usquebae · 20.10.08
12:00 <@ChrisDodo> eeep. I have just bought a bottle of whisky that has its own flickr account.
12:00 <@jerakeen> does that count as a spime, or just annoying marketing?
12:00 <@ChrisDodo> it certainly has a story.
12:01 <@jerakeen> you have to admit, a slide saying 'IT'S A TALKING BOTTLE OF WHISKY'
is going to get a different reaction from the shoe one.
12:01 <@ChrisDodo> http://www.flickr.com/photos/27759146@N03/
12:01 <+mind> [ Flickr: Glenfiddich cask 4414's Photostream ]
12:01 <@jerakeen> IT'S MY ONLY FRIEND
12:01 <@jerakeen> NOONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS ME
12:01 <@ChrisDodo> and yes, i am a sucker buying whisky the same year i was born
12:01 <@ChrisDodo> dammit, there's a blog post in that
with apologies to Russell and Tom
So here it is. I think Glenfiddich have done a very good job talking about this whisky. In June, they held a tasting to select the best barrel, which was videoed and put on their website. It’s a no-nonsense undumbed-down half hour discussing the dilemma of what makes the ‘best’ whisky, and gives a clear understanding of why it’s both an interesting whisky and representative of Glenfiddich. It’s a nice example of pre-experience design: reading about the process of selection and watching the tasting will alter my experience of both buying and tasting the whisky.
We know the history of the cask, how it was made, what it’s been filled with, and seen the result, the selection, and the craftsmanship of distillery. We know what it tastes like, and what others think. I’m sure more digital detritus will be left as people receive their bottles. So, it’s a spime, vaguely. I used to be very adamant that the data should reside in the object itself, rather than in the messy Internet. I’m changing my mind on this. With simple tools like Google search, information of all kinds can be revealed easily, and the connecting story has to be reconstructed personally.
Comment [4]
Pepsi Raw · 19.10.08
I finally got to try Pepsi Raw – Waitrose/Ocado now stocks it. It’s interesting to see big soft drink manufacturers trying to crack the super-premium market, and without turning to ‘healthy’ fruit juices.
The bottle clearly apes the iconic Coca-Cola bottle. On pouring, there’s a strange very stable, almost waxy foam. The taste is, well, apples, then molasses, and burnt sugar – in a bad way. There’s little complexity of flavour, compared to Coke, and it’s quite sweet. There’s also little carbonation, which goes immediately on pouring.
The ingredients list is odd. They play on the natural angle, but it’s pretty weaselly – lactic acid, gum arabic, xanthan gum. Now, I’m not against the use of chemicals in food and drink (I have a tub of xanthan gum in my kitchen cupboard), but to say they’re natural is a bit rich. The gums are also the reason for the stable foam. They’re there, I guess, for mouthfeel – but it’s a longer ingredients list than real Coke.
I don’t mind it having a different taste to standard Pepsi or Coke – there’s always a push for a new flavour to help differentiate – but I’d want a premium drink to be more complex than the standard drink, whereas Coke is an incredible rich mix of flavours, very carefully balanced, Pepsi Raw is one-note (apples), two-note at best (burnt sugar), and weirdly ends up tasting more artificial than the product it revises.
the new luxuries · 13.10.08
Way back at Eurooscon in 2006, I gave a talk in which one of the main messages was ‘privacy is a luxury’. Only those that can afford to miss out on offers, savings and discounts will be able to keep their privacy – perfectly illustrated in a recent catandgirl cartoon:
I’ve been speaking to Russell a lot about where advertising is going. Firstly, as he mentioned in his designengaged talk, advertising is appearing in loads more places than it used to, and there’s little or no civic discussion about if this is a good thing or not. Screens in buses? Screens in train tunnels? Screens in shops? Screens as facades? Screens everywhere. Will everywhere become like Times Square? What seem like well intentioned digital extensions of future buildings, will, rather, become vast square kilometers of new ad space per city. Should every building be used as an advertising hoarding?
When targeted messages are present in everything you do – on your buildings, on your screen, on your phone – you’ll get the advertising you deserve. Literally. One of the remaining web business models – freemium – puts a price on how much you need to spend to remove advertising from a ‘media property’, which is no longer where you’d expect to find adverts, but anywhere you spend time and attention, such as computer apps and websites.
And the final kick in the teeth is the complexity of the ads themselves. Clarity is a luxury. Ads that present a brand message tend to be simple. Ads that convey a monetary offer or benefit, are not only hard to decipher, full of words, small print, competing offers, but take extra cognition to even dismiss. “Will this be good for me?” “Will this make my life better?”. They also tend to be more cynically designed, with added lizard brain semantics. “These great offers won’t last” “Call us today.” Time, effort and worry are the price you pay for having to make hard financial decisions constantly.
Comment [6]
radio on · 10.10.08
What happens when you turn a radio on?
Sound comes out. Then you pick the sound you want.
Radios are silence-suckers, not sound-creators.
I find it weird that a lot of Internet radio and music apps and services (and even products like iPods) go the other way; silent when you start them, causing you to select the music you want, before getting any sound out of it. In some ways it’s the optimal interaction design, or at least it’s the most rational, but I think there’s something nice in just starting and letting you guide it into what you want.
It’s certainly a different way of looking at interactions from the traditional action-reaction flows that seem to dominate computers and technology.
Comment [1]
of montreal · 8.10.08
Still digesting Design Engaged, meanwhile…
not present in the present · 8.10.08
I had a thought kicking around in my head, and it was amplified by nicolas’ presentation at Design Engaged.
The future is terribly easy to predict. It’s predicting the instantiation that’s hard.
Human needs change very slowly. Sometimes they suddenly become possible to fulfill, but more normally, they just get better, easier, cheaper. Future visions are always filled with the instantiations, even not mentioning the fulfilled need.
I disagree with Nicolas that the videophone was a failure. Personal communication with pictures as well as sound is very human – and it’s happening all the time. It’s just that the instantiation that took off was laptops and PCs with webcams, and Skype, rather than a box plugged into the phone line, or indeed, webcams in mobile phones (I personally think that this will take off quite soon too).
I remember watching Tomorrow’s World in the 80s, and it was filled with exotic shopping trolleys, each equipped with a computer (hard to find early examples, as, well, it’s still happening – 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005 and, oh look, 2008, 2008). The need – shopping is boring and annoying – remains, and is true; the reality was online shopping, in all its forms. Service design, rather than technology design.
It’s true that the future is not evenly distributed. My present is about 3 years in the chronological future, both in my work and the way I’m using technology. I’ve generally noticed that big technologies, like the Internet, Bluetooth, wifi, DVDs take at least 6 years to become mass-market, from the first true consumer product. So my present can be 9 years ahead of even sophisticated, monied, privileged Western people. I’ve had several serious meetings about 2015, even 2017 at work. Big ideas take time…. self-parking cars: 17 years, digital radio: 8-9 years.
I’d also say that if you can’t predict rough instantiations 3 years out, you’re not paying enough attention. In 3 years, there’s unlikely to be revolution, but many weak signals are around. If it has physicality in any way, companies have to work this far out, and the research would have been done years before that. Pay attention!
Comment [6]
you're doing it wrong · 7.10.08
It’s interesting to watch Google start rolling out advertising to Google Maps. It seems to be travel related websites – I’ve noticed activehotels, hotels.com and Expedia so far, and this careful selection of ads seems to make sense.
On the web, little square boxes pop on the map as well as the search results.
I suspect that activehotels either didn’t have a logo that fit well in the square, or my adblocker blocked it. I thought it looked like a speech bubble, and expected a comment or some other geo-encoded content.
Now it’s gone mobile.
It’s the same deal; adverts on the map added as square pushpins.
However, there are two obvious problems and a bigger dilemma when turning this mobile.
The first problem is screen size.
On the web, a banner is 1-5% of the page; on a mobile it’s close to 30%, and it isn’t like Google search, where the ads are carefully positioned in a separate part of the page – they’re first. You have to parse it before getting to the place you were actually looking for.
The second is interactivity.
Clickthroughs make less sense: the links aren’t mobile-optimised (in fact, it’s an 800k full, heavy page) and it isn’t just opening another window. Multitasking is hard. In this particular example, it’s even weirder – they’ve pre-filled in that it’s for a hotel tonight, for 2 nights, leading to an error in this case. Saving the link as a favourite (which makes more sense) only contains the hotel name – there’s not even the full address or phone number.
The big dilemma is that needs are different. I’m normally on Mobile Google Maps when I’m frantically trying to find a place, often the hotel I’ve booked. I’m lost, I want to sleep – I’m not exploring the possibility space, and I don’t want to wade through marketing garbage. Note that this doesn’t make sense for these kinds of advertisers either: I’ve booked already, and I don’t want alternatives.
It’s good to see Google experimenting with this. It’s a hard problem, and I hope everyone learns what’s good and bad, and changes and optimises accordingly. It’s weird that marketers just want to copy techniques from other media, that people will be willing to have to make the decision to pay attention in these new spaces, and that advertisers will think this the best way of promoting themselves.
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this is not my beautiful house · 15.08.08
There is no such thing as user experience.
I sometimes go a bit stir crazy in workshops, especially when I’m told off for using too many post-its… but there’s a sliver of truth to my facetiousness.
There’s certainly no such thing as managing the user experience. Or designing the user experience.
Something doesn’t work? Bad user experience.
Doesn’t do what I want? Bad user experience.
Can’t understand it? Bad user experience.
Bad service? Bad user experience.
It broke? Bad user experience.
Warranty or insurance issues? Bad user experience.
They were rude? Bad user experience.
The store was out of stock? Bad user experience.
User experience is just a strategy. A way of thinking – one that illuminates the possibilities to improve. One that shows new potentials, by looking at things in a new way. One that I believe in. But it’s certainly not the only strategy, and it’s a really hard strategy to implement well.
Name some companies with a good user experience. Virgin Atlantic? Yes, pretty good, but I’ve seen it break down many times – whilst they have an advantage in that the main experience can be scripted and even timed (you’re sitting prisoner in a metal tube), there’s still so much to go wrong. Airports, for example. And flying requires interaction with many employees, and each one has to believe and be empowered to make things better for customers. The jungle drums report that there’s lots of anger from flight attendants about their pay; it’s clear that people’s experiences will suffer quickly if the main people responsible for good service are unhappy.
Apple? Every time I go into an Apple Store in the UK, it makes me angry. From condescending staff, to product faults, to formal policy on a number of issues, Apple isn’t the joined-up experience company it could appear. Product experience? Pretty exemplary. Service? Not so much.
User experience is a personnel problem. Or HR, if you work in a company the size of a small country. Everyone in the company has to care about what they do. Everyone has to be paid and judged on how they improve the user experience. Furthermore, this has to be communicated to the investors and shareholders, and they have to believe that the company can pull it off. It’s a differentiator that’s hard to compete with, precisely because it’s so hard to do. So, there’s only one or two people in a company that can be a user experience manager. Normally it’s the CEO – they have to believe in the singular goal of an awesome experience at all costs.
Just as the words consumer and user are condesending to people, the word experience is condesending to the activity of people, or life. And it’s condescending to the people who work hard to create the products and services. Everyone seems to be an experience manager these days, but we should be proud of what we do. If you’re a UI designer, say you’re a UI designer. Or an interaction designer, a customer service designer, a product manager, a retailer, a repairman, a researcher… all play a part in the overall experience. Otherwise, you’re just angestellten – a salaried worker. Don’t try and fix everything (or be the one person who has to fix everything): find a company that believes in user experience, and find your niche and craft that lets you optimise your particular interaction for your customers. Play your part. Do your job.
That’s the only way to improve the experience for everyone.
Comment [8]
unseasonally seasonal · 8.08.08
The difference a day makes.
modernism · 4.08.08
In the UK, we’ve seen three recent attempts to revive and recall modern architecture, and I’ve been surprised at the reactions.
During the London Festival of Architecture, there was a call to reconstruct Skylon, the 1951 Festival of Britain icon. As a lover of the Festival of Britain, I could be seen to be for this, but as a modernist, it strikes me as retrograde, and backwards looking, rather than a modern statement. This video report highlights the problem – architecture has grown bigger and better since the 50s – what should a truly new, bold structure be?
Developers are having another go at the forever doomed development of Battersea Power Station, this time into an ‘ecotown’, with a glazed commercial area and large tower outside the station, and a mall, residential units and hotel in the station itself. The central ruined area of the station will become a park, with no roof. The chimneys will have to be rebuilt completely, making the power station its own complete lifesize reconstruction. The new ecochimney completely dominates the power station, with the two sitting uneasily together. In my mind: knock the power station down. Seeing inside, it’s a wreck, and there’s seemingly no design that can turn it into a useful usable building in and off itself.
photo by joseph beuys hat
The third is Robin Hood Gardens, the Smithson’s postwar housing project. Whilst flawed, unloved, and unlooked-after, it’s a unique piece documenting a particular period. I’m not saying reconstruct it, or copy it and make new estates on a similar design, but it could be turned into a working estate, filled with people who like the feel. It’s an important piece as the Smithsons were part of the modern art discourse of the time, and these grand architecture projects describe a certain period and style of housing. Similar efforts in Sheffield are being converted into new living and working environments. Whilst modernism should provide the shock of the new, this can only be done by remembering the past, in all its glories and failures. Reuse, not reconstruction. Real life, not spectacle.
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