This is Mona

Nice work from Nike NL. 

Fantastic rebuttal-esqe piece from Fast Company on shifts in online news consumption. Before I copy and paste highlights, let it be known that the very action I am undertaking, and a good portion of my blog content, fuels blogger Brian Cray’s argument:

Everyday I see more crap clogging my Twitter stream and delicious iGoogle boxes. “Top 10 things widgets for your Web site.” “5,000 ways to do __________ in jQuery.” Well, it all wasn’t crap at one time. At one time it was somebody’s hard original work. But after the 50th article rounding up the same damn thing it’s suddenly crap…Is there hope? Yes. When I see articles by Paddy Donnelly, Dustin Curtis, and others spreading originality I get hopeful.

Fast Company’s rebuttal takeaways, which I am in agreement with as well: 

• But even if you’re a more professional, journalistic blog publishing upwards of 40 stories a day, you’re not gonna be able to produce the type of content that Dustin Curtis produces once every six months.
• Print media usually tries to get the whole story, and present it as completed product on the printed page. They don’t cover it as it moves. Web publishing does, and as a result, it’s far more diffuse.
• And that in itself is a valuable service in the information age: When there’s too much information, it’s valuable to have a (free) source of news and original content, curated for a sensibility that suits your own. 
• Now, this might not seem like an ideal state. But it’s one created by the market. Blog and Web site readerships are skyrocketing. Newspapers and magazines are struggling. More and more people are deciding they’d rather get tidbits of bunches of stories, as they develop, for free—and less and less want a tightly bound, carefully selected group of stories once a month.

Well said, CLIFF KUANG. 

(Via: Fast Company) 

As many people fumble with the dreaded word recession, I personally think that there is much gain to be had as a result of the economic downturn. Let me put this into deeper context. The digital arena, which I classify as a service industry mainly because its success is based on a positive user experience, we all play in has not only emerged as a dominant communications channel, but has evolved from a single to a multiple track platform. The explosive growth in this domain has been realized in part ever since the advent of online community. I don’t mean to be absolute when I say that these movements, if you will, have marked digital in 2008/2009. They have set the stage for the next wave of trends we are currently and soon will be witnessing for digital, such as advanced mobile communications, location based services and citizen journalism. Its a lot to handle for the likes of brands and consumers as they equally try to reconcile some purpose and relevance among the many emerging technologies. Now more than ever companies have to recalibrate to offer compelling value based on understanding user wants.

Design provides much value in this context. There is a strong opportunity to capitalize on the effects of the recession by embracing design across a multitude of functions, all towards igniting innovation and a basis for human centred offerings. There is lots of room for companies and their brands to improve the customer experience. To highlight my point, I was reading an article in Monocle on how a recession can yield positive challenges for the hotels industry. The recession has seen a great halt of hotel projects. In tandem, user desires for an unparalleled experience is unabated. Times like these call for hotel management types and designers to really consider what the customer wants. What’s the difference in the evolved desires between hotel guests and digital consumers currently? Not much. Both are looking for relevance, originality and context. Realize, the intent here is not to isolate my point to the hotel industry per se, but to highlight a universal truth that applies to the digital communications industry.

Where momentum of new technologies is rapid, agencies offering digital capabilities are gradually witnessing clients seeking them out for thought leadership, rather than for production alone. Good move. Clients need to be just as savvy as their consumers when it comes to properly adopting technologies to meet a business objective and user need. If the outcomes of a recession are placing increasing onus on behalf of the clients to get creative with their value proposition, all the better.