You little scamp
As part of the project I'm working on at the moment I'm having to do a bit of rooting around under the bonnet of Spotify to work out the best way of tying it into the experience we're creating on our site. While I was reading up on their 'social' stuff I spotted this scamp being used as a graphic. Makes a lovely contrast against the Spotify app look and feel, but in a way that makes it easy to recognise what it's supposed to be a representation of (like a proper scamp should).
I wonder if it's one of the scamps they came up with when they were designing Spotify. I've got sketchbooks full of scamps, some of which are quick and some which have real personality. It's nice to see the humble scamp getting a look in as part of the end product.
Lost for words?
Some former colleagues of mine were recently having a conversation about SEO strategy for their site. Having taken some advice from a master of the ‘dark art’ they shared his recommendations, some of which got me thinking about how to factor SEO into my designs and others that made me worry about the outcome of SEO-led design.
Amongst the advice was the usual (but oft overlooked) nugget about using the language and phraseology of your target audience, not your internal stakeholders. I’ve heard this many times and in many forms, probably most convincingly from Gerry McGovern in his Ryanair ‘low cost airfares vs. cheap flights’ example, but this quote (shamelessly stolen from the wonderful 1001 rules for my unborn son) put it succinctly in a way that also managed put a new spin on it for me.
Personal preference aside, design is for your audience
It's always nice when you're confident in the guys you work with, and this week I've had the pleasure of teaming up again with one of the guys who I've worked closely with on and off for the past 18 months or so on a project for another bunch of guys I've worked with recently.
The guys at MediaDog will be the first to admit that although they are fantastic at what they do, they're not particularly good at being 'the client'. I'd braced myself for internal arguments over design, content, the usual, but with a bit of structure, some clear direction and the velvet glove/iron fist of Sarah, the lads came good and delivered everything they were asked to so Steve and I could get started.
Recently we've struggled with a couple of clients who wanted sites designed and built but couldn't provide or even hint at the type of content the site would include. Having a DVD chock full of images and copy, I was fairly confident my wireframes should be pretty close to the mark and that Steve's design kung fu would give the MediaDoggies cause to smile. And they did (smile that is). Just one small change...
Apparently the guys they're aiming the site at are a particularly macho bunch and the pink just wasn't going to cut it. One quick tutorial about why certain colours just won't work on screen and we had a replacement and a 100% happy client. I rather liked the pink (as did they) but if it's not going to work for your target audience, it's got to go. After all, ultimately we're designing for them and not for you/your board.
Mouse, your days are numbered
Spent a really interesting and enjoyable hour yesterday talking to the guys at Rare's new Fazeley Studios operation. No agenda, I was working with the Media Dogs next door and I just popped in on-spec and they took time out of their day to throw around ideas about how the stuff they're working on with Microsoft's Kinect is redefining the way we think about interacting with game and app interfaces on consoles. Really interesting and clever guys and good of them to make the time to shoot the breeze too.
Interestingly my Twitter feed was full this morning with people posting links to and retweeting about this YouTube clip. It starts with an invisible mouse and before you know it, you're asking Google questions via your iPhone ... how much longer does the mouse/keyboard paradigm have left?
Pixelly People
I love it when you see a project start to come to life. The guys at The Team have been playing with the prototype of theHTML-JS-SVG-PNG avatar builder I recently worked on. What a motley looking crew ...
Sometimes it pays to take your own advice
I've got a couple of free days before I start the next project (this one has a maritime theme, more on that later...), so I thought I'd take advantage of the sunshine and get a few jobs that I'd been meaning to do for a while ticked off the list.
I was just about to start cutting some wood for the shed door fix I was fashioning when my Dad's voice popped up in my sub-conscious like Obi-Wan (Sam... Measure Twice, cut once...).
There's definitely something in that you know (update - shed door fixed and working like new)
Measure Twice, Cut Once
All the small things
For the past few months I've been working remotely with guys based at the Cisco campus in Bangalore, India. One of the big benefits of working with Cisco is having access to their telepresence suites for weekly catch up meetings. Being able to see and hear the person you're talking to as if they were in the same room is a massive benefit. Using Cisco's WebEx software in the spaces between TP sessions is great but it's not quite the same. It's much harder to pick up on visual clues as to how the person you're talking to feels about what you're saying and when you're the one listening, there's a real art to being able to jump in at the right point without everyone talking over each other. You don't realise how much you rely on visual prompts until they're not there.
You can say a lot without words. This sign
has been bugging me for weeks. It seems such a small thing but every time I look at the placard announcing the price reduction, my brain trips up because the arrow points up, rather than down. There's no need for the arrow to be pointing at the 'ground floor FLAT' text - it's the only thing being sold.
Our brains process imagery before text. Whether it's a piece of stock photography adding interest to a webpage or a logo, we make snap judgements about what is being said, before we take in what is actually being said. I've spotted some fantastic examples (particularly in the media where picture editors will use photographs of MPs or celebrities in unflattering poses to colour an article in a way that they couldn't do with words for fear of libel).
<Cliche> if a picture speaks a thousand words, it's worth paying attention to what's being said </Cliche>
“like an old favourite t-shirt”
Why do we have a 'telephone voice'? Whether it’s booking a restaurant or hotel reservation or talking to someone we don’t know but want to impress, something in our subconscious stirs and we feel the need to use words and phrases we’d never use in normal conversation, and it feels uncomfortable.
Seems like the same thing happens when we sit down to write content for websites, particularly when it comes to periphery content like welcome text, instructions or error messages. We write these clunky, formal sounding sentences in the belief that familiarity is bad and would sound less professional.
This type of content is the glue that sticks a website together. It’s often the last thing that’s thought about and created and if it’s done properly should really be invisible in terms of the experience. It’s designed to move you through a site seamlessly. It’s not designed to be thought provoking or memorable, but it should be comfortable and reassuring, like an old t-shirt or pair of slippers.
As with any type of writing, creating something that sounds natural is often the most difficult aspect. For an example of it done well (in my opinion) take a look at Adioso’s beta site. It makes searching for flights (one of the most popular online activities) simple with its use of natural language search, good examples and clear instructions. I particularly like the way they use the ‘Share an Idea’ feature to keep their development user-focused.
Keeping up with the Googles
Some interesting reading from the Guardian’s technology pages this morning: Vodaphone ‘leaked’ iPhone 4 prices, a tell-me-something-I-don’t-know piece about how mobile internet makes life easier and this – one of the most detailed acknowledgements of the importance of user experience design I’ve seen in mainstream journalism.
The piece struck a chord for me for several reasons, but two major points stuck out particularly:
[On inconsistencies in functionality/approach] "So I turned to PowerPoint Web App, thinking that this would surely be awful. It turns out not to be the case: for a start, it saves automatically.
On seeing that, one's instant reaction is: "Why not do that in Word Web App too?" Possibly the answer is that these come from different programming teams – but the lack of a consistent UI in a product that needs to be impressive, because it's competing against something from Google that's already there and is plenty good enough, is bad.”
[Overall impression:] "… this product has a long way to go. If you saw this and didn't know the brand name, you'd say that this was a company which didn't really get the web.
You'd say that it … seems to have learnt little or nothing from Google's implementation, and that it must have been done in a terrible rush"
Fairly scathing in places, but a reality check for companies thinking about launching into markets where they are competing against established products.
Microsoft will no doubt use their considerable resources to roll out countless iterations with the bugs ironed out, but by releasing something that doesn’t better, or at least match, the existing competition, winning advocates is going to be a hard road to travel.
When did email become old hat?
In the gruff words of Bob Hoskins it’s good to talk.
With more opportunities and means to communicate than ever before, we’re taking the opportunity to talk (even if we’re not saying much). Skype and video chat have made talking to friends in far off places easy and affordable and text messages ping around the world at the rate of over 1 billion a week in the UK alone.
I’m going to try to dress this one up as an observation and hide the personal gripe in the middle. As part of a recent project, we were looking at how 12 -21 year olds communicate with each other and their peers. We’d made the assumption that email would be a key factor and I have to admit I was surprised at what we found.
Anecdotal evidence and observation alike showed us that email by no means a preferred way of communicating. Teens especially would use IM, Twitter, Facebook messages and finally text messaging before opting to send an email. They wanted and expected more a more immediate response and IM and text messaging support that. Many of them were quite dismissive of email.
Obviously this is skewed by their environment. Commercial environments don’t lend themselves to using Facebook for example (although IM is on the increase in some sectors), but I still know a lot of people who use Twitter to hold conversations.
My twitter feed does get clogged with @replies between pairs of people I follow having ‘conversations’. I haven’t worked out whether they do this is because it’s the best way to get a quick resposnse from the other person or because they don’t want to switch to another forum once an exchange has started. What is interesting is that all of these people have each other’s email addresses and yet don’t use email.
Who wants to put a bet on who will build the first application that allows you to choose to send your message via email/twitter/facebook/text from a single interface?