ChaosScenario

Five in the Morning

A little while back, Steve Woodruff tapped me for continuing his excellent "5 in the Morning" series, which allows bloggers to highlight articles you might have missed. Below is my contribution.

1. How to approach a problem by Inspire UX
2. Is the beautifully simple Macintosh OSX interface the panacea of interface design? Not according to Bruce Tognazzini of NN/g.
3. Anyone who has ever bought a bleeding-edge device and had difficulty trying to use it can surely appreciate this piece from the Onion via 90 percent of everything (language advisory).
4. Business Intelligence is rated a #1 technology priority for CIOs, and #5 business priority (Perhaps this second number should be moved up).
5. Steve Roesler advises us to look at presentations the same way Oglivy looked at advertising. Long live the big idea.

Thanks, Steve, for allowing me to participate!

Subscribe: ChaosScenario / Steve Woodruff's StickyFigure blog
Follow on Twitter: Cam Beck / Steve Woodruff

Vote on the Terms of Service for Facebook

Lawyers rule the earth. At least they used to when it came to things like Privacy Polices and Terms of Use. For most websites, no one cared. These are the least popular pages of almost all websites.

That's true for sites where there is limited interaction and posting of a person's content for others to see. When Facebook tried to change their Terms of Service, pretty much owning any content posted to their site forever, it ignited a revolt.

That might be a case study in know your customers and understanding your value to them. However, Facebook took the opportunity to correct itself. It went back to its old terms of service and today reached out to those critics, explaining principles behind a new term of service, allowing them to vote and submit their opinions.

Kudos to Facebook for taking it seriously, not lawyer fear rule and for coming up with a way for its user to participate in the process.

- Paul Herring

What have you done for me lately, social media expert

Since being on Twitter and following some of what I think are the greatest minds in social media, I've been overloaded with conversations and opinions. Some of are worthwhile, but I wonder whether or not they are tweeting just to tweet.

Those of us who work in this area, I have some news for you. We're not rock stars, even if we dress like them. Creating conflict for conflict's sake is not productive -- and sometimes it's just downright rude. Speaking in conferences, having your own podcast, pontificating about "new media" without providing specific examples, it's all good but of little value.

Maybe CMOs at big companies are impressed by books that you've published, conferences that you've spoken at. I'm not. Show me examples of where your ideas have been applied or better yet, show me where YOU have been part of the team who did it. I'm done with the fluff.

- Paul Herring

Why Function Requires Imagination

"Good design is design that not only achieves a desired effect, but shapes our expectation of what the experience can be.” - Astrida Valigorsky via InspireUX

 
- Cam Beck

Round rock by postmoderngirl
Racing car by Ian Muttoo
Doughnut by uncleboatshoes

How to reach your audience without getting in their way

With all the criticism that Facebook received for appreciably changing their terms of service, it's interesting to note the positive way they responded that probably prevented any mass exodus.

Full disclosure: I have to mention that I completely empathize with their predicament. While their membership is growing by leaps and bounds across the world, they've had difficulty implementing an effective means to monetize that takes advantage of their unique data mining methods.

The market is fickle. People don't care that they're getting this awesome platform without any membership fees. When Facebook tried to monetize and launched one of its first initiatives, Beacon, the public revolted. Their 2008 ad revenue, in spite of the vast numbers of people using the platform, is less than that of MySpace.

By the time I got word that Facebook revised their terms of service, people had already started revolting.

Facebook then did two good things well. The first was in direct response to the outcry and threat of lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and the groundwork from the other was laid long before this was even a blip on the EPICs radar.

1. They recanted the policy and solicited feedback from the audience
2. They communicated directly with the members without the normal lawyer-speak.

(To show how fickle the marketplace really is (and what an itchy trigger finger people have),the executive director of the EPIC, Marc Rotenberg, withheld filing the his complaint with the FCC but promised to keep it in his back pocket.)

As for the other issue, here is the message Facebook sent out to all its members at the top of their member home page:

Notice the "Close" call to action in the upper right hand corner?

If the users don't really care about what's going on behind the scenes, they can just close out the message, and it won't return. I imagine Facebook can use this method to communicate any message they need to communicate to their audience about their service.

They kept it short and to the point, and it speaks directly to the people who were raising the fuss in the first place. In 4 short sentences, the Facebook team was able to explain

• Why they're sending the message.
• What they're going to do about it.
• How to get more information.
• Instructions on how to participate in the conversation.

That's all well and good. But here's the question:

If Facebook can communicate issues before the fact in a manner that provides an easy way to ignore it, if the users wish, can't they just have let their users know, in the same way, that their terms of service were going to change, and have solicited feedback before they pushed it live?

It seems getting feedback from the community before they blow up might be the best way to avoid these sorts of situations in the future.

And in the meantime, they might want to keep Marc Rotenberg's number on speed dial. Especially in a space where privacy is a huge concern, bringing in a privacy advocate (even if he does represent only the most privacy-conscious) for advice just seems smart. - Cam Beck

Navigating Muddy Social Waters

The topic I took on today at MP Daily Fix had so many contributors that it was difficult to settle on the ones I did. As I was formulating the article, I got to bounce some ideas off of friends and colleagues alike, all of whom noticed or agreed on the existence some of the same dilemmas I did:

1. More people were coming out of the woodwork to connect with them on various platforms, and
2. They weren't certain how this would impact the way they (or others) used them.

Alan warned that Facebook might be the new AOL, and Paul remarked (half-jokingly, I presume) that Facebook was becoming the dread of young early-adopting hipsters -- MySpace.

So with this information as the backdrop, I encourage you to read this piece at the MarketingProfs: Daily Fix. I look forward to getting your feedback. - Cam Beck

Are creativity and intelligence at cross purposes?

In my inaugural post on the  new Click Here Blog, I wrote about the potential applications of business intelligence in interactive marketing.

By design, I didn't delve too deeply into the relationship between creativity, defined in the way marketing agencies typically define it, and intelligence, defined in the way business managers typically define it. However, that topic has been on my mind pretty much since I started writing here at ChaosScenario.

The two shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but one would strain credibility to deny the tension that exists between the artistic license that often passes for creativity and the requirements created by real-world business problems set by market conditions.

Part of our problem is language, and another part is cultural. Perhaps our definition of creativity has been too narrow.

As you ponder how you define creativity, pop on over to Alan Wolk's post, "Does Creativity Still Matter." - Cam Beck

Why we should all reject the 'stimulus'

"By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.--Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation." - Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address

Imagine a soccer game in which every player of only one team is allowed to pick up the ball and run with it whenever they want. The other team is held to the traditional rules of soccer, where no player except the goal keeper is allowed to handle the ball with his hands, and even then, only in the goal box. What's more, going into the game, each team expected to be held to equal standards, and it was solely the discretion of the referees to grant a special favor in the interest of 'stimulating' their victory count.

When questioned about it, the Director of All Things Soccer testily rebuffed, "What do you think a 'stimulus' is? That's the whole point!"

Any organized team sport is predicated on adherence to certain rules. These rules let the players know their limits, and referees are present to enforce penalties when any team violates the rules.

An evenhanded and unbiased enforcement mechanism gives the players faith in the integrity of the outcome as well as their chances of success, relative to their respective skills and strategies.

The rules and integrity are critical to the success of the sport. Without the faith they engender, the players would be less likely to participate. - Cam Beck

Image credit, "ref"

Authentic Suffering ... and Salvation

Recently I was honored to take part in redesigning the website for The Salvation Army's adult rehabilitation centers. Take a look for yourself and see how you like it.

The challenge was to effectively communicate the idea that when you donate clothing, cars, appliances, etc., to The Salvation Army, the sale of those items helps people in need of recovery.

This requires two things to make a compelling story:

1. People in need
2. People who were helped

Oh, and their stories needed to be real.

Happily, The Salvation Army has lots of stories that meet that criteria, and now they're posting them on YouTube. Be warned, though. It may be difficult to keep your composure as you watch them. Here's one of them:

Feed readers click through.

Sometime soon, these types of videos -- and other stories -- will find their way to their website as a means of communicating their message of hope -- hope they're able to deliver because of the people who donate items they're not using anymore, as well as those who buy these same goods.

If you need a reminder, just watch and listen to the stories of those who have recovered from some of the most difficult challenges anyone has had to endure.

Jason
Nellie
Patrick
James

I think we can all be glad organizations like The Salvation Army are out there fighting the good fight on the front lines of this personal turmoil.

But beyond that, I think we have to do our best to achieve our mission, in our own contexts and on our customers' terms, as successfully as The Salvation Army has for these people.

It isn't about whether we make commercials (funny or not) about overachieving horses or people throwing snow globes at other peoples' crotches. It's about truly helping others -- in whatever way that applies to you.

You want a way out of the economic mess? That -- not gimmicks -- is the way to do it. - Cam Beck

How to destroy a good brand

Inspired by this post by Lewis Green.