Joseph Dickerson wrote a great article for UX Magazine about Walt Disney, being the world’s first UX designer. While reading that article it struck me that some of the examples are not only applicable to user experience but to marketing as well. Especially Mickey’s 10 Commandments.
Here they are, accompanied by my idea on its connection with marketing.
1. Know your audience
"Don't bore people, talk down to them, or lose them by assuming that they know what you know."
This is a golden rule in marketing. Understand your audience, so you can offer them a solution that solves their problems or adds value to their lives. Don’t bore them, interest them.
2. Wear your guest's shoes
"Insist that designers, staff, and your board members experience your facility as visitors as often as possible."
This approach increases the empathy your team has for your audience. Making the campaigns you create more appropriate and relevant.
3. Organize the flow of people and ideas
"Use good storytelling techniques; tell good stories not lectures; lay out your exhibit with a clear logic."
Storytelling is fast becoming the number 1 skill in marketing. You no longer pound your message into consumers heads hoping that it will stick. Instead you create useful and interesting stories around your brand, so consumers come to you in a natural way.
4. Create a weenie
"Lead visitors from one area to another by creating visual magnets and giving visitors rewards for making the journey."
Weenies are objects that are large enough to see from a distance and interesting enough to draw their attention. Within marketing you can use this for example in an e-marketing campaign. Providing a weenie in your e-mail will result in higher click though rates.
5. Communicate with visual literacy
"Make good use of all the non-verbal ways of communication—color, shape, form, texture."
Non-verbal communication is essential. It can make the difference between marketing done right, and marketing done wrong. When you have a story to tell make sure that the lay-out is inviting.
6. Avoid overload
"Resist the temptation to tell too much, to have too many objects; don't force people to swallow more than they can digest, try to stimulate and provide guidance to those who want more."
Make sure that the story you tell your audience is clear. Don’t confuse them with buzz words, technical mumbo jumbo or self-centered bragging. Give your audience a message they immediately understand and can connect with.
7. Tell one story at a time
"If you have a lot of information, divide it into distinct, logical, organized stories; people can absorb and retain information more clearly if the path to the next concept is clear and logical."
Chop your story in clear chapters. Divide them by relevant topics. So your audience can pick out the topics that interest them at their own pace.
8. Avoid contradiction
"Clear institutional identity helps give you the competitive edge. [The] public needs to know who you are and what differentiates you from other institutions they may have seen."
Interweave your brand in every story you tell. Don’t look at your brand as a separate thing to be applied at the end.
9. For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of fun
"How do you woo people from all other temptations? Give people plenty of opportunity to enjoy themselves by emphasizing ways that let people participate in the experience and by making your environment rich and appealing to all senses."
Be sure to keep your stories attractive and fun to read. Don’t bore your audience with long reads full of technical details. Give your audience the opportunity to interact with you.
10. Keep it up
"Never underestimate the importance of cleanliness and routine maintenance, people expect to get a good show every time, people will comment more on broken and dirty stuff."
Always strive for relevancy. Make sure that your story is interesting for your audience.
While working on new text for our new company website it struck me. The old text had to many questions, obvious questions. So I gave myself a task, provide answers to all questions.
Don't ask questions. Give answers!
Questions make your webcontent vague. It leeds to misinformed people.
In most of the cases where communication fails the sender presumes that the receiver is uninformed. They do not know any better!
That's wrong, very wrong. The receiver isn't the problem, it is the sender. His message wasn't clear enough for the receiver to understand.
Seth Godin said it nicely in one of his blogs this week:
"The easiest way to disagree with someone, is to assume that they are uninformed. ... Odds are, though, that we will make the change we seek by embracing the hard work of telling stories that resonate, as opposed to dismissing the other who appears not to get it."
A great article on a brilliant campaign to persuade people in buying dictionaries.
"Why should someone buy a dictionary in the online age? Lexical information is served up swiftly and promptly in ways that make it harder to see the other role of the dictionary," said Ms. Butler. That other role is that of a "mirror to culture" and as a "cultural document," she said, which was the image McCann needed to communicate.
Few mistakes sour good writing like nominalizations, or, as Helen Sword likes to call them, zombie nouns. Zombie nouns transform simple and straightforward prose into verbose and often confusing writing. Keep your nouns away from the elongating nominalizations!
Why are so many things broken? In a hilarious talk from the 2006 Gel conference, Seth Godin gives a tour of things poorly designed, the 7 reasons why they are that way, and how to fix them.
Het Abell model geeft een duidelijke marktafbakening van de huidige activiteiten en de kansen. Met behulp van dit model kan een organisatie zijn strategisch beleid aanpassen op veranderingen in de markt.
Wise words on the massive difference between UX and UI from Erik Flowers (who wrote about and then created this handy poster for people to educate others about those differences.)
Okay, i've read a considerable ammount of articles and books by now. But one thing that's still not clear is the difference or correlation between all the fields of expertise. What is the one thing that ties it all together?
You have information architecture, usability, user experience, interaction design
human centered design, the list goes on and on.
Yesterday's post about the difference between UX and usability only gives part of the answer. There are more things that must be considered.
After coming across an old blog post by Peter Morville i got inspired to make a diagram myself. Out of all the information i made this simple one:
IA is the basis of all. Out of that you can construct usability. And if you do a proper job you will get good user experience. It is my intention to expand this diagram.
One thing i understand now: UX is a result not a tool. Abby Covert explains it well. Does this mean that you can't be a "user experience expert"? Because then you would be an expert in a result... A carpenter is an expert in creating a table, he is not an expert in the table itself.
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