While I am all about utilizing social media to market your product and I am also in favor of using it to garner as much feedback as possible from the consumer, there is a limit to which I would take it.
I’d say the creator’s of the new Joshua Jackson film One Week crossed that line recently. Their attempt to garner some hype over the movie was probably set back slightly after taking a full-page ad out in a Toronto newspaper this week and including a page filled with reviews of the film.
My guess is that they stuffed it with so many reviews to hide the fact that they were actually comments from users about a clip of the film on the video hosting site YouTube. And that at least half of the comments noted that they had not yet seen the film but are more along the lines of “this movie is going to be fantastic” and “can’t wait to see this.” Ouch. Social media marketing gone very wrong. I’m betting they know the fact this this movie should have gone straight to DVD.
Contrary to popular belief, there is some thought process and logic behind what I do. Yes, my job is still to make you look better; please let me continue to do my job. But in the process of making you look better I have to bear in mind that the prettiest option may not always be the best for your user.
Notice I didn’t say what was the best option for you. The problem is many times that you are too close to your product/service/brand to understand how others interact with it. Just because you like purple and gold doesn’t mean that 95% of your clientele does. Or the fact that you don’t want a website to scroll horizontally on your screen but you refuse to move your resolution up from a 800*600 pixel scree. I can think of 3-4 clients right off the bat that have had to overrule quality design decisions just because their wife/mother/spouse/other relative doesn’t like green (or any other color, button style or image).
Interaction Design (IxD) is the discipline of designing a system that a user can interact with. In English, it’s designing with the user in mind. It can apply to software design, website creation, mobile phone interfaces and even electronic devices. It’s all around you every day and depending on how well it was thought of and taken into consideration will tell a lot about how (and how often) you’ll interact with that product. (more…)
A couple of guys from CollegeHumor.com have had a long standing prank war going on dating back a few years. In what I thought was the pinnacle of their war, last year Amir scheduled an engagement proposal for Streeter and his then girlfriend.
It took almost a year and a half (and the loss of said girlfriend) but I think Streeter got his revenge…