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Finding Common Ground: Insights on Engineering and Design (BusinessWeek)
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Posted: 06/05/2009
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Microsoft Research Principal Scientist Bill Buxton is calling for engineers and user-experience designers to find some common ground. Faced with ongoing questions from well-intentioned engineers regarding design, Buxton acknowledges the answers are more complicated than becoming a designer themselves or simply learning to “do” design as many engineers suggest. First, Buxton counsels that professional competence equal to the task must be added to your team. While the UX and engineering tasks certainly go hand-in-hand, expert proficiency is difficult to come by for each discipline, making it often impossible to jump seamlessly between the two. Buxton advises a four-layered approach: Design awareness, Design literacy, Design thinking, and Design practice to achieve results and solutions worthy of your customers.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Creative & Design,
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Microsoft Vine: A New Twist on Social Marketing (CNN Money)
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Posted: 06/05/2009
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In an effort to untangle a new path toward social networking prosperity, Microsoft Vine is branching out into unchartered territory: charging subscription fees. Hailed as the 911 for the 21st Century, the new platform will focus on climbing the social networking ladder into the public safety and emergency information arenas by limiting activity to two actions: alerts and reports. Users can customize profiles and bunch their friends and family into groups, creating a virtual safety net to keep informed about events as major as hurricanes or national crises, or as minor as a snow day. The testing phase offers the opportunity to discover how city emergency management agencies across the country might implement this new communication tool. While the basic service will be free, premium services like smartphone access will come with a price tag.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic:
Content Strategy,
Experience & Interaction,
Technology Implementation
Region:
North America
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Online Communities Strengthen Brand Power (Chief Marketer)
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Posted: 05/24/2009
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No matter your product or service, building online brands means building virtual communities that cultivate customer loyalty and provide lasting value. Shaping customer experiences that allows for custom-control, targeted e-mail follow-ups and strategic communications will not only maximize the time your customers spend with your brand, it will also increase your messaging impact and build mindshare, too. It never hurts to make the experience enjoyable, too, through elements like compelling visual design, intuitive navigation and user-generated content. Take for instance, the Pen Collective, by eROI and Wacom. The group now boasts more than 3000 active members, due to the brand’s intuitive mix of tutorials, testimonials, wit and social networking to create an inimitable personal connection to the brand.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Strength in Numbers: Unveiling the Benefits of Eclipse (Forbes)
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Posted: 05/24/2009
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Faced with the increasing squeeze of a down economy, many companies are forgoing the expense of programming their own software without losing their competitive edge. The experimental Eclipse software consortium offers companies within sectors like technology, finance and insurance the opportunity to collaborate, build and share computer code. “People these days are interested in doing more with less,” says Michael Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. With a budget of $5 million this year, the company is seeking to expand its 185 member base even further into the automotive and telecom industries. Nonmembers can take advantage of the foundation's free software library, while companies who pay dues of up to $125,000 a year get to hand-select upcoming programming projects.
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Industry:
Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Peer Groups & Communities
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Facelift for Facebook (Ecommerce Times)
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Posted: 04/22/2009
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Facebook recently underwent a redesign of its user home pages to put a direct spotlight on instant updates to friend posts. This has led many to compare the new look to Twitter but the additional result is a cleaner page based on more traditional web design and focused on information hierarchy. The new approach also generates several opportunities for Facebook to reach people interested in advertising to members of the social networking site. By offering the additional ad space, Facebook is hoping that marketers will embrace the idea of mixing ads with content and take advantage of the abundance of information on consumer behavior at their fingertips.
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Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Peer Groups & Communities
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Conversation Sells: Using Twitter to Boost Your Sales (Practical eCommerce)
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Posted: 03/31/2009
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In a virtual world that often lacks a personal touch, Twitter offers retailers a unique opportunity to make meaningful connections with customers online. Whether you’re quirky or serious, you can customize conversations directly with your customers that authentically reflect the personality of your business while giving you the tools to grow, manage and reward a loyal customer base. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, raves about Twitter's usefulness in building personal connections with customers and employees and Dell's Twitter success led to the creation of the Dell Outlet to offers exclusive discounts to its Twitter supporters. Learn how you, too, can turn conversation into conversion by incorporating Twitter into your online marketing arsenal today.
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Industry:
Retail & Products
Topic:
Content Strategy,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
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We cut through the clutter of the web to highlight innovation and forward-thinking. The best stories from leading publications – hand selected and organized to provide you a single point of access.
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