In this Advertising Age article Al Ries muses on the difficulty of weeding out good creative ideas from bad and observes that "most people tend to make their judgments against a background of 'accepted standards,'or conventional wisdom."

As an example, he contrasts the classic Doyle Dane Bernbach "think small" campaign for the VW Beetle with other automobile advertising of the 1950's. Existing automobile ads contained people, used artwork rather than photographs, included mutiple illustrations and used color.

The Beetle add was simple, black and white and included a realistic photograph. This ad is credited as the start of modern advertising. The new form of ad worked because it stood out from the crowd. It said what needed to be said simply, and in a way that reflected the brand values of a small, simple car.

Ries concludes with this statement "People don't want to be different. They want to be better. Clients want advertising à la mode. And most creative directors want the same thing. They want advertising "in the fashion" of the times, only better.That's why it's hard to recognize a great advertising idea. It doesn't look right because it goes against accepted wisdom. "

Interaction designers have the same problem. People often ask them to create something "out of the box" or "really innovative." When they see the wireframes/concepts they react from the context of what they already know. When presenting an idea that's really revolutionary, it's important to explain who it's for, and why it will be efffective.

 

In Today's AdvertisingAge Simon Dumenco writes:

"To give you some background, in late 2007, I tested the Eee PC, a mini laptop from Taiwanese laptop maker Asus. At the time, the "netbook" moniker hadn't quite congealed around this emerging category of sub-sub-notebooks, so when I wrote a column in January 2008 about my experience with the 2-lb. wonder, I didn't even know what to call it. But I knew then it was going to change everything. The $300 machine, I wrote, "has me contemplating nothing less than The End of Microsoft." That's because I tested a version that was Microsoft-software-free -- it had a simple customized interface built around Linux (the popular open-source operating system) and was obviously set up to encourage users to compute on the "cloud," using free web-based services such as Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, etc. I totally didn't miss Microsoft's balky operating system or its pricey apps, because I was mostly using my new little buddy as a front-end to the internet (sort of like an oversize iPhone, with a real keyboard) rather than computing locally on my hard drive."

---

I bought an Asus Eee in 2008, but found that the screen resolution made it impossible to use Yahoo mail and other net aps with top-heavy page layouts. The browser and advertising cruft at the top of the page made the form factor impractical.

Fast forward to 2009. I've abandoned the Asus, and love my new Dell Inspiron mini, with a screen resolution that works, even with chrome-heavy MS applications. This is my new buddy for note-taking, photo storage, email etc.

However, in the long term the iPhone seems like the better solution for walk-around computing (messaging, maps). Waiting for July when I see what Apple comes up with.

adage.com/agencynews/article

Heineken to Agencies Outside NYC: You Need Not Apply

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Heineken USA's creative review has an unusual qualification for agencies: Non-New York shops aren't welcome.

In a statement confirming the review this afternoon, the White Plains, N.Y.-based importer explained that it was planning a Manhattan marketing headquarters and "is pursuing a New York-based agency in conjunction with the office move."

As a result, it's taken creative duties on its flagship Heineken and Heineken Premium Light brands, previously handled by Wieden & Kennedy's Portland, Ore., office, and placed them up for grabs between Wieden's New York office and Manhattan hubs of three agencies it has worked with previously: StrawberryFrog, TBWA/Chiat/Day and Euro RSCG.

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Of course, in these cost-conscious times, marketers may be increasingly wary of paying for their agencies to travel to them. A Heineken spokeswoman said the decision was driven by a desire to collaborate better with agencies, not to save money.

Like many of those "learn french in 24 hour" books, this book doesn't actually teach you to draw in a single weekend. However, it contains good exercises which, followed methodically, result in better facility with the pencil.

"Learn to Draw in a Weekend" by Richard Taylor.

A friend asked "how do I feed a lot of people without much money"

If budget is tight, best to go with self-made platters. Don't buy anything already cut up or arranged, it adds cost. Think about having a variety of tastes, sweet, salty, savory.

cheese tray - get the large bricks of cheddar or ched/jack because it's pretty and something white (jack or swiss). cube and pile in bowl or platter.

If you want to serve meat, the most economical thing is to get a large smoked ham and cut it in cubes. I'd also suggest cooked turkey, if you had a way to keep it cold on the table. Ham will be OK for a couple hours.

bread or crackers - price it out, but usually sliced baguettes are most cost effective. Serve in a basket or bowl.

some sort of dip - hummus is very easy to make, it's chick peas (large can) lemon juice, garlic and tahini, run it through a food processor. You can also base a dip on black beans or white beans

veggie tray. People like baby carrots, and will eat SOME broccoli and cauliflower, but not much. Keep the ratio about 75% carrots, 25% other stuff

tortilla chips and salsa are cheap

round it out with a bowl of wrapped candies. Hard candies last longer, or you can get mini chocolate bars if you like them. The point is you want something that people won't grab by the handful (i.e. not M&Ms).

I've been thinking recently about the idea of "designer as facilitator" and how design consciousness is an important quality that needs to be present many places throughout the organization. Of course, interaction design specialists are an important part of the puzzle, but increasing awareness of design skills and techniques in a way that's accessible to everyone on the team can only help in the long run.

In a recent article, Fast Company talks about how the Stanford d.school helped The Takeaway team define their a new radio show using this simple recipe: Observe. Brainstorm. Prototype. Implement. Repeat as necessary.

In June 2007, 15 producers and executives from WNYC and PRI met with Kembel and d.school instructors in a ring of red sofas on the platform at Palo Alto's Caltrain station, a nod to the school's "user-centered experience" ethos. "The exercise got us thinking about how to remake mornings," says John Keefe, WNYC's news director. "So we're sitting at the train station during the morning commute, and all these people are rushing past. It was this beautiful moment." ...

A three-day crash course taught the producers the basic steps of d.school innovation: observe, brainstorm, prototype, and implement; repeat as necessary. When they went back to Manhattan, everything was up for debate. Instead of hiring from the usual pool of public-radio producers, they sifted through 1,700 résumés collected from such eclectic sources as Craigslist and the Native American Journalist Association. The usual media brainstorming sessions also shifted. "Here's how idea meetings work in TV news: 'We did that, I saw that, I hate that!'" Hockenberry says, his voice rising. Instead, following the design firm Ideo's guidelines, the team encouraged wild ideas while deferring judgment.The result of all that foment debuted at the end of April.

It's interesting to observe that thinking this way not only changed the way people made decisions, it changed the way they worked with each other. Better process, better result. Nice.

In honor of Apple’s launch of the 3G iPhone last month, I’m posting a few words about Leander Kahney’s new book “Inside Steve’s Brain.” In this video Kahney talks about the three things he feels Apple does well: software design, industrial design and marketing. Farhad Manjoo’s provides some additional details in his interview with Kahney, posted on Machinist.com.

Kahney's observations inspired me to jot down the following thoughts:

Good people do good work - When Steve re- joined Apple in 1997, he stopped development on the Newton, but kept the team, who later went on to deliver the iBook. Steve forms long-term creative partnerships that can span years. No matter how good your process is, the secret ingredient is smart people with good ideas.

Use the power of prototypes - “Steve Jobs doesn't wake up one morning and there's a vision of an iPhone floating in front of his face. He and his team discovered it through this exhaustive process of building prototype after prototype.” Apple made more than one hundred prototypes of the MacBook Air before they were satisfied. A good integration of industrial design and interaction design requires a tight collaboration between these two disciplines. Creating physical artifacts helps the team understand the experience of the device and “fail quickly” when necessary.

Focus on the entire experience - The original Mac mouse was an unfamiliar device for consumers. It was packaged separately so the act of handling it and plugging it in would make it “a little less alien…” The iMac packaging contained an insert “specially designed to double as a prop for the slim instruction manual.” One of my favorite parts of buying an Apple product is the "out of box" experience.

Empower small teams with a shared vision - According to Kahney, Steve believes that small teams are easier to manage. He also feels that “Everyone at Apple has a passion to impact culture and society.” Even within a large enterprise, it's possible to form smaller teams with a mandate for innovation.

Cooper Journal
IxDA discussion
Mark Hurst’s Good Experience
Adaptive path newsletter

To keep up with the interactive/agency space

To keep up with the development/Agile space

And I follow the twitter stream of IxD professional friends.

 

David Wong posts about The Seven Commandments All Video Games Should Obey. #1 and #7 particularly resonate with me...

#7 Thou shalt let us play your game with real-life friends. - the reason the Wii is so compelling to non-gamers

#6 Thou shalt not pad the length of your games.

#5 Thou shalt not force repetition on the player.

#4 Thou shalt make killing fun.

#3 Thou shalt admit when enough is enough.

#2 Thou shalt make sure your game actually works.

#1 Better graphics do not equal innovation and/or creativity. - but they sure look better on the box!

He includes some great video examples of crimes against gamers.

 

Great article about Bill Nye in the NY Times. This interview makes living in L.A. sound somewhat attractive, especially if I could have a neighbor like Bill.

 

 

 A friend recently asked me:

"...the students have done some user research and we've begun modeling using behavioral variables, etc. For a kitchen appliance (recipe finder, shopping list builder, etc.) or similar household device, I wonder if you would ever have a "couple" as the primary persona, for the purposes of the persona description."

Good question! This is a tricky aspect of persona creation. When designing a consumer product, you often have to consider a household full of people who will interact with the solution you're designing. When I've encountered this problem myself, I've never created a "couple" persona. Instead, I've found these alternatives to be more useful:

- One persona, with "characters" in the story to provide context
- Two personas in different households
- Two personas in the same household (rare)

I'd only place two personas in the same household if I was trying to express an important interaction between them, for example, how a mom and kid would use a kitchen appliance very differently. In this case, the dad would be a character. In writing the persona description I'd start by talking about "The Miller Family," name all three and describe the household shopping, cooking and eating behaviors. Then I'd go into more detail about the perspectives and needs of the mom "Mary Miller" and the kid "Benjamin Miller." Mary's husband Curtis would appear in the overall household part, but wouldn't have as much detail, and would not be the "star" of design scenarios the way the other two would.

Of course, the behavioral patterns you discover in your research, and the business requirements of the product you're designing will determine the correct solution for your situation.

 

What a nice present for Earth Day. Google maps now has transit directions!

 http://tinyurl.com/6ene7g

Play with the "options" control to see how they handled different departure/transit options.

 

I've noticed how the Obama campaign has made deft use of social networks (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and even Flickr) but I didn't realize until now how sophisticated the branding is.

The New York Times reports:

"Barack Obama is running the first real transmedia campaign of the 21st century. His people not only understand how media has splintered, but how audiences have splintered, too. Cell phones, mobile devices, Web sites, e-mail, social networks, iPods, laptops, billboards, print ads and campaign events are now just as important as television. The senator’s design strategy has given these diverse platforms (and their different audiences) a coherence that makes them all work together. I’ve worked with giant, global corporations who don’t do it this well."

The author is talking about Obama's use of the Gotham typeface, but it seems to indicate a larger strategy in play. Brand advertisers take notice!

And while we're on the subject of reaching the youth demographic, has anyone else noticed the nod to the "Obey" meme, a staple of street art culture? Shepard Fairey has produced an Obama "HOPE" sticker.

Thought I'd jot a few thoughts about how I'm using twitter

Personal - Protected list, edited frequently to track a variable small subset of people I'm listening to at the time. Updated a few times a day usually when I am on MUNI, or when I have something to share. I have a wide social circle and I travel a lot so it's hard to keep in touch. Tweets give me a "vibe" of how people are doing. I often use it as a signal that I need to contact someone via another channel, usually txt or an email mesage.  it allows me to have better social continuity when I do get together with someone and keep the conversation moving even when we aren't directly communicating. There are one or two people I follow who I don't know well (sfslim, laughingsquid) because they are tuned into the social scene I follow.

Professional - open list. Integrated with my FaceBook page, I try to update it at least once a day when I am at my desk. Posts relate to the professional interests of the people in my tweetcloud. Checked via the internet interface unless I am on the road. Use of this stream is still evolving. May decide to block some twitterers who seem overly marketing focused. This is a way to keep in touch with my circle of professional contacts. This is also the twitter stream I use at conferences to find out what's happening.

Here's a thought...My Treo calendar allows me to have a much more complicated schedule I did before. It has changed my capacity to plan and attend activities and get things done. Twitter is doing the same thing for my social network, allowing me to keep in touch with many more people than I'd be able to with a one-on-one strategy.

Tom Scott posts that Dave Thomas proposes an “envisioning” and “definition” phase to be added to the front of the Agile “development”  and “release” cycles. Thomas assumes that developers perform all roles, and there’s still no place for documentation that isn’t code, but this doesn’t seem that far off from what Alan is proposing. There’s even this quote, that sounds rather like Alan’s recent presentation “The Envisioning Team provides a clear definition of what needs to be built; the Definition team designs how to build it.”

Interesting.

There's another post that references Dave Thomas here and opens the larger question about how to do Scrum with larger teams.

"Using Agile methods with large teams is a reality - the old Agile = Small Team equation is no longer valid. Nonetheless, team size is still an issue. How important is team size and what, if anything, should we do about it?"

The development community hasn't come up with an answer to this problem yet, perhaps the IxD community can step up and help?

The Starbucks site My Starbucks Idea invites people to "Help shape the future of Starbucks--with your ideas." Perhaps they are missing the point. A successful social site exists to promote conversation between people. You have to consider who you're talking to, and do you have anything to talk about, really?

In an Advertising Age article "Starbucks Gets Web 2.0 Religion, but Can It Convert Nonbelievers?", Michael Bush writes:

"This sort of online listening post worked for Dell, whose IdeaStorm website resulted in a few concrete product developments and, in turn, helped to turn some of the computer-maker's fiercest critics. One of them, Jeff Jarvis, went from a state of high dudgeon on his blog to praise the company in BusinessWeek."

"However, the coffee chain, which made a PR splash when it recently closed down its stores to retrain its baristas, isn't getting the same sort of raves. New York magazine, which called the network "the biggest and possibly worst idea" that came out of the company's annual meeting, said, after checking it out, that it resembled "a virtual suggestion box.""

What does Starbucks hope to accomplish by having this site? Who will visit it, and what kind of dialog do they expect to have with the company? A virtual suggestion box is not the same thing as a social network.

As quoted in the article, "Jim Romenesko, keeper of the Starbucks Gossip blog, said, "It looks to me that it's very repetitious. How many times do you want to read about people suggesting free Wi-Fi?""

Successful social networking sites exist to promote conversation between people who want to talk to each other and have something to say. For example, consider the dialog Sun has with the Java developer community, which is populated with a deeply invested and talkative community of people who want to talk about a complex product.

When considering if a social network site is appropriate for your company consider:

1. Who is at the other end of the conversation?
   
2. What are you going to talk about?
   
3. Who are they talking to at your company? Will you give them someone with a voice, or do you expect them to address the "corporation?"
   

From the New York Times
"You’ve picked up this product, and you don’t want to go back to your PC,” said Tim Kindberg, a senior research at the Bristol, England, lab of Hewlett-Packard. “Or you’re outside this building, and you want more information. We call it the ‘physical hyperlink.’"

Or you live in a part of the world where phones and wireless networks have leapfrogged PCs and wired networks.

qode site

Wired sez:

"The process is labor-intensive, but surprisingly efficient: The text collection on archive.org is the world's largest online collection of free books, with nearly 350,000 titles and growing."

If you're curious about how it works, the article includes some nice pictures of the machine and operator. There's even this this little tidbit about how we associate aged books and photos with their color.

"At the start of every shift the operator calibrates the color levels using a pair of color-calibration cards. When the scanning project first started, Internet Archive attempted to color correct the scanned pages to white, but later decided to capture and store them as they are in their various aged shades of yellow. Preservation of the oxidized tints makes the virtual viewing of old books more lifelike."

Wonder how much longer that will be true? How do we know the relative age of digital media. Does it matter?