Every day in Historically yours, David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept of everyday life. Tuesday, he was interested in those of the terminals allowing the customers of the businesses to note their level of satisfaction. Objects that can now be found in shops and pharmacies as well as in airport toilets.
The interest I have for the origin of things has allowed me to travel a lot. I went to Japan to meet the inventor of karaoke and the inventor of emojis, to Israel to meet the inventor of the electric epilator, and to the United States to meet just about everyone else. So I frequented the airports a lot and all the joys that come with them, like the bottles of water at 4.80 euros, the small stands with game consoles to wait for boarding but never work, but also and above all airport washrooms, where there are kiosks that allow people to record their washroom experience.
These are often terminals with buttons on which are printed four smileys: a super happy smiley, a slightly happy smiley, a slightly unhappy smiley, and finally an unhappy smiley. And these smileys allow you to give a note when you have been in the toilet. Was the experience pleasant? Have there been any skirmishes?
But it is not only in the toilets that we find these terminals. There are some at baggage check-in, security, and even in other places like electronics stores, supermarkets, pharmacies.
A city in Finland
So I wanted to know where it came from. For that, I had to take a plane and go to Finland, to a city called Tampere. It is a great place. Already, we can do what the Finns do best, that is to say go to super hot saunas and then bathe in super cold lakes. Tampere is also a city of high-tech lumberjacks, who cut wood with machines of the future that are too good to see and who calculate how much wood they are chopping as they are chopping it.
And then, in Tampere, there is above all a gentleman called Heikki Vaananen, and who is the inventor of these terminals to note things from real life, which are often called “Happyornot” terminals, because it is their brand. Heikki recounts that when he was 15 he went to a computer store and wanted to ask a salesperson a question … But there was no salesperson. A little pissed off, he kept this idea in his head that it would still be good if we could immediately tell that we were pissed off in a store. Fourteen years later, on November 23, 2009, after lots of prototypes, the first kiosk for recording real life stuff was installed in a supermarket in Tampere.
A huge success
And the success has been enormous, because these kiosks answered a very strong need that companies had to know what their customers were thinking. Before, the only solution was to tell everyone: “Take ten minutes to answer this satisfaction questionnaire and maybe win an iPad”. But the people who answered were people who had ten minutes to spare on a questionnaire.
I was lucky enough to be offered a “Happyornot” terminal that I installed at home. And sometimes, like that, I note my existence. Tonight’s blanquette? Can do better. Those friends who visited me? A little silly. Then I do statistics. I recommend it, it’s great.
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