It is true that those of us who care seek out and value authentic companies that provide authentic experiences. However, the reason why many goods and services have become commodities is because consumers regard everything as a commodity that should be provided to them at the lowest price.

People state frequently that they want authentic experiences, responsive customer service and quality products. The majority also say that they value the natural environment and want it preserved. However, when the time comes for purchase, consumers based their decisions primarily on price. Price continues to trump authenticity and value – except in the rarified consumer arenas of the socially conscious wealthy.

In addition, marketers have trained consumers to be ready to accept the flimsiest of claims of authenticity – so that the pesky thing called conscience will not interfere with purchases.

This is not to say that companies should foresake the pursuit of authentic authenticity. It does add value in the workplace. It can lead to enhancements in productivity, commitment and output of quality products and services.
One cannot look at authenticity within the isolation of the commercial marketplace. For the concept to have meaning and impact, it must relate to the pervading culture. Within narrow segments of our society, authenticity is becoming a significant goal. For the majority of our society, the ability to continue to our current levels of consumption is the driving force. You can see it even in the discussions on sustainability. Let’s buy our way to sustainability – where are the green products. We shouldn’t need to change our lifestyles – just change our product lines.
Authenticity – once you can fake that, you’ve got it made. That may sound cynical, but until consumers stop behaving like consumers, it will dominate marketing philosophy.

In partial response, recognize that authenticity is personally determined (as Joseph Waisman asserts). You get to decide what is authentic to you, and so if Paolo thinks Starbucks is fake, it’s fake to him. Most of the millions of people who regularly go there, however, think it’s very authentic. What’s clear, though — as L. Smith alludes to — is that its continued success has nothing to do with its availability, cost, or quality; it depends on its perceived authenticity.
Therefore, as Dan Wood points out, it is a matter of perception. We do in fact live our lives “almost entirely in manufactured space”. (The Grand Canyon, to Gardner Clute’s point, may be a natural space, but virtually everyone’s experience of it is mediated through manufactured economic offerings. The Grand Canyon may be authentic, but the Skywalk most certainly is not!)

That’s why the key task for companies now that authenticity has become the new consumer sensibility is one of rendering authenticity — managing everything so that people perceive our offerings and, by extension, the places in which they are offered, and our companies themselves as authentic. In response to Sjors Provoost, authenticity is the value that people seek in today’s Experience Economy.

In summary, if my “logic skips and tumbles” it is due to my inability to convey everything about the subject in 15 minutes. If you find the topic intriguing — even if still wrong! — please do wrestle with the ideas in full in the book I wrote with Jim Gilmore, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, which you can learn about at www.AuthenticityBook.com.

New York Times columnist David Pogue takes aim at technology’s worst interface-design offenders, and provides encouraging examples of products that get it right. To funny things up, he bursts into song.

He’s highlighting the decline of some manufacturers commitment to user-friendly software. There are vendors that release complicated software to run under Microsoft’s products, and while they are to blame some for the lack of intuitiveness, Microsoft created this user-not-so-friendly foundation..

Calling for simplicity in design is easy. But what appears to be simple from the designer’s perspective may be anything but from the perspective of the player.

About David Pogue: David Pogue is the personal technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy Award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. He’s also one of the world’s bestselling how-to authors,

A demostration of Augmented Reality…the seamless mixing of the real and the virtual. Quite simply, this is the future. AR has unlimited potential, the potential to give us virtualy anything anywhere.

For many of those interested in AR, one of its most important characteristics is the way in which it makes possible a transformation of the focus of interaction.

The interactive system is no longer a precise location, but the whole environment; interaction is no longer simply a face-to-screen exchange, but dissolves itself in the surrounding space and objects. Using an information system is no longer exclusively a conscious and intentional act

We Love to be Scared. If you haven’t been inside a haunted house lately, you might be shocked to see how far they have come. The haunted houses of today have animatronics and Hollywood-quality sets and special effects designed to shock you and make you scream. Haunted houses keep trying to one-up each other with the latest technology and special effects.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig9dhC06nwU

When people get scared, their bodies automatically triggers the “fight or flight” response—their heart rates increase, they breathe faster, their muscles tense, and their attention focuses for quick and effective responses to threats.

If the brain knows there is no risk of really being harmed, it experiences this adrenaline rush as enjoyable, Rudd explained. The key to enjoying such thrills lies in knowing how to properly gauge the risk of harm.

The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a new technology from Google that automatically translates Java into JavaScript, making Ajax applications easier to code and deploy.

As you might have guessed, it emphasizes end-user experience, GWT usability features, and several of the big improvements made in GWT 1.4 RC.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMsL9fN-rXk

Usability = Great Application + Happy Users

The Web is experiencing a new growth with an emphasis on rich, web-based applications. These applications can be difficult to build because they rely on JavaScript, which lacks the sophisticated object-oriented structures and static typing of Java, they are tricky to debug, and they require you to manage numerous browser inconsistencies.

In May of 2006 Google released the Google Web Toolkit. GWT enables developers to create Ajax applications in Java. With GWT, you can build your applications using a real object-oriented language and take advantage of Java tools like Eclipse that are already available. Instead of trying to bring tool support to Ajax, Google brought Ajax to a place where the tools already existed.

Robert Barlow-Busch argues that traditional usability testing is too slow to properly support an iterative approach to product design. He presents the “design checkpoint” as a complementary activity: an informal exercise in which 1 designer meets with 1 user for 1 hour every 1 or 2 weeks.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgxKyuglbT8

From the “7 Minute Soapbox on User Experience” in Waterloo, Ontario on June 14/07, in which speakers had exactly 7 minutes to present their ideas.