A good deal of companies maintain a Facebook page as part of their web presence, for marketing, hiring new employees, even for customer support. It’s an excellent medium to interact with users, both to release information quickly as well as to receive feedback. The following are a few tips on how to increase your user interaction:
Make your profile noticeable, this is what your audience sees first
Your profile pic
“Profile pictures matter. The site feature that attracted most attention on Klout, Facebook and StumbleUpon was the profile photo.” Source Mashable: Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile — Literally
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Written by Frank Gaine
As outlined in our last blog entry, we reviewed over twenty automotive and motorcycle mobile websites in Europe and the US. We also had a look at the native apps (available through the app store) that these manufacturers provided. An interesting trend has emerged – the move away from native app towards more capable mobile websites.
Mobile websites versus Desktop websites
It seems that fewer and fewer manufacturers are prepared to tolerate their users muddling through the full desktop version of their websites while using mobile phones. This is the case even though some of these sites perform quite well on the small screen (if you count the need to zoom and scroll horizontally apart). Instead, most provide bespoke sites for mobile browsers. In general these mobile web sites can be described as scaled downversions of the desktop website in terms of content, functionality and needless to say physical dimension.
Mobile web versus Native App
Inevitably the question is asked whether or not to create a sumptuous mobile app whose content can be curated and that can perform morequickly. The answer all depends on what you need it to do. Unless you have to rely on functionality that only an app can perform then the answer seems to be – build a mobile website. Mobile websites generally cost less to build, need less specialized skills to put together and are quicker to market.
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XMatthew Carney
E-mail:
matthew.carney@mediacatalyst.com
Info:
Through the power of new technologies, innovation and imagination I am in awe of the possibilities for connecting and engaging people in today’s creative and dynamic marketing space. And, inspired by the possibilities for brands and organisations to impact peoples lives for the better, which I see evolving by the day.Posts by the author (3)Posted on December 23, 2011 by Matthew Carney
MediaCatalyst recently carried out a review of over twenty automotive and motorcycle mobile websites in Europe and the US. The insights of our review brought up some interesting trends and design practices that we would like to share with you and invite commentary.
Visual Design and Navigation
In terms of visual design approach, sites fall into two broad categories. There are the experiential sites and there are the more functional sites (Audi USA/Vespa and Renault/VW respectively). The former presents larger, more lavish imagery whereas the latter focuses more on presenting comprehensive and obvious navigation that aims to get the user to where they want to go as soon as possible.
Sites now offer dynamic navigation brought to you by the wonders of HTML5 and CSS 3. This is where additional navigation options are shown in neatly expanding or collapsing accordions or where navigation appears almost immediately from the sides of the page.
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MediaCatalyst has been working with Sony’s in-house development team at London Studios since 2009, joining in a dynamic partnership to develop a web presence to showcase such titles as Killzone 2 and SingStar, plus involvement with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s Digital Comics in 2008. Because MediaCatalyst is known for expertise in integrating game data with a live site, the two entities began working together on their DanceStar Party game site.
DanceStar Party is much like SingStar, the hugely successful karaoke series initially launched in 2004, the new addition to the family being focused on dance rather than singing. The user can use a hand-held controller in conjunction with the web cam to mirror moves shown on the screen and be scored on personal performance, plus be able to compete with others across the digital platform. Continue reading →
When MediaCatalyst were asked to redesign the World Press Photo website we were thrilled to take on such an exciting project. Since partnering with World Press Photo for the first time in 2004, MediaCatalyst have always shared a passion for Photojournalism and it’s power to Inspire Understanding of the world around us. Being lead designer, I knew this shared passion would be the key to redesigning their new website and bringing the brand to life online.
From the beginning of the project I was aware that close collaboration within the MediaCatalyst team (IA, UX design, technical strategists and strategists) as well as with the client would be essential for success. This process began from the onset with intensive interactive workshops and regular working ideation sessions throughout the project. This was an essential part of building a solid working foundation for all areas of the site, such as UX and CMS. There were many areas to be explored as part of a team, with everyone working in the same direction. During the design phase we encountered 3 main design challenges, working with large amounts of CMS content, showcasing images on the homepage and presenting contextual information throughout the site.
How to present CMS managed images
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The beginning of 2011 brought two very interesting new developments to the MC tech team: a new exiting project for the world renowned photojournalism foundation World Press Photo and the release of Drupal 7, one of the leading open source content management systems. From the onset we were aware using a “fresh” new dot-release (as early as 6 months after launch) comes with many challenges, however, we decided to give it a go!
Why we chose Drupal 7 for World Press Photo
To start off we’ll explain why we went for Drupal 7 instead of Drupal 6 or another CMS system like for instance Joomla, Typo 3 or EZ-publish. While all previously mentioned CMS systems would have been suitable candidates we went for Drupal because of its advanced out of the box capabilities such as custom content types, taxonomy and the pretty much default installed Views module which when combined allows for the creation of highly customised sites. On top of that Drupal also has a very grown up user community and a huge user contributed code repository. Drupal also has an advanced theming system which allows the flexibility to skin pages on any level required and enables front-end developers to work with the modules that back-end developers have written.
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XMatthew Carney
E-mail:
matthew.carney@mediacatalyst.com
Info:
Through the power of new technologies, innovation and imagination I am in awe of the possibilities for connecting and engaging people in today’s creative and dynamic marketing space. And, inspired by the possibilities for brands and organisations to impact peoples lives for the better, which I see evolving by the day.Posts by the author (3)Posted on July 25, 2011 by Matthew Carney
Our partnership shares a passion and belief in the power photojournalism has to inspire understanding and shape our world. Over the years MediaCatalyst has developed World Press Photo’s digital offering and helped the foundation to improve elements of the online experience along with ongoing strategic advice.
In 2009 World Press Photo asked MediaCatalyst to identify how their site could be improved to support their evolving user needs, making it accessible and useful for a variety of audiences.
www.worldpressphoto.org before the redesign
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XBrian Gillespie
E-mail:
brian.gillespie@mediacatalyst.com
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Inspired and motivated to humbly participate in the amazing flow of great thoughts and ideas delivered every day by smart people around the world on the subject of design, creativity, innovation and the impact on people and organizations. And, of course, powered by our MC espresso machine!Posts by the author (8)Posted on June 9, 2011 by Brian Gillespie
One of the early and simplest aspirations of those in the design community who feel that design can and should play a role in the formation and realization of business strategy is that design not simply be used in a tactical, ad hoc fashion…later in the process of bringing a product to market…just to add aesthetics and make something look good. Over the years there have been enough market success stories to allow for this expanded role. Many companies would even describe themselves as design-driven. This has expanded the role of the designer and design strategist.
However, when design has succeeded in making its way up the strategy ladder to have a more front-end role, communication between business strategists and design strategists has not always been the smoothest. Separate left and right brains have not always easily been able to produce a shared creativity. The language is not the same. The thinking is not the same.
I have always advocated that the best-case scenario driving innovation by design is the designer as design thinker who can move up the process to become a business thinker and naturally integrate the two. Why? Because the designer cannot just designthink but can also designdo and is in a great position to translate the strategy into action by producing a design. I like the designer as strategic designer! Continue reading →
XBrian Gillespie
E-mail:
brian.gillespie@mediacatalyst.com
Info:
Inspired and motivated to humbly participate in the amazing flow of great thoughts and ideas delivered every day by smart people around the world on the subject of design, creativity, innovation and the impact on people and organizations. And, of course, powered by our MC espresso machine!Posts by the author (8)Posted on May 30, 2011 by Brian Gillespie
Whether or not you agree with Bruce Nussbaum, one of the leading media voices to support the approach to design inherent in design thinking, and his recent highly publicized declarations that design thinking has been a failed experiment; it may be useful in that it may provoke a broadening of the discussion around what it takes to create great design.
One aspect of the design of business upon which I would love to see such discussion is the role of design in the creation of competitive advantage. I have always believed that design thinking is most powerful when paired successfully with the elements of business thinking and that this happy marriage can provide great momentum to the process of producing market innovations. Market innovations that provide competitive advantage often exhibit one of its key characteristics…they differentiate the business from competitors in the market place. I believe it is the responsibility of business designers to understand how to achieve this and to continually innovate the tools and methods of design to achieve this. It is core component of the strategy formation process and an important area in which the role of designers and design managers can move upstream. It is strategic design.
In the design innovation process insights drive ideas and the deeper the understanding generated by your insights the more plentiful, inspiring and diverse your ideas are likely to be. Design research methods that engage with customers and users are the principal way that designers gain the insights that reveal unmet needs. Customer personas are an important by-product of such research and provide a lens through which empathic designers can imagine and validate ideas and concepts aimed at satisfying their goals and needs. However, I would like to suggest a desk research tool that builds on the primary research and resultant personas and can help focus in on potential unmet needs and which are not provided by competitors. The goal of this tool is to identify competitive white space that a business might occupy and which can result in differentiated products and services. The tool is called the competitor customer experience audit. Continue reading →
XBrian Gillespie
E-mail:
brian.gillespie@mediacatalyst.com
Info:
Inspired and motivated to humbly participate in the amazing flow of great thoughts and ideas delivered every day by smart people around the world on the subject of design, creativity, innovation and the impact on people and organizations. And, of course, powered by our MC espresso machine!Posts by the author (8)Posted on May 4, 2011 by Brian Gillespie
One of the most useful of tools of human-centered strategic design is the persona. They are a wonderful form of synthesis upon completion of primary user research. They become a lens through which design and business teams can define users; understand their goals, needs, behaviors, and motivations; and remain objective when determining the features that may satisfy those needs.
However, I would almost guarantee that from one design agency to the next you would be hard-pressed to find a consistent definition of personas, why they are useful, how to create them, who should create them, and how to use personas during the design and marketing of new products, services, communications, and well…just about anything that can be designed for people! And because agencies present personas in different ways to the marketplace, businesses are also often unclear on what qualifies a persona to be a truly reliable and quality persona. Arriving at reliability and quality is a question of degree. The degree of insight and information the design team has at their disposal, the means in which it was obtained, and the skill at surfacing the important dimensions of the persona are critical to building confidence that teams can indeed make important design and business decisions that they can stand by.
The questions of degree in the creation process look something like this…
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