Fame-seeking is on the rise.
To get paid to be who you already are? No training required? Generous stipend? What is the catch? Oh, Ok. I’ll get used to those cameras. Can I get my check now?
In reality, “reality show” stardom seems rare, short lived, cheap, and doomed. Not that it’s stopping people from trying.
The idea of being able to make a living by being a media star is fueling headliner hoaxes to multiple births — All done in hopes of snagging a show. Alternatively, some stars are watching their carefully crafted public image fall apart.
On one hand, this all makes me sick to my stomach. On the other hand, at heart I’m a media junkie. I love advertising. I love branding.
And they’re really missing the point. The point of branding isn’t just making you recognizable to a large audience. It’s making you recognizable to the right audience for the right reasons. Otherwise you are going to suffer brand dilution.
Case in point: Spam.
No, not the junk mail sort. The canned meat.
The word spam has become so tied to the pop culture definition, its original meaning is replaced. There isn’t much competition for Spam (with a capital S), but some services that see that type of brand dilution really suffer. Think about Kleenex. What is a Kleenex? A tissue, which is easy to replicate. Enter generics. Xerox machines vs. ‘xeroxing’ something. Some online services, like Google, are meeting the same Proper-Noun-to-Lowercase-Verb death.
So while people in reality shows are being caricatured into personalities that can be picked up by the audience before the first commercial break, I hope people watching reality shows are clever enough to realize what is going on.
People in “reality shows” do not get to promote themselves, they end up promoting an assigned societal role. They’re promoting what the editing room needed: The Whiner, The Loopy Blond, The Fighter, The Jerk, etc. While they are unique and special snowflakes, we won’t learn that from watching their reality show.
More info on the term brand dilution:
http://moneyterms.co.uk/brand-dilution/
MEX: Mobile User Experience has a good set of videos of the presentations. Looks like a great event!
I meant to post this last spring, *chagrin*
The May 09 lineup is free to watch, the Dec09 lineup is paid. From the good stuff in May, it’s tempting.
Manifesto #1: User interface design is key to leadership in application stores
Manifesto #2: Achieving great tactile experience is a subtle art
Manifesto #3: Customer research methodology must be enhanced to close the reality gap
Manifesto #4: Changing economics will facilitate increased diversity in handset portfolios
Manifesto #5: Investment in input and display modalities must increase
Manifesto #6: The next billion customers are already here
Manifesto #7: The delicate art of balancing commercial imperative and user experience
Manifesto #8: Location data forms an integral part of user experience
Business Week has an interesting article “Will Work for Praise: The Web’s Free-Labor Economy” By Stephen Baker with the descriptor line: “This online business model has Americans happily toiling for attention on for-profit sites that don’t pay them money ”
This is a subject that cuts close to the bone for me, since I am often asked (and provide) information for free.
Why would anyone work for free?
If you are not familiar with the No-Spec Movement:
Spec work is defined as producing a piece for a potential client with no guarantee that your work will be chosen and/or paid for.
When put that way, spec work just doesn’t make sense. I mean, doing the work in the hopes of maybe getting paid for it? Who does that? No one outside of the creative community, that’s for sure. Yet this is becoming a common practice throughout the design industry, and companies are just preying upon the young and inexperienced. ~http://www.no-spec.com/articles/just-say-no/
Well, it’s not just in the design community. In professions like auto mechanics, doctors, accountants, etc – going in and saying “Why don’t you fix it, then I’ll see if I like it, and if I do I will pay you” would get you kicked out the door (or in the teeth). At very least they’d laugh at your joke. But it’s very common in design work and serious to the future of designers being able to make a living off their talent and investment of learning the skills and software. And keeping up with hundreds of dollars of industry standard hardware and software.
Spec work is often justified as a response to a lack of reputation or trust that used to be evident in a client list or portfolio. With the democratization of design and numerous ways to learn design online, there is an increase in the supply of new designers. This is a good thing. But is the plunge in the market value of design a market response to supply and demand in a free market or something more sinister?
I want to draw a distinction here: I am concerned for people trying to make a living. I suspect the vast majority of free work is done by people who are hobbyists, occasionally viewing it as supplementing their income. When they do need to survive off the sale of their work, they face an uphill battle to convincing people that what they do is suddenly worth of payment.
That’s the difficult leap Stephen Baker’s article and No-Spec highlight. Why would businesses pay for something they can get for free (or very cheap)? They encourage the profit models, but the models rely on willing participation.
In short, working for free is a luxury.
Only people who are already able to support themselves, or who live off others, can afford to work for free.
Why would anyone work for less?
When pitched unpaid work, I cannot tell you how many times a client has said, “I’m doing you a favor to let you do this. You can put it in your portfolio!” as if paid work cannot belong in a portfolio. Ditto to the line “I’m letting you call all the creative shots, so I don’t need to pay you.”
For design, part of this might be fed by the belief that design is “Art.” It snuggles with the Myth of the Starving Artist – hell-bent on creating and sharing their creative vision with the world and not caring about money, often flinging it away as it would taint their purity.
This myth also exists in other professions, particularly ones “traditionally” held by females like nursing and teaching, with a slightly different, but familiar, tone.
This was recently addressed by the brilliant danah boyd:
Let me addressing education specifically for a moment. Rather than addressing the issue head-on and finding market solutions that value teachers, we have created a cultural expectation of altruistic teachers. We run long NYTimes stories on individuals who grew miserable in their first career and came to teaching to make a difference. In fact, good teachers are almost always discussed as saints who gave up everything for the good of the students. While those individuals should be commended, shouldn’t this also be discussed as market failure? For each brilliant, highly motivated teacher out there, how many are there who aren’t particularly qualified or good at their job? And, more importantly, what are the costs of not incentivizing potentially amazing teachers to enter the profession by any means other than guilt?
Encouraging people to invest time and effort in unpaid activities is nothing new, but the perception that is what you should be doing seems to be linked into a guilt zeitgeist. Altruism, environmentalism, and volunteer work saw a polarized swing in the last few years as big business and profits were demonized. [I still have difficulty believing making money erodes your soul, and taking a loss somehow strengthens it. How can you give unless you first "have"? Is making a living inherently unethical?]
In addition to expectation, this is trained belief. We are taught “Sharing is Good.” And it is. That’s how society stays polite and communal. But the value of work and ownership should stay strong.
It’s also part of a pattern. Consider primary school, when students write reports for “free” (they don’t consider grades payment, but the gold stars are nice). In secondary school, they are required to work for free as volunteers (they don’t consider meeting college requirements or honors society admission payment, but the social boost is nice). No wonder it’s easy to find people willing to donate their expertise. We’ve been doing it for years. We just didn’t have corporations profiting from our willingness.
It’s almost a relief to hear some kids refuse to do chores unless paid. But that’s not out of any sort of realization that the work has value – they’d never offer to pay back their parents for the years of putting up with them. Sadly, they’re just being snots.
To go back to “Sharing is Good,” I posit “Trading is Better.” With trade you must cognitively accept that what the other person has (1) legally belongs to them, and (2) has intrinsic value.
The pain point is that the value of information and design work is being redefined. Even the ownership is under question.
To complicate the issue of people giving away their time and effort for free (or on the cheap), there is internet movement of Free Culture, Creative Commons, and Piracy. This post is already in the tl;dr zone. For a really interesting discussion about the legal ethics and issues, check out the Berkman Center for Internet & Society Podcast.
But the argument of what “should” be free and what “should” be paid (and how much should be charged) will be continuing for a long time. I just have a vested interest in making sure Design doesn’t go the way of knitting.
At issue: Is it ethical to offer advertisers to buy space in your game and then offer players to earn game credits (or boosts, etc) for completing information or offers?
It certainly is profitable. For the popular games, advertisers are willing to pay a premium. Added bonus: Most social games target a particular affluent demographic. [Such as stay-at-home mothers with internet who like animals, or college age males with mobile phones who like fantasy sports leagues.] Because of that targeted audience, advertisers can easily get their products in front of people who might be interested in them with this method.
It should be a win-win.
But…
1) The quality of the leads is questionable. Who wants them? I’m not sure what the ROI is, nor do I expect to find numbers on that. But the money is there for game developers and the social platforms they use, because advertisers are willing to buy the space. SuperRewards claims “Our platform average earnings rate is $78 per 1,000 daily active unique users on your application.” Someone wants those email addresses. And savvy players know that’s a red flag. Offering players the chance to get in-game credits for completing offers should work to companies and the players advantage. The game company gets a cut, the advertising company gets a cut, the company selling the product gets a cut and the player gets the service they sign up for and some in-game credits. If players are just wanting credits without the service, they should be buying those directly. Presenting “trial offers” for credits as free lunches is a common misrepresentation. I believe the majority of leads generated are the thrifty, the cheap, and/or the least educated of players. Who wants those leads? People looking for the sucker born every minute?
2) The offers reek of scams. This is somewhat unfair, but has been my experience. I have never completed an offer for points, but I have read some in-game sponsor offer TOS and been amazed. Many of these offers do not make it clear to players that they will be charged a recurring fee for completing offers. A few of the ones I read buried the charge inside legalese-ridden scroll boxes of all caps text at 10pt. Statistics show few people read terms, instead they just click the “I agree” to get the benefit they want. Michael Arrington’s snazzy rant on lead generation (lead gen) in Social Games is worth a read. He points out, with screen shots, examples of indefinite $20/mo subscriptions for asking to text message the answer to of their quiz to their phone, or Video Professor’s charging $300 while the user sees only a $4.95 with free shipping. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
3) Opt-in. Players can always opt to not use sponsor offers. This deflates the whole “scam” arguement for some. You don’t need to buy credits to participate – the offers are quick methods to get ahead. I tend to think this argument is somewhat weak, since I’ve seen so many players through my years of gaming be taken in on these. Most of the time the player blames the game company for allowing that type of “scam offer” on the site. In the case of lead gen, the game is even promoting those offers. Some companies, like Offerpal, dedicate a lot of effort to promoting their advertising policies and quality assurance. But when something goes wrong, the game company gets the blame from the users – even if the player is legally culpable for clicking “I agree.” If you don’t believe me, head over to some forums.
4) Branding. What kind of game are you? Is this offer in line with a game’s branding? If not, then don’t embed it. While the offer is usually appropriate for the target audience, I’ve seen a lot of Viagra text ads on sites branded as family friendly. Part of that is from advertising affiliate companies – even if I’m on a kid site they have my computer marked as an adult demographic with cookies. But again, not many people know about that sort of thing. There is implied endorsement if it is showing up on the game company’s game.
Sponsored Lead Generation deserves serious consideration before being implemented.
Here’s an interesting little periodic table of visualization methods with data tip illustrations. Check out the symbol key to see how they label each method as divergent or convergent thinking and detail, overview, and “overview plus detail.”
This page also shows why more designers need to be involved in the process. Most of the images are cringe-inducing power point slides.
37signals has a blog post “Why We Skip Photoshop” for the prototyping phase. I think it’s an interesting read. And as always, the comments are as interesting as the article.
I am surprised they do not use Fireworks for prototyping, since the Web Layer is created for simple interaction elements like drop downs and links. If they are an Adobe shop, Fireworks creates pixel pretty, interactive comps. It addresses the “Photoshop comps are not clickable” complaint.
But… Let a client see a “looks done” prototype and they tend to think the site is done. Fireworks png with a web layer is not a web site, but looks and acts like one. It’s a movie set facade of a site – no plumbing. It also leads to lengthy discussions of production concerns, like if the logo should be bigger, instead focusing on usability.
The trendy solution to avoid that pitfall is “sketch style.”
Balsamiq seems to reside in the world of application design, but it is a great tool for it.
The best rapid prototyping tool I have seen is Sketchflow. It includes a few default styles (including sketch) and the ability to define custom styles. For prototyping and client response, I’m particularly keen on the client feedback options and the ability to automatically generate a Word document. (Who reads those? I never really understand why they’re required except as reference, but clients keep asking for them.) For an in depth look at Sketchflow, check out the MIX 09 intro video.
But the article’s main point is exactly true: Photoshop is a crummy tool for prototyping. It’s designed for production. It’s awkward and takes a long time to learn. It does not handle type well (even as well as a browser). To redo your work in HTML/CSS after static mockups is inefficient, but a necessary step. Important part is to optimize your time spent on design and prototyping – which is why it’s called “rapid prototyping.”
No rapid prototyping tool I can think of could be as optimized as a pen and paper, but a quick coder is the next logical step. It’s all about getting your ideas into the world as quickly as possible. But in my opinion, there are cases where using prototyping tools is a wise option.
Excellent map of the Interwebs by xkcd. Outdated? Sure. Facebook has seized a good deal of territory from Myspace in the last three years and Myspace Music has broken off as a satellite state. But still and extremely funny infographic considering where virtual world territories converge.
Don’t blame me if you end up reading xkcd comics for a few hours. The guy is brilliant.
Great video interview about Sketching, Designing, and Communication with Mark Baskinger on the ever great Johnny Holland Magazine site.
Recently, I dissed the Dark Crystal as “one to skip” renting on Netflix. I didn’t anticipate the hate that would spawn. I stand firm that the memory of the magic of seeing it as a kid is more valuable than seeing it again – which I guess was more of a fact that I loved it – and watched it as often as possible. It was pivotal in my love of intricate sci-fi fantasy details.
To clarify: The Dark Crystal is a MUST SEE movie. But if you saw it as a kid, you may cringe when you watch it again.
The plot was simple and the solution obvious. Really, it was a movie about the world and it’s inhabitants, with a journey story as a handy excuse to explore. Not like that is anything bad, or anything new. Lord of the Rings was written to create a world for Tolkein’s invented languages. (Seriously, look it up.)
The real problem is that it’s fantasy/ sci-fi – which overwhelmingly rely on special effects. It’s the same problem with books made into movies: Tech can’t rival the richness of the imagination. When you have a master at the helm (like Jim Henson and Brian Froud) and a budget to work with, it’s amazing. Some special effects hold up at any age, some don’t.
Inhuman/Alien puppets hold up extremely well:
Skeksis puppets from the movie "The Dark Crystal"©Incorporated Television Company (ITC)
Gelflings have three facial expressions: blank, blink, and mouth open. Sadness is looking down while blinking. Happiness is leaning back with mouth open. They make great still photos and drawings, though! With the advances of digital animation, we are seriously to the point of “realistic” characters. But Beowolf (2007) and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) kinda proved we don’t quite have the whole digital acting thing down. Or cheap. I think the Gelflings did as good a job as those characters. Lest we forget JarJar.
I love special effects. I love cheesy special effects that are obvious (I’m looking at you, Krull) and elaborate did-they-matte-paint-every-frame special effects (I’m looking at Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.) I don’t always care for plot if the imagery is there, either. (Kurosawa’s Dreams is purposeful awesome vignettes.) But when match strong story and special effects that age well, you get masterpieces (eg. Blade Runner, Alien, E.T.).
If the special effects get in the way by distracting the audience from the story, it breaks that fourth wall and reminds us we are watching a movie. Sometimes that is ok and just part of it – B movies almost make an art of it.
This goes hand in hand with how I feel about interaction design: If peope notice your hand in how it was done, you’re distracting them from their task. Unless it’s they are in they are also designers, and their task is admiring your work. *wink* But really, we don’t like to see the strings on the flying characters unless it’s part of a joke.
So here is my list of awesome 80s sci-fi movie magics: Awesomely bad, and Awesomely good.
You can decide for yourself which is which, but I think they are all fun. Add to in comments if I skipped any! I’m not so into horror, which you can tell from my list. (Maybe I should have put The Gate, Basketcase, and that Garbage Pail Kids movie in? Nah. Evil Dead should be in there though.)
First off, the best of the 70s:
Arranged by year:
Now please stop sending me “wtf, I thought I knew you!” messages on facebook? kthx *^_^*
I blogged about the 10/GUI project, and I got interested in other creative solutions in HCI. So, for fun and science, check out my some of these~
Ivan Sutherland using Sketchpad, 1963
If you are interested in seeing some vintage HCI, check out Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad Demo from 1963.
At 4:25, the interviewer asks “How do you go about communicating with a computer in a graphical sense?”
We are still working on that one.
It’s fascinating that the use of the light pen still involved switches. I work with one hand darting over to my short cut keys as well. It’s no accident that the most common shortcut keys – cut, copy, paste, undo – are set as default in the lower left. I’ve actively sought out a list of the most common user shortcuts in programs (as defined by user testing) with no luck. Please send me one if you know of one!
Also fun to see snapping in a computer program from 1963. Brilliant.
These days, you can check out some Tablet PCs and Wacom Ciniq
The cases are not full room sized, but neither case is lithe. Also seem to take Henry Ford’s “Any color – so long as it’s black” stance on customization.
Screenshot of Minority Report, 2002. ©Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
I hope we never get as complex as that floating 3-d heads up display interface in Minority Report.
Fun for a game, but I’d hate to have to do data entry on that.
The flashiest UI is in sci-fi movies for a good reason: It needs to show information in an engaging visual way and not bore the audience with the reality of implementation. When you are freed from the practical restraints of what is possible to actual build, you can get very creative.
I’m a huge fan of sci-fi for this reason – it aims to show what could be instead of what is here and now, and challenges why things are done the way they are done. The best sci-fi (and fantasy) clearly establish the rules of the universe where the story takes place and explains the way that extraordinary things happen. But sometimes the logical leaps are too far. I’m sure you have a favorite – insert your own example here.
But the eye piece and half gloves are wicked cool. Anyone have one of these?
Nintendo Power Glove
Speaking of bad UI, 1993’s Jurassic Park security computer interface was slow and impractical even without Velociraptor trying to break into the room.
Jurassic Park, 1993. ©Universal Pictures
Overly complex use of visuals instead of normal, tried and true classics is a great movie trick. But it just doesn’t make sense for daily use. In fact, there seems to be a strong backlash to overtly graphic or characterization of features. (Remember Clippy? or Bob?) I still think the talking animatronic help chat widget that is out there is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. It also violates my strong ethical belief that websites should not make noise unless specifically asked to do so. Double bad.
I might not be alone in my repulsion. Most FAQs and Help pages use a format of a lists of the questions with jump links, so a user can quickly scan for the info they need and click. Most also involve a search box for power users. Site navigation is at the top and left, categorized in logical groups, usually with dropdowns to common related subpages.
Data trees are great for planning, but we don’t make them our main UI. And never in 3-d animated flyover mode. Except in movies.
Ditto for voice operated computers in movies. That, my friends, is UI design for movie watchers.
