Location based advertisting

Posted by Braden on Tue, March 16, 2010 at 11:04 PM

Shawn Gunn from Navteq Media Solutions, a division of Nokia, presented the current state of location based advertising. Primarily focused on highlighting Navteq’s services, the talk was a nice primer on some of the possibilities for location aware mobile advertising.

Location based advertising is a subset of mobile advertising combining proximity, contextual, and demographic targeting with location-based advertising engagement.  Mobile phones are personal, portable, and widely in use.  Rather than merely displaying widely circulated ads, location based advertising offers to make ads more relevant and helpful to end-users, potentially enhancing the advertising experience.

Despite their pervasiveness, brands have been relatively absent from mobile devices.  Over $225B is spent on local advertising (newspapers, circulars, radio, TV) and 94% of retail sales still occur through physical stores.  Previously, mobile has not been able to connect a brand to a hyper-local level.  Location based advertising is an extremely efficient method to drive customers to nearby establishments.  Brands are willing to spend a much higher CPM for this.  Navteq views much of their offering as a lead generation service.

Campaign and business models are currently being established but opportunities are vast.  Many are exploring augmented reality interfaces and alternate reality gaming along with existing location based advertising channels:

Text – individualized SMS messages exchanged with potential customer
Navigation devices – coupons and promotions for nearby establishments
Mobile web – ad banner units
Mobile applications – Loopt, etc

Highly trackable, the current mobile CPM model is moving toward a performance-based model.  The ROI is extremely high and is causing advertisers moving to mobile with limited marketing dollars.  Global location based service spending is forecasted to exceed $7B by 2013.

Notes (0)

Effective Dashboard Design – Why Your Baby is Ugly

Posted by Braden on Tue, March 16, 2010 at 11:00 PM

A dashboard is a single screen able to be monitored at a glance.  As a buzzword, “dashboard” has become synonymous with bad user interfaces and poor information design.  Aaron Hursman (@hursman) touched on some ways to optimize your dashboard experience and highlighted pitfalls to avoid.

First off, it’s important to note that all performance indicators are not key performance indicators.  Choose what’s important to conserve real estate and make it clear what’s important.  Dashboards are meant to be interactive but forcing too much interactivity can hide important data.  Try to find ways to surface important information.

Bad ideas and things to avoid:
3D graphs – perspective is difficult to read
Pie charts – does not support much information.  Round visuals are typically not an effective use of space
Gauges – a dashboard does not need to look like a ‘dashboard’
Grid liness – add too much noise to data visualization.  Dashboards don’t need to show precision, just trends.

Helpful tips:
Front-load design time and prototype to allow proper information design
Utilize simple graph models.  Many waste energy on creating complex graph designs
Use spark lines
Focus on monitoring data vs. historical data

Those interested in learning more on dashboard design should pick up Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few.

Notes (0)

Hating Flash is the cool thing to do

Posted by Braden on Tue, March 16, 2010 at 10:59 PM

There was barely been a mention of Flash at SXSW aside from the claim that it will die a quick and painless death at the hands of HTML5 and CSS3.  In fact, I may have heard more references to Silverlight over the past couple days.  With all the promises HTML5/CSS3 holds, is it right to assume that Flash will be rendered completely obsolete?

SXSW is a conference of developers, designers and people who are deeply involved in the interactive community.  This is the group that selects the tools to concept and create the interactive work we experience today.  If this community wants to abandon Flash, the change may happen sooner than most think.

The excitement about HTML5 is justified as it opens the door to do many tasks without Flash.  The most notable example is audio and video playback.  Additionally, Javascript and CSS can add motion to elements previously only possible with Flash.  However, there remain many uses for Flash that will keep it around for the near future.

My excitement comes not in thinking Flash will die, but in knowing that designers and developers have more options for building web experiences than ever before.  These options allow us to make better decisions about which technologies to deploy and allow us to create more compatible experiences across web, mobile, and social platforms.

Notes (0)

Prototyping web apps

Posted by Braden on Tue, March 16, 2010 at 10:58 PM

Tuesday began with a discussion on the benefits of prototyping web apps.  The presentation was conducted by two design leads at Google. Michael Leggett is currently the design lead of Gmail and Darren Delaye has spent several years as the design lead of Google Docs.  Both extolled the benefits of utilizing prototyping in the early design stages of a project. 

It is important to note that prototyping does not have to require much HTML development.  Prototyping techniques shared ranged from static image slideshows to quick screen-capture movies with voice-over narrative. Think of the effect you need and think about how you can make it look like the final product.  The scrappier the technique, the better.  Scrappiness increases speed between iterations and ultimately allows more thought put into the final product.  The desire is to make a commercial, not a spec, for the proposed design.  Prototypes allow proper evaluation of functional components and generate much higher quality feedback.

Some projects, such as the creation of cars, buildings, and electronics are difficult to prototype; interactive work is not.  We can prototype with the same tools that we use to create the final product.  We can even demo the prototype in the browser.  Prototyping enables better communication between design and development teams by providing additional clarity on development requirements.  It also allows more informed decision-making when it comes to feature prioritization by giving developers a better grasp on the time required to implement feature sets.

I found the most interesting statement from the two was that they don’t place much value in formal wireframes. Both rely on sketching to concept an idea and then move straight into prototyping.  I’m intrigued by the benefits prototyping offers and am excited to infuse it into more projects I work on.

Notes (0)

Monday keynote with @ev

Posted by Braden on Tue, March 16, 2010 at 10:55 PM

For those who don’t know, Evan Williams is one of the founders of a small social media startup named Twitter.  Whenever a Twitter founder gives a presentation there are great expectations that they will answer one of many questions people have for the company.  The primary question being; how will they monetize the service.  Williams used the keynote to announce @anywhere, a platform that allows site owners to embed Twitter services within content pages.  More information is available online than was delivered during the keynote as after the announcement was made, the talk moved into an awkward interview format conducted by an editor from the Harvard Business Review.  After each answer, the moderator provided inspirational follow-up remarks to Williams such as:

“That is a fascinating answer”
“I’m really glad you brought that up”
“I find that a really interesting point you make”
“Let’s think about what you just said for a minute”

The questions became lengthier over the hour-long keynote while Williams answers grew shorter.  @pjbfcp summed it up best by tweeting about a session following the keynote: “I know this is going to be better than that last session where @ev interviewed that guy.”

All in all, hopes were high for Evan Williams and most felt the insight he provided was underwelming.  It didn’t help that the keynote immediately followed Gary Vaynerchuk’s magnum opus.

Notes (0)

We’re playing with social location software.
If you find us at SXSW, we’ll give you something.*

Braden

Braden’s formal education as a scientist combined with his professional experience as a technologist offers a unique approach for creating innovative uses for emerging technology and media. As a producer he blurs lines between departments and disciplines by acting as translator, problem solver, and counselor.

Zara

An incessant media snacker, Zara lives online. She built her first website when she was twelve and hasn't looked back since. She's always interested in the next big thing, the next small thing, or that obscure thing over there. When asked to describe her job, she often says, “Some days I design, some days I code, and some days I get to use scissors and tape."

Colle+McVoy

Colle+McVoy is a digitally focused full-service advertising agency based in snowy sunny Minneapolis, Minnesota.