Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Author: Mark Riggan

  • Try our simple hack for choosing accessible brand colors.

    Color – it’s one of the most expressive, subjective elements in life. Color surrounds us everywhere we go and shares a powerful connection with our emotions. And yet ironically — most of us are too blind to see just how lucky we are to have the ability to see in color. A lot of people today cannot see as many — or in some cases, any — colors like the rest of us.

    It’s no surprise that our world is changing rapidly and becoming more dependent on technology. Digital experiences, such as browsing websites or applications, has become critical to our daily lives. When designing these experiences, it can be easy to overlook color accessibility.

    Recently, I was asked about my design process and how I go about inclusivity – in particular with color accessibility. I realized how many people were not aware of accessible design.

    So, let’s talk about color accessibility and how to go about tackling these challenges in your own digital experiences.

    Why is accessibility so important?

    Digital experiences can be expressive to everyone, regardless of color deficiencies. As creative professionals, we have the power to make the lives of those affected better — to have a sense of belonging. It starts with planning and designing for accessibility. It involves crafting experiences for all people, including those of us with visual, speech, auditory, physical, or cognitive disabilities. Let’s create a web we’re all proud of: an inclusive web made for and consumable by all people.

    Color accessibility is important because it enables people with visual impairments or color vision deficiencies to interact with digital experiences in the same way as their non-visually-impaired counterparts.

    [pull_quote]If you have to squint at any point in a website or web app to read or articulate something, there’s an accessibility problem.[/pull_quote]

    While we often think of visual impairments as long-term or permanent, many of us may experience short-term visual impairments. Have you ever had the sun glare into your eyes or your monitor when trying to browse the web or use an app? Ever forget your glasses or contacts? What about trying to read those digital billboards from a distance? Even those with the sharpest vision – corrected or not – will have trouble reading or comprehending your brand at some point.

    Still not convinced? In 2017, The World Health Organization estimated that roughly 217 million people live with some form of moderate to severe vision impairment. Ouch. That statistic alone is reason enough to not only consider — but mandate — design for accessibility.

    Related: Get a Free Website Accessibility Audit

    Apart from being an ethical best practice, there are also potential legal implications for not complying with regulatory requirements around accessibility. Did you know: In 2017, plaintiffs filed at least 814 federal lawsuits about allegedly inaccessible websites, including several class actions.

    Related: A Lack of Accessibility Puts Beyonce’s Website in the Spotlight

    Designing digital experiences with color accessibility in mind can also have a positive economic impact on a brand by increasing its user base and conversion rate. Similar to poor usability, poor accessibility can drive up abandonment rates, which can lead to lost revenue and ultimately lost brand value. Making sure a brand uses colors that are strong in contrast will only help improve on this economic impact.

    What makes a color palette accessible?

    Digital experiences should follow the guidelines outlined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to be accessible. Color accessibility is required for Level AA and Level AAA.

    Level AA

    For digital experiences that must comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the following are the bare minimum requirements for color contrast:

    • Minimum 4.5:1 for normal text
    • Minimum 3:1 for large text, graphics, and UI components (e.g. input borders)

    Level AAA

    For digital experiences that must comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AAA, the following are the bare minimum requirements for color contrast:

    • Minimum 7:1 for normal text
    • Minimum 4.5:1 for large text, graphics, and UI components (e.g. input borders)

    Note — Large text refers to a minimum of 24px or 19px bold.

    Ensuring your designs are color accessible doesn’t have to be difficult.

    There are two types of testing for color accessibility: quantitative and qualitative. The best way to ensure your designs are accessible is to test with actual people! If someone cannot use or read your product, then there’s likely a contrast issue. Qualitative testing can be time-consuming and costly.

    For inexpensive testing, there are color contrast tools you can use online. These tools measure the contrast ratio between a foreground color and background color. The higher the ratio, the more likely a person can distinguish it.

    Here’s a typical scenario I go through all the time when designing digital experiences, such as websites or web applications:

    1. The customer provides me with their branding colors.
    2. I take these colors and run them through a color contrast tool to see what combinations I can use (according to the WCAG). I’ll also check brand colors against commonly-used black and white.
    3. When colors fail to meet the requirements, I start nudging the color’s lightness to the closest value that passes.
    4. Rinse and repeat

    Does this sound familiar? The color palette I am given may not be the same palette I recommend. As you can imagine, it’s a difficult conversation to have with a customer that they cannot use their colors the way they want.

    I’ll admit that finding elegant color combinations for Level AAA is pretty tough, but for standard body text, I almost always try to get a combination that works for that level of compliance. It’s just a better experience to have a strong contrast ratio for dense content.

    ColorShark has a beautiful, intuitive interface for finding accessible colors.

    Single color contrast tool to rule them all.

    To help creative professionals be better equipped, there are a lot of tools out there, such as Colorable and ColorSafe. While these tools are great at doing a simple comparison between colors, I have to manually tweak combinations that do not pass compliance. To help automate this, I designed and developed a color contrast tool, called ColorShark. I wanted ColorShark to provide people with the ability to not only provide real-time visual indicators of color combinations, their respective contrast ratios, and adjustment sliders to hue, saturation, and lightness, but also automatically detect and suggest the closest compliant colors – if your combination is not accessible.

    Going back to that typical scenario, using a tool like ColorShark saves me time and budget in getting an accessible color palette for a customer and their brand. Currently, I haven’t found another tool that can provide that sense of speed and exploration.

    Let’s build an accessible web.

    Don’t take the ability to see color for granted. As part of inclusive design, creative professionals must promote best practices to make sure people – regardless of color deficiencies – can use websites and web applications.

    Tools like ColorShark can drastically improve your exposure to color accessibility and give you the means of expanding your audience. You’ll also feel better that you’re being more inclusive!

    Need help with color accessibility?
    Web Accessibility Services

    We designed and built ColorShark. Got an idea for a web app you’d like to make? Let’s work together.
    Application Development Services

  • Building Brand Credibility With Visual Design

    Building Brand Credibility With Visual Design

    Think about a brand you experienced in the past that made you feel happy. It could be a one-time thing, or maybe it’s a brand you’ve interacted with frequently. Think about the things that made you feel this way, like delightful products, friendly customer service, or honest communication. Brands can have a powerful impact on people’s lives and emotions, and it’s safe to say that they don’t go in hoping for a substandard experience.

    Similar to a walking inside a store, your website or application is one of many gateways for your audience to engage with your brand. How do you think your audience feels about your brand right now?

    Branding demands commitment. It demands a commitment to connect with people and stir their emotions. It demands a commitment to imagination. Many brands are only given one shot to engage people. Regardless of what you believe, people will quickly evaluate you and your brand when looking at your website or application.

    The care you put into your website and brand reflect the attention you put into your product and services. Consider this: if your content is valuable, someone might assume you believe in clear communication, honesty, and care for customers. If your content is wasteful, contains broken links, or is surrounded by confusing navigation, someone might assume you lack a commitment to quality. Don’t do the latter.

    Establishing and growing a brand—including a website or application —takes careful craftsmanship, commitment, and dedication. Brands are organic in nature, so they need to be cared for over time or they’ll eventually die off. The way in which you approach branding can allow you to speak volumes about your priorities, culture, trustworthiness, and level of expertise.

    Nike—first and foremost—promotes beauty in their products to build brand credibility.

    Is Visual Appeal Enough to Create a Trustworthy Brand?

    Are there any intrinsic biases that we have as a species that prevent us from making calculated and good decisions? Yes, there are. Mainly beauty.

    Beauty can influence whether we decide to walk into a store in person or explore deeper into a store online. It’s quite fascinating to observe how our behaviors and inclinations translate between offline and online existences.

    As aesthetically-oriented humans, we are psychologically hardwired to trust beautiful people. In fact, research conducted by the University of Melbourne found that visually attractive websites or applications were perceived as more trustworthy than those that were unattractive.

    Credibility begins with aesthetics. Whether or not a website or application has credible content, a beautiful user interface can give people the impression that the brand pays attention to detail and quality.

    If your organization does not value design at its core, your brand—and your organization—will inevitably fail.

    However, visual appeal alone isn’t enough to make your brand trustworthy. Beauty is only skin deep, right? The largest source of frustration from people on the web is the inability to find the right information. What’s important here is that your website or application should not only have a professional appearance, but also should have both logical structure and friendly navigation.

    Connecting Brand Value to Real People

    Pretty website or application—check. Logical structure—check. Friendly navigation—check. Valuable content—uh oh! Ultimately people will still struggle to get what they came for if your content isn’t written properly and adds value.

    Common Reasons Your Content Fails:

    • It’s too vague, complex, or full of jargon.
    • It’s either too shallow or too full of meaningless words.
    • It’s incorrect, outdated, or unverified.
    • It’s simply boring.
    • Timing is off: it’s not customized to a user’s journey.

    Even if you have information perfectly aligned the way your audience wants it, timing can also determine a content’s value. Providing the right amount of information at the right time is the key. A solid content strategy can help your brand find the right balance, presenting users with highly relevant information depending on their pain points.

    Characteristics of Effective Content:

    • Speaks to the human reader.
    • Tells the reader what they need to know, when they need to know it.
    • Reduces confusion through consistent, concise wording.
    • Provides value and freshness.

    Additionally, where appropriate, effective content shows personality, telling the audience that the brand has the capacity to truly appreciate what matters the most to people.

    Simple & Effective Ways to Build Brand Credibility

    With passion and attention to detail, you can design a website or application that expresses your brand while building credibility. Let’s go over a few of the commonly-used, proven design principles that can help build that brand credibility.

    Design “with people”—not “for people”

    It’s important to understand your audience and what their objectives are so that you can connect with them. Are they here to perform an action? Soak up information? Interact with a particular process? Rather than making risky assumptions, design alongside your audience to meet their needs. It’s not only good practice to be more inclusive with them, but it will also add more credibility to your brand if they feel like they are being heard.

    I believe as creative professionals, it’s not only important for us to run designs through tests to get a quantitative measure, but also to test qualitatively with humans who will actually use the end-product.

    Provide Clear Navigation

    Whether it’s a website or an application, navigation is one of the critical ways to allow your audience to discover your brand’s products, services, and information they seek. Every action a person takes with your brand has risk.
    Your audience may be saying:

    • Is what I’m looking for here? No, wait… there? Umm…
    • How does this work? Ohh… is this clickable?
    • Where am I at? Ugh, forget it – I’ll google it.

    Is your audience willing to take a risk and explore deeper into your brand to find value, or will they become frustrated and leave? Is your brand willing to take a chance on that? Good labeling practices can alleviate those risks.

    Everything should be organized and labeled in a meaningful way that makes the most sense to your audience. Stick with conventions and do not get overly creative, unless you want to risk hindering brand exploration and reduce brand confidence.

    Don’t Sacrifice Usability for SEO

    Believe me, the last thing you want to do is write your content in such a way that’s only meant for a robot—e.g. Google—to read. Search engines are great at understanding the type of information you have, however, they cannot decide whether your brand is worth buying into. Only people can decide that.

    Focus on a people-first content strategy and allow your brand to speak naturally to your audience. Search engine optimization (SEO) should not dictate your message. Instead, use keyword research to see what topics your audience is interested in, and hold off on optimization until this human-centric content has been written.

    Present Information at the Appropriate Time

    It’s important to guide your audience through every step of their journey efficiently. Throughout their journeys, information needs will vary. For example, a user may begin by trying to see if you offer the services they need. On another visit, they may be interested in learning about your company’s processes. If you deliver all of this information at once, the user could be overwhelmed or discouraged with difficulty finding the information they need. On the other hand, not showing enough information can make you look like you’re hiding something.

    As part of your content strategy, consider the context you’re presenting to your audience and disperse your information accordingly.

    Delight Your Users Whenever Possible

    Delighting your audience may vary depending on the industry you are in, but make no mistake, great design can and should delight all the same. Whether it’s the subtle animation of a button, the unique style of a photo filter, or the clever integration of a Konami code easter egg— plan something different to surprise your audience with.

    Often times, it’s the little things that make the most impact, while showing there are real people behind your brand. We’re all human—so let your brand connect with us.

    Final Thoughts on Branding

    Branding is about creating a difference, adding value, and connecting with people. Life’s purpose is the same thing, right? What story will your life—your brand—tell people next.

    This article was originally posted by Mark Riggan on Medium. 

  • Building a Custom Application to Reimagine Digital Strategy

    Building a Custom Application to Reimagine Digital Strategy

    One of the most influential life lessons that I follow every day is about planning—which teaches us that if you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail. You may wonder if planning really is that important. Uh, yes—yes, it is.

    As part of a digital agency, planning is one of the core phases of every project we engage with. The ability for us to strategize as a team really feels like a game of chess. Every piece has a purpose, and if you plan well in advance, you just might make it out alive.

    When it came to planning, communicating, and documenting data architecture, I noticed that our organization had some inefficiencies— repeated issues that chewed up both time and money. This past year, I sought out to design and develop a tool that would build in efficiency into our process—and look good while doing it too.

    Digital strategy has always been about connecting people to information through well-informed navigation.

    For most projects we’ve engaged with, there had been some level of documentation around research and data architecture. Who is this product for? What information are they seeking? How will they get to this information? Digital strategy boils down into a few primary areas.

    3 Primary Areas of Digital Strategy

    1. People

    Until the robot apocalypse occurs (it’s only a matter of time), the products we design and develop are to be consumed and engaged by people. Whether we put together assumptions on personas or we conduct user research and interview actual people, it’s important that we document the characteristics of these people to help us understand them better. The better we understand, the more accurate our recommendations become. Empathy is a powerful emotion that we can use to connect with people.

    2. Information

    Information can come in many forms, such as products or services. They can also tell stories and evoke emotions. We use content strategy methodologies to define and organize content that audiences seek. More specifically, content models help document information with a brand and define the relationship between them. These relationships help shape data types, taxonomies, and templates.

    3. Navigation

    The bridge that connects people to the information they desire is through well-informed navigation. Even the most desired information becomes useless if people cannot ultimately find it. We frame our content and navigation around sitemaps. Sitemaps help us show connections between our content, giving us a bird’s eye view of the product. Keeping our content well-organized allows us to provide better design solutions.

    Identifying Documentation Pain Points

    After countless hours of reviewing documentation across various projects, I was able to audit how we were documenting and setting ourselves up for digital success. Spoiler alert—it wasn’t pretty.

    Each project was almost entirely different in their approach to documentation, yet they all shared similar problems, like:

    • Too many documents
    • Too many file formats
    • Too many locations
    • Inconsistent branding
    • Proprietary software or hardware

    Needless to say, our documentation was fragmented and ineffective.

    Challenges With Visual Sitemaps

    One document that we typically produce in projects is called a visual sitemap. These are graphical representations of a website or applications content, and the connections made between them. What makes them unique is how we apply illustrations that best represent the kind of information each page may have. Visual sitemaps can give us a glimpse into user journeys, template architecture, and so much more. Often times, we print these sitemaps on a wide-format printer, which gives us a tangible poster for the team to review collectively.

    As you can imagine, large-scale sites or apps can make for some impressively large visual sitemaps. When producing these sitemaps projects can end up wasting lots of paper and ink – especially when you account for multiple revisions.

    Challenges With Standard Tools

    Using Google Drive as our repository for documentation was ineffective due to cultural diversity in technology and inadequate governance policies. For example, documents were being created in various applications based on personal preferences, projects were not being shared properly to team members, and nothing appeared to be brand-compliant. Drive was supposed to be the answer for us, but wasn’t measuring up to our standards.

    We also tried making visual sitemaps in Omnigraffle. Personally, I love Omnigraffle for making diagrams. However, if the designers weren’t available to make edits, the rest of our team could not help; Omnigraffle requires both macOS and a paid license.

    To make matters worse, additional methods for documentation got out of hand. Some details were posted as activity notes in our project management platform (which almost always gets lost), while others were simply emailed between one another. As if that weren’t bad enough, we’ve ran across files that were stored on people’s desktops—or worse—in their trash bin.

    If you were not part of the project team from the very beginning, getting involved became almost impossible. The landscape of how we documented and stored our plan of actions was chaotic. When you can’t effectively communicate with your team or even comprehend what is going on, you lose efficiency.

    Designing a New, Inclusive Application

    It was time to design an inclusive, customized app to promote improved team communication and strategy. I wanted to design and build an application that:

    • Centralized documentation into a single location
    • Allowed access cross-platform
    • Automatically applied branding to all documentation
    • Reduced dependency on 3rd party software
    • Eliminated ink and paper waste

    By creating an app to address the issues, my goals were:

    • Reduce Costs: Remove time-intensive inefficiencies, and uncover problems quickly with real-time metrics.
    • Increase Product Quality: Allow teams to spend more time making awesome products.

    What if we could use technology to help us make better decisions and improve planning? By allowing the application to display real-time metrics— like page counts, page title lengths, and persona distribution—we could make well-informed decisions around the data architecture.

    I branded and called the app Sapphire—for its clarity, strength, and beauty around providing value to us. Sapphire’s core value is about being a real-time data architecture planning tool that can help us strategize digital products at any scale.

    Benefits of Sapphire

    More Empathy for People in Design

    Sapphire makes it very easy to define and explore personas for projects. Every project can create as many personas as necessary, with just the right amount of information at a glance. It’s incredibly easy for team members—especially designers—to empathize with a person’s goals or frustrations.

    Better Organization for Content

    Creating well-organized architecture around a project became effortless. Each project can have content broken into data types, taxonomies, templates, and pages. In fact, you can also create relationships between pages and people. This allows us to understand who our target audience truly is.

    Clear Perspective on Navigation

    In the past, we had to document the same information multiple times. The best part about Sapphire is that both branding and visual sitemaps are automatically generated in real-time. If I could get people to focus on the content and nothing else, Sapphire could handle the rest. Visual sitemaps are fully interactive, allowing anyone to explore pages and their architecture.

    Inside the Single-Page App 

    In order to provide such a rich experience, I wanted to ensure Sapphire was using the latest technology. With performance being an important factor, I needed to choose technologies that were built for speed.

    Sapphire was built on React—as both a progressive web app and single page app—and used Google Firebase for its NoSQL real-time database. Users were authenticated securely using Google Domain Authentication and was securely hosted through Google Cloud Hosting. All of these technologies were relatively easy to learn and integrate.

    To power our intuitive sitemaps, I opted for jsPlumb framework over something like D3—primarily due to time constraints and the amount of effort required. I’ll admit, jsPlumb integrated extremely well with React and allowed me the power to customize as I needed to match the desired functionality.

    Final Thoughts on Digital Strategy

    Documentation allows teams to communicate and work together on projects of any scale, and digital strategy around architecture plays an important role in documenting how products should work. When we ignore documentation—or simply allow it to deteriorate over time— we are hurting our ability to communicate effectively.

    By recognizing these problems, I was able to design, develop, and deploy a tool that helps us reimagine digital strategy and how we document data architecture. When we can work better together as a team, anything is possible. Make something people love!

    This article was originally posted by Mark Riggan on Medium. 

  • The Future is Clearer: How to Display High Resolution Textures on Apple’s Retina Display

    Yesterday here at Atlantic BT, we hosted the first meeting for our new local design community meetup group, Crop. Our first event was about discussing ways to design and develop interesting textures.

    For our Tips and Tricks segment, I gave a presentation on how to properly use your textures and display them on Apple’s Retina Display supported devices. Know how to properly setup your documents and use CSS3 media queries to achieve crystal-clear results!

    Presentation on Slideshare

  • How the iPad Could Impact Mass Media

    Apple iPad (source: Apple)
    Apple iPad (source: Apple)

    It may not have the best name, but the Apple iPad has generated some intense buzz lately. Mobile Internet traffic on the iPad has surged so fast that it has already jumped ahead of Blackberry and Android in Internet usage (source: Net Applications). Games, apps, and even books are being bought at a rapid pace. I have had my iPad for awhile now and have had the chance to mess with all of its features. It’s hard not to like the iPad. By no means is it perfect, but if we take a step back and look at it from a global perspective, the iPad could truly impact mass media as we know it.

    Everything is going digital these days. Thanks to devices such as Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, books and publications are the latest to convert to a digital format. I will briefly explain how the iPad handles media from five different industries and more importantly, how it may potentially impact these industries for the future.

    Music

    Buying music on the iPad is no different from buying it on an iPhone, or even a personal computer for that matter. Thanks to the iPad’s larger screen, Apple is able to closely resemble the shopping experience that you would typically find on a desktop computer. More screen means more room to advertise and promote featured items.

    Listening to music on the iPad is enjoyable with its ample quality speakers. Of course, don’t expect the iPad to replace your surround sound system anytime soon.

    Verdict: The iPad’s storage limitations are a big downer, but the quality of the sound and the usability of the iTunes music store is a breeze with its larger screen. I wouldn’t expect the music industry to alter itself because of the iPad anytime soon.

    Impact: Moderately Low

    TV, Film & Video

    Netflix streams videos to the iPad
    Netflix streams videos to the iPad

    I have to admit, I am a big fan of the DVR. However, there are times when I either forget or cannot record my shows and watch them whenever I feel like it. That is why I have been addicted to going online to watch them. Most networks publish their recent episodes within 24 hours, available in high resolution. The iPad certainly takes advantage of streaming your favorite TV and film videos. Apps such as Netflix and ABC make watching your favorites a breeze.

    Browsing and purchasing videos through iTunes is just as easy as buying music on the iPad. But I’m putting my bets on free streaming video to be successful with the iPad.

    Verdict: The high resolution screen and ample audio quality make watching videos enjoyable. The lack of Flash certainly restricts the amount of content available to users, but I think that limitation is will soon be non-existent. Expect the TV and Film industries to provide greater access and more intuitive, engaging ways for users to watch their content.

    Impact: Extremely High

    Web

    One of the most popular features of the iPhone is the ability to browse the web with a similar experience to a desktop computer. The problem the iPhone had was that websites would get scaled down beyond the point of legibility. This not only used more bandwidth but also frustrated users. Websites either got optimized for the iPhone or ignored the problem entirely.

    Nike optimized their flash-heavy site to HTML5 standards, specifically for the iPad
    Nike optimized their flash-heavy site to HTML5 standards, specifically for the iPad (source: Apple)

    The iPad’s larger screen reduces the amount of scaling that websites had to endure. This nearly eliminated the legibility issue that the iPhone had with most websites. Apple has made it clear that they will not allow support for Flash on the iPad. While there are plenty of websites that use flash, they will need to find alternatives if they want their content to display on the iPad.

    The real question that comes to my mind is at what point do we [as web designers] allow the device to render websites as it sees fit? There were a great number of websites that were optimized for the iPhone. But should we ignore optimization since the iPad has that larger screen? Or should we take the opportunity and make it just as unique as every other device? Sites that have taken the time to get up to current standards for the iPad have been generously promoted on Apple’s website.

    Consumers who are used to browsing the web on the iPhone will find no trouble doing the same on the iPad. For newbies, I think they will.

    Verdict: The larger screen is greatly appreciated when browsing the web. Some will argue over the lack of Flash, but I find it outdated, too restricted, and sluggish to be beneficial on mobile devices. Fluid websites really take advantage of the two orientations that the iPad has available. The web industry will certainly have an opportunity – and in my recommendation should act upon – to provide a richer experience on the web with technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript.

    Impact: Moderately High

    Books

    Thanks to the Amazon Kindle, e-book readers have been populating the markets as of late. I can carry around all of my books in a single device. What the iPad does that other e-book readers don’t is display books in color. It will only be a matter of time before other devices like the Kindle and Nook release a color version, but for the time being the iPad shows books in their true form.

    Some may argue that the iPad will cause eye strain due to the fact that it is backlit, whereas the Kindle and other e-book readers use e-ink technology. Other than the usual amount of eye strain I get from looking at monitors all day, I haven’t experienced any additional discomfort due to reading books on the iPad.

    The iBook store is a breeze to find books and even download samples. For the most part, you’ll find discounts on e-books compared to their printed version. The iPad allows the books to be read in two orientations: 1 page at a time (portrait) or 2 page spread (landscape).

    Book publishers will have a larger market to target to and they should be able to take some risks due to the lower costs associated with digital books distribution.

    Verdict: The iBook store is visually impressive and I believe will be a big hit for those who read popular books. The current library is large, but not large enough. Once other publishers jump onboard (and trust me, they will), I think reading books on the iPad will become second nature. No more paperbacks! This could potentially be huge for higher education.

    Impact: Moderately High

    Magazines & Newspapers

    Wired Magazine will set the bar for e-publications
    Wired Magazine will set the standard for e-publications (source: Wired.com)

    I will admit, one of the reasons that I decided to even look at the iPad in the store was the demo that Wired Magazine posted online awhile back on their app for the iPad. They took their printed publication (which is amazing in itself) and created an iPad app that not only showed their publications, but showed them in an interactive way that will, in my opinion, revolutionize digital publications.

    Newspapers, such as The New York Times and USA Today, have shown that the news can be interesting and interactive! The large screen size of the iPad allows publications to use a more traditional print layout, but at the same time give it interactivity.

    Verdict: Depending on how publishers approach the iPad will determine if this media is ready to go digital mainstream. Some of the magazines are charging premiums for their digital editions, which may sway people elsewhere. Early apps show promise of what could be to come in the future. It may be too early to tell, but there is a huge demand for this media to go digital.

    Impact: Extremely High

    So What Do You Think?

    Okay, so I’ve given my thoughts on how the iPad could potentially impact mass media. What are your thoughts on the iPad? Is it setting the standard for digital media? I’d like to hear from you.

  • I Need Your Opinion! Social Validation Applied to E-Commerce

    No matter what we may think of the situation, we are (for the most part) all conformists. As a whole, we act upon what others do. We use social validation as a means to fit in with others around us. You can see evidence of this in areas of education, business, and yes…even the Internet.

    Why Won’t You Help Me?

    Great example of the Bystander Effect (source: carbonsmart)
    Great example of the Bystander Effect (source: carbonsmart)

    A couple of teenagers start a fight in the hallway at school. We’ve all been in this situation, whether we were a part of the fight or we were witness to it. How many people do you think will intervene and break up the fight? Very few. More often than not, others willl group around and witness the fight unfold before their eyes. We’ve all been there at some point in our life.

    The Bystander Effect refers to the phenomenon in which the likelihood of someone acting upon an emergency situation will decrease if the number of people around the situation is larger.

    (Source: psychology.about.com)

    Videos are posted all over the Internet about experiments and even real-life situations caught on camera where people simply ignore distress calls. At first, you probably would laugh at the situation but in reality it is pretty sad how we are hardwired to react a certain way based on our surroundings.

    Why do we ignore? Put simply, it’s a matter of trying to fit in with the crowd. If everybody else is just watching and not doing anything, therefore, I should act like them to fit in with the social norm.

    A study on the bystander effect, Markey (2000) tested how it played a role in getting help online through a chat service. Markey had three primary goals:

    1. Would gender determine the response time in receiving help?
    2. Does the amount of people needing help affect the response time?
    3. By asking help from a specific individual, would it decrease the response time?

    The results validated the bystander effect by proving all three questions. Gender did not have a distinctive effect on response time. The larger the number of people in the chat room increased the response time per person. By asking someone specific for help, the response time was rapidly reduced (as if nobody else were in the chat room).

    Only 5 to 10 percent of the population engages in behavior contrary to the social norm. Because we want to fit into these groups and maintain our membership with them, we conform our actions to the norm.

    The bystander effect is a great way to show the power of social validation. We tend to do what we think is best to fit in with the crowd, regardless of the situation.

    Online Shopping

    stars

    Shopping online is becoming more popular each and every day. It’s more convenient, cost less, and with websites becoming more focused on usability, it is much easier! The real challenge is the actual shopping itself.

    Questions start to come into play, such as:

    • What do I buy?
    • What color?
    • Which model?
    • Will my friends like me if I wear this shirt?

    Online shopping is a great example of how powerful social validation can be. Websites that allow user feedback or shopping statistics can provide a great experience for both the business as well as potential customers. It is used as a tool to reinforce their purchase.

    People look to others to decide what they should do. This is especially true when they are uncertain about whether or what action to take.

    (Source: Neuro Web Design (2009), Dr. Susan Weinschenk)

    Make It All About The User

    So what are some ways to enhance the user experience for online shoppers? Here are just a few that come to my mind and should be relatively easy to implement:

    • Product ratings
      These are typically a 5-star scale, ranging from 1- Not Good to 5- Highly Recommend. They are straight to the point and are based on the collective average.
    • Product reviews
      Whether they are from professionals or from actual customers, product reviews can provide a more qualitative analysis of a product. Users will listen more to those who appear to be in a similar lifestyle as them. Therefore, product reviews that relate more closely to the user’s use of the product will have a better effect.
    • Similar products
      When looking at products on a site, it can be beneficial to see a list of similar products. In a store environment, you would expect similar products to be grouped and placed in the same location. Why not mimic that for the web? By doing so, you allow your users to seamlessly flow between similar products without having to backtrack or go through the search process all over again.

    Hey Which Game Would You Buy?

    Highly rated game and was highly well sold worldwide (source: RockStar)
    Highly rated game and was highly well sold worldwide (source: RockStar)

    Let’s take video games for example. I personally go out and buy the latest and greatest video games on the market. I have my sources online that I go to daily and read up about the upcoming games. This is my strategy for figuring out whether my investments will be worth it in the end. After all, spending $60 per game adds up rather quickly. So when these games get reviewed (most get a review within a few days of its release date), I’ll read it and decide whether the game is going to provide me with an amazing experience. I am putting my trust on my sources. If my sources unanimously say that a game is amazing (i.e. Grand Theft Auto 4), then I will go out and buy that game. About 9 times out of 10 my sources are correct. I like those odds. In today’s economy, every dollar counts and I want to ensure that I am making a great purchase – every time.

    My strategy not only works for games, but it works for other big purchases, like a TV, surround sound, car, etc. People rely on others’ opinions in order to make an informed decision.

    Your Opinion Matters

    amazonitunes

    Amazon’s products have two very valuable pieces of information on their website: user ratings and similar products. As an online shopper, I find this very helpful when making a decision in buying a product. Most of the time, I’ll focus on why a product is necessarily bad rather than why it is good. It could be the functionality, the photo of the product was misleading, or the materials were below expectations. I like to do my research beforehand when buying stuff online. I’ll check professional reviews, read the product description on the manufacturer’s website, etc. I’ll know beforehand why it appears to be awesome. By reading what users rated and said about the product, I can filter out and find information that I want to know: reasons why I should not buy this product. Of course it is up to me to determine the validity of this information.

    How many times have we gone to the iTunes Store with the intention of buying just one or two songs and ended up downloading entire albums? Sounds good to Apple, but not so helpful on the wallet. Happens to me all the time. Not only is iTunes addicting to media lovers, but Apple now uses meta information in which it uses to suggest similar media (music, apps, videos, etc.) that pertain to your collection. This information organizes their media by tags, such as most downloaded, highest rated, similar genres, etc. Having this information at your fingertips is helpful – or hurtful, depending on which way you look at it.

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    Time to Speak Out!

    Social validation is hard at work in many ways. Ever feel pressured to buy something because everybody else has one? Did you grow up trying to be like one of the popular kids in school?

    This topic doesn’t end here today. I open it up to you guys. Got any stories about how social validation has helped or hurt you in a given situation?