Brett Collinson

It’s interesting to watch Jeff Bezos introducing the Kindle Fire (and other new Kindle models). It’s clearly very Steve Jobs / Apple Keynote inspired. The slide design in particular.

We’ve grown use to Steve Jobs’s style. He’s made it look easy. It’s actually useful to see someone else try it. And as media presentations go, it was quite good, but these subtle contrasts were interesting to me:

• It comes across a bit boastful and arrogant. Not majorly. But where Steve Jobs would say “And we think our customers are really going to love this”, you have Bezos saying “And we’re going to sell millions of these”.

• It lacked strong storytelling. It lacked strong, relatable connective tissue for the items. Watch the lead-up of the Kindle Fire reveal. Bezos lists all the Amazon building blocks they have been amassing over the years to make the Fire a compelling and logical end-to-end service solution. It’s impressive. And of course you know it’s leading to the Amazon tablet. But he’s really just listing his arsenal. There’s no story about why they’ve done this. There’s no relatable motivation. You miss Apple’s believing in something beyond just making money – a motivation about making the lives of their customers better and more creative/enjoyable.

Confessions of an Efficiency Nazi:  I hate it when people want to try flavors in ice cream, gelati and yoghurt stores before they buy.  Especially when there are a lot of people waiting.  It’s a $5 purchase people.  Wanna take a guess at what banana flavored ice cream tastes like?

My favorite gelato place decided to help this problem by explicitly stating that you could only try 2 flavors.  They installed this sign.

Except, anecdotally, I think it backfired.  It seemed to have created more tasting.  It’s given everyone permission to taste.  When people see the sign, what they read is “Please taste 2 flavors before buying”.

Here are some links about great presentations and presentation styles that aren’t death by Powerpoint bullet point. Spare your audience. Present interesting. They’ll love you for it.

1. Lawrence Lessig’s classic presentation that started it all.

2. Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 presentation that borrows from Lessig, but is much funkier. I clapped spontaneously when I first saw it.

3. And the sequel.

4. The Presentation Zen blog, with some interesting posts from it: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/10/thelessigmeth.html http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/itwasoneoft.html http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/thezenestheti.html http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/06/usingannotated.html http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/01/contrastsinpr.html http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/01/wherecanyouf.html

5. Then there is Al Gore’s speech on global warming that everyone is raving about.

6. And finally Beyond Bullets.

Enjoy! Blow their socks off. Be different.

Peta – the animal rights organisation – like to make the most of every opportunity on their website. Even their 404 “File not found” error page. It’s cheeky, it’s fun, it’s great writing to support the voice of the site.

This is a great bit of email marketing by lastminute.com.au to try to persuade former users back to their site. Nicely taps into why people use the site in the first place. But above all, it’s got personality.

Often sites that strive to be all user-centred trip over on the legal text. It’s as if all too hard, and hey, who reads all that stuff anyway. Which says to me that it is more for butt covering than being helpful.

But does it have to be that way?

OXO’s Ts&Cs were are great example of how it doesn’t have to be so.

And this recent example of Linux provider Red Hat cutting their Service Level Agreement (SLA) from 7 pages of legalese to 1 page of simple information:

Meanwhile, back at Sensis…

Recently when designing a new and coming identity system, I was determined that the registration page shouldn’t have the near ubiquitous teeny-weeny scrolling box of legal text that no-one reads, just complicates the interface and says everything in the opposite direction of “we want to be helpful, simple and straight with you”.

So here’s the proposed design:

The text is just made-up at the moment, but you get the idea. Hopefully someone can read this and think “ah, that’s what it means if I sign up to this site”. The concept has in-principle support from our legal department, but I’m sure the devil will be in the detail. Fingers crossed as we fight the good fight.

It’s always good to be reminded of the power of good writing, purely because it engages you and makes you want to read more, rather than shut off.

Here’s a review of a software development process book (“Dreaming in Code” by Scott Rosenberg, founder of that great webzine salon.com), written by the ever-engaging Joel Spolsky (of joelonsoftware.com).

The [Quick Context}(http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/01/02.html) and the Actual Review.

Even though it’s a little off topic, it’s relevant to user experience, because one of the key points is: make sure the concepts and interactions you are developing are things people actual want and can understand – rather than something that makes sense from a programming architecture point-of-view.

And there is also this gem about designing before programming and the need for solitary thought-space to do this:

[Error] Number two, you hired programmers before you designed the thing. Because the only thing harder than trying to design software is trying to design software as a team. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a meeting with even one or two other programmers, trying to figure out how something should work, and we’re just not getting anywhere. So I go off in my office and take out a piece of paper and figure it out. The very act of interacting with a second person was keeping me from concentrating enough to design the dang feature.

What kills me is the teams who get into the bad habit of holding meetings every time they need to figure out how something is going to work. Did you ever try to write poetry in a committee meeting? It’s like a bunch of fat construction guys trying to write an opera while sitting on the couch watching Baywatch. The more fat construction guys you add to the couch, the less likely you are to get opera out of it.

At least turn off the TV!

Duarte Design a communication company I’d admired for a while. They work with a presenter to uncover what their key messages are and what the experience should be, then craft a presentation to match. Most famously they did Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation that became the movie.

I love their staff profiles. Staff profiles are the perfect place to really nail and project the tone and character of a company. Check out Duarte’s. It makes you want to click through each one and find out more. You can find them in Organization > People.

It’s one thing to define your brand personality and voice, it’s another to have the discipline and process (and creativity) to execute it in all the little places – to make the most of every opportunity.

Virgin Blue’s brand personality gives them lots of scope to have fun, and I loved this sign in their Melbourne terminals.

And what’s great about their brand personality is that it speaks of humanness – it closes the gap between them and you/me/us.

Website log-in and sign-up have become so standard for so many people that WordPress have some fun with theirs – admittedly targeted at quite a web-savvy audience.

2 screenshots:

• Their login box on their homepage is titled “Already Hip?”
• Their legal acceptable checkbox is labelled tongue-in-check “Legal flotsam: I have read and agree to the fascinating terms of service.”