Design News
What the Design of Promotional Products Say About Your Business
Few companies think about the message promotional products give users. How many companies hiring a designer to project a green image are sending out earth friendly promotional products. Branding through design demands coherency in communications strategy for persuasion effectiveness.
Prototypes As Functional Spec
Confusion disappears when everyone starts using the same screens. Build an interface everyone can start looking at, using, clicking through, and “feeling” before you start worrying about back–end code. Get yourself in front of the customer experience as much as possible.
— 37Signals
Functional specs aren’t functional. Since there is no UI without use, how you create a user interface specification is with prototypes.
Key Disables Teen’s Cell Phone, Texting
A smart car key design which shuts off cell use is ideal for parents. However, it’s also a good example of smart objects as the fusion of bits and atoms giving everyday objects a virtual existence.
Content Doesn’t Have To Fight Marketing (it just works out that way)
In the last week someone wrote and said “I want you to talk about SEO, and don’t give me any of that **** about good content.”
— Matt Cutts; SEO Advice: Writing useful articles that readers will love
Kodak’s content strategy is the key to their marketing. Unfotunately marketing for humans has been polluted by SEO for search engines, not human search. Consequently content marketing is different from SEO, at least until ’bots start using wallets.
Global Forum 2009 on Design Thinking
The design thinking conference Global Forum 2009 just ended. “Design concepts and artistic thinking can accelerate business innovation and can drive profit—even in a recession.” You can find event videos here.
Design by Fiefdom, The Curtis AA–ffair
An interesting sequence is this Dear AmericanAirlines redesign suggestion and the here’s how design really happens response. Which is why I wrote Designing Culture about systems design and cultural contexts directly influencing what gets into a final design. There is no more powerful invective than design by commitee, where the design becomes a social book keeping of who’s got political pull. However, the clever designer can steer clear of the negatives (design by fiefdom) and get to the positive (consensus design).
If you want a better design outcome, design a different culture first.
UX Happens With Desirability Design
Desirability Studies: Measuring Aesthetic Response to Visual Designs offers the design methodology (different from usability) making up a user experience. In that it is far ahead of most UX design.
Radical Listening
The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’'s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.
— Alan Alda
One of the most trite, borderline nonsensical things written on web sites is “we listen.” The problem is there is a gulf of difference between pretending to listen to users or customers and actually changing things based on what you hear. Often listening projects are developed to let some disenfranchised party or another blow off steam as the organization goes merrily along its way. Radical listening means going beneath the words to what people really desire, which is the heart of desirability design.
What that means for you is an alternative to suicidal cost cutting: Designing desirable products that cost less.
Connecting The Dots As Part Of Information Literacy
Data processing technology is essentitally atomistic, breaking everything down and separating everything from everything else. Design thinking means connecting the dots as part of information literacy. Because when your company doesn’t connect the dots, another company will. One example of dot connecting design is the mashup.
Nokia Ideas Project
There are some interesting concepts at the Nokia Ideas Project. The most important idea of all is designing a bias for acting on ideas.
Is Information Visualization a Next Frontier For Design or merely Undiscovered Country
Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design? Only if information technology is the next frontier of technology development. If everyone blithley uses data processing and information technology as interchangeable terms, then you’ll never see information visualization as a critical app. When Informative Art Isn’t makes an important distinction between decorating data and the decision support (and user testing) involved with true information visualization.
Any next frontier would start by understanding information doesn’t drop out of a computer just because it’s plugged in. …Or when a blog is plugged in. …Or when a CRM package is plugged into an entrenched business culture.
Chipotle Does Identity Design Right
Brand Irrelevance is created when messages don’t conflict with each other like in Brand Dissonance but they don’t have anything to do with each other either. For instance your marketing materials scream a “we listen ”message and in fact, your sales associates do listen. They just don’'t take any action.
— Small Biz, Big Buzz
Chipotle did what most don’t when creating a business identity. Chipotle’s Food With Integrity Manifesto is a crucial part of identity design without which the nifty new logo is meaningless. This article on brand manifestos is far more relevant to identity design than anything happening in a graphics program. 8 Steps to a Winning Brand gives logo design its proper weight in building a business identity: Logo design is somewhere around step nine.
Design Noir or What UX Wants To Be When It Grows Up
A voucher worth 40% off wine and champagne — intended for suppliers of Threshers — leaked onto the web. Thresher thinking makes a case the so–called leak was instead a marketing move; made all the more bold through its illicit nature. Welcome to design noir, the seedy underbelly of design and engineering, which involves hackability as a step beyond usability.
Greenbox, Rethinking the Pizza Box
Greenbox pizza boxes turn into plates and leftover storage that doesn’t take up your whole refridgerator shelf. (see the YouTube video) A green idea that just makes sense for consumer behavior. How much company innovation starts and stops with the logo and clever catchphrase?
What Is Your Return On Design?
Seth Godin, the author of Return on Design probably wouldn’t be surprised Apple just posted its’ second best earnings ever. That’s because Apple doesn’t merely hire designers, it employs design as a competitive advantage competitors can’t understand from their context.
Another Economic Bubble To Pop Is Estimated At Four Trillion Dollars
The Brand Bubble, the looming crisis in brand value and how to avoid it is a good bookend to the post on AIDA below. Designers know how to get attention, but not how to reward it. Y&R’s four factors of brand value is a great blend of the intangible assets information design is about and desirability design, consequently Young & Rubicam’s brand valuator is one of the only true information technology applications in existence. Brand valuation is the key to unlocking the benefit of your brand, but branding through design is what opens the door. Contrary to the belief of most logo designers, the decline of brands happened amidst a deluge of logos.
Applying The AIDA Formula To Web Design
I advocate the Attention, Interest, Desire, Action formula for effective web design. It’s starting to catch on, with a major design magazine’s article on AIDA and other designers using the formula for effective website design. Right now the web is all A, no IDA, front loaded with superficial gimmicks which grab attention without rewarding attention to generate interest.
Minority Report Gesture UI Eliminates Your TV Remote
The new TV remote: Your bare hand? shows where sci–fi and UI design can produce some practical user benefits. The device isolates the gestures of one person is a good idea, given something like 91% of families fight over the remote control. Since this is so much like Wii gesture controllers, it seems companies missed an opportunity for settling these battles by using gaming behavior.
Cognitive Crash Dummies
When designers want to know the cognitive load of several designs, a tool called GOMS gives them the answer. Don’t make me think – science fiction, ubiquitous computing and human interfaces is a good overview of the issue.
How To Jump The Shark With Mootools and jQuery
Gimick libraries are rapidly becoming the new marquee tag with 10 Creative & Rich UI interfaces & How to Create Them;a full assault on users and usability. A great way to brand a company as a trend addict whose motto is because we can.
Users — The Most Talked About, Least Talked To Group With Control Over Your Project Success
Most companies still see users interviews as interfering with shoving projects out the door. True enough. Rather than seeing user data as a gold mine the competition hasn’t got a clue about, others are uncomfortable with data they hadn’t anticipated.
When All It Takes To Do The Right Thing Is A Persuasive Nudge
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Wealth and Happiness is an interesting read for anyone studying design which persuades. Rather than changing behavior, most people only need a persuasive nudge to do what they know they should be doing. Like a light switch which nudges you to use less electricity.