There is something looming on the horizon and, if we don’t act accordingly, your brand may be worth only a buck someday, just like TV Guide. In fairness, it was the paper magazine brand that sold for that amount; their database, however, was a prescient parable in Karen McGrane‘s “Content Strategy for Mobile” seminar.

Why?  Because TV Guide asked its editors to put all of its content from Quark files into a database for some unforeseen future purpose.  But that’s not the point here, the point is where is that future-thinking now?  McGrane pointed out that 72% of responsive designed websites actually fully download their content, meaning content is getting lost out there for the mobile experience as it is.  What about Smart TVs?  What about watches, Google Glass, your car (you can’t hear italics, can you?)? What about that digital display in the elevator, over the urinal, or on a Subway billboard? Content need not be made for one thing and one thing only, and let’s face it: the client will want to stretch their resources on managing content across several platforms.

The worry, as McGrane explains so well, (only butchered a bit by my paraphrasing), is your content management system, not just the hardware but even in your workflow.  ”Real usability comes from the workflow,” McGrane said to a room full of international UX experts.  Clients are hoarding their content for an SEO of yesteryear without thinking about all the structural ways it will be consumed in the future.  I agree with this assessment, we in the field of UX must not only champion relevant experiences, but we must work strongly in helping brands evolve their systems to be ready for whatever may come, even things we know not will be.  And, accordingly, content strategy must be woven the UX tapestry with nimble content editors imagining flexibility, structuring and independently presenting content in “chunks, not blobs”, and thinking less about weight on the page and more about weighting metadata semantically more meaningful.

McGrane quoted Matt Thompson, NPR Editorial Product Manager, “The happier people are the better their content will be, the more content they’ll produce.”  Here cometh the lesson: today’s CMS uses tags and IDs (illustrated in the seminar with Time Magazine’s WordPress, for example) in their metadata, adapting one-size-fits-all content for multiple client-side platforms; but UXers and creative technologists must steer usability with server-side meaningful encoded metadata and accessible structural content before the only value it has is worth less than a glass of corner-stand lemonade.

During today’s workshop, “Global Design Research,” with lecturer and author of Global UX Daniel Szuc, I was inspired by how relevant narrative is in how we evolve from a task-based discipline to one that is more experiential and holistic design.  In essence, we are storytellers.

Ernest Hemingway was a war journalist and traveled extensively, bringing classic book novels like For Whom The Bell Tolls, as did Steinbeck to the Dust Bowl in birthing for Grapes of Wrath.  More recently, Szuc lead his UX design firm through a project for linguistic centers across the world.  All storytellers.

And for that Szuc asked a flabbergasted audience, ” When was the last time you had an amazing conversation?”  It’s a ruminative question we as digital designers, UX and otherwise, need to consider when we approach projects.  Our agency needs to continue to work on bridging brands with customers on a human level, avoiding the “blah”, and setting up dialogue that engages, encourages, and enhances the transaction, commercial or simple evocation.

In approaching UX Design, Szuc asserts that one must be well-travelled, culturally interested, balanced and open, aim to build bridges, and respect perspectives.  All of which really does come down to the first: travel.  How can we, as UXers, have “experience” in our job title if we do not fulfill our role by getting out into the world—leaving our offices, comforts taken for granted, and people we already know?

This presents a challenge for all agencies and the clients who pay them, experiences that are user relevant and grow business over time require investment of human capital, time, and money to humanize what companies blanket-ly consider customers; humans are story creating creatures (Sikes, Gale 2006).  That said, the result of being a UX team that immerses itself as bold and curious researchers results to effective artifacts for design—quotes, films, photographs, sketches, refined user journeys; thus these artifacts converge into unequivocally proven higher returns on investment.

New Google Maps is pretty amazing

(Mashable)

Google Glass Dating 101

(ReadWriteWeb)

Google+, Gmail and Google Hangouts are merging

(TechCrunch)

Atmosphere’s The Big Ad Gig, where young advertising hopefuls compete for a chance to work at a top agency, was nominated for a Webby Award in the Corporate Social Responsibility category. Support Atmosphere and the Big Ad Gig by voting HERE.

LOL Cats set the stage and even helped create the idea of spreadable memes

Video entered the picture with scores and scores of cute cat vids, followed by cleverly edited pieces like Keyboard Cat

Which then led to more memes

And then to bonafide cat celebrities like Lil Bub and Grumpy Cat

The latest development? An official Internet Cat Video Film Festival in New York, thus completing the cycle and bringing cats back into the real world.

Google came into Atmo’s offices today to talk about storytelling, brand building and the future of digital. One breaking news item: Google Glasses will be released this summer.

Which brand won the Oscars? According to Twitter, it was Samsung and Grey Poupon. Watch the ads here.

What about the Grammys? Critics picked Target and Pepsi. Here are the ads.

And the Superbowl? No general consensus, but some of the standouts were Budweiser, Taco Bell and Audi. Watch here.

Google Glasses will change advertising (Mashable)

Facebook is the number one mobile app in the U.S. (comScore)

Apple revenues hit record high – 75 million devices sold (Apple)

Twitter’s new video-sharing app, Vine (think Instagram for video), goes live (New York Times)

Get an inside look at the top Digital Trends for 2013, including Personalization, Integration and Customization, along with the latest developments in Mobile, Social and Advertising.

View the presentation HERE

When I was a kid, the most coveted Christmas item for me and my generation was the Millennium Falcon. It was the subject of daily pleas to mom, grandma, aunt, dad, etc., and just about anyone else who would listen. It was the MUST HAVE item of my youth.  I just needed that toy…that was until my Transformers construction set appeared the next year and it was time to trade out room in the toy chest and chuck out Han Solo.

Things haven’t changed. My toy chest today has limited space as well (of the gigabyte kind), with apps that I wanted yesterday battling those I want today. Now, I just click “Buy” in iTunes and my inner child is instantly satiated with the newest, latest and greatest must-have toy app.

After downloading iTunes 11 last night, I caught a quick view of the apps eating up space on my iPhone. Because I travel a lot, iCloud or Spotify aren’t going to cut it at 33,000 feet (and space for my music is non-negotiable). Within five minutes of viewing Apple’s cleaner UI, I started to erase all the apps that haven’t been updated in months, those that haven’t been used for over a year, or those I never even opened since they were downloaded.

If only developers and brands took the time to reassess the coveted real estate their apps take up on iTunes and on devices. For example, I’ve had Microsoft’s Xbox app on my iPad and iPhone for years. The app, which keeps track of a user’s Xbox Live friends’ activity, was fairly useless until Microsoft recently reimagined it as Smart Glass, which acts as both Xbox controller and provider of supplemental information regarding what a player does with their game console. Rather than clutter the land of misfit apps, Microsoft decided to rebuild and earned another day on my device.

Like George Lucas, app developers need to reinvent their wares from time to time in order to maintain relevance; if I had kept my 1978 Millennium Falcon it would sell for at least a couple hundred bucks. I can’t say I’ve found many apps that were worth the same in megabytes.

Denis Griffith

Creative Director, User Experience