Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Twitter and the web at large is up in jubilation over the release of Google Wave today. So much so that the beta invitations have run out and the opportunity to take a "test drive" is selling on eBay for $70 a pop. If you don't already know what Google Wave is Mashable offers a really nice "Complete Guide to Google Wave", which after using can only be experienced not described.

Google Wave is a real-time communication platform with some huge UI bugs to overcome. In order to test out the platform, I started a wave with some of the best minds at Organic and threw them a series of questions to answer, debate, and co-edit. Extracts of which are below:

QUESTION #1: Do you think the "revolutionize e-mail" hype is justified or even accurate for Google Wave?

Kai Wright: I'm expecting a revolution. It's definitely a cool way to send AIM and have group chat. It's hard to learn though - where's the simple Apple-like tutorial?

Dan Neumann: You can't quote me on this, but Wave is waay to complicated for older people. if this is going to replace email my parents will need to be willing to use it

Marta Strickland: My parents are confused by the different functionality within Facebook... what's a comment, what's a wall post, what's a private message. I don't know how they would handle something like this. Even I am a bit confused.

Craig Ritchie: but I remember when email was difficult to understand for people too... it's all about your previous experiencse and how to apply them to new ones. And what's a "poke" for anyway? we'll never know.

QUESTION #2: Is Google Wave going to be relevant and in use by the "mainstream" or at least early adopter mainstream in 2010?

Dan Neumann: relevant yes. useful? maybe not

James Vreeland: i think that it will hit a point where people stop thinking about using it and its just "how you post photos and comments on the site". This UI is way too much for day to day use for most folks, but the underlying engine is way to potent to fade away quickly.

QUESTION #3: Is Google Wave a wiki? an e-mail platform? a chat window? a whiteboard tool? Which one does it have the most opportunity to replace in our daily lives?

James Vreeland: 1 part subethaedit, 1 part basecamp, 3 parts campfire

Craig Ritchie: worst thing you can do is try to bucket new concepts into old buckets. that's why we have such trouble selling these things to clients.

Derek Scott: I'm looking forward to seeing what new collaborative tools are created using the API.

FINAL ASSESSMENT: Lots of quirks and lots of potential. Potential to confuse, potential to revolutionize... if not e-mail or chat or whiteboarding, than at least the ability to get a few co-workers across offices riffing on an idea for half an hour.

Thanks to Craig Ritchie, Kai Wright, James Vreeland, Derek Scott and Dan Neumann for participating in today's experiment. A snapshot of the full dialog can be seen below.

Marta Strickland

image credit: wockerjabby

Strategists, Planners, Graphic Designers, Experience Architects (XA), Developers and Writers are basing strategic decisions off of phenomenon without knowing why the phenomenon exists. Is this a smart move or just ballsy?

The New York Times has an article in its Ping section on the business of 'link sharing'. As you'll notice visiting any site designed in the past 18 months, virtually every page and every article features some type of toolbar or list, which enables the user to post that article on their Facebook profile, 'Digg' it, 'Stumble Upon' it, Tweet or re-tweet it, etc. The hope is that readers will serve as article evangelists and generate awareness amongst their 'friends.'

You know what: it really works. My news sources these days are the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and generally whatever people post on their Facebook profiles. One of my colleagues loves posting interesting obits. A friend from gradeschool - before 3rd grade! - is in charge of social media for Schwarzenegger and posts cool articles on the power of Twitter . A recent colleague and friend ensures I know everything that's going on with the latest and greatest technology, always with a bit.ly link, so I can read more.

As much as I'm ambivalent about new technology, I am astounded at the evolution of information communication. I do love it, but I wonder which human impulses are driving the tremendous growth of information dissemination:

• Craving connections
• Our desire to know as much as possible, in a timely way
• Positioning ourselves as 'know-it-alls'
• Journalistic passions
• Triumph of being 'first'
• 'Do gooder' practice of disseminating information for our friends' benefit
• The need to feel busy all the time, regardless of the productivity's value

These types of questions may be impossible to answer via quantitative or qualitative studies, because the subjects might not have a clear understanding of their actions or might have a necessarily subjective (and typically altruistic) interpretation of their behavior.

This points to the fundamental problem of planning: basing strategy on subjects' opinions of their actions, which are inherently biased. Analytics gurus have shown that analyzing clickstreams can show what and how a phenomenon is happening, but it doesn't help explain why it's happening. Even if we were to ask consumers why, they might have a tendency to sway their answers towards our pre-formulated why. It could be because most of time people don't really know why. It's just them acting intrinsically.

At times, it seems planning requires a leap into philosophy to fulfill its promise of insight and inspiration. How often is the planner subject to his own biased perspective on phenomena? It may be more often than we realize.

Jonathan Cohen

This post isn't meant to be an attack on Seth Godin or his online effort "Brands in Public". After all, many are already attacking him for his decision to launch a site which basically aggregates social chatter about a brand into a public facing site, which they then have to pay $400 a month to customize. Some have called it a game changer, while others have declared it outright brandjacking.

The problem I have with "Brands in Public" is that it feeds into a myth... a myth perpetuated by frustrated marketers that just don't want to admit that in the current digital landscape, we have our work cut out for us... it's the myth of the social media shortcut.

So, why is Seth's effort both ineffective and against best practices:

1. Aggregation isn't conversation. Pulling a bunch of feeds together does not create a story about the brand, or open the doors for a new kind of communication.

2. Fishing where the fish aren't. Seth suggests that brands add to the "conversation" in a platform where no one is currently listening.

3. It goes against integration. If any site should be pulling in twitter feeds and YouTube links, it should be the brand's website. Wouldn't it be a much more of a game changer to see brands putting their twitter feed under the "customer service" section of their website?

Marketers want so badly for a $400 month solution that just brings everything together into one place. They want there to be only one channel they need to respond in, rather than several dozen. But there is no easy out, you have to roll up your sleeves and prepare to spend hours and dollars to do social media right.

Maybe that's why 84% of marketers don't measure ROI. They are still looking for the easy solution, and don't want to admit that it doesn't exist.

Marta Strickland

Are you on LinkedIn? Twitter? Facebook? Delicious? YouTube or Vimeo? Flickr? Do you have a blog, using sites such as TypePad, WordPress, Blogger? If you're in the market for a new job any time soon, you won't get far without these tools in your social media toolbox.

During an average week, a recruiter reviews countless resumes, responds to hundreds of e-mails, conducts phone screens, video interviews and in-person interviews -- all to find one perfect candidate match. The sheer volume of work has been exacerbated by high unemployment and a down economy. As a result, many recruiters are casting a smaller net, relying on sources like social media, employee referrals and Boolean search to attract a smaller, more qualified set of candidates.

For job seekers, this means a change in job-search approach. Rather than the "find a job" mentality, job seekers must focus on being found. Recruiters are holding the proverbial glass slipper -- looking for the perfect match to open positions.

There are at least seven things you should be doing to make us and other talent recruiters take notice.

1. Expand your digital footprint.
2. Define your magic keywords.
3. Customize your handle.
4. Don't be a wallflower.
5. Use blogs to show off more than just writing.
6. Tweet and encourage re-tweets.
7. Join groups.

Read the entire AdAge article to find out how.

Traci Armstrong and Tracy Cote

This post is in follow-up to an earlier post titled "RIP: Why We Don't Need QR Code Campaigns." Several critical points made by commenters merit further examination. These are:

Many URLs are too long to be easily input, even with a QWERTY keypad.

In the end this will go down to individual comfort levels, but there is some powerful anecdotal evidence to the contrary. If we consider SMS messages, the average length of which is approximately 25 characters, combined with the fact that the average American sends over 300 every month. It follows that Americans are quite comfortable typing on their phones, QWERTY or otherwise, and that in the US thumbs are tapping out well over 7k characters each month.

Based on SMS volume, it stands to reason that if marketers can get their URLs down to 25 or fewer characters, US audiences will not balk at being asked to type it into their browser. To help with this, there are services like Budurl that enable branded URL shortening.

There are more mobile phones with cameras than there are devices with QWERTY keypads.

Yes it's true that mobile phones with QWERTY keypads account for a minority share (18-25% depending on where you look) of the US market, but it's also true that that minority accounts for over 75% of all mobile web traffic. The truth is that the majority of users aren't likely to use their phone for much more than making calls and sending SMS messages. On top of that, many of the feature phones used by the majority, that don't have QWERTY keypads, also do not have cameras with high enough resolution sensors to be capable of decoding a 2D barcode.

Use of 2D Barcodes allows the passing and/or capture of channel, tracking, location and personal data that URLs do not.

Yes and no. In theory, with a specialized reader, a redirect from a barcode scan could pass data about me, and where I'm coming from - name, location, phone number, basically anything stored on my phone - into a form on a mobile optimized site. However, doing this would require a specialized reader and form. There aren't any open standards that are used widely enough to make this more than proprietary functionality. So, the tradeoff really becomes untenable for marketers when we consider drop-off associated with requiring audiences to download and install a proprietary application.

It's also worth noting that much of the aforementioned data can be captured with a shortened URL redirecting to a mobile site. Several mobile browsers already allow location data to be passed to a mobile optimized website.

Generally, 2D barcodes make for a better user experience than URLs.

The process of decoding a barcode is not as straightforward or error free as many of the technology's proponents seem to believe. Current reader software/hardware combinations suffer tremendously high failure rates. This is especially true of software/hardware combinations that require users to take a picture and then decode it, as opposed to decoding through an active camera.

Moreover, putting the onus of driving reader software adoption and educating a target audience on a brand detracts from the delivery of primary campaign messaging. Between education, download, and install the use of 2D barcodes in place of URLs adds too many friction points to be worthwhile.  Marketers should be doing everything possible to get their message across. Using a barcode instead of a URL distracts from clear expression of that message.

QR codes and 2D barcodes have other uses beyond directing users to a URL.

This point was conceded in the initial post: "there are other uses for 2D barcodes that make sense." Clearly 2D barcodes can be useful, but integration with mobile platforms for specific utilitarian purposes will likely require specialized reader software for each unique purpose. The critical point to recognize here is that the use-case that popularized the technology in Japan, easy input of URLs, does not translate to the North American market. In NA, the trend toward QWERTY keypads eliminates the need to use 2D barcodes as a URL input mechanism. Smartphones are not widely used in Japan.

It is too early to proclaim the death of 2D barcodes for any and all mobile uses, but expect to see image recognition and NFC give barcodes a run for their money. That said, it is worth considering interesting ways to use QR and other 2D barcodes with mobile phones, that can't easily be replicated with a URL and mobile-optimized site? 

2D barcodes can contain as many as 4,000 alphanumeric characters depending on size and type. Using barcodes to transmit data in spaces that lack network connectivity could provide significant value for both marketers and consumers. For instance, print ads in subways might use barcodes to allow people to save or receive additional information about a product or service directly to their phone.

Barcodes have been widely used in inventory management infrastructures since they were first introduced. Starbucks' use of QR codes in their gift card iPhone app is more an extension of infrastructure capability than a marketing play. Although it does have important implications for its marketing and advertising.

Dan Neumann

Orange County Library's Guide by Cell audio tour

How often do you visit a museum alone? Me? I honestly can't recall if I ever have. I usually find someone I can talk into seeing the latest art exhibit or science exhibit with me. And that's part of the joy of seeing the exhibit -- being able to talk about it with someone.

I was at Cranbrook Institute of Science Friday evening. It was the first time I had been there in probably close to 10 years and not much had changed...except I noticed a seemingly small addition to one of the text descriptions. A phone number with a call to action to use your mobile and hear more about the exhibit. I didn't take advantage of this because I was trying to keep a rambunctious 2-year-old from running too far out of my sight. But it was very intriguing.

For The Pre-Planners
There's been a growing trend for museums to offer audio guides as free podcasts. MoMa has a pretty comprehensive, growing collection of both audio and video guides via iTunes. Not sure when I'll see the collection in person, but I'm tempted to listen to the podcast nonetheless. That poses a problem for spontaneous visitors (as was my case with the science museum trip with my son).

For the Spontaneous
I often get sucked into renting the laborious, sometimes over-priced audio guides. However, I'd love to ditch those for something more portable, personal and... spontaneous.

Say you are browsing a museum and stumble upon a piece that truly intrigues you and the write up just doesn't do it justice. You don't want to know everything about every piece in the museum. But maybe it's just that one piece. Your mobile phone is resting quietly in your pocket. Bingo.

If the information on the mobile recording is comprehensive, I would love to see this in more museums that you only visit once in an eon. It would have especially come in handy on my recent trip to Rome and Florence. Before I left, I downloaded Rick Steve's podcasts on The Roman Forum, The Sistine Chapel, The Academia and The Uffizi Gallery. We visited even more museums than that and more than once I was left wondering what significance the piece I was looking at held.

What's Missing
Still, whatever happened to unguided immersions? Degas said, "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." I realize that guides are meant to entice more people to visit and understand what's being shown at a museum. Why stop there? Instead of only education, museums should be encouraging immersion, conversation.

Here are some ways they could prompt conversation about your visit:
1. With tickets, give visitors a conversation starter. Something like, "What's your favorite piece and why?" You could even have them text their answer to display on the museum's website.
2. Create an app that uses the GPS on your phone track your route thru the museum. It then updates your Facebook status telling your friends what you're looking at with picture of a main piece in that area. It also asks them what they think of the piece.
3. Allow visitors to text their thoughts about key pieces from their phone. Reviews are displayed on a video monitor in the lobby or cafe of the museum and also on the museum's website and social properties.

Increasing Awareness
Talking about the exhibits increases awareness, leads to exposure. This is good for the museums, curators and artists. Aren't you more likely to make it to a special exhibit if someone you know is talking about it?

When you're visiting a museum this weekend -- yes, please step away from your screen and get out there and take in an exhibit or two -- take a look at how many people are actually talking with someone else about the work.

What are more ways curators could make their exhibits more social?

Sarah Jo Sautter

Did you know the FCC touched cell phones, satellite dishes, internet, broadcast (TV & Cable), radio and telephone? Traditionally they've struggled with emerging technologies. However, when Obama appointed Julius Genachowski as the FCC chairman back in January, we knew their focus would shift from traditional to digital and a true consumer positive focus.

The shift is happening and there are some true wins for the consumer. With this shift you can:

- understand your cell phone bill and figure out why there are overages because of the Truth-in-Billing policy.

- share files legally the way you want to without having the network block you because they don't like the content provider you chose, thanks to the Net Neutrality policies.

- make choices about ISPs based on how they manage their traffic. Why does this matter, if you do a lot of peer-to-peer file sharing you may be being blocked, the network isn't down. Transparency would require ISPs to inform paying subscribers about how they manage their network traffic.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The FCC is beginning to look at cell phones with a consumer focus as well. The idea of one phone, one network may be going by the wayside. Apple won't be able to block Google, Skype or other apps.

What does all of this mean? Genachowski seems to be on the right track, he seems more involved but in a good way. Not regulating what I want to watch or listen too, that's my job. He's actually protecting the consumer.

Kari Girade

Numbers You Need To Know
$11,000 is the supposed fine that bloggers will have to pay if they don't disclose getting free product or payment from brands for their postings, according to a new FTC ruling. The FTC has recently replied to a series of questions posed by influential bloggers, in order to downplay some of their fears, including the hefty price tag attached to lack of transparency.

99% is the amount of online retailers who currently have or plan to have a Facebook Fan Page in the next two years. Twitter isn't that much farther behind. 20% is the amount of loyal traffic Facebook brings in as a referring site, making it the most valuable source of traffic. Is social media considered mainstream yet?

1,000,000,000 is the number of video views that YouTube now gets in a single day. That is over 11K views per second. Is YouTube faster than the speed of light yet?

2 billion is the amount of applications that have been downloaded from the Apple App Store since its launch. While that number is pretty impressive, other numbers have been harder to come by, like the true market share Apple has in the smartphone space.

Launches, Rumors, and Let Downs
After much heated anticipation, Google Wave launched. Invites went out to happy Google geeks around the net, and demand soon outpaced supply, leading to the launch of trading sites and eBay auctions. The feedback was mixed. Some were disappointed, while others, including Organic, saw great potential.

Also this week, Adobe announced support for Flash on just about every smartphone... just about. Not so surprisingly, Apple was not included on that list. Later in the week, after some pressure, Adobe and Apple announced Flash support, but only for Apps. The negative news didn't stop there, as Verizon has begun launching ads mocking AT&T for their poor coverage, and many have begun speculating on whether the iPhone will soon be coming to other network carriers. For the near future though, it looks like Verizon isn't going to be one of them.

Marta Strickland

Editor's note: This is a counterpoint to Jonathan Cohen's statement about the evolution of information communication and how it is impacting the dissemination of information.

The Internet as a Tool
The Internet is not an evolutionary leap in the history of human communication - at least not yet. It is an important tool that magnifies what has already existed. Subsequently, the web hasn't intrinsically changed human behavior but it has offered more immediate access to information that consumers use to make decisions.

The Internet is also a tool that offers the opportunity for mass collaboration, which will probably be viewed as its most valuable attribute when historians look back upon the 21st century.

But during these waning moments of the second decade of the Internet (aka web 2.0), the web is a planner's paradise. The Internet is a platform to broadcast our human narcissistic tendencies. Social exchanges are a way to gather real-time and real customer feedback inexpensively. Opportunities for real-time response offers additional insight and it can dramatically change how brands are perceived in the digital conversation.

Rethinking the Planner's Role
To take advantage of these strategic communication opportunities, planners need to re-think their fundamental approach. The audience is networked - they can communicate in real-time to each other AND we can eavesdrop on those 'conversations'. The role of the planner becomes less about 'the brief' and more about 'the framework' for real-time, authentic, transparent communications, powered by the brand. An interconnected audience also means that companies need to think about communication much more broadly than the silos of PR, Advertising and Marketing.

Revise the Planning Process
Traditional marketing planning has been a deductive reasoning process since its inception: what is the problem we must solve through communication?  A hypothesis is developed (generalization) and data is obtained to support it, frequently through focus groups and other observed behavior. This process is implicitly flawed by bias - both consumers and the planner.  
Database marketing offered the introduction of inductive reasoning into 'below-the-line' communications planning with the introduction of marketing analytics. Planners are able to observe actions to identify what is happening, not seek/ask opinion to identify why the (user) thinks it's happening. Bias is reduced, although not entirely removed, particularly when validating the data-based insights with a focus group.

The web offers the potential to eliminate bias, provided planners revise their insight process to leverage this powerful tool. Instead of the linear progression approach with a finite end implicit in both deductive 'traditional' account planning (pyramid) and inductive analytics-oriented approaches (inverted pyramid), a digitally-centric approach to planning should be viewed as an ongoing process (rather than finite). Planning becomes an ongoing series of diverging and converging inflection points (double-helix) that can start anywhere: with a generalization based on a sentiment, a collection of specific actions (clickstream analysis), conversation sentiment (generalizations), velocity of content spread (data points) and so forth - all mapped in real-time.  In this model, there isn't a real 'beginning' or 'ending' as the planning process, like the subsequent communication, is continuous.

Keep Asking
The questions planners need to ask are the same as we have always asked, starting with: how can we make best use of the (new) media for the message?

Lori Laurent Smith

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt of a document created for a client who was new to digital marketing and wanted some context for making better marketing decisions. Consider it a useful primer for anyone who needs a history lesson in how we got to where we are today.

"In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. " - Eric Hoffer

The Good Old Days
In an era that now seems as antiquated as betamax, advertising was once simply a message created by an agency and distributed through mass media channels to a large passive audience.

It was one-way communication knotted to a piece of popular content, eagerly gobbled up by the viewer, reader or listener. Creating content was difficult and distribution channels were owned properties which created a power structure that favored the publisher of content. Enter the Internet.

Web 1.0 (Also the Good Old Days)
Like a telephone in a world of telegrams, Interactive changed the game by allowing user to interact with the content and with each other around the content. Users could choose what was interesting to them, when they wanted to view it and create a personalized experience. Remember the thrill of the "You've Got Mail" voice popping up, or setting Yahoo to display NFL scores every time you showed up?

As web publishing became easier and access to the internet grew, the proliferation of websites exploded allowing users to choose from millions of sources of content on demand or to create their own. This began the transformation of the media industry.

Channels that were once held by a small number of companies were opened to consumer and any digitized content was easily sharable. Now consumers started to question their existing media consumption.

One unexpected brand is embracing social media in a new way. Estee Lauder is offering free makeup application and photo shoots to use for your social network profiles.   
 
The promotion kicks off Friday, October 16, at Bloomingdale's in New York and then branches out to Macy's, Saks and other Bloomingdale's stores in Southern California, Miami and Chicago. They tout the event on their Facebook fan page.

It's a smart, ground-breaking move by a company whose primary target aren't even the biggest users of social media. In fact, they offer to help you post your new photo online. Guess they realize their customers may have never even uploaded a photo before. Estee Lauder hopes they might entice those younger online extroverts with this promotion. But I wonder if they're sending the wrong message.

One attractive thing about social media is that you can, in a way, re-invent yourself or present only certain aspects of yourself to guide how you want people to view you, rather than be at real life's first impression mercy. And this amplifies that.

Remember, you are your own brand. If you choose to present the one-time, professionally glammed up version yourself, you might consider disclosing that. If Estee Lauder really wanted to extend this idea, they'd imprint the photos with their name -- similar to how a magazine might credit a makeup artist: "makeup by Estee Lauder." Then they'd give the women a discount for every friend they refer to the promotion through their social network.

If Estee Lauder keeps this fun, it'll work. Afterall, what woman doesn't love a free makeover, especially if she gets to show it off in her online world? If other youthful cosmetic companies are smart, they'll follow. I could even see this branching out to hair salons for a full headshot glam shot.

Thanks to Kari Girarde for the event info.

Sarah Jo Sautter

How long is too long for a web page layout?  In his 2007 post "The Fold is an Unnecessary Design Limitation" here on the ThreeMinds blog, Rod MacQuarrie pointed out that using the "above the fold" design principle inherited from the print world isn't always a best practice, and not always applicable to how online content is read by users.  Trying to get all content "above the fold" doesn't acknowledge how users recognize and interact with their browsers' scrollbars.

That post was one of the most viewed in the history of this blog, and generated a heated discussion among readers who argued the pros and cons of designing sites to accommodate long-form content and the predilection for users to scroll significantly if given the right cues.

While the debate continues almost two years later, at least one brand -- Japanese retailer UNIQLO -- has embraced the long-form layout with a vengeance, creatively using a "sandbox" content design to fills a 28,200 pixel long page.

In their "From Tokyo to Paris" page, UNIQLO has placed blocks of content in a flowing grid that runs the entire page length.  Scrolling down (and down) reveals a visually dynamic stream of clothing designs and story modules covering their Cannes t-shirt design contest, a recent Paris store opening and global news and comments on the brand from their team and the public. A pixel ruler on the right margin provides a navigation cue and reinforces the page height. Cleverly, only the content near the browser's page position is loaded, preventing a crushing page load. 

As one of our creatives said, he went all the way to the bottom of the page to see what was there, claiming "It's just proof what you can do. There should be no boundaries." Organic creative Matthew Tait, another UNIQLO fan, also pointed out last year's "Unlimited Web Page" by Orange UK, which continues to grow in length as long as the page is open in the browser window.

So, do the UNIQLO and Orange pages indicate a trend in hyper-long page length?  Not really -- it's more appropriate to look at it as another experimental user experience designed by a brand that most people will encounter digitally long before they ever visit a store (There's only one store in the US, in NYC).  UNIQLO's site is full of other exploration-rewarding experiments, such as their Grid and Calendar.  This type of experience is a core part of their brand.

However, Joe Leech's "The Myth of the Fold" post does provide several examples of long-form pages on more commonly-used e-commerce and content sites like the BBC, Amazon and the New York Times, emphasizing that user exploration "below the fold" is usually a result of thoughtful content and visual design.  He recommends against in-page scroll bars (as seen with a frameset) because users will usually check to see if a browser window scrollbar appears when the page loads.  

Are long-form pages becoming a trend or even the norm?  That remains to be seen, but I will offer two points for why we might be moving in that direction.

1. The most popular blog, video sharing and social networking sites now feature content and user commentary in a long "feed" that requires longer or vertically expandable pages.
On Facebook, for example, the stream of status notes from friends really pushes users to click the "Older Posts" button on the bottom of the page -- I'm sure that button is hit *a lot*, and that the average expanded page length for most user sessions is much longer than what's visible "above the fold".

2. The touch interfaces that first appeared on mobile devices are now becoming more common on laptops and desktops.
Gesture-based scrolling through long-form content is very easy and intuitive, and as touch interfaces become commonplace in the future, the gesture-based "long scroll" could become a more standard part of user experience design.

We welcome (another) good discussion on this topic, so please post here after checking out our 2007 post, Joe Leech's more recent one, and of course UNIQLO's great site and design experiments.

Jay Bain

image credit: heiwa4126

Personalization and customization have hit our theme parks.  Kids can now use digital tablets to create the type of roller coaster ride they want to experience.  Appears that the parks are finally taking notice that they are competing with video games where the user is in control and they can determine their own path. 

It's all part of a new exhibit at Walt Disney World's Epcot theme park. CNN reports, "After inputting their designs, kids climb into a robotic carriage that uses virtual-reality technology to help them experience the ride they've created." Disney has expanded the idea of ride customization to their California park and Universal Studios in Florida boasts a roller coaster that lets you pick your music track.
 
I find it interesting that the parks, who used to cater to the masses, are starting to understand that personalization is key and you need to let people experience things in their own way.  Just another example of the user/customer being in control and brands needing to give them the tools to interact in whatever way they choose. 

Tracy Richards

Yep. You heard right. All your celebrity URLs are now belong to Chris Bosh. But, after battling an alleged cybersquatter in court and winning, apparently he's gonna go all Robin Hood with the domain names, giving them back to the famous folks whose URLs were poached.

Sure, he's primarily known as an all-star forward for the Toronto Raptors, but for Chris Bosh, this isn't exactly his first rodeo in terms of online activity. He is heavily involved in social media, through his firm Max Deal, and is clearly one of the more Internet-savvy athletes out there. He put himself on the map when he became a legit Internet sensation by way of his YouTube campaign to get fans to vote for him for all-star. However, apparently he didn't register the URL Chris Bosh dot com quite fast enough. One Luis Zavala got it first, along with a huge stockpile of others. And he didn't want to give it back. So he got sued. And he lost. But it didn't stop there.

Luis Zavala apparently was either disinclined or unable to pay out the $120,000 settlement Bosh won against him. So, as a consequence it seems that Bosh got a gang of URLs in lieu of payment--some 800 domain names. Now, instead of just having ChrisBosh.com back, he also owns a plethora of other celebrity and athlete domain names. He's like a one-man GoDaddy. But don't listen to me, listen to the New York Times.

The list of domain names, which is available for download at www.winston.com/siteFiles/Domain_Name_List.pdf, includes several N.B.A. stars, among them Jason Kidd, Deron Williams, Amar'e Stoudemire, Steve Nash and Michael Redd, as well as college and high school players and international prospects.

It also contains the names of mixed martial arts fighters, a competitive eater and members of the Gotti family. There are domain names for Britney Spears's son, the wife of the rocker Rob Zombie and the twin sons of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.

All the Web addresses now belong to Bosh, who said he had no intention of profiting from them.

"I am thrilled that I am able to offer the return of these domain names to a host of other athletes and celebrities whose names were cybersquatted," Bosh said in a statement.

Tying a neat little bow atop the story is the press release from Bosh's legal team. Why? Because that is the page you are redirected to if you try to go to www.luiszavala.com.

Daniel Turman

"On September 26, 2009, Typhoon Ondoy brought a month's worth of rainfall to Metro Manila and nearby areas in just a few hours, causing severe flooding which resulted in the loss of many lives and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. 8 days later, Typhoon Pepeng struck the northern regions causing more damage. This site compiles relevant information about the disaster, including a volunteer-maintained map of persons needing rescue and a list of relief organizations accepting donations, so that more help can be provided where it is needed."

There is no denying that Google's efforts are admirable and for a great cause. So it's hard to suggest that the site they developed to rally people around the Typhoon Ondoy cause could benefit majorly from improved design and usability. Normally, as marketers, we get the benefit of a specific demographic we are trying to address and for a defined product. In the case of large scale disasters, the demographic really is everyone, and the emotions you are trying to illicit is everything from awareness to action.

Knowing the need for action is great and the design challenge is real, I sent the site around to some colleagues. Together, we tried to come up with a few of best practices for making cause-based sites more effective...

1. Provide clear direction on needs, goals, and progress. Help users understand where the need is the greatest.

"I often feel a little helpless when massive events like this happen, if for no other reason than I don't even know where to begin helping. Is sending cash the right thing, do rescue workers need provisions that can't be locally sourced, etc?" James Vreeland

The current page leaves the user with too many questions. What's already been donated? What are the areas of need? What could my money be going towards? Is there something that needs to be donated besides money? Giving user a list of numbers to call only makes them feel overwhelmed, not motivated.

2. Use stories, not numbers. Stories make the user feel closer to the cause, while numbers often do the opposite.

The current Ondoy page isn't organized to elicit a reaction... not emotional or actionable. With so many charity stories and good causes out there competing for attention, incorporating a story of an actual person affected does more good than stats and charts. People need to be moved and then lead to action.

3. Harness the power and reach of social media to generate interconnectivity and spring users into action.
Google has seem to forgotten the "share this" button. No tweet this, no Facebook that. While links are simple and becoming ubiquitous, that simple addition could have made all the difference. Google could have also considered something like http://micro.ilist.com/ for quickly bringing folks together, especially now that Twitter is rolling in geolocation data.

#ihave a spare bedroom for up to 3 nights
+
#ineed a place to sleep, my house burnt down

It works best for big events, not one-off needs, but it is still an interesting way to connect at a personal level, those who have with those who need.

Thanks to James Vreeland, Douglas Diaz, and Dean McRobie for the link and sharing their thoughts on this topic.

Marta Strickland

image credit: Orin Zebest

Humans seem to relish on pointing out the faults in products, places, events and even people. So it's no surprise that the Internet has become an incredible engine for sharing and observing bad news, ideas and offerings. It's probably been a human tendency to want to observe people making terrible mistakes for at least two thousand years (Ancient Greeks watching tragedies), but the Internet seems to have intensified and enabled this desire.

Highlighting Bad Behavior
Journalists, pundits and gossipers have created a cottage industry of highlighting the worst in behavior, ideas and products. This doesn't merely extend to sites like the Drudge Report, PerezHilton and TMZ, but also to more traditional news sites like CNN , the New York Times and the Huffington Post (not quite traditional, but not TMZ). Over the past year or two, there's been a new type of site that's been gaining notoriety amongst the snarky hipsters, which could be loosely categorized as 'fail sites'.

The Fail Target
FailBlog.org is one such example, and it has some pretty funny 'fails' and some that are just really unfortunate. So who's viewing the site? According to Quantcast, it has 2.4 million monthly US unique visitors, and 4.3 million monthly global unique visitors. Clearly, the love of failure is global. It overindexes in single people and people with incomes between US$0-30K. 65% are between 13-34 years old. Probably no surprise in terms of demographics, but the numbers are pretty incredible for a site that feels somewhat one note.

Better Them Then Me
I suspect that it's human nature to want to see other people's failure in order to recognize how fortunate one is - to not be the one in the car accident (rubbernecking), to be caught in an embarrassing scandal or to have created a ridiculous product or business. There's an element of virtual, anonymous 'one up manship'; it enables a type of mental hierarchy, even if that hierarchy doesn't quite manifest itself in the real world beyond video views and snarky comments. We privately and publicly laugh at foolishness and stupidity, because we would never drop so low or be so stupid. We share others' stupidity with our friends and colleagues via Facebook and Twitter .

Aristotle argued that watching tragedy, in the form of a fictional play, was cathartic to its audience - that observing something horrible helped ensure that the person could witness something awful without having to experience it, and hopefully learn from those mistakes. I suggest that in the modern day, there's an additional reason why people are flocking to these sites: to have a laugh at the foolishness and stupidity of others.

Though I'm the greatest advocate of the Internet and social media, all of this makes me wonder if the Internet is driving us towards increased meanspiritedness. How do you get your daily dose of negativity?

Jonathan Cohen

The time when it starts getting chilly outside is a time we most dream of winning an unexpected trip to Hawaii. Marriott as a brand has been stepping up their social media efforts, and this contest is clearly a result.

How are they using social media to their advantage? Simple... every username you provide (Twitter, Facebook, email) is an additional entry into the contest. In addition, each of the 25 winners has the opportunity to participate in a YouTube contest that could also win them tickets for their closest 10 friends to join them in Hawaii.

I have to give Marriott kudos for incentivizing participants to hand over the keys to multiple social media accounts in order to increase their chances. It gives Marriott access to a powerful platform to spread the news about the contest virally through tweets and wall posts.

But this method is also a little offputting to the user, especially because you are denied the extra entry unless you "allow" them to post without your knowledge. I had to dig through their Terms and Conditions small font size legal page to see that they promise to only use my account for one tweet and one wall post, and that they don't retain my information afterwards.

Which proves that even though Marriott has learned a lot as far as leveraging social media as a platform, they have a lot to learn about authenticity and trust.

Marta Strickland

Virgin Companies have built a web portal that not only represents the Virgin brand really well, it's a simple way to see and interact with all the Virgin companies  -- and by "all" I mean all 80 of them. 

That's a big undertaking with potential for clutter, chaos and agnostic branding. Many brands have attempted and succeeded in the latter three, but Virgin does it fluidly with a series of comprehensively categorized drop-down menus that guide users through a plethora of related content and interaction options.

Why it works:

1. They make it easy. It's experiential and easy to navigate fairly complex content. A single sign-on allows users to add their thoughts on any of their companies.  

2. They make it entertaining. Lifestyle categorization teamed with various ways for users to voice their thoughts and see what others think of the posts allows users to really feel part of the brand. Plus it's completely aligned with and supportive of the brand.

3. They consider their audience. It pays attention to all types of users by having a more traditional navigation easily accessible.  

4. They interact. Virgin posts new articles regularly, giving users something to respond to. The brand fosters commenting on and rating articles, contributing and asking the founder and chairman questions. Users can "Ask Richard" anything.

Transparency is front and center as the site reveals both answered (responses with Richard's icon and handle) and pending questions. Similarly in "Quick Talk," users not only post questions they want Richard to answer. They can also reply with their own answer and vote on the best questions and answers.

Closing the loop even further, Branson blogs on the site regularly, giving a personal glimpse inside his daily happenings.

It's nice to see a corporate site break the bland, boring portal mode and become more cultural and conversational. I can think of a few others that could use a make over like this. Can you?

Bill Camp
Sarah Jo Sautter

Oh Kanye. First you go all meme-ish the other week after the VMAs. Where, predictably, just about all of us with a computer had to go and Photoshop up some sort of spoof of your Taylor "Swift-boating" incident. Some pretty reputable-sounding rumors out there even have you and Jay-Z orchestrating the whole thing. Because everybody in y'all's camp won. His wife Beyonce looked saintly at the end of the show. You get to go on Leno with Jay and Rhianna the next night goosing the ratings for Jay and promoting self. And Jay-Z's new album--which not so coincidentally features guest artists from his latest label imprint, as well as tracks you produced--becomes his 11th album to top the Billboard 200. Thus breaking a record held by Elvis Presley. But I digress.

Mind you, I know. You're smarter than most give you credit for. You're no more a pawn in Jay-Z's master plan than you are the vision of unchecked assholery that others think you are. You think about these things. Maybe not 100% of the time. But certainly in general. And your operational philosophy basically announces to the world that you don't care how many haters you have as long as they know how to spell your name right in their tweets and blog posts. And feed a publicity machine that jumps from social media to mainstream media and back so fast and so often that the release of the above video actually spawned a "trending-topic" flood of "RIP Kanye" tweets this week.

Which makes people watch the video. That is directed in the beautiful and provocative style of one Spike Jonze. Because Spike Jonze directed it. And it's probably promoting something that we're not even aware of yet, in addition to Jonze's box-office-topping film "Where the Wild Things Are" and your song "See You in My Nightmares."

For whatever it's worth, Jonze is saying that you jumped the gun posting the video on your blog before it was finished, before mysteriously taking it down later. But okay, enough of the second person, I'll call you Kanye from now on and act like a reporter or something. From today's New York Times, Jonze had this to say about the leak.

This is the first time it's happened to me and it is a weird feeling, like, 'Wait a second -- I wasn't ready to put that out! That's mine. Uh, no, I guess it's not mine anymore.'

Nonetheless, his enthusiasm for the project was quite evident in the following statement. Jonze continued.

We rehearsed the night before we shot, and talked about trying to get to that raw place, that sad, pathetic, drunken, lost place. I told him, the more shameless it is, the more pathetic it is, the better. He just went for it.

I like Kanye and I care about him. This video is a side of him. I don't know what the reception is going to be, but I love making stuff with him. I love the guy.

A couple of thoughts. First, I'm pretty sure that the reception will partition folks into their usual camps: those who dig Kanye, those who dig his art but find him to be a bit of a douche, and those who hate his ass with passion and find him to be a total douche. But personally, I'm starting to think he's working an angle that's much more actively thought through than most people give him credit for.

This short film--about fighting inner demons--was in the works for months. And seemingly leads one down a trail that has been mapped out. With plenty of layovers on the social-media world tour. If you ask me, I'm guessing that it leads to a place where Kanyeeze will be pitching us an elaborate musical story about the personal salvation that comes after acute heartbreak. Just hazarding a guess here, but maybe all of these antics are just prep work for an even more elaborate pitch for public redemption.

Either way, we'll know about it. Because whether they love Kanye or revile him, fans, influencers, and even detractors will all be working hard to get the word out.

Daniel Turman

There is an obvious shift in digital communication. Email is becoming less and less relevant, as social networking sites dominate our online lives and now our mobile online lives.

With the internet becoming not just a place to learn, a place to buy, but a place to live... it's fairly interesting to see how much the digital space is becoming a political issue. How do people access it? What are rights and what are privileges? Does regulation make the internet more or less free? One country, Finland, says that high speed connectivity is a right, and not a privilege.

But there is more than political battles being fought this week...

The battle to Own Real-Time Web
The information flow has become intense. There are 45 million status updates on Facebook every single day. And with Facebook looking to open up their public messages to search, everyone is looking for a piece... a way to index our collective consciousness.

Bing, who continues to grow while Yahoo! declines, announced official alliances with Facebook and Twitter this week. The idea is to incorporate status updates into their search results. Not very long after, their top competitor (if you can call the giant of search that) Google also announced a search deal with Twitter and the plans to incorporate real-time discussion search and tracking into YouTube.

The Battle to Own Social Music
After experiencing a sharp decline ("falls off a cliff") in their traffic, MySpace issued a plan this week to revise their strategy and focus at what they do best... music. Many are questioning if this shift in focus will be enough to save them, to make them profitable again. While MySpace certainly has the advantage, Facebook and Google are certainly not out of the game when it comes to integrating music into their long-term strategy.

Marta Strickland

My wife and I were able to catch Wilco at Hill Auditorium on Friday, October 19. Before the headliner came out, we were treated to an outstanding opening act, Liam Finn. What a unique style. A one-man band, Liam plays a riff on guitar, loops it and then jumps on his drums, loops that and picks up the next instrument. The sound is very industrial with a DIY aesthetic. Check it out for yourself and you'll see his looping effect beginning around 3:30 in this video.

So it got me thinking. Liam took a piece of technology designed for perfecting music in a studio and turned it into tool for high-energy live performance. Just like any live show, it wasn't perfect, but the audience wasn't disappointed in the least. There were technical glitches, missed notes, but it didn't take away from the brilliance of the moment.

Of course, the equipment, guitars, technology would all be worthless if Liam didn't have the chops to make them work for him.  I could walk up to that same setup and drive a crowd away -- in other words, be ignored.

Could that be applied to anything we do on the Internet? Sure. We go live everyday with thoughts in our tweets, blog postings, comments, forum topics, photos, videos and so on. In the olden days (10 years ago), we read, proofread, edited articles in newspapers. Highly educated experts wrote our encyclopedia articles and music critics helped guide our next big find. In today's world, anyone breaks news, entertains and educates.

The cream, however, will rise to the top.

I recently took up photography as a hobby, but was reluctant to share anything on flickr. Finally, I figured, what's the worst that could happen? At worst, my pics will be ignored, unless they're really bad and become a viral joke. But what's the best that could happen? Well that remains to be seen. For me, I hope to connect with people in the community and improve on my hobby. Some (a.k.a. "the cream") rise to the top and their lives change.

So, if you have something to share, don't be afraid to step on the stage and go live.

Anthony Viviano

Is Twitter a social network or blog? That's how the conversation started here at Organic...and it blew up from there.

A Social Network
If you consider the definition of a blog from Wikipedia, most of us would agree that a blog it is not. Look at their social network definition. It connects individuals by "one or more specific types of interdependency." Think friends, family, colleagues, beliefs, interests...

Neither a Blog Nor A Social Network
While some of us at Organic argured that Twitter is a social network, David Lewis pointed out that it lacks one crucial element of what most of them offer: the ability to see the whole conversation. I can't count how many times I've seen someone use an obscure hashtag. If the tweet is intriguing enough I may search the hashtag and try to sift through the conversation to figure out what they're really talking about. The majority of the time this doesn't work. I leave the page just as confused as when I entered. Just like in the real world it's not always easy to edge your way into conversations.

To add to the social confusion, it's tough to follow complete conversations. I haven't found one place that displays the complete thread of a conversation between two or more people on Twitter. You see @so&so respond to @her and you wonder what it is that @her asked in the first place. Because of all of this Lori Laurent Smith feels the company should coin a completely "new phrase to define itself."

Marta Strickland thinks "platform" best categorizes it. And that might be the closest as it's the tool people are using in three distinct ways. It's the people who use it most often who are really defining it.

For One-Way Blasts
Clearly everyone has a different view of what twitter is [to them]. It is what you make it. It's no more than an entertainment channel to some. They might be simply reading for enjoyment or posting into the abyss. Others are onboard to stay informed or absorb learnings from experts in their industry. In both cases, it acts as a distribution channel.

For Two-Way Dialogues
Direct Messages allow two people to carry on a completely closed conversation. I've seen a couple brands use this as a way to send their RSS feeds. Okay, so I see the blast more readily, but why wouldn't you want to include the rest of the Twitter Universe in on the news? Not the most effect use of two-way conversation.

For Multi-Way Conversations
Twitter is also good at facilitating the exchange of ideas. More people are accessing Twitter via various channels (think Seesmic, TweetDeck and TweekGrid, just to name a few) in order to do this more effectively. Organized Twitter Parties use the platform as a kind of live chat, so even if you're not following someone, you can join in the conversation using a predetermined hashtag. Usually a moderator presents questions or thought-starters in an attempt to keep the conversation on track. Still, it can be tough to keep up. Read a transcript and you'll see what I mean.

Twitter Now
Twitter is evolving. It's not the same today as it was when it was started back in 2006. So, it's not surprising that we have so much trouble defining it. Craig Ritchie claims, "Twitter owns the now." For some, true. If you're interested in the conversation right now, then it has you.

But I can bet that your definition of twitter has even changed now that you've read this. What was Twitter to you one year ago? What is Twitter to you now?

Thanks to David, Lori, Marta and Craig for their viewpoints on this subject.

Sarah Jo Sautter

Audi Car Configurator on Surface @ IAA 2009 from Neue Digitale / Razorfish on Vimeo.

Interaction on a touch screen has come a bit closer to the mainstream with iPhone interaction and news casters using them for presentations. The Audi configurator for Microsoft surface is an interesting next step for automotive configuration.

The Audi surface demo has some strong features, it allows you to view the vehicle at any angle in different colors, wheels and accessories and in different backgrounds. This allows the user to get a very good feel of the vehicle.

The best use of this would appear to be in a dealership setting as a tool for ordering and walking through features by someone who is experienced with surface interaction. The surface demo shows potential for an experienced surface user.

Still there are more touchscreen features I would have like to seen. For one, it might be interesting to have an exploded view of things like the safety cage or all wheel dive and engine -- the ability to get under the skin of the vehicle. If it was done well, users could learn everything about the vehicle while configuring it.

What would you like to see?

Scott Brennen

Photo credit: violinha @ Flickr

Network neutrality in the US is a contentious issue with a long and detailed history. President Obama is a strong supporter of the principle, while the Bush administration saw it as "regulatory restraints [which] can inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation and diminish consumer welfare." But the whole idea behind "network neutrality" is to ensure a neutral broadband network that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, and on the modes of communication allowed. In other words, to ensure that broadband providers or others don't unnecessarily get to restrict access to the network.

In his campaign for president, Barack Obama promised to overturn the Bush administration's stand against net neutrality. Last week, all five members of the FCC voted to begin writing new net neutrality regulations. The rules, opposed by the majority of Republicans in Congress, will prohibit all broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain kinds of Internet traffic.

It seems that according to the Republicans, "government regulation" can never be good - not even when it is to ensure neutrality and free access. And it sounds like senator John McCain is on a personal mission against net neutrality. He calls it a "government takeover" of the Internet.

In the meanwhile, in Finland the government's going the opposite direction. They just declared access to a broadband Internet connection with a minimum speed of 1 Mbps (by 2015, it'll be expanded to 100 Mbps) a legal right. Yes, a legal right similar to access to clean water. That may sound a bit extreme, but really what it means is that the Finnish government wants to guarantee "that all members of the public and companies, regardless of location, will have an opportunity to use information society services."

No, the government there won't pay for anybody's Internet connection, no, they're not raising taxes because of the new law, and yes, Finland's a market economy. They just want to set the same standard for everyone. I think their take on net neutrality is more likely to increase innovation than the Republican stand on the issue in the US. What are your thoughts?

Karri Ojanen

A couple of articles that came out recently - one from TechCrunch and another from MIT's Technology Review - sparked a lot of healthy debate here at Organic.

How useful and reliable are ratings and reviews? Do super users bunk up the system? Or are these systems simply set up to fail?

According to TechCrunch, five-star ratings systems (YouTube's was called out) are unreliable and inferior to other, better-defined/fewer-choices models like thumbs up/thumbs down or favoriting. The weakness of the five-star system was pegged to user subjectivity (But how can any ratings system get around that? Aren't we looking for others to share their own personal experiences and point of view in reviews?) and the tendency to vote only when one really loves (five stars!) or really hates (one star!) something.

And this is where the heated e-mail debate begins...

Fang-Yu Lin: "Yes, only people who love or hate a video enough would bother to rate it, hence the U shaped rating curve. However, one cannot simply extrapolate that to other 5-star rating systems. Amazon's customer reviews, for instance, seem more evenly distributed. My guess is that by requiring people to write a review along with the rating, herd behaviors are greatly reduced... The issue here is not the 5-star scale itself, but the entire system one designs around it."

Bridget McKinley: "But are Amazon's ratings and reviews really all that much more reliable? The MIT Technology Review article on recent Carnegie Mellon research indicates even the Amazon system has serious issues. The culpruit? A handful of superusers and their bias."

Fang-Yu Lin: "Curiously, many seem to accept the thesis that if some users rate more items than the majority of users, reviews would be skewed as a result. Is it really so? For every item, each user has only one vote. It doesn't matter if certain reviewers are way more active; on a given item he or she can cast one vote, just like everyone else."

Bridget McKinley: "Or course, you can argue that even though each user only votes once, the likelihood of encountering reviews from power users are higher on any given item... Could this be a key issue hindering the reliability of reviews? Well, maybe. Conventional wisdom (along with hard data from a variety of sources) indicates that fewer than 10% of users end up generating more than 90% of the content on sites with social media functionality (functionality like ratings and reviews). That can certainly lead to volatility and sway that may undermine the very point of providing that type of service on a given site in the first place."

Fang-Yu Lin: "There is no proof that these [Amazon] frequent reviewers effectively acted as a voting bloc and submitted unvaried reviews, thus making the point moot."

Bridget McKinley: "But even if they aren't acting in a bloc, they are significantly affecting the curve. Recent studies by Bazaarvoice, Keller Fay Group. and JupiterKagan have all concluded that positive reviews tend to outweigh negative ones by an overwhelming margin (the Bazaarvoice analysis finds a 8:1 disparity)."

Fang-Yu Lin: "Looking at the average Amazon rating by item [per the Carnegie Mellon research], yes, there is a tendency toward higher scores. However, this is to be expected for a shopping site: People buy things that they perceive of a higher value. Of course more reviews are on the positive end (Sometimes things don't live up to the expectation, hence the higher standard deviations)."

Fang-Yu Lin: "Now look at the average rating by user: There's still a bias toward higher scores for the same reason, but the bias is much less pronounced. The standard deviations are lower here too. This seems to suggest that many Amazon reviewers are rather evenhanded."

But what is really the point of all this, what is the crux of the matter...

Is the fundamental question really about the benefit or detriment of power reviewers on the user experience? After all, without them, most sites (including Amazon) would be left with a much shallower pool of user participation and feedback. Perhaps... but perhaps the question is more about how sites can best maintain usefulness and credibility in star-rated and other voting systems with power users in the mix. With around 70% of digital consumers relying on and trusting in other's opinions online, this is a problem that needs fixing fast.

Bridget McKinley
Fang-Yu Lin