Archives / March 2006

A couple of good reminders to share with you today... I only wish they had greater awareness of "good experience" and its role, even greater than design, in business and technology today.

(This - if you'll permit me a side-rant - is precisely why I started the Gel conference - to promote greater awareness of who and what is really driving success today - good experience, and the people who focus on it in their work. if you haven't signed up yet, this is your near-last opportunity for this year: just three days left at regular price: http://gelconference.com/c/gel06.php )

First - writing at Design Observer, Adrian Shaughnessy calls it "odd" that Google "should have a folksy logo that looks more like a school project than the mark of a global corporation."

From Google and the Tyranny of Good Design:

...[T]here's something magnificent about Google's lack of design. There's something defiant, almost obtuse about its reluctance to indulge in the sort of oleaginous branding and design that is now the corporate norm. We've reached a point, in the homogenized West, where good graphic design is everywhere. The battle has been won: every business knows it needs good design - you don't have to tell them anymore. It's enshrined in the business schools, established in the corporate HQs. Even small businesses understand that good design is good for business. It's a universal truth, like "customer service" and "value for money," and all the other boardroom nostrums that drive modern commerce.

But the consequence of all this feel-good business is that design has become, more often than not, a badge of mediocrity.

Very well put. But missing in this piece is what is most important in business these days: creating a good experience. Logo design is really important to graphic designers; what's most important to users is the user experience. So it's no surprise that Google's user experience would be a better predictor of their success than whether the logo was "folksy" or not. Good experience drives business success.

(What comprises good experience? See the three strands of good experience.)

And then a nicely written reminder in The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites, which expresses surprise that some websites perform well despite their lack of beautiful visual design:

The general lesson here is simplicity. A beautiful website may draw a user in initially, but a simple website will keep your users coming back. If one of your users gets lost trying to navigate your website, check out of your web store, or finding simple contact information, then you unnecessarily are increasing the chances that this user will simply leave.

I have to say, though, I'm surprised that anyone in 2006 could still call this a "surprising" truth... :)

If you have ridden the New York City subway recently, you might have noticed little speech bubbles stuck on to the ads that line the walls and halls of the subway. The bubbles invite passerby to write their own text into the bubbles, thereby adding a caption and commenting on the ad, the city, or anything else on their mind. (One ad for fashion brand DKNY, for example, has a young model wondering, through a speech bubble, "What am I gonna do when I'm 23?")

These stickers are all the work of Ji Lee, who started the Bubble Project as a way of allowing New Yorkers to talk back to the advertisements that often dominate their urban experience.

Ji Lee will be speaking at my Gel 2006 conference in a few weeks, so I had a phone call with him to talk about why he started The Bubble Project.

(The text below came from my notes I scribbled during our phone call, so any rough edges are mine.)

Ji Lee: The Bubble Project grew out of my experience working at an ad agency. I had learned a lot about how clients think, and how mass communication works, and I was frustrated with the often politically correct and conservative aspects of these companies.

Everything was a problem-solution setup. The brief comes from a big company like General Mills, or one of the big airlines - millions of dollars is budgeted to produce these ads. Every time I came up with an interesting idea, a great idea, I saw the potential of how to make communication interesting and engaging to the public - but these ideas always had to go through many layers of client approval.

I remember this one assignment for Cheerios, which was about communicating all the different flavors. Consumers are used to the yellow box, but there are several other flavors. So my partner and I came up with this line - "only the holes taste the same." The client loved it, everybody in the meeting was laughing - and then all of a sudden, this discussion started about the difference between "flavor" and "taste." So all the excitement shared in the beginning disappeared, and we were locked into this absurd discussion, forgetting the big picture. This experience was really common, having meeting after meeting discussing details, instead of seeing if the idea worked.

This is why a lot of ads look the same today. If you turn down the TV volume and remove the logo, the ads could work for practically any product or brand. There's a sense of fear about experimenting in anything, but also a sense that traditional ads are no longer working, because consumers have choices to skip the ads - TiVo, the Internet, video games.

On one hand, the companies are afraid of trying something new; on the other hand, they don't know what to do, they're lost. But when people in advertising see the Bubble Project, they're excited - it's a simple, inexpensive way to engage people.

I'm not against advertising - it's like money, it's part of our capitalist system. Advertising will be with us for a long time, like it or not. I'd like to see it be more entertaining, more challenging. And the Bubble Project is good for advertisers - most ads are boring, but with the bubbles on top, people look at the ads and interact with them. I'm trying to humanize advertising. It's not intended to be damaging. It's a form of graffiti, but it's disposable and inexpensive. And it's a lot of fun for everyone.

Mark Hurst: And you're expanding?

Ji Lee: Yes - there's also a bubble project in Italy now, Progetto Bolla.

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Note 27 Mar 06: Edited the sentence "So my partner and I came up with this line - 'only the holes taste the same.'" because the original version had the wrong quote. Thanks to Ji for clearing that up. -mh

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Remember - you can see Ji Lee speak at Gel 2006, May 4-5 in New York City.

Regular ticket prices end in about a week, so register soon!

I'll never forget something I saw last week at the ETech (Emerging Technology) conference. This guy, a very smart technologist, is excitedly demo'ing his new software, which allows users to fly through hundreds of bitstreams - pictures, RSS feeds, e-mails, calendar stuff, and on and on - in the slickest way possible. He's pitching it as though it's supposed to make overloaded users more productive, which it won't, but at least he's identified the problem correctly.

And he stands there showing me this demo, very nice guy, pecking out each - letter - on - the - keyboard - with - one - single - finger. And I thought, you just spent a year of your life creating a tool to fly around information more quickly - and yet you could double your productivity by just learning how to type. (Or triple it, if it's Dvorak.)

Learn to type! I wanted to tell him. Pursue the technology that truly helps you, even if it seems basic and not new or slick. But of course I didn't say it. I couldn't, because that would break the techie rule of ACKNOWLEDGE THE COOL.

I re-learned something about the technology industry last week at ETech, where I presented bit literacy and Gootodo:

The tech industry is full of people who really, really like technology.

It should be so obvious, by definition, right? Birds of a feather: Aren't Star Trek conventions full of people who really love Star Trek? What's the big deal?

What struck me in San Diego was that technology doesn't need to actually help users, or improve their lives in some way, in order to look really, really cool. Something that looks cool and exciting to me (as MIT-trained geek) can also be largely irrelevant to me (as user advocate).

The love of technology isn't, by itself, for or against helping people - it's a different interest altogether. Now for the most part I do think that technologists tend to have an interest in helping people - but technology itself doesn't have a bias... and what you choose to love defines your outlook.

It's important to draw that distinction, I think. What some techies call great, cool, exciting, slick, compatible, open - all those have nothing to do with whether the technology is useful, productive, simple, valuable, meaningful, indispensable.

Sometimes - here's the real heresy - sometimes the best option for users might be less technology. It's less cool, and makes for decidedly less exciting press, but it could very well be the more useful option.

I propose that the technology industry begin to consider what is important for users, not only what's cool; what's going to improve people's lives, not only what's "hot"; what's going to make our jobs meaningful, not what we can cash out.

What I'm saying is, tech needs a new outlook.

(We need a new Outlook, too, but that's a whole other column.)

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If you want to see what I presented at ETech, read this...

...or ETech attendee Phil Windley's notes from my session:

...or my rough notes after returning from ETech.

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Update: Jason Fried from 37signals was nice to link to this column... it reminded me that my rant on "less" is hardly unique; Jason wrote Less as a competitive advantage last fall. Keep up the good work, 37sigs!