I want to know about screen names. We get to create a persona for ourselves, label (brand?) ourselves a certain way. What prompts us to make the choices we do? How do we see ourselves, or perhaps more importantly, how do we want others to see us?

I use afhill for nearly everything online. It wasn’t anything I even picked: my first email account was assigned - afhill@ualberta.ca. Generally email accounts for students were “first initial-last name”, but ahill was taken. I didn’t mind, because my mother’s first initial was also A, so within my family, we’d always left notes for AFH for me or AMH for my mom. I’m comfortable with my middle initial

Now virtually all my online accounts are afhill:

• this blog (http://www.afhill.com/blog)
• Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/afhill)
• Digg (http://digg.com/users/afhill)
• Old Dmoz Editor profile (http://www.dmoz.org/profiles/afhill.html)
• Friendfeed (http://friendfeed.com/afhill)
• LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/afhill)
• Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com/afhill)
• Technorati (http://technorati.com/people/technorati/afhill)
• Tumblr (http://afhill.tumblr.com)
• Twitter (http://twitter.com/afhill)
• Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/afhill77)

*Not sure what happened with youtube, had to add “77″ at the end

So yes, I’m quite consistent with my online presence. But I know many people use a host of different screen names. I’d love to find out why and how you determine the name to use. Are they different personas that you tie together under a specific name (i.e. when using “CookieMonster” on recipe sites, but “PixelPrincess” on design sites) or is it based on whim?

I’d really appreciate any and all thoughts on the matter…!

As I mentioned in my last post, Rohit Bhargava just released a book called *Personality not included (why companies lose their authenticity, and how great brands get it back). True to the nature of the book and O.P.E.N. branding, Rohit offered bloggers advance introductory excerpts and exclusive interviews to post.

You know marketing is working when you’re overwhelmed by the response. Rohit had trouble knocking out the answers to all the requests for interviews he received, but he was honest and forthright in notifying people and resetting expectations (via twitter, natch!)

Why was this promotion so well-received? By offering bloggers an exclusive advance exerpt (ok, not that exclusive, it’s posted on his blog), we were made to feel part of an exclusive community. By soliciting individual interviews, we were made to feel important, and the experience was tailored to our specific interests. And lastly — there was the lure of a contest (notoriety if you won) and a prize! (Voting will take place on his blog on Monday, if you’re so inclined…)

So with no further ado, here are my interview questions for Rohit Bhargava, author of “Personality not included”:

1. I loved the part in the introduction where you stated “personality can’t save crap”. How closely do you think marketing and brand management should work with product development? Do you think the “personality” of a brand needs to be explicitly considered through product development to ensure integrity?
This is a great question because it gets to the central issue that many companies struggle with, which is their different silos within their organization. The best companies are the ones where this can all be integrated, but I know well how difficult that is. For that reason, I focused in the book on the broader idea of how individuals relay that story as amabassadors for the brand and how telling a story can fill that gap. When you couple that with packaging and product design, you get the best result.

2. How do you think the role of a ‘brand spokesperson’ complements or conflicts with the brand’s personality? (Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders)
Interesting that you bring this up because it inspires an entire section in Chapter 2 which talks about this exact question. That chapter is all about “accidental spokespeople” and I lay out five key types of spokespeople. Both your examples fit into the category I called “The Character” which talks about mascot type spokespeople. The difficulty with them is that they do not have the same reality as a person and are therefore notoriously difficult to change perception around. Colonel Sanders, despite his refreshed image, still stands for the same thing he always did.

3. Do you think a conglomerate can cultivate a personality, or is it better to focus on the smaller companies/brands that make it up?
This is another important question, and one that I actually also had in another interview. I think that in most cases, it is not only easier, but also vital to focus on the smaller brands that make it up. The example I shared in that interview which I’ll use again here is Darden, the parent company for Olive Garden and Red Lobster. All the brand association there is with the smaller component brands.

4. We know the consumer as an individual can help contribute to a company’s personality (”the unwitting spokesperson”). What about the individuals working at the company? Do you have any thoughts as to how much of a brand’s personality should be tied to specific contributors?
I think this is a VITAL point. A big part of the book focuses on getting this type of conversation to happen from employees and embracing them. The idea of “accidental spokespeople” from the book is a actually much more about employees than it is about citizen marketers or customer brand evangelists.

5. Are there any cases where you would advocate that a brand NOT try to cultivate personality? Under what circumstances?
No, I can’t think of any. That would be like a situation where a company would not want to build a strong brand. Maybe if they are trying to devalue a company so someone can buy it for cheaper? That’s about all I can think of!

(View the full list of interviews)

Today I received an introductory copy of the first chapter of “personality not included“. A great example of an OPEN brand, the author has shared the first chapter and encouraged bloggers to post about it, and will also be answering individual interviews with bloggers to post on the date of the official book launch. Sounds Personal, Networked, and Engaging to me!

As books about branding/marketing/innovation have to do, it started with a story about Apple and the iPod. It talks about the shuffle, and the fun note in the disclaimer “do not eat iPod”. It’s a bit of commentary on brand personality. It made me think of the fervour generated around the Tom Bihn washing instructions a few years back.

One major statement the author tries to drive home is that “marketing isn’t just about selling”. This is very apparent to me: we do brand marketing at Resource all the time, and there is rarely any direct eCommerce being pushed forward. It’s about cultivating a relationship with the brand, beyond an exchange of money.

The big idea of my book is that personality is the key to creating an inspiring brand.

Personality is the unique, authentic, and talkable soul of your brand that people can get passionate about.

Personality is not just about what you stand for,but how you choose to communicate it. It is also the way to reconnect your customers, partners,employees,and influencers to the soul of your brand in the new social media era.

This quote is obviously important to really focus on the book’s main premise, but the idea of “how you choose to communicate” really struck me. It’s about cultivating a unified public persona. Just yesterday a friend questioned the unwillingness of a certain big box store to match prices between their online and bricks-and-mortar experiences. My friend doesn’t know or care that those are two business divisions: the label on the product is the same, and he expects the same level of quality and service. Putting forth a consistent public persona implicitly lends credibility to a company’s internal organization and strategy. A company that presents too many different faces and pursues too many diverging priorities doesn’t offer the consumer a strong sense that they (the consumer) is number one.

Which is where personalization and customization really comes into play. A brand CAN have dramatically different strains of potential consumers, and each one needs to feel the brand is speaking to them. And we all know from our “effective communication” classes that listening is a critical skill in fostering relationships and making people feel valued.

Marketing books often strike me as “the stuff I know… I just never really thought about”. The author lays things out in a palatable way, and I will admit I laughed out loud at the important truth (complete with hand-drawn illustration) that “Personality can’t save crap”. It’s true: an engaging experience and open communication with a brand doesn’t enhance the quality of the underlying product or service. The other week I mentioned Jesse James Garrett’s discussion of the layers to add value to a client. Although he focussed on the topmost “design” layer, ultimately the foundation was in the technology. Like in the dating scene, “she’s got a great personality” isn’t always enough to sustain a long-term relationship. This is not to say every product needs to be the first (or only) in its class. Personality can help take something from “good to great” - it just needs to at least be good first

The book “personality not included” provides the reader with plenty of stories and anecdotes, guiding him through understanding of the significance of cultivating a brand personality to the actual cultivation thereof.

WAI mourns the passing of John Slatin, who was Co-Chair of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group in 2005 and 2006. Through his persistence, patience, and keen insight, John contributed greatly to the field of accessibility, especially to the development of the WCAG 2.0. He will be fondly remembered and greatly missed by his colleagues at W3C/WAI and in the broader accessibility community.

For those who want more information, John and his wife Anna have chronicled his experiences on his blog “Leukemia Letters” at http://leukemialetters.blogspot.com/ , and information about services will be posted there.

Today I was back in ATG developer training - in their Commerce course. Some of our time was spent looking at templates for category and product pages. This was something I’d been thinking of on my own, and it was good to see that my ideas were right on track.

Basically I had been thinking about templates on both the presentational as well as the content levels. The templates we looked at today were set at the content levels. That is, a particular template could be created to ensure consistency across pages, but there could be rules set up to support deviations from the standard. Elements are associated with a particular template, which would basically serve as the way to retrieve the specific properties of the element.

My second thought was to create a presentational template as well, to support how these elements should be displayed. A simple idea I gave a colleague would be that every product page would contain a description, a title and an image, but in some cases we may want the image to the left rather than the right. The underlying data would be the same, but we would want the presentation to be slightly different. (this could be applied even so simply as including a specific stylesheet)

In Jesse’s talk yesterday on Delivering Long-Term Design Value in a Short Term World, he mentioned that typically technology projects are built with data first in mind, then logic, and with UI tacked on top. He stressed the importance of not allowing your thinking to be limited by perceived technological limitations.

For the past few weeks as I’ve sat through ATG training, I’ve tried to be really aware of what ATG has to offer, and how to make its product and feature suite relevant to people in my organization. I’m currently in the business user/management training series, and the needs of this user base are dramatically different than those of the developers. I’ve been trying to think about how to explain ATG and how we can apply it in our work to the different user types.

Last night’s talk had me thinking about this even more. It’s not “ATG” that will sell, it’s what it offers the client. The whole premise of personalization and customization directly contributes to a better user experience, but using ATG for a site doesn’t inherently make for a better experience. It’s a means to an end, and all the tasks associated with determining user needs/wants/motivation still need to take place.

I’ve mentioned before that ATG is a technological platform that really is looking to meet a strategic need. Its standard implementation is rules-based, which is that layer of logic discussed yesterday. I think the challenge is that often from a UX standpoint, we want to achieve a certain result, without too much concern of the “how”. After the talk last night, someone mentioned pandora radio to me as an example of a personalized user experience with that “wow” factor. There is definitely an element of magic involved, which arguably makes the experience even more compelling. The average visitor doesn’t have to know how it works.

I feel that way about training, to some extent. For many of our creative or managerial types, they don’t need to know the intricacies of the platform, they just need to recognize the implications. Like any sort of personalization or customization, it’s about catering the message to the individual and satisfying his needs, to ensure he has a positive perception of what’s in front of him. There’s no need to overwhelm him with too much detail: it’s all about the “beautiful, elegant solution that works”

Last night the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts brought Jesse James Garrett in to speak about “Delivering Long-Term Design Value in a Short Term World”. One of my co-workers is the co-president of the group, and there were quite a few of us from work showed up to hear him speak.

I’m most familiar with Jesse as “the guy who coined the term AJAX” and crafted that picture of the elements of UX (from which actual development is notably absent). I was interested to see how he would cater to his design audience.

I’ve taken courses in “color theory” and “branding and identity” but I still associate design with “making things pretty”. I really enjoyed the talk as it helped me to appreciate that there’s much more that goes into effective design.

We went through the requisite examples of great product design (iPod, Target medicine bottles), but Jesse focussed not solely on the products but on the entire system.

Jesse asked the audience what the greatest complement to receive on a design would be. Evidently, it’s “I can’t live without it”. He talked about revolution, fundamentally changing the user experience. Cameras used to be very complicated, and then kodak came along and dramatically simplified things. It was one of those cases I love to think about: the users didn’t know what they wanted, until it was presented to them.

valuetriangle
Originally uploaded by afhill

He spoke of how to deliver value to clients in terms of a triangle. At the base (initially), it could be achieved via technology. (his example was WordStar). The next level involves adding on new features to offer value (example: Microsoft Word with all toolbars turned on). The last level hinged on the experience offered to the client. In this case, he showed the newer design for MS Word, with the ribbon. The idea was that you didn’t need to clobber the user over the head with everything you had to offer; rather you could design something elegant that simply provided them with what they really needed/wanted. I’ll admit, I wasn’t so sure about this example, since I know the ribbon was met with much skepticism at its introduction. Perhaps that was due to users’ experiences with MS products, it’s hard to say.

dataunderlying
Originally uploaded by afhill

He also suggested that too often we build products with data at the core, with a layer of logic over top, and finally a shell of a UI. But this is not inkeeping with how users see the product, which is “UI” with “magic” underneath. He encouraged designers not to limit themselves on what we’re told the technological limitations are.

He then shared charmr, which was a project they dreamt up just to flex their creativity in the medical field. They prefaced their presentation on this revolutionary tool for people with diabetes by stating that the technology did not yet exist for this to become reality. The ideas were great, and when they shared their ideas on youtube, they were met with great enthusiasm. But my practical side was stuck on the idea that they were limited by technology. I waited until the end of the lecture to ask “at what point do you have to reconcile with the limitations imposed by technology, and give up part of your dream to achieve part of it?”. His thoughtful answer was to first inform yourself as to whether they barriers you’re being told exist truly are barriers, and then to decide what is worth fighting for. A vague answer to be sure, but an acceptable one.

Some other audience members asked about the level of consumer insight to seek out, and I liked his answer that he “doesn’t ask the customer where they want the button, [he] asks what they want to get out of the experience (motivation, feeling)”. I think that’s what makes this fun: it’s about figuring out how to deliver on that, not on how to build a better mousetrap…

the challenges with learning about the entire product suite for ATG is that there is LOT there! Campaign optimizer, customer intelligence — there are plenty of ways to gather lots of data on user behaviour, to perform analysis and enhance the user experience. I think it’s really compelling.

The challenge is our role in the site development/enhancement/maintenance. I would say that much of this information would be of business relevance for the company for whom we’re doing the work. Would they be the ones therefore to be using these tools, or is that a service we would offer?

Before class started this morning, I was chatting with an Information Architect and a Business Analyst, and we were talking about how much of this needs to be supported by formal business needs. While we may try to tease that information from the client, there is a question of how much we should be influencing their overall business strategy.

I think what we need to do is really be careful about how we can leverage what ATG offers to meet our client’s needs. As I mentioned earlier, we really do need to be sure we’re aware what functionality is included in which product. While it does appear that the scenario engine is the driver of the entire system, and we could manually build in the functionality we’re looking for, we will need to be conscious of the costs and benefits associated with each product.

Anytime there has been a question if ATG can do what we want, we’re told that it can. Well, it’s built off java, so really it can support anything java can, it’s just a question of whether or not it is OOTB or if we must customize or extend.

A little information can be a dangerous thing, and I know I will have to be careful not to be too agreeable about what we CAN do without considering the time and effort involved in it…