Avatar: The Last Air Bender (not to be confused with James Cameron’s Avatar, which came out some time ago) took a great cartoon and made it a live action 3D movie. The movie bombed by all accounts.
This got me thinking, does media need to be cross platform, and should it cross platforms?
With The Last Air Bender, the underlying premise stayed the same, which in itself is pretty unique, but everything that made the show special – namely character development and world-building had to be stripped away for the sake of the new format, the movie.
Was it worth it? The damage done to the brand has made it almost impossible for me to sell people on the idea that the cartoon is worth a look? When was the last time you read the book of a horrible movie?
This begs the question, Should we attempt to recreate the same experience over multiple platforms and is such a thing even possible? The answer is yes, kinda, if we realize that the experience we are trying to recreate is the emotional response, not the physical one.
We need to figure what exactly what in the product makes it special and try to recreate that. It may look different, but the spirit – the emotional experience - of the product is still intact. Also we should realize that that different platform usually will have a different set of opportunities.
One of the issues with magazines and newspapers is that the emerging platforms themselves create wholly different expectations. Are we asking ourselves, is the purpose of the website the same purpose for the mobile application or the print article?
While I think that it is honorable to try to recreate the same physical experience to bridge the familiar with the unfamiliar, there is the hidden trap of boxing ourselves into a certain way of seeing a solution.
Think about some of the metaphors on computers – desktops, files, folders – we are stuck with those things as a consequence of trying to bridge the familiar with the unfamiliar instead of realizing that the virtual limitless space is a different animal that the finite desk space in front of us.
In the case with Avatar, the movie missed the singular fact that the show is about a bunch of kids, in a world that is changing around them, but demonstrate all the optimism, naiveté and resiliency that only kids on the threshold to adulthood have - they just happen to be able to control the elements. Make a movie about that and you’ll have a winner.
Posted on Saturday, August 21, 2010 in
Logo designer beware
Coming from a design background I'm going to say something heretical.
Logos are useless and everyone who design logos for a living had better find something else to do with their time.
The company I use to work had a complicated business to say the least and was not terribly brandable. I believe that most companies are going to be this way going forward. It might even be hard to create a logo for even a sandwich shop, it might seem easy but what would differentiate it from the sandwhich shop down the street?
“What do we do?” is the million dollar question for any company, and one rarely asked. I doubt just a logo can answer that question and more often than not that is what is being asked of a designer in the logo creation process. A good designer will do the research, and create media friendly iconography, and then hope that the company is willing to attempt to make a brand connection to it.
There in lies the challange to companies. Once you engage in the creation of a logo, the willingness to put the full force of the company and it’s people behind the logo to breath life into it.
I like QR codes but for the life of me I can’t think of an application for it that would be worthwhile. Yet.
The QR (Quick Response) code is a 2D barcode that is huge in Japan and trying to get a foothold here in the US. QR codes can be scanned by applications on smart phones using the phone’s camera. The QR code usually contains a URL, a short text message or contact information.
This can be a boon to a digital marketing strategy. It can track responsiveness, stickiness, and take advantage of user feedback. I think the potential for social games is huge. I think as a counter-part to the foursquare and gowalla’s of the world are huge.
But the QR code has a last mile problem big time. Outside of the name which doesn’t mean anything to anyone, and as a first step ‘QR code’ should be dropped—quickly. The last mile is one part behavioral, one part technical and one part usefulness.
On the behavioral side, the actual act of scanning is a clunky process at best. However with the advent of location based services, whipping out the mobile phone to open a casual application is over-coming that hurdle big time. Even now, the more I get into the habit of checking in, the easier it gets. QR codes will follow the trend I suspect.
On the technical side, sometime the information that is scanned is not very actionable. If I scan some one’s contact information, the application should recognize it as such and give me the option to add it to my address book or more options when it’s a URL I should also get more options, whether bookmark it view it, and it should certainly lead to a mobile site. Applications just need to be smarter.
Finally we need to be smarter on how we use them in campaigns. What is the added value of the hassle of scanning a QR code? The challenge is going to be figuring out what the user wants when they are scanning and are we giving it to them. Is it information? Is it a coupon? What can I give the scanner that will prompt a next step? What are the expectations? Am I adding value?
I think it’s something that needs to be figured out before QR codes can really ever catch on.
There comes a realization that some problems will need to be solved by future generations, in the business world this usually means the person that will have your job after you leave.
The problems we leave behind could be for several reasons: political, technical limitations or just plain trying to get a minimum viable product out the door. Some of the concessions we make for progress is a headache waiting to happen for someone, in a worst case scenario, a headache for ourselves six months down the line. Just in the past couple of weeks a couple examples have cropped up
Example 1:
Icon creation can be a challenge, the simpler the metaphor one can use the better for all involved. For example, a down arrow could have several possible meanings, the most likely is ‘download’, but it could also mean ‘apply’ or ‘move down’. What if the application has an ‘apply’ feature but not a download? Do you assume that at some point in the application roadmap that a download feature might be added and go with something else or do you go ahead and use the simpler, more direct metaphor and let future generation sort it out?
Example 2:
According to standards on a website I was involved in we could not have orphan pages. It forces us to make very deliberate decisions of document taxonomy. But occasionally, there is a business need for what could be an orphan page. What do we do? Do we set up a new rule? Do we use development resources to create a new branch of the document tree? What if this really is a one off page and there does not appear to have other pages created like it in the future? Do we throw the link on a backwater internal page where no one will find it and let a future generation revisit it?
The only way to can feel okay about screwing the future is to document, document, document. Put down somewhere why the decisions were made, what the context was and/or the limitations that may have boxed you in to a less than desirable situation. At the very least the person taking up the mantle after you has somewhere to start and does not need to re-invent the wheel. it’s the least we could do.
Once upon a time when I first started filing federal income taxes I had no idea what I was doing. I remember even asking the money guy at my first job whether I even should be filing taxes since I was a freshly minted college graduate. He told me the government doesn't care whether I was a graduate or not, the governments knows I had income, and I need to file. Needless to say I did.
Fast forward several years, I was still talking about taxes, and this time it was with a woman that worked in my father’s church. I asked her about getting it wrong on taxes. What would happen? She told me that the in her mind the key to doing taxes was to do the best you can, always try to learn more, and when you know better, do better.
Logical errors aside, for some reason this always stuck
Working in an inhouse department certainly has it’s challenges, one of them being the notion of promotion to your internal clients. This was a recent question on In-house Designers Linkedin group. While I have a bunch of suggestions, here are three favorite tried and true methods:
Make friends and influence people. There are always a few people that really take advantage of the services of your department. Conscript them to be ambassadors making sure that whatever project they are involved in, that your group is pulled in.Check in on your ambassadors from time to time to see what projects they are working on, and where you might help. It also helps to have a few friends in every department to let you know about new projects coming down the pipeline. Bonus points for friends that work across departments like yours does.
Be nosy. If you see anything that does nto conform to standards or just plain ugly, step in and offer your services. In some cases do the work and present them the alternative. If it is breaking corporate standards (and always say ‘the corporate standards’, as if it is beyond your control, even if you came up with the ‘the corporate standards’) and they need to get in line. It helps to provide the tools for them to use. Such as an internal wiki..
Get a module in employee orientation. Contact HR to get some time in new employee orientation to talk about branding, the services that your department offers and the tools at their disposal. Get them early before the bad habits set in.
Finally, some people will never get it, but persistence matters, be sure to document the efforts at outreach to the hold-outs. Either they will be told to work with your department or be left behind, but you’ve done your due diligence.
“Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors…...Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory.” Hat tip
I really like the notion behind this article. It focuses on small non-intimidating things that are problems of larger projects. Folks in the comments criticized it as not being analytical enough, but some things like weight or personal projects have to be taken day by day and cannot be measured or to time consuming to measure.
It’s a simply question, any answer will only inspire you to do more the next day.
So. Did you?
Posted on Sunday, February 28, 2010 in Productivity
People tend to generate their predictions by thinking about the particular, unique features of the task at hand, and constructing a scenario for how they intend to complete the task - which is just what we usually think of as planning. When you want to get something done, you have to plan out where, when, how; figure out how much time and how much resource is required; visualize the steps from beginning to successful conclusion. All this is the "inside view", and it doesn't take into account unexpected delays and unforeseen catastrophes. As we saw before, asking people to visualize the "worst case" still isn't enough to counteract their optimism - they don't visualize enough Murphyness.
But all is not lost:
So there is a fairly reliable way to fix the planning fallacy, if you’re doing something broadly similar to a reference class of previous projects. Just ask how long similar projects have taken in the past, without considering any of the special properties of this project. Better yet, ask an experienced outsider how long similar projects have taken.
Lately, I’ve been trying to take the outsider view and planning realistically, although I’m finding I may not doing well enough. For example I should be working on a website project that I’d like to finish by Friday. However, we’ve been struck with server problems most of the day, which pretty much kills any ideas of getting to bed early tonight if I want to even try to get this thing done.
Lucky for me there are plenty of other projects that have over estimated timelines that I can work on.
She then gave me what I came to call the 20-10 assignment. It goes like this: Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone call tells you that you have inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second tells you that you have an incurable and terminal disease, and you have no more than 10 years to live. What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?
That assignment became a turning point in my life, and the "stop doing" list became an enduring cornerstone of my annual New Year resolutions — a mechanism for disciplined thought about how to allocate the most precious of all resources: time.
This sentiment is also echoed in The Dip by Seth Godin. Starting something is just as important if not more important than knowing when to stop.
What are you going to stop this year?
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 in Productivity
