They paid so much attention to the little details, but kept it a simple experience. So important for a kid to be able to play without getting distracted by more flashing lights and bells.
The end of advertising as we know it, or “the sky is falling”
August 23, 2011 – 8:37 pm
I wrote this the day the article in question was posted, and never made it public. I don’t know why it slipped my mind, but here it is, a little late, but true as ever.
MDC partners has posted on their blog about the Reader function of mobile Safari, and are making it seem as if advertising will cease to exist.
So what exactly is Reader?
In a nutshell: Reader is a feature that allows users of the Safari mobile browser to prevent advertisements from being displayed in the news stories they read.
It’s actually a little more than that, Reader strips all formatting from the article, presenting the content as plain text on a page. It’s a great way to consume content, particularly long form text found in lengthy news articles. It’s not designed to prevent ads, ads are just one of the things that are distracting readers from their goal.
Their goal on a news site is to read the news, to consume content. The point of ads is to distract the reader in order to inform them of a service or product. These are opposing forces, with the advertisers trying to break the flow of the reader’s original intention. Readers aren’t going to a news site to look at ads, they aren’t seeking information about a product, the advertising has always been a necessary evil in order to pay for the production of that news. In the past, readers have just ignored ads, as shown by the abysmal click through rates. To fight this banner blindness, advertisers started to make their ads gaudy and aggressive -including actually blocking the content- so ad blockers became popular. Reader is the next evolution of this active aggression against ads, but also it’s an attempt to avoid over-designed content.
I make my living creating advertising, but my reaction to Reader is not that my livelihood is disappearing, instead I think this is a step forward in our evolution.
Banner ads were a reaction. They were news sites reacting to having a website for the first time, and seeing it as if the internet were paper, where ads covered the costs and made tons of money. They were a reaction from us advertising people saying we’ll handle ads the same way we did in newspapers except now we can make them move. The problem is, it was the wrong reaction, from both of us.
For the most part, we’ve failed to innovate, and have kept going with banner ads though the results were never extraordinary. Now it’s time that we look at ads in a different way. How can we get our message to consumers in a way that is useful, an experience, even delightful?
It’s time for us to stop complaining about the ad blockers, and start thinking about new ways to have a conversation.
http://www.mdc-ideas.com/2011/06/10/apple%E2%80%99s-new-mobile-browser-a-threat-to-online-adverting/
The best designer I’ve seen
August 23, 2011 – 8:34 pm
That’s a pretty bold statement, the BEST is something very reserved.
I don’t know his history, I don’t know where he learned this, but I’d really like to have a beer with this guy and talk shop.
He’s been somehow able to get rid of all the fluff, and in most cases remove all design to make the leanest experiences I’ve used, a ton of iphone apps.
The forever running away footer
April 18, 2011 – 9:12 am
Lately I’ve been noticing a combination of UX techniques that are combatting each other. I’m singling out Svpply here, but it’s really happening at any number of sites. I’m talking about an infinite scroll and a fat footer.
The point of the fat footer is to have a simply accessible area on any given page through which to find information in a site. The infinite scroll adds the benefit of a page that loads content as it’s scrolled to, offering a ton of content without a page break, or a massive preload.
What happens when you mix the two, is a page where the fat footer is nothing but a tease, hinting at something more to come, but flitting away before you can click anything, as the infinite scroll adds more content and whisks the links away.
I tend to avoid criticizing other people’s work on the internet, because I’m not aware of the details that lead to the decision, but this is something not limited to one site, it’s a clash of techniques.
My initial thought is that this could be solved simply by anchoring a thin version of the fat footer at the bottom of the browser, or even to the side at the bottom. It could be locked in place, with the infinite scroll whizzing by all the time the footer isn’t needed.
The second thought is that if you are going to use an infinite scroll, don’t use a footer that has content people need, but that’s less productive criticism, right?
Mill Group Showreel 2011
February 8, 2011 – 2:20 pm
This is one hell of a reel.
The Mill Group Showreel 2011 from The Mill Visual Effects Studio on Vimeo.
