Sure we do have a bunch of internet cliches – how to make a registration form, how to place ads, how to build websites that are easy to navigate. The list goes on.
It had to be redefined a bit in terms of usability after web 2.0 came into play, but the main point is that studying the usability of web apps (and not only, the usability of daily objects is also studied and put to many tests all the time) has never been more important than now. With the overflow of information a site that’s not well prepared in terms of usability will flunk, even with the best promotion and visual flare. Examples : Google ? A simplistic, pretty ugly site, but it works well and it’s so easy that people using it for the first time know what’s going on. Well the ads might be a bit confusing, but the rest is very thought out. So are we seeing the fall of the dark ages in which we were supposed to do “pweety weebsites” ? Or will the web be divided between “pweety” and “functional” ?
Usability specialists sure know their worth nowadays. It’s time for the rest of the web world to pick up.
Author Archives: IdeaMonster
Creativity can be squashed
The less people in a creative chain, the better. And in some cases, a small team can deliver much greater impact than a big one. But it’s the general marketers and know-it-all’s who really ruin it.
So what can we do ? Sit quiet and watch our work being changed into something we won’t really put our names under ? Or maybe start something on our own and then face the same with the clients of our own? It’s important to keep one’s identity at all times, since it is what defines our creativity. And if others don’t want usability at all in their products then it’s their problem. We can make our own stuff, that’s useable, creative and pretty cool for everyone.
Textures are designers daily bread
Well in many cases they are. Maybe not if you’re into minimal style graphics with just white background and solids, but for all of us that like to do stuff as bitmap as possible textures sure come in handy.
3d modellers would also love some new additions to their texture library. That’s why I’d like to recommend to you a great website that’s all about free textures. Go check out CG Textures !
they’re all about the tablets
The whole world has gone crazy with the tablet-mania recently. Probably just because Apple has decided to release one this january and usually when they release a totally new (for them) product it’s something that redefines the industry. So we’re expecting a different user interface, which of course will then be copied (creatively-stolen ;)) onto many, many websites and again a new trend will show up. Just like reflection under products, glossy buttons and white backgrounds. Stuff like that. I guess when something becomes mainstream (and their products do quickly) people WANT to see similar ideas in other fields – like design and web design. Let’s just hope it’s not gonna be anything 3d, keeping it simple should be the priority. The hype was never so high for apple to deliver, and I fear this might be the first time (not counting apple-tv) when they disappoint their fans. But we’ll wait and see. Not only the device itself, but also how it will influence web design in the near future – and who will incorporate the new ideas into their site first. Only 3 more weeks and it will all be clear.
How to make a viral video
That’s right. Let’s say you want to go viral with something, not commercially yet, but just for yourself. What do you need to consider? Well there are a couple of factors.
First factor is – you need to understand that in viral videos there’s the main “pillar element” that is drawing the people to watch and share it.
What will your pillar element be? The way you shoot the video? An odd performance that’s either impressive or silly ? The less ordinary the better. You can do talking cardboard boxes, bottles drinking themselves, people doing some funny or skillful things etc. The list goes on, but you can be pretty sure that a video of you standing by the wall juggling with three oranges won’t go viral.
The second factor, almost as important as the content itself is how are you going to seed it. Rarely viral videos go viral because someone just finds them on youtube. No, you need to start the process somehow. You probably have friends and/or family, don’t you? Well start off with them, but I know for a fact that they won’t spread it as much as a complete stranger would, especially if it features you. That’s how it works, sorry.
So what can you do? Well video aggregating sites are a good start – there’s a bunch of them, and since most virals qualify somewhat as a “cool thing to watch” sites like that can be useful for planting the video there. If you can suggest it by yourself after registration that’s fine, sometimes an email or two (or a thousand) to the site admin will yield better results. Don’t be afraid to use social networking, tweet it, facebook it, post it to digg, stumble-upon and others. Anywhere you can think of.
The third factor is posting of the video itself. If when asked for a video site you say “youtube” and that’s all that comes to your mind, then it seems that it’s time to crawl from under that rock finally. There are at least 20 big video hosting sites out there, and you can post to all of them using services like tubemogul and similar. The more places the video gets, the more possible views it can have.
What else can you do?
Well if you have a blog or a website of your own, be sure to post it there as well, since nowadays 99% of video sites allow you to embed the video anywhere on the web.
But is that really it ? Can’t we be more creative and think a little bit outside of the box (which is the internet) ?
Sure!
In most cases people like mystery of sorts. Why not print out a bunch of cards with the url (shorten it if it’s long, tinyurl.com should do) and some odd announcment like “this address will change everything”.
And since most viral videos are addressed to fairly young adults, go to a few clubs and either hand the cards around, or just put them on the tables (but do it discretely or the club might kick you out).
Any other frequently occupied places would be good too. Like schools, universities, malls. Just leave it on a bench somewhere too. And if you attend some type of school, why not tell about it to the people in your computer class. We know for sure that in those classes everyone does ANYTHING but what the teacher says, so they are likely to check out your video there.
After you’ve completed all the steps, stop and think – what else can be done? How else can I promote the video? What can I improve in the video itself?
Watch a few viral videos of the type you’re planning to do (see my post about types of viral videos ) and think why were they a success. Then analyze and think some more. Then make another video and repeat. Virals are unpredictable, and that’s what’s best about them. So if it didn’t work the first time, try again, just improve something first.
Virals WITHOUT registration are the best
And here’s an example. I made a site a while ago where every user can create a virtual “wall” and others can post post-it notes all over it with messages. The idea was pretty new at that time (3 years ago +) but I noticed that after advertising the idea on some forums, the site didn’t get many views. It was a week after launch and the user base was still below 50. So I decided that since the site doesn’t share any personal information (it’s only the nickname, no names etc) to drop the email and overall limit the registration to just nickname, password and the register button. So the process of making a wall takes 4 clicks (password repeat being the 3rd).
What happened then ? Well the charts skyrocketed! After another week there was way over a 1000 unique registered users and they were growing fast. After a month the site reached 100,000 unique visitors a day and the registrations were somewhat around 80,000 users. Just because in most cases people DON’T want to confirm anything, or take STEPS to register anywhere. The simpler it is the better, and you can still get the emails by adding them AFTER they register and have a fair amount of time on site already. They’re more likely to add their email (in case they forget the password for example) at that point, than with the registration.
The emails were still about 1 for every 4 people, so 25%, but imagine what would happen if the email verification and a full registration weren’t removed. Sure it’d be 100% emails instead of 25%, but with A LOT less people registered the numbers are still bigger with the 25%. So keep that in mind – the simpler the user input the more successful the viral!
Types of viral videos
A brief recognition of the types of viral videos floating around the web with selected, recent examples.
First type is the “Your face here” viral video, spread most recently (after the stupid dancing elves) by a swedish “our hero” campaign.
Now this is very well made and it shows that a lot of money was put into the production of this viral, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so successful – it seems “real” when you see your own face on all those pictures inside the video. The technology makes it believable and that counts! Here’s the link : Great swedish Viral
The other type is the funky “Whoa! They did a great job” type of regular ads, that don’t try to pretend they’re not an ad. Instead they are so creative and innovative + just plain “new” that people send them out and about anyway. Here’s the most recent “Google Chrome ad video” :
Yet another type is “we know it’s an Ad for a respectable company, but look how stupid it is” and here we have a winner in form of the MSI slim laptops and showing they’re so thin you can catch one with your butt. Most consumers will probably think : Hey , are they showing us where their laptops belong? But all in all it does spread anyway. Here’s a preview :
Then there are those “not yet used ideas” like the guys jumping into pants. The pants are not branded (yet, cause I’m sure the idea will be bought by some major jeans company sooner or later). They did it as a trick and to show their skills, but the marketing value of it is pretty big if used properly. Here’s the video:
Update : I’ve heard that the idea was made into a commercial later on. 5 million youtube views does account for something.
Then there’s the lipdub (just type lip dub in youtube search and you’ll get millions of videos) but that’s not really a comercial thing that much. There are also weird, funny and / or stupid songs videos. The proud winner in that category is microsoft songsmith – which went viral in seconds after the release of the video. The song is so terrible that it spreads unbelievably fast. Oh and they use a mac during the video ;)
Update: And finally, almost forgot about it, there’s the wacky science, represented by mentos + diet coke “experiments”. Don’t forget your lab coats for such videos, that makes them more believable. ;)
But truly anything can be viral, not necessarily commercial in value. Any more ideas?
Predictions and hopes for 2010
I have a couple of predictions that are also almost like wishes as well for the upcoming year.
First of all we need to see IE6 (that’s Internet Explorer 6) go finally. Vanish from the face of the planet. It’s a terrible, slow and ugly browser that makes webmastering a nightmare.
Second of all – we want CSS3 – shadows, rounded corners and many, many more things are finally possible to do without lots of code and lots of cut-up PNG’s!
Third, let’s say NO to all the “put your face here” virals – they’re so repetitive it’s boring (maybe except for the “hero” one from sweden but that’s a much harder job to do!)
We’d love to see some creative new ways to expand the web beyond the web (like google did in it’s google chrome Ad)
And lastly – there might be a tablet announcment from apple – supposed to redefine the way how people interact with mobile devices – well that might change the web in a good way too.
Let’s wait and see where it takes us. And let’s be the ones to do a couple of very first viral campaigns on the new devices. Why not ? :)
London Banksy tour
Well not really. We were planning to go on the (in)famous Banksy tour only to find that in so many places the works are not there at all. Painted over or demolished walls were the most common image.
We finally found a nice route at Camden (When getting out of the Camden Town tube station turn right and then turn left when you pass the canal – then walk along the shore-walk)
First we encountered the global warming one :
Then the boy fishing for graffiti under a bridge:
Finished by one of the famous Banksy rats. All the images are in places that were really hard to reach unless on a boat, making them a bit more impressive that way. The famous “painting over graffiti” was also supposed to be there somewhere but we couldn’t find it.
You can find the map of Banksy in London at Loc.alize.us Banksy Tour of London.
Is this the time to make money with Viral advertising?
Since a good portion of nowadays virals online (especially holiday related but not necessarily) are spread mostly by people with families and what’s most important – jobs – maybe now it finally pays off to guide them to a product itself, not just a hype or a company logo. If so we might get yet another boost in internet sales which are going up constantly anyway with various new ways. E-book virals anyone? That might be a hit of the future and I’m sure to try it as soon as ebooks will be decent (or when apple releases it’s take on the subject – january 26?)
Stupid virals directed to younger audience can also sell a product but it creates at least a two-person chain from wanting something to buying something. Without the middlemen the buying urge can be direct and more successful.
We’ll see what happens next. Aside from the holidays there are also the “office virals” since half the time in the office we spend fooling around online. What better way to waste time than with a funny video or a wacky flash animation with your boss’ face on it. Or you can even shoot your boss out of a catapult in a clever flash game and compare your score with other happy co-workers. The ad is of course for a job agency, and I bet they had a raise in pageviews after. So is holiday-office related viral a thing of the future that we should focus on the most? Probably.
Because all I don’t want for christmas is a PSP ;)
Happy new year! I hope we will see some more creative approaches and no more dancing elves or santas in 2010!
Is team creativity a bullshit myth ?
Is it the spark that comes every once in a while and hits us in the head? Is it an idea that works? Or a skill that we can apply daily and keep up the creative pace?
Is it still creative to copy ideas from others with no real self-implied twist to them? You know, the Bad artists copy, the great artists steal – syndrome. The more I work as a “creative” person, the more I feel how vague and stupid those processes are. There are as many ego’s as there are creative designers out there, that’s a fact. But I’m starting to doubt the fact that one can be creative in a team of other so-called (or not) creatives.
It gets out of hand easily, not really depending on personality. Maybe conflicts of interests or the fact that I’ve got the american high-school motto forced into me when I was still deciding what to do in life — “There’s no I in TEAM”. Yeah, but there’s a lot of other shit in there. How come the only projects I feel are worth doing are the ones that don’t need me to rely on anyone other than myself? As egomaniac as I am, this saddens me a bit. I constantly try to believe in people and re-invent the teamwork schemes into a living, breathing, creating organism. And then we get blown off by personal attitudes, psych problems, human incompatability.
And since we are a team of humans, being paid by other humans, to sell some worthless shit to yet another group, we creatives are surely a creatively evil bunch. And even in that evil we still feel the best working solo. The lone, creation wolf. The archetype is as old as it is boring. Even set aside the morality of my employers-employers (big evil corporations, y’know) I cannot think about ONE project that I did in a team in the last few years that I was satisfied with. And guess what? As far as I can tell, even if they were a success it was only a moderate one. So is it a myth? Is it just my head?
Space’y design + Pixelmator
A while ago I designed the cover artwork for the “Krop” music project. The idea was to be as “from outer space” as possible, and at the same time have some of that 80’s look to it. Since that’s the decade the aliens came to earth anyway.
I used pixelmator pixelmator a 59$ photoshop wanna-be app for the Mac. It’s faster than the big brother, has a lot of the same tools (some stuff is lacking but we can’t have everthing for 59$, right?) and is pretty easy to use. If you own a mac and want to have a cheap photoshop alternative go give it a try.
I used a lot of duplicates of the character with different blurs and color settings + some painting over with a rainbow gradient and masks.
Then some noise with low opacity was added to give it a feel of the 80’s even more. I will also be in charge of the music videos to follow, so I guess it’ll also be about similar effects there too.
Go check it all out at kropband.com
Season greetings from the viral!
So how long can we be drawn brainlessly by “funny videos” that after a while are a common-wealth – seen by nearly everybody we know.
Are they gonna surprise us with billboards saying “In 2010 everything you know will change”? Do we really anticipate the knowledge of what will happen then? Or did we simply stop caring about it. Do we even discuss out-of-the-internet examples with anyone? Don’t think so.
Human imagination is pretty vast, so I bet there’s still a couple of good ideas undiscovered, but all in all we’ll be bound by funnier and funnier seasonal virals that we post even with the knowledge that it does more good to the maker, than to the sender. Yes, it has started. From dancing Santa with your face on him, through the last-year-hype dancing elves (elfyourself.com) up to whatever else we can come up with. Maybe a present that blows up when you open it? Smurfs-viral fun with a christmas twist? Why not. The notion that fuelled the first seasonal campaigns a couple of years back is now gone. They don’t try to impress us by the idea, just the packaging.
Dancing characters with your face on them were done before a couple of times, and this time the whole packaging made it look “fresh” and “oh so funny” to many, many adults.
But hey! Are the older parts of the internet currently more into viral than the younger?
That’s the interesting part – seasonal “fun stuff” is usually sent around by people with jobs, families, often children etc. Not by kids with too much time on their hands.
Maybe the next generation virals should be directed at the respected parents instead?
I’ve seen a catapult-a-santa viral where you could upload your face, and a good % of the faces were someone’s little babies.
So maybe there’s still hope to surprise, just by looking elsewhere?
To be continued…
Bing/Google maps API free idea giveaway ;)
So here’s the deal. I’m not really a microsoft person, but I checked out their “isometric view” of the maps (here’s New York) and I instantly thought of one thing – Sim City! First of all the idea itself is pretty awesome to show it this way, the perspective makes the cities more memorable as a landscape, rather than just a top-view photo. But what can be done with it ?
Well for once – using the API which I think would be given out anyway – a new type of social sim-city style game could be created. Let’s for one moment think that we can “destroy it all” and put nice, green grass everywhere. Then we’ll have a few types of buildings, some roads, other elements, and combine it to create a district of our own, based on the natural landscape of our city, with it’s rivers, islands, whatever. Other people can of course join the fun and start building a district of their own in the same city. Maybe even a better city-planner could be found that way (choosing the best guy for the job while working on a semi-real thing would probably make more sense than choosing him based on just promises). Possibilities are endless.
And yes – of course google is doing something similar as well – letting people build their own buildings and all. So a bunch of free API’s from both of the big fish could actually give someone with the guts to do such project, plenty of choices.
OmmWriter Equivalent for the PC ?
I am a mac person. But at work I’m forced to reckon with the evil empire outburst known as microsoft windows. I discovered ommWriter and got hooked on how easy it is to silence all the shit from around and focus – think. At first I thought that experience cannot be duplicated for the bulky, ugly PC world. But I was wrong. Of course it’s not the same, but the differences let me have my sanity intact – the mac and pc worlds are different after all anyway. So here it is Ladies and Gents : DarkRoom
Of course it’s free, and reminds me a bit of the good ol’ days of hackers in 80’s movies and stuff like early DOS.
The cool thing is the simplicity, combined with a way to make the black screen transparent a little bit (while set to 98% opacity it has a nice “texture” from what’s behind but nothing’s really catching the eye)
The ugly green font is supposed to be retro, but we can change the font and background colors to anything we like. This time I think white text on a semi-transparent black background does it for me!.
Cool idea – youtube doubler mashup
A pretty cool idea for mashing up youtube clips for some stunning results. Ideas can include adding spoken-word videos to instrumental music videos (dance music anyone?) and many, many others.
It’s clear that simple ideas are a great thing, and it’s odd that it took so long to create something like that. Thumbs up.
You can see it at : http://www.youtubedoubler.com/