I remember my presentation about our poor promotion of tourism in Slovakia compared to places like Tirol. When I was studying in Antwerp, I was so amazed with the ability of Tirol tourism office to bring artificial skiing slope to the city center of Antwerp. Air lines were also present. They had their own stands and happily promoting cheap flights to Tirol.
However, we are not that far yet there are some small steps taking place. At least in some advertisements on Eurosport channel. Don LaFontaine apparently borrowed his famous Hollywood voice for this advertisement.
Check it out…
Here is the older ad… I like this voice much more than the above… It sound more Slovakian, not like Terminator.
After Eurosport, it would be great to see it on BBC, DW and other big channels…
People copy one another. Human behavior in the group can be easily influenced by the others. Here is a great illustration from the London underground elevator.
But how to use it for your own benefit? I am sure you will find out :). I realized that jealousy works similarly well. Few years ago, when I started my online catalogue of hotels and B&Bs in High Tatras, I find out that once I got one customer and his neighbor found him in the catalogue, he wanted to be there too… And I got another customer.
What to take from it? Don’t let your opinion to be formed by the others. It is good to stand hard behind your views and actions even if others are acting differently.
Here is something I learned recently from the web site of dConstruct - user experience design conference. Their web site has one example of how not to design for user experience, especially if your users are keen on using bookmarks and services alike - which most people do trust me.
I was just thinking that I need to go out between people again, someday, somewhere. Attending conference is great to meet like minded people and learn something new at the same time. As I was running through my Del.icio.us bookmarks I end up at dConstruct page and “Sold Out” popped just into my mind before I realized that the page is for 2007. What? I wanted to go. Ok something has to be wrong. Off course it was for 2007 and my bookmark 2007.dconstruct.org was wrong. I rewritten the URL for 2008… and luckily found what I was looking for. It took me quite a while to realize that the page was out of date.
Here is the hassle. Dconstruct web site always moves you to sub-domain and if you bookmark such a page, your bookmark is referring to old conference a year later. I consider this broken. I think that you should promote your actual content at your top domain. This way if people bookmark your pages, they get link to your main domain and always actual content. Even if they return one year later. Move the archive of your old content to sub-domains, that’s fine, but keep the actual content at the main domain.
By letting people bookmark your top domain you will always serve them up to date landing page. It will not only avoid confusion but you will also create better user experience.
Volvo in their S40/V50 campaign speak about design principles which are applied in web design almost daily…
less is more
treat everything like a piece of art
form follows function
redefine luxury
never stop learning
These are scopes very similar to mine applied in web design. However Volvo is speaking about cars. Less is more. In fact less is less and that is good about it. It enables you to focus on what is really important and make it as best as possible, treat every little piece as a piece of art. Off course form follows function, we make web sites both nice looking, functional and easy to use. We do not design creative sites for creative designers. We design nice looking and usable sites and application to perform concrete functions, present, provide information and sell.
I never stop learning, that’s why “embrace the unknown” is my motto.
You can apply these principles for any design, either web, car, furniture or even property development. I would very much like to live in a house developed according to these principles.
