Lee Dunbar

Dec

4

Despite your political leanings, Stephan Dion and the Liberal party taught us an important lesson this week. The medium IS the message.

The absolute horribly produced video that was sent to the press gallery to be distributed to the networks represented a comical string of errors worthy of the Keystone Cops. The video arrived late, was in the wrong format, the composition of the video was well below the quality seen on many amateur YouTube videos, and the quality caused people to speculate that it was shot on a camera phone.

This caused people at the water cooler and the media to talk about the poor quality of the video rather than the message itself.

Research at Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab indicate that people judge the credibility of a message based on the quality of the medium — be it a visual cue, quality, aethstetics, etc. If this is the case, and it certainly seems to bear out in my experience, Dion very well could have done even more damage to himself and to the rest of the party.

The lesson to be learned here is this —pay absolute attention to the quality of the media you are using. Make sure the design works, make sure the aesthetics support your branding and positioning, and make sure that when you do present something to the public that it actually helps your cause rather than hurt it.

And now the video in question (it looked much worse on TV than on YouTube):

Of course, this isn’t the first video to hurt Dion’s credibility:

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff
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Aug

9

In a post I wrote about a month ago, I outlined my frustration with changes made at the concession stand of a drive-in my family frequents. I shared that we have given up on the concession stand and were now bringing our own snacks and drinks. It seems we are not alone, and the owners may very well have noticed a decline in overall sales, as the drive-in in question has added a few lines to their website:

“We ask that you kindly refrain from outside food and beverage … “

Hot, fresh, spend half an hour in sweltering heat lining up to get it. No thanks!

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Business Stuff, Customer Service Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Retail Stuff
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Jul

31

The Round Up

July 31, 2008

Oh please, I hope this isn’t true. ‘Cocky new female pilot‘ meets a guy who was a cocky pilot 20 years ago in this follow up to Top Gun. Yes, Maverick is rumoured to be making his return in Top Gun II. Poor Goose is turning in his grave.

PC Pro reports that the British Police have started using YouTube to embarrass people who use the emergency 999 service (their version of 911) for anything other than emergencies. “It’s important people realise that what could seem a harmless joke could result in a serious criminal conviction or endanger someone’s life,” says chief superintendent Dave Hayler. “We want to send out a warning that we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour and positive action will be taken.”

Robert M. McDowell makes the case for keeping the Internet open and free. Let the engineers solve the problem — not politicians.

Nate Anderson does good job tearing DRM apart in his article DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it.

To encourage New Yorkers to explore their own city instead of traveling elsewhere, the City of New York is closing streets for pedestrian use only for three Saturday mornings in August. The town I live in does this one Saturday a summer and there are many, including myself, who think it should be done every Saturday to allow our farmers market and other vendors to set-up. It would be a great for locals and a good tourism draw as well.

 

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Community Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Web Stuff
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Jul

23

The Round-Up

July 23, 2008

Well, here’s today’s collection of things that caught my eye …

Gizmodo gets an exclusive tour of the Lego factory. See video showing the entire manufacturing process of the Lego bricks. Kinda like learning the Caramilk secret.

An article in Computerworld outlines how web 2.0 can facilitate development 2.0, facilitating better software quality and a more efficient process.

Isn’t it ironic? From the fossil fuel capital of the US, the state of Texas Approves a $4.93 Billion Wind-Power Project.

Can product piracy be a good thing?

Wired reports that, seeking to make money from mistyped website names, some of the United States’ largest ISPs instead created a massive security hole that allowed hackers to use web addresses owned by eBay, PayPal, Google and Yahoo, and virtually any other large site.

It’s reported that Tesla Motors is starting to deliver their production electric cars. Here are the stats: 220 miles per charge, 125/mph top speed, 248hp peak, 3.5 hour charge time and 0-60 in 4 seconds! That’s a serious entry in the green car market. While you’re at it, take a look around their website. Great use of blog software to build community around their brand.

Are computer manufacturers really bowing to the RIAA’s demand to disable stereo sound on computers?

I love this idea of “crowd-sourcing”. Reuters has an article about “eCars – Now!”, a Finnish Internet community seeking to apply the collective approach to start converting used petrol-fuelled cars to electric ones, with the first roll-out due this year.

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Business Stuff, Community Stuff, Design Stuff, Technology Stuff, Web Stuff
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Jul

9

When you speak of control measures, the benefits to the customer are often overlooked. In actual fact, people are continuously looking for visual queues – and providing direction can facilitate a positive experience for your customers while avoiding confusion, anger, and even serious incident.

Last summer, my family traveled to the Eastern region of Quebec to go on a whale-watching cruise. To book your spot on the ship, it is recommended that you book through one of their partner sites (physical site), as there is very little parking at the dock. Once you arrive at the pick-up destination – in our case a restaurant – you receive your tickets and then a shuttle bus picks you up and brings you to the dock.

Once we arrived, we saw that there were two companies that shared the dock on the St. Lawrence River. One company had very clear signage, an area fenced-off to form a line and a person was staffed to answer any questions, control the line and provide information. The other company, the one we purchased ticket with, had – a dock.

Once we figured out where we were to go (with the help of the staff member from the other company) we stood near the dock entrance and people kind of wandered up and stood in line so we followed suit. Others followed and soon the line grew kind of haphazardly along a fence. After about 20 minutes in line, the cruise ship approached the dock. Staff disembarked and started taking tickets – and of course a whole group of people budded in line with no interference from the staff.

“Excuse me, there’s a line here,” a young man that was behind us said. “I don’t care,” was the response.

So we finally board and off we go through the St. Lawrence for what was a pretty amazing experience viewing whales. I was actually quite surprised with how many we saw and how close we were to them.

And now back to the dock. We disembark and again – complete confusion. There were no signs as to where you should stand to meet your shuttle bus and nobody was around to offer any information. We stood there with a group of people waiting for the bus. When it arrived – absolute madness ensued. People budding, jumping in front of each other and from where we were lined-up only one family that was actually in line got on the bus.

It actually took three missed buses and witnessing one argument between a ‘line-ee’ and a ‘bud-ee’ to finally get on – and that’s only because we (my family and another family that was waiting with us in the original line) specifically asked the driver to meet us at the far side of the parking lot away from the crowd.

It was a frustrating experience. No direction. No information. A lot of rude people.

We will go on another whale watching cruise, but I’ll tell you, it will be with the other company.

It would have been so simple to avoid all of the resentment, frustration and arguments that we witnessed on the dock. Simple control measures such as signage and a designated area to form a line – for the ship and for the shuttles. Such control measures would have contributed to an overall positive experience rather than the absence tainting what could have been one of the most amazing experiences of someone’s life.

Are there control measures that you could take to improve your customer experience?

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Customer Service Stuff, Experience Design Stuff
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Jun

24

The Round-Up

June 24, 2008

What happens when Google and Disney get together to throw around a few ideas? You get the Walt Disney World Resort available on Google Earth in 3D. The project features over 1,500 fairly detailed 3D models of buildings and attractions in all four theme parks and more than 20 of Disney’s Resort hotels. I had a lot of fun scrolling around — what a great way to allow your guests to move around and explore the park when they are either planning or dreaming if a trip to the most magical place on earth.

Montreal is the first North American city to role out a self-service bike rental system. Users will be able to pick-up a bike at one location for a nominal fee and drop it off at another location which are dispersed around the city.

More search engine election fun. A blogger has launched a Google bomb attack on McCain. The strategy was designed to raise the rankings of negative news stories about McCain. Yes, the same strategy you use to raise the visibility of your organization, can be used by your competitors to raise rankings of negative stories or reviews about your organization, officials, staff, or product. It is a good strategy to continuously monitor your own brand, trademarks and product category keywords. It can be as simple as subscribing to a comprehensive Google news alert.

It also seems that people are messing with page views and video ranking on YouTube. In an effort to make it the most viewed video, a blogger has created a refreshing web site that is increasing the number of views of Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend video.

Tags: Advertising Stuff, Brand Experience Stuff, Community Stuff, Customer Service Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Search Engine Stuff, Web Stuff
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Jun

24

Where is Matt?

June 24, 2008

I am not sure who Matt is, the story on the Stride Gum web site and also on Wikipedia is that he’s a guy that quit his job so that he could travel around the world. And this he does — dancing in some of the most beautiful and interesting places on earth. Not only does Matt dance, he has many guests that jump in and dance with him.

I am not sure if this is real, or just a buzz/viral tool developed by Stride, all I do know is that it brought a smile to my face.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo

Tags: Advertising Stuff, Brand Experience Stuff, Design Stuff, Funny Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Web Stuff
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Jun

12

I own a lot of music. A lot of DVDs too. I have invested thousands of dollars over the years — if you think about it, you probably have too. The artists, producers, labels, writers have all made their money. Yet, it could be illegal for me to copy the media I have purchased onto a device so I can listen or view it? Seriously!?

An article by CP states that:

“The amendments would also make it illegal to copy a compact disc or DVD to a personal digital device such as an iPod – even if you’ve paid for it – if it involves breaking so-called digital lock to make a copy. People caught hacking digital locks or uploading copyrighted material to file-sharing websites would face penalties of up to $20,000.”

Well here’s my thought. If they are going to make it illegal for me to put my own collection on my device (does the music I already own have this lock?), I might as well download music from P2P sites, right? They are both deemed to be potentially illegal under this bill and one costs me more money than the other. So the value is in the downloading.

More money? That’s correct, more money. Most people don’t know it, but when you purchase blank media in Canada, you are paying a tariff that is distributed to music publishers, writers and performers. Since I am sending money to these people — should some sort of service not be provided? I pay a tax on media, I should be able to download music and place it on this media, no? /sarcasm

Now, potential criminals like me aren’t the only ones who object to this farce. The very musicians whose copyrights are supposedly protected under this bill don’t agree with it.

“But the Canadian Music Creators Coalition slammed the bill, characterizing it as “an American-style approach to copyright. It’s all locks and lawsuits,” according to Safwan Javed, coalition member and drummer for Wide Mouth Mason.

“Rather than building a made-in-Canada proposal to help musicians get paid, the government has chosen to import American-style legislation that says the solution to the music industry’s problems is suing our fans,” said Javed.

The coalition of nearly 200 Canadian acts includes household names Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Broken Social Scene, Matthew Good, Billy Talent, Sloan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41 and Sam Roberts.”

I am often curious how well a number of these collectives and lobbyists really reflect the wants and needs of the people they claim to represent. This is a pretty good indication that there just might be fractions within this collective group.

I think most artists realize that their success is built on relationship-building. Connecting with their fans. Most record industry suits, it seems, feel that success is built upon wringing every single cent out of people (musicians and fans alike), and developing conflict rather than a relationship with fans.

I am all for people getting their due. The writers, artists, producers, labels — they should all get their fair share. But to deny a person who PURCHASES their product the right to copy it to a different device is just asinine.

Anyway, Michael Geist does a much better job interpreting the new law than I ever could.

 

Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Community Stuff, Customer Service Stuff, Technology Stuff, Web Stuff
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May

30

Themepark bans PDAs

May 30, 2008

For a one week period, an amusement park in the UK, Alton Towers Resort, has experimented with a no PDA policy. The experiment could become a permanent policy if things go well, becoming part of a social movement designed to draw lines of proper gadget usage in public places such as movie theatres, convention meetings and restaurants.

They actually had a squad of “PDA police” roaming the park. If any dastardly adults are caught with a qualifying device, they will be directed to a PDA Drop Off Zone where they can leave their device for the day. The web site does not mention what reproductions adults will face if they refuse to turn-over their phone.

Russell Barnes, Divisional Director for the Alton Towers Resort explains; “What we have here is the ultimate short break location where every member of the family can unwind and have fun. We feel it’s so important for parents and kids to focus on nothing more than having the best possible time, we are prepared to take drastic action to ensure that parents really leave their work behind!”

Of course, many people in this day and age will use a device as such to take pictures of their vacation and remain in contact with other family members or friends if they go separate ways for a time period while at the park — as family members have different interests and age will dictate that some family members are not permitted on certain attractions.

It is an interesting concept, and does create/support a perception that Alton Towers is certainly about putting family first.

Tags: Advertising Stuff, Brand Experience Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Marketing Stuff
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May

25

The wildly popular Lego Star Wars games have been followed up with the soon-to-be released Indiana Jones The Original Adventures game.


Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Design Stuff, Experience Design Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Neat Stuff, Retail Stuff, Technology Stuff
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