Darty's Contract of Confidence (Contrat de Confiance) - Iconic Action

Darty is a leading French electrical goods retailer, currently owned by KESA Electricals Plc.

The “Contract of Confidence/Trust” is a contract between the firm and its customers. Darty launched it 30 years ago, promising price, choice and service.

It contains tangile specifics, e.g.
- Darty is never knowingly undersold
- They guarantee a repair on any day of the week (unheard of in a country where no one worked on Sundays)

Iconic action: each employee signs the contract of confidence when they join.

Sources: Mainly Disruption by Jean-Marie Dru (p 163). Also KESA Electricals site here.
CDC booklet itself available here.

37 Signals...

...have a book explaining their philosophy

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_What_is_Getting_Real.php

Flimsy Doorknobs (Why iconic actions work)

How do you judge how solid a door is? Of course from the feel of the door handle, and the clunk the mechanism makes when you close it.

On room doors the handle and noise is even less related to the quality of the door itself than in cars, which manufacturers apparently spend a fortune getting the closing noise right on.

Inspired by, thought not directly from: http://dustincurtis.com/two_stories.html

Accidental Innovation: @replies on Twitter

"@replies were not originally part of Twitter. They were embraced by the community first, and then we built them into the system."

Source: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/05/how-replies-work-on-twitter-and-how.html

Power of testing - You should follow me on Twitter

UX designer Duncan Curtis found that the phrase:
"You should follow me on twitter"
Got 38% more clicks than:
"Follow me on twitter"

Source: http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html

Market gap for serious but pacy media content

There needs to be more serious but pacy content on TV and radio. Radio 4 is too slow and current affairs based. 'Yoof' TV too dumbed down. Instead do something for people in their late 20s and 30s, based on Saturday broadsheet magazines.