Rules of Engagement

Being a great admirer, follower and constant student of the Frank Chimero. There are precious few people who's commentary, essays and anecdotes on life, I look forward to as much as I do of those from Frank. So much so, I'd like to share one of them with you. Along with some of his worked mixed in amongst it.

Rules of Engagement

"We used to have audiences, but the information age has transformed them into users who are no longer satisfied with the passive consumption of content. They desire interactions and opportunities to connect and contribute. Designers are placed in a position to plan and produce the systems, platforms, frameworks, events and artifacts that work as a conduit to facilitate these interactions and experiences.

Unfortunately, there’s little information to cite about what works and what does not in these sorts of endeavors. We’re left looking in the periphery for wisdom about the process, trying to find patterns in other realms that can be mapped into this new space.

The best way to gain a bit of insight is to consider the best, most social, interactive work designers are producing as frameworks for improvisation. To develop a vocabulary, frame the process, label characteristics and potentially predict success, we can cite the wisdom of the other arts that use improvisation as a cornerstone: areas such as jazz and improvisational theater. From this, we can begin to dictate best practices.

The above Poster line... 'A Light That Never Goes Out'

Limitations

Every game needs rules, and every successful framework for improvisation has limitations. These limitations can be internal to let the creative get to work, but can also manifest outward to act as rules of engagement for contributors and participants.

Limitations can be useful to help a creator or contributor begin working in a general direction, then, use the feedback of the process to steer their decision making. This is how improv theater works. Most sketches begin with a prompt, then the actors let the momentum of the narrative snowball by working off of the limitation of the prompt and any rules the improv game may have.

The utility of restraints is that they give the participants common-footing, which allows them to get started. Motivation doesn’t disappear, it evaporates, and this seems crucial when a designer is either trying to get to work, or is working to ensure their users remain engaged. One strategy is to create a purposeful set of limitations I like to call a “pseudo-structure.” Pseudo-structures act as a framework for creative activity and improvisation. Limitations are the playground of a creative mind. They are a latticework on which to hang ideas.

Many of the greats used pseudo-structures when working. Vivaldi wrote four violin concertos: one for each season. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow a specific rhyming scheme and are always 14 lines. During Picasso’s blue period, he essentially only painted monochromatically. There are also ample examples of limitations being used to frame user’s contributions, such as Twitter’s character limit on posts or the formulaic approach to creating a proper LOLCat. (Oh hai.) Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s Learning to Love You More is a project made of a series of pseudo-structures that asks contributors to complete the task, document the results, then submit them to share online.

The restrictions of a pseudo-structure can take many shapes. They can be conceptual, where the restrictions determine the subject matter of the work. (See Vivaldi’s concertos or any illustrated Alphabet book.) Limitations can also be structural, where compositional restrictions are created. (Such as Shakespeare’s sonnets, Twitter’s character limit, or choreographing a dance where the dancer doesn’t step outside of a specific space.)

When choosing limitations, the designer needs to be careful to not make them too&emdash;well—limiting. The idea is to use the pseudo-structures to promote activity, not suppress it. When done correctly, limitations can be used as a tool to overcome the gap between finding the desire to do something and knowing where to put one’s efforts. A good limitation makes the contributor feel like they are already halfway done: all that is left to do is to sort out the details and execute their idea.

The above Poster line... 'The Films of Sergio Leone'

Acceptance and Ambiguity

One of the core beliefs of improv theater is the idea of “Yes, and…” meaning that each step in an improvisational process is accepting previous contributions and is additive in nature. Improvisation is more akin to building with clay than sculpting out of marble: things are added and attached rather than excess being carved away. The process is not freeing people out of blocks of marble, it is building something out of nothing. Rejection squelches unforeseen possibilities in the interaction and cripples participants’ desire to contribute. Frameworks for improvisation must remain positive and accepting.

The challenge (and potentially the art) of creating these frameworks is balancing the inherent incongruency of some ideas that comes with setting limitations versus trying to create an atmosphere of acceptance that maximizes potential. The art is having participants understand that anything goes, but not everything.

Creating these frameworks and building them on the idea of acceptance means that there will always be an element of ambiguity in the results. But, designers and users will become more and more accustomed to ambiguity as more of these platforms are built, because their utility will not be obvious. As the format of contribution proliferates through more of what designers make, more new, powerful tools, devices, sites and ways to interact will not have a clear value proposition. They can’t say “this is important because it lets you do this” or “this is the specific reason this thing exists.”

Ambiguity begins to explain why Twitter is different from Facebook. The value proposition of Facebook is clear: stay in contact with friends and share with them. But, what’s the use of Twitter? No one can say definitively, because there is no right way to use it. For some, it’s a news feed, for others, it’s a way to communicate with friends, and for others, it’s a way to keep in contact with brands.

It’s why Twitter fascinates some and beguiles others. Twitter can’t craft a clear value proposition on their homepage to say what the site is for, and if you are someone who needs convincing, that’s frustrating, because everyone is talking about the site. If you are observant, Twitter’s popularity in spite of its utility ambiguity is a sign that something big is happening on a larger scale. We are no longer building hammers with one specific use, or even a swiss army knife that can do many different things. What we are building is more akin to two pieces of stone, from which someone can make their own tool for their own specific uses: arrowhead or hand axe. The most flexible frameworks for improvisation will not only have improvised content, but also improvised utility. Often times, the utility is the interaction.

Lessons from Jazz

The predominant cultural example of an improvisational creative endeavor is jazz. Learning about the history of the music and listening to musicians talk about jazz, one will hear things that can make these frameworks make more sense. Jazz is about improvising, and it’s about having the musicians and audience meet the music halfway. Jazz is a platform and a cultural vessel. And it’s incredibly difficult to summarize in words without seeming hyperbolic. It’s value is soft, but we some how perceive it to have value despite it’s ambiguity.

Design seems to be the same way. It is about improvising (we can’t boil it down to a hard set of rules to follow). It’s about meeting messages at a halfway point where the creators and users overlap. Design is a platform and cultural vessel prone to hyperbole. And it has a soft value that is often difficult for outsiders to discern.

The primary trait of both jazz and improvisation is process. To truly partake in it, you have to visit a place to see it in progress. Every jazz club or improv comedy theater is a temple to the process of production. It’s a factory, and the art is more the assembly than the product. One could say jazz is more verb than noun.

That makes me think that the most successful of these improvisational frameworks we create should be verb-based, and focus on creating meaningful experiences, interactions and connections. We’ll use nouns and artifacts to act as facilitators, but the real point of the exercise is the experience.

Designed frameworks can be platforms for experiences. As our skills in making them mature, the basic trait for platforms will be interaction and the basic need of its contributors will be connection. The success of a framework will be measured in enthusiasm. But, it should be said that platforms and their frameworks are not a destination, but an environment: less a sandcastle and more a sandbox. It has been frequently noted that the tools of our trade have been democratized and everyone can access them. If we’ve all a shovel and a pail, the sandboxes we build become incredibly important. So, time to play."

Poetry In Motion

With Apple announcing that the iPad will be available in the US from Saturday 3rd April. Landing in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland sometime late April. Now's probably a good time to take a look at how some of the US's biggest magazines, are going to tackle the question of how do you serve magazine content on it.

Furthest down the development line, showing us exactly what’s in store, is VIV Mag. With this video demonstration, showcasing a behind the scenes look at what went in to creating their very first, up and running, interactive magazine for the iPad.

VIV Mag



Below, you’ll also see the cover and a feature spread.



And the VIV Mag iPad front cover.



Wired

Next up is Wired Magazine. While less elaborate but no less inventive, is their vision for the future: Digital Story Art. And allowing that to happen is of course, the iPad, showcasing the experience WIRED will be delivering to their readers in April, they released their demonstration at TED a few weeks ago.

The WIRED Magazine’s iPad experience is very rich, and believe it or not, is developed in Adobe AIR (even if flash is banned!) which is said to be the technology behind the iPad’s rich text, imagery, interactivity, animation and dynamics.

There are lots of great little interface and experience features of the WIRED iPad Experience, but I think the seamless use of the 360 degree product views, dual axis navigation, favourite bin (very handy) and standard social integration are the standouts in this first glimpse.

However, the thing that a lot of you will be interested in is how advertising is represented. About three minuets into the video they showcase an interactive ad for Teslsa Motors, it’s a nice clean ad but didn’t seem to create the expanded interactive experience I thought an iPad Ad would deliver. But I’m sure it’s just the very start of what’s to come.



Sports Illustrated

And with Sports Illustrated going the same way as the aforementioned. It just serves to reaffirm and demonstrate that the future of magazine publishing very probably lies in incorporating video clips, interactivity, branded content, games, content sharing and rich, interactive advertising possibilities. But it has to be noted, all this looks and sounds an awful lot like the websites of today.

Don't Touch That Dial

An insightful article from Vaughan Bell that being scared of new media technology isn't new. In fact it's very old, right down to the first major media revolution.

"A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data, and that this overabundance was both “confusing and harmful” to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an “always on” digital environment. It’s worth noting that Gessner for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That’s not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press.

These concerns stretch back to the birth of literacy itself. In parallel with modern concerns about children's overuse of technology, Socrates famously warned against writing because it would "create forgetfulness in the learners souls, because they will not use their memories." He also advised that children can't distinguish fantasy from reality so parents should only allow them to hear wholesome allegories and not improper tales, lest their development go astray.

The Socratic warning has been repeated many times since: The older generation warns against a new technology and bemoans that society is abandoning the wholesome media it grew up with, seemingly unaware that this same technology was considered to be harmful when first introduced.

When radio arrived we discovered yet another scourge of the young: The wireless was accused of distracting children from reading and diminishing performance in school, both of which were now considered to be appropriate and wholesome. In 1936 the music magazine the Gramophone reported that children had "developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker." And described how the radio programs were disturbing the balance of their excitable minds.

The television caused widespread concern as well: Media historian Ellen Wartella has noted how "opponents voiced concerns about how television might hurt radio, conversation, reading, and the patterns of family living and results in the further vulgarization of the American culture."

The skepticism and fear continues today:

"By the end of the 20th century personal computers had entered our homes, the Internet was a global phenomenon and almost identical worries were widely broadcast through chilling headlines: CNN reported that “Email hurts IQ more than pot,” the Telegraph that “Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values” and the “Facebook and MySpace generation cannot form relationships,” and the Daily Mail ran a piece on “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer.”

But we’ve not a shred of evidence to back up the claims:

"All of these pieces have one thing in common, they mention not one study on how digital technology is affecting the mind and brain. They tell anecdotes about people who believe they can no longer concentrate, talk to scientists doing peripherally related work, and that’s it. Imagine if the situation in Afghanistan were discussed in a similar way. You could write 4,000 words for a major media outlet without ever mentioning a relevant fact about the war. Instead you’d base your thesis on the opinions of your friends and the guy down the street who works in the kebab shop. He’s actually from Turkey but it’s all the same though, isn’t it?"

Mmmm, Kebabs. But alas we need to be scared of something:

"In contrast the accumulation of many years of evidence suggests that heavy television viewing does appear to have a negative effect on our health and our ability to concentrate. We almost never hear about these sorts of studies anymore because television is old hat technology scares need to be novel, and evidence that something is safe just doesn’t make the grade in the shock-horror media agenda.
In short, older media institutions whipping up fear of the newer media institutions."

For the full article click here.

What People Are Really Buying Online

This beautifully designed infographic from Permuto visualises some of the latest shopping data from the US Census Bureau. What’s interesting to see, is that e-Commerce (including phone & catalogue sales) is starting to “out sell” many of the traditional bricks and mortar categories in the US. There is some debate as to the exact numbers being used in this chart, but overall it tells a pretty important message to brands and retailers.


The see the infographic in it's full glory, allowing you see the e-Commerce and In-store sales difference click here.

The Minority Report

The future of Public Space Advertising as seen from the Minority Report. Arriving sooner than you think?



I remember when this scene from Minority Report generated some visceral reactions from the marketing community. Some of us thought what a clever idea, why haven't we been able to do that yet? And then some of us recoiled in horror at the invasion of privacy and realization that maybe consumers might not want brands to be on a first-name basis. However one might feel, the science fiction of the film is fast coming true, right now, with the arrival of principles behind Augmented Reality.

The first real foray into this was in the early 2000's. It was the localised wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place, commonly through bluetooth-enabled phones. First it was BIG in Japan but bluetooth marketing gained steady traction before stalling. Lots of factors stalled proximity marketing, mobile device penetration rates, low Bluetooth adoption and brands really weren't ready to move budget from national mass marketing to highly-local mobile marketing. Bluetooth marketing is finally doing better in markets where mobile phone penetration is higher than computer penetration, in third-world countries.

Today, however, digital, direct marketing, social media, and mobile marketing are speeding toward convergence. Ushered in by the iPhone, Android and to a lesser extent Garmin and the automakers, brands now have the ability to know where we are (or at least the early adopters) in order to target us. They know because we tell them whenever we do an online search from our mobile, or ask for directions through our car, or update our location via Tripit, or use an AR app to find the subway. At least they have the option to know.

The interactions we have online identify and in some cases predict what we'll like and buy based on real-time, real-place data and perhaps most importantly, who we associate with. Think of it as a multi-dimensional view of you based on the information you provide through your social graph and online activity.

Specifically, the dimensions are:

- Who you are (your social profile)
- What you do (your perceivable actions on a networked device)
- When you do stuff (your schedule, real-time or virtual)
- Where you do stuff (your location, physical or virtual)
- Who you do stuff with (your social graph)
- What you intend to do (your plans, intentional or not)

Not quite an avatar but maybe a doppleganger or a digital ghost, it is this multi-dimensional view of you that brands will soon be observing, monitoring, analyzing and designing for, to better be able to influence you.

And while the below links aren't examples of it in action, remember, we don't have it just yet. Combined, they very much look like the beginning of it to me. It's just a matter of refining and combining. Sometimes I feel technology is moving quicker than I can write about it.

Pattie Maes from TED. Ideas worth spreading.




GE. Plug In To The Smart Grid.




AntiVJ. Light Projection.



BMW Servicing.

The recipe for success

I want to tell you a secret. Something that might change how you see our profession, how you go about learning and how you perceive your position in it. Come closer. Closer still. OK, ready for this? Here we go.

"There are no recipes."

I say it quietly but I want to shout it. Scream it. "There are no recipes."
Stop looking for a recipe for success. You want it? So far as I can tell it is to relentlessly do what you're best at, keep at it, and to keep moving and take advantage of opportunities.

Stop looking for recipes about how to find work. You want it? Do what you're best at, tell people about it, make incredible work and every once in a while remind people you exist in a way that best represents you. There's no one true way to promote.

Stop looking for recipes about how to optimize your workflow. You want it? Get rid of stupid fluff and do things that matter. Do one thing at a time. Work like your grandpa did. Yeah, the world is different now but humans have always had to make decisions about where to put their attention. We've just lost our spine.

Stop looking for recipes about how to finish a project, treat a client, manage your email, optimize your sleep, get over a creative block, get your first job, maintain focus or stay fresh. They don't exist. Or they're common sense. Eventually you'll grow out of wondering How-To. Hopefully you'll progress into Why-To.

Why do we look for recipes? Because we're risk averse. If we fail it's because someone else gave us the wrong recipe. We get to skip on the blame but can claim the success.

I myself find that I trust my own work the most, and others seem to trust it too. That gives me courage and comfort. But to be honest, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing from day to day. There are days I question. I don't think that ever stops.

Take identity, it's something we've been fighting with for a long time. It's an individual pursuit, so it's not knowledge that can be downloaded or picked up from another individual. Human kind has a pretty good institutional memory, but it just doesn't work for these individual pursuits. I suppose that's what makes them so special and so hard. It's why we write books and make movies about this stuff. They are our own voyages: we have our own boat on our own sea with our own map. We must own the responsibilities and the outcomes of the expedition completely. It's an opportunity and a millstone.


Socrates said "Know thyself." But he didn't go on from there, sad. But if he didn't want to touch it there's no way my weak, flabby mind is going to try. Maybe he knew something we don't. Or maybe, just maybe, he did not.

But there's money in recipes. If there's a recipe, that means there's a secret. And you can sell a silver bullet. The thing is most people that are giving you a recipe are pandering to your fear. "What if things go wrong?"

Let me let you in on another little secret: failing isn't as risky as it used to be. You're probably not running a factory that employs thousands of people. You're more than likely mostly anonymous. If nobody knows who you are, no one notices if you screw up. If people do know who you are and you screw up, there will be something new in 5 minutes to steal their attention. Sometimes an audience's fickle attention can be an asset. The world will move on. If you work digitally and you make something awful, you can delete it. Liberating.

Thinking and learning are bound up with action. Recipes fail because to really know self-promotion (or anything else) you have to do self-promotion. Recipes are pseudo-action, a visage of a person doing the movement you yourself want. Looking for a recipe is no better than hang-wringing or navel gazing.

Recipes don't work because it means that things need to be able to be boiled down to a set of hard rules. But most things are different than a series of if-then logic games. This is why cooking recipes work. But most of the things we search for recipes on, are dependent on the situation and practical know-how is always tied to the experience of a particular person.

You can't download experience. You can only live it. Stop waiting around for someone to save you with a recipe. Stop being helpless. Go do something and save yourself.

The recipe for success is to keep moving.

Google: Interesting Facts & Figures

Another infographic chart from Pingdom for anyone who takes an interest in Google, and while there is nothing groundbreaking here. It’s a great compilation of key Google Facts & Figures that tick along month after month.