This month, .net magazine asked our development team the big question. Maybe the biggest question everyone is asking at the beginning of a new year. What will be the most significant trend of 2012? Some believe it will be the end of the world but not our two senior developers…

So what will it be? Both Joe and Stefan believe there will be continued boom in the mobile and tablet device market, more standardisation and inventions around HTML5 and mobile apps…  And we will be really excited to bring these great technologies to our clients this year.

See what we have to say in Issue 224, which is out now!

I say dotBrand – you say What? So, let’s start with the basics. DotBrand is the moniker that’s been given to the new raft of impending top level domain names.

We are all currently aware of at least a handful of the 22 existing traditional endings to a domain address such as .co.uk, .com, .org, .net, .biz, .fr, and we get along quite nicely with them for the most part. People have come to understand that a ‘.co.uk’ site is the UK version of a website, or that ‘.edu’ is limited to use by educational institutions, and is likely to be the domain name for your childs primary school, or your university.

dotBrand opens up the top level domain names to ‘.anything’… It could be .coke, .london, .music… and so on, creating with it an entirely new online landscape. Brands could essentially have total ownership and management of their own unique name space. No longer would they have to check whether a domain name was available at the start of a new product launch, or advertising campaign. Instead they would simply just add it in their repertoire. For example if MGM studios launched a new film, lets say it’s called Violet… they could simply have www.violet.mgm (instead of a) not being likely to get www.violet.com as another company will probably already own it and b) not having to use something along the lines of www.mgm.com/movies/newrelease/violet). Obviously the latter is a lot less effective, less memorable and holds less retention with the audience.

All dotBrand domain name requests have a 90 day period to be submitted to ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, starting Jan 2012. After which time a review process will take place, and names granted or declined… More of this later.

So, next comes the fact that a new digital landscape calls for a new digital strategy. Obviously there are immediate pluses and minuses to the arrival of a dotBrand era, and questions to be considered.

• How will it be received by the public? There is likely to be early confusion and potential reticence to change.
• How will brands educate the public, and encourage them to use their new dotBrand top level domain?
• Will cybersquatting increase? Will dotBrands be bought up by people who have no right to them?
• Will dotBrands be perceived as more or less trustworthy?
• How will dotBrands affect the online search strategies and effectiveness for non-dotBrand’ers?
• Will dotBrands give a competitive advantage to their users, or will they be yet another top level domain name in the mix of the existing ones?
• Will the obvious simplified url’s create a noticeable amount of stickyness for a campaign?
• …And the list goes on…

One immediate problem is that credible and agreed names that are submitted for registration will not only be approved, but will ensure that similar names, or different versions on a similar theme will be declined. The example given in the recent webinar was for Deloitte – if registered, .deloitte will be acceptable, but .delloite / .deloite / .deloittr will all be declined. The irony for me is that dotBrand itself is a company name… Will ICANN buy the .dotbrand top level domain for all registrations, and if they do, do they have ‘more right’ over it than a company whose registered name is DotBrand?? Wow… the mind boggles. Gap is another great example, as a colleague pointed out. There is currently thegap / gap/ gapadventures / gapinc / gapantenna / gap-software… Who can lay claim, and who will be shoved out of a dotBrand world? Or will it come down to those that can pay will muscle out those that can’t and stake their claim on a name?

The digital landscape may also change more dramatically than one would first envisage. There is the potential that dotBrand websites will eliminate the need for a website hierarchy, as you will be pointed exactly where you need to go by a short, snappy, memorable dotBrand url (www.contact.amazon or www.soul.kia). No website hierarchy and a direct route of navigation potentially means no Homepage doesn’t it? – a concept that all website users are currently familiar and comfortable with using and navigating. Obviously the immediate question raised in my mind, is around the interconnectivity of pages within the same dotBrand domain, and how users will find their way from one place to another if the navigational homepage is made redundant…? This may currently appear to be one step too far.

Now back to the process of registering for a dotBrand, as promised. There will be an initial 90 day registration period, after which the current schedule is that further registration for dotBrand domain names will be closed until 2016. That is a long way away! My initial fear on hearing this, coupled with the fact that each submission for a dotBrand domain name will cost a whopping $185,000 (please don’t gasp aloud as I did upon hearing this figure), is that all of a sudden the internet will become yet another landscape of have’s v’s have-not’s. For me the beauty of the internet is that it allows everyone an equal playing field – whether you’re a small start-up, or a big fish in the marketplace; equally it has allowed some amazing entrepreneurial successes that may never have got that first break had it not been for a unified global online space…

And let’s not brush over the $185,000 price-tag itself. What exactly are brands paying for? I’ll repeat that. What EXACTLY are brands paying for? And frankly, aren’t we simply saying to companies over a certain size and turnover ‘welcome to a brand new web’, and to all you others ‘goodluck’…

Whilst you read this, there will be more Top 100 companies publicly setting their stall out (to register or not to register, that is the question?), with the likes of Deloitte and Canon quickly announcing that they would be buying their respective dotBrand domain names. It would seem that there are therefore two options – dotBrand, or don’t. A third, slightly questionable, route is also being put out there by ICANN: register and then retreat. You register and essentially ‘reserve’ a domain name so others can’t get it, and then withdraw your application after the 90 day deadline. This would mean that between April 2012 and sometime in 2016 no-one else would be able to get your dotBrand domain name, however it would also cost you $55,500 for the privilege (30% of the original fee would be retained)…

I guess we shall just have to wait and wonder…

We humans all differ in our need to participate in social media at different speeds and across various networks. Some of us have strengths in certain networks such as being active Tweeters while others are more active within groups or friends in Facebook. Many have a distributed input across multiple social networks and appear further up the ‘ladder’.

Some are steady and cautious (like Joiners), while others grow faster and participate more (Creators). There are also others described at the bottom that does not engage on any rung of the social technographics ladder called inactives. These types are still your customers but this just means ‘inactives’ are not communicating with you or your brand via social channels. Don’t forget them as they are coming to you via other means or digital channels or maybe through physical or static touchpoints.

The 9C’s

Known as The 9C’s the ladder structure has since been updated to include 2 new sections outlined in blue on the diagram. There have been a few name changes but the groups remain the same. As social media engagement evolves so will these groups change and shift importance. Over time the inactives group will diminish and may even disappear all together. The 2 new additions are:

• Commercialists are those who recognise that they are using social media for business social not just social social. They may have existed before, but it’s important to note and track growth, especially as social commerce and social CRM seem set to boom.
• Collaborators are those who are online documents and web space for others to contribute. This category will grow as cloud computing becomes ever more widely adopted.

Josh also found that:

• “Conversationalists” – includes not just Twitter members, but also people who update social network status to converse (since this activity in Facebook is actually more prevalent than tweeting). It only includes people who update at least weekly, since anything less than this isn’t much of a conversation.
  • 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they’re among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.
  • The data from this survey continues the trends from the last two years
    • Spectators are maxing out at around 70%,
    • Joiners are still growing rapidly, and
    • Creators are still growing slowly.

How do I use this?

It is vital to understand if, and how your audience uses social media so you can make it a foundation of your social strategy.

• Profile your customer base, and see what they’re ready for, before planning a project to reach out to them. (After all, People are the first step in the POST Process.)
• Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments. (Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.)

We did a quick test here in the office of where we place ourselves on this ladder. Some of us plotted ourselves in multiple types. Try it out yourselves.

• Spectators 31%
• Joiners 22%
• Collectors – 4%
• Critics 9%
• Conversationalists 22%
• Creators 12%

Want to know more?

• POST Process (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) 4 Steps to groundswell. Don’t forget to add “M” for Measure.
• The 9C’s – Social media types updated. A few labels have changed since the original ladder was published.
• Take a look at Brian Solis an engagement evangelist presents a spectrum of social platforms and technologies with which we can try and engage our audience. Follow-on article about technographics and humanising the social web including the Conversation Prism.
• Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder by Josh Bernoff. Forrester research.

The session was about the gaming culture developing around us in our everyday activities. From popular casual games like Angry Birds to fitness apps such as Nike+ (giving us encouragement), to the engrossing MMORPG  games such as World of Warcraft. Games aren’t meant to be easy, it’s their challenging and addictive (“just one more go”) nature that engages us and allows us to  escape from day to day life.

We spend alot of time gaming in its various forms, often without realising it. The presentations started with an amazing statistic on the hours spent gaming:

• The time spent playing World of Warcraft totals 5.93 million years. That is as long as we have been evolving as a human species!

Here are 2 more…

• 250,000 years spent playing Halo.
• 3 billion hours invested a week globally playing online games*

Then followed 4 quick fire presentations on the four M’s of gamification by the invited panel. The 4 M’s (in no order):

• Membership
• Meaning
• Mystery
• Mastery

Membership is all about how we define ourselves as belonging to a group or multiple groups. We also need to look at the opposite of this – exclusion. Sometimes being an ‘outsider’ is another form of membership that can drive behaviour. Tom Hopkins used the Stanford prison experiment to highlight how humans adapt and behave when in and outside of a group. He mentioned Abraham Maslow’s psychology theories on behaviour and how fulfilling the basic of needs motivates us to move on to more complex ones. We need to think about what drives membership, how it builds ‘friendships’ but also what is great about being an ‘enemy’. Just look at the Apple vs. Microsoft debates that rage on.

• Stanford prison experiment
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Meaning. Alex Lee mentioned the different motivations across gaming that can build meaning.  The way we reward users can be based on accruing things like status, collection of points, badges or credits. This can be achieved by completing new levels in a game, gaining badges for completed tasks (foursquare), enlisting your friends to join in an event like Movember. Meaning is not defined just by skill level. The differences between WoW and Angry Birds are vast on the skill level and game genre but both reward users for effort and involvement in different ways. The others Alex discussed were:

• Celebrity Pedigree - Fun and engaging way to accrue points and breed, buy and sell celebrity dogs. (OK, so I am a sucker for a cute dog that’s a mix of Clarkson and Geldof=Poppy Pooches)
• Nike+ –  An app that encourages you as you exercise. The voice of friendly encouragement when you need it.
• Movember – join a group, gather your friends and reward yourselves as well as others, like a charity. One takeaway Alex raised here was around gifting sites like JustGiving and how people feel about being compared with others on the value of their donations.  Is this a positive or negative meaning? Would you like to be compared to others on the value you have contributed?

Mystery. Matt Bagwell hates golf. Well I think he does   He took a simple game like golf as an analogy to explain mystery. The aim of golf is to get the small white ball into a hole. No mystery or mastery there but, when you add in more complex tasks to get it to the hole like distance, trees, sand bunkers, repetition, rules and skill level you begin to create the ‘mystery’. The core rule is to get the ball in the hole – how you get it there is up to you and there are many ways to achieve it. It’s about the freedom to make your own decisions, challenges and sometimes frustrations to get to the goal.

Mastery is the ability to master a task, level or activity and then build on it to maintain interest & increase engagement. Richard Sedley pointed out you have to make it difficult to master, but not impossible. Use obstacles and barriers to challenge users to find ways around a problem or environment. Reward often but randomly and build in different levels of complexity (easy to hard) to maintain the attention of users hope they will be repeat visitors or brand advocates. (I did not master the art of paper plane flying)

After our pep talk from the panel we went to work on brainstorming to help Cancer Research look at ways to use gamifcation to increase fundraising and awareness across their organisation.

Presenters’ links

• James Wallman – Future Lab
• Tom Hopkins – Fortune Cookie
• Alex Lee – Kempt
• Richard Sedley Foviance
• Matt Bagwell – EMC Consulting
• Microsoft Kinect – The gestural interaction demos looked pretty cool, but now we need to sweet-talk our boss to buy one for the office and see what we can develop for our clients. (due to increased beer consumption and noise this guy was a little hard to hear. Tough crowd and last session of evening)
• Further reading: 7 winning examples of game mechanics in action – Mashable

Special thanks to Matt Bagwell (@mattbagwell) and Michelle Flynn (@michelleflynn) and of course “DJ H” banging out the tunes! If your interested in this or future Taverners events head to The Fantastic Tavern site (or @TFTLondon). Photos on TFT Facebook page.

*(Jane McGonigal – The Gamification Summit 2011)

For ten days in November residents of the US aged over 18 with a valid driver’s licence can register and get behind the wheel, for many this is a opportunity not to be missed a real life mix of Knight Riders meets Need for Speed.

Drivers will be set challenges introducing a competitive gaming aspect to the experience, through completing these challenges visitors will also be presented with increasing detailed information about the features of the SUV.

Dont know about you, but I am pretty excited to see the results of this campaign.

Du wanted to enhance their site by separating the available packages on offer to subscribers. These consisted of TVoD – a movies on demand package and SVoD – an unlimited video on demand package.

Unlike TVoD which is on a rent basis and is enabled to all Du TV subscribers, SVoD packages need to be subscribed to – so it is extremely important to present the SVoD catalogues in a unique way to intice users to sign up.

To achieve this, we split EXPLORE VoD into two pages:
•  Movies on demand
•  Unlimited VoD

We then applied separate colourways to each section to provide a clear differentiation between the two as well as applying a grey colour treatment across all shared content between TVoD and SVoD.

Well done to everyone who worked on this bilingual project. Take a good look at the results, hosted on:  http://www.du.ae/en/vod

As was to be expected there was a lot of discussion about the capabilities (and limitations imposed by particular browser/s) of HTML5 and CSS3. Admittedly, it is very exciting to be able to utilise these tools when designing for the web, however a few of the speakers touched on some points which I think are of much greater importance when it comes to the real future of web design.

Paul Boag mentioned that we should forget about the new technologies for the time being and focus on improving our Marketing, Copywriting, Contextual Understanding, Strategy, and Psychology skills. This is very much in line with what I believe makes a good designer, so I thought I would use this as a basis for what I, personally, would like to see for the future of web designers.

Over the coming weeks I am going to discuss in detail the often overlooked attributes which I feel make a successful designer in the creative industry.

What I hope to achieve is an increased awareness of the design industry outside the specific “digital space” and a more considered approach to the use of the new technologies which are available to us. Ultimately I would like us all (as creatives) to work towards avoiding an era of over-used CSS3 effects and being faced with a repeat of the original Photoshop filter overload.

So, while it is easy to get excited and spend all of our time learning the new technologies, I urge you to hold back and concentrate on improving your foundations skills before anything else, and only utilise the new technologies when the right project comes along.

In no particular order, I think there is great value in constantly improving and being aware of the following attributes, which ultimately separate a good designer from an outstanding designer.

Learn to communicate your concepts (both verbally and written)

Communication is one of the strongest tools a designer can hold. Communication is a constant across every aspect of a project, from an initial briefing through to concept presentation and rationales. It is important that you can fully understand what is required of you and, in turn, present your concepts in a clear and concise manner.

I quite often hear designers who claim that they can’t write properly, or they don’t know how to explain their own work. What we all have to realise is that writing is just like any of our other skills. If you think you’re not a good writer then you need to practise. Write blog posts for yourself; write blog posts for your company. Spend an extra few minutes when you write emails to ensure they are written as clearly as possible. Read articles about writing. Take notice of other people’s corrections of your writing so you know how to improve, but most importantly just write, write, and write even more!

Spelling is another problem area I see with a lot of designers, or people in general to be honest, and while I know it is unrealistic to expect everyone to be able to spell correctly in every instance, I don’t think it is unrealistic to expect any finished work to be one hundred percent ‘typo’ free. When it comes to spelling, it simply isn’t just a one-person responsibility. It is a really good habit to get into to have someone check over the majority of your communications, whether it be an email to a client, body copy on a website, a blog post, or an article. (The nature of making comments such as this is that, undoubtedly, someone will find faults in my writing!) Spelling mistakes insinuate carelessness and lack of attention to detail. Is this really the impression you want to be giving to existing, or potential clients?

Giving rationale behind your design is a very important skill for a designer, and one that rarely comes easily. However, getting to the end of a four-week design job and then struggling to write a three hundred word rationale about the finished piece is not really acceptable. I know that I have been guilty of this, as have many designers I have worked with, but the written rationale is an important component of our work. The fact is that every pixel in a finished piece of work should have been considered throughout the process, so we should be able to justify “the why”. A rationale is not about explaining every aspect of the design; it is about giving the viewer an insight into the thought process which underlies the design solution. Pick the elements on a design which are not necessarily self explanatory, and justify their presence in the design.

It is too easy for clients to get caught up on the minor details of a design. Whether it be a colour or an image, all too often quality solutions are dismissed simply because the designer hasn’t possessed the ability to communicate his/her decision process and the overall “vision”.

Identify and explain the elements which are the “backbone” of the solution. Once the fundamentals are described clearly, the stakeholders will have a shared understanding of your objectives and decisions, removing subjective opinion and thus resulting in a more rounded outcome.

Learn to solve problems
If you want to create things which look cool but don’t necessarily have any real purpose then you’re in the wrong career! Yep… to put it bluntly, you probably should have chosen Art when it came to College or University.

The reality is, as designers, we work in a commercial world. Sure, we all work on personal projects in which we start with a blank canvas and have no restrictions to effect the outcome. However, in our day-to-day work there is generally an important stakeholder to set targets, determine boundaries and dictate how quickly, and for how much all this will be achieved. Yes, you have probably heard of them…. the Client.

As designers, it is our responsibility to not only create beautiful things but, more importantly, to create designs that meet our clients’ needs and objectives. Being a successful designer means possessing the ability to tackle a project objectively and create the best possible solution for the problem at hand (the brief). Yes, (insert any “current trend” here) is cool, and as much as I know you are aching to use it, do you really think it is the most suitable execution for the Retirement Village website project you have just won? No, didn’t think so.

Although it does happen, retro-fitting an idea or execution to a new project is not a valid solution and should be discouraged at all times. Every project should be approached individually as, although the subject matter may be the same, I can almost guarantee that what each client is looking to achieve through the design is completely different.

Furthermore, Brendan Dawes (Magnetic North) acknowledged a very valuable lesson in his FOWD speech, “Be prepared to kill the things you love”. This point is very much in line with designing objectively. Although you may have created something which you are really proud of and works extremely well… it is not to say it is the best solution for your current project. If you are struggling to finish a design and have hit an apparent “wall”, the best option could be to remove the element which you are most attached to. By removing the one element you thought to be a “constant” you will be amazed at how many new opportunities you can create, resulting in a much better finished product.

Continued here…

It seems the majority of design bloggers have already formed their opinions of what 2010 and onwards has in store for web design, but I figure it’s time I throw my thoughts and learnings into the mix.

The importance of a company’s digital presence is becoming increasingly important. According to Forrester,* 67% of online customers said their opinion of a brand was affected by their ability to accomplish tasks on their website. Now is the time to re-assess how we are utilising the digital space and ensure we work harder to align it more with how people actually live, we need to make sure we can offer users a reason to visit our sites rather than just expecting them to want to.

In no particular order, it seems to me that in the following 12 months and beyond we will be seeing an increase in the use of the following –

Embracing the fact that the web is now totally portable and can be used almost anywhere, designing for mobile browsers is continuing to grow in importance and we will see more and more mobile specific design considerations in the future. According to Nielsen, 40% of iPhone/iTouch users access the internet more on their mobile than their desktop.

Geo-Mapping
Utlisation of geo-techonology to personalise, and in turn create more humanised, digital campaigns across all digital platforms to reach those who are most interested in what a brand has to say.

Large Serif Fonts
The last 10 years or so has seen sans-serif become the standard in web design, however as our web usage continues to evolve we are beginning to see an increase in the use of seriffed fonts. Due to improvements in screen resolutions and display technologies, the problems which used to be associated with serif fonts are no longer relevant and as such a whole new world of typography on the web has been opened up.

Embedded Fonts
Taking typography on the web one step further is the introduction of Embedded fonts. This technology enables designers to utilise any font they desire in their design, whilst avoiding the negative affects of using images to displayer any non-web safe fonts. The ability to create design through typography on the web has long been a no-go zone for designers, however this is now a thing of the past and we will continue to see more and more beautiful type-based design in the future.

Evolution of Social Media
Usage of Social Media will continue to evolve and will become more campaign focused. Whilst the .com will evolve to become a central hub which exists almost independently to the Social Media Campaigns. No longer will we see Social Media simply used as a way to support campaigns, but we will increasingly see Social Media being used as the campaign.
Social Media will also continue to be a facilitator of colloboration, companies will continue to work hard to ensure they are utlisisng SM to work with and for their customers rather than just speaking to them.

Gifting
Gifting is all about making a shift from disruptive to productive marketing approaches, it is focused on changing mindsets from “how we reach our customers” to “how to make their lives better”. We will begin to see a big change in companies ensuring they give users a reason to get involved with their brands online, rather just just expecting them to.

end Reality
As technology becomes more stable we will see Augmented Reality make the transition from what is essentially a tech-fest at the moment, into a tool which will change our day-to-day lives, in particularly, the way in which we consume information.

CSS3 and HTML5
As we see the introduction of these new standards, it is evident that the possibilities are extremely exciting. It might not be the time yet to start embracing it, but in the near future it seems animations, rounded borders, shadows and many more of the new features will become standard in our day-to-day browsing experiences.

Conclusion
So, with all of the above in mind I think it is fair to say the future of web is (but not limited to); playful, collaborative, generous, experimental, helpful, personal, honest, and ensuring we do things actually worth talking about.

Most of the points mentioned above are simply tools which designers can use, and like all things it really comes down to how these tools are used which separates the leaders from the followers in the industry. Brian Chiger, a Digital Strategist at AgencyNet sums this up perfectly with his quote -

“A great digital campaign isn’t made by technology alone; Strategy is vital.”

References

Smashing Magazine
Web Designer Wall
Soda Speaks
Paul Isakson

At the end of last year we kicked off our new relationship with West Kent College by designing and printing their strategy document for 2010. The end result is a clean, flowing document with some great design touches. We’re already looking forward to the next project, so keep your eyes peeled because there will be plenty more to come…

Below is a sneaky peak from the strategy document… we obviously can’t give it all away…

West Kent College - Strategy Diagram