Interface Design. A Day in 2014.

September 6th, 2010 • View Comments Tech, Tools
Tags: Case Study, Cool, Creativity, Design, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Interfaces, Media, Mobile, Prediction, Presentation, Study, Tech, Tools, Touch, Usability, UX, visual, World

We all love interface design studies, don’t we? Notorious Swedish UX company TAT.SE has conducted an experiment in open innovation of User Interfaces. And the winner is this little case study staging a possible day in 2014. Nice one. I want the mirror (via).

HTML5. A Great Intro to What is New.

August 23rd, 2010 • View Comments Tech
Tags: Agencies, Blast Radius, Cool, Development, flash, HTML5, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, Tools, Trends, visual

When you start a new job it is always extremely interesting to find out about your coworkers after a while. Who is this guy across the table actually? And what did he or she do before we actually started collaborating?
One of my new colleagues who really surprised me is Bobby van der Sluis.

Bobby is Technical Experience Director here at Blast Radius, Amsterdam and a veteran of Flash Development. He is author of UFO and co-author of SWFObject 2 (along with a lot of other projects), which are both well-known open source JavaScript libraries for detecting the Adobe Flash Player and embedding Flash content in web pages. In addition to that he does publish articles at A list apart quite often and speaks at conferences. Oooh….and he is also a very nice guy – a fact that should not go unnoticed here as well.

Anyway, last week Bobby held a very insightful presentation about Flash HTML5 and his personal perspectives on its progress. It is interesting to watch Flash veterans such as Bobby to reinvent their job profiles and start developing on a similar  different platform.

Here is Bobby’s presentation. Check out his blog as well and follow him on Slideshare.

OMFG. Brands and Social Media in China.

August 11th, 2010 • View Comments Brands, Social, Underway
Tags: Brands, Business, China, Prediction, Presentation, Report, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, Truth, We like, World

Sometimes when you do research on tech adaption worldwide you get the impression it is completely enough to look at figures from the U.S. Take for example the excellent ‘State of the Blogosphere 2009‘ report by technorati. It presents all the charts and diagrams you need if you research statistics on blog usage….but if you dig a little bit deeper you find out that it’s actually nothing but a study about the American blogosphere.

This is particularly interesting if you take a serious look at the figures. China for example has surpassed the U.S. in social media usage last year. According to Netpop almost every Chinese online user is part of a social network. There are three times more bloggers per online user in China compared to the U.S. No major study will explain an average European or American strategist what these people do, what they talk about and how to engage them. By the way, we are talking about 1.6 billion Chinese and billions of Asians that I did not even consider in this calculation.

Check out this deck by Ogilvy One Shanghai (via Giles) about the connected Chinese digital landscape which is absolutely stunning. And afterwards do me a favor and answer one question: Is it actually possible to understand and lead the complexity of this world from a desk in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam or London and to make the right decisions? How can we build cross cultural knowledge which is so important to get away from our subjective western perspective?

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Creative Briefs. Two Decks on making them evolve.

August 11th, 2010 • View Comments Jobs, Strategy
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Creative, creative briefs, Ideas, Jobs, Prediction, Presentation, Process, Strategy, Tools, World

As a strategist it is kind of a fixation to think about creative briefs. Creative brief? Yes, a piece paper which traditionally is created by a strategist/client directore to serve as a guideline for the creative process. There are literally hundreds of these templates out there. Some are good and some are bad.

In fact, most creative briefs circulating in agencies nowadays are pretty old school. That’s not surprising. Most agencies are pretty old school in the first place, secondly all too often the briefing context is the key problem and not the template. Finally, the ownership over the document is frequently not shared among the different stakeholders. Stupid process that is.

Jasmin Cheng has pulled together quite a nice deck that collects a lot of thoughts about this problem.

google. A not so evil look back on its History.

August 9th, 2010 • View Comments Brands
Tags: Business, google, history, net neutrality, Presentation, Truth, visual, World

google sure does combine many elements of a modern tech fairy tale. It is extremely successful (please, don’t mention social networks now), it did not exist 15 years ago and started with a very philanthropic vision…at least they tried. While the company still pretends to stick to its ‘Don’t be evil‘ mantra, others call it ‘a company on steroids with fingers in every industry’. The glass is always half full or half empty, right?

Google UK has now staged a (very) quick look back at the its history over the last 11 years. From Stanford to Mountain View and around the world, featuring many different products, starting with BackRub (Search) up to Google Wave, StreetView and Chrome. Enjoy the cute little animations and in case you are keener on a more critical view of the brand, try the Beast File. (via)

The presentation. When Function follows Form.

August 6th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Tools
Tags: Funny, Presentation, Social Business Design, Strategy, Truth

The greatest sin in marketing is when function follows form. In fact this is more the rule than the exception – also in social. Like the comic. Thanks to Conversation Agent.

Case Study. Old Spice Guy flexes his Muscles.

August 5th, 2010 • View Comments Ads, Strategy, We like
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Ads, Agencies, Brands, Case Study, Creativity, Funny, Ideas, Old Spice, Presentation, Social Influence Marketing, Truth, We like, wieden & kennedy

Yes, we all love Old Spice now. No, it was not at all unsuccessful. In fact Wieden + Kennedy did not only stage a highly entertaining stunt with ‘the man your man could smell like’ – obviously it had exactly the effect a great campaign is supposed to have. It sold stuff.

I admit, ad agency case studies should always be watched with a certain skepticism. But hey, the best social media first ad campaign of the 21st century rocks big time (via adweek).

Great Tools. What the Fuck is my Social Media Strategy?

August 2nd, 2010 • View Comments Tools
Tags: Business, Buzzwords, Diy, Funny, Presentation, Social Media, Strategy, Tools, Truth, World

Thanks Sean. My colleague pointed me to the wonderful What-the-fuck-is-my-social-media-strategy-generator that generates pretty realistic buzzword creations ready to be used in your next deck. It’s like the web bullshit generator…only closer to what we call reality. I think I can go home now, can I?

google Me. Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Privacy.

Juli 12th, 2010 • View Comments Business, Social, Strategy
Tags: Business, Facebook, google, google me, Prediction, Presentation, privacy, Reports, Social Networks, Strategy, World

Most of you may have heard about the so called Facebook killer ‘Google Me‘ that supposedly binds half of google’s resources currently. And as most of you know, google has not exactly been successful with social networking by now. Especially after google Buzz also failed as a platform that is able to compete with Facebook. google knows they need to get their hands on social. Why? Steve Rubel explains it quite well…

google will ‘continue to dominate “pull.” But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule “push.” Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it – and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over – and the system get even smarter.’ And that is exactly what google needs to do to stay alive in the long term.

No matter how successful Facebook is with its social strategy – they need to conquer Planet Push asap or become Facebook’s junior partner. In the middle of all the buzz about google Me we have to read the deck embedded below as a first rationale for google’s new platform – not as the ‘designing social networks’ deck that it wants to be. It was created by one of google’s lead User Experience architects Paul Adams and it criticizes Facebook existing social networks and the way they make people interact with a clear focus on privacy. What a surprise!

Even beyond the google Me hype – definitely a deck worth to take a look at (even though it is looooong).

Big question: Do you think google might make it this time? Do you believe privacy will be an USP strong enough to differentiate google Me from Facebook? Leave a reply.

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Eye Candy. 100 Beautiful Slides from Cannes.

Juni 29th, 2010 • View Comments Business
Tags: Agencies, Award, Awards, cannes, Cool, Creativity, Ideas, Presentation, Underway, visual

I may neither be a fan of advertising award shows nor of what is said on award shows. But if there is one thing I like about them (beyond drinks and food) it is well designed powerpoint slides. All of us have seen a couple of really ugly, undigestible slides in their lifes. So check out these PPT posers that were just presented in Cannes… (via)