FEMA and the chart of DISASTER

I really really reaaaaallllly hate when people make completely crappy charts and use them in presentations or even worse on TV or websites. The Federal Emergency Response Agency (FEMA), one would imagine, would be immune to such crapulence, it seems they aren't.

I missed the boat on this one because it was discussed way back in 2005, and I only stumbled across it last night on the presentation zen blog archives, but the FEMA chart above is one of the funnier charts I have ever seen. The informative graphic was featured in their "what we do" section, and it seems that the stages include: response, recovery, mitigation, risk reduction, prevention, preparedness and then.... BACK to disaster, 'cus that's just what the good folks at FEMA do for the people, CREATE DISASTERS.

It is excusable when an 18 year old student comes up with something like this, but such an example of design crapulence from a US government agency is unbelievable!

Jonathan Ive, Apples forgotten saviour

Most people if asked, would put Apples success in recent years down to one man, Steve Jobs. I whole heartedly agree that Steve Jobs has been the driving force behind the computer company’s resurgence from its darker days, however, it would not be fair to over look the contribution of a certain Mr. Jonathan Ive, the chief designer behind so many of Apple’s products.

The London born designer and co founder “Tangerine” a design consultancy, was head hunted by Apple back in 1992 and went about designing computers that he thought would complete the user experience of using an Apple computer. Ive was responsible for the design of the iPod, iMac, Powerbook and the upcoming iPhone, and says that the projects have been developed with the intention of keeping in mind “ease and simplicity”.

A modest man, Ive rarely boasts of his exploits and remains relatively unknown to the general public, however his achievements have been recognised by
Industrial designers society of America – industrial design excellence

1. Design Museum – designer of the year 2002 and 2003


2. The Sunday times - one of Britain's most influential expatriates


3. Macworld – Joining company voted 6th most significant event in Apple history
   

So next time you use ur iPod or an admire the design of an Apple computer, keep in mind the man behind its design, Jonathan Ive.

Election posters

I was getting the 46a into college today and it struck me that there was a truly incredible amount of Election posters up everywhere that my eyes cared to wander, seemingly any street light pole is fair game for pre election advertising, and the political parties have them fairly comprehensively covered in an incredibly short amount of time.

I’m not sure who designs these posters on behalf of the candidates, but I think that they are fundamentally flawed and very ineffective. I think the people in question haven’t asked themselves some pretty simple questions, seeing as this is an advertisement (of a type)

• Who am I selling this idea to?
• How will I convince them to choose my idea over someone Else's?
  

As far as I can see, the people who know the political scene in any meaningful way, on the most part, know who they are going to vote for and why, and (I acknowledge they can also act as a reminder) they are not going to be swung by the amount of times they see Joe Bloggs’ smiley face on a poster stuck up on a pole on the way to work. So therefore the people who might be swayed by these posters are the uninformed or undecided voters.

Once that is established you need to decide what method would be best to swing these people to choose your candidate/idea over anyone elses. The current approach seems to be to get the candidates face to fill the poster and put his/her name beside it…great.
I think that a much more effective approach would be to state what that person/party is offering to you the voter, that the others aren’t. Even a few simple sentences “introduce mandatory duck washing” or whatever it may be…just something….anything…Information.

Comparing this to an everyday product that is advertised to perfection is Dell computers, Dell know who they are trying to advertise to (on tv: the “average home user”) and try to convince you by telling you exactly what they offer for your purchase(vote). This is a much more effective way of swinging uninformed/undecided buyers than simply putting an ad on the TV that says “BUY(vote) DELL”

The importance of a 2nd opinion v2.0

Sometimes spelling is not important, and as long as the person gets the general gist of your message its fine, for instance scribbling down an important phone note, the grammar or spelling intricacies do not really affect the credibility of the message.

However when you are designing a cover for a product, a computer game for instance, and more specifically a SPELLING computer game, you should make it your business to get it completely, totally and irrefutably correct.

Eamonn Holmes is a much..."loved"...."celebrity" that frequents our televisions with annoying regularity, but recently he decided that he needed to enter the world of educational computer games to enlighten us mere mortals.

The creators of the game DDS media, in their infinite wisdom spelt Eamonns name wrong on the cover and CD of the first 10,000 units, meaning they had to be scrapped. The title had misspelled his name including only one "n", and was only pointed out when Eamonn was sent a copy just before launch. An irate Holmes called the producers immediately enquiring 'How can you expect people to buy this game when you've misspelt my name on the front!'

According to insiders "There are a lot of red faces with everyone blaming each other."
Brings up the importance of checking things twice (or more)

Its simple, Right?

I must admit am a bit of a stickler for simplicity and efficiency, I think its because I am generally quite a lazy creature, and when someone is getting paid handsomely to design something, be it a product or a service they owe it to the end user to make it as easy to use and as straight forward as possible.

If you read through some of my other articles you may well have gathered that I am somewhat of a fan of Apple computers and their operating system, mostly because they have perfected the art of making features much easier to use and more visually pleasing.

Palm were a company that were extremely popular in the 90s and produced handheld computers that could compute to, at the time, reasonably high levels, for each model in the design phase, the company had a designated "click counter”. The post came about when the CEO at the tine Geoff Hawkins had declared that any application or feature that was more than 3 clicks away from the main screen, was just not good enough and would have to be re designed.
I was watching a presentation on the TED (technology, education & design conference – great stuff here) website, given by David Pogue a Technology writer for the New York Times today, and he gave a perfect example of a company that definitely do not count the clicks and keep simplicity in mind. Microsoft

Rather than adopt the "dock" system seen on Macs, windows are determined that to access a program stored on your computer, you shall be forced to go through multiple menus and options. We start at “START” then to “All programs” - then search through the list of applications. In osX, you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen and click, that’s all.

When i want to turn my computer off, i need to go to an button on the screen called... wait for it...START, then I need to go to shut down, once I am there I am presented with a box of options which I then must scroll though, there are only 4 options in the box, wouldn’t it be so much better if they just made a window which had 4 buttons, rather than a pop down list?

I know that this stuff isn’t hugely important in the grand scheme of things, and it wont make many people lose sleep etc, but I think when you are making a product, that will be used by millions, and especially when you are in competition with similar products, it is you duty as a designer to make things the best they can be.

A thousand words?

"A picture tells a thousand words"

I believe that to be very true. I was watching a presentation by Seth Godin (my hero) last wekk and he put up the above slide to describe the differences between competitors in the motor industry. Two circles... and that was it, the entire slide consisted of two circles.

The traditional method of "presenting" utilised by people and encouraged by the powerpoint interface, is to use bullet points and invariably to fill the slide with endless reams of text, that the person proceeds to simply read aloud while looking at the screen.

The slide actually showed an important fact too, the small circle showed the amount per car revenue (the white screen) was spent by Mercedes on advertising, because the car is aimed at a specific group and is an exeptional car that really sells itself. The great big grey circle is the amount of advertising per car that Ford spend. Because they have to sell average cars to average people they have to spend alot of money on letting people know that their new "fiesta" has hit the streets, so to avoid huge costs you try to make your product, rather than advertising budget, exeptional.

The main point im trying to put forward is, using images like the above give scope for a more engaging presentation where you tell stories rather than repeat out bullet points.

Remember, its a presentation not a recital, the information needs to be in your head rather than on the screen

Marketing Boundries?

No one is immune to marketing.
No one.