The folks at my former agency Resource Interactive work with some pretty big clients. It was fun to be among the first to hear about the new Victoria’s Secret facebook presence (one of my former colleagues, Michael Krotscheck can truly claim to be their number one fan!)

VS is a huge brand with a huge following and an already well-established web presence, so it was no surprise when they amassed an incredible amount of fans. Yet even I was amazed when one of the Associate Creative Directors at Resource tweeted:

1.8 million Victoria's Secret fans since we launched 3 weeks ago. Gotta be some kind of record. http://bit.ly/9Si12

Wow, it may well be a record.

So what?

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Why are you on Facebook?

by Andrea Hill on June 30, 2009 · 1 comment

in social media

Facebook is the new darling of social media, and increasingly I hear organizations being asked “are you on Facebook”? In the cases where the answer is yes, there is no more discussion. A negative response, however, seems always to be accompanied with a tinge of regret. If an organization isn’t on Facebook, it would seem, they’re not ‘keeping up’.

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In earlier posts, I discussed my use of privacy settings on Facebook, and on my blog sidebar it clearly states “I tend to restrict my Facebook friends to people I’ve met in person. ” In general, my Facebook account is much more closely aligned with my athletic and social pursuits than my technical and social media activities. Yet when Facebook announced that individuals and organizations could register usernames, I didn’t even consider not registering www.facebook.com/afhill.

So I registered the name… now what??

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Will Twitter Kill the RSS star?

by Andrea Hill on June 11, 2009 · 3 comments

in social media

When I speak at conferences or training seminars, I ask who in the room has heard of RSS. Despite the fact it’s been around for close to a decade, generally less than 10% of attendees are aware of it.

I always explain that RSS lowers barriers: people no longer need to go to many different websites to see if there are updates: the updates come to them. They can get them in email or via a feed reader (I use Google Reader).

And then I tell them about Twitter: people get updates from trusted friends about what they’re reading or have written: the updates come to them. They can get them on their phone, in email or via a twitter client (I use Seesmic Desktop).

@jowyangFor awhile, I subscribed to Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategist blog, and I followed him on Twitter. When he wrote a new blog post, he’d tweet about it, and I’d go read it. Later when I checked Google Reader, the same post would show up. While a feed reader program prevents me from having to go to multiple sites, I still have to go to one. (Note: when I had a PC I used the Feedreader client, which popped up a notification when the feeds I subscribed to were updated. This overcomes this challenge). With an omnipresent twitter client, I get immediate notification when a friend tweets a link.

Twitter also helps filter the information we receive. With an RSS subscription, we get every post. With Twitter, we either see posts that our friends recommend, or have written themselves. We make the choice to click-through, but there is already some vetting that occurs.

Now this is a consideration: when I go to my Google Reader, it’s because I have the time and attention to read a post. With Twitter there is the chance that a tweet will pass me by when I’m not ready to check it out. Personally, I use the “favorites” feature of twitter to keep track of links that I want to come back to later.

So will (or has) Twitter replace RSS as a way for people to get notification of updated content online? What do you think?

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What’s more Mobile than AAA?

by Andrea Hill on June 9, 2009 · 0 comments

in mobile, user experience

‘What’s more mobile than the American Automobile Association’, I found myself thinking as I was stranded on the side of the road last night. Evidently, the unique benefits to mobile haven’t yet come to AAA Colorado. However, I had some time to consider it for them:

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Designing for the Social Web Contest Winners

by Andrea Hill on June 9, 2009 · 0 comments

in books

A hearty congratulations to Cristhian and Peter Kaizer – they are the winners of my first book giveaway!

I compiled a list of all comments and tweets related to this giveaway (although I rendered the author himself ineligible), and then ran two random number generator scripts. It just so happened that it was one tweet and one comment that won; there was no bias on my behalf.

Thanks again for those who took the time to comment and help raise awareness of the contest! There will be more in the future, best of luck!

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The other day I was creating a Company Profile on Linkedin, and noticed that there were some employees showing up who are no longer with the company.

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I have been a fan of Joshua Porter and his writings over at the Bokardo Blog for quite awhile. When he announced that he’d written a book, Designing for the Social Web, I knew I wanted to read it. It’s taken me a year since its release, but I finally was able to read it, and I also have two copies of the book to give away!

Porter has a well-developed philosophy on design. In his own words:

Five principles guide [his] design philosophy:

  1. The Experience belongs to the user.
  2. Technology serves humans.
  3. Design is not Art
  4. Great design is invisible
  5. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

This shines through in both the topics discussed as well as the overall presentation of the book itself. Designing for the Social Web comprises 8 chapters:

  1. The Rise of the Social Web
  2. A Framework for Social Web Design
  3. Authentic Conversations
  4. Design for Sign-up
  5. Design for Ongoing Participation
  6. Design for Collective Intelligence
  7. Design for Sharing
  8. The Funnel Analysis

Officially my background is in web development, but working in the User Experience and Interactive Marketing fields has allowed me to cultivate an appreciation for design as well. I was actually recently involved in a Twitter exchange with Taj Moore (@tajmo) about design:

design discussion on twitter

Independently both stated that Design is not art, with which I heartily agree. I have known of agencies where an Interaction Designer must be good at Flash; but that should not be to say that someone who knows Flash (or is “an Artist”) is therefore an Interaction Designer.

Designing for the Social WebThe book “examines the series of design problems to correspond to increasing involvement–the Usage Lifecycle–and the strategies social web design can offer.” This refers to the transition of users from ‘unaware’ to ‘interested’ to ‘first-time users’ to ‘regular users’ to ‘passionate users’ of software. This is an incredibly simple concept, yet one that is too often not considered when a project is conceptualized. We want to build a site/make sales/increase conversions, but we don’t always focus on the relationship we need to establish with our visitors to ultimately lead to those tangible objectives.

Designing for the Social Web walks the reader through the changing online landscape, and introduces the idea of the social web. It then introduces the AOF method for making design decisions (Activities, Objects, Features). This chapter resonated with me for a number of reasons. The focus is really on, well, focus. What is the primary activity? What are the objects with which people will interact during this activity? What are the core features? It is easy to dream big, but my personal preference is to refine and simplify and work out the tiny details. If something on an interface doesn’t support the primary action, why include it? Why distract a site visitor from achieving what they want to achieve?

This idea of starting with a core feature set and then enhancing it moving forward is a difference between the ‘old web’ and the new web. A website is not a static thing that is built once to exist in perpetuity. Rather, it should be expected that it will be developed and enhanced as time goes on (to the point where we now consider some sites to be in perpetual beta. There is no need to shove in all the features you may possibly want at the beginning, on the off chance you may need them later.)

designing for the social web

The entire Usage Lifecycle is about lowering barriers and making it easy for people to progress through different stages, and simplifying the interface is one way to do this. This is particularly well-explained in the chapter “Design for Sign-up”. Don’t scare users away with daunting forms that collect more information than is needed. Perhaps you’re interested in knowing the income level of your visitors are, but if site visitors are not invested and don’t see the benefits in sharing this information, you risk their abandoning the page and losing them completely.

Beyond the quality of information, the book itself is a joy to read from an aesthetic standpoint. Every page contains illustrations or examples of the points being made, and helps to drive home the fact that this is a book on effective design.

So now – if you’re interested in receiving a copy of this book, you just need to do one of two things (or both, for double the chance to win!). Either leave a (meaningful) comment to this post, or tweet a link to this post. That’s it! Next week I will collect a list of everyone who’s either commented or tweeted, and I’ll announce the winners!

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I’m not a web designer, by any means. Sure, I have a graphic design certificate, but my design skills pretty well peaked in 2003 when I completed the online program (although my portfolio is still featured on the sessions.edu site!)

But as someone who’s been taking amazing designs and making them functional for close to a decade, I have some ideas as to what makes design work for the web.

1. Anticipate changes

Who reads webpages anymore? People want content to be updated frequently. That means limit the custom typography or graphic headers (or at least consider how to use custom fonts on your site. Look at blogs: they are really text documents, perhaps with an image inserted. If the image isn’t there, the page is still available. If every page on your site requires a custom graphic before it’s published, you’re slowing down your time to release. Similarly, don’t build so rigid a design that the change of a word or phrase will throw off the entire page layout. Things change

2. Respect the medium

Unless you’re building an RIA (rich internet application), these are PAGES. They should read like a page, with a title and body copy. Think about your content as you would a text document: is it logical from a glance what the hierarchy of content is?

3. Be consistent

Unlike a print ad that may stand on its own, a website is a complete entity. Use the same conventions across the site, in terms of fonts and layout. If you deviate from it, make sure it is intentional and of benefit to the site visitor.

4. Anticipate people arriving on any page of your site

With Google indexing every page of your site and people being able to share pages with friends, you must anticipate that not everyone will visit your home page first. Does your site make sense to someone arriving on an interior page? Can they navigate elsewhere through the site?

5. Get an interaction designer to help

…yes, it’s a cop-out. But one key feature that web offers over print is the opportunity for interaction. There is no equivalent in a print design for error messaging, progressive disclosure, or user flows. I see the evolution from print to web design as both a widening (you are designing a series of pages that are related) and a refining (you are designing components or micro-interactions within a single larger design). Many will argue that an Interaction designer uses none of the same tools as a graphic designer, and I shouldn’t assume a straight-forward transition. Yet I’m not sure that every team can have both an interaction and a graphic designer, so at some point those skill sets need to merge.

As Jakob Neilsen stated back in 1999:

Anything that is a great print design is likely to be a lousy web design.There are so many differences between the two media that it is necessary to take different design approaches to utilize the strengths of each medium and minimize its weaknesses.

  • Print design is based on letting the eyes walk over the information, selectively looking at information objects and using spatial juxtaposition to make page elements enhance and explain each other.
  • Web design functions by letting the hands move the information (by scrolling or clicking); information relationships are expressed temporally as part of an interaction and user movement.

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What IS Facebook? According to the homepage, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” But how aggressively or personally are you connecting and sharing? Is your personal approach to Facebook one of privacy or publicity? Have you ever considered the impact of your online engagement?

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