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Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Starbucks Experience, by Joseph Michelli

The first time I encountered Starbucks was when I moved to Vancouver in 1992, and Starbucks was a cool, little company in the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t know the words “user experience” then, but even in 1992, realized then that it was a company that created an in-crowd feeling by using its own vocabulary and in-store culture. I was curious, then, to read The Starbucks Experience to see what the deal was. I’d lost a few feel-good points over Starbucks, but not because it had grown to be a large chain - I never got that “now that you’re successful, we have you” vibe. My beef was that Starbucks sued a little coffee shop inside a kids’ clothing store, in some remote B.C. town, that called itself Starducks or something similar. This from a company that has a name from a character in Battlestar Galactica? In the vein of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I didn’t shutting down a little puddleduck shop was a very good corporate move. Aside from that, however, I was impressed with what the book outlined as their five corporate principles for creating great user experiences. I wish all executives with retail operations would read this book and implement the principles throughout their organization.