I’m not late to this party. I saw this when it first landed last month. What I have been doing is studying it… and quite intently… because from what I’m seeing ‘IF’ this is the experience they’re going to go live with and it’s not just a really polished up demo video (we’ve all done it to sell something, it’s what Computer Games have been doing with their advertising for decades; “Not actual game footage”) then this could be potentially game changing. Not just for social networks, but for the way we design our websites.
So what about it then? It’s an important piece of design because it’s gone balls out to be awesome. Which means no compromises. It means giving people the time and the bandwidth to do something amazing. Working within those variables inevitably means great (no, AMAZING) work emerges. All too often as UX practitioners we’re given the brief, but we’re not given the time or budgets to do the brief justice. A deadline dictates the output. The budget dictates the deadline. The competition / competitors dictate the deadline. What we end up with is work that quite often we are not happy with and that shows in the output. I believe that.
So just do what I’ve done for a while now and go over this video again and again and again and absorb the quality of the interaction design. The dedication to the experience design. The attitude of the team (which this oozes by the way – ATTITUDE – the attitude to want to produce the greatest interaction experience on the internet… it smells of hunger and want, doesn’t it?!) to win.
Bluma Zeigarnik was a Russian psychologist who identified what came to be called the “Zeigarnik Effect.”… basically, it means that once we start doing something, we’re going to tend to want to finish it. The Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.
Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik first studied the phenomenon after her professor, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, noticed that a waiter had better recollections of still unpaid orders. Zeigarnik went back to the lab to test out a theory about what was going on. She asked participants to do twenty or so simple little tasks in the lab, like solving puzzles and stringing beads (Zeigarnik, 1927). Except some of the time they were interrupted half way through the task. Afterwards she asked them which activities they remembered doing. People were about twice as likely to remember the tasks during which they’d been interrupted than those they completed. Also, of those interrupted nearly 90% carried on working on the puzzle anyway.
In Gestalt psychology, the Zeigarnik effect has been used to demonstrate the general presence of Gestalt phenomena: not just appearing as perceptual effects, but also present in cognition.
The Zeigarnik effect suggests that students who suspend their study, during which they do unrelated activities (such as studying unrelated subjects or playing games), will remember material better than students who complete study sessions without a break (Zeigarnik, 1927; McKinney 1935).
One of the oldest tricks in the TV business for keeping viewers tuned in to a serial week after week is the cliffhanger. You tune in next week for the resolution because the mystery is ticking away in the back of your mind.
The great English novelist Charles Dickens used exactly the same technique. Many of his works, like Oliver Twist, although later published as complete novels, were originally serialised. His cliffhangers created such anticipation in people’s minds that his American readership would wait at New York docks for the latest instalment to arrive by ship from Britain. They were that desperate to find out what happened next. What all these examples have in common is that when people manage to start something they’re more inclined to finish it. Procrastination bites worst when we’re faced with a large task that we’re trying to avoid starting. It might be because we don’t know how to start or even where to start.
What the Zeigarnik effect teaches is that one weapon for beating procrastination is starting somewhere… anywhere. Don’t start with the hardest bit, try something easy first. If you can just get under way with any part of a project, then the rest will tend to follow. Once you’ve made a start, however trivial, there’s something drawing you on to the end. It will niggle away in the back of your mind like a “Lost” cliffhanger. Although the technique is simple, we often forget it because we get so wrapped up in thinking about the most difficult parts of our projects. The sense of foreboding can be a big contributor to procrastination.
The Zeigarnik effect has an important exception. It doesn’t work so well when we’re not particularly motivated to achieve our goal or don’t expect to do well. This is true of goals in general: when they’re unattractive or impossible we don’t bother with them. But if we value the goal and think it’s possible, just taking a first step could be the difference between failure and success.”
Check out this TED video from Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world, it’s awesome:
…and this I think is one of the smartest applications of a Gamification model I’ve seen for a while… it’s a piece of Project Management software called RedCritter. Team members earn badges, points & rewards for completing tasks on time etc… just smart really:
A riot is the language of the unheard – Martin Luther King Jr.
In August 2011 riots ripped through major cities in the UK & the best viral campaign of the year was created. What do we now know about the rioters and looters? Are they a criminal, feral underclass OR victims of socio-economic blight getting their own back on the rest of society? Fluke organizers or the new experts in 140 character communication. Rather than shouting through a megaphone — as in the infamous 1985 riots on the Broadwater Estate in Tottenham — today’s rabble rousers organized online and with the aid of their iPhones and BlackBerrys. As the riots unfolded, they turned to Social Media to encourage violence & organize hordes of youth into areas of the cities. They communicated digitally and efficiently and in ways that every advertising agency in the world only dream about executing successfully.
If any proof was needed that Generation Y, Generation We, Generation Sell, the Millennials, Generation Next, the Net Generation & Echo Boomers should be running the communication strategies in advertising and digital media then last year it was given to us on a big flaming plate. The demographic cohort following Generation X proved without a shadow of a doubt that with their thumbs and fingers they are the greatest organizers and communicators on our planet at the moment.
Youth custody is failing young people who want to change their ways -Mark Johnson
Characteristics of the generation vary by region, depending on social and economic conditions. However, it is generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies. In most parts of the world its upbringing was marked by an increase in a neoliberal approach to politics and economics. The 2007–2012 global financial crisis has had a major impact on this generation because it has caused historically high levels of unemployment among young people. This problem is particularly acute in Europe, and has led to speculation about possible long term economic and social damage to this generation. They want to start reaping what has been sown over 3 decades of creating grotesquely unequal society, with the alienated young copying ethos of looting bankers in their own special brand of communication. But they also have the firepower and the passion to fight back. They just need to be tapped and employed by we the communication makers. We talk to them but we don’t talk to them in their own language.
So what happened then?
6 U.K. cities where rioting broke out
1,051 Arrests in London alone as of Aug. 12
591 Number of people charged in London
11 Age of the youngest person arrested
5 Number of fatalities
16 Civilians officially reported as injured in the riots
186 Police officers injured in the riots
6,000 Number of police on duty in the areas affected by the riots on Aug. 8
16,000 Police on duty in those areas on Aug. 9
2,169 Calls received by the London Fire Brigade on Aug. 8
20,800 Emergency calls received by the London Metropolitan Police Service on Aug. 8 (a 400 per cent increase over the average volume)
The figures are a devastating indictment of the way society has failed some of the poorest and most disadvantaged younger members of society.
The “criminality” vs “ideology” argument goes like this. These riots are fundamentally criminal acts, an opportunity for a criminal class to act with impunity. BUT, so the counter argument goes, these crimes have an undercurrent of ideology. They are the voice of the unheard. Of course they are largely criminal acts. But the bigger story is the dwindling of confidence in the idea of progress. The idea of progress is as fundamental to a society based on science and technology as the idea of liberty was to the enlightenment.
TWITTER: Everyone up and roll to Tottenham f*** the 50 [police]. I hope one dead tonight
TWITTER: Be inspired by the scenes in #tottenham, and rise up in your neighborhood. 100 people in every area = the way we can beat the feds.
Jody McIntyew was forcibly removed from his wheelchair by police during London demonstrations last year – he asked his 9,000 Twitter followers to spread unrest across the city. He has ‘followers’. The police forget about that.
People were referring to BBM as a network where they were telling people where they were going. References to the Tottenham riots on BBM began cropping up two days before violence broke out.
There’s a recruitment broadcast going around on BBM to gather hoodrats to start a riot. Just received 3 BBM Messages detailing a new organised ‘Riot’ plan complete with ‘Loot Rules’. This is the start of something new. #Anarchy
Some 90% of those brought before the courts were male and about half were aged under 21. The 18-30 market are themselves, gatekeepers and experts on leveraging communications and messaging… In an age of social media in which disgruntled youth are frequently more skilled with smart phones than are the adults who police them, authorities believe handheld technologies may have helped those trying to instigate violence to spread their message. You’ve got to admire their resourcefulness.
62% of youth brand and technology decisions are influenced by friends and family. Other decisions are no different. By 2013, Earned Media will replace paid as the #1 driver of youth consumer behavior for smartphones. Who understands earned media better than the people creating the most powerful messages? Brand choice is shaped by Paid vs Earned Media splits. Research data shows key “Beachheads” of customer support for brands in specific age groups not found in rival brands. Youth spend just short of £200 billion on mobile services annually. That’s one pound in every ten of their disposable income going to a mobile telecoms company. They get it. They understand it. They also understand how to use it to mobilize and rise up.
13% of those arrested were gang members (but in London the figure was 19%).
In terms of ethnicity, 42% of those charged were white, 46% black, 7% Asian and 5% were classified as ‘other’.
In this same demographic group only 1/3 of the youth generation trust advertising or traditional top-down messaging – preferring peers to guide their choices rather than traditional marketing messages.
For many people who were rioting, that week was a rejection of the future that was laid out for them… so I say why not employ them? With support obviously… they need proper integrating and acclimating. Unlike most people, some of those rioting and looting had no stake in conformity, those things that normally constrain people are not there. But they have the will and the communication methods that we in advertising and communication would LOVE to tap and bottle. A generation bred on a diet of excessive consumerism and bombarded by advertising has been unleashed… now we have to make them the arbiters.
They feel they can rationalize it by targeting big corporations. There is a sense that the companies have lots of money, while they have very little.
Passion is the mob of the man, that commits a riot upon his reason. – William Penn
Most advertising agencies prefer candidates with bachelor’s degrees and a liberal arts background – preferably in advertising, journalism, public relations, literature, sociology, philosophy, or psychology. However, after fifteen years working across the big players I realised that the greatest skill in an agency is passion and vision. A channeled desire, defies and beats any recognised degree. Strong leaders and mentors trump all teachers and lecturers. We can create a new system where people are empowered to learn and improve.
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
Some say we need leaders in Government and the tech community to give us a vision of where science and technology is headed, and how it makes us better as a society and a people, and to articulate why that is an inclusive vision. I say we need to ask and empower the people who fight for their voice.
These kids are called the hardest to reach, what we’ve found is that they’re really easy to reach. All you’ve got to do is have a really honest approach, and for them to see transparently that there’s an opportunity to be part of something. mark johnson
Agencies have always done ‘campaigns’. It’s what we do… be that a massive one that lasts for years or a couple of tiny ones to support some above the line marketing hullabaloo. But paradigms change when we look at things from a different perspective. We often sincerely believe something from one perspective, but when we view it from another angle, our beliefs can change. It changes how we think, and how we react to something. What some people call “magic” is based on this same principle. Once you understand an illusionist’s “trick”, your paradigm shifts, and you will likely never see that trick the same way again.
So with that idea of ‘thought shift’ in mind what if a digital agency did things differently too. I had a fascinating debate with a planner at an agency I was working at who was suggesting the agency might sell 100 little experiences to a client instead of 1 big one. A brilliant idea. It fitted neatly into my distributed experience idea I was trying to sell the same client too… The client agrees to pay a wedge of money and the agency agrees to concept, design, develop, and launch 100 individual digital experiences (sites, apps, whatever) in 52 weeks rather than one huge one.
It makes sense when you consider that an agency for ‘now’ needs to increase their odds of creating a big hit when it’s impossible to predict what’s going to catch on?
Most digital agencies rely on selling the execution of a big beautiful campaign or website. The more complex the site is, the more expensive it is, and the better it is for the agency’s business. But, the market for that business is disappearing.
When an agency pitches to clients, they don’t just come up with one big idea, they usually come up with lots of ideas and then choose the best ones to sell-in hoping that one will make the cut. The ideas that got the chop originally might have the winning formula in there, so why not just do those as well?
No one can predict which idea is going to become and internet sensation. And not every potential hit will get approved by the client’s legal or PR department. These concerns don’t matter because you’re going to launch every good idea you come up with. Work for the client initially launches without the client’s name attached. If it takes off and becomes a hit, they get to claim it. If they don’t want it, the agency can either take it for themselves or kill it.
Everything is iterative – A tiny fraction of what you launch will be worth additional time and investment. Create strict qualifications for what makes the cut. Work on all of these select projects using an agile process, making small changes as you go. There’s no finish line, there’s just one improvement after another.
Wendell Phillips said “revolutions never go backwards” so what a year of permanent change through great work in the ‘Big D’ 2011 was. From social to relaunches and updates of services like Twitter and that Face-thing. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years this year and it’s my own personal view that 2011 has genuinely been the best year of change since the inception of the commercial internet. I think it’s because everything has matured so much – especially in the UK – to the point where things are starting to gel… which I think is reflected in my digital wrap-up below. I’m a UX guy in theory, but actually I just love good solid tech and creative work above all the UX hyperbole. If it’s urban, mobile, unique, easy to use and instant-utility then THAT is awesome UX as far as I’m concerned. 2012 is going to be the year I upset a lot of my peers in the UX community by championing the end of all this chat that goes on about standards and patterns and familiar paradigms and so on and so on and so on… 2012 is the start of the age when we continue to marry great tech’ with amazing ideas and give the end consumer awesome experiences that change their lives in little ways.
I’ve hand-picked a couple of my highlights and it’s no surprise that they all span so many different pillars of the ‘Big D’ and also appear on pretty much every other list you’ll see summarizing 2011. So here we go in no particular order:
Tesco Homeplus – The QR Store in Korea
The objective was to make Tesco the No 1 seller in Korea… but the competition have way more stores… so what do you do? Take the ‘store’ to the people and let them shop with their phones. People should find Tesco Homeplus wherever they are without having to go to the brick and mortar store. Moreover they could make good use of the wasted times and enjoy their free time.
RESULTS: 76% of online members & +130% of online sales. Homeplus became N°1 in online grocery shopping and is a very close 2nd offline. Novelty? Or game-changing? I think a little of both… it certainly helped QR codes come of age a bit too…
New York – The World Park
The concept was simple… Create a museum in the park to create an entirely different experience using QR codes that gave access to other content integrated into the context (including History, pop culture, music & science). They also included elements of gamification.
Again – Another quality use of mobile (I see a pattern emerging) and QR codes… Marketers are sometimes nervous about or afraid of technology but nowadays, technology enables the possibility of amazing experiences. Note that you should be careful about sharing specific content with everyone.
IKEA 365
Create one simple creative campaign everyday including a new product to create a story and engage consumers. I always loved the concept brought to me by a colleague that digital is about a myriad of little ideas not ‘the big idea’ now and this campaign pretty much embodies that to the letter. IKEA proving they’re still one of the most innovative brands on the planet.
Volkwagen – Planeta Terra
Create awareness of VW’s sponsorship of the Planta music festival in Brasil… to an audience who are generally quite apathetic about VW. This was one of several awesome campaigns run using Twitter and Google Maps as the gaming platform. Pretty simple really… Tickets to the music festival were strategically placed around locations high-lighted using Google Maps… the first person to find the tickets wins them… But here’s the kicker… ‘Tweets’ made the map zoom… so the more the protagonists tweeted the closer the map zoomed to the location of the tickets. A beautiful self-fulfiling prophecy of a game.
Microsoft Bing
We’ve already seen a campaign using Google Maps and that was a lot of Microsofts challenge this year… how do you raise awareness of its own service ‘Bing’. In some ways a far more superior service in the same way that Vimeo is to YouTube, but displacing existing behavior is next to impossible (don’t get me started on Google+). So what they did was pretty clever… They placed each of the 320 pages of Jay Z’s book, Decode, in 600 unique traditional, nontraditional and digital advertising placements in 15 cities around the world.
The best of the ‘hide and seek’ games from the year for sure… results speak for themselves: 11 min per visit on the specific website. +11,7% of visits to bing. ~$1,1 B worth of media impressions.
Greys Anatomy Sync app for iPad
The best of the iPad offerings this year (for concept rather than longevity). The Grey’s Anatomy Sync app for iPad lets you experience Grey’s Anatomy in an entirely new way! You’ll get to interact with other fans and get exclusive episode-related content delivered to your iPad in real time while you watch Grey’s Anatomy live on your TV.
So what? It’s just back-channel stuff which we’ve all seen, right? But think about it a bit more. It actually used the coding baked into the show to talk to the app. I love that. Old media being used to control new platform. Awesomely powerful idea.
Empire Avenue
My big big digital addiction of 2011 is without a doubt the genius ‘Empire Avenue‘. I’ve spent more time working on my social share price this year than my actual shares! Fact. It’s a simple concept – Register. Hook-up all your various social media profiles, channels and wasted time interfaces and Empire Avenue gives you a shareprice. You buy other peoples shares and they buy yours. You make money, you lose money and you can’t help but go to that dreaded iPhone App every morning to see how well you’re doing. This is gamification of the highest order and I’m going to need some kind of therapy next year if I’m going to ditch the habit.
Summary
There were so many more too, but I just haven’t got time to highlight them all in any great detail… I will just highlight ‘World of Fourcraft‘ as the best gamification idea of the year… pure genius… and leave you with this round-up:
In 2011:
Multichannel became Multichannels
Point of Sale became Points of Sale (sell everywhere using mobile)
Using ‘Free Time’ became the big success currency
Gamification stopped being a fad and a buzz word and started being a genuine thing
Thinking outside of the box became acceptable and not just rubbish ATL buzz generation
Customer Experience became the new User Experience
The simple ideas still run the roost!
My predictions for 2012:
The mobile wallet will become a reality and we’ll all start to embrace the ‘idea’ of using our phones to pay for things
Facebook will announce that it’s Facebook Credits idea will become an offline currency too and try to take on PayPal using mobile as the payment device for the Facebook Credits
Apps will start to diminish in favour of fluid HTML 5 pages that can be used on all devices and give the same experience as an App
User Experience will be even more integral to the industry than before
I’ve mentioned Viral Loops before in a couple of posts. Since I started talking about it a lot of people have been asking me to ‘do it for them’ like it’s some sort of silver bullet you can just load into any digital gun & fire at a target which makes me chuckle every time. In reality my theory is that sites and content that go viral are more a product of the ‘when’ and ‘where’ rather than the ‘what’. It’s about being in the right place at the right time – call it ‘fluke’ if you want. Most videos that go viral on YouTube were never designed to do so & the ones that were engineered by an agency and go ‘viral’ have spent money with a company like Rubber Republic to get people to view them and I don’t classify those as viral, I classify that as paid-for-media (old school advertising to you & me!). Most websites that go viral have a built in loop for sure, but there is also a lot of luck & right-time-right-place about them.
There are obviously some conditions you can promote within your agency or organisation or start-up that MIGHT have the desired effect… but don’t put all your eggs in these baskets because chances are if the time that you launch isn’t ripe for you product or content it won’t make any difference how potent your viral idea is or how rigorous your viral loop mechanics are:
Viral content has to be web based – It just belongs in the frictionless world of the internet. Too many people are asking me how they can create an offline viral idea… sure you can seed stuff offline to raise awareness (more paid-for-media / advertising!) but don’t bother trying to create an offline viral loop. It’s just silly. Use the internet – it’s what it’s there for!
It’s GOT to be FREE – Users need to consume your product or content at no charge; after aggregating a mass audience you may be able to overlay various revenue generators… but nothing that you had to initially pay for ever went viral. Fact.
Think about organizational technology – The kind of sites that don’t create content, their users do. They simply organise it, but facilitating can lead to a mass audience – just ask Google!
It’s almost always about the network effect – The more people who join, the more people there are to have an incentive to join… Every time I talk to clients or colleagues about viral loops I keep on hammering home the point that it’s NOT about the person you recruit to your website, it’s about the people that person knows.
Your site HAS to have built in virility – Users will spread a product purely out of their own self-interest and, in the process, offer a powerful word-of-mouth endorsement to each subsequent users… but without the thought about how that invisible virility works right up front you’ll probably lose the opportunity. Apple have recently done it to perfection with PING. I happen to think it’s growing into something of an interesting product is that PING thing (and with the looming downfall of Spotify it’s set to take the main social music crown) because for months now I’ve been sending out Tweets from Itunes and I didn’t even realise I was doing it… how crafty is that… It’s damn annoying but quite quite brilliant. I was telling my 600 odd followers on Twitter what I was buying on iTunes and I had no idea.
Remember that a point of non-displacement (or a tipping point to quote Gladwell) is that moment when it’s nearly impossible for a competitor to take a company down. Here’s the harsh facts of life amigos… if you’ve got this big bold viral idea (be it content or a new service) and someone is already out there and it’s got a million subscribers or it’s had a bajillion hits… then don’t bother wasting your time doing it yourself. I’m serious too! The point of non-displacement is a serious fact and reality. You cannot displace something that’s already ubiquitous in peoples lives even with an idea that is 100 times better.
There’s not much more to say really except give up on the idea of ‘planning a big viral event’. It just doesn’t work like that. You can’t BUY virility (well you can, but it’s not viral at all, it’s advertising – a rose by any other name blah blah) and you can’t spoof it. It won’t JUST HAPPEN and if it does it’ll probably happen by accident. So stop trying, sit back, do creative things & play by the rules… you never know, it might happen by accident and all that glory will be yours!
The following stats come from a survey conducted by Pew Research at the end of 2010. It’s based on data collected from a survey in the U.S, however it’s fair to assume that relatively speaking the stats reflect behavioral shifts across most Western markets.
As of May 2010, 59% of all adults go online wirelessly. The definition of a wireless internet user includes the following activities:
Going online with a laptop using a wi-fi connection or mobile broadband card. Roughly half of all adults (47%) go online in this way, up from the 39% who did so at a similar point in 2009.
Use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone. Two in five adults (40%) do at least one of these using a mobile device, an increase from the 32% of adults who did so in 2009.
Taken together, 59% of adults now go online wirelessly using either a laptop or cell phone, an increase over the 51% of users who did so at a similar point in 2009.
The use of non-voice data applications on mobile phones has grown dramatically over the last few years. Compared with a similar point in 2009, mobile phone owners are now more likely to use their mobile phones to:
Take pictures—76% now do this, up from 66% in April 2009
Send or receive text messages—72% vs. 65%
Access the internet—38% vs. 25%
Play games—34% vs. 27%
Send or receive email—34% vs. 25%
Record a video—34% vs. 19%
Play music—33% vs. 21%
Send or receive instant messages—30% vs. 20%
Young adults (those ages 18-29) are also avid users of mobile data applications, but older adults are gaining fast. Compared with 2009, mobile phone owners ages 30-49 are significantly more likely to use their mobile device to send text messages, access the internet, take pictures, record videos, use email or instant messaging, and play music.
Let me just add my own input into this data – It’s rising – Year on year mobile usage is becoming more ubiquitous. Largely due to advances in connectivity and more urban access to wifi and 3G signal. But also because handsets themselves are becoming more desirable. This is as much about product development than it is about service providing. iPhone is now an object of desire… it’s less of a phone and more of a total digital solution. Same with the new tablet devices… my digital behavior has totally changed since I got my iPad. It’s just ‘easier’ to access ‘stuff’. The next big phase in mobile will be undoubtedly ‘affordability’. Devices will come down in price significantly once the early adopters have been exhausted and the less cash-flush user will be able to join the revolution without selling a kidney.
Taken from an article published in Wired Magazine in October 2009. I didn’t write this article, nor do I claim to have done. What I do want to make clear is how much the story means to me as a practitioner of User Experience and Social Media (blah – the term actually curls my toes). It’s a hugely significant case-study. Enjoy reading it:
Viral strategies aren’t strictly for businesses. They are also seeping into other arenas – politics, for example. And no one was more successful in imprinting a viral loop into a campaign than Barack Obama. “One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organiser is that real change comes from the bottom up,” he said in a statement. “And there’s no more powerful tool for grass-roots organising than the internet.” Because an organisation can reach only so many people, it must turn to its loyal followers to widen that pool. As with all things viral, connecting to others outside the initial cluster of supporters depends on the quality of referrals. Friends, family and colleagues are far more credible than any ad that a marketing exec could dream up.
A pivotal moment came when the campaign hired Chris Hughes, the 24-year-old co-founder of Facebook. With the title of “Online Organising Guru”, Hughes retrofitted grassroots campaigning to web 2.0 by weaving together social networks and the mobile internet into a central platform of Obama’s campaign. The linchpin was my.BarackObama.com (“MyBo” for short), which functioned as a lively online community and social network, registering 1.5 million volunteers. Users created profiles with friend lists and blogs, joined one of the 27,000 groups that formed, raised money, and organised meetings through a Facebook-like interface. The site had a search function, enabling likeminded people to find each other; a page offering tools for creating a personal fundraising page (“You set your own goal, you do the outreach, and you get the credit for the results”); a blog and a forum. Each drove even more traffic to the site.
Leading up to the election MyBo members organised more than 200,000 campaign events, which didn’t just energise Obama’s support base but generated loads of cash. Over the span of two years, the campaign brought in $750 million from three million donors, with nine out of ten donations less than $100 (and half of $25 or less). It achieved this by democratising its fundraising. Instead of turning to wealthy Americans, who could be seen as leveraging their privilege into power, Obama’s campaign tapped the little guy, spreading donations across millions of Americans – giving each donor a stake in his success. In February 2008, his campaign raised $55 million online without its candidate attending a single fundraiser. What’s more, while the law allowed large donors to contribute $2,300 for the 2008 primaries and the same for the general election, smaller donors were tapped repeatedly, forging a persistent connection with the candidate.
The campaign’s viral strategies included a short, clear positioning statement as a call to arms. Unlike Hillary Clinton touting her “experience” or John McCain bragging that “I have the record and the scars to prove it”, Obama’s two core messages were “Change” and “Yes, we can”. Obama’s campaign galvanised its supporters while they, in turn, extended his message virally. It also relied on multiplier effects. During the campaign, will.i.am, frontman of the Black Eyed Peas, created a musical mashup based on Obama’s phrase “Yes, we can” that included celebrities such as Scarlet Johansson. The campaign quickly embedded a link to the YouTube clip on its website. “After nearly a year on the campaign trail, I’ve seen a lot of things that have touched me deeply, but I had to share this with you,” Michelle Obama wrote in an email to supporters. The video was viewed 20 million times. Another music video, I Got a Crush… on Obama, starring the bikiniclad “Obamagirl”, was downloaded more than 13 million times. Fomenting the creativity of its supporters helped the Obama campaign to extend its message.
I remember being in New York a few weeks before the Election. There was electric in the air. A real sense that Obama was about to make history. Not just because he was a black man about to take the White House and become the most powerful leader in the modern world, but because a new way of getting him there had been born. It was literally a movement. In Union Square there were hordes or young people selling t-shirts, badges and other merchandise… but more importantly you could tell on the faces of every single one that their antics on Facebook, Twitter and other Social Channels they were making change happen.
It’s getting difficult to judge campaigns & digital work based solely on usability these days because there really is a lot of blur around the topic of ‘best practice’… It’s really all about accessibility (how easy it is to take part in the proposed experience rather than the traditional accessibility of inclusiveness for people with disabilities) & ease of use of the media itself. So this years list of experiences I’ve found is really more of a hot-pot of great ideas executed well. When design meets a good idea which meets business requirements which utilises social media and gives users a jolly good time… then the experience box has a big tick in it & I consider that to be job done (Sorry Jakob Nielsen, the concept of ‘rules’ for usability no longer apply – it’s user centered experiences that rule the digital waves now).
In no particular order these are the experiences that engaged me and worked well this year:
It’s all here isn’t it? A really clever idea blended with some good web-experiences that lead people to great offline experience. It’s true through-the-line work. For my money not very many brands have ever got this right & I suspect Volkswagen got this right totally by accident. Hats off to ‘Church of London‘ for creating some brilliant content. Anything draped in movies is instantly going to gather an audience, however, it’s difficult to get it right when people can get so passionate about a topic… so to pull this all together as a set of ideas is just genius. Have a look at the Ghostbusters video & tell me the idea here isn’t brilliant… I dare you!
For my money… the best experience I found this year. OH… and one final thing… and this is the brilliant bit… how many of you forgot that you were part of something essentially advertising cars? That’s the genius of new marketing. Subconscious brand awareness.
2 – Quora
Elegant interactions. It looks simple; it prompts instant and easy engagement; and it takes the hide-and-seek elements of a Q&A site away, leaving the user with a trove of relevant information at his or her fingertips. Quora is basically the future of FAQs for businesses. Rich, intuitive and fun.
Again – For me this has just nailed the challenge of blending something people are passionate about with that right amount of brand-awareness. It’s Levis – ACE – so they can get away with alot more than most brands… but what I actually love about Levis is that they know how to tap into peoples passion about a topic & then own it. The Workshops project running in New York is a pretty basic experience truth be told… sign up to attend a bunch of workshops about photography from names in photography that have respect… nothing new, right?
Check out the wealth of good images being stacked against the Levis Workshop search term too… that right there is a brand starting to look comfortable with it’s consumers. You’re part of the brand, not just on the end of food-chain. Have a look around Flickr at ‘Levis Workshop‘ photos too… it’s just brilliant… users are actually spreading the message about an experience & indirectly advertising Levis. Most of you will be wondering what this has to do with UX? Well it’s simple… think about it… this is users (consumers) EXPERIENCING Levis… it’s pure User Experience.
4 – Google
Silently up’ing the game all year round. Unless you’ve got beady interface eyes like me you probably didn’t even realize it. If you could go back a year Google was a totally different place from an experience point of view. It just ‘worked’ and that was enough. Now they’ve bolted in the bells and whistles that not everyone needs, but some will relish. For instance – How about that the left nav… notice when it appeared? Probably not… but it’s already a ubiquitous part of my Google behavior. Live Preview? Spot that one? Not so useful to a lot of people (probably 95% of people to be honest) but to a small minority this has just become the difference between clicking on a link & then hitting back in the browser because of the site not being the one they actually wanted. It’s like looking through the letterbox before going into a house. Seedy but good.
5 – The best job in the world
SapientNitro delivered a multi-platform campaign promoting its “The Best Job in the World” contest. Which although pretty traditional as an approach (it’s been done before) was a stroke of genius in terms of promoting something usual in an unusual way… its the Queensland Tourist Board remember… no? You didn’t know that? Well then that’s why as an experience it’s been a massive success. You saw Queensland and you fell in love with it… experienced it first hand, but didn’t have a sale-pitch to get you there.
Great campaign. A lot of social media buzz… tapped into peoples love and desire for reality TV and talking about reality TV online. Generally just a great use of media to promote something that’s actually pretty difficult to sell in times of financial hard-ship (“Don’t travel TOO Queensland, let someone else win the chance to go & then feedback on their experience” – It’s still desirable though, and one day you’ll remember that & go).
Think of HipMonk as a test bed for possibility. It’s not brilliant, but like some of my examples in this list it’s taking UX and being experimental with it. Which I admire. HipMonk is basically a new way of searching for flights. Simple as. Results are displayed in a more digestible way than normal flight-checkers (think of it more as a Microsoft Gant-Chart for air-travel!) and users are able to make comparisons in a more information driven way.
7 – iPAD
Let us just reflect on this little product of 2010. It’s a solution in search of a problem… we were fine without it and nobody asked for it. I’ve forced myself to use mine a bit since I spent the £450 on it… but it’s still brilliant… it’s that old cliché “it changed the game”… and it has. New paradigms for experiencing content. So fair play to Apple for once again bringing us an experience that’s really too good to be true.
Nothing more to say on the iPAD – If you’ve got one you’ll either agree with me or disagree… it’s a game changer & an opinion splitter.
8 – Twitter
As an experience it really started to infect my life this year. It’s probably my social medium of choice now. I’m bored of Facebook… it’s too explicit… Twitter has just opened up my learning & consumption experience to a whole new level. Back on piste for a minute – The new interface they unveiled this year was a slice of usability brilliance too. Sleek, original (for a website), intuitive and most of all still ‘to the point’. What I’ve always admired about Twitter is that they don’t pretend to be a million things for a million people. They’re just a single thing doing it brilliant. Delivering 140 character messages to followers. So I admire them for not giving in the temptation (Facebook!) to try & be lots of other things.
It’s definitely DIGG that DIGG should have been.
9 – Virgin – The Project for iPAD
I’m not going to lie to you. I absolutely hammered this with criticism when I first loaded it onto my iPad. The biggest flaw is the file size. It is MASSIVE in terms of iPad usage (lets not forget iPad is still just a really big mobile phone with no talking bit) with it’s 450mb downloads… even on my work super-charged wifi network it took an age to download and then load. #fail. But then I started to play with it. Discover things. Use my fingers to explore & really get the experience and it is BRILLIANT. It’s taken all the best paradigms of the last 10 years and remoulded them into something tangible. We gushed over the adverts (panasonic digital lenticular?! GENIUS) and were gobsmacked about the quality of the videos. The Tokyo guide is superb. Fresh blend of opinion and video. Loved it.
What ‘Project’ is to be fair isn’t perfect… far from it… but it does start pushing the world forward in terms of media experiences. It might just be the first glimpse of something halfway between ATL and BTL. Which in itself is where the game changed. Again.
10 – Amazon Kindle
To be specific, for me, the iPAD Kindle app (why do I need a Kindle device, I’ve got my mid-size web touchscreen jobby now!) which has not only re-ignited my passion for reading in a way I never thought possible, but it’s actually teaching this old dog new tricks. I’m bowled over by it. As an experience it’s so pure but it’s so powerful. I can read a book, click on a word if I don’t know what it means and learn the dictionary definition (think about that a moment), I can highlight bits with my finger and save them for later. I can browse books and buy them cheaper than ever before, download them in seconds & not clutter my shelves at home. I’m actually contemplating taking a lot of books to Oxfam Books and buying them back in digital format. So as an experience, and a very intuitive one, it’s made a big impact on my 2010. Thank you Amazon – Proof that content is king – with a little help from Steve Jobs!
Quick one this. You’ve probably not heard anything about the Banner Concerts idea. Basically Axion streamed live-gigs in the frame of traditional banners… nuff said… not ground-breaking… but a new experience and one to watch out for in 2011. Live experiences in traditional spaces.
Simple. Brilliant. Inventive. Great experience.
12 – Flipboard for iPAD
A good idea. Well executed. Not convinced it’s going to change my behavior, but I applaud anybody willing to try something revolutionary & Flipboard to me was ‘THE’ iPAD app of the year in terms of showing people what is now possible.
13 – QWIKI
So this list is also about the possibilities we were introduced too in 2010 and nothing really solidifies the new possibilities of user-experience much better than QWIKI which arrived on the scene in 2010 (and will probably leave the scene at the same time next year to make way for something bigger, more refined & more… well… Google!). It’s essentially information redefined. It’s not perfect. I wouldn’t use it everyday (which to me is the ultimate definition of user experience) and I can’t see how it improves me life. But I like what it represents from a UX perspective, which is new ways to digest content. New ways for my son (when he’s old enough) to learn ‘stuff’. It’s stuff we never had growing up, so it can only be a good thing. The world is absolutely getting smaller everyday.
Conclusion
A lot of things taught this old dog new tricks this year. Which is why I got excited about experiences again in 2010. User experience is obviously more about enjoyment and entertainment than the old-skool usability stuff… get a person involved in something & they’ll remember it, amplify it, tell their mates & engage with a brand… make it easy & they’ll keep coming back… make it part of their lives & they won’t have any choice but to keep coming back. This sort of thing started coming of age in 2010. Looking forward to seeing the next evolution of digital urban experiences.
There’s a guy in a bedroom in London tweeting to his followers about a crap experience with a new digital service. They’re listening too. Lapping it up because they think it’s giving them some inside track. Some of them will even pass the disgust on to their followers. They might just re-tweet creating a virtual cycle of pass-it-on with limitless viral potential. Some might even just plagiarize the advice and pretend it happened to them instead – an interesting case of wanting to be the top informant. It’s binary Chinese whispers, but in this case the message doesn’t change just the magnitude of it. Meanwhile the digital service is shitting bricks of binary trying to put the untameable fire out – “it’s out of control, what can we do?” – the answer is of course nothing at all. If you tackle the guy at the source you risk in framing his rage by second guessing the motive and getting it wrong again. Besides, he’s getting his moment in the limelight as the hero who exposed the scandal (him & the 32 other people who nicked the warning and claimed the victory) so why would he be interested in a bung to shut him up. We have an unwritten rule in our land of digital architects & experience manufacturing, you can only do one thing – “don’t feed the troll”. Act ignorant, pretend it’s not there & eventually it should go away.
It’s not a new phenomenon, I’ve been parroting on to colleagues & peers about this for almost 10 years under various labels. In fact the whole concept is rather old hat – you have a crap experience & human nature tells us to warn our friends to stop the same thing happening to them.
On the flip side if you have a great time you’ll be an advocate & pass the good times on. So we have to embrace the new world order as much as fear it because the positive effect can be too huge to risk missing out on.
We’ve come to label the uncontrollable desire to tell everyone everything “The Prosumer Effect“.
Prosumer is a portmanteau formed by combing either the word professional or producer with the word consumer. The term has taken on multiple conflicting meanings: the business sector sees the prosumer (professional–consumer) as a market segment, whereas economists see the prosumer (producer–consumer) as having greater independence from the mainstream economy.
Influencing a company with the power of communication
My view of the Prosumer is as one who can influence what a company does be it product development or marketing in ways which directly benefit them. For example, say you’re an advertising agency and a group of people who were subjected to a particular campaign took issue with it & used social communication tools to voice their concern. These customers are important enough that losing them would seriously hurt your bottom line. Based on their request you direct a portion of your next campaign budget to solve their specific issue. While the customers didn’t directly make the changes they did influence the company with their feedback. This arrangement has positive effects for both parties:
For the customer:
Immediate access to a more tailored counter-campaign
The new campaign meets their specific requirements.
For the company:
Strengthened relationship with the customer.
Demonstrates a willingness to keep their customers satisfied.
The company now has a new feature/product/service they can market to other customers.
It’s a win-win scenario.
Another definition of Prosumer is “Progressive Consumer” which emerged during the recession in 2008 / 2009 and identifies a modern consumer who has changed their approach to the traditional methods and habits of purchasing products. A Prosumer is researching a products value, performance, and price through social networks (twitter, tumblr, facebook) and consumer product reviews (such as Amazon.co.uk) and prices comparison shopping engines such as Kelkoo before making a final decision or purchase. Within these web sites a Prosumer researches all aspects of a products performance, price and social acceptance in relative comparison to similar products within the same category.
It’s no coincidence that Aleksandr Orlov of Compare the Meerkat was an advertising hit in 2009, he was the poster boy (well, animal) for the prosumer crowd, all scrabbling over the best deals to help dented pockets.
The Prosumer is searching for the highest quality product that best meets their personal needs for the maximum amount of money they are willing to spend. Based on that search criteria, the Prosumer is also willing to venture into new shopping distribution channels in order to purchase that product.
I simply adore this video entitled Prometeus: the future of media. It really crystallizes some of the new order in stunning over-exaggerated style:
“Man is God. He is everywhere, he is anybody, he knows everything.”
“A new figure emerges: the prosumer, a producer and a consumer of information. Anyone can be a prosumer.”
“Experience is the new reality.”
It’s melodrama of course, but those 3 statements from the video alone carry weight & reality. We are everywhere now, we do communicate globally in real time & we are hyper-connected. I’m writing this post in bed using a app on my iPad. I might go & shop & review when I’m done. If something irritates me I can open Tweetdeck and let my 200ish followers know it sucked. Hell, if it REALLY sucked I might send the same status update to my Facebook profile & let my 170 ‘real friends’ know so they can tell their friends & so on. We call it a ‘status bomb’ in this game. I’m a prosumer. I’m also an influencer. I carry weight in my own vapor sphere & that means I can’t be ignored. Scary, huh?
