Microsoft launched recently an ad for Windows Live Photo Gallery with Yosemite Bear. His recording of a double rainbow became quite popular reaching over 12mln views since January. The recording itself bears tremendous amount of emotions, which is quite nicely put in one of the video’s comment:
His inner peace is what every being on earth strives for. Joy obtained simply by viewing a natural phenomenon that isn’t man-made. Learn to appreciate the little things in life and see with unabashed bliss… we should all be so lucky to be so happy… it’d be a better world.
Logged in with Facebook Connect and… not much, actually haven’t seen the point till saw it 2nd time and still it was plain silly. And then, suddenly and obviously at the same time: “replay the experience“! I loved it. Not the experience because that was a cheap joke, overused tactics to get something famous(how long it’s been? 30 years!)and then rape it. I do now want to write about whores of adland nor about piggy-backing strategies in backwards creative industry. I want to just say that if one could replay an experience I would be selling my balls for it. Although the whole thing, being like a big replay, the end of it got me thinking of the word “experience”. I remember few years ago when I was using it to address issues with the lack of user/customer in communication. Just couple of people would listen and not many would care since that was the client’s wish to make it selfish and “on brand”.
This Adidas Star Wars campaign reminds me of those days when web was used as a huge speaker that brands would use to announce… well actually I mean mostly wank in public. It was great status quo for those with large budgets and speakers. They were deciding what happens on a web and how it is pronounced. Today they have to pay a man back in his own coin. It may look like social media heaved the brands back into their place. Coca-Cola drops campaign sites in favour of social media. Many understood recently that one has to be the speaker as well as a mic in order to make oneself reliable and likable(salable in other words). And now it looks like power of the speaker shifts very rapidly. User is in a centre… well actually that is the political term for something that seldom happens. Giving the user/customer too much freedom would mean that they can choose and they can be less predictable. They would wonder around having dangerous thoughts and it is easier to hit something static. Controlling them is the key and moving into social media does seem on the surface like the brands want to say: “we’re here to help”. It actually means that being there, having a piece of it, brands are be able to be closer in order to influence, peek and control behaviors.
Facebook may be saved, like all trends on the web I thought it will be replaced with something similar. This model so far works and, I think, presence of major brands will put Facebook’s head in a noose. Will make it dependent. Any decrease in user count on Facebook would mean decrease in profit through access to users. Worst case scenario: brands won’t keep the balance, masses would got bored and migrate elsewhere. Best case scenario: people got so much dependent on the platform that they wouldn’t be able to communicate otherwise, brands will get a chance to rape them all one by one. None of it is going to happen, fortunately. Something else is going to happen and it is going to be another great day and we won’t be able to replay that experience. Would a lemon like to be repeatedly squeezed?
Exhibition of Katharina Fritsch at the deichtorhallen looks like one of those many popular exhibitions by unknown young artists influenced by Apple design and video games. Well she’s got much more experience then just that and that is what makes her approach very unique. She takes what seems to be obvious these days in visual arts: one color painted objects, nostalgic prints and of course umbrellas to communicate. Unlike others, those young rebels, she does say something, she does have something to say and she’s using symbols in a right way, knowing what they actually mean and in what context they make sense. I am not a big fan of all of her works (some are way to close to self satisfactory mambo jumbo) but some are damn good. Maybe because of my photographic background(sic!) I highly admire her that side of her art. Exhaustive photo coverage on design boom
I do love comic books, and from time to time even a bit too much. I’d been even playing Arkham Asylum recently. My iPhone is filled with nothing else but comic books at the moment. I know this passion won’t last long, still got too many books in a queue.
Anyway I have just stumbled upon this list: The 50 Best Comic Book Covers of 2009. What a nice bunch of pretty images. Some are plain some are copy-cats some are pretty cheap. But hey! among 50 there must be something good, well let’s leave it for now because I had to double and triple check that these are 2009 covers. Some of them could have been pretty cool in 60’s or 70’s but now they just look like someone’s messed up with inspiration. Covers are actually posters in fact. They announce what comes from within the book as they do in film poster industry (you decide). They should be the content’s metaphor. I know some target audiences need nothing more but simple old “flesh and guns” but those shouldn’t be among top 50.
So, those made me think of good old Polish posters which were actually in the same style. The reason was that authors wouldn’t have access to any assets, sometimes they weren’t able to watch the movie. I know it sounds silly but in communistic Poland all sort of shit was common. So they would have pen and paper and thy would create some of the best posters ever. No I do not mean that socialistic crap, I mean some serious film posters for example, which would convey the story in a most dramatic and deep metaphorical way. I’ll compare 2 posters: Polish and American here to give you an idea what I mean:
Rocky (the original one)
Polish Version
USA version
So that “top 50” list reminded me about this particular struggle with so many doors to be opened and with trying to avoid the obvious ones. Some comic book authors should have commissioned others to design their covers and maybe not to get on that list and please me. Seriously, one does judge book by the cover. The comic book. And it does not have to be comic.
UI fully focused on one thumb navigation. That sort of UX seems very impressive. One can access everything on a mobile phone using just one thumb. My first thought: amazing, functional and good looking UI. Well actually I changed my mind pretty quick. Certain tasks do not require such a quick access, they may seem to be a bit difficult to perform in a long term. Using just a thumb for longer periods of time may be tiresome. Navigating calendar looks very good, quick access, easy scrolling… accessing gallery on the other hand looks bit overcomplicated. I felt like designers forced the thumb navigation just for sake of making it one-finger-UI.
I bet they’ve tested it and I wonder how would real life test it and is it going to be a next gen touch screen user experience?
Patterns and grids were supposed to make design(digital I mean) a bit easier and, thank God, they did to certain point. I remember times before 960, when I’d use canonical grid mixed with golden ratio and some human perception knowledge I got while studying art.There was Jakob with his ugly idea of usability. Well, idea was great but the presentation had some traumatic results on some. Then of course there was always a story to be told which someone called journey and then added a user to that whole new experience. And the UX has been born.
Recently I saw this nice and sad link browsersize. Sad because so many people can’t see the donate button. Nice because it says that not much has changed in last decade. Well actually in last millenium. We’ve been always doing certain things the way we do, and some uneducated plonkers thought they’d reinvented the wheel with usability(I mean all those wankers that follow blindly rules of grid systems and false kindergarten science). There are still blank spots on the map of our behavior with regards to our journeys and decision making process but hey, for some it is still not very obvious that people(with christian background) read left to right and that it affects composition(positive and negative).
Browsersize is a great…hmm let’s call it tool. (On many occasions, I did have to pull out F shape print outs as in the last resort and be told to back off because the web ‘is changing’ so this may be one more useful weapon for those still crusading dark-ages).But that’s not what I am really on about. What I am on is the obvious implication of the above observation. It only confirms what we’ve known for centuries. So it is time to start seeing what’s under those rules because grid designs aren’t the final solution neither are pixel-perfect Mac OS X rip offs. So I always love to see when one gores the 960. I am getting bored with that slick, colorful barf that defines what is good digital design. I wonder what is usual dwell time on those sites? Some may know the answer and if it is more then 30sec it means someone forgot it has opened in a back. Proper user experiences aren’t that rare but that usually requires whole new grid to work with. 4 dimensional one.
Most of current grids require 2D thinking, plus eventually some twists. Where shiny stuff is just a nice package for mind blowing emptiness. Designing user’s time on a page and the depth of the journey defines 2 more dimensions that many designers completely ignore glorifying ‘let’s just scratch the surface’ culture. No I won’t give examples, show pie-charts nor flood blogosphere with ‘visual aids’. It is all about thinking which is something that cannot be found on a web or thought through tutorials. It is something that requires a bit of courage to look deeper.
There are always reasons behind that, but whatever you tell me this is one very bad user experience I am having. By the way TFL does similar job too. Timeouts are so short that if one has kettle on or is just thinking about which train is actually working this winter, it is impossible not to throw few explicit thoughts at the screen. I wonder what was the copywriter thinking when was told to write:
“Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.”
For God’s sake, like if it wasn’t man-made or the timeout was cause by bad weather Of course it ignited my thinking process and as a result I’ve visited their contact section and… surprise. No maze of FAQ and hidden doors with 0845 numbers. Simple contact form, but hey. Go back to the top. There is a catch.
“We handle over 360,000 customer enquiries every day and quality of information is always our top priority. Nevertheless, things occasionally go wrong.”
See the number? Well, I could be wrong but there may be simple answer to that. If they cause inconvienence and with no shame write that just below the sorry bit:
“If you are still having problems, please check your network settings or contact your systems administrator.”
Then no wonder that thousands of frustrated users, madly hitting back button, cry for help using that very well accessible form.
I cry with them. Sitting on a train waiting for a conductor who is 20mins late…
“The bill proposes that the Federal Communications Commission regulate commercials, mandating that the sales pitches must remain at the same decibel level as the show that precedes them.”
