Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

(via)

So I guess we have all probably been expecting this from Google… A Catalog app that aggregates the worlds leading brands and retailers under one little screen, providing a rich, interactive shopping experience, that will also deliver Google a whole new revenue stream

The app allows you to flip through catalogue pages as you’d expect, and extends that to detailing out each product, playing videos and other rich content, while providing a “Buy Now” button to launch the brands e-comm store or “Find A Store” button which instantly maps locations with directions.

So who’s on board so far? Urban Outfitters, Williams-Sonoma, Sephora, Macys, Bloomingdales, Crate&Barrel, Lands’ End, Nordstrom, Patagonia, UGG and many many of others!

Aden Hepburn

A lovely selection of Christmas music using iPhones and iPads at North Point Community Church.  Yeah - it’s a little gimmicky, but they really did a good job picking out the perfect apps to pull this off.  Enjoy!

Via: IntoMobile

Scott Rosenberg at Wordyard has a pretty interesting take on why the Murdoch/iPad venture is a dud. Apart from the obvious old medium fighting for survival, there are some other factors: I bet there’s a lot of people who’d like him to be right about this one. Check out his post.

…what a wundervoll time to be alive!

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Read more at the Dentsu London blog:
dentsulondon.com/​blog/​2010/​09/​14/​light-painting/
and at the BERG blog:
berglondon.com/​blog/​2010/​09/​14/​magic-ipad-light-painting/

Check our the iPad report on Horizont TV.

Part 1:
Talks about possible 3 directions of best-practices of iPad Apps for media companies.

Part 2:
Talks about Branded Applications, Target Audiences and Creative Possibilities

Amongst other things, we’ve done some testing with Silver Surfers. It is clear that the 50+ and even more so 60+ generations is maybe not the first adopter target audience, but a close second. In fact, in some ways the iPad by itself could be considered an even better fit with this target, than say, young professionals.

Undoubtedly younger targets (with the necessary disposable income) will be the first to buy, but given the online behaviors of silver surfers, the iPad completely covers the tasks and functionality silver surfers use regularly, such as e-mail, browsing, photos albums, online banking, e-commerce, etc. For this target it is more likely to actually replace other computers.

As forecasted, the lean-back nature and non-work environment context in which this device excels immediately makes it a nice fit for even 65+ pensioners.

Initial doubts stemming from the technical nature of the device are quickly dispelled after seeing how much more intuitive and cheaper the device is than their existing PC or laptops. Except for some participants who also heavy computing users, the device was short listed immediately, especially when they were about to replace their old computer with a new one. Also, a preexisting internet affinity is key to adoption. Participants with no or little internet affinity obviously had a hard time understanding the purpose of the device. However, with the intuitive nature of the device, it is likely that adoption of the internet per se could also be accelerated through the iPad in this age group.

Interestingly, initial difficulties consist of “unlearning” the sometimes arduously acquired mouse computing skills as well as dispelling the fear of actually touching the technology. Once overcome, the apparent real life metaphors present in the applications (turning pages, etc) are intuitively understood and recalled again without having to be reminded. The fact that no complicated folder structures are present - common to normal operating systems - makes it even easier to adopt.

Typing, however, usually poses an issue for some, as unlearning previous keyboard behavior of unconsciously resting your hands on part of the keyboard turns out a bit more difficult and sometimes leads to a more timid touching behavior, as if unsure what unplanned action the device “will do next” when unintentionally triggering keys on the virtual keyboard.

Apart from using the device for things previously done on their PCs, the device also scores high on doing a few new things that had previously remained within the realm of analog behaviors. Quite different than expected, this group had no qualms about reading newspapers or magazines this way and applaud the fact that “we can save all the trees” or “don’t have so much paper lying around”. Also, the picture quality and sharpness was deemed as “even better than on paper” in many cases. What scores high as well in this area is to actually be able to receive the publications of international press which they cannot even get in analog form where they live.

Books, however, are bit too holy to be sacrificed on the digital altar. They could only imagine reading eBooks when going on a trip without having to bring all the heavy books with them.

Another area that tested well is card and board games as long as they are solitary games such as, you guessed it “Solitaire”. In the case of multiplayer card games the experience of being social and looking people in the eye vs looking at the device was rated as important.

Overall, the biggest joy point seems to be to be able to all of the things they did before in the comfort of a couch or sofa without having the feeling of “working” for a price they feel is more affordable than their previous computing solution. Within this context, the device is being used more in a information consumption than actually inputting information or sharing information.

So, thanks to our colleague Karen Green in Chicago, we received an iPad today in the office mail.

After finding a workaround for the fact the the German Appstore doesn’t work for the iPad yet, we started playing around a bit. Apart of noticing how crappy iPhone apps look on the iPad, there are some first observations.

First off, the device is pretty amazing and we can see how it has the power to alter a lot of human behavior. But in the first moments, it’s not changing behaviors radically, it’s augmenting them. Funnily, when you use it to read magazines and newspaper apps, you revert to analog user behavior. The interesting thing is that it becomes a combination of your analog user behavior with digital interaction expectations. What this means is that User Experience professional are designing for both kinds of worlds when it comes to magazine apps. Seems pretty obvious, but when you start playing around with it you also notice a lot of gaps between those two different ways of usage. So it will be a matter of how well XPs and Designers fill that gap. You no longer do print layout or interaction design. You will have to know how to both without compromises for the print type medium and the weblike medium.

Case in point: we feel the NYT App works with much more expectation conformity than the Popular Science App. It works like a newspaper except it has some interactive elements. Even the contained advertising isn’t at all surprising or weird to the user. It’s what you would expect from a newspaper with the cachet of NYT. Like any good user experience, you don’t notice how great the usability is. It however needs a little more interactive stuff at the right place.

The popular science application however, doesn’t really quite seem what it is yet. It looks amazing, but it has an odd usage paradigm that is neither analog nor interactive nor an easy to use amalgam of both. From navigating to flipping pages and a lack of real interactivity to not being able to differentiate the advertising, it just doesn’t feel there yet.

So, I am sure web User Experience heuristics will apply for the iPad as well, but they will also radically alter. Maybe heuristics will be created for types of magazines in similar ways that different heuristics have been developed for differing types of sites, i.e. e-commerce sites vs news portals vs social networks. Finding that right user experience will probably go a long way in terms of really working for a unique brand experience that helps position the brand.

Second, apart from the obvious changes need to develop applications for private end users, when you look at this through the lens of the brand or marketing person, you get tons of ideas instantly on how to make brands relevant in this context. The long touted “brand user experience” can really happen here with the best of all media channel worlds. Also an interesting thought might be on whether the user experience paradigm of whatever eMagazine you advertise in influences your ad experience. Since ads can be interactive, their interactivity might have to embedded into the magazine’s usage paradigm to really work. Spinning cars in automobile ads are nice, but there’s probably more. Or, of course it will need to be so special that you want to interact with it regardless. The potential of print ads with stopping power: it might be back.

Third, not just that, while we believe private end users will probably keep the iPad at home (because, let’s be honest: it is NOT a working tool for the types of thing we need to do at the office, barring some exceptions), the possibilities for specific industries literally lie in your hand. Really anyone who could directly profit from bridging a analog-digital gap or augmenting existing processes and information flows will have a field day with this: car dealers, retailers, logistics, restaurants, you name it. Not just for marketing, but also internal processes. And, of course marketing departments of all types of industries will not pass this up to do their name generation, promos, etc with it.

So, while it might take some time to become mainstream, it looks like exciting times for everyone. Designers get to design in a new way, marketers to market in a new way and newspapers can survive with a new type of advertising again. Almost to good to be true.

We will do some user testing on it and report back.

(cool! new chevy ad with the new camaro)

WIRED Magazine Creative Director Scott Dadich provide a sneak peak at a digital rebirth of WIRED built to run across a variety of devices.
see the full video here

Genius product placement…