THE END

As people always say: “All good things must come to an end”.

Well, I don’t know if this fits for my blog, that is something you need to decide for yourself.

All I can say is that I’ve tried to show you some interesting stuff I’ve came upon during the last semester of the Master “Business Communication and Digital Media”. I hope you found it at least a little interesting and fun to read.

In any case, I’m a bit relieved that it’s over.

Writing blogs isn’t that boring or stupid, but when you are obliged to write a post (almost) every week, it can feel a bit compulsory and frustrating.  

The only thing that remains me to say:

Thank you and goodbye!

Tired of waiting at a bus stop?

Understandable
Waiting at a bus stop is a boring and useless time period for people. Travelers often try to find something to do during this time period, but a bus stop does not offer them any potential activities. A bus stop can be defined as a simple and basic area. In order to pass time many people read a book, listen to music, call a friend or play a game with their mobile phone (See how all of these are individual activities).

These annoying moments have come to an end!
Group 2 from the User Interface Design proudly presents:

"The Buzzle"

“The Buzzle” can be described as an interactive bus stop “abri”, which people can use to play touchscreen puzzle games. Furthermore, cities are competing against each other, so the main goal of people at one bus stop is to beat the people who are playing at a bus stop in another city. Statistics of this “battle” are shown on a special Facebook page.

NOT CLEAR YET?

WHY WILL IT WORK?

The main reason why this concept will work is the simplicity and accessibility of the design. It can be assumed that everybody at a bus stop knows what a puzzle is. Furthermore, the interface works with a big touchscreen, making the experience of the puzzle a new, realistic and intuitive one. 

How can you gather realistic emotions?

To learn more about the process of investigating real emotions, Martijn Goudbeek has been interviewed.

Martijn Goudbeek  is a staff member of the Department of Communication and Information Sciences at Tilburg University. He is specialized in the production and perception of emotion, nonverbal communication (voice and gesture), speech perception, and the production of referring expressions and therefore, the appropriate person to ask the question: "How can you gather realistic emotions?"

What type of music to use when in a financial crisis?

Charity commercials
Everybody knows them and I bet you all remember at least one commercial in particular.
But what makes these commercials so memorable and more important, which types of commercials generate the best donate intention?

This last question will be (partially) answered in this post.
With the team of the course 'Onderzoekspracticum BDM' a studie was conducted in order to gather more insight in the relationship between people's donate intention and the type of backgroundmusic a charity commercial uses. In this studie we showed two groups of people 30 commercials. One group experienced the commercials with a combination of happy and none backgroundmusic and the other group experienced the commercials with a combination of sad and none backgroundmusic (the commercials that were shown without backgroundmusis functioned as a controlling variable). After each commercial people were given a fictional €10,- and were asked to indicate how much of this amount they wanted to donate to the charity.

So, what type of backgroundmusic do you need when you are finding yourself in a financial crisis?

It doesn't really matter!
The studie showed no significant difference between the amount of money people spended in the happy condition and the amount of money they spended in the sad condition.

Disappointed?

Don't be! After all, this studie provides enough posibillities for further research about this subject.
For example, try to allign the shown images in such manner, that they are not influencing people's emotion. In other words, try to exclude the infcluence of the images on the emotion and behaviour of your subjects.
Furthermore, think of a way to let your subjects think they are actually donating their own money, or at least real money instead of fictional money.

Who knowes, you might find a different answer to the title!

User research... The Movie!

As promised, the movieclip of our user research phase!
Unfortunately, the sound doesn't work via Youtube, but I still want to show it to you:

Importance of user research

Before I'm going to show you some sketches of our User Interface Design project, I want to underline the importance of a good user research phase for an interface/design.

When people start designing an interface without exactly knowing who their target audience is and what this target audience needs and want and moreover what their target audience definitely NOT needs and NOT wants, the results will (99 out of a 100 times) be poor. In one of my earlier blog posts I have showed you multiple of these poor designs, which all perfectly illustrate my point.

The user research phase of our UID project existed out of several interviews and contextual inquiry in which we observed people while they were waiting on the bus. The results of this user research confirmed our earlier ideas about 'waiting on the bus', and are essential for the further phases of our UID project.

We even made a short movieclip of this, which I will try to post in a couple of days!

So remember, when you are designing something (practically everything) always keep an eye on the users of your design before you end up the same way as the designs I've showed you before!

Back to the future!

Today I'm taking you on a journey into the future, as you all might know technology becomes more and more important in our everyday life. For example, what is your main activity while you are waiting on the bus or train? I bet you will be playing with your mobile phone or listening to music on your mp3 in such a scenario.

So, we become more and more depended on modern technologies, is this a good or a bad thing? I say it is good, new upcoming technology’s will make our life and communication better, easier and more efficient.

You don’t agree? See for yourself!

In my example I mentioned the bus- or train stop not without a reason, a recent research from my User Interface Design group has confirmed the idea that people are often bored while they are waiting on the bus or train. With the help of the aforementioned modern and new technologies we will change the boring time you encounter while waiting at a bus- or train stop into a whole new interactive experience.

Curious?

Wait for my next blog and I will maybe, just maybe show you some sketches or ideas!

The future of buying

With Groupon there's a new giant in town!

Groupon exists for 2 years now and has already turned down a take-over bid from google worth over 5 billion dollars. Easy to say, the company has loads of potential and it is not afraid to remain independent!

So what business is Groupon in?

This next video will explain it in a very basic and clear way:

Experts already predicted that the online market for 'local business advertising' will show major growth in the next years. It is not without a reason that both Facebook and Yahoo already have said they are planning to put lots of effort in this market.

Furthermore, Facebook has already launched their 'Buy With Friends' concept. This concept is now aiming on the games in Facebook in particular, but shows the same collective buying concept as Groupon.

Enough about the market, back to Groupon!

Recently Groupon has been negatively in the news with their Superbowl advertisement.

The ad says 'not all hope is lost', aiming at the situation in Tibet:

Groupon received a lot of negative response to this advertisement and immediately took the ad out of the air and offered their apologies.

Will this affect their business?

I don't expect so, everybody makes mistakes, they have offered their apologies and said they were wrong. Besides that, they have been all over the news lately, which without a doubt has positively influenced the brand awareness of Groupon.

My expectation:

Collective buying is the future when it comes to buying from local businesses!

Lost, television series or ...?

The television series Lost, I assume everybody has heard from this television series to a greater or lesser extent. The series is about a group of people who have survived an airplane crash and find theirselfs on a mysterious tropical island.

At this point you might be thinking to yourself what a group of people on a deserted island have to do with my study Business communication and Digital Media.

The people on the island are engaging themselves in relationships through face-to-face interaction with each other. Which brings me to the point I'm trying to make with this:
When we have a look at several theories concerning relationships through social media, we can group these theories into two perspectives, the 'Lost' perspective and the 'Liberated' perspective.

The 'Lost' perspective states that people do not need social, digital media to engage themselves in a solid relationship, but simply use face-to-face interaction to build up friendships. And furthermore, that face-to-face interaction is the most appropriate manner to build up solid friendships.

On the other hand we find the 'Liberated' perspective which states that social, digital media is well appropriate for building up solid relationships between people and adds a positive contribution to the process of building up friendships.
I think it's ironic that a television series called 'Lost' follows people who are limited in their ways to interact with each other and only have the possibility to interact face-to-face with each other. I don't think a lot of people have ever looked at the name of this series in such manner before and I hope I've shown you a new point of view.

The last thing that remains me to ask you is:

Are you 'Lost', or 'Liberated'?

Relevant literature:
Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer Mediated Communication. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Whose fault is it actually?

Company's often blame you, the consumer, for not knowing how common used products work.

But who's fault is it really? Can they blame you for not knowing which buttons to press and in which order just to adjust the time on your VCR or DVD? Or can they blame you for the fact that you are not able to adjust your tv's volume the first time you try?

I think they can't blame you!

Look at this ordinary tv remote control for example and tell me which purpose the arrows in the cirkle have, I bet you can't if you have not used this remote control before.

But not only digital/modern products encounter many usability problems, you can find poorly designed interfaces anywhere you look. Another example of such interface is the following tap and sink. When you look at the objects that are close by to the tap and the sink they could practically all serve as a button to turn on the tape.

The main point I am trying to make with all this, is to show you that you're not stupid, but the designers were when designing these interfaces! A well designed interface takes the human cognitive systems into account and adapts to its target group in such way, this target group is able to use the interface.

So remember, you're not the idiot, they are!

New, new, new

Since I've never had anything like a blog before this is all prety new to me.
Keeping this blog is part of the assignment of the course Business Information Technology.
Trough this blog I will keep you updated on the most interesting experiences I encouter at my study 'Business communication and digital media' at Tilburg University, together with the progress of my own work at the University.

My goal is to at leat post one message a week, so see you next week for my first message!