Littlefair Communications for Technology Companies

You're doing Facebook Wrong

2015-02-05T13:27:00.001+00:00

According to this neat little article there are some key trends you can use to better engage when using Facebook posts. It's clear that if you're using Facebook it should be as part of a joined up campaign across many channels. Facebook simply is one way of expressing the narrative that you've developed which answers direct business objectives. Facebook is a way of promoting that story, so if you're going to do it, do it right!

Know you're customer and how they interact with Facebook to help you craft a more effective campaign. The 'Buddy Media' article over at Mashable shows some key and easy to follow guidelines, namely:

- Don't forget the weekends
- Out of office hours see more interaction
- Want to take a day off? Wednesday might be best
- 1 to 2 posts are day see more interaction than 3+
- Use recognisable links.

Check it out here: http://mashable.com/2012/09/28/marketers-facebook-wrong/

Intangible Value Creation: Hunter Summerville and Shreddies

2014-05-13T12:28:00.002+00:00

Quite a fun video from TED by Ogilvy veteran Rory Sutherland.

He talks a lot of sense about how we perceive products and services and about the 'intangible value creation'. For an example of this see Hunter Somerville's ad campaign for Shreddies (to which he makes reference)...
http://cargocollective.com/huntersomerville/SHREDDIES

Your Company has a mission statement so why don't you?

2014-05-12T15:04:00.000+00:00

Fed up with your job? Going nowhere? Ok, but how can you tell if you don't really know where you're going?

Check out the following article about the value of having a personal mission statement. Don't like the jargon? Call it personal objective or goal, but call it something. It's worth a read.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3030038/bottom-line/why-your-life-needs-a-mission-statement

Minority Report User Interface available for homes

2014-04-06T09:32:00.001+00:00

I've already written about this sort of futuristic gestural interface before and I love it! I can't wait until this sort of thing is available for home use.

Wait…! What did you say? It is!

More accurately, it will be. Currently dizmo is at kickstarter phase so no idea about how much it'll cost but suffice to say there are boffins working on it now. Dizmo is a software that can make the apparently flaky 'Leap Motion' work on a realistic level.

Science Fiction eh? It really does help push us to make our fantasies reality.
(I'm still waiting for my hoversuit though…)

The television ident

2013-12-02T12:29:00.000+00:00

Here's a nice little BBC video article about the history of the ident, highlighting the designer of the first BBC ident, Abram Games.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25181754

It's interesting to see in the following clip how the ident went from its original abstract whackiness, through boring globe spinning and then came out at the other end even stranger than the very first.

(If you want the animations of these idents then follow this link to the BBC site. It also features some voiceovers)

Before working on this 3D medium for the BBC, Games was a well-known advertising and poster artist. Of note are some of his wartime pieces such as this one.

Continuous personal development and growth

2013-11-24T18:50:00.002+00:00

Often it's hard to give yourself time to work on skills you'd like to develop. Time is precious and sometimes the courses that you want to go on to improve are just too expensive! Ok, so your company *should* give you a budget for personal development but between what companies should do and actually do there is sometimes a gulf..

So you should think about MOOC.

Sounds strange but MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Courses and the best part of this is…they're free. Learn what you want, when you want to and at no cost.

The only downside is that often you have to dig a little to find something that:

Is of a certain quality (ahem)...
Is aimed at your level of learning
Doesn't advertise the author's products or services too heavily.

If you are interested then try googling for MOOCs or visit this link to check out what's available in your field of interest.

Network with confidence: you have nothing to lose! Networking with Jerome Jarre

2013-07-19T10:33:00.000+00:00

What do kids these days know, huh? Nothing! We're more experienced, been there, done that. On top of it all young people simply don't have the get up and go of we more seasoned business folk. They just laze around all day checking facebook, playing video games and producing monosyllabic grunts when in need of food, right?

If you think like this then you should check out the following video about networking and challenging yourself to achieve your goals. Jerome Jarre is a young guy but with a lot of energy who (among other things) has made crazy videos which other young twenty somethings love. Funny, daft, irreverent.

He's also, in my opinion, an astute entrepreneur from whom we can learn. Check out this video. Give it time and you'll see (3minutes).

Conclusions: dare to do it, be bold and be creative about it. There's no point waiting for these people to come to you. You need to take the 'game' to them.

As my karate teacher (read my martial arts blog here) used to say the strength of effort is the measure of the results (he paraphrased James Allen) . Ok there's a side discussion here about effort, efficiency and results: my point is if you do NOTHING then NOTHING will happen. It's pointless sitting around all day waiting for emails to come to you if you haven't reached out in the first place. You have to be targeted, focused and smart with your efforts but this process of focusing your efforts on a goals and objectives means you're getting it done.

Focus your efforts.
Get creative.
Dare to do it...

Downloading and Converting Youtube Videos

2013-03-27T08:02:00.000+00:00

Useful tool for downloading YouTube videos. You can also convert the videos to different formats.
Be careful with copyright issues on Youtube though! I use some videos for teaching and lecturing when network connection is not possible so downloading the video is essential

http://www.clipconverter.cc/

How to be Creative

2013-01-14T10:43:00.002+00:00

Although I've worked in the creative field for many years I've never really analysed the process of how to be creative. It just happens. I'm not saying I'm a natural at it as I took me many years studying in the creative arts and then being surrounded by superb, creative people from whom I learnt creative nurturing techniques. This is why I found the following video so fascinating: somebody who has studied the process carefully and rounded up the salient points into a 25 minute presentation. And to top it all the speaker in question is John Cleese which makes it informative, creative and funny! Check it out…. (but give yourself some space and time in order to do so)

Learning something in 2013 for your resolutions?

2013-01-07T12:03:00.001+00:00

Have you thought about how technology will impact upon that learning process?

When I first started learning French, some twenty years ago I had access to a teacher during lesson time, books in the library and cassettes for listening comprehension. Some tv programmes were available but were difficult to get hold of. Maybe I could have video taped them and watched them at some other time, but let's face it, this was a faff on.

Leap forward to 2013 and we can see how learning has changed. Essa Academy is at the forefront of student interaction technology, having issued every child and teacher with an ipad. The upshot? No heavy books for the kids to lug around, instant feedback from teachers during the lessons and a reduction in the photocopying bill of some £65,000.

See the BBC video here ...

…and an older but more comprehensive video showing the school's 'enabling' ethos headed by the Principal, Showk Badat.

The Success Factor

2012-12-31T22:59:00.001+00:00

Good points for everybody to take on board as we embark on a New Year…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maryellen-tribby/the-success-indicator_b_1874431.html

The Success Factor Indicator

Successful People
Have a sense of gratitude
Forgive others
Accept responsibility for their failures
Compliment
Read everyday
Keep a journal
Talk about ideas
Want others to succeed
Share information and data
Keep a "to-be" list
Exude joy
Keep a "to-do/project" list
Set goals and develop life plans
Embrace change
Give other people credit for their victories
Operate from a transformational perspective

Unsuccessful People
Have a sense of entitlement
Hold a grudge
Blame others for their failures
Criticize
Watch TV everyday
Say they keep a journal but really don't
Talk about people
Secretly hope others fail
Horde information and data
Don't know what they want to be
Exude anger
Fly by their seat of their pants
Never set goals
Think they know it all
Fear change
Take all the credit of their victories
Operate from a transactional perspective

Online searching in real life

2012-12-16T11:57:00.000+00:00

Neat Google Analytics ad pretty much sums up the feeling you sometimes get when online searching.
Milk, semi-skimmed.

It doesn't have to be this way though does it!?

How to get people to do what you want

2012-12-07T12:16:00.000+00:00

This is a great video by Associate Professor Charles Dwyer who has a quirky and funny delivery. I'm pleased I found this video as it reaffirms some of the thoughts I had about working with others.

"People do what they do to take care of what's important for them"…

- It's all your responsibility! 100%
- Positive reinforcement and influence
- There's no place for ego:people will do it for *their* reasons
- The stuff of human influence is fluff: timing, words, tone…
- Reasons with "because" increases the likelihood of your demand being followed through
- Ask for help from others
- Thank people
- Communication breakdowns are your fault, "I must not have said that very well, let me try that again…"

McCabe's Law: "McCabe's Law: Nobody _has_ to do _anything_."

Old Skool UI

2012-12-02T21:00:00.000+00:00

As our car was in for a service I had the opportunity of using the new Scenic for a while and was interested by the dashboard UI. The most interesting thing I noticed was that the fuel gauge was old skool! The display was fully animated and this fuel indicator was in fact a facsimile of the way analogue fuel used to appear. I'm sure this is the result of much user feedback and not the whim of a misty-eyed older designer (ahem).

In addition the rev counter was a sliding arched scale much like you'd see in a video game and the speedometer was a digit. Have video games influenced dashboard UI? Car games dashboards have long needed to be animated and this sort of animation is commonplace in the virtual world. Have we been so influenced by games that we *need* similar UI in our real cars?

Is this life imitating [c]art?

Visual language for design

2012-11-23T16:10:00.001+00:00

Chief Mazda car designer, Akira Tamatani, talks about the visual language used in the new Mazda 6 car design. Enlightening stuff, regardless of the fact it seems tightly scripted by the marketing department. Tamatani says he was inspired by the power and beauty of the horse in the design of this car. Judge for yourself.

First 3D measurement chip developed to make mobile gestural interaction possible

2012-11-15T09:09:00.002+00:00

Following on from my sci-fi inspired gestural interface post, I'm following up with a bit of good news concerning the development of technology that may well soon make this into a reality.

As well as the camera-based technology developed by others such as Leap based on camera technology there are advances in electrical field controlling for mobile devices too.

Overview of Leap's technology

Microchip Technology are now launching chips which help mobile devices sense movements in 3D using this electrical field technology. With an active area of only 6 inches though, this is somewhat limited. One can envisage applications in controlling mobile devices which may not need more than that distance for effective interface. Check out Mashable's article about the new chip release.

A general, corporate video from the technology developer, Ident Technology AG.

Here is the technology developer's website, Ident-Technology.

Minority report User Interface (sign language for your computer)

2012-11-13T11:09:00.001+00:00

I thought Minority Report was a great film. It's my kind of science fiction: thoughtful and set not too far in the future nor based solely on whacky gadgets that we think may one day come into existence. The technological developments which we see in Minority Report are close enough to feel achievable, such as the following interface between John and the digital files he's inspecting.

Imagine my surprise when visiting the Maritime museum in Cherbourg (Cité de la mer) when I get to have a play with such an interface! It was a little cranky as it took a bit of work to stay still enough within the active zone but it was perfectly usable.

Plink, plink...

Not like that Daddy, like this!

Furthermore when checking out more of these types of interfaces online I see that there are some amazing new advancements with gestural recognition and I have included a video of 'kinect' below controlling Windows 7.

The real impact of this technology will come when the interface can be controlled with very subtle gestures rather than the big pointy and hovering movements we see in the video. The above video demonstrates a useful application of current gestural recognition but I see this developing more into a discreet sign language. It will become less of a series of large gestures you need to learn (much like apple track pad and mouse interfaces) and more akin to a sign language you'll need to take up in order to communicate with your computer. This will enable you to have much more freedom and depth of communication.

Once these gestures become so small and well defined and set into a language 'structure' then we will see the mouse becoming redundant.

Tablet interface difficult for creating artwork but good for sketching

2012-11-09T14:31:00.000+00:00

Tablets are great aren't they? Portable, shiny and lovely. But are they any good at content creation? This BBCnews article (Creating art on tablets remains a work in progress) outlines the pitfalls of creating art on an ipad or tablet and reflects my frustration at illustrating directly onto the tablet screen.

I found that sketching wasn't a problem and indeed some apps enhance the dynamic feel by but trying to get anything close to what you intend takes some working out. Then again most media aren't that immediate; it takes time to learn how to manipulate images, textures and colours be it a new type of painting process or an illustration software. I suppose this is the crux of the painting on a tablet is difficult problem: we expect it to be easy because of the interface. But the friction on the tablet and the absence of any pressure sensitivity means you have to work at it to get results. Having said that plenty of people have! Including, of course, the most famous exponent of tablet art, Mr. Hockney.

Belgian Design at Atomium: Something for the weekend?

2012-11-09T14:29:00.003+00:00

Intersections 2 Exhibition at the Atomium, Brussels.

Despite being hugely into design I'm not usually a great fan of design exhibitions. Such shows can be a parade of the pretty where they present design as being that which is only involved in the aesthetic or to use a phrase clients have used to me in the past: "tarts things up a bit". (If you're an industrial designer you may have heard the term, "to paint it yellow"…!)

The Intersections 2 Exhibition at the Atomium in Brussels, however, shows a real kind of design. Thoughtful and useful design. Design that affects people's lives in a positive way and leaves them better off after the interaction. That's what design is for me. Sometimes I think of design as more of a thought process than an illustration process (which I probably did when I was younger).

The show highlights three Belgian companies with an emphasis on 3D work from across the spectrum. Achilles Design is a product, brand and service agency in Mechelen, Lucile Soufflet showed some interesting public furniture work and Diane Steverlynck's work focuses on "materials and structures and their influence on the use and identity of everyday objects".

The exhibition runs to January 2013.

And what better way to finish off an evening celebrating great Belgian institutions than with a great Belgian institution of fritjes, bier en balletjes (Frituur Charles)..

When computers go bad.

2012-10-24T10:37:00.004+00:00

Buffer : handling sharing on social media.

2012-10-01T18:41:00.003+00:00

Found this neat free app for sharing on social media. The problem with propagating stories is that you have to have a good stock of them lined up and be able to schedule them at the right time otherwise the effect is somewhat lost. Bufferapp is able to stock up a 'buffer' of stories you find whenever you are browsing throughout the day and then publish them at your specified times.

Optimal tweets per day? See this article. Just add them to the buffer, set the times you want and you're off.

Link in multiple accounts or Facebook pages that you manage. Very good so far.

New tech roundup from the BBC

2012-09-27T07:25:00.000+00:00

Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups vie for attention

California's Silicon Valley has done much to earn its reputation as the world's leading technology hub.

This article covers new tech start-up products the self-balancing motorbike, the anticipatory chat app and the $10,000 coffee machine. Are these guys on the right track? Check out the article here: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19655627

Samsung buys CSR mobile

2012-07-23T20:14:00.001+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-18908035

and such a BEAUTIFULLY designed logo too! That must have swung it for Samsung, surely….

Mirror Neurons help us empathise, teach, inform

2012-07-19T13:28:00.000+00:00

Another interesting article to from Ramachandran and here he talks about what he calls 'mirror neurons'. This talk reveals some insights into how we can teach, inform, empathise or care for others better.

Humanities meets Science.

Evolution, the eye and communication design

2012-07-17T19:54:00.001+00:00

Whilst on holiday (this fact is not superfluous, it crops up later!) I finished reading Richard Dawkin's fascinating and insightful book, "The Greatest Show on Earth" which outlined the evidence for evolution.

Dawkins says that the eye is an amazing, if oddly put together piece of kit and he uses this as an argument against an 'intelligent creator'. He points out that the optic nerve gobbles up quite a lot of important retinal real estate and would most likely not be made in such a way by an intelligent designer of an eye. Amazingly, however, we don't perceive this 'hole' nor do we generally see the gap between our eyes as our brains do an amazing job of working out the 'puzzle' in front of us and rendering us pretty seamless vision. I am aware of this more than most as my wife suffers from a condition which has caused her to lose some sight near her macula but, as her consultant tells her, the brain does an amazing job of compensating and under normal circumstances she sees no 'gap', despite the disease's progress.

I was first put on to the amazing visual processing power of the brain after listening to the 2003 Reith lectures called 'The Emerging Mind' given by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. He details the workings of the mind and notably touches on art: "Are there such things as artistic universals?", he asks.

The lecture is well worth a listen but one point I want to dwell on here which struck a chord with me after my holiday at the coast (aha!) was the story about the seagulls. On holiday I saw plenty of seagulls and I love to hear them 'squaaaaaww'. As they fly past I often point out the red spot under the beak to my children and tell them the following story.

Experiments on seagull chicks by N. Tinbergen at Oxford University showed that this spot is not only a very important signal for the chick to peck at for food, but by abstracting it further researchers found that a chick would peck for food at a red spot painted on two two long sticks!

Photo (taken on holiday!) by PG.

Furthermore, Tinbergen found out that the higher the contrast of the red spot the more the chick will peck for food and this high contrast is what the chick perceives as 'motherness'. Ramachandran emphasises that this is intellignet rationalisation of the brain processing of a chick: the goal of vision, he points out, is to do as little as is needed to get the job done. Evolution has taught the chick that all it needs to do is peck at the high contrast red spot in order to be fed, because this is 'mother'. It cares not that the mother has a head, wings, feathers or legs because it's saving energy! The red spot will do.

The analogy I see with interface design is clear: we need to use visual clues and the processing power of humans' brains to streamline our interaction design and icon development. Use what is hard-wired within us all to make that interactive process a seamless one for the user so that they are helped along the process by the mother within them. Why use complex invented icons when our innate feelings can show us a simpler way. We don't however need the blatancy of red panic buttons for simpler operations (although occasionally this might help!). We can do better than this with more subtle colour palettes, intelligent photographic choices and visual clues in order to smooth the passage from operation to operation.

So designers: before you use your pencils, use your brains.