Consent
I’d say that the strongest perceived problems come from unsolicited ’junk’ email or spam. Its something that most people have to deal with everyday. The main point here though is the fact that the email was never asked for in the first place, does not apply to an interest area shared by the recipient and usually arrives along with many more similar variations on the same original email.

Marketers should seriously consider the locations where they solicit subscription to the email newsletter, updates or mailing list and the manner within which it is carried out, in the same manner that it applies to any other form of solicited and unsolicited advertising. This is as much important as the contents and design of the email itself. A good place to start is to look for locations where there exists a shared enthusiasm for the product or an inherent need. Its obvious that involvement will be much higher and if the product is in fact worthy, you will generate positive word of mouth.

Emails are Personal
Messaging with emails are quite personal. Its not traditionally (nor desired) to be a public broadcast medium. Usually the recipient will already know the sender. Keep this in mind. Email messaging today easily takes advantage of personalized elements as well as personalized messages written within the template by a friend. Use this. Its extremely powerful. Also draw upon personalized content from previous points of contact with the user, but not content that is private. Be genuine. Be authentic in both communication and manner. This is the fine detail, but its also shows respect towards the user (potential customer). Its a level of transparency that today is expected.

A common misconception is that computers, the internet, and technology will do everything for us. Mailing lists are easy to put together and require little resource to maintain. Yet the fact is that we are lazy. We don’t care that 95% of the recipients will not be engaged. We ignore the fact that many of them will in fact be turned off and that there is a consequence of generating a negative aura around the product. There is no real problem with the mechanism of communication itself but rather the manner that we carry out our communication.

I personally subscribe whole-heartedly to mailers from Sketchers shoes. I love to know whats coming out, when and where promotions are taking place. There is a shared enthusiasm here, but please keep it simple.

Having designed html picture emails for over a year, I know that clients and users alike appreciate emails that are shorter and easy to quickly identify the message.

What is it useful for?
Email is being used for B2B marketing because it is free and relatively easy to maintain. If you take the approach seriously there is a lot to be gained.

What can be tracked?
- the number of recipients (not very helpful)
- the number of recipients who open the email (more helpful)
- the number of recipients who click on embedded links, and what links they are clicking on (useful)
- the number of recipients who send the message on.

Content that can be delivered
- text, image, animation, video, sound, personalized messages
- content can draw on previous points of connection between brand and user, from a website, phone call, survey – basically any database

What should be delivered
- a clear and visually well designed message with a call to action
- content that will add value to the recipient, ask yourself first – “what has the recipient to gain?”
- a legitimate incentive to send the email on to friends. This constitutes positive endorsement through word-of-mouth. Most of the time incentives are marketing gimmicks manipulating the user – “You scratch my back (send the message on), I scratch yours (show you 30 seconds of that new music video)”

How will e-mail evolve as a B2B medium?
Just to point to Yahoo!’s picture email service which is in early beta. Picture emails and ecards will become more common place, so don’t rely on the format alone to make your message stand out. Actually make your message stand out. Think about your content, your added value to the user, and be better targeted and transparent.

2006 was the year when UGC and virals really came to the fore, created by a few and watched by many. This has since been absorbed into our routine understanding of the internet although the buzzword ‘viral’ does still continue to crop up. Definitely read ‘All Virals are Black Swans‘ by Jerome Courtial on Knitware for a quick reality check and then wade in on ‘Are Marketers hiding behind UGC?‘ asked out aloud by Martyn Perks on Netimperative.

2007 was the year of Social Networking, and social networking as we know it has not at all passed and probably won’t, but it will become more integrated into the finer parts of our day to day communications and interactions in the contexts of our personal lives, our businesses and our passions (politics, sports, gaming, fashion ..).

There will still be strong milage in social networks, as mobile platforms open up a new dimension with peer comms/interactions more available to us on the go, exposing us to valued and trusted opinion from friends or personalities of authority that will influence our decisions to buy, to participate in events, to socialise and influence how we benefit from these connections.

There is also strong milage in the 3D aspects of social networking, which has dipped below public media awareness for the time being (ref: Second Life et al), but will definitely re-emerge when technology catches up, delivering social networks in 3D through the web as a delivery network, established as a game/platform, but experienced with devices such as digital mirrors in our homes/bedrooms, goggles and in the coming years holographics. Holographics will also greatly expand the potential use of miniature mobile devices that will project displays onto surfaces and into 3D space. All of this continues to hold strong ties to social networking.

Specific mentions of MySpace, Facebook and their competition, most of these platforms are maturing into strong media partners that harvest eye-balls and personal data for the benefit of brands and businesses selling product. This is becoming the business model, but should never be confused with the reasons why people use the networks in the first place. They should tread with care and remember where they come from, or else they will most definitely be surpassed by new networks. It is easy to see the necessary lure of business success that is offered by entertainment brands, music labels and broadcasters who themselves are required to find new ways to get their product to paying consumers.

2007 was also the year of Social Network Apps, widgets and hacks. In many ways their visual identities have become clichéd with aqua-esk bubbling interfaces that call out for the user’s attention consistently, bearing a likeness to becoming unwanted and passé. App-spam is in part to blame (ref: Facebook) with close resemblance to email spam and pop-up alerts that are more appropriate to the nether realms of the darker internet. These apps essentially provide novel interfaces that act to display dynamic information feeds that are personal and of interest to a single user. Social network apps go farther to provide awareness of peers, their activities and interests and move to add depth to the experience of online social networking.

Here today
2008 is definitely a year of the mobile platform. We’re seeing the emergence of smartphones with touch screens beginning to surpass other traditional handheld phones and take the headlines. We keep these devices with us almost 24/7 along with our keys and money, and technology has now reached a point in delivering communications services, entertainment, business productivity and the internet through these miniature consoles and tailored all the time to us as a single user.

Apple has been taking most of the headlines, while the Google Android platform shows strong promise. Every other vendor is getting into this as well. An extremely significant change is in the way we use the devices, no longer just through a limited vendor locked interface, but rather more akin to the free-agent nature of our wireless, deskless personal computers, open to running any software we choose, fulfilling our needs on an almost limitless scale of applicability. Essential, its the emergence of the mobile device as an open platform for applications that will set it free. This is it’s year. Be sure to read what David Armano, VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass has to say on the subject.

Viral
There are clear times for using viral type content – mainly for raising awareness on a grand scale.
Virals are great because the brand or marketing crew don’t have the labour intensive job of pushing the content around to the many places where users will see it (that on the other hand is what happens with say, traditional marketing that is placed outdoor, in magazines, on radio stations etc). True virals that spread all on their own, need only initial seeding, and the viewers do the rest. Whats even better is that these virals (which may be video clips, email chains, slogans etc) cross the boundaries and spread across a diverse landscape of viewing destinations and when they inspire imitation – media types. A viral that starts out on a forum, or in an email or on TV will probably see its way to YouTube or BoreMe, may find its way to video phones and may also be talked about (extended coverage) in print newspaper and on the radio.

But we know that already.

Targeted
There are times where you know where your core audience is, and what you need to say to them, and how to say it. So don’t try and give yourself a hard time and seed something virally. Thats a joke.

Targeted marketing is perfect for quick executions, communicating distinct messages and inspiring a response from the crowd.

And thats not to say that the two types of communication can be used together, which is what we will be doing with Yahoo! Music with an initial viral video before launch, that whets the appetite, sparks an interest and begins to grow awareness of the campaign, followed by another 80% of marketing that will target many distinct groups that make up the Yahoo! Music audience and only includes one more viral element aimed specifically at the Facebook community.

Ben raised a few interesting discussion points -
One of the things that makes a viral so appealing is that it is not seemingly coming from the brand, but from a friend or community right? So, in targeted messaging do you not lose the credibilty that a viral may hold in this instance? Do you envisage using ‘viral targeting’ so that people receive something that is seemingly not from Yahoo!

Yes I know exactly what you mean. But lets be clear that viral and targeted are firstly two different a distinct methods of spreading a message. Viral also refers (as a more umbrella understanding of the word) to the content and tone.

With that said – targeted marketing may also take a form that is more personal (set by tone) and personal (set by reducing branding, and changing the author of the piece). The second may set off alarm bells in being inauthentic and manipulative of the audience’s trust. I would argue that you might do the same when you commission or invite a guest speaker or writer to create something that embodies the truth of what you wish to communicate. I’d also say that lower budgets compromise this by relying on a few talented creatives in an agency to carry out the same work – that is up for consideration.

Either way, I believe that targeted communication can also be personal and unbranded.
An example of this are blogs setup by people in a company where they voice their own insights and opinions that sometimes may be at odds with the company – as Dan Wieden said – ‘hiring people with their own voice and unique perspective’. Microsoft allowed one such controversial employee to keep his blog and his job, and today in a changing world of transparency its become quite common place.

You might then argue that a blog, though personal in tone and usually smaller in scale, is also just another broadcast form and un-targeted. I’d argue that if the blog’s author interacts with the readers through comments and quote referrals, then he is doing a fine job of keeping it personal through action and engaging a more down to earth relationship with his audience. Secondly blogs become a lot more targeted when they embody a strong theme or topic that connects with a specific audience segment – and hopefully that audience is as passionate and enthusiastic. Now thats personal and targeted and worth talking about.

My two cents. I think personal, unbranded and targeted can still work.
What do you think?

Designed interface should directly communicate to the user in the same way that signage at an airport and on public transport is clear, easy and helpful. Signage always communicates the full message in the shortest amount of time, sometimes sacrificing artistic detail to maintain only the absolute necessities. Often such a rigid approach leaves the financial world as being cold and unpersonable. The main consideration here should be in accurately separating what is the interface upon which the user wholly depends and what are in fact designated points for more human and natural customer communications.

Financial interfaces of the past would display monochromatic (two colour), standard mono-spaced fonts in much the same way as a calculator or typewriter with little care given to the way in which the aesthetic look is presented and how the language is delivered. Today of course banks are as much a branded institution conveying their own character, warmth and personality to their customers as any other business with care given to every word, every character and every message that leaves their door.

A healthy online experience must include to the finest detail, just as much care as exists within any other communications channel in employment by the bank. In addition to this, the online canvas poses a few more constraints as well as flexible parts that must be considered and molded to the user’s advantage.

Web pages provide a limited (and varying) screen space for laying out financial tools, customer communications and branded messages. Though it is also a flexible screen space upon which there is room for dynamic elements that may convey via finely laid out typography, image, video, forms and interactive elements, which are all fine advancements that should be utilized. Although unlike outdoor print media or linear TV – online’s broad flexibility will often also lead to experiences that may also disorient users – objects that shift and change, pages that refresh and points of reference remain inconsistent.

Today we have at our disposal the ability to finely tune the experience to each user personally, placing control in their hands and the ability to grow their own knowledge and ability to operate successfully. It is expected and required, more so than ever with personal finance.

All of this is key to a successful and dependable experience.

The challenge remains with the careful balance between the considerations of the content, its aesthetic, the manner of delivery, its contextual applicability and the user’s need. We believe in dependable interfaces that do not confuse, navigation that is simple and display space that is flexible, avoiding incessant page refreshing, and catered personally to each user in a way that is both secure and accessible.

Such individual-broadcasters can be found within the community networks of online communities and will enjoy the status of semi-celebrity. Interested media companies already approach such broadcasters with intentions of co-opting such communications with their own branded edge. (see 5 user profiles detailed in ’I told America how to eat Jaffa cakes‘. These people also enjoy networked audiences who propagate their messages along lines of shared interest and over multiple channels within and outside the community (much more to be explored here).

It is also poignant to say that while the trends of UGC are currently in vogue, UGC itself is not the end-game and also inherits a wide number of failings in its implementation and as of yet, not totally understood use. One thing that is clear though is that UGC enabled sites currently boast the fastest ways to garner a massive user-base (the news articles are abundant in this regard).

As content type/themes grow in popularity and consumption they in turn will saturate their participating audience user-base and devalue their own uniqueness. Larger more attractive content types become quickly consumed in the competition and leave what is bizzare, niche and obscure to surface now and then above the crowd. In such an environment it is hard for people to retain qualitative consumption and relationships of longevity and meaning (more on this in the future).

An effective approach will take full advantage of the underlying nature of social networks even as far as new roles they are playing as ways to find content and connect people (moving into search engine territory). These social networks naturally utilize open publishing tools that allow people to connect, create content and share … what is also being referred to as an age of participatory media experiences.

Taking all this so much farther is the development of ubiquitous transfer mechanisms allowing real crossover of these connected and shared experiences from the internet sphere and into the real world. Think mobile devices, universal formats, wireless transfers, mashups all enabled over connected people networks furnished with the means to self-publish, communicate and broadcast.

The credibility that underlies word-of-mouth and it’s endorsement is nothing new. We’ve all been communicating person to person since the dawn of time. If anything we are returning to our roots, preferring relationships with people, that are meaningful and rewarding to the cold mass automation of the factory mindset.

We can look at numbers endlessly and try to determine where the eye-balls are and what spaces they have left and perhaps, where they might go. But here you are still just estimating and acting in a broadcast manner. That may have been the way offline, but its not utilizing what is most precious and unique online. The web is personalized and on demand. It is person to person services and conversations, and it should reduce barriers and bring people together. If a brand can meet people at this level and utilize technology that is effective and efficient, and a manner that is genuine and authentic – then it is surely potent to explode onto the scene garnering trust and loyalty. In such a way social networks are useful to brands, but there is something more.

The real holy grail of social networks lies in the power of the enthusiasts themselves. They are the ones, usually only making up 1% of the crowd who are the initiators and the influencers. They are the ones who propagate messages on their own time, with their own energy, and spread it out, innovate on it and creates fresh ideas. They can do it because their relationships are credible and authentic and their motives for involvement are situated in an innate core enthusiasm that they share with the brand or product.

I don’t think social recommendation is a ‘new’ social currency, but rather something we’ve always had. What is new today is the unprecedented access to free online tools that make communication, networking and sharing easy enough that anyone can do it who wants to do it. Consumers today usually know more about a brand’s product than most people working within the brand. If they don’t know it, they soon will. And when they do, they’ll share it.

Get in with your core 1%. Do the ground work and use the technology at hand to make people connections, encourage conversation and be honest. Theory behind word-of-mouth marketing, engaging enthusiasms and utilizing the platform of social networks is all meaningless if the brand itself continues to build billboards online and hope that ‘if you build it, they will come’.

~ Gautama Payment

****

Originally written for Brand Republic. I am copying the original post by Havlev Pinkerfield below.

Vox pop: Is social recommendation the new advertising currency?
by Hayley Pinkerfield, Revolution UK 01-May-07

Are social networks the best place to push your brand message?

New social networking research commissioned by Microsoft has revealed that 35 per cent of people recommend a brand socially and 25 per cent post a comment about a brand. With over 215 million user accounts globally, there are more personal spaces worldwide than there are people in the UK, France and Germany. This would explain findings from Jupiter that 50 per cent of marketers plan to use social networks to reach consumers this year. Following IAB figures revealing huge increase in online ad spend and AOP stats which showed a decline in interruptive formats, we asked the industry: are social networks the future for online ads?
- MICHAEL STECKLER: EMEA regional advertising sales, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions

Social recommendation is the next iteration of customer segmentation – that’s where it’s going to make the most impact on marketers. It goes beyond identifying groups of people to pass your message on, to individuals who’ll do it.

Some advertisers and sites are doing a good job of engaging consumers. Among those consumers, there is a keenness to engage with more branded content. This is probably because it’s of a higher standard and more relevant. People are interacting with other users, for instance via blogging.

There are huge opportunities for marketers to both advertise and create content in that space. You need to understand why consumers are there and stay sensitive to brand values. Identify brand advocates, they can potentially be very influential. Give them great content and it can become viral.

Although these are positive results, marketers need to be very specific about how they engage through content.
- CHRIS SETH: UK MD, Piczo

It’s another currency in today’s media world – customers, consumers, are dictating that. The terms of media reach and media frequency are something that every brand needs to understand. If your message is not relevant in terms of message and context and specific to social networks, that’s a missed opportunity.

Brands that do it well offer more content with which consumers play and co-create new messaging. Comic Relief invited members to put forward ideas on how to make Red Nose Day the best ever. This put power into the hands of the member base. The right brand presence is relevant, authentic and offers meaningful content to encourage social networkers to co-create a message.
- MARTIN GILL: head of new media, Comic Relief

Social recommendation has always been one of the most powerful tools – if not the most powerful tool – for promoting a product or brand. It builds on the unparallelled trust and confidence embodied within a peer-to-peer interaction. The challenge for an organisation like Comic Relief has been how to stimulate that word of mouth: what do people want to talk about and where are they talking? Now, with people using social network spaces more fully, it is possible to know where people are, so we have worked to be in those spaces too, and to empower our advocates to ’spread the red’ and get involved with us.
- MARK PORTER: client relationship director, Tonic

The economics of reach for the social network marketer are simply awesome, especially when you consider the high production costs of traditional advertising formats. We see it as a matter of content being an agent of the brand, capable of broad consumer engagement, while being adoptable and adaptable. It’s as though the content seeding is only the beginning of an unknown journey, the length of which will be something the consumer decides. All across the online social networking space, page views are rising phenomenally, but the overall user adoption is beginning to plateau. Targeting will prove increasingly difficult. Youth is now older, but silver surfers are adopting younger habits and reinventing themselves. We need to try to find a way to get big ads into small spaces.

Historically we associate ‘geek’ with computer nerds who may be struggling socially, possess above average intelligence and probably more than a few pet hobbies, just a tad too far outside mainstream culture for anyone else to easily relate to. But I’d like to introduce to you a slightly more refined and more modern notion of exactly what geek is, and sadly I would say that the computer geek has taken the cake over the past few decades and received glowing attention in this regard.

My dictionary defines a ‘geek’ as:
- an unfashionable or socially inept person.
- a carnival performer who does wild or disgusting acts. (origin)

or ‘geeky’ (the adjective) as:
- a person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest : a computer geek.

Wikipedia covers the subject in depth and with finer detail, leaning initially towards the technical bias the term inspires, but then broadening outwards declaring a geek as“one who is primarily motivated by passion”.

I believe that geeks are the specialists and they should be celebrated. They are passionate and they are experts of what may have been in the past niche and rare. They love what they do, and they are fascinated by it. In times past, geeks suffered marginalization from the mainstream. Their passions were often in conflict with our blockbuster enthused monocular vision of our world and life. Sidelined and marginalized their sharply focused enthusiasms and passions gave way to the more general and generic.

Today we have the internet. We have social networks, we have search and we have the ability to easily target any idea, singular or shared and make a connection and then a community. These small communities resonate with shared passions and interests at their center around which people gravitate. Just as in any crowd, they have their core 1%, their surrounding involved, and the larger group of periphery onlookers. I’m definitely game for the geek, and any community from big fish like – YouTube to IMDB, Wikipedia and of course Virb; but more lovingly the smaller ones – Fanboy, Flytip, The London Anime Club and The Bag Blog. These people are making up the most vibrant scene on the net with high quality, passion driven, experienced content, and surrounded each within their own distinct micro hysteria.

I know many geeks in every walk of life. In fact if you look inside you should be quite proud to notice the geek in you. Its very dear and special. Perhaps its an affinity amongst the earth, or the stars. Perhaps its animals or plants, or the way natural chemicals join and interact with each other. Perhaps its the historic landscapes or perhaps just portraits. Perhaps its the people in the portraits or the people in the magazines – the gossip from around town. Maybe its the world those people live in, or the worlds they use to live in. And maybe its also the virtual world where these ideas are right now going to travel through so they can arrive and arrange themselves in front of you, for your generous consideration.

I know my geeks from my nerds, and they should be celebrated in every walk of life. Who do you know?

If you want to know more, get in touch. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

A few Apple-esk thoughts for the day. The new OS X operating system is being delayed until October this year although the iPhone is still on track. Patents point to Apple integrating the iPhone in a much closer way to the whole Apple (so-called) media experience (sounds almost like Microsoft, but those are my words). They are making a strong point that the iPhone will be released on time (late June in the US), and its fair to say a lot rides on a successful delivery.

To be honest the iPhone does have an entire industry’s worth of competition from the completely copied Chinese phone, to other touch phones like LG-Prada, to the usual Blackberries and upcoming innovation from Nokia, Sony with coop ventures by Google, Yahoo! and many others. Some have commented that the iPhone is definitely not multi-touch, but rather two-touch. But even so, what Apple excels at is a “quality release that we and our customers expect from us” with added benefits of their loyal user base, free press coverage on everything, brick and mortar flagship stores, Steve Jobs, and so on. The iPhone will be pricey, it will also be premium, and lets not doubt it will go mainstream similar to what the iPod Nano is to the original iPod. Take a look at the latest offer from iRiver to challenge the Nano or perhaps you’d just settle on a Sony Walkman W880 like I did with upto 8GB.

Apple TV is another extremely interesting platform. Granted competition here is equally bullish. Apple is late to the game, and they’re really testing waters with the current release and allowing a wide range of hacks to play with what they have made, adding features like RSS, games, breaking the iTunes DRM, working with Slingshot and so on. A common theme between the iPhone and Apple TV is that they both run modified versions of OS X – and thats pretty powerful. Sure Microsoft does this, but they get in your head by publicizing their wide range of novel OS titles, rather than just getting on with the job and making it work, most of the time mis-identifying their home-user customers as being their own developers. Pardon the slag on their employment of over 61,500 staff worldwide – high in talent, low on clear vision that spearheads innovation. I’d rather be at Google.

What I’d really like to make clear is while the world is oohing over the iPhone, I’m pretty sure that it will become integrated in a way that is much closer than any of us perceive today. Where the iPod has driven wider awareness and adoption of the already sleek and effective Apple Mac range of computers amongst home users and consumers of a wide scale, the iPhone will probably play a similar role especially within the business world, currently in bed with the Blackberry phone and its Windows counterparts.

In the meantime the iPod earlier this week overtook Sony’s original Walkman, Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s Gameboy as the product with the highest sales over the shortest time, selling their 100 millionth iPod in just five and a half years. Apple’s stock is still hanging around $92, with one analyst pricing them at $200 per share, and if you have some spare cash, I still see it as a big opportunity for some longer term returns on investment.

The year beganwith announcements from Apple for their iPhone garnering the usual following and press coverage along with numerous unveilings from every other corner of the tech industry. In fact according to the Keller Fay Group and Nielson BuzzMetrics, the Apple iPhone was mentioned up to nine times for every mention of George Bush across the internet for over ten days following its announcement.

Today the planet is literally covered with screen devices from the very visible and common home screens – TVs, plasmas, computer LCDs; to screens on-the-go – phones, ipods, psps, portable video players, screens on trains, planes and cars; as well as display advertising everywhere – shops, stations, stadiums, outdoor. We can’t escape them and most of us spend the larger part of our lives using them. Designing interfaces for screen devices that appear almost anywhere, fulfilling numerous purposes at the same time provides an almost universal and growing need for increasingly simple and natural ways of interaction that are forgiving and accommodating of anyone who may use them, in anyway they want.

Just getting past the post-New Year’s slumber, Lorenzo spotted LG’s Prada touch screen phone, ready to ship with an interface modeled in Flash. Late last year Elmer previewed a similar Flash menu running on his own Nokia. Designing interfaces with Flash for handheld devices will take us out of the dark ages in on-screen interfaces, historically – just image buttons changing state and calling up lists of further actions. Flash gives designers control over interfaces that offer the user flow and natural organic transitions between states. It puts the design back with the designers and liberates us from stuttering screen interfaces that have been co-opted by hardware limitations and telecom companies (who still don’t get the internet).

Last week I was invited to deliver a course titled ‘Design for Screen’ at the University of Westminster’s ‘BA (Hons) Contemporary Media Practice’ degree program in Harrow. Lecturing over two days to second-year students, we began with a morning of how to gatecrash a job in the industry, playing to our strengths and being passionate about what we love in our work, my own journey from uni to Holler, as well as showcasing some key Holler projects and a sneak peak at some new stuff, not yet seen. We swim within a diverse industry delivering communications and media to every segment of the world. Even an equally diverse body of students made up of film makers, writers, illustrators, and media designers who are rooted within the practice of developing well founded concept and evolving thought process, are not made fully aware of the scale and scope that their talent applies to, and thats exciting.

Design for screen is in itself just as diverse. During the first workshop the students were given sheets of paper and asked to fold them down to size appropriate to the screen they would design. Working in small groups they discussed the how, where and who of each device and put to paper designs that ranged from interactive DVR cinema, exhibit consoles and children’s bubbly touch-screen TV to a pictographic-mobile interface, immersive goggles and a dreamcatcher concept of a ceiling mounted touch-screen device to capture and categorize the quickly disappearing fragments of last night’s dream. I was generally impressed with the unanimous adoption of touch-screen interfaces throughout, but even more so with their embrace of simple finger point-and-drag interactions and the ease with which they took it for granted. And rightly so.

The students really brought it home as they naturally made intuitive choices in how we interact with screens, relate and experience them. They demonstrated scalable design ideas with simple transparent navigation. Day two and we were taking our paper-based designs to the screen. I delivered a basic Photoshop masterclass – preparing our digital canvas and covering technical basics that would allow us to get on with the creative design. The students were given the chance to present their work, field any questions or insights and above all, get a real good feeling for the industry they will become a part of: a media golden age passing just beneath our finger tips.

If you are a designer studying today, there is no doubt that you will graduate into the humble dawn of universal, simple and tangible touch screen interfaces (verbal interaction included of course). We talk of convergence and ubiquitous connections between all devices through any medium, but the real experience will connect with the user only through a fundamental rebirth of the interface. We’ve all seen the stunning TED talks multi-touch screen presentation of February 2006, and perhaps you’ve also followed Prada’s Magic Mirror of a few years ago in New York. And what of HP’s ‘Making the computer personal again‘ TV ads or more recently (January 18th) – Nokia’s quietly released concept films titled ‘A view to the future‘. The last two are pure gold.

Let’s think natural, non-intrusive and extremely responsive intelligent design. Multi-touch has enormous potential and along with voice interaction will revolutionize and simplify the way we do almost anything. Its essentially back to the basics, and thats a good thing for all users. Today we use back-lit displays, electronic paper is not far off, and 3D holographics may soon emerge out of deep-end development and into our own day-to-day lives.

Think human to human point and touch simple experiences that assist rather than get in the way. Think as far ahead as Star Wars tri-corders. And I think we’ll see them in the next 10 to 15 years.

The concept that all your stuff is stored online, accessible anywhere, tapping into the online platform and fleet of software (with public APIs) rather than any traditional offline OS. But what happens when your connection dies? Are you left with a fancy plastic wafer?

Devices that use remote storage and applications is extremely valid, but I am sure some hybrid solutions will become the most successful.

Google’s ambitions promise simplicity of experience, with apps we already know – which supports this approach.

Originally posted via Gizmodo. Enjoy.