Design & user experience
Develop short term memory loss (How Heston Blumenthal forever changed dining with my wife)
If you have read my blog for any amount of time you know that I get most of my inspiration from creativity the world’s best chefs. On two different occasions I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time talking with Heston Blumenthal who is the chef at two of those world class restaurants - The Fat Duck and Dinner. The conversation that lead to this article came at an event here in New York City where my wife and I arrived to find a few people milling around, seemingly too intimidated to talk to the chef, and thus Heston was sitting by himself by the back of the space. Their loss was my gain and we went over to talk to him. I always find this interaction extremely interesting as some chef’s couldn’t be any more generous with their time while others are every bit the bristling prima donnas you feared they might be. Heston was every bit the former as he happily indulged my version of celebrity worship by signed my beloved first edition of the Fat Duck Cookbook, taking photos and talking with us for a while.
During the conversation I asked a simple question that had an equally simple but unexpected answer we all could learn a lot from. I asked him “When you eat at a restaurant what do you look for to know if it’s going to be a good experience?”. He simply answered “the butter”. I’m sure I looked puzzled by his answer so he went on to explain “When you sit down to eat a meal and they bring bread and butter to table if the butter is too cold and rock hard then you know the chef hasn’t ever eaten in him own restaurant, he isn’t watching the details and whole meal is going to reflect that lack of attention to detail”. He was completely right where this simple observation about a small detail is a much bigger bellwether of the experience to come.
This conversation had an immediate effect on my life as dining with my wife has never been the same. At the start of every single meal, no matter where we are in the world, she takes her knife, poking it into the butter when it arrives at the table to tests the temperature of and uses like a crystal ball to determine the quality of the meal to come. If the butter passes the temperature test she will usually say nothing but I know in her head her hopes for the meal have just gone up but if it fails the test she will push the bread away and announce “Heston wouldn’t be pleased” followed by her watching the rest of the meal with a more critical eye than usual.
This whole experience is something that always makes me smile but it has been fascinating to watch her adopt this ritual with such tenacity. I think her behavior comes out the core truth that anyone designing a consumer experience in any medium needs to understand what the experience you are designing is really like for the end consumer. In this case if you are the chef then you need to eat in your own restaurant to get a customers perspective of the experience. I think the ability to get a fresh perspective from the other side of the experience is absolutely critical to being able to create anything great. You need to have times in a project or even in your career where you are able to step back from you are creating, develop short term memory loss to be able to forget all the details and excuses that have build up over the creation process, and objectively evaluate all parts of that experience. It is something that doesn’t come naturally and you have to work at it but the more you are able to do it the more you will create advertising that connects with people, web sites that people interact with engaging, brands that people bonds with, and on and on. So on your next project be sure to take the time step away from the process, sit down and see if you are watching all the details in your experience. You might just find you are serving your consumers cold, hard butter a lot more than you think.
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Adobe launches Edge – their Flashless HTML5 animation tool
After being previewed for about the past year behind closed doors, Adobe released a preview of their new Flashless animation web tool called Edge this morning. They describe Edge as “a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.” and ”Content created with Edge is designed to work on modern browsers including those on Android, BlackBerry, Playbook, iOS, HP webOS, and other smartphone mobile devices as well as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer”.
At a high level Edge will be like a Flash-like program that will output HTML5 but it gets a little tricky when you get into the specifics. This is because HTML5 as a technology platform is still changing so it makes developing a tool that uses that platform much more difficult. Adobe is trying to address that by releasing the software into previews much earlier than normal but it will mean that there may be significant changes and additions to the program before it releases a final release state. This is also why you will see that the preview version only currently does animation but Adobe has said that this will be shortly followed by shapes, expressivity and coding, and then interactivity and graphics will arrive for testing in the public pre-beta before an expected final release of the product in 2012.
Since Adobe let Apple dominate the Flash vs. HTML debate we all knew a move like this was coming. We will all just have to wait and see how powerful this tool can become to truly be something we can use as an HTML5 replacement for Flash.
You can download your free preview today at Adobe Labs and get some sample files to experiment with here.
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Adobe Museum of Digital Media
An interesting development at the Canne Advertising Festival keynote today as Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and members of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners unveiled the new Adobe Museum of Digital Media which is described as the world’s first virtual museum dedicated to digital art and innovation. The mission of museum was stated as showcasing and preserving groundbreaking digital work and expert commentary to illustrate how digital media shapes and impacts today’s society. It also seems that it will also work as an artists colon where artists and innovators will be able to create work that wouldn’t be possible in a traditional museum. They have already announced that the first exhibition will launch on August 2nd and video artist Tony Oursler, RISD president John Maeda and Japanese artist Mariko Mori are all working on exhibits. The teaser site has a video about the museum space but nothing that really gives you any idea about how you will experience it. The whole project really intrigues me because of the fact that it is focused on creating new and experimental content as well archiving great work which has been done for years on other sites like FWA or WebDesignFile. We will see on August 2nd when can all experience the virtual museum for ourselves.
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Tell me again how copying is really flattery?!?
Exhibit 1 – The Luxury Collection ‘Explore the Collection
Click here to see The Luxury Collection site
Exhibit 2 – Middlebury College Web site
Click here to see the Middlebury University site
The Luxury Collection web site was launched a little less than two years ago and the redesign, which was done in collaboration with BBDO Atmosphere and their phenomenally talented creative director Arturo Aranda, was the first step in their re-branding and the creation of the brand’s new global visual language. The strategy and inspiration for the site came from the world of art museums and galleries where you can see unique and varied works of art from across history that are bound by the curation of the museum that brought them together and made them into a collection. Explore the Collection brings this strategy to life with the properties displayed as slivered works of art against a large white background like the works lining the walls of a museum. You can either explore the slivers by rolling over them or search interactively by Destination or Pursuit which will narrow down the numbers of slivers displayed.
This morning a link to the Middlebury College web site lands in my inbox. I clicked the link and could just feel my blood pressure go shooting up and face getting hot as I stared at my screen.
Before I say anything else I want you to click the links for both sites and decide for yourself. I can wait…
I my humble opinion I think it’s pretty easy to see more than a passing resemblance between the two sites seeing as how the layout and user experience are exactly the same.
Maybe I’m making this into something more profound than it needs to be but if an agency (in this case White Whale Web Services) is going to get paid by a client they have to have the talent and ethics to give the client what they paid for – an original idea. Doing this is an abuse of their trust because they are looking to you to be the expert. They are looking to you to be the professional. They are looking to you to be anything but the group who is going to exploit the fact that they don’t know they are just getting a re-skinned version of something someone else already did. If they wanted a site like someone else they could have gone to TemplateMonster.com and saved a hell of a lot of money.
Maybe my bigger issue is that I want to know when we all got so lazy? Why can’t we can’t come up with our own ideas? Why can’t agencies write their own blogs so I don’t have to send out cease and desist letters every month? It’s becoming an epidemic that I see time after time when I speak at conferences and people come up to me and ask what the ‘secret’ is for success. I tell them all the same thing – a lot of hard work. It means that on every single project, every single day you have to put in the time and work your ass off to come up with an original idea and not taking the easy way out and copying someone else. Such a simple concept but seemingly harder and harder to find.
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What makes an online community successful?
Last week I spoke at the Social Media & Community 2.0 Conference about Non-Traditional Insight-Driven Community Building and I’ve had a few emails asking for me to elaborate on one of my slides so I thought I would post the answer here.
When you use social media to create an online community the biggest challenge is going to be how does your brand stand out from your competitors who are all trying to get the same consumers into their online communities? One of the keys to success is to build your community so consumers see some kind of value in their participation in your community. That value is critical because while both traditional and online communities form around shared interests, the bond to the digital community is really thin. This happens because a community that is formed in the real world is based around physical proximity and participation so people have to go to that community to be a part of it. The effort required to physically go somewhere to participate in something is much, much higher than the 5 seconds it takes to click a ‘Follow’ or ‘Like’ button. So because of that difference you have to work much harder to keep the digital community working, keep that consumer seeing the value and keep them from losing interest and breaking that thin bond and dropping out. I have found that when consumers see value it falls into three different kinds of modivators.
Emotional
They join or participate in the community because they have an emotional connection to the communities subject matter. It could be a cause they are passionate about or a brand they connect with on a personal level. Of the three different triggers this is the strongest because the bond is on a personal and emotional level which will be harder to break than the other two. The best examples are communities for brands like Apple, Microsoft Xbox or Toms Shoes.
Intellectual
They join or participate in the community because they want to either give or gain knowledge round the communities subject matter. The members who want to give knowledge feel a sense of empowerment for being a teacher who can speak with authority on the subject matter. The members who want to gain knowledge join the community because it allows them to learn from a community that would not be geographically possible outside of the virtual world and it removes the intimidation that could be found if the situation was taken into the real world. These could be founded around large and generic subjects like cooking or brands like Adobe, Ford or Twitter.
Financial
They join or participate in the community because that participation brings them financial gains or savings like discounts or special offers. It could give be as straight forward as coupons that translate into dollar savings or access to special merchandise that isn’t offered to the general public making them feel like an insider who has special access to the brand. The best examples are communities for brands like Coupons.com or Gilt.com.
How do you use these triggers?
I have found a lot of success building communities to cater to and take advantage of all three of these different motivators by cycle through these three different motivators in the marketing messaging. This means that one week give out some tips about the brands area of expertise (intellectual), the next week talk about something that is core to their business (emotional) and then the next week send out a discount or offer to drive sales or customers into the store (financial). By cycling through the messaging you keep the communication fresh so it isn’t the same thing over and over again, you cater to the individual motivators as well as consumers who fall into multiple categories and you are able to build the brand and drive sales.
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Architecture + digital technology = N Building Tokyo
In tokyo near the Tachikawa station amidst a shopping district you will find the N Building. It is unique because if you have ever been to Asia you know that most ever building in these commercial districts has signs and billboards covering almost ever inch of the facade but not in this case. The facade of the N Building is one giant QR code that triggers up to date shop information, Tweets from building residents and even AR decorations for different seasons and events. Check out the video above for all the details but I think this is a fascinating direction for new retail experiences that can go far beyond the traditional store windows and branding.
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Salt 101 with Alton Brown
Because of it’s ability to seamlessly combine Mr. Wizard, The Muppets and Julia Child in one package, Good Eats with host Alton Brown has been my favorite cooking show for years. Recently Alton has taken to advertising pitchman for brand like Welches Juices and now Salt. This is part of a recent trend where many different vilified ingredients like high fructose corn syrup and salt have turned to advertising to try and salvage their image.
In this case Diamond Crystal Salt has launched a new site called Salt101.com which is a modern homage to a 1960′s educational film. You start off in the lobby of the Diamond Crystal Salt Education and Experimentation Center for the Betterment of Flavor Enhancement where Alton directs you to the two halves of the site – the kitchen and the lab. In the kitchen where you can learn how use salt properly and the lab where you learn how Diamond Salt is different from convention table salt. Both areas are a mix of large, high quality video done with a nice infusion of Good Eat’s style props and humor. Both areas of the site also feature interactive games that do a nice job of turning the passive viewing experience into a fun, interactive learning experience. So while it doesn’t make me want to run out and hike up my blood pressure it is by far the best food site I have seen in a long time.
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I am Iron Man with markerless AR
Marvel & Paramount releases a new augmented reality site / application today powered by Total Immersion technology that lets you see what you’d look like wearing the Iron Man / War Machine helmets or go inside the helmet to see the internal Heads Up Display. I’ve written before about Total Immersion AR for the work they did with Tops Baseball Cards and this new Iron Man AR experience is just as interesting as that was one. The big difference between the two is that this new Iron Man experience doesn’t require you to have a baseball card or print out a marker for it to work. You would think that would a huge step forward but it comes with a different set of problems. First is that you have to go through the dreaded plug-in download which is only around 5MB but we all know how prohibitive that simple step can be for people. Next is that I found the plug-in initialization took a really long time. I launched the site, clicked to start the experience and it took me over 5 minutes on my insanely fast FIOS connection to have the plug-in initialize and download the content. During that time I was treated to only a spastic loading bar which felt like a missed opportunity to sell tickets, market a promotional partner or pretty much anything but making me look at that load bar. The plug-in finally came online, I picked my webcam and a few second later the video came up with an open Iron Man helmet popping over my face. After a second or two the helmet snaps shut to give you the full effect of the helmet. The helmet is able to track with your head pretty well and would only consistently lose position if you the turned part 45 degrees right or left. After trying it a few times I found it struggled with how big to make the helmet and it would either make it too small so I had red hair sticking out the top or too big so it would make me look like a bobble head. You can record all of this which is a great idea to make the content viral but yet again I found it crushed by technical problems. I hit the record button, played around with the helmet and when it was done I hit OK hoping to be able to post in this article. The first times I wait 30 minutes and got nada. Tried a third time and waited and hour and you got it – nada. The ‘Processing Video’ message was the only thing I was treated so sorry but you get the generic YouTube video instead.
So while you can see how augmented reality technology is advancing in this site the technical problems are just too much overcome. If they can find a way to create this experience more in line with the older embedded web site technology and lose the install and initiation time then I think it will be moving into an area where we can start creating some seriously interesting experiences.
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Burger King gives Digg.com results tiny hands
Burger King and Crispin Porter have launched a great new digital element to support their “Small hands” TV commercials where they are branding the error message on Digg.com. If you type in anything that yields no search results you will see:
Looks like your search had a typo. Maybe you’ve got tiny hands?
The $1 BURGER KING® Double Cheeseburger is so big and beefy it’s not for the tiny handed.
Click here to see why it might be too much for you to handle. Mr. Tiny Hands.
Like Whopper Sacrifice I think this new work shows a lot of really smart insight into the digital world by putting messaging in places where people do not expect it, where people will actually pay attention and where it will create a meaningful brand impression.
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All this for… posters?
Came across Canv-as.com today which is a really intricate, 3D animated site selling… posters?!? You can choose from a number of different locations like your kitchen or studio, customize wall colors, choose the size of the poster and see how the art would look. The average price point is around $250 so it is more expensive than what you will find at your local record store but it is probably the most elaborate experience I have found for something at this price point.
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