Experience branding: the same, but different

Product, communication, behaviour, environment
Experience branding is seamlessly connecting all elements a producer uses to let her customers purchase her product. Main point of these elements should be the positioning of the company, extracted by the needs and wants of the target group. Walli Olins, a guru in the global brands and corporate identity field, globally classifies these element in four parts: Products, communication, behaviour and environment. Through these four elements, a brand can be experienced. Activities that can be subdivided under this are: advertising, retail, web, events, publishing, brand community, product and package design and much more. In this short analysis about experience branding (and which part interactive media plays within this), I’ll apprehend the Olins model for brand experience.

Brief history of branding
When at the beginning of the 20th century mass-production became possible through the industrial revolution, the demand for certain products could be largely met. A larger product choice arose. When in the 1930’s and then in WOII arose less demand through frugality, while more and more mass-production was possible, in the fifties, producers began to use the new medium television to bring their brand and associated products to the attention of many potential customers. This traditional way of branding is aimed at distinguishing one product from another on the shelves. What matters here is package, the product and the volume. For this, people are addressed on what they find visually attractive, their instinct and intuition and their emotion. This technique of branding is called indirect messaging, and is more and more used when direct experience of the brand (product) is not possible. Another example of indirect messaging is a sponsorship; a way to let people associate a brand with nice activities.

A successful brand demonstrates who you are
On the current market there’s mostly not only a tangible product to sell, but more and more an emotional one. Often you buy “the brand” because it adds something to your own feeling about yourself. This is a key to a successful brand. That’s also why advertisement goes more and more from informational (”this hairgel contains natural elements”) to transformational (”If you use this hairgel you are extremely cool”). Marketing is also moving more into services (which are more difficult to manage). You see more and more company’s that don’t make or do anything, but where it’s only about attitude.

Interactivity has more impact
While the beginning years of modern branding were about products and communication (Olins brand experience model), with the new way of branding, the behaviour and environment elements are addressed more often. Besides indirect messaging, there is also a branding technique called direct-experience. Direct experience is about using the product or service. This positive or negative experience influences the feeling of the customer towards the brand. Direct experience is much more effective and has much more impact then indirect messaging. This because of an actively participating customer, interacting with the brand and its product.

The use of interactive media
The behaviour element of Olins’ model is about the way for example employees of a certain company interact with you. If the receptionist of a chic hotel doesn’t greet you when you enter the hotel and doesn’t seem very interested in helping when you’re asking for clean towels, the brand experience of the hotel probably isn’t complete. Another way company’s can behave through is via interactive media.

“The interaction a customer has with a website is a very intimate interaction with an organisations brand. When it let’s us down, the brand let’s us down” David Tames, innovationcatalyst.

I just read about the purchase funnel, which describes in general the steps a customer walks through when making a purchase. Pete Lerma (Tribal Fusion) uses the elements of this funnel for what he calls the “brand experience cycle”. The steps a customer walks through in this cycle are awareness, consideration, preference, experience and loyalty. Lerma typifies the use of interactive media with each of these steps differently. According to Lerma, in the experience-step (Which is Purchase in the traditional funnel) interactive media mainly plays the role of “generating excitement and delivering the information a customer needs to make the most of the brand-experience.”

Hmmm… interesting
Jim pointed out that the Olins model is difficult to use it for describing processes. Like for example a process which a company undergoes to anticipate on a changing market. At first I answered that the purpose of this model wasn’t to describe such processes; no matter where the company in such a process is, the elements working together for positioning a product still can be subdivided in product, communication, behaviour and environment. To Jim’s question about where for example “timing” would fall under, I didn’t had a quick answer. At first I would say under product, because the way you experience a product connects with when the product is brought out. But is could also fall under communication: When do you advertise about a certain (renewed) product.

Experience branding was here all the time
I am aware of the general definition of experience branding in the first paragraph of this entry. It describes that companies use the elements of branding in a uniform way to let people experience their product. This way, branding in the fifties could also fall under this. I know that branding has changed through the years from addressing tangible to more emotional needs of the customer, making use of different kind of elements to do this and that there is more participation from the customer through for example the use of interactive media. Right now, the way I interpret the definition of experience branding from my web-research, all of this is no part of the experience branding definition. (Maybe this ís part of direct-experience branding)

There are still so many things to say about this subject. For example, an important thing I haven’t noticed yet, but definitely interesting to evaluate when it comes to experience branding is the increasing role of the customer in branding (participatory culture).
Finally, some examples of brands that use the new way of experience branding (links to articles in which is written about the concerned brand):

Virgin
Disney
Starbucks
Dove
Apple

How something that isn’t sexy, still can be successfull

This blog is about the results of 6 weeks of thinking and working on a way to improve the image of a public utillity through a user generated community. In broad outlines I’ll sketch how and why the final solution to this problem is, against all odds, very close to the company itself.

Final presentation of concept and prototype
Yesterday I had the final presentation for 1,5 month during schoolassigment for a dutch public utillity; ENECO. It was all well-organized; ENECO had hired some space in a big building which houses several companies, the in Rotterdam well known Groothandelsgebouw. Every projectgroup that entered the assignment got a small table with a diameter of 70 centimeter. That was the place that we had to use to present our concept and prototype. We used the table for two computers to show our prototype: on each computer a movieclip with a scenario that a persona, representative of our target group (people from Rotterdam, (potential) customers of ENECO), passes through. Two posters that we designed for a campagne to support the whole thing, we sticked on the desk.

Unexpected outcome
In the beginning I did’t feel like coming to this masspresentation (there were like 35 other project-groups, all presenting their concept for ENECO). Allthough my groupmembers and me thought we had a sober, but smart and well-founded solution to the problem of ENECO (ENECO wants a closer connection to their customers), in an earlier presentation on monday for schoolteachers we got a disappointing grade because it wasn’t innovative enough. Allthough my IVID teacher Jim Boekbinder (who wasn’t at that presentation on monday, and did’t have anything to do with this grade), who knew our concept very well (and helped us a lot with it) and was quite enthousiastic about it, told us that this “rejection” is a common thing when suggesting a good, but not sexy solution to a company in need, I still felt a little bit like a looser. We were very certain about this idea, and still it was rejected!

A public utillity with their own, Youtube-like, community
So, you are probably wondering what our “brilliant” idea was about (or maybe not, but I’ll still write about it). Well, first a short description of the problem: ENECO, a public utillity with a stuffy image, wants a closer connection with their customers. Because they saw the success of user generated communities like Youtube they thought it would be a good idea to organize such a thing especially for their customers. Maybe you already see a slight problem: A public utillity with a user generated community; what kind of content should the users upload, and what should they talk about with each other? ENECO found that the theme of the community should be: “This gives me energy”, Through this “energyplatform” the users had to see energy as a concrete thing and associate energy with ENECO.

Eneco Recharge: our solution to ENECO’s problem
Our solution to the problem of ENECO was a little different then all then the other project groups, who’s thought up communities were all outside the main website of ENECO, with a very different style from ENECO. Our community itself was not really special: It was about people telling about what in their own neighbourhood environment “recharges” them, users can show on a map of their hometown where their “Recharge Spot” is.
The special thing about it, in comparison to the other solutions is that thís community is integrated in the main ENECO website and keeps the house style of ENECO. That is where customers take care of their energy-administration, like passing on their meter-readings, or new adress data in case of moving. That is also the place where non-customers, when using ENECO Recharge, will notice the other services of ENECO, and can get interested in being a customer. Because the current communication on the ENECO website is very business-like, we also had some suggestions for ENECO on how to create more balance between the business-like communication of Eneco.nl and the much more personal communication of our Eneco Recharge. Otherwise the communication by integrading Eneco Recharge in Eneco.nl would be very conflicting.

Summary: Eneco Recharge means integrating an opportunity for users to communicate with each other about their neighbourhood in ENECO’s main website, improve it’s Information Architechture to personalize information that the target group wants to see and approach them in a more personal way.

A community can be usefull in a personal way
An example of how our community can be of personal use for the ENECO customer is when someone moves passes on his new adress data. That person mostly doesn’t know much about his new neighbourhood, so Eneco Recharge can anticipate on this by offering him a service which let him meet with an inhabitant from his new neighbourhood. That person has recently ago uploaded a photo with a message on the map of the Eneco Recharge Community to tell other people about his favorite spot in his neighbourhood: his Recharge Spot. Through coupling the exsisting services customers already use with such a community there can be anticipated on being usefull on a personal for customers, who will feel as if they have more in common with their energy supplier ENECO.

Positive confirmation
Eventually it was a good thing that I went to this meeting. There were a lot of people form ENECO, the people that were really in charge of the final decision about which kind of concept (community) ENECO would like to host to improve their image. They gave Eneco Recharge really positive feedback, for me enough confirmation about the usefullness of our sober, but really potentialfull concept. We’ll see in the near future if and what ENECO will do with our suggestions.

The online office suite and interaction and visual interface design

Yes! My teacher marked my test-thesis with an A! She found it “well-founded”, “good to read” with a “good structure”. Good, I’m ready for the real thing: my bachelor’s thesis that I have to finish somewhere in June next year and will be about e-learning and interaction design (sounds still a little vague, but I still have to refine this subject). Here’s the translated conclusion of my test-thesis (it was written in dutch).

Conclusion; my answer on the research question “to what extent is interaction and visual interface design(ivid) a factor in the commercial battle fot the online office suite?”
Computers, and the applications running on it, are a huge factor in our daily life. Because of the rise of Internet you can get in contact with everyone in the world, and from every spot have acces to the same data. Through the rise of web 2.0 techniques and ideas, there is at the moment a change going on from offline to to rich online applications.

To determine to what extent visual interface and interaction design is a factor in the battle for the online office, it is good first to determine what other factors could be.
First and most important factor when putting a product on the market is to create value for the customer. That seems very logical, but often a lack of value the reason why products bite the dust after a while. The office already proved to have value, since the applications are used by many people worldwide. It seems a logical step, now that the Internet through the web 2.0 ideas has more opportunities, to move these applications online. Still you see that it is not that simple, that companies like Google and Microsoft realize that office applications require a whole new design, that it has to be build up from the ground. That they are waiting so long before the release a complete online suite could be because of that; It is important to determine how the online service will create value for the users, more then the offline variant.

Other factors, so also ivid, are “just” ways to produce the concept. If the web 2.0 ideas are the other factors, the use of the AJAX technoligy to make rich user experiences possible is the idea that has most to do with ivid. I think the other ideas, like offering services in stead of products, users as co-developers and the web as a platform are, together with the rich user experience, links in a web 2.0 chain. Web 2.0 ideas are succesfull and will be taken in account by the office-releaser in producing the concept of the service.
The released service is as strong as its weakest link, so interaction and visual interface design are a huge factor in the battle for the online office suite:
Without a well thought-out design of the now possible rich user experience, the service will only irritate the user. It will be to slow and visual unattractive. There is a chance that users will revert to their good old offline office or change over to a competitor who’s service works more efficient and user-friendly.

If all of the above-mentioned works, succes is still not garranteed. “Old” marketing elements, like branding, corporate identity and a good introduction of your service also have to be right. And: Who introduces a right working office the first. So with which user interface, file format storage possabilities will users get used to so they won’t change-over to a similar, maybe a little better service.

A lot of factors that are included in the battle that, without all the big players admitting, is going on. In a few years we will know which company is truly the winner, and what has become of it’s service concerning interaction and visual interface design.

About studioroosegaarde.net and other exciting things

I finished my thesis!
Wow! it’s already two weeks ago since I wrote my last post. I’ve been really busy with writing a test thesis. I should have been turned in last July, but I was to busy with I don’t remember what so chose to do it this study-year. Because of that I had to write more words but that’s no problem for me because I always tend to be a little long-winded with writing papers. Anyway, good news because I hand it in last Thursday, so I’m more relaxed now and things can excite me again…

Studioroosegaarde.net is online!
More exciting stuff, because last night the new www.studioroosegaarde.net went online!! After spending four months thinking of the right concept a site for an artist who’s work lies between art and architecture, (interaction) designing, actionscript programming etc, finally the first version is ready to be seen by a bigger public than Daan Roosegaarde, Theo Lagendijk and me. So take a look and don’t hesitate to say what you think about it. Like a self-respecting website in a web 2.0 era should, it’s first online performance is in a beta version, to hear from others and to see for ourselves how to improve things like navigation and graphics. There’s more to come so stay tuned.

Doing offline business web 2.0-style
There are a few more thing I really want to write something about.
Last two weeks I experienced so many thing that are worth blogging about. I already noticed the web 2.0 era. I became conscious of its existence in analogue live, a sort of “doing business 2.0″, or in my case, the 1.0 version. I was at a little exhibition, where a talented acquaintance of mine, Michiel Dronkers, had a first exposure of his artwork, which are abstract tribal paintings. I was there with Theo, we were interested in his work and of course his plans to maybe have a nice website to show his work online. I a situation like that it’s normal to give a business card, but the exhibition arranger didn’t allow him to! This probably because the arranger, a small gallery only want people to do business with artists who use their exhibition space, through them. In that way the company won’t miss out part of the money the artists gets when they sell some of their artwork.
I immediatly had a negative feeling about this, I thought it was an awkward way of doing business with people. Theo pointed out that and that it’s better for the artists and for the gallery to serve more as a platform for artists and interested parties. In that way artists have more chance for exposure, can arrange more deals, get more income, etc. The company becomes a service (you see the web 2.0 similarity?) and will also have more exposure, because they connect interested people with artists and the other way around. As a platform for several parties, the company will generate more income. And: visitors won’t have a negative taste in their mouth.

Print-media as part of a cross-media platform
Another thing I really want to spout is about an interesting guest-speaker last Friday at my school. Theme for the module “Trends & Developments” this term is “Media Shifts”. A writer, journalist and editor in chief of magazine “Nieuw Rotterdam” Nico Haasbroek, told the fourth year students about the shifts in printed media. In his opinion (and also in my opinion) the print-media is about to stay. The way to communicate an distribute it will be different though. Papers and magazines will be more like reference works with (news)backgrounds and deepening, part of a cross-media platform. Another speaker during this meeting there was Nancy Ubert (link to Dutch website), who could tell some interesting things about how this works in practice. More than a year ago, she started a local newspaper, which is published three times a week. There is also an online version (link to Dutch website) of the paper, where news is published every day. The paper is very popular, and according to Ubert, this is because of the local character of the paper, popular content like a “girl of the week“(link to Dutch website)  item, and the arise of a community: The journalists and other employees of the paper are working in a store where everyone can walk in and take a cup of coffee. Sometimes people come in and ask if they can fax a letter. This is allowed, but only if that person tells the journalists what the fax is about. The community also organizes (playfull) charity activities. This way, the paper collect real local news, instead of publishing press reports. This is a really short summary of the meeting, but I really wanted to write down something about this interesting and creative developments.

Will a 22 year paralysed arm work again?
One more thing: Last friday morning I was in the metro, going to my work. I spoke with an acquaintance, that hadn’t seen for a while, maybe like three or four years. She was on her way to the hospital, and was very excited. Since she was born, her left-arm has been paralysed. Now, 22 years later, the medical science and techniques are so far that there is a chance that she can use her arm again!
She was on her way to a whole day full of all kinds of tests to see for example which nerves in her arm are still working and if the new technique is working for her. I’m not sure which technique exactly will be used to make her arm “work” again, therefore the time we spent together in the metro was to short. But nevertheless: Because of things like this I think it’s great to live in the 21st century!

Wikipedia: quality articles or quality vandalism precautions

Reliability and Vandalism
Wikipedia is a popular place to get some brief information about almost every subject you can imagine.
The wiki-based, user-generated content-sharing site, is governed by the Wikimedia Foundation. More projects of the foundation, supporter of the free culture and software movement, are: wikiversity, wiktionary, wikibooks and worldwikia. One of the main issues, concerning the user and owner goals and expectations, in a site where users themselves can take an active role, is the discouraging of vandalism (by users) in the content and, very important for the success of Wikipedia, prevent the display of unreliable articles.

“If enough users agree with them it becomes true” [Jimmy Wales, 2006.]

Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, held the opening speech at the Wikimania (August) 2006. He had a lot of interesting things to say, also about wikipedia’s main issues. Concerning the reliability issue: He knows the articles at Wikipedia are “pretty good”, they are written by passionate people, and Wikipedia users feel more and more the responsibility trustful and readable articles. Even scientific articles are, according to specialists Jimmy spoke with, correct, all tough not always very in-depth and up to date to the latest discoveries.

The right kind of barriers
I think it’s a good thing that despite the risk of vandalism, the barriers of editing (or vandalize) a Wikipedia article are still very low. You usually don’t have to sign in and you don’t have to do an intelligent test before you add your knowledge about a subject. Wikipedia always is in search for good quality editors, so even the slightest barrier, like code in the editor, can deter people and have to be eliminated. Take away the barriers so intelligent people can easily leave good and trustful content, is more important than precautionary measures against vandalism and incorrect articles. In an open system it’s also easier to correct mistakes than to make them.
Therefore Wikipedia uses soft security. Only after damage has been done, measures will be taken. Editors of articles can use several features to easily see recent changes and differences, receive modification warnings and revision history. When a user keeps on deleting content or adding nonsense to articles, eventually he or she will be blocked. That’s not the perfect solution, because people can use someone else’s ip-adress, so also legitimate users can be affected by this measure.

 

Design Patterns
I want to address a few Design Patterns that can be used or are used for Wikipedia. For screening of the content, but also for the mainly concrete goal the broad target group has, visiting Wikipedia.

First thing you need when you want to screen a particular article, is an Article Page Pattern. To, for example, easily see recent changes and check these, you will need the Highlight Pattern that highlights changes in a text field. To navigate back in time, I think the best opportunity to give the editor, is to enable him to go back to every point in time where the article has been changed. To view an articles history, Wikipedia works with the use of a List Browser, where list items are the states of the article, sorted by the date of change. The radiobutton of the displayed article is checked. Maybe even a Container Navigation Pattern can be used. The three panes contain a list of changed articles, per article a list of the states the article has been in (sorted by date or maybe by how big the changes were) and in the third pane the selected article. Of course there is also the place to edit the article or choose the article (-state) to display online.

All the precautions and actions (the use of “featured”, “locked” and “stable” articles, warning systems, etc.) of Wikipedia to eliminate vandalism results that incorrect articles are reverted in five minutes.

One thing about the broad target group of Wikipedia, and why I think the use of the Simple Search Pattern is suitable. People mostly know what specific thing they are looking for, and even if they don’t know the correct spelling, Wikipedia still returns some relevant search results. If people don’t exactly know what they are looking for, but do know a less relevant keyword, they can always go to the category-page, which one click further away then the search possibility.

User-Generated Content: Interface issues summarized

UGC-sites and their user interface issues summarized
Last week I wrote about User-generated content sites in general, UGC site-types there can be distinguished (user scenario’s), issues those sites come across and a little bit about interaction design patterns there can be used to solve those problems. I was not the only one who had this little investigation, also my co-students did a good job with this kick-off 4^th years minor assignment. Our IVID teacher summarized all of the outcomes we sent him, here’s my summary of that summary:

Examples, site-types and user-scenarios
We came with a lot of UGC examples, which can be divided in the site-types I wrote about earlier: Transacting, (content-)sharing and expressing. Ebay and Marktplaats.nl are examples of auctioneering sites and belong to the transacting category. Content-sharing is done at, for example, Google video, shutterstock.com and other music, video and trailer sites, search engines and price-comparing sites.Blogs, fora and community sites belong to the expressing-category. I think a lot of sites will overlap the two or all categories.Users of UGC sites can have an active and passive role, or both. These roles are also a good part of the description of what UGC sites are about: The making of content is not only allowed for a suitable team, but every viewer can also be a writer/adder.

Interface and user-goals & expectation issues
There are some main user interface issues for these UGC sites. These are the design pattern issues my co-students and me came across:

• Search-mechanisms are insufficiently refined and defined;

• Mechanism for adding content is to complicated;

• Lack of categories;

• Slow and unclear rating systems;

• Visual chaos;

User-goals and -expectation issues: (site-owners and users)

• reliability of the information;

• Degree of user generated content;

• Screening (author-rights and vandalism)

Design patterns
Design patterns which are related to the issues and identified as important:

• Community pattern

• rating system

• comment system

• image resizing

• flag system

• account system

• email confirmation

• extended search system

• external links

• video control pattern

• hotlist

Up next:

Let’s take a closer look at a well known user generated content site: Wikipedia.org. and it’s user interface issues.

“Public utility new style”

Online platform with User-Generated Content

How can an electricity board upgrade its image from a inaccessible and official utility to a “public utility new style”. Eneco energy, one of the three largest energy suppliers in the Netherlands, enlisted the help of the fourth year Communication and Multimedia Design students to find a solution for the image-problem of the company. I happen to be one of those fourth year students and together with four other co-students I’ll try to pass this assignment, but maybe also to make a chance for the travel cheque of 300 euro’s per person Eneco gives for the best idea and presentation. A more concrete description of what Eneco wants: A platform on the Internet, arranged by user generated content, where the local society (Rotterdam) can experience “tangible and positive energy”.

Just a recently denationalised public utility
Like I said, Eneco is one of the three largest energy suppliers of the Netherlands. The other two in that top three are Essent and Nuon. The utility is denationalized, all tough the Dutch government still keeps an eye on her. 4700 people are joining the company as employees and they take care of the production, transport and delivery of electricity, gas, warmth, and accompanying services (measuring, managing, installing and invoicing) for 2 million business and household costumers.

Eneco mostly delivers her products in the west of the Netherlands (Rotterdam and environs), but also in the north (province of Friesland) and in the south (Weert).

Mission of the company:

“Eneco continually takes care of available, save and future-directed energy provision for business and private end users.
We strive for the recognition of our costumers, shareholders, co-workers and the society as a whole, as the best energy company of the Netherlands. Our goal is to make this ambition to come true, through in our acting always to be trustful, enterprising, professional and sympathetic.

Nice details: Eneco sponsors the largest cycle race in the Netherlands and the Dutch Clini Clowns. With the platform they had in mind and what the assignment is about, they also want to give users the chance to get a sponsorship for good initiatives.

Personal experience
I live near Rotterdam and I also get my energy and gas from Eneco and they always deliver so I am a satisfied costumer. What is maybe a bit misleading or at least not so decent is the description on the site of their two sorts of tax-measuring: A costumer can choose always to pay the same price for what they use (single tax reader, the “standard tariff”) or pay less in the evenings (after 23.00) and more (than the standard tariff) in the evening, this is called the “double tax reader”. So when you use a lot of energy durig the night its profitable to choose for the double tax reader On the site it says that with the double tax reader, during the day, you pay the standard tariff (that you also pay when you have the single tax reader), but that’s not true: You pay much more! This probably is not so shocking information and just a little detail but i thought it was remarkable …

 

Up next: Bridging the gap: more about the assignment, who are the costumers of Eneco and what do they want……

FRESJ; catching up. Stay ahead and keep delivering quality

When I designed my first portfolio three years ago, I wanted to position myself as a self-confident and unique designstudent. I thought up the brandname Fresj: Fresh designs, and a little different. My tagline was “standing in nobodyelse’s shoes “. A year later I wanted to make a different statement, also as a stimulation for myself to deepen more into definitions of problems, contexts and backgrounds. “Style requires brains” became my mission statement.
Right now I’m a fourth year student and still have the idea that there still so much I should know and that everything goes so fast. The work I deliver are more and more for serious clients who expect a well-considered endproduct. I think the right sentence that summarises this state where I am now is “catching up” , because that is also where I use this blog for: catching up with everything I need to know to stay ahead and keep delivering quality.

Why e-learning doesn’t replace learning in a classroom

New job, new things to learn
Today was my first day at my new job: an so called “e-learning company”. Besides a traineeship at the Internet-department at a dutch televisionstation, this is my first job that is related to my study. Before this I had all kinds of jobs: from being dressed up as an easternbunny to promote licker, to a photographer driving through the Netherlands, shooting pictures of pubs for an investment company.
Now I have to prove what I’m worth… Exiting! My job overthere is to think about the interaction design of their cms and the front of the software (which users who follow a particular online course will use). The (small) company already quite successful, but they want to improve the interface and the behavior of the platform.

Capabilities in the classroom, theory at the computer
Without sounding to much like a commercial, I would like to share what I learned today. Studying used to be very theoretical, people who studied a few years ago, had different kind of colleges then I have now. But the communication in the classrooms became more and more directed at the teacher as a coach. Now the situation is somewhere in the middle, or at least more ideal: The teacher provides you with information, students can ask direct questions and discuss about it with each other, they can work on putting their knowledge into practice. For a solid background on your skill in a particular branch, theory is still very important. When the popularity of e-learning was rising, back then (somewhere around the year 2000), it was even said it would replace learning from teachers in classrooms. Well, e-learning seems to be a good solution for learning theoretical stuff, because it can provide you with knowledge/theory and exam in a structured and personalised way. But it seems it can never replace the face-to-face discussions and direct feedback from teachers and co-students. Best thing to do is combining the two ways of learning together. Or even better: let the learner decide which combination of learning ingredients fits best.

Blended learning
Well, besides my new employer and now also myself there are more people with this vision, it even has a name: Blended Learning. KnowledgeNet’s Graunke describes blended learning as “multiple formats that reach learners in ways they want to learn. It’s a combination of traditional instructor-led training with subsets of e-learning components such as self-paced and synchronous.”
(from “E-learning, the second wave” by Craig R Taylor, 2001).

Also an interesting point in this article I never thought about before: Unlike the traditional instructor-led world, where bad course-information can be saved by a good teacher, an e-learning program needs good content to succeed. (mm, maybe I’m not so needed at my new job afterall)
Blended learning is more than a combination of learning in a classroom and e-learning. It’s about combining every situation where you can improve your knowledge and skills: from reading a book on the beach to have an online discussions with co-learners.

It must be quite difficult to organize all the ingredients for the learning-blend to satisfy the learners needs, when they have so many opportunities/institutions to choose from… To be continued….

Transacting, sharing and expressing: User-Generated Content

Primary questions about user-generated content
Hooray! Today was the kick-off of the last year studying Communication & Multimedia Design in Rotterdam.
First theme for this semester is about User-Generated Content (UGC) on websites and issues you come across while designing a user interface for these kind of sites. Before I take a deeper look at this theme the following eight weeks, I’ll try to answer four primary questions about the phenomenon:

1. What type of sites have user generated content
2. What are examples of User Generates Content Sites
3. What are the most important user interface issues you come across
4. Which Design Patterns are used for these kind of sites

Main Keywords
Content in community-sites are often user generated. Sites where a group of people want to get in contact with each other, share information, help each other or whatever. Then you have sites like eBay, or Marktplaats (Marketplace) which could’t exist without the user input of all the stuff they want to get rid of. And there are of course the weblogs, where people can express their-selves about any subject they are interested in. I think the main keywords that summarise User Generated Content-sites are Transacting, sharing and expressing.

UGC-examples: Quite successful brands
The brands which use these site-types are doing quite well, in comparison to other webbrands, but they also compete with brands in general. Nielsen//NetRatings, Internet media and market research company, examined the growth of the brands (in the U.S., year over year increase) and came to the following that image hosting site ImageShack ranked No. 4 among July’s fastest growing Web brands, increasing 233 percent, from a unique audience of 2.3 million to 7.7 million. “Heavy.com, a video sharing site, took the No. 5 spot, increasing 213 percent, from 965,000 to 3.0 million unique visitors. Photosharing site Flickr followed at No. 6, growing 201 percent from 2.1 million to 6.3 million unique visitors.Other user-generated content sites that made it into the top 10 fastest growing Web brands were MySpace, with a 183 percent year-over-year increase, and Wikipedia, with a 181 percent year-over-year increase.” (Nielsen-Netratings, “User-Generated content drives half of U.S. top 10 fastest growing web brands”, August 10, 2006)
In the top ten of fastest growing (regular) brands on the web you can find Myspace (183%) ranked at No. 1, after Google with 23% growth and eBay with 13% growth. For that matter, eBay is according to this research no site with user generated content.. mmm..?
Many more interesting rankings and growpercentages in this document, which is the result of that “user-generated content sites have seen significant growth over the past year, owing in large part to their reliance on viral marketing,” according to Jon Gibs, director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. “They also benefit from their cost-effectiveness – the content is practically free.”

Keeping the target group you had in mind: UGC-site issues
With designing a site where users can add text, photo’s, movies etc. their-selves, there are a lot of things you have to think about. Besides the question “What content shall I let my users upload? (or something like that)”, you also have to think about who, when, how and how much the uploaded content has to be controlled and overlooked. If you have a certain target group in mind, let’s say, students who can share information with each other, you don’t want them to find all kinds of spam or untrustful information on your site. How can you design a site where such spammers are discouraged to leave their message? My new IVID teacher, James M. Boekbinder, had a nice example of this: Wikipedia. Their design gives you the idea that you can’t leave a message or add an item unless you’re a real professional on the topic and know what you are writing. This because of for example the objective and clear style and the not so obvious possibility to upload new information.
Other things you have to think about: The way of categorizing/tagging content, how to put the constantly incoming stream of it in a sort of conveniently arranged layout and, but I think this brings me more to the pattern-question: How can your users share, rate, bookmark,search all the things they are or are not be taken with.

Like I said, next eight weeks a more in-depth exploration about the subject. Yep, vacation is really over….