Techno//Marketer

Visualizing interaction design

Did you know that there is a large, passionate community of digital design experts who focus on the ways that a consumer interacts online? It's a level above and beyond what a pure web designer does. Their thinking goes beyond Flash intros and shiny 2.0 graphics. These professionals think about how we consume sites visually and physically with the mouse and help brands convey their identity no matter the format.

A problem that I run in to often is that people don't get what interaction design is. I start to explain that it's a custom process that is generally design-led. Still, they look at me puzzled.

To solve this, I've started looking for great examples to show people. One of the coolest examples of this is for a site that was done for Mercedes Benz in the UK. It's called A-to-S (playing off of their A-class and S-class lines).

The site uses Flash as the technology platform, but the experience behind each letter allows you to almost touch the screen. The mouse interacts in very logical, physical ways.

Have a look and let me know what you think. These small details make the difference in the experience when used correctly. Yes, there is more to interaction design, but I'm looking at the basics here. The complete definition of interaction design (IxD) can be found here or on the IxDA website here.

Technorati Tags:
design, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, trends, IxD, interaction design

Social reputation patterns

I found a very interesting post on the Yahoo User Interface blog today discussing social reputation patterns. Reputation is a way to create engagement inside a community and plays an important part in many social networks and other action-driven sites.

Some quick examples of reputation systems are LinkedIn's profile completeness and eBay seller ratings. Having these levels of reputation in the system give interactions an added value. In eBay, sellers are given the incentive to deliver what they say they will, because they know they'll be rated afterward. LinkedIn's profile completeness level is dependent on helping others in the system and encourages more interaction.

Here are the patterns that Yahoo mentions:

These patterns can also be used in different types of community environments. They range from altruistic, nurturing communities to combative, winner-takes-all environments. Certain brands can use each to deliver value to their community.

Take a minute now and think about the communities that you participate in where users are given an incentive for taking action. Where does it fit in these patterns? Most sites use multiple patterns to engage different groups of users and it's a very powerful technique to engage users online and drive repeat visits and extended loyalty.

Technorati Tags:
conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, Yahoo, reputation

What would it take to topple Twitter?

Twitter has a double unfair advantage over its competitors; a huge user base (estimated at over a million users now) and a very solid head start.

This hasn't stopped a host of new competitors from trying to give it a go. Among the latest competitors are BrightKite, Jaiku (who is owned by Google), Plurk, Utterz and even Facebook and LinkedIn have begun enabling micromedia updates on user profiles.

[Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod]

However, as Twitter's service woes keep mounting and user sentiment keeps edging toward the negative, I have to wonder...what would it take to topple Twitter?

In order to understand this, we need to look at what makes Twitter work. Let's break them down so we can see how it's gained such wide-spread popularity.

1. Simplicity: Twitter does one thing really well. It lets you communicate what you're doing right now. Now other functionality (no matter how easy it would be to implement), 140 characters, one text field and one button. Anybody can look at it and start using it in minutes.

   What competitors need to do: Though I think that there is room beyond 140 characters of text on a service like this (think video and photos), it needs to remain easy to use. Design and usability needs to be where the majority of the development time is spent. The technology should, as I've said before, fade away to the background. If it's not clear on what the user should do within 5 seconds of opening the page it's too complicated.

2. Ease of use: This builds on the previous idea of simplicity. Twitter let's you use it. It gets the heck out of your way and adds value by supporting conversation. The interface guides the user smoothly through the interactions. Posting a message is easy, replying is easy and the content is simple text. That's ease of use.

   What competitors need to do:This is a no-brainer. Any competitor who is going to topple Twitter will have to have an extremely easy to use service. Like I mentioned before, a lot of attention needs to be paid here. Too many services offer more features/better technology, but are a pain to use.

3. Mobility: Twitter has a very strong mobile platform. Not only is the SMS (text messages) updating solid, but the mobile site allows most of the regular site's functionality from nearly any device and network. Either option allows for seamless use when away from the browser.

   What competitors need to do: There is no option for the competition to miss this crucial piece of the equation. The portability of the user experience has to be in place. Users need to be able to update and receive updates from any device in the world. SMS is growing in popularity and allows quick updates from US networks. The mobile site allows more reach and really lets the user step away from their computer with confidence. SMS also serves an important role in getting messages to people and breaking through the clutter.

4. Platform agnostic: We just touched on the mobile platform, but Twitter's open architecture has allowed developers to extend the service to IM (AOL/GTalk/Jabber) as well as desktop applications. For IM, users add Twitter as a friend and send it their updates. Applications like Twhirl work like any desktop application (think Start > Applications > Twhirl) and don't make you keep a browser open at all times.

   What competitors need to do: This is another area that any competitor worth their salt will need to copy. The open architecture allows the development community to do its work and enhance the service faster than the competitor would be able to.

5. Strong RSS: Twitter has a very strong RSS architecture. You can subscribe to individual's feeds, your own feed (messages and replies) and use the RSS feeds to build other services. Other services like Twitterfeed use RSS to update Twitter accounts automatically. You can look at my "Techno//Marketer" twitter feed for an example. That feed is 100% auto-generated by Twitterfeed.

   What competitors need to do: No question here either. RSS is a staple of the new digital frontier.

6. Widgetization: Twitter had this right from the start. One of the most powerful ways that Twitter spread through the social media space was from the blog widget that allowed people to promote their messages as well as the service. It added value to the reader and drove new users. You can see my example in the right-hand panel of this blog.

   What competitors need to do: The more options people have to spread their content the better. Formats should be adjustable (width, height), customizable (color, branding) and should work everywhere possible.

7. The community: This is Twitter's ace in the hole. No matter how good other services are, no matter how easy they are to use, no matter how comprehensive the utility there is no use for a service like this that doesn't have a community. While some competitors have been around longer they have not been able to build the buzz and following that Twitter has. Some of this is due the founder's background (having founder Blogger.com) having an immediate, connected audience.

   What competitors need to do: You have to transplant the community. What I mean is that a competitor that's looking to topple Twitter (not build a new, unique audience) will need to use the openness of Twitter against it. Accounts will need to be moved over while keeping all of that user's connections in tact. to move user's networks in whole. Accounts and logins will need to be moved to make it as easy a transition as possible.

What would you add to this list? Is Twitter indomitable at this point or are they Yahoo in 1999 with Google just around the corner?

Technorati Tags:
conversations, design, Facebook, FriendFeed, Jaiku, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, technology, micromedia, Twitter

The scalability of language; the role of design

In this final installment of my series on the scalability of language online, I want to take a look at the role of design. So far we've looked at the challenges of language, the problems with machine translation, and the role of video. Design, though, enables ideas to transcend language to reach a much broader audience.

One of the best (if not the best) example of someone who uses design to convey complex ideas effortlessly is David Armano. Let's look at this illustration. To convey the complex ecosystem that has been created through the birth of social media and the immense fragmentation, David used a series of ripples. Like a rock thrown into a pond, it's something everyone is familiar with. The size of the circles conveys their impact (as would the size of the rock). It's intuitive and doesn't need copy to assist it.

I asked David to give his thought on the use of design to overcome the language gap:

"We were born with two eyes. Before we could speak words, we could see the world, recognize the faces of our parents and gaze into their eyes.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot how important visual stimulus really is. We scribbled drawings before writing. Visuals help bring us back to a universal understanding where words can sometimes fail us. It's time to pick up our crayons again."

Other bloggers use design to help us think through ideas. Roger von Oech uses his offline products to inspire us all to be more creative. He taps into his wildly successful (and I can personally say very helpful) Whack Pack series to help you think differently. The imagery on each card gives you a better idea of what you can expect.

Design also manifests itself with photography and there is nobody who uses photography better and is more prolific than Thomas Hawk. Thomas is a photographer in San Francisco who covers topics that he is passionate about including photography (duh), photographer's rights and social media. Many of his posts are comprised of single photographs that convey the emotion of the time and place.

These are just a few of the examples where design helps to transcend language. It's a very powerful tool when put in the right hands. Design can just as easily confuse and bankrupt ideas of their merit.

Who have you noticed that uses design to convey ideas? Have you seen it used incorrectly? Let me know your thoughts.

[This was supposed to auto-post last Friday. Sorry for the delay.]

Technorati Tags:
communications, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, Techno//Marketer, design

The most powerful branding tool. Ever.

If I were to give you a tip on the most powerful tool any company has at their disposal to positively impact their brand, would you act on it? When companies talk about branding, they often turn to the standard creative elements. They conduct focus groups and prepare branding briefs before the first pixel is pushed into place on the logo. If you're really serious you have a whole identity package. But that's not branding, that's just a logo right? From there they create the marketing campaign. Print ads are created to build emotional connections with people, TV spots reinforce the company image and convey the same emotions. Hundreds of hours are spent planning the website, the information architecture, the experience design, the content. When it's all said and done you have one damn fine looking marketing campaign.

Most companies know that part (very few do it right). The part they don't get is the tool that I am talking about. Customer service. Customer service is so powerful that it can make up for bad products, downtime and inconvenience. Conversely, poor customer service can kill even the most well thought out, killer product or service.

A brand is the sum of the interactions with an entity over time. Still, the last interaction with a product or service usually sticks with us. How many times have you felt your opinion of a company turn sour when somebody in the store isn't helpful? How many times have you sat on hold waiting in line only to not really get the answer you're looking for?

The last interaction is the only one that matters.

So why is customer service so often overlooked as a branding tool? It's hard to get right. Here are some of the challenges:

• It takes time. Lots of time. Customer service takes training, dedication and people who are aligned with the company's goals. Time is money after all and most companies look at the short term outlay instead of the long term benefit of building customer loyalty and creating a great total brand experience.
• High turnover. Typically customer service is made up of entry level folks packed into small offices strapped to a phone 8 hours a day. Why not really turn to results-based incentives here? Why not dress up their work area so they have a great attitude and convey to your customers?
• Everyone is in customer service. This means the CEO, the VPs, the account people, the programmers, the designers, the administrative staff, everyone. This is a key shift in thinking that needs to take place. One off day for one person will have an impact on your brand image. The last interaction is the only one that matters. You may not get another chance.
• Not just for consumer packages goods. Customer service happens in every industry whether you label it customer service or not. Law firms, ad agencies, PR firms and accountants all are in customer service. The problem is that it's not ingrained in their corporate philosophy, they think it beneath them. That's the
• Too easy to rely on technology. No message board or crowd sourced solution can replace human interaction. Technology is a great way to give people access to basic, commonly asked questions. However, when a person's questions are not answered by those solutions they can be left frustrated. Have you ever tried to reach Flickr, Technorati or Feedburner to get a prompt answer to a question? They make it 100% impossible to talk to a human. Don't be like those guys.

I think David Armano summed it up well in his reply when I posted this on Twitter a couple of days ago.

How do you integrate this common sense into what you do? How can you improve your support system? What will you do NOW to take action to create a customer service culture?

What do you do to make sure every personal interaction is the best it can be?

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, technology, customer service, branding

Developing personas for marketing strategy

Personas are an extremely valuable tool for marketers in any field. If you're not familiar with the term, personas are representations of your target audience based on research and interviews. From PR to digital to advertising, any marketing team or agency can benefit from developing client- and/or brand-specific personas.

As an example, let's say one of your target audience types is a 18-21 year old male who likes emo music, skateboarding and high-end electronics. You would come up with a name for this person along the lines of "Nate" and you would find an image of him to use in your planning. When you start making decisions about marketing strategies, you would check back to "Nate" and ask if it would reach him. What would reach him more effectively? What message does he need to hear. That is a basic model of persona development. Here is some more information to guide you through the process.

Why personas are important:

• Personas put a face on the customer. Some persona programs give people names so you can refer to them and see them in a physical representation. The agency Organic creates persona rooms where their people live so the project team can become fully immersed.
  
• Personas remove the tendency to think of yourself as the customer. You have to step back and this gives you the structure to do so.
  
• Act as a guide throughout the process of developing marketing communications programs, cross mediums (print, digital, outdoor, TV, etc.).
  
• Keeps designers, copywriters, programmers on track and avoids waste by remaining focused on the customer.
  

How people screw them up:

• Personas take time and research to get right.
  
• This includes some time in the field and meeting face-to-face with the customer.
  
• People think they know their customer without looking at data.
  
• Personas are often used up front in the marketing strategy process and don't carry through the process.
  

How you can avoid screwing them up:

• Get data. Collect it from the web and third party sources. Analyze web traffic. Do in-person interviews and ethnography. Get a big picture view and then analyze it objectively.
  
• Talk to your customers. Videotape them. Record the audio. Take notes. Come back with a real feeling for who you are trying to reach.
  
• Compare what you saw to the data and look for the insights.
  
• Evolve the personas over time. Adapt them as your product lines change or the economy changes. These should be living, breathing entities.
  

A great sample model.
I found this great model on Idris Mootee's site in a post where he compared the problems that MBAs and MFAs have in the workplace. It's a great start to being able to wrap your head around these ideas.

1. Finding the users
Questions asked: Who are the users? How many are there? What do they do with the system/brand?
Methods used: Quantitative data analysis.
Documents produced: Reports.

2. Building a hypothesis
Questions asked: What are the differences between the users?
Methods used: Looking at the material. Labeling the groups of people.
Documents produced: Draft a description of the target groups.

3. Verifications
Questions asked: Data for personas (likes/dislikes, inner needs, values). Data for situations (area of work, work conditions). Data for scenarios (work strategies and goals, information strategies and goals).
Methods used: Quantitative data collection.
Documents produced: Reports.

4. Finding patterns
Questions asked: Does the initial labeling hold? Are there more groups to consider? Are all equally important?
Methods used: Categorization.
Documents produced: Descriptions of categories.

5. Constructing personas
Questions asked: Body (name, age picture). Psyche (extrovert/introvert). Background (occupation). Emotions and attitude towards technology, the company (sender) or the information that they need. Personal traits.
Methods used: Categorization.
Documents produced: Descriptions of categories.

6. Defining situations
Questions asked: What is the need of this persona?
Methods used: Looking for situations and needs in the data.
Documents produced: Categorization of needs and situations.

7. Validation and buy-in
Questions asked: Do you know someone like this?
Methods used: People who know (of) the personas read and comment on the persona descriptions

8. Dissemination of knowledge
Questions asked: How can we share the personas with the organization?
Methods used: Fosters meetings, emails, campaigns of every sort, events.

9. Creating scenarios
Questions asked: In a given situation, with a given goal, what happens when the persona uses the technology/engages with the brand?
Methods used: The narrative scenario - using personas descriptions and situations to form scenarios.
Documents produced: Scenarios, use cases, requirement specifications.

10. On-going development
Questions asked: Does the new information alter the personas?
Methods used: Usability tests, new data
Documents produced: A person responsible for the persona input from everybody who meet the users.

*Diagram developed by Lene Nielsen of Snitker & Co.

More quality persona resources:

• Usability.gov
  
• Cooper on the origin of personas
  
• Persona ecosystems - David Armano
  
• "Creating and using personas and scenarios to guide site design" - Razorfish
  
• Customer Storytelling at the heart of business success - boxes and arrows
  
• Personas, goals and emotional design - UXmatters
  
• Three important benefits of personas - Jared Spool
  
• Practical persona creation - evolt.org
  
• Yahoo's approach to keeping personas alive - Jared Spool
  

So what else do you do when planning personas? How do you develop them? How do you adapt them? What's the balance between qualitative and quantitative feedback?

 

Technorati Tags:
David Armano, marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, usability, user experience design, UXD, Jared Spool

Voiceless, spoken communication

Now this is pretty cool and I just have to share. I found the following video on Marc Andreesson's blog and it blew my mind (as it did his). These guys have developed a way to intercept and translate speech before it gets to your vocal chords so you don't need to say what you are thinking, you just have to think it. Check out the video below.

This is very cool technology and may well shape the way we engage with technology in the future. You could be sitting at your desk and just think things like "open Microsoft Word" and it would open. You could create thought to text software that would actually work because the words are pre-digitized. This could possibly enable speech impaired individuals to communicate "vocally".

What other implications will technology like this have on our day-to-day lives?

Guest blogging at Drew's place

Please take a moment and check out my guest post at Drew McLellan's blog today when you have a moment. The topic is creating a solid 1.0 digital foundation before moving into a 2.0 world.

A quick excerpt:

Pardon the idiom, but if you don't have your marketing ducks in a row it's hard to make a move into emerging media.

Too many companies try to jump to Web2.0 and skip many important steps in the process. This makes for a hard sell internally and an even more awkward transition.

This post focuses on what you're already doing online and how to make a smooth transition to 2.0.

Here is the link to the post. Thanks Drew!

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, Techno//Marketer, usability, user experience design, Web2.0, Drew McLellan

If you build it they may not come (back)

You've heard the old riddle right? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, the same is true with web sites that take the time to create RSS feeds, but don't tag them properly on the page. Not every visitor to your site hunts for the hidden little orange icon buried deep on the page (). The majority of people use the RSS indicator built in to their web browser. Did I lose you? Let's take a look at some examples.

If you go to a site that does this right, when you land on the page your browser should display an RSS icon in, or around, the main URL address bar.

If you look on FireFox on a PC, here is what the consumer sees (note the orange icon next to the URL of the blog):

If you're on FireFox on a Mac, you see something like this (very similar to the PC version):

If you look on a PC running Internet Explorer, you will see the following at the top of your screen. Note the RSS icon in orange on the lower right-hand side. If there is no feed detected, that icon will be gray.

Now, if the short bit of code I am about to show you is not in place, here is what they see. I found it very ironic that this happened on Microsoft's main RSS listing page, go figure.

The solution is to add a bit of code to the pages that have RSS feeds available. The code looks like this (but just ask your IT folks to figure out the details).

The reason I bring this up is that if I land on a page that doesn't have their code in place, I will keep moving, not subscribe and they've lost the chance to communicate in the future. Bloggers are lucky here as this is automatically built-in, but other sites need to add this into the code.

Each visit is an opportunity to build a relationship and, with the opt-in nature of RSS, this is a no brainer. Even if a page contains multiple feeds, pick one as your default (it is possible to list multiple). People don't want to hunt for icons like they're hunting for Waldo.

Technorati Tags:
interactive marketing, marketing, Matt Dickman, RSS, social media, Techno//Marketer, technology

End of the line or beginning of a new opportunity?

Imagine this scenario for a second. You're walking through Barnes & Noble. You've just picked up a hot cup of coffee and now you're ready to browse. You start checking out the new fiction best-sellers and move through the magazine section. Finished there, you head towards the business section picking one of a dozen routes. Just then, BAM, you're standing on the sidewalk. You think to yourself, "what the...?".

This same situation plays itself out every single day when millions of people reach error pages on the web. This typically happens when a user mis-types a link or the link is mislabeled by the site. The errors typically look like this:

First, you need to find out how you're currently handling the problem. Go to your site and type in your URL and then add a "/75;yu" (that's a totally random keystroke). If you see the error message above, you have a little work to do. There are opportunities here for marketers who are smart enough to realize it. Here is how a couple of sites handle these errors.

Technorati: Here is a basic approach. Technorati gives you an error message, but adds links to quickly find whatever you typed just in case you were guessing.
Google: Shame on Google for such a poor error page. The company could easily take you to a search result page similar to Technorati.
Greenpeace: Greenpeace takes advantage of the situation and uses it to educate the user on its mission. Click the image for a larger view.
Marvel Comics: Marvel uses a touch of Homer Simpson-esque humor.
Craigslist: The Craigslist error page is as simple as the site. Very basic, but in line with their voice.
The Motley Fool: The Motley Fool has a great little page. A Haiku for the error message with a search embedded on the page to get you back on track.
Bloglines: David Berkowitz sent me this one from Bloglines. Nice little bit of humor.

So, when your customers make a wrong turn, are you going to help them out or kick them to the curb? Do you have an example of a page you like? Let me know in the comments!

[Links: A List Apart has a great article on the perfect 404 page]

Technorati Tags:
interactive marketing, marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, usability, user experience design, 404