DMDxd Blog http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs The latest blog posts from the DMDxd Blog. en-us <![CDATA[The Writing is on the Wall]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/296-the-writing-is-on-the-wall the future of technology is ubiquity.

I wanted show what an evolutionary step between today and that imminent future.

I decided to show this in what might a business card look like. So here is my business card, in a evolutionary stutter between now and ubiquitous technology.

HTML Code that is simple enough to work as advertisement, but still readable by a computer and not only readable but semantically tagged in such a way that would come up faster on a search than most sites we cruise daily, complete with a QR Code to bridge the physical to the virtual, and above all to bookmark it.



(screen print on Canvas tote, graffiti on non-permenant surface, sticker)

It took me a a bit of effort to make this example and quite a bit of analog tech like stencils, and silk screen, and is a bit crude but you get the point. And possibly the first of it's kind.
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/296-the-writing-is-on-the-wall <![CDATA[The Future of Technology and What Strategy will Serve that Future]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/295-the-future-of-technology-and-what-strategy-will-serve-that-future
The future of technology is not another device or service, although we will see many of those before the future arrives.

Instead, the future of technology is ubiquity.

You will no longer reach for you iPhone to make a call, it will simply be, need to send an email, just scratch it on to a piece of paper and write send. These sort of things.

Seem like science fiction? Remember where we were 30 years ago, remember where we were 10 years ago? Now we can have face-to-face chatting through our iPhone. Imagine that 4 years ago, and this Sci-fi idea seems all the more tangible.

These things are already in motion, check out MIT inventor Pranav Mistry's SixthSense technology. And the understand of simple and ubiquitous technology will be understood with clarity and wonder.

We are at a bulging point with technology, and it's future is ubiquitous as opposed to device driven, and therefor the sort of thinking that was once at the forefront before technology became such a focus will be important again, but only with a full understanding of how technology can serve that insight, as opposed to lead that insight.
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/295-the-future-of-technology-and-what-strategy-will-serve-that-future <![CDATA[Inspiring Use]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/294-inspiring-use This post discusses:
  • Experience Design & User Experience
  • The Golden Circle
  • Inspiring people to use

Today I took the F train to work instead of my typical route and got off at the first stop in Manhattan, East Broadway. As I wandered my way to work through Chinatown I was reminded of how quickly you can find yourself in unfamiliar territory. I had to keep checking the horizon to orient myself through what was once the famed Five Points.

There was information everywhere, but none of it was information I could understand. I was looking for points of reference among this cloud of info and I was thinking about how much it was like the types of systems I help clients through and how quickly they can lose themselves in a maze of backend, CMS, servers and Ftps, and formats, all to achieve the same goal: to get their work done.

This maze of tech can be confusing and no matter how well crafted a system or even your guidance through it, if the User is not the focus of the design, it is bound to end in frustration for all, and that User should be the people who will be using it it not the people building and critiquing it.



Is your user experience meant for only a select few or for a greater audience? In world wide web, it should be the greatest audience as that anyone could find their way to your site, company, program.



Take this ad for tea, I know it's for tea without even understanding the print, I understand most of the add and the call to action without even reading a word, and the scan leads you to purchase. Very effective and simple, yet the technology doesn't get in the way of the ad nor destroy the image and emotional feeling of the ad. And the end result is that this company went from a print add to actually connecting with me via my iPhone and one step away from the point of purchase. The contrast of the two above images says a lot about what we call experience design. Why is that some companies are able to communicate their product or idea so much better than others who are "selling" the same thing? It is the property of the Golden Circle, the positioning of what you believe first inspiring others to believe in you, as described in Simon Sinek's TED talk: How Great leaders Inspire Action.

If you believe that the user's experience should be an experience they can understand and communicate (sans tech support), then you are going to inspire Users to USE your product or service.]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/294-inspiring-use <![CDATA[Bi-Focus]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/293-bi-focus This post discusses:
• the hospitality, music, and internet industry
• a start-up to be aware of
• a cool iPhone app
• two ways to direct your strategy
• the key to successful poetry

Last night, I went to the ACE Hotel in midtown to meet up with Edward Aten founder of Swift.fm in ACE's very popular bar. swif.fm Swift.fm is an amazing start-up that allows users to add audio information to tweets creating a radio-station style playlist of music (check out my office ambiance channel here) which is viral-enabled to allow users to engage content in various formats and contexts by highlighting their musical perspective. They are also a breath away from being the #1 Music-specific twitter client by traffic, and with their new platform of locked down branded-wrapped embeddable channels they are soon to be a swift force in creating brand identity, engagement and social conversation on the web (well even more than they already are). We talked about the future of Swift.fm and the future of the web and which direction we see it going: a direction that other like minds across town are quickly developing at diaspora* diaspora I had two eyes open all night as that not only am I interested in the internet (as it is my field) and especially as it relates to social networking and music (as that is my love), but also because I build social media plans for hip hotels and program their facebook pages in FBML. We toured the hotel and it’s famed analog sound system, met with the event planners and tried a variety of their special brews. Independently, Ed and I both took pictures of the Hotel/bar and showed them to each other, both photos were snapped with our iPhones, yet with surprisingly different results. My photo on the left, doesn’t look cool, but points out one of the cool features of ACE and it’s brilliant design; the curation of space through text and messaging throughout the space Such as this great use of the exit sign:



 Ed’s photo on the right is much more cool looking and stylized in presentation as that he took it with the new app Hipstamatic which creates some really incredible shots (I have been using it exclusively ever since for all my photos), however his photo doesn’t show how cool ACE is, instead it shows how ACE is just like any other bar, hip or not, across the world, and in essence the backbone to the bar, that it is in the end a “bar”. There is what you present and there is how you present it. Success is a synergy between the two. The great poet Terry Hummer once told me the secret to poetry was to take a flower and expand it’s beauty and properties to become as vast as the cosmos, or to take the cosmos out of the sky and wrap into a language and understanding so tight that you can hand to someone like a flower.]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/293-bi-focus <![CDATA[AdtechSF | Key Takeaways]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/290-adtechsf-key-takeaways
At AdTech San Francisco last week, I caught up on current trends and insights involving the digital marketing world. Lot of great insights from speakers such as Jamie Cohen Szulc - CMO of Levi Strauss, Chis Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, and some cool tools from Chicago based Networked Insights. Here are some highlights.

"It's not about selling, it's about being coveted... and creating a consumer experience." Jamie Cohen Szulc of Levi Strauss captured the core of marketing circa 2010 with that one statement. Citing that the general public has uploaded more content to YouTube in the last few months than TV networks have in years. It's this kind of data that backs up Levi's daring plan to let customers generate content for the brand. One of many examples was their "Go Forth" campaign. Users are encouraged to re-write a constitution and critically think about what America and an American brand (Levi's) means to them. This is the kind of branding I love! It's the perfect example of having a conversation with consumers, rather than shouting about how great a brand is.

"Do things for the consumer and they will carry forth your brand." Jamie Cohen Szulc was so jam-packed with great case studies it's hard to pick just one. You have to check out Compare the Meerkat. Apparently, "Compare the Market" is an over-used search term for insurance aggregators. This brand seized the opportunity to create a whole new category with a Russian accented meerkat! Their results were through the roof.

The "swipe" will replace the "click." As Chris Anderson explains, the iPad is saving the day for the 21st Century magazine business. Wired magazine is taking the canape version of print magazines onto the iPad along with a level of interaction and experience that the web doesn't quite deliver yet. Consumers will "swipe" the screen simulating a page turn from a magazine. As digital marketers, our job will be to stop the finger. Some ideas? 360 product view, interactive games, and playing with engaging characters.

A tool to effectively harness the spectrum of online consumer conversations? Networked Insights has an exciting new tool to capture the conversation and buzz around your brand called Social Sense™ . It translates all interactions into insights that can drive marketing and brand communication. Finally! There's a way to filter and make sense out of all the noise generated by social media, chat rooms, online cafes and anywhere else your customer is 'talking' online.
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/290-adtechsf-key-takeaways <![CDATA[unConference Guest Blog: Gitamba Saila-Ngita Founder of The Retrospective]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/287-unconference-guest-blog-gitamba-saila-ngita-founder-of-the-retrospective Today we are very excited to have Gitamba Saila-Ngita a freelance strategist from San Francisco and founder of the outstanding site: The Retrospective as a guest Blogger for DMDxd.

Gitamba was a part of the Unconference we hosted last month in partnership with Wenovski and Parsons, and will be joining us again next week for our 2nd unconference March 23rd at Parsons.

Last month, while floating amongst the flashing cameras, models, and elite fashion parties that make up New York City during fashion week, I was invited by Jesse Poe, Associate Producer for DMDxd, to participate in a design-centered thought strategy unConference, hosted by Wenovski. I must admit, though, that I rarely enjoy going to conferences because either a) I'm reluctantly there for work or b) the conferences are nothing more than a podium for people to wax poetic on their own importance.

Thankfully, the Wenovski unConference (billed as such due to its largely participant-driven nature that shunned typical conference requirements such as fees and sponsored presentations) fit into neither category. Populated by some of New York's sharpest minds in anthropology, urban planning, architecture and technology, our group discussed how design-centric ways of thinking can solve every-day problems, and maybe even change the world.



In my view, good design permeates almost everything around us. Designers, regardless of their discipline, strive to solve problems of all shapes and sizes; maybe they're re-evaulating the placement of a door handle, or envisioning what colors will best echo a brand's core values. What started out as a loose conversation among 20 guests holed up in a Parsons' New School classroom turned more serious when we were given the task of brainstorming how we might solve societal and environmental issues affecting New York. Some of the topics we discussed revolved around the utilization of free and unused space, how to galvanize community identity through group initiatives and (my personal favorite) how to to dispel the fear of interaction in gritty New York City.



As a group, we voted on initiatives to battle the ironic resistance to human interaction in a city as populated as New York. Would it be shirts color-coded to specific moods? Or digital umbrellas that would display your interests, giving your fellow man an opportunity to relate? If you've ever been lucky enough to brainstorm with design or advertising creatives, you know the pitfalls (and promise) of having so many people simultaneously generating ideas. Luckily, Humantific's Garry VanPatter set clear parameters that let us tap into our knowledge, stories and experiences in ways that informed our ideas. And even more luckily, Petri Tanninen was kind enough to jot down all the thoughts and ideas of that brainstorm session at the Wenovski Design Thinking Ning page.



For me, the greatest take away from the unConference was the utter ease in which such various disciplines came together, and how new and innovative ideas followed. One amazing perk of the unConference was being able to ideate solutions with other people free of the bottle neck of client approval. What if a meeting to create a new building, park or playground was organized using this interdisciplinary approach? What if rigid governmental bureaucracy was replaced with groups working in balance, rhythm and harmony, all design school staples of thought? I love being challenged and engaged by thinking from outside my realm of experience because it allows me to start seeing a bigger, more holistic picture. Being in a room with someone like Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox, who works as an architect when not indulging his many other talents, allowed me to tap into his experiences with design and architecture in China. His knowledge was influential in thinking of the ways in which a city like New York could make its populous not just friendlier to each other, but also to isolated tourists and travelers.

 

There are several more unConferences in the works so take a look and participate if there's one coming your way. And special thanks to Jesse Poe and Rowland Hobbs of DMDxd for the invitation, and to Arne van Oosterom of Design Thinkers for coordiating the event. When design is truly great we don't think of it as design, but as the ways we interact with the world around us. Imagine if we got that feeling from every aspect of our day-to-day lives, and how powerful and liberating that would be.

More coming on the next unConference!
-----
As a strategist, Gitamba Saila-Ngita has helped brands develop strategy and content for the ever changing landscape of digital media. Clients have included Odopod & Evolution Bureau (EVB) on such brands as Pepsi, PayPal, and Gatorade.  He cut his teeth in the marketing and branding world at Stage Two Consulting (S2C), a firm that specializes in branding, social media, and product marketing. There he worked on accounts including Boxee, Netgear, and Sonos.  In his spare time Gitamba founded The Retrospective, an online publication focused on uncovering trends and giving insight into global consumer culture.

]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/287-unconference-guest-blog-gitamba-saila-ngita-founder-of-the-retrospective <![CDATA[E-commerce and Brick & Mortar Retail Duke It Out]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/286-e-commerce-and-brick-mortar-retail-duke-it-out ]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/286-e-commerce-and-brick-mortar-retail-duke-it-out <![CDATA[In The Press]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/280-in-the-press ]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/280-in-the-press <![CDATA[Unconference]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/279-unconference Arne van Oosterom (Owner and Strategic Design Director at DesignThinkers, a strategic design agency based in Amsterdam, founder of WENOVSKI design thinkers network) at Parsons The New School for Design.

A collection of 20 great cross-disciplinary thinkers from San Francisco to Finland and in between, met for 4 hours to discus solutions for urban design.

The unconference started as a mummer, quickly raised to a rumble of fantastic ideas and thousands of possible directions for making world of design better.

After an hour of this exciting fray of thinking, GK VanPatter (Co-Founder, HUMANTIFIC,  CoFounder, at NextDesign Leadership Institute Founding Editor at NextD Journal), stepped in with his own brand of design, making sense of cross-disciplinary innovation.

And make sense of it we did!

Broken into 3 timed sessions we:
  • discovered the issues we all had burning within us and were addressing in our own ways
  • distilled them all down to the most potent and effectual problem to solve, the problem which when solved would begin to unravel the tensions around other problems and open them up for solving
  • finally coming up with 50 possible solutions to that one issue
Amazing day. Amazing minds. Amazing results that got at the heart of not just possible directions for making world of design better, but possibly making the design of our world better through better interactions.


Look for more on this Unconference what we learned, what we can share, and what/when the next one will be!
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/279-unconference <![CDATA[The Morning After]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/278-the-morning-after (Part 2 of Tomorrow Will Change the World)

Well it’s the morning after the day the world would change and well, has anything changed?

Jobs wrangled his illusive tablet unicorn out of Apple’s enchanted woods and it’s called the iPad. The internet exploded not with acclaim, but with jokes. One thing I learned as a musician was never name your band something that can easily be punned upon. Why? because for lack insight or time to investigate, it’s easier for writers to bash something than to support it. If there’s a joke to made then it’s the first step on that slippery path, and the iPad slid right down it.

Was it a game changer? Not really, but we can’t say until it is implemented. My greatest hope was to see 3G packages for existing iPhone users who purchased the Pad, and bundled subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. But there is still hope, even in it’s highly sterilized control freak OS.

It’s also the morning after one of the best speeches since Roosevelt, and if you watched the ignoble arm folding of the right during or Fox news afterward (just for torture), it wasn’t a game changer either, according to them.

However, this morning I was encouraged as I stopped at my local newsstand, and saw the positive headlines topping almost every paper, and it made me think. It’s not so much the product, but the way we react to it. It is not so much what is given to us, but what we choose to do with it.

So my challenge is this, even though Terry McGraw probably woke up with a horse head in his bed, we can still have bundled content, we can have cool innovation. Who will join us?

I’d like to see my favorite print in full glorious color, hyperlinked, and with video all in one spot. We don’t have to wait for Time or SI to lead the way, what about the The Baffler, or Yeti? And new hardware to interface. Adobe, Wacom? How about a slip case that holds the iPad on one side and on the other side a pen tablet to write/draw on, bundled with subscription services for university text books?

It’s the morning after the day the world would change and nothing stopped it from snowing in NYC, but you know the snow looks nice!
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/278-the-morning-after <![CDATA[Tomorrow Will Change the World]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/277-tomorrow-will-change-the-world
Apple will drag the elusive unicorn out of the woods and unveil their Tablet (whatever it will be called), and the world will be a different place just like it was after the iPod.

 

Maybe?

I doubt it, but it will be a wonderful new way to create, engage and connect. A new tool to build around to work with, to enrich our lives. Should be a step up or two from it's former Newton. So game changer or not, it will be exciting.

You can read proposed specs and uses on every site & blog on the web, however the most important thing to think about for this 'game-changing' moment is if this does change the world, are you ready for it?

The iPod smashed the music industry and then rebuilt it. It also turned music back into a staple of culture.

Technology, as it advances, changes business and the way we work, how will this new Apple device change your business? And if it is not a game changer, will you be able to use it regardless in an effective way for your business.

Here is a chart showing what others have allegedly filed apps for according to Flurry:


The print industry is rubbing it's hands in expectation of this glorious day. How are you going to use it?



]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/277-tomorrow-will-change-the-world <![CDATA[New York Times Charges. Is it Smart?]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/276-new-york-times-charges-is-it-smart-
Makes sense, people have always paid for the New York Times at the newstand or to open their door in the morning and find it waiting there, so why not on-line.

I clicked a survey yesterday on this very topic and the results showed that some 70% thought it should be free. Because journalist should work for free? Absolutely not, but because we have come to believe that everything on the internet should be free. How we got to that idea collectively is the subject of other posts, but it is true, free is the current currency of on-line life.

So is the Times doing something smart?

Well smarter than the Wall Street Journal, in that incidental visitors, arriving no more than once in a while through searches and links, would be unaffected by the new system. This is good as that Wired.com has proven it is the long-tail that is of greatest importance of all. Over 70% of the searches performed leading to their site are for articles more than 2 years old.

Blocking information is like cutting off people’s water, it just seems wrong, but if we can’t afford to pay for serious journalism, we would suffer much greater problems in the future. As an example look at the age of miss-information that Fox “News” has created.

What is very smart in all of this is that the New York Times is thinking ahead. The deluge of e-Readers that are about swamp the market will most likely funnel down into a paid prescription sort of package, as that internet providers will not be able to squeeze a third monthly charge for access. Your home connection, your phone and your tablet. It just won’t fly. But wrap that up together in a package with different content packages and I’ll buy it.

The most important thing is that as technology steps into this new decade you will see an advance in e-readers that will make the hype for the Apple tablet seem without basis. Flexible screens, that you can fold and shove into your bag will be the tipping point for a complete exodus to digital news, as it will no longer make sense, neither environmentally nor economically, to produce a majority of printed news. Having begun to step into the waters of paid subscription again, the New York Times will, even if running a skeleton crew, still be alive for this new time of jubilee that will once again reposit newspapers as pillars of wealth as well as culture.

Whatever the Apple Tablet may turn out to be, based on the speculation of what it is purported to be, they are missing the boat. I don’t need an expensive one-sided laptop. But an affordable flexible reader that has my choice of content, that I can follow hyperlinks for further exploration or word/fact look ups, email articles to my friends, see videos attached to the news, fold up and shove in my bag; that will be a game changer, and worthy of subscription fees. I’m glad to see NY Times getting ready for that kind of game.

I’m also glad that subscribers to the physical paper will get free access to the site, that is fair and makes sense, I love reading the Times in my hands, but for passing articles and information on to friends and clients, the on-line site is essential. And will hold me over till the future arrives.
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/276-new-york-times-charges-is-it-smart- <![CDATA[Do Mobile Campaigns Work? Yes]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/275-do-mobile-campaigns-work-yes American Redcross. It's simple, texting "HAITI" to 90999 makes a $10 donation. $22 million according the to New York Times.

The gravity of the need, the compassion of people, and the simplicity of HOW you can help, made one of their most successful campaigns of all time.

Do mobile campaigns work? Yes. Compliments to the American Redcross for not only helping people, but for making it so easy for others to help them help people.


]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/275-do-mobile-campaigns-work-yes <![CDATA[M.I.A. vs. Verizon: Going Beyond Social Media]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/274-m-i-a-vs-verizon-going-beyond-social-media
 
Here at DMDxd we try to lead by example. We see things that are about to go wrong and promote the good before it goes bad. But sometimes it just goes bad. What can you do?

Not only has social media, or perhaps better said dynamic media (as all media should  be soical), become a force to be reckoned with it has also become a issue of corporate stance. If you now say to a mega-national, I am going to post how much you suck on my Facebook, they have corporate speak to combate and control that, which in essence makes people feel like once again they have no power.

The lesson to be put in our pipes and smoked is not the, hey if they make the effort and waste their time we might have to due some damage control (see United Breaks Guitars and it's more than 7 million views, first showed to me after a Thanksgiving dinner with my whole family watching, if only your company had that kind of viewer attention), but hey in the end we really don't know who our clients are.

That's a problem, not knowing who your clients are.

Enter M.I.A. who's 2007 underground-cum-mainstream hit "Pull Up the People", still to this day one of the best party songs of all time, became overwhelmingly famous with the success of Slum Dog Millionaire and their use of her undeniable sound in "Paper Planes".

So her new record, the first since all this amazing world wide success: Myspace views 29, 190, 328  and 133,398 Facebook fans, is to feature a hit about how she spent 3 hours on the phone with Verizon and still didn't get her problem resolved.

This song features actual Verizon workers singing with her about how the service, how shall I say, sucks!

Listen to Pull up the People, or Paper Planes from Slum Dog Millionaire and tell me if she has a voice that millions will hear or not?

I hate to point out the negative, but sometimes you have to, so that others don't do the same. This record has already gone to press, there is NO damage control. It has gone beyound social media, kids will be dancing to how bad Verizon treated her. Must I repeat, you have kids dancing to your poor serivce, there is no damage control. It would have just been better to have had more phone staff available to fix problems for a company who serivces so many people, of all levels.

Now if she'd only write a song about all my dropped calls on AT&T, I might get my service improved before I break contract.
 
 
 
 
 
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/274-m-i-a-vs-verizon-going-beyond-social-media <![CDATA[What Will Your Site Look Like on a Tablet]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/273-what-will-your-site-look-like-on-a-tablet
ddd
 
 
Geekdom has been drooling over the coming of the Apple Tablet. Why?

The simple hope that it will be a game changer, like the iPod was a decade ago, or the iPhone was just a few years ago.

The important question is what will your website, blog, magazine look like on a tablet and more importantly are you ready for it?

With the late adoption of the iPhone/mobile platform and still complete failure of major magazines such Playboy to respond in a current and creative manner, you can be sure this might be your chance to get a leg up.

Many have already cued up, have you?

Here is an example of what Sports Illustrated is planning:









What will your brand look like on a tablet?


Thank you to Business Insider for these images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
]]> http://www.dmdxd.com/blogs/post/273-what-will-your-site-look-like-on-a-tablet