Urinal Turns Your Pee Into A Rocking Guitar Solo

MaKey MaKey turns the world into a $35 input device

Ultrabook™: Desperado video ad

Pulp Fiction in Chronological Order

Volkswagen People’s car project, Hover Car, the flying two-seater

Pedal-powered table charges devices in meetings

Kindergarten Teacher Earns $700,000 by Selling Lesson Plans Online

RunCore Launches InVincible SSD w/ Self-Destruct Feature

London’s Amazingly Explicit Surveillance State Mascot For The 2012 Olympics Has A Huge Camera Eye That ‘Records Everything’

Google Project Glass patent shows control system using infrared rings and fingernails

We have found that when it comes to intranets and extranets an important factor that determines a company’s strategy is the questions asked during the planning phase: if, for example,  the main question is “what do we want in our intranet” companies find themselves discussing platforms, technologies, modules, webparts or departmental requests; on the other hand, companies brave enough to ask themselves “what kind of company do we want to be” discover that their intranet is only a means to an end and not an end in itself.

Before designing and building an intranet or extranet, our job (or even duty) as a experienced supplier it to use our analytical process to help the organisation fist ask the right questions and then find the right answers.

Below is a list of intranets and extranets we have created belonging to a number of diverse organisations that have chosen equally diverse paths for creating them:

Global extranet for London Business School

Global channel partner portal for Xerox

Social intranet tool for MSCI

Intranet for Bibby Financial Services

Intranet for DS Smith

Intranet for International Power

Global extranet for Baker Tilly International

Innovator Develops A Mobile-Phone Glove That Lets You ‘Talk To Your Hand’

Youngest Billionaires in the World

If Famous Competing Brands Merged, Would Their Logos Look Like These?

Visit the Pyramids of Giza With This Interactive 3D Site

McMarketing: McDonalds Marketing And Advertising Hits And Pits

Kids today vs. kids in 1982: What a difference a generation makes

A Phone You Can Hear in Your Bones

TEDx Thessaloniki – Finally something positive coming out of Greece!

Arrestinly simple Pinterest animation

GIF Tumblr Goes Viral Over Obama’s Gay Marriage Stance

Below we list the five most typical uses of video in corporate communications and illustrate each with an example from our portfolio.

Bring to life sales presentations

A pacey 60 second opening will ensure that you grab your audience’s attention from the very beginning and that your key message remains etched in their brains long after you exit the room.

Demo a product, service or process

A video won’t replace your extensive PDF but will work alongside it as a quick guide. This will ensure that more people, especially those averse to lengthy manuals, will become familiar with your product, service or process.

Thought leadership

If you are trying to humanise your communications (as you should) video is the best format to share ideas, views and opinions. From well-orchestrated interviews to impromptu commentary, put those experts in front of the camera and get them talking!

Internal advertising

Modern corporate premises are full of  shared screens in reception areas, lounges, cafes, department floors or kitchens. Many corporations use these screens to deliver not only company news but also to advertise products and services, new launches, employee awards, or campaigns. Such video content is likely to be watched by anyone occupying or visiting these premises like employees, clients, prospects, partners, or suppliers and to strengthen brand recognition and trust.

Bring your proposition to life on your corporate website

Why not replace your homepage’s slide-show of uninspiring stock photography with a 60 second  video that will blow the socks off your unsuspecting users?

Our sales plug

When we discuss video with our corporate clients our agenda goes beyond the typical topics of the message structure, graphics and production process. We also put great emphasis on the following:

• How the videos fit into the organisation’s content marketing strategy (either external or internal)
• The purpose of the videos and the desired viewer response
• Sharing tactics, propagation and promotion
• Mobile and multi-screen access
• Design template and brand consistency (intro, outro, video and audio signatures, etc.)

The proliferation of social media and smartphones combined with the ever-diminishing attention span of your audiences make video the perfect way for your communications to cut through the noise, deliver a powerful message and elicit the desired response.

Unilever

This is one of the best looking apps. It is fast, simple, slick and rich in content. It makes great use of video and keeps PDFs to a minimum.

TVlogic

This app, probably created for the South Korean market, is rich in content, formats, as well as attitude. Although not the best looking app out there, it uses strong graphics that make browsing a more tactile experience.

Shell

This is probably the most content rich app we reviewed; there are heaps of content for even the most demanding audiences. It is also very strongly branded, although the rich design detail gets in the way of browsing; it feels a bit claustrophobic, like a website has been forcefully squeezed into a tiny screen leaving no breathing space.

Stanley Black&Decker

This is an app whose design and content leave quite a lot to be desired. The content is basic, there is heavy dependency on PDFs and there is limited use of video. The branding is weak, the design language confused and the signposting barely visible.

Nestle

This app has good content but the design feels generic. The design language that can be summed up as “overly sculpted blue bars” is too strong and suffocates the content sandwiched in between. Despite their strength, the blue bars have little to do with the Nestle brand, and lack sophistication and individuality.

ENEA

A basic app, promising little and delivering just that. The red text is quite tricky to read on a grey background, but apart from that it just works.

Dixons

This app is based on a platform used by a number of companies we reviewed and although simple and slick, it is nothing more than a PDF index facility.

Caterpillar

A basic app heavily dependent on PDFs.

Allianz

This app is well designed, simple and easy to use, but the design language veers towards the generic doing no favours to Allianz’s brand. The content is rich and comes in various formats.

Walmart

Surely this cannot be the IR app of one of the worlds biggest corporations! I guess they didn’t get there by wasting money on fancy mobile apps!

MAN (the first +1)

This is not an investor ielations app, but a mobile corporate brochure. It has been included on this list because of its exceptional design, attention to detail, content richness and format variety. There is no reason why an investor relations app can’t have such a strong visual impact. Yes, the trucks look good, but this comprehensive presentation of the company is capable of satisfying more than just the petrol-heads.

Audi (the second +1)

The Audi app is not an investor relations app either, but it sits diametrically opposite the IR apps above in the user experience spectrum. It offers the richest and most interactive interface and has no resemblance to the standard mobile app interface. As with Man, Audi has sexy products and the marketing budget to match them. This app makes a bold statement all brands featured above could learn from.

If you are planning your organisation’s Investor Relations mobile app, it is worth downloading some of the examples mentioned above and reviewing not only the content included but the formats, navigation and design language that help make an app an indispensable source of information for the target audience and a bold brand ambassador for you.

Evernote has been a popular desktop/cloud-based note taking application for a few years now. The mobile application arrived recently and is available on multiple operating systems and devices. The application’s long list of useful features has ensured it repeatedly tops the note taking app charts.

Note taking feature fest

• Note creation: Evernote’s note creation comes with some great features that push note taking beyond merely typing a few words on a screen: you can take and add photos, record and add audio files, create lists and task lists, insert links, add tags, format text and add locations.

• Note filing: Evernote files notes in notebooks which you can assign, create, delete or edit. Notebooks can be about any subjects relevant to your business such as projects, market research, campaigns, account management, prospects, business functions, product design or anything that requires note taking, information capturing or media creation (photos, video, audio). Notebook management is one area that can be further improved in a couple of ways: Firstly, Evernote only allows a single level of notebook nesting, a far cry from the multi-layered folder structure that comes with Microsoft’s OneNote (Evernote’s nemesis). Secondly, the application does not allow drag-and-drop editing of the notebooks, making editing a bit more labour intensive.
• Sharing: You can share each note via Facebook, Twitter or email. Sharing a note creates a unique URL which your audience can use to access your note. If, for example, you are capturing market information while researching on behalf of a client, you can email them a particular note that might be of immediate interest.
• Access & collaboration: Evernote is a great collaboration tool. You can set the access settings for each notebook which allow others not only to view it, but also to edit it and add new content. A team who are working on a proposal together, but are split between different locations can use a notebook as a whiteboard to collaborate and comment on thoughts, research material, or captured media.
• Flexible viewing: You can view notes as lists or thumbnails and you can isolate photos, attachments, audio files, or locations which can also be viewed on a map.
• Search and tag management: The application not only has a search facility but also adds an extra layer of taxonomy in note management by giving you the option to create and add tags to your notes.
• The Evernote ecosystem: Evernote has created an extensive catalogue of both native and third-party tools that greatly increases the value you get from the mobile application. The list includes a desktop application that allows you to work locally and not dependant on an internet connection, browser extensions for saving web pages, cloud storage for remote access and back up, as well as an array of extensions that further stretch Evernote’s capabilities.

Soporific design

Visually, the application is fairly well designed but it could do with more personality. The uninspired design language makes you think you are using your phone’s generic operating system and not immersed in a branded environment. In the past 12 months mobile application design has entered a new phase of increased individuality, featuring stronger branding that includes better use of colour, textures and custom buttons. Evernote could do with a fresh lick of paint – even the flawed Microsoft OneNote mobile application looks a lot better.

Evernote on the left, OneNote on the right

Decent usability

From a usability point of view the interface takes some getting used to it, not because it has been badly designed, but because there are a lot of features and only a small screen to accommodate them. No need to worry though, as repeat use will ensure that you quickly become familiar with the interface’s intricacies.

Not just for creatives

Traditionally, Evernote’s great visual-asset capturing features have made it a big hit with the creative industries. The latest versions however feature new functionality, such as handy text editing tools and even telephone call audio recording, which render Evernote a business tool of a much broader appeal.

As there are thousands of mobile productivity applications out there, the key question is whether Evernote can be the only note taking and information capturing business tool you will ever need. Despite its small number of shortcomings, the answer is yes.

(A version of this article first appeared on B2B Marketing magazine)

British History Timeline

Visually interesting timeline created by the BBC and featuring zoom-in functionality and filters. It suffers a bit from the vertical text and the fact that there is no actual information provided until we zoom in.

The path of protest

Unusual pseudo-3D timeline created by the Guardian with information spread across the x and z axes. It looks good but it lacks any user controls other than navigating back and forth in time. Also, each link clicks through to a new page making this timeline more of a fancy index page rather than a contained experience.

Global Events Timeline

Visual extravagance created by the British Library. It features filters, favourites, screen shots and a carousel-like navigation mechanism. The layout feels a bit cluttered and the information included is a bit of a let down; it leaves you wishing it was as elaborate as the navigation.

Steve Jobs Timeline

A very simple timeline created by The New York Times. It would work a lot better if the markers on the timeline were easier to click on.

9/11 Memorial

Another pseudo-3D timeline featuring a long horizontal scroll. It has a nice feel to it, but it could benefit from a non-linear mechanism that allows users to jump to any point of the timeline without having to rely on the scroll-bar or wait for the animation to get them there.

History of Adobe

A busy timeline marking events with dots, like the BBC’s timeline above. And like the BBC above, the issue is that the main “dotted” view does not provide any actual information and therefore offers zero value to the user. A close-up view like in the 9/11 timeline would ensure instant user engagement.

200 Years of the New England Journal of Medicine

A very complex timeline featuring a number of navigation tools and filters spread across multiple axes. Parts of it look good, but overall the UX has a whiff of interactive CDs from the late 90s. It could benefit from full screen viewing, more legible text and simplified navigation.

U.S. Political Climate

Visually arresting interactive infographic combining a timeline with multiple layers of information. The upside-down text is a bit of a UX nightmare and the physical split between the timeline and the info wheel requires the user to go back and forth between the two to make any sense of it, but it looks simple and it almost convinces that it actually is.

British Prime Ministers

Created by No 10, this is the first non-Flash timeline we came across. It works really well, but is let down by the big image in the background that offers little value and makes the whole experience visually busy and tiring.

Target through the years

A simple timeline that features a neat filter and a series of flying panels holding the information. It works well, but the panel animation is a bit annoying after a while.

It is definitely true that we are in a power shift. Tablet and smartphone sales data tell us that quite clearly. Quite whereabouts along the spectrum of that power shift depends on the organisation, its markets and the propensity of its stakeholders to consider and adopt new technology. In the firms that we have spoken to, it is that propensity that is driving the change.

Now you could argue that the propensity comes in part from the organisation and the market and you’d be right. But, it also comes from people’s attitude and their desire to create corporate competitive advantage – with a happy co-incidence of personal competitive advantage of being an early adopted. In short, it is about attitude and open-mindedness. And almost in all cases that we’ve experience it is driven by the business and not IT.

The downside of the business being the centre of gravity does drive change quickly, allows for easier (a relative term!) implementation of process change and perhaps a shorter-term ROI focus (as it is often operational rather capital expenditure).

The Forrester team see these challenges:

• A multichannel coordination quagmire (e.g. how does an app work with a call centre’s process)
• Business processes designed for transactions, not engagement (i.e. creating simple, one-off interactions)
• Servers and infrastructure ill-prepared for exploding activity volumes
• Middleware, application, and security models poorly constructed for engagement (i.e. the use of SOA and web service)
• Design, development and governance processes misaligned with mobile requirements (i.e. designing with the user in mind not the existing system or data)

When we look at this from an enterprise app perspective (i.e. one used by employees), we’d include a few more consideration.

People

• Designing for employees has subtle yet important differences to consumer or corporate app UX. At work our motivations are different. Given that by 2016 350m employees will use smartphones and business spending on mobile projects will have grown by 100 per cent to over $20bn per year
• Building a small – forgiving, but representative – user base to aid the iterative development process is essential
• Having a mobile champion or a team that’s empowered to enable mobility through the organisation will help – whether is the Chief Mobility Officer or a head of mobile

Process

• Does the app support an existing process or re-invent it – or somewhere in between? It has to depend on what’s right on balance, but all three need consideration before development
• Should business owners be allowed to create apps with the central teams’ support. On balance, yes because they have the business pain and gain. But they need rules in which to operate and support, plus a shared roadmap
• Take mobile first approach with every app development

Technology

• A Mobile Device Management strategy is essential. So is a clear strategy on supporting BYOD (By Your Own Device) and a rules on what platforms are supported
• Creating a secure platform for devices that has a mobile friendly architecture
• Look at the options of creating an enterprise app store

Lots to consider.  A fine balance needs to be struck between planning and doing. Some of the best planning insights come from having done something. Either way sharing development experiences across the organisation is essential.

• Tap 1: To open Safari. Then I type “Furniture Village” into the Google box. The search results comes up.
• Tap 2: To select the desired search result. The website appears.
• Tap 3: To place the cursor into the navigation toolbar of Safari.
• Tap 4: To bring up the text edit menu.
• Tap 5: To select all.
• Tap 6: To copy.
• Tap 7: To go back to the home screen.
• Tap 8: To open the “Web Capture” app (it allows me to capture the full length of a mobile web page, but otherwise it is primitive, so I can’t search for a website the same way I do on Safari)
• Tap 9: On the URL button.
• Tap 10: On the text box to bring up the text edit menu.
• Tap 11: To paste.
• Tap 12: On Return. The website comes up.
• Tap 13: To capture.
• Tap 14: To select Camera.
• Tap 15: To go back to the home screen.
• Tap 16: To open Evernote.
• Tap 17: To open the relevant Notebook.
• Tap 18: To add Note.
• Tap 19: To select Camera Roll.
• Tap 20: To select my screen grab to add.
• Tap 21: On the title box to bring the text edit menu up.
• Tap 22: To paste URL.
• Tap 23: To save.

The reasons for this excruciating user experience are not only the limitations of the current mobile interface and some bad app design, but also the fact that apps don’t talk to each other. Efficient, nimble and task-driven, apps are great bits of software – the antidote to big software behemoths born in the 90s and still lingering about. Yet, lack of interoperability turns a smartphone into a pocket or task silos. There are tons of such examples – try to use the Hootsuite app to Tweet about a post on the Mobile RSS app – and unfortunately, they compromise our relationship with technology and content. We are a long way away from content (and tasks) becoming truly free.

The idea of “write once, run anywhere” has been a goal of the software industry at least ever since the arrival of Java. Perhaps before? Trouble was that it didn’t hold true and I remember the line being changed in jest to ‘write once, debug everywhere’.  Still the goal is the same, except this time it is now in the mobile arena.

So is the time right for the mass adoption and application of a “new” open standard?  Well, HTML5 does tick most of our developers’ boxes.

With the significant number of Operating Systems (and we can count the differing flavours of Android separately) and our growing unease around iOS’s walled garden (and OSX – but that’s a separate story)…we are feeling more at home with the new standard – especially in the Enterprise.

Why? Well, it clearly offers significant time and headache-saving benefits to a developer like us and to our clients. An HTML5 application runs on Android, iPhone or BlackBerry devices and the CSS3 features can be leveraged to adjust automatically the application page layout.

Factor in that HTML5 apps can bypass the stringent and lengthy app store approval processes (not needed for ‘internal’ Enterprise apps, admittedly) and also easily allow for new functionality and bug fixes to be deployed immediately – it starts to become more compelling.

But then the consumerisation of IT point raises its head again. Employees are increasingly used to the standards of native apps and sometime HTML5 just can’t quite deliver that high-end, on-platform experience that just makes native apps so compelling.

Then comes the offline data point. We’ve got a slightly different take here. A lot of commentators reference that we don’t always have ubiquitous access to the Internet (limiting the use of the app) – true.  Also true is HTML5′s ability to access and save data on the device is weaker.

But, we’d argue that having the data stored on a server with limited and secure offline access for key offline tasks is often the most secure for the Enterprise.

At this stage of the argument, we are in favour in HTML5 web app route for the Enterprise – just. Look at the option of converting a web app into a hybrid app for improved UI and access to handset features and we have a stronger argument for the web and hybrid app route. Especially given the common development path.

With that thought, we can conclude our debate that it is a web app future…..Not quite.

For example the Enterprise app that we released this week on iOS platform, we opted for native because of the extensive offline data requirements and the speed of interface.

The debate continues…in the meantime it is about making the right choice given the goals and the budget – just as it has always been.