Going everywhere!

I came across a great example of guerrilla user research: Alaska Miller and Dan Curtis are going to use JetBlue’s “Jet all you want” pass to visit every JetBlue city. Check out my post on threeminds about it and submit your thoughts.

Filed under: advertizing , advertising, design, experience design, jetblue, user research

The rise of the creative technologists

I just completed a piece over on threeminds about the rise of the creative technologists. Check it out!

This was what had been seething below the surface, this was what had been bothering me about engineering. In light of this, I began to envision how to create a creative technology team. A team that can seamlessly integrate with creative concept teams, design teams, quality teams, clients, and customers. We will need some new skills, a re-prioritization of current skills, and an refactoring of how we work together. The first step down this path for us is a simple rebranding. 

Today, developers at Organic are no longer Engineering. We are Technology. We are masters of our Craft. We are strong. We are conceptual, we are creative, we are the total experience engine that powers the modern agency. We are Technology.

Filed under: advertizing, big thoughts , Code refactoring, Craft, Creative Technology, Technologist, technology

The medium is the message

One of the great piece of feedback I got from my boss (and independantly from our COO) was that while I am close enough to technology and design I am not really in the advertizing and marketing business. Two weeks ago at the Forrester Consumer Forum I cornered the Organic traveling bard of the advertizing industry: Shane. Just Shane. I managed to pick over his almost photographic memory for books that would help ground me in the business. The first book I read on my quest to get closer to the advertizing business was “The medium is the massage” by Marshall McLuhan. O … M … G This book was written in 1967 and sounds like it was written this year. McLuhan’s vision for the future and linkage to the change from a mechanistic society to an information society is still directly relevant. As we move from an information society into a conceptual society, his message still resonates. Why have I not heard of this book before? Why did I not read this in university? Why has this been hidden from me, despite my design reading and exploration of the fields of visualization, visual thinking, creativity, and problem solving? Oh yeah, because none of those things are in advertizing. Some of my favorite quotes (several incredibly apropos of this particualr time and space):

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

The core message from the book can be boiled down into the following:

The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

And of course:

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium / that is, of any extension of ourselves / result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

Get this book. Read this book. Re-read this book imagining yourself (or like me your parents) in 1967. Think about it.

Filed under: advertizing , advertizing, design, future, marketing, mcluhan, medium, message, vision