Matter/Anti-Matter

Google Chrome was born explicitly as a platform for web applications. From the first bits I saw I can say that Google's new creation delivers most of the promises and brings new interesting innovations in the user experience realm. Competitors will find them hard to ignore, especially when you look at the tab concept improvements. For a good review of these points, you can refer to this post on Ars Technica.

Many hailed Google's move as a revolutionary step. And indeed, with Google Chrome, the web application era is getting real. Let's look beyond the technology and outline some possible models and consequences Chrome might have for the field of user experience:

Firefox's concept, where the web browser remains the key tool and the main interface for using a web application, is a service that is completely online. In this case, the user experience is chiefly based on typical web technologies, that is, the magic triad XHTML, CSS, and Javascript. Standard web browsing is blended in with web application interaction. The user jumps between tabs within the same context and tool.

An alternative model seeks to overcome the web browser, hiding it for the user, like Mozilla Prism, or at least trying to replace it with a different client and dedicated interfaces. This is the model you can see in action with Adobe Air or Microsoft WPF, and also with Apple's iTunes. In this case, the user experience is based on a mix of locally installed software components and user interfaces, online contents and services. With this model you get the best performances and a more consistent user experience while the web remains in the background as a distribution channel for data exchange. Any device and system has its own client, designed and created ad hoc. Nevertheless, as you can see with iTunes, the user sometimes is locked into a "walled garden."

The pure online web application model based on Chrome, with few local components installed on your hardware, is certainly the most promising one: truly open, flexible, and easy to upgrade. But for now, Chrome is still a web browser, and its dependency from the web browser's user experience could be a soft spot, or at least a strong constraint for the web application's evolution.

Talking about the Chrome "revolution," many commentators are using the metaphor of the operating system. The browser plays the part of the platform, and the web application is the software. But a real operating system is not only a software platform; it also provides a framework for user interaction, a consistent UI layer, as well as components that the software designer and developers usually have to follow. It puts together many small tools and modules, unifies the user experience, and brings into play every software application built on it.

I think that this is the next big challenge. Will Google be able to change the rules of the web user experience? With Chrome and Android, Google is getting into the big game: building a consistent and unique experience for end users as well as application designers and developers. Google is an acclaimed leader in web technologies innovation, but from the end user point of view many web applications are still nothing more than a toy for geeks. Now they have the opportunity to get their beautiful tech jewels out of the eternal beta phase, into true commercial products focused on the end user.

(Credit: Scott McCloud/Google)

Google's new Chrome browser is an interesting entry into the revitalized "browser wars." Given Google's Apps and Gears, the browser has essentially become the "OS" that contains them, so it makes perfect sense that Google would want to extend into that area to give it more control, and provide custom functionality that could not be accomplished with other browsers that it does not control.

But what is also interesting is how Google chose to describe some of its capabilities and intentions to the world: with comics.

The comics form has a number of benefits, the most obvious being that it does a better job of explaining technical features of Chrome better than a dry spec sheet would have.

For example, what if Google had said this in a features section of a page describing Chrome: "Multi-process rendering engine eliminates browser hangs due to single-threaded JavaScript executions."

I would have thought, "Gee, that sounds great, but I don't really know what it means." Well, the comics form allows the company to explain that in a non-intimidating way. It's still not exactly lay-person speak. (It is more geared toward journalists and bloggers who will be more familiar with the jargon than the general public.) But many more people will now understand what's going on under the hood and, more importantly, the resulting benefits.

A nice side benefit for Google is that because the team of people who worked on it are brought to life through the comic (rather than stultified by press-release lingo), it humanizes Google at a time when it is starting to get a bit of a big-bad-wolf-Microsoft reputation due to its size and clout. By focusing on the individuals, it takes the mega corporation out of the picture (literally and figuratively).

The comic itself was created by well-known online comics artist Scott McCloud, after doing many interviews with Google engineers. It's a great example of using someone outside the nitty-gritty of the product development process, with a knack for story-telling, to craft the narrative of the product. Too many good products fall by the wayside because not enough attention has been paid to the narrative--in other words, telling the value proposition in a way that the audience can relate to.

McCloud also wrote the mini-classic book Understanding Comics, which is a must-read for anyone who makes use of storyboards or scenarios to describe how a yet-to-be-made product will be used. Back when I was teaching industrial design I would get all my students to buy it.

Unfortunately, navigation of the Chrome comic itself is a bit clunky. There are just back and forward links at the bottom, which look pretty old-school considering how advanced the product they are talking about is supposed to be. There's also no sense of where you are in the "book." Is page 8 still early at the beginning, and do I need to get comfortable for the long haul, or am I almost done? (It's 38 pages long, so, yes, it takes awhile.) It's been treated more like a series of static pages than a slide show, and slide shows can be done much better and dynamically than this (in fact McCloud has some interesting uses of dynamic navigation on his own site).

My grandparents in England had cows on their farm so I've always had a lot of affection for them, and was delighted to read this story from the Los Angeles Times indicating a "hidden cow power." Turns out cows may have internal compasses much like birds and bees do for orienting themselves to magnetic north.

Using satellite images on Google Earth, German scientists were able to see that all over the planet, cows stand with their bodies pointing to magnetic north.

Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen and their colleagues found that two out of every three animals in the pictures were oriented in a direction roughly pointing to magnetic north.

The resolution of the images was not sufficient to tell which ends of the cows were pointing north, however.

You have probably seen how cows will tend to face together in the same direction in a field, usually to face head on into a wind (reduces heat loss) or sideways to the sun (maximize heat gain), but because the photos on Google Earth are so widespread and taken in generally good weather, it appears that cows have a "default setting" of north-south orientation when local conditions don't override it.

As one of the researchers said, "This is an incredibly neat use of Google Earth. This is a study we would not have dreamed about doing five years ago."

Not just crowd-sourcing -- it's herd-sourcing!

(Credit: Brittny Badger)

Ever wondered what the inside of your waffle maker looks like? Yes? No? Well, even if not, you might be surprised how interesting small electric appliances are when you take them apart.

Brittny Badger has produced a wonderful series of still-life photos of disassembled small electric appliances, such as a waffle iron, electric knife, and a can opener. Rather than the usual slapdash tear-down photos one sees of the latest tech gadget, these are artfully composed images that show the inner complexity of mundane objects that we typically take for granted.

As my colleague Denise Gershbein says:

Seeing the sheer number and varying size of parts that go into a simple juicer reminds us how complex are the objects of our disposable consumer culture. Every little part is designed by someone. Every piece has meaning and function. Everything that is created has the potential for elegance, thoughtfulness, appropriateness. The spectrum of colors, the materials and finishes, and the positive and negative spaces within and around coils, cogs and wires all come together to form a surprisingly appealing palette.

See the full set on Flickr (photos used courtesy of Brittny).

(Credit: Brittny Badger)

(Credit: Textually)

"Be the first to know whom Barack picks as his running mate," had been the campaign's promise. The only problem: Those who had signed up to be the first to know, were not the first to know. About three hours before the Obama campaign deployed their SMS blast, John King of CNN broke the news, leaked from "Democratic sources." The "artificial exclusivity" of one-to-one marketing was undercut by the familiar means of traditional broadcasting. The thunder of Web 2.0 campaigning was stolen by old-school TV news coverage. The utterly disciplined Obama campaign seemed to have lost control for a moment and experienced one of its rare glitches. The "eventization" of news -- a social media paradigm so masterfully applied by the Obama camp -- was "uneventized" by CNN's preemptive strike. CNN suspended the suspense. What was supposed to be gratifying instantification - "all for this one moment," as Lufthansa's advertising slogan goes, collectively shared -- became a shallow confirmation email devoid of any newsworthiness.

What this tells us: you gotta be faster! "Now is Gone," Brian Solis called his book about PR in the age of social media. Indeed. If CNN breaks tomorrow's news, you have to release yours yesterday.

Also read Tomi T. Ahonen's analysis including a great overview of SMS usage in the US.

(Credit: Palm)

Underwhelming--that's the word that comes to mind when I look at the new Palm Treo Pro.

Yes, nicer looking for sure, with a strong influence from the lower-cost Centro model (and looking rather like the upcoming BlackBerry Bold). It also has 3G and Wi-Fi, which is great, the newest version of Windows Mobile, and GPS, though these can also be found on existing competitors. So it's got a decent package of features, but what's so compelling about it that isn't offered elsewhere?

In this day and age, offering a screen that takes up less than 50 percent of the device, especially with as big borders around it as the Pro has, just doesn't cut it. I'm not suggesting touchscreen only here, as I definitely prefer typing on a physical keyboard to tapping on a virtual one, but really, even a business-oriented device like this one is going to be used to show off photos, look at Web pages, etc., which all benefit from a large screen. The 320x320 screen has been the Palm standard for years now. Heck, even the Palm Tungsten T3 I had four years ago had a 50 percent bigger screen, albeit without a physical keyboard. The Pro's screen already looks small, and will look even more diminutive over its product lifecycle given how slowly Palm brings out new models.

Size-wise the Pro is almost identical to a BlackBerry, though longer. It's fatter than the iPhone. So there's no real advantage in pocketability or bragging rights there.

The talk time and battery life are good, but the 2-megapixel camera is ho-hum.

In this video Palm talks about how the Windows interface is great because it mimics what people are used to on their desktops. Ironically, as Rob Haitani, the software architect for Palm back in the day, used to say: the whole philosophy of the original Palm OS was that you should not try to mimic a big-screen mouse/screen environment, because it was not optimized for small-screen direct touch interactions. Transferring desktop interaction patterns onto a handheld was just not efficient, and that's why the early versions of Windows Mobile were slow to use. Now that it has adopted the Windows platform exclusively, Palm has to sing the opposite song.

Palm got a lot right in its earliest models, but it has struggled to stay innovative and focused in the last few years.

In the video, Palm also talks about how it wanted to take care of all the little details. It looks like the company has done that. But by focusing on the small things Palm's come up with a device that treads water in the market. There are no big things that really push the boat out further compared with other smartphones. There are no marquee features that really stand out in an increasingly large and diverse crowd. With the current state of the smartphone market, that's just not good enough to move the needle on Palm's dwindling market share and attract new customers to the Palm brand.

(Credit: Durbin Media)

Brand designers, on the other hand, are on the surge, especially in the digital space. Their task is not to manage a brand but to creatively co-shape its appearance on the Web, such that it becomes a viral conversation. Increasingly, brands are built (and destroyed) on blogs and Web sites, so that there is a strong need for experts who understand brand in the context of online interaction paradigms. Digital branding experts know that nowadays brand architecture is largely congruent with the information architecture on the corporate Web site--and brand identity is made of the content that is disseminated to online audiences through search results, online ads, blogs, campaigns, and micro-sites. At last, brand designers dispel separations that have been artificial anyway, establishing a brand-new equation: brand experience is user experience is user interface design. Digital branding is branding. And your Web strategy is your brand strategy and vice versa.

Traditional interactive agencies see this as an opportunity and have started adding brand design to their services portfolio. One notable example is New York-based agency R/GA, which recently launched its new Brand Design practice, led by Marc Shillum, who previously worked at TBWA, London, Wieden + Kennedy and BBH, along with a post at Netherlands-based design firm Studio Dumbar. In an interview with Creativity, Shillum asks for a more holistic view on branding: "Hopefully, what we're going to bring (at Brand Design) is a seamless experience. There are lots of digital companies that do 'customer-up' communication and a lot of branding agencies that do 'brand-down' communication, which results in a 400-page book sitting on somebody's desk that you've got to follow. What we're trying to do now is form an idea and an expression of an idea in one place."

Brand, user experience design, product design, marketing communications, PR, online advertising, etc.--what we're seeing is an increased convergence of all these creative disciplines. It is not a matter of strategic choice, more a necessity: The truth is that today's consumers demand that all these disciplines converge. As their experience of a brand spans different platforms, media, and technologies, ranging from the TV ad, blog review, the retail purchase, the out-of-the-box experience, to online customer support, the creative disciplines must, too. A seamless, convergent consumer experience requires seamless creative convergence--which means that there is not much tolerance anymore for agency-to-agency hand-offs in between. Branding is a "city that never sleeps." Creative firms that embrace this new brand continuum will win.

So says Robin Good in his provocative post on the Brand Ambassador, in which he touts highly credible and authoritative bloggers as the advertising channel of the future.

Good envisions "bottom-up advertising with publishers selecting the favorite brands they would want to endorse." And further: "In reality bloggers or other similar online authority figures could publicly pre-elect companies and brands that they would want to be Brand Ambassadors for. They could do this directly on their sites and/or via their representative advertising agencies. This advertising model would provide companies embracing it with a communication vehicle with much higher impact and effectiveness that anything they have done so far via traditional advertising."

But how would bloggers be able to maintain their authority (which is, of course, based on trust) if they're paid to endorse a brand (even if they truly believed in it)?

Good has an answer to that, too:

"Yes, you say, but you are going to be influenced by those who pay you. Yes, I answer. But so do you with the people that spend big money on your site with traditional advertising. And if that is not so, how in any case can people tell? How can they find out whether the new review, article or link you did was a consequence of a return favor you are doing to an advertising agency or to a past direct advertiser who would want to come back? Unless you have some very strict, and public disclosure policy about this info, it is going only through your actions over time that people will be able to tell whether you have your own integrity or whether you are simply a marketing puppet at the service of whoever pays you more."

So, in the end, Good's model would make things more transparent and actually increase the level of trust between bloggers and their audience. And that again would raise the value for the advertiser.

(Credit: iPlot)

Last week in Hamburg, Germany, I had the pleasure of lunching with a SPIEGEL editor in the iconic news magazine's iconic canteen, or "Spiegelkantine," as the Germans call it. The extravagance of the interior design (created by Danish designer Verner Panton, who worked with Arne Jacobson, in the 70s) -- a lavish, ultra-red cave with highly disruptive stalactites hanging from the ceiling -- is reminiscent of "Clockwork Orange" and so ostentatiously out of line with the earnest, purist, social democratic SPIEGEL culture that it appears to be almost deliberately cynical -- and that again is very SPIEGEL.

The daily lunch parade in the "Kantine" is one big catwalk for all SPIEGEL staff and their guests. It seems to obey secret laws (for example, don't stand too close to the kitchen door or you will be yelled at by waitresses who happen to be scarier than Lufthansa flight attendants). There is of course also a secret eating order, and violating it can have grave consequences -- the place breeds gossip. It is the stage for the cruelest and most narcissistic (thank you, John Edwards, for bringing this word back to the American mainstream vocabulary) cabal. Just recently, the editorial team ousted its long time and very successful editor-in-chief, Stefan Aust. And it probably began with a conspiracy in the canteen.

The "Spiegelkantine" is a time-stands-still venue that catapults you back into the heyday of investigative journalism. Like the design of its canteen, the SPIEGEL today is a strange mix of nostalgia and progressivism. Although its best days may have passed, you can never write it off: Just lately the magazine left its mark again on the stage of world politics when it ran the much-quoted interview with Iraq president Nouri al-Maliki, in which he backed Barack Obama's Iraq proposal.

Like all great institutions, the SPIEGEL has a difficult personality. It does not necessarily believe in the good in man and yet counters that with truth-seeking fervor. It is up to date on topics but outdated in style. It is ueber-critical and thorough, and at the same time thoroughly negative and pessimistic -- maybe because it usually knows more facts than anybody else.

(Credit: Aquarium Guys)

"We're doing all the things we tell our clients not to do," admits a strategy director at a renowned design and innovation firm, "it is ironic." He's not alone with his assessment. Other employees of creative firms (let's just use this label as a catch-all for all design, innovation, marketing, brand, and advertising firms) secretly confess that while they go out preaching to their clients about the importance of open innovation, brand consistency, or a distinct, provocative marketing messages, it is the very absence of all of which that often severely hampers their own organizations.

All too often, creative firms struggle with applying their proven principles, methodologies, and tools at home. While they strive to inject "out-of-the-box" thinking into their clients' organizations, they choose to stay within their own box, which is often in a poor condition. While they teach clients ways to foster a high-commitment, high-performance culture, they fail to create it for their own teams. While they promote flat hierarchies to spur innovation, risk-taking, and creativity, they often have bloated structures themselves that resemble the org chart of the Roman Empire. While they evangelize original and irreverent thinking, their own marketing campaigns are safe, mediocre, boring, and devoid of any potentially polarizing, sticky ideas. While they propagate the value of an engaging, user-friendly experience across all brand touch points, the interactions with their own brand are often stale and impersonal.

Of all firms, creative firms should get it right -- but they often don't. Why is that?

First of all, creative firms tend to suffer from a Not-Invented-Here syndrome. Instead of welcoming outside innovation, they succumb to the same short-sighted inward fixation that handicaps many of their clients -- relying on internal, often billable resources that are strapped for time and laden with political baggage and thus often fail to generate truly fresh ideas. Groupthink and other well-researched social dynamics prohibit true, disruptive change. Decisions are made by committees, and the result is, in many cases, the lowest common denominator. Everyone's satisfied -- but no one is really happy, let alone excited.

Another frequent phenomenon is the creative paralysis that begets the creative firm not in spite but because of its amassed creative powers. One key leader empowered to make decisions is of the essence in such environments, and the lack thereof stifles commitment. When there are too many cooks in the kitchen, too many strong creative opinions, too much foil and mutual out-smarting, competitiveness does not fuel, but rather stalls progress. Projects derail, and egos are inconsolably hurt along the way.

The third problem is the time horizon. Many creative firms' perspective is rather short-term as they are strongly exposed to the volatility of the economy and focus on new and opportunistic business rather than long-term strategic planning. The need to meet the numbers and maximize the utilization of resources all the way down to the bottom line doesn't leave much room for brand-building, a critical examination of one's own market positioning, or an overhaul of the marketing platform.

Fourth, marketers who are tasked with marketing a creative firm are under constant scrutiny for a possible lack of proper credentials. Creative teams are often skeptical about the efforts of an "outsider" who has not lived through the inner-workings and experienced the pain of working for demanding clients. Their motto seems to be: "We could do it better if only we could (but we lack the time)." Of course, the billable, creative types will never be pleased, no matter what. If the corporate marketer delivers below-par work, they will tear it apart. If s/he excels, they will feel threatened.

Creative firms can be narcissistic, navel-gazing, and soul-searching monsters, carried away with their own grandeur and prowess (or the assumption thereof) and in stubborn defiance of what their audiences have to say. And often, some nebulous self-cult makes them openly refuse being marketed at all ("The first rule of the Fight Club: You don't talk about the Fight Club.").

Marketing a creative firm is a tough job. You gotta be creative.

Here are three principles that I try to apply in my job:

1. Whenever you can, simplify. Because that's your job and the one turf where no one else can (and wants to) compete with you! Translate the complexity of your business into digestible chunks for your audience. Earn a reputation as "simplifier" and you will earn respect.

2. Stay out of the arena. Leave the intellectual strong-arming to the creative stars. Don't try to out-smart, out-wit, or out-innovate them. Drop your ego at the door.

3. Play with your own toys, find your own buddies, and build something that you and your team can truly own.

(to be continued)