well from a customer perspective as an established behaviour.
Until the business realised their other business – the selling second hand used rental DVD business – had a difficulty. Banged up and scratched cases send a bad marketing message about the quality of the DVDs. Which posed a bit of a problem to them – how do they rent you videos but keep the covers shiny and new. The answer: fuck with the established behaviour and make you rent the orange cover. Did it work?
Note: if you’re from Video Ezy this is a customer perspective, therefore I’m right whether you like it or disagree.
OK so you walk into Video Ezy and the store looks entirely the same except for numerous labels instructing you to take the orange case for rental. As a customer you are revisiting that established behaviour and questioning the grab a video for rental interface. The shiny cover is still in front of the orange cover – you just have to use the orange cover instead for rental. So what happens to that instant ability to recognise available videos? Gone. Kaput. In fact, as a customer you go to some areas with bundles of shiny video covers of the movie you want to watch and the only real way to tell there aren’t any available is to look behind every single copy. Some copies, obviously due to other customers, are just in front of other shiny copies not available for rental.
The shiny copies, after all, are the movie industry’s marketing tool to get you to buy or rent that video…
So, when you think closely about what Video Ezy has come up with as a solution for their video resale marketing problem, we see a solution that creates more problems. Lack of visual cues for availability. Change to the existing customer interaction through altering the interface that videos are directly accessed for rental. No it won’t send Video Ezy broke, but it might make some people move to Video City for rentals in the longer term. And even if it doesn’t, it will make renting videos slightly more uncomfortable than they’re used to.
I personally thought the cashier telling me that my difficulty was due to their desire to sell more ex-rentals as a bit of a slight. It’s like saying, I’m saving the shiny sportscar for someone who is better, here take the dented model from 2002.
The real answer Video Ezy was looking for: purchase two shiny marketing covers for each DVD purchased from the movie companies. One for rental, the other for resale. Simple. Win – win. The real answer doesn’t involve rocking an already working boat where Peter pays Paul. Peter and Paul need separate accounts entirely! What do Video Ezy really sell in their shops? User experiences. Good user experiences send customers home with rentals or resales. End of story.
Please stop making us rent those orange covers like we’re second rate citizens in your market? Those shiny covers are actually there to market movies to us, right? Seriously…
