You can learn more about Playing For Change by visiting the website: Playing For Change, Peace Through Music

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

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:

One tactic I’ve heard is to emulate Australia’s punitive approach — vote or get fined. It certainly gets people out to the polls, a full 95% mark their ballot.

In the States, we see a far different approach. Rather than legislation, companies step up and offer freebies to those who cast a ballot. Provide proof that you voted and you could qualify for free coffee at Starbucks, an icecream at Ben & Jerry’s, or a donut at Krispy Kreme. Seeing that some Americans stand in line for anywhere from an hour — to three or five — they certainly deserve some sort of reward for their perseverance.

Hey — it happens to the best of us. As you develop your product you keep adding features and layers of complexity as you continue through the development cycle. That’s what the customer wants, right? More features? More complexity?

Not always. Maybe never. Sometimes developers get to the point where they lose sight of what their purpose is. That is, to solve a problem or need. Sometimes the product itself can become a barrier to the desired result, whether it be for business, convenience or entertainment.

This is the conclusion 2K Sports came to when designing their newly released NHL 2K9 video game.

“Feeling last year’s version was too complicated, 2K Sports is offering a simpler entry into its hockey title, promising gamers can pick up a controller and play from the get-go with virtually no learning curve. There are deeper playing options with plenty of complexity, but the goal was to make the title simple and fun out of the box.

“Thomas and his California-based development team concluded that as consoles grew more sophisticated, hockey games became more complex, turning off some gamers.

“We just kept layering controls and adding more functionality and looking for the next silver bullet feature that we had to put in there. And we kept layering this stuff on. And what happened, in our mind, was I think the game got out of hand.”

Read the article It’s Game On for NHL2K

I can relate to this story. When we purchased EA Sports’ NHL08 for my two boys they would not use it, deciding instead to keep playing NHL06. They didn’t like the way EA changed the controls, taking what was an intuitive, simple interface with the game and adding far too much complexity.

While this article speaks specifically of products, the same idea holds true for process, place, graphic design and other elements that are designed.

I guess this is kind of old news, but Ottawa’s 20Q has a Disney version of their 20 questions game, a very addictive game I would add. Think of a place, thing or character that has something to do with Disney and see if you can stump the application.

Speaking of Disney, if you visit their webs site, you can now create your own Disney page. On a side note, when are they going to get rid of the failed go.com part of the URL?

I’m a big fan of Michael Geist. CTV reports, “Critics of the Harper government’s proposed changes to the Copyright Act have launched a cyber crusade to fight the controversial bill. They’re using everything from Facebook to YouTube to Wikipedia to blogs to get their message out. They want the government to either scrap or make serious amendments to Bill C-61 when Parliament resumes next month. At the helm of the digital movement is Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in Internet and e-commerce law. In addition to his own blog, Geist runs a Facebook group called Fair Copyright for Canada that boasts 90,000 members.” I am also a big believer in the effectiveness of social media tools, so I will be interested to see how effective this campaign is.

The Daily Show and Colbert Report are two of my favs. The American Political Science Association has posted an article about what is coined, the “Colbert Bump“. Democratic politicians receive a 40% increase in contributions in the 30 days after appearing on the comedy cable show The Colbert Report.  In contrast, their Republican counterparts essentially gain nothing.  These findings appear to validate anecdotal evidence regarding the political impact of the program, such as the assertions by host Stephen Colbert that appearing on his program provides candidates with a “Colbert bump” or a rise in support for their election campaigns.