Threshold Resistance

I recently spoke at the Business of Design Week in Hong Kong. It was an honour to be invited given the notable collection of speakers assembled from around the world. Moreover, it was a wonderful opportunity to break from the never ending talk of financial Armageddon and humbly delve into the unadulterated world of design.

I was particularly enthusiastic to discuss design in the context of business, my business, which is the creation and ownership retail space. I titled the presentation “Threshold Resistance” – a phrase coined by Alfred Taubman – founder of Taubman Centres and pioneer of the modern shopping centre business in America.
The audience of roughly 800 people were largely from the design world, be it architecture, product, digital or the environmental fields.

Excerpts of the presentation follow:

Design has always been important in the retail world, but to understand why design is so important today, it helps to look back at how retail venues have evolved throughout history to meet the changing needs of society.

The act of shopping has gone from being a necessary evil often performed by servants, to being the number one leisure activity of the 21st century.

Retail venues were traditionally nothing more than a place where merchants and consumers transacted. The tendency for people to exchange or sell goods in return for other goods led to the creation of the world’s first retail destinations. Sellers discovered they thrived alongside their direct and indirect competitors… the theory being that buyers wanted to compare, and thus, would come in greater numbers to locations where that comparison was possible.

While these rudimentary marketplaces were haphazardly expanding, so were individual retailers in their own right, thus creating a virtuous proliferation of choices for buyers, leading to a dramatic increase in visitation and aggregate consumption. In turn, the venues responded by becoming increasingly large and sophisticated; and for the first time became purpose-built destinations designed for interaction.
Today the shopping centre is the world’s dominant built environment for social exchange. It’s interesting that when you think of the world’s great architectural icons, I doubt anyone here would think of a shopping centre ……..

When considering design we could imagine that it springs from nowhere – the product of inspiration or a muse, and that designers exist in a realm of creativity that others do not. While this may be true in rare cases; it is more legitimate to think of design as a tool to meet the needs of business. For example, while hundreds of chairs may be designed, the ones that are eventually manufactured are the ones that resonate with business minds, as a proxy for the ultimate users. The same can be said for cars, electronic products, almost every subject of a design initiative.

When I think of something like the ubiquitous Blackberry. I wonder whether its origins trace to a spark of inspiration in a designer’s head, or whether it was the result of a consciously devised business strategy to respond to an observed need.

The reality is, good design invariably finds a way into marriage with business and vice versa. The best products are those which are borne from a collaboration of creative design and thoughtful business minds. Nothing in the world is truly new or original. So good design often involves a process of adapting or incrementally improving the product’s aptitude, and occasionally, as is the case with the blackberry and the ipod, making a great leap forward. In either case, it is the instructive interplay with business that helps a designer interpret the requirements of the user. In doing so, providing a rational foundation for the designer to apply creative freedom.

Designing retail space is a study in human psychology. Its not rocket science, but it is very hard to get right and requires a great deal of experience and patience.

The evidence is the hundreds of shopping centres being built today in emerging markets by new developers that fail to succeed. The most common error made when designing a new shopping centre is thinking about it as lines on an architectural plan or rental area that needs to be maximized at all costs. It’s not until you put yourself into the shoes of the customer, the retailer, the delivery man or garbage man that can really conceptualize the right solution for the space.

So good design in a retail sense necessarily becomes a response to and dialogue with the customer / user in all its forms. The challenge remains how to inspire and enthrall in an ever demanding and sophisticated consumer world, but at the same time create a functional venue that will last.

It may be strange for a retail developer to show an image of a coffee machine, but it highlights in one glance, some universal design principles we focus on. It was designed in the 1947 by Robbiati. It is timeless in its aesthetic appeal, simple, easily understood, and extremely functional. Often it is within simplicity that sustainable design is found. These sorts of products rebuff the commonly held view in Asia that new is better. In designing retail venues we strive for this same simplicity and durability. Great malls tend to have timeless design.

Perhaps Taubman’s most highly sought after mall today is Short Hills just outside of Manhattan in New Jersey. This project was built almost 30 years ago. If we think back to 1980 when Taubman was designing this shopping venue …….. Computers were rare. Televisions weren’t flat. Radios needed manual tuning. Music was played on vinyl and cassette tapes, and videos were amazing. There were no mobile phones, no internet, e-commerce, or electronic banking. Shops took notes and coins out of your wallet. So, how has Short Hills stayed relevant and successful over the last 30 years? One of the secrets is logical physical planning that has allowed the venue to evolve as the society evolved around it.

Until recently it has almost always been the more functional venues that were commercially successful and inversely the so-called beautiful malls that have been financially challenged. I say until recently, because we have sort of, just entered a golden age where we are beginning to see a more consistent convergence of form and function to produce beautiful shopping environments that are also doing lots of business. Maybe the powerful synergy of design and business working in unison is being realized?

The whole basis of this event is the interaction of business and design. To that end, I’d like to talk for a moment about the relationship between a retail developer and a retail architect.

In the simplest terms, it’s generally the developer who brings commercial parameters, functionality and urgency to the creative table, and the architect who brings the creativity. However, when a developer becomes an owner of a shopping centre, or dozens of shopping centres, the role definition begins to change. In these instances, the developer brings a wealth of operating experience that is priceless.

Designing a retail venue is not a perfect science, we learn as much through our mistakes as we do through observing what works. The on-going daily custodianship of a mall forces the owner to see the venue through the prism of the retailer and customer. That perspective then gets reflected in future renovations of that mall, and by the developer on the next project.

Contrast that intimate create -> observe -> interpret -> re-create continuum of the developer/owner, with the short-term retained involvement of an architect. No matter how experienced, how intellectually adept or how thoughtful the architect may be, it is a mighty task for he or she to appropriately balance all the nuances of such a complex social organism as a shopping centre, particularly when the architect often has additional aesthetic aspirations influencing their thought process as well. These slightly or widely diverging influences often create tension. But managed correctly, within that tension can come a lasting composition of both form and function. But at the end of the day, it is really the developer / owner that has to live with the property long-term, so in my view it’s the developer that needs to ultimately be responsible for the design.

If I had to distill the hundreds of design rules that Taubman applies to each project down to one axiom, it would be that of Threshold Resistance.

“Threshold resistance is defined as the physical and psychological barriers that stand between a customer and the sale of merchandise - the force that keeps the customer from opening the door and coming in over the threshold. One must understand that force and break down the barriers between art and commerce, between shoppers and merchandise, between high culture and popular taste.”

The best way to examine threshold resistance is to look at examples of it. Many would think that threshold resistance is a consequence of the constraints placed on a developer or designer during the conception process. But ironically, it is usually these very people that are responsible for creating the resistance in the first place.

Of course, different sites and regulatory requirements do heavily influence a developer and designer’s ability to create the ideal environment. To minimize or eliminate threshold resistance is an onerous aspiration that requires a dedication and precision not often associated with real estate developers.

Designing a large shopping centre is a highly iterative process that usually takes 18 months to complete. During the process a developer has literally hundreds of decisions to make. Decisions as major as: how floors should it have? to a decision about the colour of line markings in the car park.

Whatever the decision, we are always trying to reduce threshold resistance. In a sense we are endlessly trying to design the most fluid and seamless shopping experience conceivable. With no obstacles or frustrations built into the design.

Threshold resistance can be obvious, for example stairs. I’m sure everyone could predict the typical human response to being confronted with the option of climbing a flight of stairs. But there is the more subtle nuance of human nature that for every 3 people having a choice to go up or down a level, 2 will choose to go down. These sorts of psychological realities instruct Taubman’s design thinking.

Threshold resistance could also take the form of a sight line that is blocked by a column or lift. The reality being, that if a customer can’t see a store, they probably won’t shop in the store.

Threshold resistance doesn’t always present as a physical barrier, it might be an unfriendly looking shop attendant or a store temperature that is too cold or too hot. A mall that is too congested with merchandise, or too spacious. Whatever it is that reduces the ability for a customer to make a purchase is threshold resistance. To pursue the elimination of such forces is the most worthwhile aspiration when designing retail space.

Great retail design is not about fancy architects or grandiose architecture. Great retail design is about shaping social behaviour. Retail is the world’s biggest business, and shopping is the human race’s most fundamental activity.

What a responsibility to have.