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Living the Digital Life

The many ways in which the Internet has become ingrained in my lifestyle

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I typically hide at home the entirety of Black Friday weekend, focused on transforming my home into a holiday wonderland. I finally forced myself to rest late Saturday evening, and plopped down on my couch to watch sappy Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel (a total guilty pleasure). But of course I can’t just sit and watch TV – I must multitask. I reached for my iPad and started to web-surf, realizing that I had not pursued any website for this shopping Festivus. Perhaps it was physical fatigue getting the best of me, but my patience had worn thin quickly, as I abandoned website after website because the refreshes were so delayed (presumably from heavy online traffic). Finally, I abandoned my iPad and glazed over watching the aforementioned movies.

I pondered this phenomena the following day and into Cyber Monday. Last year, I took care of almost all my Christmas shopping on Cyber Monday, and this year I didn’t open a single website. Online sales saw a 12-percent increase from last year’s sales volume, equating to a little over $3 billion USD in e-commerce sales, so my behavior was seemingly counter to the trend.

Or was it? Last year’s e-commerce sales on Cyber Monday saw a 17-percent growth from the previous year, so while the overall dollar volume increased in 2015, by just shy of a billion USD, the growth percentage shrunk. So, what does this mean?

Maybe it means nothing, but I have developed my own personal theory on this as I do with almost all things, by extrapolating the patterns of my own life to the patterns at large. What I have observed about my own current shopping tendencies are the following: The Internet has infiltrated my daily routine and life, overall, and that I’ve evolved my habits to utilize it more to save time or money and no longer for recreation.

As I was sitting on the couch getting frustrated with websites, I found myself planning a trip to the mall. This inclination came about because I didn’t want to deal with looking at 243 pages of apparel options that popped up in response to my search criteria, I just wanted to be able to walk a sales area and choose from what the retailer was presenting to me as the best in that category. Essentially, I was struggling with too much choice, and with little point of differentiation, when all I had to go by were photos and bullet-point descriptions.

So I started thinking that maybe the digital life was simply no longer for me, and I was reverting back to my old patterns now – maybe the novelty has worn off. But then I reflected on it more closely and saw that the opposite was true: The Internet has somewhat seamlessly infiltrated my lifestyle, and has even enhanced it.

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Just a few examples that extend beyond my ever-increasing reliance on Google: Up until last January, dogs were an integral part of our little family (which is comprised of my daughter and I). Unfortunately, we had to put both of our dogs down last year, and I was really not in a place, mentally, to bring a new dog into our home. But my daughter, exhibiting all the resiliency of youth, was shopping for new pups online by February. Occasionally, she would share with me the dogs that were her favorites, imploring me with her own version of puppy eyes in an effort to get me to soften and relent. In October, she emailed me a link to a dog on Adoptapet.com, simply saying, “I found our new puppy.” This one merited a meeting. As we all know, if you can get a customer into the fitting room, the chances of the sale increase something like 60 percent, and so too goes with meeting a dog for adoption. His name is Waldorf, and he is now firmly ensconced in our home.

So now I needed to resume buying dog food, which for a 50-plus pound dog, I’m not buying the conveniently small, lightweight bags of kibble. No, I’m buying the thirty pound bag so I only have to load up once a month. As luck would have it, Waldorf was accustomed to a fancy, expensive dog food, and I chose to continue with it so as to make his adjustment to his new home a smoother transition. Being a thrifty consumer, I found that if I signed up for a subscription through Amazon, I saved substantially per bag over the pet store price, and it was delivered to my home for free. This reduced my efforts to lugging the bag from my stoop into the pantry and eliminated the need to keep track of when his food supply was getting low.

At this point, I had provided for Waldorf’s regular sustenance, and so I turned to my own culinary quandary: I don’t cook. That was my ex-husband’s domain. I typically have salads for dinner, and I’ll pick up miscellaneous local take-out for my daughter. Tired of this scenario, I decided it was time to ratchet up my mommy skills and engage with the kitchen I remodeled last year. Friends had recommended Blue Apron – a service that delivers fresh ingredients and recipes for easy, homemade meals – so after perusing their website, I signed us up for three meals a week for two (plus the wine option for me). So while I think they vastly overestimate the everyday cooking skills of most, I have to say I have found this to be a relief and somewhat of a shared adventure. It seems Wally agrees – he found and ate the entire package of uncooked egg noodles for the chicken meatballs that first week.

The point I’m making here is that since the Internet and e-commerce are now entrenched in my so-called non-digital life, and contribute a functional aspect to my everyday routine, my recreation needle has flipped back to the physical. I long to experience surprise and delight amid direct interaction with products and people. I suspect that may be the case with others, as well, and I believe the pendulum is swinging back in favor of bricks and mortar.  

Kathleen Jordan, AIA, CID, LEED AP, is a principal in Gensler’s New York office, and a leader of its retail practice with over 24 years of experience across the United States and internationally. Jordan has led a broad range of retail design projects as both an outside consultant and as an in-house designer. She has led projects from merchandising and design development all the way through construction documentation and administration, and many of her projects have earned national and international design awards. Contact her at kathleen_jordan@gensler.com.

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