“You cannot NOT have a user experience.” — Lou Carbone

A Mantra for the Advertising World

We experience the digital world as timely, relevant, useful, and personable. I can find out exactly what my friends are doing as they do it via Twitter or Facebook. Or grab directions to a restaurant and concert tickets on the go through my mobile phone. This is how technology (when it works), has fundamentally altered the way we behave, work, and live.

But when it comes to advertising the focus is currently on disrupting culture, not augmenting it, and advertisers have focused on crafting messaging rather meaning. For this industry to thrive as technology continues to shift behavior, and during tough economic times, the model of experience design must move front and center.

As a discipline, User Experience, or UX for short, has been a staple of product and software development for decades. In essence, UX is about designing things for people. As Don Norman puts it, “The whole point of human-centric design is to tame complexity, to turn what would appear to be a complicated tool into one that fits the task, that is understandable, usable, enjoyable.”

UX in its basic form is information architecture: organizing content logically. But at its most potent, experience design has the power to transform brands and products. OXO changed cooking products by emphasizing ergonomics. Nike Plus transformed running through community. The iPhone redefined “mobile phone.” All of these examples stem from understanding and designing for peoples’ needs.

The vein through which we can transform advertising from a function of marketing teams, to a core piece of the enterprise, lies within human-centric design. It starts by approaching brands, not with an eye for communications, but from the view of an experience designer. After all, consumers can interact with software, or use a physical product. But people have never been able to use a thirty-second spot, or gain value from a billboard ad. And that’s the fundamental reason why traditional forms of advertising are in decline: people want meaning, not more messaging.

Experience design focuses on individuals, rather than customer segments, and it levels the playing field between people and brands. Because people want to talk to each other, not to technology, and not to advertising. Just momentarily think about this: if corporations treated individuals like humans, would ads exist?

For decades we’ve been saturated with marketing messages from all angles and channels. Messaging that is surface-y rather than cerebral, comical rather than emotional, and usually based on popular cultural symbols, rather than deeper human truths. What we really long for as individuals are meaningful connections — emotional, personal, and significant moments.

That’s in essence what this cultural shift is all about — not technology, but about humanity. A revolution against the pedantic brand and enterprise-wide efforts we’ve been fed for so long. We don’t want to be talked down to anymore. We want to communicate with other people. Meaning trumps messaging.

After all, some of today’s strongest brands, from Whole Foods to Google, made their way into culture without a dollar spent on ads. They’ve built permanence by focusing on customer experience. They’ve designed for people, and that is the treasure chest for any agency moving forward. And this is the mantra: redesign the experience.

My Role: digital creative and UX lead

View UX Document (PDF)

In partnership with UNICEF, Armani helped to promote World Water Week, and tapped R/GA to concept and build a full multi-channel campaign. With fellow creatives, I build out ideas for multiple digital channels and fleshed out each component. We influenced multi-channel creative, from OOH to iPhone. R/GA’s team of top-notch web and iPhone developers brought it to life.

Desktop Site (also renders on tablet and mobile): Hub of the experience

iPhone App: Experience Extension

Facebook Tab: Alternate to site

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

My Role:UX lead

Modernista! was asked to come up with a tutorial experience for the new Palm Pre. The challenge: quickly and casually showing owners the essentials of the WebOS, a brand new mobile operating system. The demo structure is three mini-narratives user through three different paths: “Stay Connected”, “Stay on Track” and “Have Some Fun” each one of them having an unique approach to different lifestyles.

This project represented Modernista’s very first effort in digital app design, a huge shift for a formerly traditional-led agency.

My Role: concept and digital strategy, interaction design

In January 2009, (RED) came to Modernista! with the idea for a concert series that would serve as one of the hallmark (RED) branded events of 2009. It would consist of 26 shows throughout the year, with up-and-coming artists at intimate venues across the country — all building to a crescendo on December 1, World AIDS Day. The Challenge: Generate excitement and momentum around the (RED)NIGHTS concert series and make it bigger than just several blips on the radar.

So we concepted a site experience that would act as the social hub for the full concert promotion effort. Our key inspiration was to allow music fans the world-over a chance to re-live each concert online, through fan-submitted photos and videos.

My Role: digital strategy and client preso

After launching a fresh take on its desktop web destination with the elegant CHANEL.com, it was time to mobilize this classic brand. So we culled together a mobile web strategy and roadmap, with a clear POV on why this luxury icon needed a mobile web presence. Our recommendation was to create a mobile site experience that fit into a changing digital ecosystem. Consumers want product info, way-finding data, and the ability to purchase on the go.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

My Role: lead ux designer and strategist

Redesigning the global blogging platform for the world’s top footwear brand is a big undertaking. But with a small team  I helped to build a clear full view of a social, real-time hub for Nike content. We started with a content audit and then shared our POV on a new blogging strategy and vision for how Nike can connect more with its core audiences. Then I went to work wireframing out template layouts and content ideas, to help express this vision as page and interaction designs. Each of these wireframes represents my work as an interaction designer.