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As a web designer and information architect it’s my job to make things simple. So simplicity, of course, is one of the attributes our firm strives for in all our work, as well. Our content specialists work on web copy to make it easier to read and understand. Our web marketing expertise focuses on boiling content down to its essence, for both its audience and for search engines. Our designers take complex technical product information such as flow charts and schematics and create visualizations and diagrams that tell a clear story. Or they create an icon or a logo that needs to communicate the most critical information about a product or brand in a half-inch square space.
Lately, for no reason I can tell, I’ve been seeing quotations about simplicity in books and on web sites. I continued browsing and searching to find a few more. I’m struck by the fact that the giant, iconic minds of art, science and philosophy all revere simplicity as a core principle. da Vinci, Thoreau, Einstein, and many others. So I thought I’d make a blog post out of them … they’re all very useful and all remarkably similar in their sentiment.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” - Leonardo da Vinci
“Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.” - Frank Lloyd Wright
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” - Henry David Thoreau
“Simplicity is the glory of expression” - Walt Whitman
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” - Albert Einstein
“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” - Albert Einstein
“A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life” — Winston Churchill
“In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” - Fredric Chopin
Yesterday one of my Facebook friends posted a note that “Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission” and to copy the instructions to prevent this to everyone on your friends list. I followed the instructions myself, did a little research on Mashable and some of my Twitter feeds, and proceeded to let all my Facebook friends know how to protect themselves in their Privacy settings.
The whole scenario proceeded to become a bit confusing. We know that many Facebook users are seeing their own or their friends’ photos used in sidebar ads. Whether or not Facebook “has agreed” to allow this is a bit fuzzy. In their privacy settings for using your data in Facebook Ads, their copy reads as follows:
“Facebook occasionally pairs advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. These respect all privacy rules. You may opt out of appearing in your friends’ Facebook Ads below.” (Got that? Good. You are then given the option of allowing this data to appear in your friends’ ads, or ‘”no one.”)
“Relevant social actions.” Does that encompass “photos” and wall posts? We can conclude that these “actions” include profile “Info” such as your favorite movies and books, and your “Pages” that you are a “fan” of or Group pages that you’ve joined. It also obviously refers to the countless quizzes, top five lists and games on Facebook feed the hungry FB data mining machine. At my gut level, I feel like photos and wall posts should be off limits to marketers, but with that ambiguous privacy opt-out statement it seems like Facebook is being squeamish about it at best and secretive at worst. Having said that I can clearly recognize Facebook’s difficult balancing act: protecting as much of the privacy of their millions of users while providing services to their paying advertisers who want as much access to those millions as possible.
Before I go further I’ll provide some links to articles that look at this issue through slightly different lenses. I’m not sure they’ll help you resolve whether or not Facebook photo sharing is a legitimate concern or not, but they do fill in many more blanks than I do above. Check out DowloadSquad’s initial article that triggered this controversy; and their follow-up article to AllFacebook’s return fire. An updated Mashable article wraps up the tos and fros of the debate as well.
Decisions, decisions
So after reading and considering all this, where should the line be drawn? Because clearly, a definitive line has not been drawn yet. As social media continues to skyrocket to stratospheric heights of influence, conundrums like this one are nothing new (Google’s catches grief for similar Gmail data mining exploits) and will continue. After I posted those instructions to turn off Facebook’s ads-to-friends sharing, I got “thank you’s” from my brother and high school buddies and some “Bro! What are you doing??!?” responses from some of my web marketing industry colleagues. As in: “Why are you biting the hand that feeds you?” Hey, I tell my clients that Facebook is an excellent advertising tool because you can advertise on FB members’ pages who have indicated that they may be interested in your product, based on their interests, their “fanned” pages, and their groups. Facebook users are at some level aware of this business model. However, since Facebook’s policy is so fuzzy anyway I usually don’t go into the fact that “by the way, we can eavesdrop on their wall posts too, if you want to get really aggressive with this whole data mining thing.”
Your personal XML file
A few years ago, before Web 2.0 and Facebook and YouTube took hold, and Amazon and eBay were gaining full strength, there was a lot of talk in the industry about somehow, some way, getting every consumer to generate their own “personal XML file” — an über-demographic schema. You would populate this file with everything about you and your family that was relevant to future purchase decisions and perhaps include some social demographic data as well. You would agree to post this XML file would “somewhere” on the Web and based on its content, you would receive not only Internet ads but also TV ads and even out-of-home digital signage messages based on your personal metadata, your demographic DNA. The benefit to both consumers and advertisers would be more efficient communication of relevant information: The right content to the right person at the right time.
Well, fortunately this scenario didn’t play out as planned. This rather generic approach would have resulted in the commoditization of a lot of products and services and decreased the influence of good brands, not to mention a huge hurdle for small businesses. Instead, the concept of a personal digital fingerprint grew beyond this original blueprint to become Facebook and Google profiles. Especially in the case of Facebook, something interesting happened: consumers willingly and voluntarily WANTED their friends to know what cars, music, TV shows, fashions, vacation destinations, and coffee shops they were “fans” of. The Facebook info, profile, fan pages and groups are a user’s XML file, and advertisers use that data, and members aren’t all that concerned about the ads, and they follow the fan pages. Everyone is happy, brands thrive in a whole new frontier, and fascinating new opportunities surface for smaller brands farther out on “the long tail.”
In conclusion, I think you’ll see Facebook more clearly define “social actions.” What I’d like to see Facebook write into this definition is a better description of the vital user-consumer-marketer-advertiser ecosystem that these social actions (whichever they are) help nourish. An ecosystem where consumers help marketers and marketers help consumers to be in position to deliver or receive the right messages, learn about desired brands, find the best prices, explore relevant business or career opportunities.
The Terryberry Company, North America’s leading recognition program provider, developed a new peer-to-peer recognition solution. The Give A Wow! peer recognition program is an online, subscription-based solution that allows any coworker to nominate a peer for going above and beyond. Terryberry invited Elexicon to design and build a website to promote and create awareness for their new Give A Wow! product.
Challenge
The user audience for Give A Wow! is significantly younger than that of their primary recognition programs. The main Terryberry site is designed to appeal to an older audience, so they wanted a clean and hip feel for their new site that at the same time did not offend or alienate any of their older audience who may be the purchaser of the program.
Solution
After some competitor research, Elexicon’s AD decided on a strategic design approach to meet the client’s needs. We developed a microsite that features an intuitive, yet visually appealing, Flash interface that offers users quick and informative access to key points of the Give a Wow! program. The site was designed with clean lines for a crisp, modern appeal and with simple icons to direct users to featured information. The design blends a clean, hip and minimalist feel with business sophistication that appeals to both the young, up-and-coming audience as well as seasoned professionals.
Visit giveawow.com to see more!
I recently had an opportunity to meet some bright high school students in a software engineering workshop at Ferris State University’s downtown Grand Rapids campus. I also spent some time with their instructors. If these kids are a snapshot of our future innovators, West Michigan stands an excellent chance of remaining at the forefront of technology-related industries. Our challenge will be to keep them here, or to return here, after college.
The instructors have a terrific attitude toward working with local industries and corporations to develop talent in schools like Ferris, Grand Valley and Grand Rapids Community College. I’m looking forward to strengthening Elexicon’s relationship with these instructors and schools. We have a great resource in these facilities, teachers and students and the West Michigan business community needs to support them in any way we can. They are definitely reaching out to us with bright talent and new ideas. If we’re not there to reach back, there are other cities and regions who will gladly take them.
Elexicon has completed and helped launch a new web site design and identity system for Systems Maintenance Services, Inc. Based in Hudson, MA with locations nation-wide, SMS is a leading provider of expert professional maintenance services for corporate IT systems. Elexicon completely overhauled the company’s logo and product identity system and wrapped the new look and feel around the re-launch of their web presence.
Elexicon client Harris Corporation, headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, is sponsoring the nearby Orlando Magic for the NBA playoffs. Elexicon had the opportunity to provide some web graphics and animations to support the sponsorship so a couple snippets of our work is thereby getting a larger audience than usual which is, well, neat. Calvin created an animation for Amway Arena’s huge LED boards, and Jennifer supplied a sponsorship banner for the Magic’s web site (it’s a rotating sponsorship so the Harris banner may not appear initially). Good stuff.
I noticed a couple conversations on Facebook today about the fact that there is no “Dislike” button. You have the ability to click and state that you “Like” a friend’s status or post, but you can’t “Dislike” it. There is a FB group dedicated to convincing Facebook to add a thumbs-down button. Personally I hope this never happens. Isn’t there enough “dislike” in the real world?
Organic’s ThreeMinds blog posted some interesting links about lessons information architects can learn from regular architects (’regular’ for lack of a better terms … these folks are anything but regular). While this overall ideas is, of course, nothing new, these five lessons are all fresh takes with keen insights. Lesson #1, “start with the joints (points of stress)” definitely caught my attention. Sounds like this conference speaker they’ve met is writing a sequel to The Fountainheadache. These concepts are all focused on giving the client what they want while getting them excited about discovering what they also need.
Two Elexicon projects received awards in the West Michigan Shores chapter of the Society for Technical Communication 2008-09 Effective Communication Competition.
Congratulations to Calvin and John! Elexicon has a long history with the West Michigan STC and we appreciate the recognition from this great organization…
Elexicon redesigned the web presence and marketing collateral for Cascade Die Casting, based in Grand Rapids. www.cascade-cdc.com
Elexicon is an interactive design and development agency based in Grand Rapids, Michigan...More>
