We recently had the pleasure of working with HookUP Media to help produce the Web site for “March for California’s Future,” an online companion to an event going on right now in the Golden State. Organizers say that the 250 mile march, sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers and its diverse allies from labor, the faith community, and other civic supporters, is designed to draw attention to the underlying causes of the state’s woes as well as gather signatures for a majority budget initiative.

Visitors are invited to take action by signing the online petition, donating to the cause, and even joining the marchers as they travel from city to city across the state. A core team of marchers staff the roaming “Blogmobile,” and a Google Latitude map is updated throughout the day on a mobile phone.

Check out the site at http://www.fight4cafuture.com/.

The site connects to a proprietary inventory management platform, but most of the heavy lifting for the catalog and content pages are built on the Symfony PHP framework. It also integrates with the content management system provided by Nashville-based SiteMason.

Check out the site at NashvilleOfficeFurniture.com.

In my defense, I’ve been in interactive marketing for 12+ years and have seen enough one-hit wonders to disregard hype. After all, clients don’t invest tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of dollars with CentreSource to get fads. On the flip side, learning is a critical, never-ending endeavor. In this business you blink, and you’re a decade behind. So, I rolled up my sleeves, and resolved to learn something new. It didn’t take long.

The next day our Ops Manager, Will Acuff, told a few of us that he was participating in Pepsi’s Refresh Project, and would appreciate our help in raising money for a neighborhood clean up effort. He asked us to vote for his idea on Pepsi’s site and pass the word along to friends. Will’s verbal request was about to be digitized. After I voted, Pepsi gave me the option to spread the word via Twitter, so I did — which in turn was ‘retweeted’ by friends and colleagues.

By Day 2, word was spreading through our Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter networks. Hits started pouring into the CentreSource website, so we augmented our efforts with a blog entry. On Day 3, the story jumped from social networks into the Nashville Business Journal. On Day 4, Pepsi’s use of Twitter, Facebook, and other online media had combined to build national interest. The Pepsi Refresh Project — and our own Will Acuff’s photo — was featured in a CBS Sunday Morning story to an audience of 5+ million people.

An idea that began with 1 person in our office, traveled via Twitter through our local office network into our regional social and professional networks into a regional newspaper and onto a major national television network and to 5+ million people — in 4 days.

While atypical, this story illustrated to me the speed, the path, and the power of social network marketing — a real, tangible case study for anyone considering how social media can fit into a corporate or personal marketing campaign.

Devastation. Tragedy. Hopeless. Those were the words used to describe the recent earthquakes that struck the island of Haiti on January 12 near Port-au-Prince. To a nation that that was already struggling with poverty and trying to meet the basic needs of its people, the earthquake magnified the crisis for the world to see. Like many companies in Nashville, CentreSource matched its employees’ donations to give $500 to the UNICEF organization to help with relief efforts.

Late last year, we were approached by Trinity/HOPE, a feeding program aimed at providing meals for school children and teachers so that they may be agents of positive change in their communities and help lift up a nation. Their existing Web site did not effectively tell of the mission trips, year-round campaigns and coordinated efforts of partnering organizations to sponsor schools across the island. The new site builds upon Trinity/HOPE’s reputation as a spirit-lead organization that makes a difference in the lives of Haiti’s children, one bowl of rice and beans at a time.

Visit their site at trinityhope.org.

Having just wrapped up the logo design, I thought it would be fun to share with you an overview of the process.

Brief

The client had previously received a logo from one of those cheap logo design sites that churn out subpar concepts for around $50. You get what you pay for, and he was given a ridiculous visual representation of his company that had no flexibility at smaller sizes or one-color applications.

After showing us this wonderful example of mediocrity (this is me being nice), Bounty Bev came to the table with a request for a super quick turnaround: they needed a great logo design in about a week, and they had no initial direction with any of their branding. With such a tall order, where does one start? Over beers at a local pub, of course.

The client’s ultimate request was that the logo and branding be fresh, bold, and flexible. I left the meeting with some general notes and a few napkins worth of quick sketches which, if they didn’t get lost somewhere along the way, I would gladly share with you.

Sketch

Even if I sketch with a client, I like to take a few days to sketch on my own time and let ideas grow slowly. A great logo should be an identifiable mark that people can associate with a company and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

I was drawn (har har) to a circular shape from the beginning, abstractly representing a barrel or bottle cap. We had also thrown around the idea of creating a physical stamp from the logo, and these shapes would work great.

The client had expressed interest in using a line drawing of a ship in their logo, but after working with this concept, I felt using a real object in the logo could restrict the brand and that it would be better to work towards something more iconic and flexible.

Concepts

With an intended direction, it was time to open Illustrator and create some concepts. During this step, I’m usually fleshing out sketched ideas, but I leave myself open to completely new possibilities.

The client had made it clear that their primary focus was American craft beer and that somehow needed to be communicated in their branding. Their current tagline was “we deliver the reward,” which is the kind of cheesy marketing speak you could expect in a television infomercial. This led to our new suggested tagline “American Craft, American Passion.” Short, sweet, strong. While trying to bring out American qualities in the logo, I was inspired by the sort of retro shapes and type treatments when it became clear that there’s no modern visual style considered strictly “American,” sans red, white, and blue stars and stripes.

A selection of these concepts were collected in a PDF and shared with the client, along with some visual explorations of the new tagline. Our recommendation was on the circular emblem because of it’s flexibility with color and presentation.

Final

The client loved the suggested concept and gave us the go-ahead to fully explore it and come up with the final version. Because the Bounty Bev box truck is blue, we created a white version of the logo that can work on dark surfaces.

The client has expressed their excitement about their new branding direction, with kind words such as “I love the simplicity and versatility… I love it!”

Slide from Whoa! Creating Engaging User Experiences

What is Experience Design?

According to The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence, experience design (XP) is the practice of “designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality of the design.”

The New Everyday: View on Ambient Intelligence

What Are the Components of Experience Design?

Experience design is made up of six key components:

• Psychology
• Market Research
• Brand Management
• Information Design
• Interaction Design
• Visual Design

As you can see, these components span a wide array of skills. Don’t make the mistake of assuming experience design is the sole responsibility of your designer, usability expert, strategist, dog trainer, mother-in-law, or significant other to handle. Experience design is an inclusive process that involves every person on your team. It is a collaborative process that needs buy-in from every person that touches your project. With that in mind, let’s break down these components.

Psychology

Seek to understand your audience. Who are they? How do they think? What influencing factors shape their decision-making? What types of things evoke emotions from them? Why do people do the things they do? These are all questions you should ask yourself when determining the direction of your experience design.

Market Research

Know your playing field. What are your competitors’ strengths? What are their weaknesses? What have they tried in the past? Identifying these things can save you time identifying potential pitfalls. More importantly, this market research will also help you shape a unique experience that sets you apart from the rest of the herd.

Brand Management

You must have a good grasp of your brand. In this age social media, it may seem like you are not in control, but don’t make the mistake of leaving your brand to chance. You have the ability to control your brand as well as the ability to shape the perception of that brand. I promise you, this is not going to be easy. There are countless books and blog posts written about this very subject, and I definitely do not have all the answers.

Customer service is one aspect of brand management that is easy to overlook when focusing on function instead of experience. Remember the last time you got off the phone with a company and were so mad you wanted to hit something? How do you feel about that company now? Manage your brand well, or you may end up on consumerist.com’s “Worst Company in America” tournament bracket.

Information Design

What information do you want to disseminate, and how will you organize it? Construct your information in a clear, easy to understand hierarchy. Don’t dilute your information with unnecessary fluff. Find the core of your message, and stick to it.

Interaction Design

How will users interact with your experience? This is your opportunity to be creative! I am extremely impressed with the influx of augmented reality on mobile devices. For example, if you have a compatible device, check out the Amazon Mobile application.

Amazon Remembers

I also consider usability design a part of interaction design. Without good usability design, your users cannot interact with your product or service and will ultimately leave with a bad impression of your brand.

Visual Design

What is the visible face of your product or service? What will it look like? Don’t assume that a good logo is all you need. Keeping a consistent, well designed visual look to your logo, print collateral, website, packaging, etc. will help consolidate and unite your brand’s image. Visual design can help shape the perception of your product or service. Take a look at the visual design of any investment firm or financial management institution. Generally speaking, the design will convey stability and order, because they want you to feel at ease when entrusting them with your money.

What’s The Point?

You may be asking yourself, “why do I have to be concerned with all of this? My product stands on it’s own.” This may be true — your product or service may be so revolutionary that it rises to the top of our collective consciousness purely on the power of it’s own awesomeness. For the rest if us, we are going to have to invest a lot of hard work, time, and energy in making it to the top. Case in point: there are 187 million websites in the world. That means, if your site is an “one in a million” experience, there’s 187 other sites that are just as unforgettable. If you hope to rise to the top and elicit tangible customer interaction, you must constantly focus on the design of your product or service’s experience.

With all of that information, managing the taxonomy terms and categories could easily get out of hand. Working with his staff, we created a Symfony module dubbed “HyperWords” (the name is a work in progress) that scans the page content and recommends the appropriate taxonomy. Now, when a new page is created, it suggests to the author relevant categories and tags.

The new site is easy for prospective clients to navigate thanks to a clear strategy and professional design. The site is also easy for Dr. Biesman’s staff to manage thanks to innovations like HyperWords. We call that more than just a facelift.

Visit the site at http://www.drbiesman.com.

Being a lady who loves clothes, makeup, general online shopping … and GOOD DEALS, I find myself signing up for these things all the time (hang in there, boys, we’re getting to the techie/strategy stuff momentarily). In fact, there are so many ladies like me out there, that designer discount collective sites have started popping up everywhere. They package themselves as “invite-only” and spread by incentivized referrals and word of mouth. Sites like ShopItToMe.com, GiltGroupe.com are some examples. I get … well, I GOT emails from both of these sites, and a few others, at least once a week, if not more up until a few months back when I found out that I’m going to have a baby, realized that a waistline and online clothes shopping would likely be distant memories for at least 9 months, and started hitting those unsubscribe buttons.

It was when I encountered the ShopItToMe.com unsubscribe page that I saw something that made me NOT unsubscribe … and instead, take note for my strategy clients. Too many times, when we are dealing with customers on and offline, we give them options in black and white – yes or no. Either you want this, or you don’t want it. If you don’t want it, you’re no longer a prospective customer … if you do want it, you’re in. When it comes to email lists, which are becoming more and more specialized, we have the ability to give our clients more options. It’s about time that we actually started doing this.

ShopItToMe.com has the right idea. I clicked on that “unsubscribe” button and was presented with a few options for altering my email subscription in addition to just plain unsubscribing. The ShopItToMe.com email gurus examined every possible reason why I might be seeking to unsubscribe from their email list and presented alternatives for me to customize my subscription accordingly. It was not black or white / yes or no … not even shades of gray. I had a regular color wheel of options to choose from to customize my email subscription to fit changes in my lifestyle or email reading habits.

Their options included:
Take a Temporary Break – “We know you’re busy. Take a breather! We won’t come back ’til you tell us to.” Then, you choose a date in the future when your subscription will re-activate.

Make SaleMail More Affordable – “Set a maximum price. How about $100?” Then, you choose a maximum price point for the items that show up in your email. This allows you to customize the products being shown to you to more realistically fit your budget.

Receive Email Less Often – “How does one Salemail a week sound?” You choose how often you’d like to receive the newsletter. It’s as simple as that.

If none of these options satisfied me, and I still wished to unsubscribe, they said they’d miss me and asked for me to share with them why I was unsubscribing (at my option, of course).

Being that I was unsubscribing because I wouldn’t have a waistline for the next 9 months, I selected an option to simply suspend my subscription for 9 months instead of unsubscribing altogether. I came away with an appreciation for how consumer-focused ShopItToMe.com was, and how they presented me with an option for relating to me on my terms in away that suits where I am in my personal circumstances.

Consumer-focused organizations should take note. Customers may have a variety of different reasons why they may cease engaging with your products and services. When forming a strategy for leveraging the internet to better relate to your customers, take advantage of the many different options for customizing electronic communications. Pay attention to your opt-out rates and Twitter un-follows. Use your observations to examine what might be causing your customers to lose interest and examine ways to improve upon the way that you relate to your customers where they are in their life circumstances. Think of beefing up your e-communication options as comparable providing a customer service team with additional training. It could ultimately lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention. And we all know that happy and plentiful customers make for a positive bottom line.

Ozburn-Hessey Logistics (OHL) specializes in third party logistics (3PL) services, meaning that they partner with other businesses to meet their supply chain demands on a rapidly scalable platform. Our goal for the site was to communicate nearly 60 years of experience in a way that appeals to logistics decision makers. One of the ways that we achieved this is by producing a video that you can view right on their home page. The video features two people representing very different businesses, but one shared need — a partner for their global distribution network.

The OHL Excellence and Media Center sites were created to cater to the specific needs of different segments of visitors to the site. Excellence highlights OHL’s mission and values, corporate culture and awards with which they have been honored for being a global leader in their marketplace. The Media Center serves as a central location to find out about news and events for the company.

Visit the site at http://www.ohl.com.

What makes this site different? We had the pleasure of working with photographer Carrie Vonderhaar to really bring the nautical look and feel to the Web. Our strategy from the beginning was to let her photography shine throughout the site to help create a unique user experience. The older site lacked a CMS and was spread out over several domains. Now, updates to the latest environmental news and information comes at the click of a mouse from anywhere in the world.

The site also tracks the OFS team on their expeditions around the globe, and a new Live Events section will bring the experience right to you through an integration with Ustream. Registered members can also download ringtones and wallpapers for their mobile phones. Users that register on the site are simultaneously added and updated through the Democracy In Action’s Salsa supporter management platform.

Visit the site at http://www.oceanfutures.org