I’m excited to see some brand redesigns that have recently occurred, to two long-standing brands we are all so used to we probably don’t even think about them much, for bananas and ketchup.
Heinz has updated, with brilliant results, the lowly ketchup packet and if you think about it, you’ll see how people and their needs factored into this design. The old ketchup packets can be messy, inconvenient (if eating while driving, and unfortunately, we have to do that sometimes) and they don’t even hold much. The new condiment packaging is more like a small tub, so you can peel back the cover to dip your fries or whatever in it, OR you can rip off the top and squeeze out the contents. The beautiful part of the design is that it resembles a tiny bottle of ketchup… this was inspired creative thinking, to solve real complaints by customers for over 30 years, and I really love it! Yahoo has an excellent piece on this from the company’s perspective about how and why they made this change and what took them so long… they’ve apparently been working on a new design for years.
Chiquita Bananas have also been modernized, with a playful, icon set of stickers that will introduce a whole new cast of characters to banana lovers. Stickers, games and a Facebook community give people something to play with and talk about… there are even skateboard graphics! Everyone knows bananas are healthy to eat, but with all of these little images and fun ways to participate with the brand itself socially, now I believe they’ll be more fun. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this positively impact Chiquita’s bottom line. The graphics are kid-friendly, but not kid-like, if that makes sense… they will appeal to adults too, especially those who Tweet and hang out at Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and the like, where we talk in OMG’s and LOL’s. The images are quirky, fun and cool. There’s a wonderful article with a lot of details about the design here… check it out! Their website also rocks – very interactive and playful… corporate businesses could stand to take some lessons from it about how to present information in small chunks and make exploring a site fun and compelling.
The thing that cannot be denied is that people are increasingly affecting what brands do, where they participate online, and what they offer. And that’s a great thing! We’ve had focus groups and marketing analysis for years, but those efforts to get into customer’s heads by nature, can only represent a small sampling. With the advent of social conversations, sentiment analysis, and being able to directly ask anyone listening online what they think about your brand, or what they need, the opportunities for hitting the target when changing a product or service are better than ever. I have noticed, in the last six months, nearly every single proposal we do has SOME element of social marketing or social presence in it, because it’s needed (we think) or wanted (by the prospect.) Despite the economic troubles nearly everyone has faced, it’s a really fun time to be in the business of branding, marketing and selling!
Something has been on my mind for a while, and I’ve waited to write it because I have no data for this theory that’s been formulating in my mind, and haven’t had time to research to see if there is corroborating data somewhere out there that I can give you.
Here’s my theory: we sell what we see. First, a little background so you know where all this is coming from. During 2009 I became involved in various business ventures… I launched Twitterface, my web-based Twitter client. I went away from a company name I had used for some years (this one, Fresh ID) and set up We Heart Studios with a lot of cute, focused names associated with it like We Heart Tumblr and We Heart WordPress. I created a long-needed “personal brand” for my pithy musings that have nothing to do with business. That brand got a lot of attention online for some reason, but it doesn’t really communicate what I do. I helped LightThread (who we partner with on lots of projects) as we tried to get more work here in the Kansas City area – in fact, we almost launched yet another new brand to focus on integrated marketing, then pulled back from that. All of these things have been competing for my attention.
So coming into December, I had a lot on my mind… and I felt disconnected from my own company branding. I am a little mystified regarding the way people view me and how few people know what I actually do – I am mostly on “marketing” or “social media” lists on Twitter, which is so vague. That’s unsettling as someone who needs to make money from creative services, and mostly enables social media from a technology perspective, rather than being a speaker on it or author or something. In short, I felt I needed a brand overhaul and continuity, something I both relate to because it typifies me, and can use in a corporate setting to do what I do to earn a living. This can be hard for a creative type – we like so many things. But what I resonated with most is my old company name, Fresh ID… I have had a company with the name “Fresh” in the title since about 1997. After some thought I realized I needed to commit to it fully, with my whole being, and so I have finally made Fresh ID an LLC and am in the process of rebranding everything to fall in line with my core offering.
What has this to do with you? Well, I want you to think about something. In the day-to-day, sort of always online life that many of us now lead – a true mix of business and pleasure at all times, what is it you’re looking at, physically? Are you looking at other people’s brands more than your own? This may seem unimportant, but consider for a minute: do you see branding for Twitter, Tweetdeck, Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc. more than yours? And if so, what are you focused on? Do you have a brand that represents you both online and in printed materials to give people? Whether you’re self-employed or work for a company, is that brand and all it stands for top-of-mind and in your face, every day? And if so, do you love it? Do you get the value behind the words and colors and images? Does it stand up well next to competitors? Is it vibrant and exciting to you, or stale and outdated, or non-existent? Are you proud of the brand you represent, so much so that it’s part of your life pretty much 24/7/365 days a year and you want to share it with people?
Because my theory is, we sell people on what is most present in our lives. This is where I wish I had some numbers or studies to give you, but I don’t. All I have is my own semi-psychological nature and human factors observations to offer… really, just an intuition about this. I think that with my personal branding being most present for me, and my various other ventures being dabbled in and scattered around all over the internet, I was unfocused when it came to a unified message. So I have taken steps to bring my own brand into alignment with what I can do for people (intelligent design with a universal view), what I can offer (lots of creative/tech/socialization services) and what lights me up (making products.) And I’m really, really excited about it. I have some visuals of my new branding to show you, and will do a dissection in another post of how I created the Fresh ID brand and the various elements I used, for those who are interested and want to do something similar for themselves, or at least want to understand the visual dynamics of a strong brand.
Below are Fresh ID-branded Twitterface & Twitter pages & a Ning Workspace design (we’re going to try using it in private mode to manage projects) plus a prototyped business card, which you’ll see all complement this site and blog design:
This site you’re in right now is the umbrella for all I will focus on in 2010. It’s not quite finished, so bear with me, but this is where my blog is now, and it has its own little name, The Arboretum. I like to think of The Arboretum as being where we can all hang out, discuss, think and learn from each other. I have moved my Design for Users blog into this site so that I can share all the thoughts I have on user experience and customer care, as well as point to the products we offer, show portfolio pieces, list services and explain our differentiator, since we are primarily a B2B services company.
Twitterface is going through some changes and we will be changing its name eventually (partly due to Twitter’s request that product names not contain the word Twitter in them.) And of course I will continue to work on projects with my friends at LightThread. But this is going to help me focus on what’s truly important and enable me to keep my own brand top-of-mind in the coming year.
This was my best decision so far, because bringing everything into this one business site is going to ensure I am in and out of my own company site much more than I was before. (I will keep my personal tumblr for playing, talking about cooking, music and other personal passions, etc.) We will be going further with this idea, as we develop ID Clouds (more on what that is later) that makes working online more pleasant and keeps us in our branded environment, because I truly believe we are selling what we see.
What do you think? What are you looking at everyday? Is your focus as sharp and your mission on target? If not, let’s talk about it and get you on the right path. If you have a brand you love and are proud of, share it with us so we can learn from what you’re doing!
There is no single best way to have users sign up for an account online, because there are too many variables to be considered for this aspect of the user experience. Varying factors can include security, purpose of the account, understanding of the user at the time of signup, what information they must have ready and what they will have to do next, among other things. So to point to a cool new site – even a competitor’s – and say “I want a one-field signup process like that!” does not necessarily serve your needs or your user’s. In fact, there is an awesome site I recommend to people that suffers greatly from a confusing signup process because they tried to simplify it too much.
Getting people to signup is a marketing and conversion issue not covered in this article, but the signup experience itself is your user’s first impression of using the product for their own benefit. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this design and see other great examples of signup processes. Link me up! 
A user interface designer relies on certain things: a fast, working internet connection, a big enough screen to handle the inevitable hopping back and forth from one window to another, some excellent music, and a steady supply of his or her favorite addictive beverage of choice… in my case, coffee or Coke Classic.
But those are just the accoutrement needed to set the stage. An interaction designer must rely on one or more tools with which to turn the brilliance bursting forth from highly stimulated and caffeinated synapses, into pure bottom line revenue. Well, ideally at least.
I have my staples, those products I cannot and will not live without, which happen to all be owned by the same company these days. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver have fueled the development of most software products I have worked on. Though they will always be used for my ultimate design and final polishing, I’ve recently discovered a few products that make creating a prototype almost as easy as having a thought, and I want to share these finds in case other user experience professionals or developers looking to prototype new features might benefit from them.
Balsamiq Mockups Makes Rapid Prototyping Fun!
I happened onto Balsamiq Mockups via a Twitter comment by Alex Horstmann about how great this product is. One of the big back-and-forth debates among information architects and user experience designers is the level of prototype that should be created and presented. Info architects generally rely on wireframes… the outlining of sections and navigation elements and the like. People who design the product line branding and comprehensive user experience like I do, often go whole-hog and want to communicate all their creative ideas, along with the taxonomy, navigation, etc. It can be time-consuming to do that, and sometimes even a visual designer just needs to show a simple feature interaction concept. Historically, I love to sketch with pencil and paper. It’s been the fastest way for me to work a design problem out for myself. But then I usually want or need to share it with developers, and I have a sketch. Do I scan it, recreate it using one of my standard tools, or just get on the phone and describe it???
With Balsamiq Mockups, I can grab and place “sketchy” elements such as dropdowns, icons and other form elements onto a blank notebook page online, then save and send it to my team. Peldi Guilizzoni, owner of Balsamiq and developer of the product, sets a new standard for customer service, which is one reason why this product will always draw raves from me, despite my occasional gripes about Adobe Air, which is the platform the product is built upon. Meet Peldi and you will agree with me. This product was and is “designed for users” by Peldi himself. If you have a problem, he strives to fix it, and uses the excellent Get Satisfaction site to stay in constant contact with users who need help. If you have a request, Peldi will seriously consider it, usually implement it, and if he cannot or shouldn’t, he provides the research behind his decision and fully explains why not. That is RARE, even in this day of more transparent and more open applications.
And now maybe Peldi will know why it took me so long to put this review up – I can’t stop blathering on about how great he is with his customers, and stay focused on the software itself, which is why you’re here. So go see the software for yourself!
>> Try it now, before you buy it!
>> Twitter Balsamiq
Skitch Takes Screenshots to a New Level of Convenience
Working with software, I’ve taken a lot of screenshots. I’ve taken them into Photoshop and refashioned them completely, I’ve drawn circles and put giant pink #ff3399;">“Please do not do this!!” messages on them, and I have often had to take multiple shots of a long web screen and then put together the hacked up pieces in a Photoshop file so I can have the long screen to work on or annotate. Thankfully, a new Adobe Air tool called Websnapshot has eliminated that issue, as long as you have a direct link to point to.
But Skitch, though it doesn’t take a screenshot of the entire web page, does so much more, that it is well worth the money you don’t have to pay for it. It’s in Beta and Free as of this writing. Here’s what Skitch does, brilliantly and easily: find something you need to take a screenshot of, open the Skitch application, snap the portion of the screen you want, draw circles, boxes and write notes on it to explain your issue, post it to your online account, then share the link with the people you choose. Nathen Harvey, Director of Operations at VisualCV, turned me onto this modern miracle. He uses it to communicate with users and developers, because he can snap a screen and put notes on it and distribute it within minutes. The ability to post a screenshot online and grab the link to send in an email, rather than having to save and send an attachment from your own hard disk space is truly awesome. Learn the lingo and try it! I love this tool.
>> It’s free… nothing to lose but a moment of time. Try it!
>> Twitter Skitch
>> See Nathen’s Skitch Message Online
GUIMags & GUIMagnets Makes Whiteboard Collaboration Productive Beyond the Meeting
Gathering in a conference room, brainstorming with smart people, the smell of fresh markers permeating the air… nothing beats it (sometimes!) But after hours spent in a conference room, what do you have? A lot of stuff on a whiteboard that has to be transcribed, remembered and implemented immediately, or all the hours of work are at risk of being lost forever.
Enter these little whiteboard magnets that are so obvious, you’ll wonder how you lived without them all these years. I love the GUImags story… the lead designer had some carpal tunnel issues, and was stuck at home healing. He used refrigerator magnets to make interface elements, and the Eureka! moment struck him: he needed magnets of interface elements to make design faster and easier. (And less physically debilitating!)
GUIMagnets is a similar product of laminated form elements. Rik Schot, a User Experience Designer in Nederland, was working on a website form (and no doubt, making frequent changes) when he realized there had to be a better way to prototype.
Now, there is a trick to this – you will have to take pictures and distribute them of the whiteboard designs, until GUImags partners with someone like Polyvision or Scanr, or designs a unique solution themselves. Output of the meeting is a critical element of this process and I hope they will come up with a full solution soon, because I think this could be a really valuable product in team settings. GUIMags mentions several other products coming soon that will aid your prototyping & collaboration: GUIBoards is a neat whiteboard with built-in resolution sizes that looks like a helpful concept.
GUIMagnets are sold on a laminated sheet, but GUImags come in a little briefcase – you’ll look so official when you show up for meetings! 
>> Learn more about GUIMags
>> Learn more about GUIMagnets
Additional Products for User Interface Designers
Gliffy Does Diagrams in a Jiffy!
I so couldn’t help that headline. But Gliffy does seem really cool. I have known about them for several years, and they’ve rebranded themselves to focus on using their tool for online wireframing, diagrams, storyboards, etc. This tool is easy to use and would really come in handy for professional sitemaps and interaction flowcharts. They offer a free one-month trial, and paid subscriptions following that. I haven’t tried the wireframing options they offer, but it looks pretty neat. Check them out.
Dabbleboard – A Powerful Online Whiteboard
I just discovered Dabbleboard but have only dabbled in it so far… it takes a bit of getting used to. The concept is really cool though – you can draw online, instead of offline using pencil and paper, and then show your lovely sketches to others much quicker than you could sketch, scan and send.
I tried making a user interface as lovely as the Dappleboard example shown here, but couldn’t in the few minutes I spent with the product. I think you have to add some elements or something from this UI Toolkit. I’ll explore the product more when I have time. For me, Balsamiq Mockups was faster and easier to get started with, but Dabbleboard has one key thing I like, which is the idea of drawing electronically so I can avoid the step of scanning, or recreating sketches in a full-blown prototype before showing them to people. You don’t have to sign up to play, which is awesome, so try Dabbleboard out today and let me know what you think.
Have I missed any other cool prototyping or user interface-related products? I’d love to hear about them if you use something not mentioned here!
In a new variation of designing for users, Moms around the world are gearing up to make their kids the most fabulous lunches they have ever experienced. Fortunately, for those blissfully ignorant of Bento and the latest designer trend of “cute food”, a host of sites and experts exist to help you make your babies lunches the BEST lunches their peers and teachers have ever laid eyes on. And I think it’s great, because who says the food we eat to sustain us can’t be healthy, appealing to look at, a little mischievous and FUN?
This picture, from Cooking Cute, a website by dedicated mother and Bento-designer Ngoc, is just one of many examples of a Bento-styled lunch. Audrey is her niece, and this meal really is a thing of beauty… what a treat to open your lunchbox and find something like this in it!
I cannot help but think the Bento concept is adorable, while simultaneously being thankful I have no school-age children to prepare these time-consuming treats for. The Oilman likely would not appreciate the gesture of having cute food on his plate, though he has gotten used to every meal having a “theme” such as Greek, Italian, French or my personal favorite, Tex-Mex, featuring authentic Texas flavors, such as mesquite-grilled meats and veggies. No Kansas hickory for me, thank you!
Continue reading for Bento resources and pictures… because no plate of food you serve should go undesigned. And if you like pretty things as much as I do, you won’t want to miss seeing these visual treats.
Bento 101
Alanna Kellogg provides a great introduction to Bento over at BlogHer. If you’ve never before heard of Bento, or are new to this designer food craze, start here for six easy lessons for taking Bento back to school this year.
Cooking Cute
The definitive site for all things Bento… pictures, recipes, tips, links, resources, an A-Z glossary and more!
LuckySundae’s Beautiful Bento Design – 180 Meals!
This Bento designer’s work was featured in the book “Face Food” and you’ll see why after looking at these photos… very creative, charming and whimsical… not to mention edible!
Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes
Book description: “All across Japan, parents come up with unique ways to bring attention to their children’s lunch boxes. And what better way to make children eat than to turn their midday meals into a cartoon? With Face Food, Christopher D Salyers documents the very real phenomenon of crafting food into visually creative and appealing forms, such as Pikachu, Daraemon and Cindarella, bringing health, heart and imagination to the bento box.”
Bento Lunchbox with Nested Containers
Very neat modular lunch box with 5 microwave-safe containers that fit inside, from Reusable Bags. Perfect for kids or adults who want to take lunch to work.
Cooking Cute’s Bento Box Collection
I covet these beautifully decorated lunchboxes… they’re enough to make me want to try serving Bento lunches around here after all! Fortunately, Ngoc has posted links to retailers where she purchased them, so be sure to check them out for even more Bento container options.
Fun Food Blog
Packed with love, for you… great Bento-centric blog with lots of tasty photos and food for thought, though it makes me yearn to eat lunch apart from The Oilman instead of with him as we usually do, just so I can leave him sticky notes with adorable drawings on them with his packed meal.
Do you have any Bento-making experience? I’d love to hear your comments and see photos if you have them to share.
I’ve been exploring the idea of a visual resume, after having to create a document that showed a quick overview of the type of work I do. I designed a mini-portfolio called “Six Fresh Brands” that shows thumbnails of six corporate brands I’ve done, with my skills categorized into three segments to create a simple 3 page pdf. I have since found so many neat ideas online, from people trying to creatively communicate what they have done and can do, and companies trying to help users create a visual cv. It can be so difficult to show the scope, the depth, and the breadth of a professional’s skills over a period of time.
Wordle’s Word Cloud Generator
One tool I learned about that helps people create a visual resume is called Wordle. If you like playing with graphics and text and colors, this excellent Java-based web application will occupy you for hours. The colors and layouts are all customizable, and the designs it creates actually look good. You take the text from your resume, copy and paste it, and then play with the output until you’re satisfied with the results. Here is one version of my resume in Wordle form… does this word cloud approach communicate capabilities effectively? You could design so many cool pieces with this art… like a blog header or presentation cover. I just love Wordle!
A Resume in Pictures
Karen Storer is a visual thinker who presents information using maps and diagrams, so it only made sense for her to present her resume in the same way. Can you picture her solving your communication problems like this?
Do Diagrams Help Depict Capabilities?
I also took a stab at using a Venn Diagram of my “universal experience” concept as a visual resume. What’s missing in this image is any sort of dates or companies… but would this add anything to a traditional resume, because you can see a lot in a glance?
Resume Presentations
Some folks have used Slideshare to create moving graphic resumes. Alihadi has created an autobiography that made me laugh, as well as educated me on his work history.
This format lends itself to creating and defining your own personal brand. I wonder what an HR director would think, if sent the link to this? I’d love to know, since I may be tempted to make my own Slideshare resume someday.
Timeline Resumes
NavAgility is in the business of visual timelines, which can be used to depict a person’s work history. I believe you can drill down into the different work experiences shown, and get the full-blown text of that job history, making this more like an interactive site.
But, Do Visual Resumes Work?
Some design professionals expect their portfolio to serve as a “visual resume.” But portfolio images are typically just work samples, unless dated and laid out chronologically. What I want to know, is if depicting your work history graphically is effective at getting the attention of the right people, or if they are just novelties meant to amuse graphic-inclined folks like me who find them interesting to study. I assume the traditional resume would also be required, but I’m not sure if that’s correct, if you can fit the dates and companies to depict your work history inside the visual presentation.
I’d love to hear it straight from human resource professionals and recruiters, if they’d be willing to take this short survey or leave comments here, to give job hunters some insight.
I can’t say definitively what Web 2.0 is, in fact, experts often disagree about the precise meaning of this ubiquitous term, including Tim O’Reilly, the man who coined it in 2004. O’Reilly’s latest definition of the term seems to be this: Web 2.0 is a transformative force that’s propelling companies across all industries towards a new way of doing business characterized by harnessing collective intelligence, openness, and network effects.
Fine. We can work with that, because the purpose of this discussion is primarily about design and branding. What I DO know, and in this area thankfully, I have some expertise, is what Web 2.0 is NOT. And Web 2.0 is not a brand.
These fun, cool graphics do not provide a substitute for the necessity of a brand, they cannot distinguish you from competitors (anymore) and they do not, in and of themselves, provide the critical distinction that a great brand experience offers, that moves a company leagues beyond the pack.
In an effort to better communicate what I do for clients, I’ve created two PDF documents that describe the various user experience activities that take place on an ecommerce or software design project.
This was actually a bit harder than it looks – I began with the intention of creating a UE process, but the truth is, these activities can be done at various times throughout the life of a project, so they are somewhat chronological like a process, but not totally rigid. Many times, multiple things are going on at once. For example, I might be working on a Product Design Guide for developers, packaging design with marketing, and doing user testing on a particular feature, so it’s impossible to say “we must do this first.” Each company I work with is different and so the process has to be flexible to account for time, budget and necessity.
Italic bold phrases in this document (ie. Personas) represent actual deliverables that will most likely be produced as a result of doing the activity, and are all things I have produced for various clients and employers. I will eventually offer a complete library of deliverable samples for people who are new to user experience, or companies who are curious about those documents. I hope you enjoy these!
>> User Experience Activities | Ecommerce
>> User Experience Activities | Software
Today Firefox 3 was released, and after reading the news, I eagerly rushed over to download it, especially because one article I read touted its complete redesign and must-have functionality. I was a bit disappointed to discover just another copy of an Apple product. At least the older version of Firefox I was using felt uniquely different than either Safari or Internet Explorer. I preferred it, over this design and usability nightmare.
To quote from a MozillaLinks review “Firefox 3 is not a timid release. It has been designed since the beginning with the specific goal of simplifying the web experience…” The problem is, that the visual design varies only slightly from Safari. Since the day Safari came out, it’s offered the same clean, easier to use and understand interface than any other web browser I’ve used. Now that was an original design!
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