The Boat Hack That May Change TV, and How Corporate Culture Affects Design

I just finished MIPTV, where I was liveblogging like crazy with fellow journo/blogger Stuart Dredge. This year MIPTV held an event called MIPCube, which focuses on better acquainting TV producers and network execs with the digital folks of whom they're so wary.

Over the weekend MIPCube hosted a Hack Day event in partnership with Rewired State. In short, a passel of hackers were put on a yacht and given less than 48 hours to hack something that would improve our TV experience. On Saturday night they presented all their projects, a whopping 12 of which 10 properly work and are now online.

But only one could win judges' hearts, and that was GrabMagic!, featured above. It was developed by Aral Balkan.

What I love about this Kinect hack is that it really does feel magical. It doesn't just produce a fluent connection between your TV and phone; it creates one between you and those devices as well. You behave like a connected organism, moving muscles without thinking, and that's beautiful.

During the Hack Day presentations I asked Aral how he avoids feature creep in his design. This was his response.

 As a designer, your greatest asset is the ability to say no. But that's simplistic - sometimes it's not your inability to say no, it's the structure of the organisation itself that doesn't allow you. If the organisation is design-led, it's easy; but otherwise designers may not have the authority.

A lot of organisations, because of their corporate cultures, because of their corporate structures, make simple design impossible. It isn't because of a team. That's very low level.

User experience begins at the top and trickles down.

See the other projects from the boat hack at MIPCube.

Burton's New Website Punts Merch by Weather

Your weather, that is. And it's curiously accurate. Here's what I see when I hit up the new (...and improved!) Burton.com:



I actually do want one of those sleeveless hoodies, if only because Paris weather is so schizophrenic that you never really know when you'll need head coverage, even while the hair's being burnt off your arms. Plus, burnt orange is the colour this year. (I swear, I almost bought orange shoes this weekend. Luckily I was surrounded by those who love me.)

The bottom half of the page is loaded with "timelines" of the Burton team and hyper-produced lifestyle videos inspired by E's "Wild On" (for those of you who remember the climax of Brooke Burke's career):

You'll also find job opportunities (lots!) and -- at the very bottom -- a series of big fat buttons that let you shop backpacks, men's tees and women's hoodies. That's arbitrary. But if your original reason for visiting the site was going shopping in any case, you can click on the "shop online" button in the upper right-hand corner, where a login button normally sits. I guess for now we'll ignore the fact that, once in the E-store, half of the nav is in German. But that makes sense as they only speak German in Europe.



(Even in Paris, whose name -- and whose weather! -- the homepage nailed perfectly. WTF, mate?)

Hat-tip: Influencia.

Hey, a Mobile-Optimised Agency Site!

I'll warn you in advance by admitting I'm not a developer (a fact that makes me very sad). So if at any point in this article you find I'm talking out of my ass, please correct me, and harshly.

Last month Nick Jones of Narrow Design (@narrowd) and McKinney (@mckinney) published screenshots of how the sites of major ad agencies - you know, the ones that claim to "get" digital - render on an iPhone. Most of them don't at all, or do with limited information, because most of them are heavily reliant on Flash. The list spread like anthrax in the agency social media sphere.

I like Flash and I get that Steve Jobs has a beef with Adobe or whatever. But in an environment where technology evolves faster than you can spin and say "hey presto," your digital front lines should be as lean and agnostic as possible: you don't know where that next client is coming from, or who's going to suddenly want to hit up your site in the middle of a conference from their handy-dandy first-gen iPad.

Humor me ››

One Show: W+K's Kevin Proudfoot Talks Intimacy

One thing I love about the One Show speaker sessions: they're only an hour long. And because the speakers want to show off their advertising, they have to be brief where actual talking is concerned.

Between ESPN and Nike plugs, Wieden+Kennedy's Kevin Proudfoot shared five guidelines for establishing intimacy with users. Intimacy, he imparted, is key to brand success.

1. Let the person know you're thinking of them. This is a touchy-feely way of saying you should consider the user experience before launching something. How can you make their lives easier or get them to laugh?

2. Talk directly to them. Don't address people from on high.

3. Enable and encourage them to be themselves. A brand or product should let people reflect themselves. Examples include iGoogle's customizable layout, customized Nikes, flickr, blogging, Facebook, Starbucks (Proudfoot says it conceived the notion you could be a "grande vanilla latte" if you wanted to).

4. Avoid schizophrenia. "This should really be 'multiple personality disorder,' but 'schizophrenia' looks better on a slide!" Proudfoot joked. Polite titters. The moment passes.

It's hard to be intimate with a brand that's all over the place, so commit to who you are and what you represent. Not to suggest a brand can't say many things. Proudfoot says to consider GEICO, which runs disparate campaigns with success, but only because those efforts are true to GEICO's core persona.

Think of everything that leaves your walls -- and even the things that don't -- as an opportunity to reinforce. "Every PR that goes out is an expression of the brand," said Proudfoot.

5. Encourage the other person to participate. For client Nike, W+K distributed little boxes of street chalk -- in "Lance Armstrong" yellow -- to Tour de France spectators. Users were encouraged to write encouraging messages to Lance all over the streets.

Proudfoot said this was a good way to incorporate Nike in the Tour de France without paying sponsorship dollars.

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Because these tips were inspired by Dr. Phil, Proudfoot closed his session by making the audience repeat a statement out loud: "Every relationship needs a hero!"

Grimace.

I left with that awkward feeling you get when somebody you don't like "that way" tries getting all personal with you.