Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
A Thought on the iPhone Keyboard
While reading an article partly about the iPhone user experience, a thought dawned on me about the virtual keyboard. Like many other people, I was afraid that the lack of tactile feedback would be disorienting and difficult to get accustomed to. And, like most people who have moved to the iPhone, I’ve found that it really isn’t. That got me thinking about the whole nature of “touch typing”.
Think back to high school (those of you who actually took typing classes). What was the “sales pitch” the teacher gave you about “touch typing”? Well, it made you more efficient by stopping you from having to repeatedly move your eyes from the keyboard to the screen (or, er, paper – at least when I was in high school).
Now think about the iPhone. Where’s the keyboard? Where’s the screen? Your eyes never have to move more than 3 inches to jump between the two. AND, with the large visual pop-up key feedback (the real stroke of genius), you can rely on your peripheral vision to ensure correct keypresses, and still never take your eyes off of the entered text. Apple simply took a negative limitation of a mobile device (limited room for both display and input), and turned it into a positive – the ability to support a virtual keyboard by replacing tactile feedback with peripheral visual feedback.
Turning limitations into advantages is a hallmark of both great marketing and great user experience design. Whenever you’re in the process of designing a transformative product like the iPhone, always be sure to ask yourself “What old rules no long apply?”
John Sculley: Marketing Genius
Peter Elkind of Fortune just wrote a scathing article about Steve Jobs in Fortune Magazine, but this post isn’t really about this. It’s about this included quote from former Apple CEO (and sacker of Steve Jobs), John Sculley:
“Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.”
This wasn’t just an offhand comment to the press. It’s committed for posterity in Sculley’s memoir: “Odyssey” (13 used copies are currently available for $0.01 if you’re looking for further inspiration.)
And this is why he really should have stuck with selling “sugared water”.
Cecropia Unveils “Personality Gaming” Demo
A while ago I posted about Cecropia, a game company which had pioneered a totally unique video game called “The Act“.
Using a simple knob, the player smoothly adjusts the silent protagonist’s personality, causing the characters around him to react accordingly. All the action takes place in ultra-smooth Disney-quality animation, with absolutely no UI elements – creating the first true interactive cartoon.
Unfortunately, Cecropia has had a real problem with “The Act” – namely, how to market it. It’s far too short to make into a console game, and the knob (which most users don’t have) is pretty much critical to the experience, which would require a special hardware investment for most people. The animation quality is far too high to package into some kind of Flash game. It really would make a perfect arcade game. Unfortunately, the market for this kind of arcade game died out in the early 90′s.
So, anyway, they’re taking their technology in a new direction, facing up to the realities of today’s gaming market, and trying their hand at interactive Flash “advergaming”. They’ve put up a demo on Cecropia.com. I won’t tell you how it works (figuring it out is part of the fun). If you’re at all involved in interactive marketing, get in touch with these guys. What they’re doing is truly groundbreaking, and they deserve a lot of attention (and money). And, who knows, maybe someday The Act will see the light of day, in some form or another.
New Animal Planet Logo – WTF?
For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the new Animal Planet logo is supposed to mean:
Ani Three Al Planet? What?
Revisiting "The Danger of Design"
When I was at Hill, Holliday I wrote a controversial blog post (still available on their site) called “The Danger of Design – How Not to Build an Online Community“. It was so controversial, I was actually called into the Executive VP’s office and told “You shouldn’t say stuff like this, this is what we’re trying to sell“.
I was just going through my archives and decided to re-read exactly what I wrote, and decide whether I still stand by it today.
Yes, I do. Absolutely.
When I wrote this, MySpace was the king of social networking. My argument was that MySpace’s “amateurish” design encouraged a sense of community. Nowadays, Facebook is king of the hill. Does this invalidate my argument?
Absolutely not, in fact it reinforces it. Facebook succeeds for the same reason MySpace did – and then takes it one step further.
Facebook succeeds because, like MySpace, it does not impose Design (again, that’s “capital-D Design”, as I describe in the original post) on the users. And it one-ups MySpace because it prevents its users from imposing Design on others.
Design (capital D design!) is polarizing. Design forces you to make a decision – does this product’s image represent me, or does it not? If you want to attract a certain demographic, you want your products’ Design to speak to exactly that demographic. That’s Marketing 101.
If you want to appeal to everyone, start undesigning.
Advertising vs. Product Design
I used to work in advertising. Now I work in product design.
Advertising is kind of like product design in reverse. You take a product that already exists – that may have gone through hundreds of incarnations and several changes of direction – and you pick it apart, asking yourself:
“What is there about this product that just happens to be different from all of its competitors? What Big Idea can we convince people was the motivating force behind this product all along?”
Dunkin’ Donuts is a huge client for Hill, Holliday. Their idea is: “America Runs on Dunkin’”. It’s a GREAT idea. Dunkin’ Donuts stores are everywhere. People go to them when they need a pick me up during their day. An ad agency took a fast food chain that was selling a lot of coffee and donuts and saw it for what it really was: a gas station for human fuel.
Dunkin’ Donuts didn’t even realize what it was until an ad agency told them. The ad agency extracted a Big Idea from an existing product. That’s quite a skill, and for that I hold talented advertising people in the highest regard.
But advertising and its “idea archaelogy” strikes me as a tactic of last resort for a company that forgot to put the Big Idea in in the first place. And I’d much rather spend my time working with companies that need help putting their Big Ideas into new stuff, than with companies that need help digging Big Ideas out of old stuff.
But that’s just me.
Windows Live Writer and the Big and Small
Microsoft has a major Web 2.0 PR problem. I’m an avid blogger and I had never heard of Windows Live Writer (which has been in Beta for over a year) until now. It’s out of Beta and I’m using it to write this very post, and I have to say, this is a killer “desktop” blogging tool. I’ve tried out several, and this is by far the best I’ve ever used. Do get it if you’re a Windows-using blogger.
If this program were developed by a small “Web 2.0″ startup, the blogosphere would be all over it, raving and gushing. But it’s by Microsoft, so it’s gone practically unnoticed.
Microsoft is a purveyor of big, expensive software like Windows and Office. Any time they release a small, inexpensive/free, but totally useful program (the very essence of Web 2.0), it just automatically feels like a “throwaway” app. I’m wondering how they can shake this sort of bias. Clearly creating the “Live” brand is a step in the right direction, but I think they have a way to go.
Is Web 2.0 not only about what is developed but who develops it? Spend enough time in the blogosphere and you realize that the conversations around products are often as much about the creators as the products themselves. Cults of personality are built up around single developers or small teams, and people root for the success (or failure) of the product based on these perceptions. This generates significant buzz.
Can a truly successful Web 2.0 app be made by a small anonymous team in a small division of a giant corporation? Just putting that out there… I don’t know the answer.
Zappos.com Brings Customer to Tears – in a Good Way
This story of genuine customer appreciation is truly astonishing in this day and age. If only every company were this thoughful (or, more accurately, if only every company empowered their employees to act this thoughtfully…)
Wow.
Prove to the corporate world that this sort of outstanding customer service is to be rewarded. Go buy shoes from Zappos.com right now.
Roll Your Own Social Network
Originally posted on HHCC.com on March 2nd, 2007
It’s always been a key tenet of advertising that you need to be where the people are. These days that means in online social networks like MySpace, FaceBook, and YouTube. Marketers have already learned this lesson, and are heading to these destination sites in droves. But does your brand have what it takes to take things to the next level? Can your website become a social destination itself?
If you’d like to give it a try, there are plenty of vendors who want to help you get there. KickApps offers instant gratification in the form of a free ad-supported MySpace/YouTube clone, which you can upgrade to a paid version. Customers include TAG Body Spray and National Lampoon. Vitrue offers a slicker interface, more clearly focused on consumer generated video, but doesn’t offer any free or trial versions. Vitrue powers sites from TBS, Lance Foods and the Cincinatti Bengals. ONEsite rounds out the trio, with solutions ranging from free to $1000/mo. iVillage, ClearChannel, and Sprint head up their roster.
While KickApps, Vitrue, and ONEsite have gained the most commercial momentum, there are countless startups in the space, including People Aggregator, CrowdFactory, and the matter-of-factly named Social Platform and Social Network Server.
Web sites without social content will certainly be the “brochureware” sites of tomorrow, but whether a full-fledged social network is an appropriate add-on for most corporate sites remains to be seen. If you want to give it a try though, there’s clearly no need to go it alone.
Your Greatest Online Marketer is Someone You’ve Never Met
Originally published on HHCC.com on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
Oh, how the Internet changes everything. The simple idea of happy customers spreading your brand via word of mouth has morphed into people creating entirely new, wildly innovative websites to promote your goods in ways you would have never thought of. Case in point: BrowseGoods.com — a Google Maps-style interface for browsing — and buying — Amazon.com products.
Sites like BrowseGoods.com are possible because companies like Amazon have invested time and effort in developing programming APIs that enable anyone with a bit of time and skill to create new ways of finding and interacting with your product offerings. New, programming-free tools like Yahoo Pipes are trying to make the process even easier. So, are you thinking about opening up your site via an API?
Well, ponder this. Worldwide, there are over one billion people who use the Internet. Let’s assume that just one percent of those folks are fans of your brand. Next, let’s assume that just one percent of those people have the skills needed to build a website. Finally, let’s figure one percent of those people have really killer ideas for a new way to sell your stuff online.
That’s 1,000 online marketers with the ideas, skills, and passion to pitch your product in exciting, innovative ways. Now, how many of them are on your payroll? Two? Three? So, should they spend the next six months building two or three really cool marketing sites, or the foundation for 1,000?