I thought that I was going to write my own recap of the conference, but with my recent move to New York, new job and everything else, I’ve simply run out of time, and since others have already posted a plethora of great recaps elsewhere (probably doing a better job than I ever would’ve), I’m just going to give links to a couple of those here:

• UX Booth’s UX Lx wrap-up
• David Malouf’s report (3 parts) at Johnny Holland Magazine

Thanks again to Bruno Figueiredo and the team for putting together an excellent conference and for having me there to speak among all the great people.

This opportunity was offered to me quite a while ago, and it took some time to make up my mind and then get all the paperwork ready. Though I was a bit sad to leave Toronto, which I had called home for almost three years, everything here feels great so far and I’m happy to have made the move. I’m still pulling things out of boxes at the same time as I’m getting up to speed at work, so it may be a couple more days/weeks until I get to update the blog again, but stay tuned – I’ve been meaning to start writing my UX Lx recap, and have a couple other ideas for posts as well.

Karri Ojanen

Although Twitter co-founder Biz Stone calls it “non-traditional” in his blog post, the model sounds very similar to Google. Tying ads to only searches will help to avoid upsetting the user base: you won’t see the ads unless you use Twitter to search for something. And at the same time, the advertisers will have at least a vague idea of what you’re interested in.

After having taken such a long time to think of a revenue model that “puts users first, amplifies existing value, and generates profit“, I expected Twitter to come up with something way different than this. I anticipated them not to resort to an advertising model for revenue, and instead go for something that would’ve involved the users in paying for the service.

That kind of system shouldn’t be created by suddenly forcing users to pay for the basic functionality they now get for free, but by carefully investigating what sort of new premium features the most active Twitter users would be willing to pay for, and combining that with a system that would allow users to earn and give credit for the things they do on Twitter. I myself, as an example of a pretty active Twitter user, wouldn’t be excited to pay for the tweets I send, but if I could get new and effective tools for finding more like-minded people to follow me, I could be willing to pay for that. I could also pay for the ability of setting up custom groups for tweeters, and I could see some media companies and journalists, reportedly using Twitter more and more often as a source, be willing to pay for special features tailored to their needs.

With a credit-earning system in place, the average Twitter user who wants to use a premium feature wouldn’t necessarily need to flash out his credit card every time he wants access to premium features. Instead, he could use credits that he’s earned by doing things like favoriting tweets and recommending users to others. Such a system would help drive the further growth of Twitter as well as support the existing ecosystem, where many additional features have already been introduced through 3rd party apps, mashups and community-driven innovation.

Of course, building such a system and then growing its value would take time. It seems evident that some investors and monitors have grown frustrated to wait for Twitter to find a way to start making money for all the publicity and millions of users the service has attracted. It feels like Twitter’s had to press the panic button and come up with a solution that will appease the investors for the time being.

But that seems incredibly short-sighted. More and more clearly, the biggest challenge that people are facing in the digital age is that it will, if it hasn’t already, disrupt the traditional business models of so many industries from advertising to entertainment to communications to all media in general. People are forced to look for entirely new models to nurture both business and usefulness online, and in the long term, only those who embrace this current time of uncertainty as a real opportunity and dream up something bigger than just a slightly modified copy of the old will truly succeed.

In the music business, record labels all complain about how illegal file sharing and new digital distros are killing their business. But this graph shows that while labels are seeing their profits diminish, artists and promoters are experiencing growth in the amount of money they make from live performances. Digital distribution has opened the door for thousands of small, independent artists who in the past didn’t have that much chance to get discovered.

I’m not saying that the future of the music industry is entirely in free file sharing or that it would be easy for Twitter, or any other service, to build a complex system that manages to both credit users for their actions and make real money at the same time. But I’m saying that look left or right, up or down, it’s evident that there is a big change taking place, and that change will require us to completely rethink our approach to a lot of the business we do now. Twitter’s advertising model doesn’t look like rethinking to me. Instead, it looks like reusing and slightly repurposing something that’s already been used. And they’re doing it at a time when the world calls for something much bigger than that.

Karri Ojanen

His tweet made me think of a number of things I think should be common sense, knowledge and understanding in this industry by now. I made a list of some of those. Besides Matt’s tweet, my list is inspired by the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth by Bruce Mau, and if you end up reading through my list, I encourage you to continue by reading through Bruce’s.

Most of what we think we discover now as “new” was in fact already discovered before
Recently, I watched the documentary “Objectified“, directed by Gary Hustwit who also did “Helvetica“. Listening to people like Bill Moggridge talk in the film, I had several moments where I thought that many of the fundamental insights, thoughts and even methodology that people now feel like they’re discovering as “new” in the context of software, interactive media and interaction design where actually already discovered earlier, but in a different context. What’s hard for people is to take that knowledge and to apply it to a different context. That’s why, even if the things we think we are discovering now aren’t genuinely “new”, there’s tremendous value in rediscovering those things and applying them to the current context.

Clients don’t envision the future, they inform the present
It’s way too easy to blame almost every challenge in this industry on the client. Henry Ford said, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said “a faster horse.”" If we’re the experts in this business, we need to be the ones who envision the future of it.

Interactive media works best when it’s… interactive
TV and video still work, books still work, great stories are definitely still great stories. Banner ads may have a purpose and some of the content on YouTube gets hugely popular. But the one thing about interactive, online media that is different to traditional TV, radio and print is that it’s two-way communication, it allows instant interaction. The best solutions online are those that encourage and use interactivity to the max.

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
That’s a quote from Steve Jobs. But I wish that it wouldn’t need to be – I wish that everybody who develops solutions for interactive media would understand that visual design, technical design and user experience design shouldn’t be separated. Form and function aren’t to be divided into separate processes – they are one.

Great design isn’t based on research alone, it’s research + intuition
The great “big ideas” of the digital age won’t come from academic research alone, they’ll come from intuition, from a real “design sense”, from the designers’ and developers’ understanding of today’s world and the people who consume media.

Separate the problems and you’ll mess up the solution
We are all strategic thinkers, developers, designers and writers, on some level. Of course, we all have our titles and own specific areas of expertise, and so it should be, but when we brainstorm, discuss great ideas and seek for solutions, the technologists, the strategists and the experienceists should all be around the same table. And never mind who ends up leading that process, or who the greatest ideas end up coming from – arguing about who should lead will only distract us from getting to our common goal: finding the best answer.

From Bruce Mau: “Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.”

Keep up your connection to the work at ground level
Without a hands on approach to its business on all levels of management, the company will lose its touch with the reality. Those at the top level of management should be as connected to the everyday reality of the business as those on the lowest levels – as much as possible.

If you talk about Twitter to your clients and discuss it with your peers, make sure you have tried it yourself. If you’re asked to develop the design for a new blog, make sure you’ve blogged. I find a surprising amount of people in this industry who haven’t actually used the things they talk about.

Think of not just the media you can buy, but also the media you can earn
Learn to think of ‘media’ in new ways. Don’t think of just the media you can buy, but also the media you can earn from your audience, if you get them engaged. And then how that media goes back, and gets redeveloped by both you and the audience again. When you’re thinking of designing an effective interactive solution, think of building an engine, not a billboard.

The effort to control will more often lead to loss of control
An effort to control what is being said about you will most often lead to even more things being said about you. Instead of trying to control the conversation and trying to stop it, see what you can make out of it. When there is a problem, the only way to fix it is to fix it. Stopping people from bringing the problem up will only make it worse.

You need vision first before you can develop passion
“Social media”, “user experience design”, “platform solutions” – all of those (and many more) are just buzzwords until you come up with a plan.

Too many companies have not decided whether they want to conserve the past, define the future, or just turn to others for leadership. They lack vision, but they keep asking their workers for passion.

Karri Ojanen

One online community that shows how digital media is shaping our lives in both practical as well as social and cultural terms is Craigslist. The service that bears the first name of its founder, Craig Newmark, may not have come so far in terms of its visual look from its humble beginnings as an email distribution list in 1995. But in terms of its influence and reach, Craigslist has grown to a remarkable size, serving over twenty billion page views each month.

With over eighty million new classified ads going up every month, Craigslist has become the host of both good and bad: from apartments, goods and services to finding a date or someone to stalk, to allegations of enabling child prostitution and – ironically, given Craigslist’s own past as a small, local community – crushing smaller, local businesses.

Such a great variety of things can be found on Craigslist that Jason Paul, a young journalist, finding himself unemployed after graduating from college, has decided to live his life off Craigslist for nine months. What does that mean? Here are the basic rules Jason has written for himself:

• “I will start with $2,500 that I’ve saved during college
• I will have a car, a phone, a computer and cameras to document the trip
• I am not allowed to live out of my car
• I am not allowed to live with someone I know for longer than a week at the beginning of each city
• I am allowed one large bag containing clothes and a few staple foods
• I am not allowed to initiate contact with someone unless it is through an online interaction”

So, simply put, Jason aims to find all his jobs, housing, friends, food and other necessities entirely via Craigslist. It’s an idea that reminds me a bit of Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days“, but times nine, and pulling in the digital aspect. Jason is documenting his experiences on his website, LivingCraigslist.com, and of course, you can follow him on Twitter or become his fan on Facebook.

Would you try the same thing (or have you already)? What sort of things have you looked for, and found, on Craigslist? How do you think this is changing us as people – or is it really?

(this post is also up on ThreeMinds)

Karri Ojanen

Apple iPad
Things were different ahead of the iPad’s launch than they were back in 2007, prior to the launch of the first version of the iPhone. While many had thought that Apple may enter the mobile phone market even years before it actually happened, no one managed to quite predict what the device would be like. But with the iPad, predicting what the Apple tablet would look like before the company officially announced it was easier. The surprise element of the iPad was smaller than the wow effect that the iPhone caused.

The feeling after the launch was that the iPad didn’t live up to the dreams and hopes of many. People who were waiting for something revolutionary woke up to see the new device as “just a big iPhone”. However, the tablet also had its instant supporters: some claim it’s the perfect computer for their mom, while others simply say that whatever the iPad lacks in its first incarnation (camera, for example) will make it to the next version.

I question the utility of the iPad, even for my mom, as one of her favorite things to do on a computer is to make Skype video calls. I also think she wouldn’t respond too well to the on-screen keyboard. But let’s keep in mind that the device hasn’t started shipping yet, and very few people have handled it, let alone used it in any real-life scenario. The future of it will lie in the hands of app developers – maybe even more than it lies in the hands of the company’s own designers.

For interaction designers, the iPad is an exciting new opportunity. Luke Wroblewski has written a number of terrific articles about the iPad, including a list of new multi-touch interactions and iPad design tools and resources. And Matt Gommel, a renowned iPhone developer, challenges a number of preconceptions about the tablet, including the “just a big iPhone” claim, in his blog. While we’re waiting for the actual device (and an iPad version of OmniGraffle), let’s get our tools and templates ready. Even if the iPad doesn’t instantly appear as big of a game changer as the iPhone, it, together with the HP Slate and other, upcoming tablets, is still the beginning of a new kind of personal computing experience.

Windows Phone 7 Series
Microsoft seems to have done what it hadn’t really done before: taken a totally new, fresh approach to something it had already built. The new Phone 7 Series looks and acts totally different than previous versions of Windows Mobile, incl. version 6.5, which will now continue to live on as Windows Phone Classic. The 7 Series promises to be, finally, finger-friendly, complete with multitouch, and it looks significantly different than any of the competing touch-based mobile UIs.

The initial response to 7 Series seems to have been positive, though some point out that the bold new design may not work so well in practice. Luke Wroblewski has been exploring Microsoft’s new UI as well, and written an excellent post about its information resolution vs. the iPhone. Edward Tufte responds to it here. While at first I find it quite easy to agree with Tufte’s comment that “the WP7S layout and typography have a looseness found in commercial art and marketing, an inappropriate metaphor for a handheld information and communication device”, I think it may be premature to call Microsoft’s idea “inappropriate”, when they’re trying to redefine the mobile UI so drastically. Let’s see how users react to it.

Karri Ojanen

And that idea of what advertising is about also matched the communication technologies that were at hand through the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, 80′s and on to the 90′s. Print, TV and radio are all one-way communication, mass media that can deliver a message to the masses, but doesn’t expect or allow the masses to easily interact with the advertising there and then, at least not by immediately “talking back” to the message.

Now, as we all know (but often still have difficulty utilizing), interaction with online devices has changed what mass media can do. And the audience has changed, too: we live in a post-industrial economy where people, through decades of exposure to it, have learned a great deal about advertising. People have learned to ignore and avoid a lot of it.

Interactive media should, indeed, be interactive – it should allow people to work with the content they receive. If you give people a service or a tool, a platform for expressing ideas, a way of working with the product or service you are trying to sell, people can get involved in your message, and once that happens, it’s so much easier for them to understand your offering than if you were just telling and showing something, expecting the audience to listen. Once your audience gets involved in what you do, you become part of their story, and they become part of yours.

That’s why services is the new advertising. Instead of just pushing out the message, you now need to build a service or a tool first and give it to people to interact with it in order to get them convinced to buy the bigger product, service or tool from you.  That’s the new way to “sell the dream”. One-way messaging and display advertising will still have its role in creating some awareness, reaching audience in places where it’s not possible to offer complex interaction, but it’s not the way of advertising that creates significant brand loyalty or deepens customer relationships anymore (if it ever really did?).

Many people with any kind of history in the advertising industry of the past will argue that developing services and tools and promoting utility isn’t advertising – it’s product design and service development instead. And they’re right – what we have got used to perceiving as advertising hasn’t got to do with complex interactive platforms. But because the old model of advertising isn’t efficient anymore, and because, in the meanwhile, technology offers us great new opportunities, isn’t it time to change the old models without worrying about breaking the definition of advertising?

Karri Ojanen

Traditionally, such a sign would probably read something like “shopping carts here”, “please find carts here” or perhaps simply “shopping carts”. Or no text at all, but a symbol, like a traffic sign. Ikea, perceived as a company selling simple yet stylish design at affordable prices, has chosen to use conversational language in its communication, incl. store signage, instead of the authoritative, rather impersonal language typically used in traffic signs, public as well as commercial spaces (think of “no smoking” and “please wait behind this line” instead of something like “you can put that cigarette away here” and “hold on tight, we’ll be right with you”).

Online, I remember Feedburner has always featured quite clever, “chatty” language throughout the experience on its site (nowadays under Google). “Burn a feed right this instant” and “Sometimes your feed just wants to look good. Spruce it up in the following ways:”  for instance. Or Firefox after it crashes and can’t recover the tabs you had open before the crash, says “Well this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble recovering your…” It makes it sound like the software (company) is admitting ownership of the problem, instead of implicating the user as the source of the problem, like so many error messages do.

It’s important to recognize when it’s most efficient to use conversational vs. more formal language. In an online form, for example, it may be best to switch the language to give directions like “please make sure to give at least one phone number”, while the headline of the form can still be written in a more conversational, casual style: “This’ll only take you a minute. But it’ll save you an hour later.*

You can argue that not all companies, brands, or services should use casual, conversational language. And of course, it depends on your target audience, too. But when you look at the world we live in, how our societies and culture have evolved, choosing a conversational style seems to make more sense than ever. In the online world in particular, because it’s two-way communication, and it’s all about conversations. It makes sense to talk to your audience like you’re having a conversation with them, not like you’re giving them orders or begging them to do something so that the system you’ve built can work.

Karri Ojanen

More about this in the blogosphere:
Conversational Writing vs. Formal Writing
Creating Conversation

The advertising industry has been rooted in the idea of the campaign – that is what agencies, by and large, do. And campaigns come and go, while a few overarching themes in them are constantly refreshed with new pieces of creative.

Now, even as ad agencies have been migrating into the digital space, most of them have continued to approach what they do through the idea of a campaign. And the idea of a campaign is the idea of ups and downs. For when the campaign is running, there’s media in the market, and the audience grows. But as soon as the media is pulled off, or as soon as all the people have seen the campaign, the audience breaks up and drives off. And then the agency and the client are on to the next campaign again. That’s what the entire advertising business has been about.

But those who see the future of this business in the digital age are starting to see the rise of platforms. Platforms that are built to last. Platforms don’t necessarily go into the market with a bang, with lots of media buy, but they grow over time. Platforms are rooted in utility, and they provide something that the customer, the audience, will feel like using, and using again and again. The best and most pervasive platforms become a part of the audience’s lives. They’re more like services and tools than a 30-second spot or a clever billboard ad.

And the platform, when it encourages the audience to create and distribute their own content, and aggregates it from various sources, then becomes a media engine for the advertiser: the content, the comments, and overall enthusiasm from the audience feeds back into the platform, which can then churn out the content back to the audience again. And that content is much more real, much more authentic than traditional advertising material, because it comes from the audience itself. That content is what is called earned media.

Some examples of great platform ideas are, of course, the Nike+, and, in Europe, the Seppälä Supermodel Search, which I myself was lucky to get to help create back in 2006, and the way that HSL, the Helsinki Region Transit Commission, has sourced both utility and marketing material out of its Journey Planner and Transit Cost Calculator.

The problem with these platforms to many in the advertising and media buy+sell industry is that they don’t match the idea that we’ve had for so long of what is advertising. To envision, design and develop these platforms, it takes a different kind of a team, a different set of talent than what’s been used in traditional advertising. And it takes a different mindset. The way that people consume media, the way that they connect, is now driven much more by technology than it was before. To develop platforms, a new breed of creative technologists need to get a real seat at the creative ideation table. And, perhaps even more importantly, to make sense of all the different connections, links and experiences across different technologies and devices, agencies need Experience Leads to replace the old definition of Creative Directors. It’s an opportunity, rather than a threat, for all of us to grow and explore new things.

Sure, old style campaigns will most likely still be made for a good while, as this giant industry slowly changes, just like VHS tapes were sold for a time after the coming of the DVD, but forward thinking individuals and agencies have started to realize the change that is taking place. And this change is driven by the consumer, the audience, who, ultimately, is our real source of income. If we lose the attention of that group, we lose our business.

Change is often scary, but think about it: wouldn’t it be nice to get away from the ups and downs of the campaign era, and enter a new era of sustainable growth?

Karri Ojanen

NYT’s list is the American list, based on Google.com. But what does the list look like in other countries? @skrubu looked at the suggestions that Google.fi gives and put together the list for Finland. I decided to do the same for Google.ca, and so here is the Canadian list:

A – Air Canada
B – Best Buy Canada
C – Canadian Tire
D – Dictionary.com
E – ebay
F – Facebook
G – Gmail
H – Hotmail
I – Ikea
J – Jobbank (government site)
K – Kijiji
L – London Drugs
M – Mapquest
N – NHL
O – OSAP (Ontario Student Assistance Program)
P – Plentyoffish.com
Q – quotes
R – Rogers
S – sports quotes
T – TD Canada Trust
U – Urban Dictionary
V – VIA Rail
W – The Weather Network
X – XSCargo
Y – YouTube
Z – Zellers

Unlike the Finnish list, the beginning of the Canadian alphabet bears a lot of similarity to the American list. But then things change: for I the first suggestion is Ikea, J is for Jobbank, a Canadian government site, and O is the Ontario Student Assistance Program. Interestingly, the only bank that makes it to the list is TD, and not RBC, Scotiabank, or CIBC. N is for NHL. And the online dating site Plenty Of Fish shows up for P instead of Pandora which appears on the American list.

I would be interested in seeing what the same list looks like in Spain, in the UK, in Germany, in Japan, in Russia. Anyone want to put those together?

Karri Ojanen