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Customer Experience

Designing the Small Details

5 min read Translated from the Arabic original

Introduction

In the field of customer experience management, there is what’s known as Design of Little Things (DoLT) — the small touches and minor adjustments that can leave a major mark on the customer experience. These are often inexpensive; all they require is people who care about their customers and care to provide them a comfortable experience. The winning formula needs some thought and sharp observation to uncover many small, inexpensive improvements that nonetheless make a big difference to the customer experience.

What does it cost to hang a sign at the outlet displaying operating hours? What does it cost to put up directional signs to help someone entering for the first time find their way? What did it cost Heinz to redesign the ketchup bottle so it dispenses from the bottom instead of the top? The customer may not consciously notice any of these things — but you’ll find them returning involuntarily to the same provider or buying the same product, because their experience was smoother than their previous experiences. Despite being a Samsung smartphone user for several years, my experience of opening the box of the iPhone my wife recently bought was astonishing.

Does personality type play a role in noticing fine details?

Have you heard of personality type assessments? Many of you may not have. The assessment is based on years and years of research, and divides people into 16 different personality types. Among the 16, certain types enjoy paying attention to the finest details — this is not a disease so much as a gift from God, given to some of His creation and withheld from others to create balance. Some personality types don’t care about details at all and find detail-oriented people irritating — they may even consider it a kind of obsessive condition needing treatment. I recommend you take the assessment if you haven’t already; you’ll discover great things about yourself you weren’t able to interpret or justify before. You can take the test at https://www.16personalities.com/ar and purchase the detailed report if you like the brief one. The detailed report is in English; I’m not aware of an Arabic site offering the same.

What prompted me to mention the assessment is that my own personality type falls within the group that notices the finest details. In the next section, I share a personal experience related to this article’s topic.

Look at the cover image of the article before reading this section. Three observations caught my attention in the advertising of major watch brands and in their retail outlets:

Observation 1: The time on the watch face is always set to 10:10.

Observation 2: If the watch face has a date window, the date is always the 8th or the 28th.

Observation 3: If the watch face has a day-of-the-week window, the day is always Monday — this is specifically with Rolex watches.

These things don’t happen by chance. So why? Here’s the explanation:

The time on the watch face is 10:10 because:

  • Setting the hands at this exact time makes the brand’s logo — typically placed in the center under the 12 — clearly visible across many global brands.
  • Humans generally prefer symmetry to contrast. The hands’ splayed position is more visually appealing than having both hands together.
  • This position also lets other elements on the watch face — the day and date windows and so on — appear clearly without the hands cutting across them.
  • Finally, someone might say the same effect could be achieved with hands at 8:20. But the manufacturers say that looks like a sad face — whereas 10:10 is closer to a smile or a check mark, and feels more positive.

I once read a humorous article discussing why Apple Watches are set to 10:09. The author suggested it could be interpreted as Apple having surpassed all other watchmakers in innovation — even though they arrived after them. Personally, I read it as “be different to be noticed.”

As for the date:

Some posters on the unofficial Rolex owners’ forum mention that Rolex ran many market studies to determine which date looks most attractive in the date window, and that the results showed the number 28 was preferred by the largest share of the sampled audience. That’s what some forum members heard from salespeople at the watch outlets when they asked. Others said the number was chosen because it fills the date window. Yet other global brands use the 8th, and a different writer attributed this to the fact that the numbers 8, 18, and 28 are lucky numbers in Chinese culture — and you’ll find all of them used in major watch brand ads. But some brands use the 25th as well, which may return us to the “fill the window” theory. These all remain hypotheses unless there’s an official statement from the manufacturers themselves to confirm or deny them — but it certainly didn’t happen by chance.

As for Monday:

I noticed this with Rolex watches. Some collectors in the same forum mentioned that Monday is the first official workday after the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) in Switzerland — the country where this brand of watches is made — and that’s why it was chosen.

Conclusion

The watch in the article’s cover image is on my wish list — whoever wants to gift it to me, I would be most grateful.

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