Site review
A Dribbble of creative
I found Dribbble.com today which is an interesting spin on the creative portal where artists can show off their work. The difference here is that you only share a sneak peeks of your work as small screenshots of the designs and applications you’re working on. Membership in the site is entirely driven by our users so all members of Dribbble have been drafted (invited) by other members.
The screenshots or “shots” are organized by tags but there is no real cohesive navigation to help you sort through all the work. Once you find a piece that looks interesting you can click on it for a slight larger version that you can like, Tweet or Rebound which is a shot in reply to another shot. But for me this site has a huge miss in that there is no way to get real feedback on such a small screenshot and I couldn’t find any way to track the progress of the work. How do I know when it is done? Where can I see it? How is this site anything but a tease for small windows of partial inspiration? Maybe all of this is hidden away only for members but it felt me scratching my head. I found a few artists who were smart to see this problem and posted links to the final work in the comments but this seemed to be rare. I am working to get an invitation to try out everything on the site but check it out and see if these little glimpses do anything for you.
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MapQuest finally gets some direction
Mapquest was one of the early originators of online mapping but the brand and it’s site have been dormant for a very long time. They are trying to change all of that and close the gap on Google by making a comeback with a new site and some new branding.
New branding – It’s a logo, it’s an equation, it’s a character?
Let’s start by taking a look at their new logo / icon which is a departure from the old color palette and design with the addition to a new logo mark. When I saw the new logo for the first time I honestly thought it looked like M to the power of Q. I know other people either simply see the letters M and Q or get far more creative and see the letters forming a dog or elephant like character with the Q as the head of the animal. I can see how you could all of those interpretations but I keep debating with myself how I feel about the logo. On the one hand it is unique and I can’t think of another logo where you are able to see it so many different ways but I’m not convinced all that interpretation leads to a lasting or positive brand impression. MapQuest is trying to embrace all as these different forms as they acknowledge and explain them all in their new brand video but I think their explanations go too far into overreaching marketing speak trying to give every form meaning that relates to the site. If the three it would seem that the brand may be favoring the creature interpretation because on the new site the logo can be seen tapping its feet while content loads.
MapQuest.com – Differentiated or redecorated?
Google Maps
For me a new logo is nice but the real question is what are they doing on the new MapQuest.com that is going to differentiate the site and pull it ahead of Google Maps? I started in the obvious place by pulling up both sites and searching for the same address to do a side-by-side comparison. It was a bit of a disappointment when after all the build up I couldn’t really find any significant differences. I went down the list of features on both sites. Zoomable map – check. Street views – check. Live traffic – check. Search nearby – check. While MapQuest had a slightly cleaner design with more modern interface buttons the only real difference I could find took a page from a few popular iPhone apps and added an icon bar where you can quickly display restaurants, parks, movie theaters, etc. near your chosen location. They have also gone those basic markers to ass time sensitive content like ‘July 4th events’ and paid branded content from companies like Holiday Inn so you can find the nearest hotel.
It was only after I did some digging that I did find one interesting feature on the site. You can plan your trip online and save the results to the My Maps section and then either customize the map with your own information or pull up the route you want to take on your iPhone through their application. It’s a useful feature I would probably use when I travel because I don’t always 100% trust my car’s navigation system. The problem is that I NEVER saw one mention of this feature anywhere on the site outside of an extremely short mention of it in their new brand video. This is a huge miss for a brand trying to create some differentiation from a competitors who has a huge market share over them.
So when I look at this re-launch as whole I don’t see how they are going to gain any ground on Google. Using language like ‘started designing with a blank canvas’ sound promising but then you need to deliver something that is truly breakthrough and takes advantage of an opportunity like that and doesn’t have that canvas look more like a xerox than an a new original work of art.
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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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Skittles.com Ends Social Media Experiment
Less than a year after Skittles launched their social media centric clone of Modernista.com they have re-designed the site yet again. This new version again looks to go against traditional conventions by foregoing navigation in favor of a long scrolling web page. I found it surprising that in spite of the page length there is very little content and even less interaction available. There are some photos include a clown in an astronaut suite, links to their Twiiter accounts and a YouTube video but that is pretty much it. Wrigley’s also launched a new microsite called ShareSkittles.com where you can upload video to a randomly paired interactive montage of two people sharing Skittles.
Though the content is light it looks to create a strong interactive platform for the brand that looks to make much better use of the medium than what we saw with the previous generation of work. It is also worth noting that this work is the first to come out of Wrigley’s new roster of digital agencies after they replaced Tribal DDB, Agency.com and Digitas with Firstborn, Big Spaceship and EVB. The three agencies collaborated on the Skittles work, with Big Spaceship handling Skittles.com, Firstborn building ShareSkittles.com and EVB doing their soon to be launched Facebook campaign.
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Use Facebook to tune your hetero-dar
It’s said that to find out who someone really is you should look at their friends. Stockholm Pride used that thought as the foundation for their new site that focuses on heterosexual norms affect the everyday lives of homosexuals, bisexuals and transpersons by gauging how “hetero” you are by analyzing your Facebook friends. The number is generated by giving the site access to your Facebook account and then it takes a minute to go through all your friends and give you a hetro percentage. It is also interesting because when you number is generated you can also see all the hetro percentages of your friends.
After going through the experience and getting my percentage I was left feeling that the site could have been a lot more impactful and effective if it would have exposed the logic and stereotypes that were used to generate the percentages. The promise of the site was to deal with the heterosexual norms affect the everyday lives of gay society but telling me I am 59% heterosexual without the context how that stereotype was created makes the number feel hollow. It’s only effective if I am so prejudiced that the mere suggestion of not being 100% heterosexual would effect me. So while the use of Facebook data is new and unique, something as simple as a report card style breakdown would have given me some insight and enlightened and that would have been much more effective. I hope they grow and revise this foundation to make it more hard hitting because then I think it will really turn into something special and effective.
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Social media content compose Grammy nominated artists
I can say with almost complete certainty that the launch of a new awards show Web site has never created the least bit of interest on my part until today and the launch of the Grammy Awards new site WereAllFans.com. The site creates pseudo photo mosaics of 11 featured artists from Dave Matthews to Beyonce out of YouTube, Twitter and Flickr content that was tagged with each of the artists. Each image only borrows from the photo mosaic aesthetic but is more of a semi-transparent image imposed over top of all of the content. Putting the social media content into this format takes it from the thing we have started to overlook because it is so ubiquitous on every site to an interesting and compelling experience that makes it fun to explore. You can look at all the content at once or narrow it down to just site through the simple control interface at the bottom of the page. ‘Join the Conversation’ lets you sign into any of the sites and post your own content with the correct tags so that your content will appear on the site for your favorite artist.
The other half of the site is the The Fanbuzz Visualizer that is a real time data visualization that monitors the daily and total social media buzz for each of the Grammy nominated artists. This experience isn’t nearly as well done as the social media mosaics as I found it littered with technical and design problems. I started with Today’s Posts and was only able to drag and scroll down the 3D list once in 10 tries. Frustrated with that experience I switched over to Total Posts that changes the view to a 2D list and I found that I could click and drag to scroll the content. That relief was quickly replaced by a new frustration as I found that if I kept my browser window in it’s normal more vertical shape the artists and the results were cut off to the point where I couldn’t read a lot of it. After some exploring I realized I had to change the window to a more horizontal shape and that would force the content to zoom back so I could read it. So while it would have been nice to see the same level of innovation and polish put into both halves of the site, the social media content mosaics make it worth checking out.
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JimCarrey.com – more Eternal Sunshine than Living Color
The rubber faced comedian Jim Carrey has just launched JimCarrey.com, a new personal web site documenting his career and based on his slapstick comedy stylings it’s an experience that is nothing like what I expected. The visual design is at times like something out of a Salvador Dali painting with elements of a Tim Burton movie sprinkled in. It is extremely visual with minimal navigation and a lot hidden content and interactions sprinkled throughout the extensive video and animation. One example of this is the Ace Ventura headed bird that is his Twitter link found on every page that spouts his latest Tweets one word at a time. I have to honestly say that this is the first celebrity site I have ever wanted to spend any time with and I applaud him for actually creating something that gives some credit to his fans for being able to enjoy something more challenging that the usual headshot laden celebrity dribble.
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Tobi.com uses AR to bring the dressing room home
Everyone hates having to wedge themselves into a cramped dressing room flooded with never flattering fluorescent lighting but you now have another option. Zugara’s has created an augmented reality dressing room app called Fashionista and is being used by online clothing retailers like tobi.com. You turn on your web cam and then move an AR marker forward and back in front of you to scale the clothes to fit your body. Once that is done you can use positional gestures to see other clothing options, approve or disapprove of your choices or take a photo of your favorite outfits. Your approved choices are moved into your basket and the photo can be uploaded to Facebook to get your friends opinions of your selections.
In the past we have seen augmented reality used in mildly useful ways like the United States Post Office box sizer where you can determine what box you need to ship you gift but this starts to take it to another level. You can clearly see the potential of what this could mean to online shopping as it takes the content off the flat page and makes it interactive and more importantly – makes it personally relevant. I find the opportunities for this type of augmented reality execution really exciting unlike previous executions that were more gimmick than concept.
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What do you think of the new MSN.com?
I was contacted by Microsoft today asking for my opinion of a preview they just launched for a redesign of MSN.com. I took some time and went over the design and come up with the feedback I have listed below but I wanted to open it up to hear from all of you. You agree with what I have to say? You think I missed something? You think I got something wrong? Click here to see the new home page and post your thoughts in the comments and I will pass them along to the team at Microsoft.
My thoughts on the new MSN.com:
I think this minimal problem carries over to the drop down menus where you have minimal menus with a lot of white space over minimal content with a lot of white space and there isn’t enough visual separation between the two and it makes the menus hard to read. I would consider carrying the colors used in the main nav over into the drop downs to create that separation and also help reinforce the different content groupings which could be stronger than having colored nav that all the menus that look exactly the same.
I would find a way to expose the content in the hero image and content area of the page so you can see all of the stories at one glance instead of having to click through them one at a time. I know from experience that the first story in the rotation will get the lion share of the clicks and it will fall off sharp;y from there.
I think it is smart to use ‘bing’ instead of ‘search’ in the main form field to try ad make it a branded verb.
There needs to be a stronger separation between the tier 2 content (Latest, MSNBC, FOX Sports, etc.) and the third tier content below it as I was expecting all the content from the tier 2 tabs down to change.
The search field at the bottom of the page just seems odd as it goes against the engrained user behavior that would tell them to scroll to the top of the page to do a search.
I wish I there were ways to be able to customize the content shown on the home page through content filters as well as the ability to add/remove tabs and change content placement.
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Burger King wants the truth from Tony Stewart
Crispin Porter created a nice online extension of their Tony Stewart School of Endorsements TV spot (see below) with BK Finds Out The Truth About Tony microste. The site is a video stream of a polygraph test that was given to Nascar driver Tony Stewart as he answers consumer submitted questions about he is he really loves his primary endorsement – Burger King and the Whopper. I have always believed that advertising needs to work out from a core concept and that the interactive extension of a campaign should take advantage of the medium and not just be a straight port of the offline creative. When you watch the TV spot and experience the site you clearly see that was the case here and the benefits of this approach are obvious. The total video is about an hour long and you will have to watch it to see the final results for yourself.
It is also a small thing but orange home bar that runs down the left edge of the site that opens to the content of the BK.com home page is a really elegant way to keep micro sites like this one from developing into individual islands that are disconnected from the main brand site.
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