How can we create beautifully functioning, robust, intuitive user interfaces and engaging online experiences if creative are completely divorced from the rest of the process?
Just an observation and something that has cropped up more and more in various places. I’m stunned that ten plus years down the line into the life of digital agencies proper integration between teams is still a rarity.
Interaction design is driven by information and needs. Without this we (designers) are merely decorators.
I know I’m not shy of a Paul Rand quote on this blog, and I won’t hesitate here.
Image from the book “Paul Rand: Conversations with Students” available on Amazon.
[Note: This has nothing to do with my current place of employment. Thankfully, we have our discipline integration pretty nailed.]
Although I posted it to del.icio.us yesterday and hence, it appeared in the link fest in the previous post, I thought this deserved a post of its own.
Bentley brand tags
Brand Tags is a great site that crowdsources opinion on various brands. They’re mostly very predictable, well-known companies but it’s interesteing to see what some people think of when a brand is presented to them.
For example, and I was ‘guilty’ of this. The most popular ‘tag’ for the Virgin brand is the name of the founder, either ‘branson’ or ‘richard branson’. This is similarly the case for Microsoft. However, Steve Jobs languishes down the list of Apple tags.
If I was the Pizza Hut marketing chief at the moment, I’d be panicking.
Although hardly scientific, I like the principle of this. Throw a lot of people at it and more interesting insight would come out of this than 100 online brand satisfaction surveys.
After weeks of hoop-jumping with the YouTube API, the new Fridge Raiders site, aka ‘Carnivorous World’ went live quietly at the end of last week. I say quietly as there was a TV ad going out at the same time but, alas, despite pleading with the client, the URL failed to make it into the final frame of the ad. This was disappointing and has forced us to spam all our friends; getting them to join the Facebook group or befriend the star of the ad on MySpace in order to spread the word about the accompanying competition.
The new TV ad
Back to the site. We devised a competition to ask users to view the new TV ad, film their own alternative ending and upload it to the site. When you watch the shortened ad, it throws up all sorts of possibilities for video shenanigans. The winners (as voted for by the public) will receive one of four DVD Camcorders.
We used the YouTube API as it allowed us to upload videos and video responses to YouTube direct from our own site and add/edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts). This saved a load of time and the pain of building out own software.
There’s the other usual stuff on the site, nutritional information and past competition winners.
We’re just waiting for the hordes of users to get their video phones out.
