Interior design: take 2

My second interior design project at Nameless: Helping to turn the second meeting room, known as the ‘beanbag room’ thanks to the over-sized bean bags that were impossible to get out of in a dignified manner (and as someone who wore a uniform of mini skirts and leggings I attempted many different ways) into a slightly more client friendly space. It continued with the theme of digital curiosity and had magnetic walls to allow for sketchboarding sessions and displaying client work.

Photos first published in Nameless facebook: 03/04/2011

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2025, the year of [___]

Last weekend was the start of May, which means we are well and truly in the middle of spring 2011. Some of the Nameless team have been getting their pins out and wearing shorts to the office in the hope that this will guarantee a great summer ahead, so we felt it was time to carry on with some more predictions of what our staff think the future might hold for us all in 2025…

Sammi

In 2025, digital technology has entered into an Orwellian world with two great powers battling for our love and devotion. These powers are Frutopia (formerly apple computers) and Humanoidia (once known as Facebook). It’s a battle of hardware versus software (Microsoft stopped trading in anything technology related back in 2019, after Bill Gates philanthropy efforts discovered the cure for all known illness – which is nice, but does make it rather more difficult to explain away a hangover when invited out for Sunday lunch with the family).

All of our thoughts and feelings are automatically detected by our hand held devices by the amount of perspiration levels we emit, like those archaic lie detector test. Status updates automatically let all you friends and family know your every mood – and all your friends can press the hug/scold/giggle button. Shopping is being delivered to your front door before you have even finished thinking “Ohhh I quite fancy macaroni cheese tonight” and Saturday afternoons are spent wandering around the empty high street stores which were turned into participatory art instillations after becoming obsolete.

But don’t fret, there is no need for a Winston Smith style moment of rebellion, the great Wikileaks trial of 2012-2017 (the longest and most expensive court case ever known) means you are more than welcome to scream out loud “ya know what I miss those cute little aliens on android phones – fruit’s rubbish” or update your status to “Joe is ignoring you all today, no matter what his sweat say’s: even you mum”. You are also allowed to sneak into the attic and gather a book made of paper, fabric and needle or pencils and sketchbook and a old music device called a walkman and turn on, tune in and drop out.

Sarah

Before I drain my mug of tea and peer into its murky depths to help make my 2025 digital predictions (this is a loose leaf tea free zone, so I have to make do) I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to go back in time by 14 (well, ok, 17) years…

In 1994, a PC connected to (gasp) the internet was installed my school. Accessible only to the keenest beans who were on the right side of the librarian, it was kept locked away in a glass room like some kind of secular holy grail.

In between lessons, we would linger like Victorian street urchins outside a bakery, waiting for the librarian to take pity on us and let just one of us in so that we could get our mitts on our heart’s desire: the opportunity to get online, plagiarise someone else’s work, and pass it off as our own, thus reducing time required for homework.

For me at that time, the digital world represented a way of connecting with the world and dipping my teenage toes into a wealth of new and incredible information.

I could never have imagined then, how digital would become so fundamental to how I function and earn my crust in 2011. So, what might 2025 bring? I am no digital soothsayer, but here goes:
1. Self cleaning keyboard. Never again would I have to spend 2 hours cleaning soup from my keyboard with the aid of only cotton buds and elbow grease.
2. Digi-pathic communications. Actually let’s do away with keyboards altogether and use the power of brainwaves to guide our technology. Possibly not so good if your mind tends to wander…
3. Cloud based hosting will become the norm for the average Joe (or Joleen) so that music, applications, files, pictures and the rest can be accessed from anywhere. Goodbye external hard drives, hello flexibility.
4. Proper books will still exist in my house in 2025.
5. I will feel like a digital dinosaur, not being one of these lucky digital natives who will be running the world by then, probably from their bedrooms.

Article first published in Nameless blog: 06/05/2011

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Interior design: take 1

My first little stab at interior design: The Nameless meeting room, complete with a bespoke digital curiosity table and magnetic wall…

Photos first published in Nameless facebook: 03/04/2011

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Festival frolics and brand loyalty

With winters early arrival and the accompanying reappearance of woollen knitwear from the back of the wardrobe, the memories of the summer months still linger on. Like a lot of people I now forgo a week of lying on a scorching beach in a Mediterranean resort which bears more than a passing resemblance to Basra in terms of heat and charm (I’d imagine, since I’ve yet to visit Basra).

This particularly “pleasure” has been replaced in my affections by the charms of donning a sparkly outfit and camping in a field, whatever the weather, at one of the many boutique festivals across the country. This summer was no exception and I managed to squeeze in going to two of the smaller festivals (Glastonbury has still eluded me, but one day…) and danced my way through glitter-filled fun to my heart’s content. However both festivals suffered from problems which were either unforeseeable or outside their control, and whilst it wouldn’t have solved the problems a stronger digital solution could have eased their woes and resulted in a less stressful time for organisers and punters alike.

But these two festivals are not alone in having a digital offering that is not working hard enough when the going gets tough, and when the going gets tough, brand loyalty gets going. The first example of this is often before revellers have even entered the site. Many a festival attendee will arrive in high spirits and join the back of the queue, either in their car or on foot. Three or four hours later they can still be in the queue, but high spirits have long since disappeared.

These delays can be for a variety of reasons, ranging from staff being unprepared for the large numbers that arrive earlier and earlier each year to the long arm of the law adopting a strict search policy for illegal substances (although I don’t think it’s that difficult to find illegal substances at a festival – or at least that’s what I have been told!). But the crowd does not know this; staff have no way of communicating it to them, and the brand suffers as a result with negative comments from the crowd attacking the staff themselves and no longer believing in the carefully and lovingly created brand mythology.

Another common problem faced by festival organisers in putting on a fun-filled weekend is nature’s typical insistence on making its presence felt. This was a problem faced by one of the festivals I attended this year. God made it rain – a lot. The car park flooded and organisers were forced to delay revellers for 24 hours. But this information didn’t come from the website, it came from Facebook. Panic stricken parents who had put teenage girls on a coach on the Thursday morning were desperately trying to find out what was happening. Confusion reigned as questions went unanswered as Facebook couldn’t cope with providing the information required.

As already stated digital media can’t stop these problems arising, but it can help contain them. The way in which people view digital media is constantly changing and has undergone massive changes in the past year alone. Festivals have visually beautiful websites but often made using an inflexible solution such as flash with no way of creating two way communications with their audience. Simple search functions are forgotten about and if they do exist information is poorly tagged (this alone would greatly solve the confusion of the official alcohol and glass policy, one story is of a group of friends having a champagne bottle ready for a 40th birthday toast confiscated whilst watching others carry in crates of cider). Widgets and polls can be used to gather information about when and how people are getting to the festival and a greater emphasis on good user experience needs to be considered when creating the navigation hierarchy.

The expectations of people to have the information they require provided quickly and concisely means that any site suffering from bad usability is dismissed and abandoned quickly. This is more readily acknowledged as a problem by companies directly selling products via the website, however it is still a problem for an organisation using the website for purely promotional purposes as it’s from this initial confusion and frustration that the breakdown of brand loyalty starts.

The full potential of social media platforms is not being realised, or not yet being used in the correct manner and ultimately costing money in maintaining the pages. Social media is best put to use when generating conversation and allowing people to play for short burst of time on apps, built to entertain and dazzle.

Festival organisations can use this to their advantage changing from beautiful but static and bandwidth heavy website’s in favour of flexible and searchable websites which broadcast information gathered from questions, conversations and comments already started on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. This will free up time and budget to commission bespoke apps, be they social media, web or mobile, to fully engage and play with the brand and allow people to fall head over heels in love with the festival before they have even got there. Now has anyone got a spare Glastonbury ticket?

Article first published in Nameless blog: 09/12/2010

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