I and fellow Iona Group developer, Mark Tovey, had the chance to present a basics of social media for the Morton, IL Economic Development Council’s LEAP (Local Education, Affordable Price) session.

Social networking on the web is just an extension of social networking in person. You are connecting with other people for a variety of purposes: business, social, common interest. As the internet came along we adapted these same ideas to the tools of the time. Chat rooms and email became the tools of socializing. As the web became more of a marketplace of ideas it became more social. Specific tools to socialize became available adding yet another avenue to network with others.

Because social media is so prevalent it is a hot place to be in terms of a business. Advertising dollars are continuing to be thrown at the web and at social media and there is growing marketplace on the internet and especially within social media outlets. Why? This is where the people are gathering and talking, why not talk about you?

One of the tools of social media is Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform limiting posts (tweets) to 140 characters. This character limitation has its roots in cell phone communication but Twitter has grown since it’s cell platform start. Twitter is a give and take, where you can follow people and have them follow you. Signing up for Twitter is fairly straight forward. Click on the sign up link, enter your information and start tweeting. If you are a business these micro messages would reflect the message you are trying to deliver about your company. Are you representing an individual at your company or are you the official marketing voice of your company? The answer to this may determine the content of the tweet. Twitter is also good for following others and keeping an ear to the ground about your business’s buzz. Are customers talking up your service or criticizing you for an area they found lacking. Responding to good or bad can more than make up for the original offense. Being able to head off some bad word of mouth can turn a negative advertisement into a good one. How do you find these people to listen to? Search is a great option to find people in your area, industry or people who are talking about you. There are some directories that may also be helpful (wefollow.com) or just using the basic search or “find people” functionality on Twitter may be enough to get started. You may also find that by putting out quality information people may start to find you, and if they are not spammers or bots you may very well want to follow them back. If they are interested in your business you are interested in them.

Another tool to connect is Facebook. Facebook was started on the Harvard campus by Mark Zuckerburg and quickly took root on other college campuses and then around the world. Facebook now has 300 million active users and 50% of those users log on any given day. How does a business take advantage of the networks built on Facebook? Usually through a Fan Page. A fan page is a brand or business landing page on Facebook. The sign up process is similar to Twitter. If you want to build a fan page you can use an existing personal Facebook account or create one fresh. In either case you use the create a page link on the Facebook’s home page. From here you can indicate you type of business and the name of the fan page. When you are logged in you need to add some details to the profile and an profile picture to gain a bit more footing as people search and gain information about your business. Add as much information to the profile as possible to enhance the value of your page. Status updates are similar to Twitter’s tweets.

So why do people share information on the social networks? As with anybody we do things for ourselves. We are promoting a self image, whether it be humorous, helpful, emotional, friendly or any number of different characteristics. So sharing something that triggers on emotions is key to encouraging social marketing. A funny video will get shared around as people want to make others laugh.

This advertisement for Dove may get shared as people want to encourage a healthy self image:

The strength of the emotion and impact of the message increases the sharing potential. These are videos but text or still images can be just as viral. Oprah has been a catalyst for coupon sharing with a KFC grilled chicken promotion and more recently a 50% off Payless shoe coupon that was good for two days only. This type of information relies on getting shared through social tools. People also get a great feeling of helping their fellow man by sharing this information around.

Individuals like to help people by sharing information and that is good for business too. Participating in the community shows that you are a valuable resource and full of expertise. Offering tips or how-to’s is the equivalent to a physical coupon in that you are giving some information away for free in the hopes of gaining a paying customer. Listen to your community and share back. Dell has done this in an ironic way by offering advice about social media to small businesses on Facebook. They took their own advice.

LinkedIn is another social tool more designed for professionals within business rather than businesses themselves. This may be a good way to gain credibility with people within your field. There is a similar simple sign up process and a free or subscription level of service.

To utilize these networks to their fullest you will want to connect them. Use your business website to advertise your membership in each of these platforms. Know that to get the most out of social media networking you need to put time in. Leaving a Twitter account dormant could be just as damaging as not having one at all. This may indicate to customers that you are not listening or contributing anything to the community. So communicate with sincerity and with the intention of advancing your business’s place in the community. This is a legitimate marketing venture.

And if you wondering the results of your labor there are a few ways to track statistics. Facebook fan pages and Youtube videos have built-in numbers associated with their content. If you want a bit more granularity you could share links you may have via a url shortener like bit.ly. Many of these services will offer statistics on individual links, such as how many clicks and where the clicks are coming from (both platform and geographic location). And if you are looking for more feed back on whether social media is working, look to the quality of conversation being conducted between you and your customer.

Social Media Delicious links

links for 2009-10-27

• 15 Stunning Examples of Data Visualization | Web Design Ledger
  You likey the Data? Me too! Check out these amazing examples of statistical display genius.
  (tags: visualization infographics inspiration)

links for 2009-10-25

• FLARToolkit and FLARManager – InsideRIA
  FLARManager makes integrating FLARToolkit into your Flash projects way easier. Here is an overview of the library and some more links to follow up on.
  (tags: FLARToolkit aug augmentedreality flash as3)

links for 2009-10-22

• Javascript and ActionScript Converse: Introduction to ExternalInterface – Activetuts+
  The tutorial closes with using JQuery with Actionscript. Very col stuff.
  (tags: flash jquery javascript externalinterface)

This is a reassuring thought for me. Because when the ideas don’t just appear, it is nice to know that someone like Chuck Close believes it is about hard work, not just divine inspiration.

I am not a big self-help book/media fan. However, this project was one that definitely caught my eye. I was compelled by the content found in the short film that headlines the website. I don’t want to ruin it for you, but if you haven’t had an opportunity to see this, you may find something in it that resonates for you on this day.

The Iona Group engages with a wide variety of clients using the latest communication strategies and technologies.  Join us for a discussion of trends in digital advertising, audience engagement, and online strategy.  The Iona Group will share their recent work and research and development; including killer wireless robots, eye bulging video installations, incredibly sticky phone applications, and websites that will make you scratch your head and wonder, how?
Prices for the lunch are for Peoria Ad Club members and for non-members and guests.  RSVPs are required and payment is expected the day of the meeting by cash or check. Please RSVP by October 12 to hold a seat.
Click Here to rsvp.

Using Kevin Stein’s poem “On Being a Nielsen Family,” this collaborative project interrogates our culture’s historical privileging of the printed page as sole site of poetic performance. Five hundred years of printerly convention have led to our unthinkingly accepting the materiality of the page as the only means for poets to offer and for readers to receive a poem. That convention deludes us into regarding poems as static entities. We expect, if not demand, poems presented in standardized, linear fashion marching handcuffed from left to right across the page.

Instead, this collaborative project proposes a cardinal notion of poetry: that poems are events, not stories about events.

What this means for poetry is as simple as it is profound. In sum, reading or hearing a poem offers an essentially interactive experience. This experience poses an infinitely fresh encounter enriched by the creative interplay of author, poem, and reader. Because no poem exists wholly in a vacuum, divorced from culture and community, this bristling interchange enables poems to reward multiple rereadings, each experience as unique as that particular electric moment of encounter.

All poems are performative, verbal artifacts enacted in space and time. Poetry’s mystery lies not only in recreating this performance within readers but also in welcoming the readerly act as itself performative.

Project collaborators have thus fashioned a collage of print, audio, video that challenges cultural assumptions about how poems are created and received. Artists George Brown, Jim Ferolo, Scott Cavanah, Robert Rowe, Chad Udell and Gary Will, and will be completing a variety of traditional and interactive works that explore the nature of written poetry and alternative artistic forms.

In short, the project’s artist-collaborators have aimed to reimagine traditional print forms, welcome current technological innovations, and encourage reader/listener participation in the creative act.

In the process, the poem’s literal and figurative “space” has transitioned from the historically orderly confines of the printed page to a physical realm of interactive performance. Such fooling around evokes in both poet and reader the self-sufficient joy of reshuffling the perceptual deck of cards one has been handed by previous reading.

Look for links and future summaries on the artists’ works.

Emily and I went to the Art Guild in Peoria last night to do a second site survey. Emily is a student in my I M413 course that is centered on the creation of intermedial experiences. She has proven to be a very able collaborator and has brought her experience of Flash to bear and is learning more about these types of installations as we continue to develop the idea.

We were hoping to bring in our test rear projection material, projector, and alpha build of the software to get a sense of the overall scale and color saturation of the projection. The piece is essentially a search of twitter posts that mention Lincoln and is primarily text. The goal is to have it viewable from the street in the evening, so that passerby’s can experience a part of the overall exhibit, or even better, entice them to come to the guild to see the work.

There were some scheduling changes that kept us from completing the full test, but we did get a confirmation on the physical position of the work, i.e., which windows it will project in. And we have set up a listing of test conditions to figure out which colors will pop and what type of contrast will be needed.

Additional software tweaks include some soft logic to determine how many times a specific tweet is repeated. There are many references to Lincoln and some quotes that appear over and over again. We are interested in tracking the frequency of those quotes and mapping it against physical locations– a typical mash-up approach.

Most of the physical projection work that I have completed in the last year uses virtual scenery that is extremely dense or highly composited. This is the exact opposite and is a great exercise in contrast from previous efforts. I look forward to the next phase of development and will post more pics as they become available.

1. Design and the creative process is an emotional one. 
Okay, raise your hand if you have ever been in this situation. You have moved through your design process carefully and with consideration of your audience and client. Initial needs assessments have been completed, definitions of goals are done, design comps have been created, all with the blessing of client and the team. For the first time the “thing” is clickable and usable and the entire audience is getting a chance to use the experience and the questions start coming in. “Is that nav really intuitive?” “Don’t you think that the header should be a bit bigger?”, “If not bigger, it should definitely be much more red than it is now.” And, yes, the comps were signed off on, the site map has been completed, the use cases have been accepted, i.e. we all knew what we were getting. However, the conversation will continue and everyone will begin to voice their opinion about what the next best steps should be. I would like to add that I think nearly all of the opinions are valid, but arbitrating them at this point in the design process is an extremely sticky wicket. It is more troublesome because there has been an investment made in this build and any designer or developer should be attached to the work that has been completed. If the external feedback runs counter to the designer/developer opinions there is the potential for conflict and an awful hypothetical conversation about what the best way to proceed really is. That is when I like to use one of my major time outs (I am always reminded of my mom and dad drawing the imaginary line down the backseat of our car on road trips that lasted for weeks to keep my sister and myself from eviscerating each other.), head off the ensuing battle, and get another perspective from the vox populi. Let’s put it out there and see what the users think.

2. Significant testing can be carried out cheaply and easily using on-line and client-based tools.
There are so many simple tools that can help you collect, tabulate and summarize data for your interactive experiences. I am a fan of Zoomerang for data collection and tabbing. However, it can also be completed by putting together a solid is of questions or testing rubrics that will give you the answers that you need. Excel is always good if you have folks local and just need to add up the numbers. However, it can be a bit time consuming. Don’t worry about the test being statistically significant, because the real goal is to find trends and the big gotchas that are right in front of the team, but obscured because of closeness to the build. I like to shoot video of people using software and experiences, too. I find that it provides a great record that I can go back to and also provide video evidence to clients to support observations and eventual recommendations. There are some specific legal clearances for this and other ethical concerns with testing that are important to understand before you embark. Once your bases are covered, you may want to check out Silverback for your testing needs, as well. The software is great for recording keystrokes and video evidence.

3. Most significantly, testing may help you learn something that you, your team, and your client never really considered before. 
Distance can never be underestimated. One of the best things I ever learned from a senior designer that I worked with was the importance of understanding your relationship to the work. If you are too close, you become impervious to change and less open to suggestion from those with key input. If you are overloaded with work, you can, at times, move too far away from the project and lose a grip on the details. I think that usability tests help with focus and framing and allow us as designers and developers to get back into an objective comfort zone– an appropriate “depth of engagement.”

Most of these musings can be found on a variety of sites and are explained much better by those with much more experience. I will leave you with a few links if you should choose to read more.

This is the first book you should read on usability. Clear. Simple. Amazing. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. A great book on usability for those just getting started that need a quick primer and step by step guide.

Understanding Heuristic Evaluation is key for most of us because we most likely can’t afford a full study (and focus groups are challenging conceptually because we usually use interactive experiences one at a time.)

These reports from the Nielsen Norman Group look solid, too.

links for 2009-10-20

• Reducing CPU usage in Adobe AIR | Adobe Developer Connection
  A thorough and very insightful article to help you reduce CPU usage in your AIR apps.
  (tags: AIR adobe flex performance cpu)