Setting up for one of Yelp's contributor parties. Image by Yelp.com via Flickr

This winter the Sparksheet team travelled to Toronto for Dx3 Canada, the country’s first trade show for digital advertisers, marketers, and retailers. A chief takeaway from the event was that real-world networking is more powerful than ever.

And to think that this lesson was driven home by none other than Crystal Henrickson, Marketing Director for Canada and Western U.S. at Yelp. It may sound counterintuitive, but according to Henrickson, there’s a remarkable benefit to fostering online communities in the offline space.

Yelp is no stranger to thinking outside the box. In 2009 they reportedly walked away from an offer by Google of more than $500 million. The bold move ended up being a savvy one: Their March 2 IPO launch saw the company’s valuation exceed 1 billion dollars.

During her Dx3 talk, Henrickson emphasized the importance of doing things differently. She explained how brands can get people interested in them online, and how merchants should deal with the inevitable bad review (or disgruntled reviewer).

Since more people are looking at online reviews before deciding on which product to purchase, brands, she argued, should be taking note.

We asked Henrickson to explain what makes Yelp stand out among other user-generated review sites, and about the offline networking Yelp facilitates for its devoted community of contributors (think really awesome parties).

She also cautions brand managers to take a deep breath before replying to negative reviews: posting when angry is never a good idea.

When Jon McGinley stopped by the Sparksheet booth at DX3 Canada this winter, he echoed a comment made by a more than a few speakers at the event: Social isn’t just a PR tool anymore.

And he should know. He’s the director of marketing for Radian6, a small town Canadian startup that made it big – to the tune of $326 million – when it was snapped up by cloud computing company Salesforce in 2011. Its client roster includes half the Fortune 100 companies and the White House.

Essentially, the company creates tools that allow brands to analyze content on social media sites like Twitter. So when Obama hosted a town hall meeting in the summer of 2011, Radian6 was there to track the conversations, “listen” to the questions posed on Twitter, and then provide the White House with the resulting data.

Radian6 also measures social data from its application across different sectors of a business, from R&D to investor relations to customer support.

Here’s McGinley’s take on why social media metrics are more relevant than ever, and how content marketing has helped grow Radian6’s business.

In 2007 she launched AdBroad, an AdAge Power 150 blog covering her corner of the advertising industry. Then, at SXSW 2009, she coined the term “brand fiction” to describe her unique hybrid of branded entertainment and fan fiction and launched a boutique content agency, Brand Fiction Factory, shortly thereafter.

The idea behind brand fiction is to give brands a life of their own on social media channels, growing the brands’ mythology along with their number of followers.

Her unofficial, Webby award-winning @bettydraper Twitter feed tops out at 31,000 followers, illuminating the inner life of the fictional 1960s housewife in AMC’s Mad Men.

Other Mad Men characters have Twitter profiles as well (some voiced by Ross, some by other fans), creating an ongoing conversation that draws on the show’s plotlines. This develops their personalities while giving new and die-hard fans something to chew on between episodes.

But “Mad Men on Twitter” extends beyond Twitter. Klein Ross and her cohorts even put together a Twepisode titled “Don takes Sally to the Beatles” that imagines how the characters in Mad Men would have experienced the legendary Beatles concert at Shea stadium if Twitter were around in 1965. There’s also a blog, Welcome to the Drapers. (Mad Men’s creator, Matt Weiner, and AMC have given their blessings but declined to officially endorse the project.)

During this year’s StoryWorld Conference in San Francisco, Sparksheet editor Dan Levy caught up with Helen Klein Ross, who explained what brand managers and TV producers stand to gain by bringing some fiction (and fun) to their brands.

Photo Courtesy of www.ifp.org, via Flickr

Jeff Gomez turns entertainment brands into full-blown story universes. As CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, he has created multiplatform content for such intellectual properties as James Cameron’s Avatar, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean and Microsoft’s Halo.

Starlight Runner also works with companies like Coca-Cola (the Happiness Factory), Mattel (Hot Wheels) and Hasbro (Transformers) to expand consumer brands into multiplatform experiences in the form of video games, comic books, websites and TV shows.

The key to creating successful story universes, according to Gomez, is working with the strengths of each medium. Every platform adds a complementary but consistent element to a story, and in turn, enriches the audience’s experience.

Sparksheet editor Dan Levy caught up with Jeff Gomez at the StoryWorld conference in San Francisco where he delivered a highly autobiographical keynote entitled “Worldbuilding and Mythology.” We asked him about branded entertainment, the hype surrounding “gamification,” and whether there’s room for print in transmedia storytelling.

These TVs aren’t tuned in to your favourite soap opera or hockey team. They’re showcasing catered in-store entertainment. McDonald’s recently announced the creation of McTV, a customized digital network that will feature content from the likes of Mark Burnett and BBC America.

The channel, which will be making its debut in 800 Southern and Central California restaurants, will screen programs and ads on a one-hour cycle.

As Time’s Allison Berry points out, this is a smart move for the fast food giant. “The channel should be an effective way to present a positive, controlled brand image, particularly after McDonald’s has taken hits by its portrayal in Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me,” she wrote.

But McDonald’s isn’t the first company to commission in-store content. Here’s a look at other brands that have embraced the screen in a theatre, fast-food restaurant or megastore near you.

Pizza Pizza

Pizza Pizza is ahead of McDonald’s when it comes to in-store content. The Canadian pizza chain teamed up with Rogers Digital Network Solutions back in 2008 to create Pizza Pizza-TV.

The narrowcast network – available in hundreds of the pizza chain’s stores across southern Ontario – features local sports highlights, entertainment news and music videos.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart’s in-store entertainment system dates back to 1997. According to USA Today, Wal-Mart had installed almost 130,000 TVs in approximately 3,000 stores in the United States by 2007.

Which means that Wal-Mart TV had the potential to reach about 127 million shoppers a week. What’s unique about Wal-Mart’s system is that each store can fine-tune the message that best suits clients at a given time.

Cineplex Entertainment

Gone are the days when trailers were the first thing you saw at the local cineplex. Movie theatres often showcase trivia questions, exclusive interviews with stars and entertainment news before the lights dim and the feature presentation begins.

Cineplex Entertainment (which operates theatres in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia) has expanded its content beyond the theatre; the company distributes 700,000 copies of Cineplex Magazine in theatre lobbies.

The magazine, which is published 12 times a year, features original content and celebrity interviews. Similarly, Cineplex.com features tons of original content as well, including video interviews and daily blog posts.

As it turns out, the big earners aren’t just innovative – most of them are young and funny.

Epic endorsements

The weekly anti-cooking show Epic Meal Time started out as an inside joke among friends, but as 25-year-old host Harley Morenstein’s cooking (and eating) adventures began gaining in popularity on YouTube, he quit his job as a substitute teacher and now lives off the income the show generates through advertising.

Believe it or not, those dollars don’t come from product placement (they consume copious amounts of Jack Daniels during each episode). Rather, it’s Netflix, Gamefly, and GoDaddy among others that are earning them the big bucks through referral marketing. Essentially, the cooking team promotes these brands by offering deals on their website and sometimes in the videos themselves. When their fans use the referral codes, they profit.

The college try

Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, both writers for CollegeHumor, have made it big online with their comedy sketch series, Jake and Amir, which airs twice a week on CollegeHumor.com and YouTube.

The three-minute sketches draw an average of 500,000 views per episode. Now CollegeHumor is going to see whether fans are willing to invest in what they continue to get for free. The duo has just put out a 30-minute episode called “Fired” which fans can stream for $3 via CollegeHumor’s site and Facebook.

They can also purchase the DVD for $13. The verdict is still out as to whether this strategy will pay off, though if it does, we should expect to see other popular web series give it the new college try.

6-year-old angst

Since 2006 Lucas Cruikshank has been serving up videos starring the fictional character Fred Figglehorn, a high-pitched 6-year-old with anger management issues. While Cruikshank generates income from YouTube ads, last year saw the premiere of the Nickelodeon-backed film Fred: The Movie, which was widely panned by critics.

His channel remains one of the most popular on YouTube, and he’s even partnered on sketches with an equally successful private channel, The Annoying Orange.

The old-fashioned way

It seems that YouTube viewers can’t get enough of young comedians with a penchant for gross-out humour, as Shane Dawson can certainly attest.

The 23-year-old has not just one but three successful YouTube channels, which, according to TubeMogul, have earned him a combined total of 431,787,450 page views and $315,000 through ads, proving that mouse clicks and income still go hand in hand.

Robert Wong (in plaid) with his black-clad fellow presenters

Everybody knows Google. Everyone uses Google. And unless you work for Microsoft or Yahoo or maybe Facebook, chances are you love Google. Which means that Robert Wong, creative head of Google’s in-house advertising agency, has the easiest job in the world, right?

Well, sort of. When I cheekily asked him this question, Wong explained that Google’s routine presence in our everyday lives can actually make it a challenge for the brand to resonate with people on an emotional level. That’s where story comes in.

During his talk at the Tomorrow Awards last month, Wong presented Google’s “Parisian Love” ad, which first ran during the 2009 Superbowl. The heartwarming spot tells the love story of an American man and a French woman as it unfolds through the guy’s Google search queries, from “study abroad Paris,” to “how to assemble a crib.”

Wong used the spot as an example of how Google tries to exceed people’s expectations through a mix of surprise, empathy and creativity (which he wrapped up into a neat, Googley algorithm). We sat down with Wong after his talk to chat more about the story of Google Creative Lab:

But whether you want to call it aggregating, curating, or simply old-fashioned editing, how we sift through the ever-growing digital trove of professionally produced and user-generated content seemed to be on everyone’s mind at this year’s SXSW.

Sharing the floor with the Guardian’s media reporter, Jemima Kiss, Katz discussed how the Guardian is seeking to strike the right balance between original reporting and curated content on its digital and print properties. Tellingly, the Guardians’ last few hires haven’t been journalists, but “community managers” tasked with scouring the Web for sources and stories.

After the session, I asked Katz to expand on the role curation plays in the new journalistic age:

For Matt Williams, CEO of mega-popular social news aggregator Digg, content is increasingly curated through communities. Williams said people “expect serendipity, timeliness and personal relevance when reading the news,” and look to their friends, influencers and social networks to filter content for them.

Williams, who took over from Digg founder Kevin Rose last year, said Digg is moving “in a direction that’s much more serendipitous and personalized.” To me, these seemed like opposite editorial approaches.

Personalization makes me think of the highly-customizable news experience offered by digital apps like Flipboard, while serendipity brings to mind the eclectically curated experience of leafing through a newspaper or print magazine.

I sat down with Williams after the session and asked him to explain:

It seems fitting to end our little exploration of curation with the guy who wrote the book, Steve Rosenbaum. An Emmy award-winning television producer, Rosenbaum is the CEO of Magnify.net – an online video aggregation tool – and the author of Curation Nation.

In his book, Rosenbaum argues that businesses and publishers need to sift through the Web’s clutter to curate meaningful experiences for their audience. I caught up with him in the SXSW media lounge and asked him what role brands will play in the age of curation:

Links:

Gilad’s blog, where he writes about everything from the Middle East to data visualization.

The Future of the Book, a mixed media installation he created for the Boston Book Festival in 2009.

Global Voices, an international community of bloggers who translate citizen media from around the world.

Max Lenderman

As an authority in experiential marketing, out-of-home advertising and the hyper-developing “BRIC” countries, Max Lenderman and his latest book, Brand New World, are right up our alley.

During his presentation, he shared pictures of a Bollywood-style “branded theatre” performance in India sponsored by a cell phone company.

He also tugged on the audience’s heartstrings by showing a video of Tide’s “loads of hope” truck, which provided New Orleans residents with free laundry service in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

We joined him for a cigarette break outside the venue and asked him to tell us more about his adventures in Brazil, Russia, India and China:

Jeffrey Gitomer

Funny, brash and politically incorrect, Jeffrey Gitomer has sold more than a million books on the art of selling and earning customer loyalty, including the widely revered Sales Bible. In his talk, he stressed that both marketers and sales people must put themselves “in front of people who can say ‘yes’ – and deliver to them first.”

We caught up with him as he was signing books and asked about the differences between sales and marketing and how the new media world is changing the art of persuasion:

Ron Tite

Art of Marketing attendees may not have realized that the guy providing witty banter between presenters is an accomplished advertiser in his own right. Event host Ron Tite has carved out an interesting niche for himself as a Creative Director by day, corporate comedian by night.

We spoke to him during the lunch break about the connection between business and comedy, personal branding, and the universal power of storytelling:

Mitch Joel

Our loyal readers are well acquainted with digital marketing rock star Mitch Joel. He’s the President of Twist Image, best-selling author of Six Pixels of Separation and, perhaps most importantly, a Sparksheet contributor!

Mitch kicked off the day with a passionate talk about how the marketing world is being reinvented by social networking, YouTube and online customer reviews (did you know that there are more grandparents than high school students on Facebook, or that negative reviews inspire more sales than positive ones)?

We asked him about the future of publishing and the surprising power of face-to-face events in the digital age:

The jam-packed day also included great talks by charismatic analytics wizard Avinash Kaushik, Just for Laughs founder Andy Nulman, and of course, a certain marketing guru named Seth. We didn’t have a chance to catch them all on video but…

Check out our exclusive Q&A with Seth Godin!

© Dan Lamont

Brent Friedman is Co-Founder and President of Electric Farm Entertainment.

How did you get major brands like Kodak and Verizon to sign on to something as new and untested as transmedia storytelling?

Our first transmedia project, Afterworld, was a great litmus test for the model. It became something that we could use to showcase what we were capable of from a production quality and creative standpoint, as well as a business standpoint. I mean, the reach that we got with Afterworld was globally over 20 million views and it made money!

So, although we didn’t have any sponsorship on that project, when we did Gemini Division as our next project, everybody could see we had credibility. We got Rosario Dawson interested and once we had her, and we had NBC, and we had Sony, we had the confidence to go after some big sponsors.

We got Cisco and Intel and Acura and UPS and Microsoft all as sponsorship integration deals on Gemini Division. It was an embarrassment of riches, but it was also too many balls to juggle. So by the time we got to Valemont and Woke Up Dead, we decided it’s better to have one sponsor take on a bigger role in our project. It just becomes too difficult to manage all of those relationships while you’re also trying to produce content.

Transmedia projects produced by Brent Friedman for Electric Farm Entertainment (chart by Sparksheet)

What have been the most effective ways to work these brands into your stories?

You really have to sit down and explore what it is that the brand wants to communicate; what aspect of their brand do they want to represent in this story, or in this experience? Taking the Verizon example, before we even knew that brand was on board, we had embraced this idea that the central narrative device of Valemont was going to be a cell phone.

When you’re working in two- to three-minute episodes you need shortcuts. Something I learned in video games was to cut out the first act of set up – jump right into the action – and the way we thought we could do that in Valemont was to give our main character all the clues she needed in the very first two-minute episode. Give her a cell phone with all the digital fragments of her brother’s life – his voicemails, his text messages, pictures, videos – so she could solve the mystery of his murder one clue, one episode at a time… using a Verizon branded phone, of course.

How do you integrate your sponsors into the narrative without insulting your audience’s intelligence?

That’s another thing I learned as a story consultant at EA [Electronic Arts], the video game company. When I was there they were really embracing the verisimilitude of advertising. It used to be that you had a major league baseball game, for example, and all of the signage inside the parks were jokes, they were parodies of real ads.

But then they started getting feedback that the game would seem more real if there were real ads that simulated the experience of being in a ballpark. And I think a light went on in everybody’s head – “Oh, wait a minute, they’re not going to feel that’s advertising, they’re going to feel that that’s reality” – because we live in a branded world. So from our standpoint, we could make a fake phone, and we could make a fake wireless carrier, but that would take you out of reality.

What are some of the ways in which you enabled your audience to interact with the story, as well as the brand?

As a kind of nexus of the entire ARG [alternate reality game] and interactive experience, we built a faux Valemont University website that we modeled after real 21st century college websites. Students could apply to Valemont University and when they were accepted, they got their own virtual phone through the website.

That became their communication device, where they got text messages and pictures and videos sent to them from characters in the show. And that was also a Verizon-branded phone, so it became a replicate experience to the show’s main character.

Both Woke Up Dead and Valemont have more or less completed the run of their episodes. How have your sponsors been able to realize some ROI on these projects?

We were able to offer click-throughs to the Kodak website. They featured Woke Up Dead on their main site and got a lot of attention for that. I think they really got a lot of return on their investment in terms of what it did for their brand., because it connected a new demographic to their digital cameras and made using them fun and cool. Plus, it allowed Kodak to loosen up their brand identity. In terms of actual numbers – selling cameras – I don’t know. But I do know that they couldn’t be happier with the whole experience.

Verizon was excited about a lot of things that happened on the show; the number of people who enrolled in Valemont U completely exceeded everyone’s expectations. The amount of engagement, the time that people were spending on Valemont U, the number of fans we garnered on Facebook, as well as the amount of streams they were getting to their V CAST users of Valemont was through the roof.

The retention rate of the Valemont episodes when they aired on TV was also off the charts. But most importantly, it wasn’t that people were watching the show, it was that they were engaging with the content.

And because Verizon was integrated into that whole experience, from the episodes to the websites, they felt like they were getting a lot of great exposure.

As a transmedia storyteller, how important is it to create a community around your content?

I think at this stage of the game it’s one of the most vital things. I think what’s happened is that there used to be this kind of wall between creators and audience. It used to be a one-way experience where creators created and they distributed to an audience at whatever time they chose to give it to them, for however long and for whatever price. Those days are gone and that wall has come down, and now you don’t have creators and audience, you have co-collaborators.

You have people who initiate the content and you have fans who invest in the content and even help market it virally. And I think that that relationship is going to be key going forward because the audience has become so empowered and so enabled because of the technology.

Something else I picked up at EA is the notion of “a universe worthy of devotion.” When you look at a project or a franchise like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, it’s not just that the movies themselves were successful. It’s that those worlds have been so fleshed out, so well conceived in their 3-D qualities, that fans want to go live there, they want to explore that world. The key is to create content experiences that satisfy that compulsion.

Taking Valemont as an example, what was the most surprising way in which your audience became part of the story?

We initially decided we didn’t want to have a fan forum on the Valemont University site. We were trying to create what feels like a real university site, so we couldn’t have fans talking about the TV show on it.

We thought we’d have a Facebook page where fans can gather and talk. But that’s not really a forum, that’s more of a bulletin board.

And so, without any prompting, a group of hardcore fans rose up and created the Valemont Commons, which is a very good replica of our Valemont U site. They emulated the design of the VU site, and created an adjunct, essentially, where fans could gather, and they did a really smart thing: they created an “on campus” portion of the forum where people could be in character and talk about Valemont as if it were a real institution, and then they had “off campus”, where you could kind of step back and talk about the show.

That happened instantaneously. It happened within the first week of the show being released.

Is transmedia a niche, or is it the future of entertainment?

It’s definitely the future. I think that what’s happening is that storytelling is taking on a different life because people are looking for a different level of experience. I think that transmedia producers are actually rising up to meet a need. I think that it’s an emotional, psychological need to not just watch passively anymore.

I think there is both an opportunity and a challenge for content creators. To trust the audience, to invite them in and let them make it their own. That’s exciting for creators and fans. And you don’t really have enough of that right now.

Honestly, I always look to video games when I want to peek into the future. Everything you’re seeing from Project Natal, which is creating interactivity in terms of not just movement recognition, but voice recognition, eye recognition, emotion recognition – it’s putting the viewer, the audience, into the game, into the movie, into the web series, and once they’re in there, they don’t want to just watch. They want to be part of that world.

I don’t know how far off that is as a mainstream technology, but that’s what kind of keeps me going – the idea that I’ll be around to not just see something like this, but to actually create a next-gen experience like that.

Anyone who has bonded with a favourite TV show or obsessively re-watched a viral clip on YouTube knows the power and potential of video. But few airlines have fully engaged with the medium. That’s because video production is expensive, time consuming, and potentially risky. Here are a handful of airlines that have boldly launched their own YouTube channels with varying degrees of success:

Delta Air Lines:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DeltaAirLines
Joined: May 11, 2006
Subscribers: 2,005
Channel Views: 87,705
Videos: 47

Delta plays it safe, but with style. Along with the obligatory flight safety videos (in English, Hindi, Japanese and Spanish) viewers are treated to an unguided tour of the Miami Sky Lounge, a crash course on how to use Delta’s check-in kiosk, and 25 intimate and in-depth city guides hosted by Delta employees. Hats off to Delta’s sound team for spicing up the clips with surprisingly good ambient music.

United Airlines

www.youtube.com/user/uniteditstimetofly
Joined: July 29, 2008
Subscribers: 385
Channel Views: 86,033
Videos: 7

No airline today needs a first-class YouTube presence more than United Airlines. Last month, musician Dave Carroll posted a video to the site in which he tunefully accused the company’s baggage handlers of breaking his $3,500 guitar. “United Breaks Guitars” quickly went viral, garnering more than 5 million views and heaps of media coverage.

So far United Airlines has failed to respond in kind and its YouTube channel is littered with comments from angry musicians vowing to boycott the airline. We know we’re not the only ones waiting to hear an equally tuneful apology performed by musically-inclined United employees. Until then, we’ll have to settle for a time-lapse video of a United 747’s construction.

Qantas Airways

http://www.youtube.com/user/Qantas
Joined: February 14, 2006
Subscribers: 886
Channel Views: 42,856
Videos: 54

Aside from a few television ads and some historical footage, the Aussie airline’s YouTube channel is all soccer all the time. Fans can feast on interviews and post-game roundups with members of the Qantas Socceroos, the company’s world-class squad.

Virgin Atlantic Airlines

www.youtube.com/user/ThisIsVirginAtlantic
Joined: October 16, 2008
Subscribers: 354
Channel Views: 18,118
Videos: 38

Welcome to the family channel. Virgin groupies can watch Holly Branson, daughter of Virgin founder Richard Branson, talk about the airline’s charity work or follow Sir Richard himself on an eight-day trip around the world. By spotlighting the Bransons, Virgin succeeds at being both personal and promotional at the same time.

Southwest Airlines

www.youtube.com/user/NutsAboutSouthwest
Joined: June 06, 2007
Subscribers: 662
Channel Views: 31,332
Videos: 129

And the Aviation Oscar for outstanding performance on YouTube goes to… 38-year-old Southwest Airlines. The Dallas-based company takes social media engagement seriously, and its YouTube channel is no exception. We’re big fans of the “My Old Man in Maintenance” series, which stars the airline’s emerging media maven, Christi Day. In each episode, the affable Day interviews her father, a longtime Southwest maintenance man, about hydraulic systems, aircraft flaps and other esoteric airplane parts.

We also recommend joining the roughly 53,000 people who have witnessed Southwest’s rapping flight attendant. And if that’s not enough, check out the audacious “Twitcom,” in which Southwest staff members act out a script written by the airline’s loyal Twitter followers:

What’s the connection between content and interaction design? How do you take into account the product’s ultimate function – whether it’s entertainment or information delivery or communications – in the design process?

If we think of content in a broad sense, most interactive products have to do with content: either consuming it (watching an online slideshow), generating it (digital cameras), manipulating it (Photoshop), or some combination of those (social network sites like Facebook). For interaction designers, the important thing is to consider what it means to do one of these activities in the context of use, and design for that.

On the consumption end of the spectrum, often the interaction designer’s job is simply one of providing tools to find and navigate the content structure and to get the hell out of the way. On the generation and manipulation side of the spectrum, it’s a lot more complex, because sometimes the focus is on the tool itself, not just the content.

What effect does or should the aircraft environment have on interaction design? How do you account for tangibles like ambient lighting levels and less tangibles like user frame of mind?

Interaction design is all about behaviour, so things like lighting levels can affect that, helping put travellers into a different state of mind so that different behaviours seem acceptable or expected. Think of the cool violet lighting inside a Virgin America aircraft for instance. And certainly products like the back-of-the-seat touchscreen systems have changed life for the better for travellers by giving them a modicum of control in a situation that used to be entirely regimented.

The addition of the touchscreens can change the way processes have traditionally worked. To use another Virgin America example, the ability to directly order food and drinks from your seat whenever you want pretty much eliminates the need for beverage and meal service.

Ordering drinks on Virgin America's inflight system

What are your thoughts on the proliferation of interactive terminals for travellers—I’m thinking of everything from airport check-in terminals to tourist visitor centres to subway ticket counters. Do you think travellers have been adequately served by interaction designers in this context? Is there any area where person-to-person interaction is always better?

I think they’re great. They are the best additions to a massive service since ATMs became part of banking. Travellers have been well served by them, I think, and are getting better served every day, with online and mobile applications in addition to kiosks. Of course, like with ATM and bank tellers, there are situations too complex for the regular system to handle; sometimes you just need a person to explain a situation to, and they can use the more powerful tools at their disposal – as well as their knowledge of the system – to address complex problems. Not everything can be turned into hardware/software. Nor should everything be – major systems like transportation are so complex, it takes humans to work them.

What are some ways that brands can engage users through interactive interfaces? What are some examples of effective engagement, and where have people been turned off?

The simple answer to this is to make great products that meet people’s needs and that they enjoy using. That will make a positive connection in customers’ minds to the brand. Of course, that’s really hard.

I think it’s important for companies to remember that, except in some rare circumstances, customers aren’t there to “experience your brand”. They are there to do something. If you make it easy and pleasurable to do those activities, it creates brand loyalty. If even a fraction of the money spent on marketing and advertising was spent to make interactive products better, you’d see a huge improvement.

You can see effective engagement in products like the iPhone, TiVo, Facebook, Twitter. They are all products people use and then advocate for. You can tell bad products because people quickly tire of them or are reluctant to use them unless necessary. Products that are ugly and poorly thought out. We’re surrounded by this stuff all the time.

Well Fargo's popular ATM interface

Are gestural interfaces going to replace touch screens or other traditional interfaces? Are they simply a more advanced technology or is there still a place for good old push buttons?

To paraphrase Bill Buxton, all technologies are good for some things and bad for others. I imagine a future – a near future – where gestures, touchscreens, and mechanical/physical interfaces all exist side by side, used when and where appropriate based on the context of use. Take public restrooms, for instance. Gestural interfaces (in sinks, paper towel dispensers, hand driers, etc.) seem to have taken root there, in part because it makes both practical (because the less you touch in public bathrooms, the better) and business (it saves water, paper, and electricity) sense. Touchscreens and certainly not keyboards and mice don’t belong there. Likewise, I don’t see keyboards vanishing from offices anytime soon, because they are quite good for doing large amounts of data and text entry. I think we’re still in the process of finding out what gestural interfaces are good for, really.

Are gestural interfaces culturally sensitive? Is the iPhone as “intuitive” for someone in China or India as it is for someone in San Francisco?

Gestures certainly are culturally sensitive. The OK sign, for instance, is very offensive in certain parts of the world, as is a thumbs up. Touchscreen products have their own interaction design language that has to be learned, the same way there is a language on the desktop software (“cut and paste,” for instance). The hope is that there is less of a learning curve for products that are manipulated directly with the fingers than with a mouse or via menus. I don’t know if that is necessarily true, but anecdotally we keep hearing about children as young as two picking up iPhones and figuring them out. If children who can’t read can use something, it should translate across borders pretty well.

You edit a blog called No Ideas But In Things where you feature mechanical interfaces that inspire you. What are some of your favourite interaction designs from the physical world?

I really love controls for heavy machinery like cranes, bulldozers, and the like. There is something about their bluntness and clarity that all designers can learn from. Plus, the icons are incredible. Since a lot of the operators now don’t read English, there are more icons than words. My favourite was a Fast/Slow lever that had a rabbit on one side and a turtle on the other. Genius.

Hospital bed controls via No Idea But In Things

Are there any everyday appliances that you think ought to be completely redesigned? Is there a point of no return at which the way something works becomes so intuitive to most people that it can no longer be reconfigured?

Most of the appliances we have now have been refined over decades, so there are probably only incremental changes we’re going to see to them. Although who knows? I’d love to design a gestural stove. And the initiative to be more environmentally friendly may cause some changes in food preparation and storage that require new appliances.

It’s more likely we’re going to see the interplay of our appliances, and them becoming smarter and more aware. Dishwashers running when energy is the cheapest, for instance. Stoves that detect burning and lower the heat.

I don’t think there is ever a point when a product can’t be improved. Forks, for instance, evolved over several centuries. But the TV, for instance, was a fairly stable technology until DVRs disrupted the service.

What are the differences between designing for the stressed commuter, rushed businessman, Luddite senior citizen, multitasking teen, etc.? Do you aim for the lowest common denominator when designing a user interface, or for a specific demographic?

You might have all these seemingly diverse groups, but they might all have the same expectations, motivations, and behaviour. Those are the three key components to think about when designing. When there is variation in those, you have to figure out how much the interface has to adjust for. In some circumstances, like for public transit ticketing machines, it is designing for the widest acceptable range. For many other products, that’s not the case at all. You target one set of expectations, motivations, and behaviour and that is your product. Other products are made from other sets of those characteristics.

What are some common mistakes you’ve seen in other people’s designs? Any pet peeves?

Emphasizing the wrong button is one I see frequently. Drives me crazy. Squint at the screen or the device and see what is the most prominent item. If it isn’t supposed to be the most important control, the design is likely wrong.

Saffer’s presentation on gestural interfaces at the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference in New York City

Notes from 140 Characters Conference

When he’s not doing the visual note-taking thing, Goldstein works with companies to create short animated videos that explain the clients’ products or services. We thought his “Og the Caveman” cartoon made a rock-solid case for why we are all publishers:

Robert Scoble is one of the world’s leading evangelists of all things digital. Previously with Microsoft, Scoble has also worked with Fast Company among others. He is perhaps best known as a blogger: millions around the world read it every day. And one of Scoble’s most famous creations is his starfish, a great, colorful visualization of the amorphous social-media landscape. Inspired by Brafman and Beckstrom’s “The Starfish and the Spider,” Scoble emphasizes the online media ecosystem’s decentralized and interconnected nature. Below, we dissect the starfish, laying out each medium’s strengths and weaknesses and examining which players are converting each into eyeballs and dollars.

Video

Strengths:
youth audience, viral, multiple senses, easy to embed, creativity, control over message
Weaknesses:
production costs, online video not as popular with adults, oversaturation
Services:
YouTube, Google Video, Kyte, Seesmic, Hulu
Conversions:
Politicians and interest groups use video to spread the word. Aspiring musicians and filmmakers can market themselves on the cheap. Grey-market entrepreneurs who provide links to TV shows and movies are making a killing off ad sales.
Who’s making money?
Let’s face it: YouTube will never be the cash cow Google expected it to be. And how annoying are those commercials networks lace their videos with? There is hope, however, in sites such as Hulu, where the big boys get a share of the pie.

Photo

Strengths:
“worth a thousands words,” cheap, easy to share across platforms
Weaknesses:
static, copyright confusion
Services:
Flickr, Zooomer, SmugMug
Conversions:
Citizen journalism sites such as Gothamist and CNN’s iReport are thriving off our Flickr photos.
Who’s making money?
Flickr has stayed afloat with its premium subscriber model but Yahoo suitors such as Microsoft may think they can squeeze more money out of the photo-sharing leader.

Blog

Strengths:
personal, interactive, multimedia, free and easy to use
Weaknesses:
Casual tone can lead to political and corporate gaffes. Many companies are leery about opening themselves to criticism through comments or linking. “Post or die”: maintaining a popular blog is a full-time job.
Services:
WordPress, Blogger, TypePad
Conversions:
Google, Wal-Mart, Amazon, McDonald’s and Whole Foods are among the most powerful corporations with successful. – and surprisingly readable – corporate blogs.
Who’s making money?
Blogs are the lifeblood of what Internet evangelist Jeff Jarvis calls the new “link economy.” According to a Wall Street Journal story, more Americans earn a living today from blogging than firefighting or computer programming (although some bloggers have questioned the Journal’s accounting).

Events

Strengths:
Welcome to the real world.
Weaknesses:
“If you build it, they will come”—except when they don’t.
Services:
Zvents, Evite, Eventful, Upcoming, Facebook
Conversions:
Scoble likes to talk about an unofficial Obama rally that was organized online and drew more than 4,000 supporters – plus the future President.
Who’s making money?
Depends on the cover charge.

Collaborative Tools

Strengths:
internal efficiency, transparency
Weaknesses:
Expensive and buggy. Will our privacy evaporate in a cloud?
Services:
Zoho, Zimbra, Google Docs
Conversions:
Google’s ever-evolving collaboration tools build brand loyalty (not to mention dependency).
Who’s making money?
By keeping its programs in perennial beta mode, Google can scrap unprofitable – or just plain crappy – creations while saving face. What happened to Vista Beta, Mr. Gates?

Wikis

Strengths:
Crowdsourcing, transparency, unabashed geekiness: Wikis are the coolest social media on the block.
Weaknesses:
The hazards of democracy: Wikis are fair game for critics, pranksters and sh*t disturbers.
Services:
Pbwiki, Twiki, Wetpaint
Conversions:
Wikipedia, anyone?
Who’s making money?
Wikis are the NGOs of the Internet economy. They won’t make money, but the geeks won’t let them fail.

Audio

Strengths:
intimate, easy and cheap
Weaknesses:
Radio is so 1930s.
Services:
BlogTalkRadio, Odeo, podcasts
Conversions:
The Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network just keeps growing.
Who’s making money?
Even public-radio producers have embraced mid-podcast advertising, which is somehow less annoying than video ads (how can you not buy a mattress endorsed by Garrison Keillor’s soothing baritone?)

Email

Strengths:
personal and timely
Weaknesses:
spam!
Services:
MediaPost, AWordADay, TPM Daily Digest and other so-called Bacn.
Conversions:
Six months after the election, President Obama is still tapping into his campaign e-mail trove to sell himself to the American people.
Who’s making money?
We’re so used to ads in our inbox, who would mind a few more?

SMS

Strengths:
even more personal, even more timely
Weaknesses:
except for when cell-phone carriers fail to deliver on time
Services:
Communications Channel
Conversions:
Obama announcing his running mate via SMS was a neat idea, but the cat was out of the bag hours before that early-morning text.
Who’s making money?
As if the Verizons and Videotrons of the world needed another revenue stream.

Microblogs

Strengths:
niche, timely, personal
Weaknesses:
limited audience, time-consuming
Services:
Twitter, Jaiku
Conversions:
Freelance writer Daniel Baum blabbed in 140-character form about his rise and fall at The New Yorker – just in time for his new book launch.
Who’s making money?
So far, Twitter is another VC trust-fund baby. But its powerful real-time search capabilities make it extremely attractive to a conventional search engine such as Google, whose results will always be a few steps behind.

Personal Social Networks

Strengths:
It doesn’t get much more personal than this. An advertiser’s dream.
Weaknesses:
Some might think twice before playing in another company’s walled garden.
Services:
Facebook, Myspace Linked In
Conversions:
Facebook has converted nearly every high school and college-aged kid into a computer geek and online consumer.
Who’s making money?
Program developers, online marketers and Mark Zuckerberg have all made a pretty penny from Facebook. But questions about proprietary rights and privacy continue to loom over the site.