April 12th, 2012
Posted by Jeff Hodgson

Advertising is all about big ideas. Unfortunately, not every big idea is a good idea. I give you Exhibit A:

Well, I didn’t see everyone skipping to work this morning, so I’m guessing this guy’s message didn’t make it too far outside his hometown. But he thought big. He wanted to change the way the world got from point A to point B. He even used science to prove that skipping is better for you than running. Oh, well. Here are a few other ideas that didn’t pan out the way they were intended.

When the Adult Swim show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” was made into a movie, LED displays mysteriously went up in major U.S. cities to promote it. It was supposed to be “guerilla advertising.” Problem is, people in Boston thought the homemade-looking displays were bombs and freaked out. The city pretty much shut down to deal with the possible terrorist threat. Oops.

How do you prove your identity theft prevention company is the best in the business? If you’re LifeLock CEO Todd Davis, you share your real social security number with the world. Sadly, the company’s fraud detection didn’t work as well as he thought. His social security number was used to take out a $500 loan and open an AT&T Wireless account. Worst of all, Davis didn’t find out until collection agencies called about the money he owed.

You may remember this commercial from the 2011 Super Bowl:

Groupon, an almost universally beloved e-commerce company, made a pretty poor judgment call with this ad. Trivializing human rights issues in Tibet gets you just about one thing: backlash from your consumers. The ad was pulled soon after it aired.

It’s impossible to know how people are going to react to ideas, but a little more common sense in each of these attempts to make a big splash could have helped keep them from sinking.

March 8th, 2012
Posted by Mimi Wilfong

Easter Egg, noun

  1. An egg given to children at Easter, usually a chocolate egg or a hen’s egg with its shell painted.
  2. A message, graphic, sound effect or other behavior emitted by a program in response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits.

Let’s talk about definition number 2. As it says, an Easter egg can take on one of many forms, but for our purposes today, we’ll talk about Easter eggs in the shape of “cool” things that some websites have been programmed to do, if you know how to ask. Oftentimes, these Easter eggs seem to have no purpose, offer no real value-add to the website and would leave a good, number-crunching businessperson wondering who made the decision to spend the time and money to develop the Easter egg. We’ll explore that thought further, but first, to fully understand Easter eggs, check out some of these (really cool) examples.

Google

Google is commonly known for its holiday doodles and other Easter eggs. For example, in December, when a user typed “let it snow” in the search box, snow flurries would begin to appear on screen. Google also sets up appropriate pranks: Last April Fool’s Day, they “released” Google Motion. Check out the video at https://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html.

Try some of these other Google eggs (you may need to turn off instant results in Google Search preferences):

  • Type “askew” in search.

  • Type “Google gravity” in the search box, then click I’m Feeling Lucky (and wiggle your mouse).

  • Type “Where is Chuck Norris” in the search box, then click I’m Feeling Lucky.

  • On the BuzzFeed.com home page, use the Konami code* (arrows: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A) to see what happens. http://www.buzzfeed.com/

Why?

So why would a brand or a company, with a limited budget, whose goal is to maximize profit, spend the money to make these little Easter eggs? They don’t drive sales. Google isn’t going to sell another ad unit based on its ability to help you find Chuck Norris. No one is going to be able to order a Mini Cooper if the website text is reversed. And the BiebFeed isn’t going to help BuzzFeed gain corporate partners.

It just doesn’t make much sense that they would spend the time, money and effort required to create little amusing distractions…does it?

The key here is that by creating the Easter eggs, by showing a little quirkiness and personality, the brands are connecting with people. When brands connect with people, they foster brand loyalty. Here at Click Here, we talk about brand affiliation in the context of “what club do you join when you become associated with our brand?” When brands connect with people by creating Easter eggs, the people who know about them become part of the “cool” club.

They’re on the inside.

In the know.

Pickin’ up what the brand is puttin’ down.

Those aware of the eggs know a little secret about the brand that not everyone knows, and just knowing that secret strengthens the relationship they have with the brand. Have you ever talked to someone who knows about In-N-Out Burger’s secret menu? Those people are brand evangelists – and they wear their “I know something you don’t know” badge proudly. They became that way because In-N-Out let them in on something that not many people knew about – just like online Easter eggs.

But building brand affiliation and personality is obviously more involved than building secrets. Brand personalities are just like people’s, in that their idiosyncrasy and uniqueness naturally speak to some people more than others. Some personalities make you believe the brand is an authority, is responsible and always makes the right choices. Others you connect with because you appreciate how much like you they are: they make mistakes, they have fun and they’re just real. Brands with these human personalities tend to quickly and easily connect with people. Trendwatching recently released a report about Flawsome brands – how some brands are embracing their quirks and in doing so, generating customer loyalty. Domino’s made the brand more human by pointing out its failings, and then allowed people to make a human “We all have flaws, bro, I’ll give you a second chance. And by the way, let’s be friends” connection.

Be Irrelevant to Maintain Relevancy

So what does this all mean? Consumers are more and more aware that personality and profit can be compatible. And with every business that succeeds while being reasonable, helpful, fun or human, consumers become increasingly more disenchanted by traditional, boring, impersonal brands. So in a sense, brands are doing things that are irrelevant to the business practice (like Easter eggs) to remain relevant in an environment where people are constantly scrutinizing brands, trusting them less and have more options than ever before.

*What’s the Konami code? It’s a cheat code that was originally designed for the Nintendo Entertainment System. If you didn’t know that, pat yourself on the back for being normal.

January 11th, 2012
Posted by Les Boswell

Let’s face it – at one point or another, we’ve all had a bad user experience. For some of us, the memories appear in the form of a blinking red “12:00” on our VCR. For others, it’s the lid of your piping hot coffee cup that seems to crumble, popping off just as you pull out of the drive-through. For many of us these days, a bad experience can be an irritating remote control layout, while for others it’s called airport signage. And while we all have come to grudgingly accept commercials before a $15 movie, we all still feel somewhat victimized.

More often than not, we ask ourselves, “How could the designers have gotten this so wrong! I could have done better myself!”

To a degree, you may be right. At the end of the day, one of the many challenges of experience design is a disjointed process where the product or service is touched by specialists who don’t talk to each other or who simply see their own specialty as being “priority number one.” They all may have even seen the creative brief or statement of work – but, based on their specialties, they all translated it differently. The engineer may see “elegant” as exquisitely crafted with the finest chips. The designer sees “elegant” as the most beautiful shape, color or texture ever to have graced the human eye, while the salesperson sees “elegant” as whatever the data shows as selling most effectively this quarter.

So, how do good experiences get designed? A great house requires an equally great architect, and in that same vein, the user experience architect role serves to create good experiences. As a user experience architect, the fundamentals of good experiences are embedded in the study of human behavior. Here are some basic tenets that can be universally applied to any user experience:

  • Clearly define the end result of your product or service, the budget and the timeline at all phases. If you have more than one step in the process, it will be all too easy to lose sight of what’s being done, why it’s being done and how it will be delivered.
  • Define and categorize your users. Understand their priorities, the environment they’ll be in when they experience your product and service, and what’s ultimately important to them. User experience architects typically work with strategists to create “personas,” which are behavioral models for groups within your target market. These personas are referred to throughout the project as a sanity check to make sure that the user is always top of mind on project direction.
  • Understand your business goals and make sure everyone else understands them, too. Help the team understand roles and who drives at what point. You don’t want your engineer to design, and you don’t want your designer wielding a hot torch, but if both have ample opportunity to collaborate, the results can be wonderful.
  • Test your work early and often with actual users. Understand and study reactions to your product and service, and validate the work done. User experience architects understand how best to test and what to ask in moderated sessions.
  • Don’t leave each specialty to define and interpret the brand vision. Let your user experience architect work with the business analyst to clearly articulate the vision, through validated documentation that includes user-centric perspectives.

There is a method to creating a good user experience, regardless of whether it’s an e-commerce site or a multichannel marketing campaign. At the end of the day, your user experience architect can apply tried-and-true methods to advocate a positive experience for the user. Your customers will benefit from the constant advocacy of your user experience team, and you’ll find yet another key method for differentiating yourself from your competitors.  We may not be able to save you from 20 minutes of commercials before the movie, but we can help create the right kind of experience for your brand and for your organization.

December 16th, 2011
Posted by Darlene Lo

Back in October, Sarah Voges introduced Pinterest to the blog. The rise of this online bookmarking site has been exponential. As of November 2011, TechCrunch reports that Pinterest is up more than 2,000% since June. Its audience is mainly female with boards centered on wedding, food, décor and many more.

Brands are beginning to find ways to utilize this new kind of social media to speak to their consumers. The greatest potential for success in this space is the rise of social shopping because people trust recommendations by friends more than marketers. By sharing and viewing Pinterest boards with your Facebook and Twitter networks, you can easily see what your friends are interested in and recommending. Advertisers that work in the retail, food and fashion industries can obviously benefit from pinning their pictures or products on the site and being part of users’ social sharing.

Here are few examples:

Nordstrom, one of the nation’s leading fashion specialty retailers, created Pinterest boards showcasing gift ideas and holiday outfits. Once you click into the picture, you’ll be redirected to the product page on the Nordstrom site for purchase. How convenient!

Real Simple magazine creates boards centered around tips for decorating, recipes, gifts and overall holiday inspiration. Every one of their pictures links back to the article or picture on their site. The popular magazine reports more referrals from Pinterest than Facebook for the month of October. Below are some of their recent boards.

Whole Foods, the national grocery store specializing in natural and organic foods, is interested in Pinterest by using it to be part of people’s passion points. To show brand personality, they’ve created a board for gardening and sweets. To raise awareness of their community involvement, they’ve made a board for their nonprofit organization, Whole Planet Foundation. All their boards create conversation starters and establish the company’s personality without selling anything directly.

As Pinterest gains more users and views, more brands will take notice and join the movement. They have the opportunity to showcase their products, link back to their site for purchase, converse with their followers, raise awareness of their community involvement and express brand personality.

December 7th, 2011
Posted by James Hering

At least one thing is pointing up in this economy. And that’s the level of digital ad spending. The Interactive Advertising Bureau released its Q3 Internet Advertising Revenue Report reflecting a 22% increase compared to the same period last year. This is the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year positive growth. In fact, the third quarter is always a strong performer, with increases occurring every year except three since 1996.

The major categories in terms of overall digital spending include Search at 49%, Display-Related at 37%, Classified at 8%, Lead Generation at 5% and Email Revenue at 1%. Within Display-Related, Display/Banner Ads make up 23% of the total pie, Rich Media makes up 5%, Digital Video is at 6% and Sponsorship rounds out at 3% of the total spend.

So does this mean you need to adjust your budgets to reflect overall spending trends? Here are some points and checklists to take into account before you jump on the digital budget bandwagon.

Where to Spend, Where to Spend?

As you begin to finalize planning for 2012, you might consider using the following as a budgeting checklist. To help with allocations or achieving business goals, you might assign a value to each effort – say 1 is “Extremely Important” and 7 is “Not Important”:

Owned Media
Company intranet/extranet
Brand website
Brand channels in social media (example: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter)
Branded content (content created by a brand)
Mobile site
Email marketing
Smartphone applications
Tablet applications
Search engine optimization

Paid Media
Paid search
Display ad units (including display ads on social networks)
Online video
Mobile display
Online sponsorships (online or integrated with cross-platform programs)
Branded content (produced as a part of a paid media effort)
Games (in-game advertising or sponsorships)

Earned Media
Digital word of mouth (including blogger outreach)
Social monitoring/listening
Online video distribution
User-generated content via social media
User-generated content via other online channels

Customer Behavior Matters, Too

You might also ask how the following consumer media behavior trends are occurring across your target audience and how they may impact the receptivity of your communications:

  • Customers who migrate from device to device throughout their day
  • Spending more time accessing the Internet via mobile device
  • Customers who participate/access user reviews
  • Watching more video and programming via a mobile device
  • Increased use of location-based services
  • In-store use of mobile devices (tablets and smartphones)
  • Adoption and usage of digital couponing
  • Downloading of apps or sampling content via apps
  • Use and adoption of smartcodes or Quick Response (QR) codes
  • Customers who are time shifting a majority of their TV watching

Now is also a great time to revisit your reporting and information resources so that you are making the best possible business decisions. Major digital measurement tools include:

  • Digital campaign performance reporting
  • Online brand impact studies
  • Website analytics/reporting
  • Search (PPC and SEO) reporting
  • Mobile site analytics/app activity reporting
  • Social media analytics
  • Online listening/conversation analysis tools
  • E-commerce sales performance
  • Online audience measurement tools
  • Online competitive site activity
  • Online competitive advertising activity

Also consider some of the following major technology trends and how you might allocate proper resources to take advantage of the “next wave” of innovation:

  • HTML5 development
  • Mobile app development
  • Tablet apps
  • Near-field communications (NFC)
  • Augmented reality
  • Social gaming/social apps
  • Gesture-based computing (think Xbox 360 Kinect)
  • Digital displays/point of sale interactive experiences
  • Digital imaging/exterior installations

Finally, you might want to check the last time you implemented a digital strategy. Has more than 24 months gone by? Not yet even taken the step to implement one? Well, now’s an excellent time to establish a current digital strategy to help with spending decisions…and so much more. And we know several savvy digital strategists who are ready to help (hint, hint).

June 7th, 2011
Posted by Colin Hogan

After weeks of rainy weather, it’s 98° in Dallas, which means that summer is finally here. The season of sun, patios and, of course, summer vacations. Whether you’re headed to the beach or hitting the slopes, taking a vacation can be stressful. But it doesn’t always have to be, thanks to some new offerings in the app store.

Here are some useful mobile apps to download before your next vacation:

Before Your Trip

One of the most stressful parts of a trip is the planning stage. From checking the weather of your destination to keeping track of all your flights, there are lots of things to do before you leave. Here are a couple of tools that will simplify your online research.

TripIt
Booking airline tickets, hotels, rental cars and restaurants leaves you with lots of separate pieces of paper. TripIt makes it easy for anyone to organize trip details into one master online itinerary, which automatically includes maps, directions, weather, restaurant bookings, theater tickets and more right from within the itinerary. Within the app, you can access travel plans, share them with friends, check in for flights or print an itinerary.

Price: Free

FlightTrack
If you’re traveling by plane this summer, the FlightTrack app is a simple solution to keeping up to date with your flight information. You can track your flights with real-time departure information, delays and gate numbers at a glance. If your flight is cancelled, the app will help you find an alternate flight. With nearly 1,500 airlines and worldwide destinations, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a flight that it won’t track.

Price: $4.99

During Your Trip

Once you arrive, you can use these smartphone apps to communicate with others in your group and explore the new city you visit.

Group Text
When traveling in a group, it can be difficult to keep everyone on the same page. With Group Text from Bightkite, you can start a conversation with a group of friends, and when anyone replies, everyone gets the message. Texts are free and unlimited, and it works with any phone, not just the iPhone.

Price: Free

Wikihood
It seems that we use Wikipedia to research everything these days. Wikihood brings all of this information to your cellphone and organizes it for you based on your travel plans. Using location-based technology, this app automatically shows you a list of notable places around you.

Price: Free

Bathroom Finder
Just admit it, we’ve all been there. You’re in a new city (or in the middle of nowhere), you have to go andthere’s no restroom in sight. Thanks to the bathroom finder app, sponsored by Charmin, you can find the nearest clean restroom to your location.

Price: Free

After Your Trip

Even though your trip is ending, you can still find ways to make the memories last. Use these apps on your flight home.

Adobe Photoshop Express
This app is for the creatively inclined. Use Photoshop Express to make quick edits to photos before posting them to Facebook or putting them in your scrapbook. Simply drag your finger across the screen to crop, rotate or adjust color. You can also easily add filters, effects and borders to your vacation photos. Adobe Photoshop Express is also available as an iPad app.

Price: Free

50 Places of a Lifetime
Once your trip is over, you can always start planning for your next summer vacation and checking off your bucket list with the “50 Places of a Lifetime: The World’s Greatest Destinations” app from National Geographic. The app features picturesque photo galleries, 360° panoramas, interactive facts and short personal essays from each place to help inspire your next choice of a vacation destination.

Price: $1.99

May 5th, 2011
Posted by Luke Lancaster

User interface design is constantly evolving in the digital space. As users adapt to their various online environments, so must designers and developers consider the changing landscape. “The fold” is a concept derived from newspapers, which refers to the invisible line on a web page where the user must start scrolling to see the rest of the page’s content. So in traditional media, newspapers were often delivered or displayed folded up and the area “above the fold” is the first thing the reader would see. Therefore, the most eye-catching headlines and images get the readers’ attention and draw them further into the publication.

In the digital space, depending on your monitor size, browser window or the mobile device you’re using, the fold invariably will be different. The early years of Internet design were critical to designing with the fold in mind because users were not accustomed to scrolling inherently. Often, designs were limited to the area above this fold because of user limitations for scrolling the page. Now, with trivial screen resolution statistics and varied browser window sizes, scrolling behavior has become second nature to users – no longer something to be avoided.


Various folds by Internet user browser size
Source: FoldTester.com

While users have acclimated to scrolling online, several recent studies have shown that users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the fold. So it will still be well-advised to keep the most critical messages at the top of your designs. With the emergence of so many varied screen resolutions, there is no longer a well-defined height where the fold must be met. It’s not necessary to throw out the calculations of your target audience’s fold statistics, but it doesn’t mean that you should design the entire home page or pages within this confined space. Use the insight of your fold statistics to guide your critical content within this space, but allow for continued valuable and engaging content to entice users beyond their fold.


Source: WhiteHouse.gov, Hulu.com

Source: Starbucks.com, Southwest.com

Scrolling Beats Paging

Because of users’ limited attention span, long pages can be problematic for users. Users prefer site pages that get to the point and let them accomplish their objectives quickly. So while it is recommended to design beyond the fold, consider limiting unnecessary content and keep it to manageable pages so your user is not overwhelmed.

But if you do have a long article, it is best to present it on one long page. Usability studies have shown that scrolling beats pagination, because users are inherently lazy. They prefer to simply keep going down the page to read their article, not clicking to advance the page. But be mindful that your content must be prioritized and the key enticing content must be presented above the fold.

The Information Foraging theory says that people decide whether to continue along a path (in this case, scrolling) based on the information scent. In other words, users will only scroll the page if it’s relevant and valuable to them. The key is to make sure that the scent remains. A common way to break that scent is to stop giving them the options they are looking for.

The New Fold

With so many variables for your mythical fold, it can be a frustrating exercise in futility attempting to design for a pixel-perfect solution across so many screens and devices. While users can scroll your page beyond the fold, it is important to design and plan your users’ goal or your business goals above the fold. Users will inevitably scroll the page if the layout encourages scanning and if the initially viewable information makes them believe the page is worth their time to continue discovering. It is up to you as a designer to pay off your users’ gamble by providing them valuable content to engage them further with your brand.

So fear not the fold, for they will scroll. The goal is not to force everything above the fold, but to ensure your most important content that will grab the user’s attention is within the topmost pixels. And remember: allow your content to flow down the page as it’s much easier for users to scroll down the page than to click across multiple pages. Embrace the fold and break beyond the boundaries with engaging and relevant content for your audience.

April 27th, 2011
Posted by Click Here

What if we had a crystal ball that could reveal what our target audiences were really thinking, a tool that wasn’t skewed by bias or prejudice and would reveal our target audiences’ true priorities?

While this would undoubtedly make all our lives much easier, surely this type of tool does not really exist. Or does it? With its dominant position in the digital space, Google has been collecting user data over the past 10 years and has gradually begun to make it available to users, usually at no charge. These tools allow advertisers to see what keywords users are searching, what sites they typically visit and can help gauge interests over time.

When used as a complement to the research tools we already leverage for our clients, these free tools can provide both support for existing audience profiles and can provide new ideas and insights surrounding user behavior and interest.

Before We Begin

Before we dive into this world of mind-blowing insight, a few points of caution are worth reiterating to ensure the data are used properly. First, these tools are, more often than not, best used as complements to the existing tools we have at our disposal, such as comScore, Nielsen and Scarborough. Their information, while sometimes able to stand on its own, is best used to add additional insight to these well-known and respected data sources.

The data from these tools are best taken not from one, but from many of the tools. Each will provide its own perspective and view into search, and it is only upon the combination of these different perspectives that a comprehensive conclusion may be drawn.

That being said, please open your mind to the possibility that these tools might not reveal anything at all. Sometimes an audience is too small or an interest is too specific for any tool to reveal meaningful and useful data. So these tools are not meant to serve as silver bullets when other data are lacking. Lastly, the data gained from these tools might be too general or have too many possible interpretations to reliably present as justification when presenting a media plan. Knowing all this, let’s take a look at what Google has to offer.

Google’s Tools

AdWords Keyword Tool
The AdWords keyword tool is usually the first tool used by the Click Here search team in generating keywords for upcoming and existing campaigns. It provides us with recommendations, based on actual search traffic from Google’s network, generated from a smaller list of keywords that we submit. The main value in consulting this tool is its ability to not only provide ideas for additional keywords and research ideas, but it also provides valuable statistics for the suggestions it provides. For example, entering “summer lawn projects” calls up a list of related searches including “scotts lawn care” and “miracle grow fertilizer.” Besides providing some additional competitive information, these results also show that far more users searched for the Scotts term, which could indicate less interest in DIY projects. Give the keyword tool a try here: http://bit.ly/dkrMYM.

Google Ad Planner
Google’s Ad Planner is primarily an online display planning tool that makes available a wealth of user data that are searchable with a variety of different criteria. For the scope of this article, I will be focusing on the keyword feature, which allows you to specify keywords your target audience may be using and identifies websites they may be frequenting. Along with the suggested websites, the Ad Planner provides information for each site, including demographic data, reach and monthly traffic, that are all based on data from Google’s network. For example, entering the keywords “house painting” and “home improvement” will call up sites like acehardware.com and lowes.com along with useful data on each site. In addition to these larger and more well-known sites, the Ad Planner will also suggest smaller, more specific sites that might not show up in tools like comScore. By sifting through these results, you can begin to understand a bit more about the behavior of potential users in your target audience.

Google Wonder Wheel
While perhaps not as exciting as it sounds, the Google Wonder Wheel has stuck around for a reason. Found as a link at the bottom left of any search results page, it allows you to follow a logical line between search queries by showing you related keywords to one that you enter. The tool derives its name from the way this information is arranged, with your term in the center of the wheel and the suggested keywords as the spokes surrounding it. Clicking any one of the “spokes” will move that term to the center and show additional related keyword suggestions, allowing you to move through a logical sequence of potential keywords. In addition to providing these connections, it can also provide you with additional ideas for your research. Give the Wonder Wheel a spin from any Google search results page.

Google's Wonder Wheel

Google's Wonder Wheel

Google Trends/Insights
These are two tools that provide essentially the same information, so for the sake of simplicity, only Google Insights, the more robust of the two tools, will be covered here. Google Insights for Search allows for keyword search volume to be seen across time. In addition to showing trending data, Insights also allows for the customization of the time frame, geography and number of search terms plotted simultaneously. Keeping with the home improvement theme, entering “home improvement” in the search box shows a slightly negative trend in search volume for this particular term since 2004. Along with this information, Google also provides regional data on where the term is being searched the most, as well as suggestions for other terms that are exhibiting above-average search volume for the time period. Two useful applications of the Insights information are spotting seasonal trends and identifying regional-specific interest, which can be useful when crafting plans for clients that might not have a presence nationwide or are trying to reach a certain area of the country or world.

Google Trends

Google Trends

Google AdWords Placement Tool
This is the only Google tool that requires an active pay-per-click (PPC) search campaign and gives some visibility into where our ads are appearing on Google’s Content Network. These are listings that look just like PPC search text ads, but instead of being triggered by a keyword search on Google.com, they are triggered by site content that is contextually relevant to the keywords in our campaign. Information from this tool can be very useful in understanding, like Google Ad Planner, where the users we are targeting might be consuming content online. These sites may provide additional insight into the target or provide you with additional ideas on where these users can be found.

To Summarize
As mentioned before, these tools are best when used as complements since some of the data they provide can be difficult to interpret in a vacuum. By using the (mostly) free tools provided by Google and marrying them with other established data sources, you can gain additional understanding about your target audience that can help create and support better media plans. For additional information, please feel free to reach out to any friendly member of the Click Here search team.

April 27th, 2011
Posted by Click Here

As a Millennial, I sometimes have to fight against the stereotypes so lovingly bestowed upon my generation. Quite often, co-workers, clients and even my not-so-far-removed Gen X friends fall into the trap of quickly writing off my age group. In not so many words, we’ve been called a lazy, mush-brained generation that believes we deserve everything live-streamed to us on our iPads while we enjoy being served Four Loko from a silver spoon. Awesome mental picture, but it’s not true!

If you’ve read anything about my generation, you know that aside from being more “plugged in” and “digitally mobile” than any other generation group, we’re also very interested in being civically involved and like to support nonprofit causes.

A recent study released by the consulting firms JGA and Achieve found that, in 2010, 93% of 3,000 Millennials surveyed donated their time or money to a nonprofit organization.

Now, that’s a cool number, and I’m glad to see that my peers are supporting good causes. However, here’s a stat I found alarming:

Eighty-five percent of those who were not involved with a nonprofit in 2010 attributed “not having enough time” to their lack of involvement.

Not apathy, but TIME! “I swear I want to help someone, Nate – but I just don’t have enough time between work and friends and watching Netflix and laying out by the pool and catching up with ‘Gossip Girl’!“ Pweef – are we really that busy, or are those Boomers actually right about us? Are we just plain lazy?

Well, fear not, you technology-rich but time-poor Millennial! Below you will find a few useful services that have combined tech + charity in some pretty cool and innovative ways. So now you can become involved with a nonprofit without having to cut down on your monthly minutes at the tanning salon. Also, there are only five examples, so you still have time tonight to cruise YouTube for Rebecca Black parodies.

SwipeGood (http://swipegood.com)
Support charity while supporting your shopping addiction.

Similar to Bank of America’s “Keep the Change” functionality, SwipeGood rounds up your credit card transactions to the nearest dollar and donates the spare change to the charity of your choice. There are currently almost 500 charities supported and more are being added frequently, so you’re bound to find a cause that will be worth your nickels and dimes. And in case you’re worried that you’ll accidentally blow your budget if you’re not watching your transactions, SwipeGood offers the ability to set a monthly limit.

SocialVibe (http://www.socialvibe.com)
Good for advertisers, great for charities.


SocialVibe bills itself as the leading social media utility that connects brands and consumers for the benefit of a charitable organization. Their platform is built on a pretty simple pay-for-engagement system where you interact with a brand’s advertising for a donation to charity – then you share with your social graph. It’s a dead-simple service that you can do on your lunch break or during Tuesday morning’s conference call.

HelpAttack! (http://www.helpattack.com)
A good reason for your tweets to stop being so lame.

HelpAttack! operates under the philosophy that giving back isn’t something we should only do when disaster strikes or when your company has their annual 5K – it should be ingrained in our everyday life. For many of us, our lives are just as much online as they are offline, so HelpAttack! allows users to pledge a small donation every time they update their social network. So with every scandalous spring break picture you post on Facebook or live tweet you send during jury duty, you can actually be supporting a great cause – one small donation at a time.

charity: water’s online portal (http://www.charitywater.org or http://mycharitywater.org)
An easier way to motivate other lazy friends’ giving.

charity: water is a not-for-profit organization that sponsors clean water projects in developing countries. They are also an organization that supports grassroots involvement of its supporters to spread the word and garner donations. Their online portal makes it incredibly easy for one person to plan an event or campaign and encourage others to donate to it. Actually, just last month for my 24th birthday, I used this service to rally my friends to raise over $2,500 for a soon-to-be-built clean water project.

FreeRice.com (http://www.freerice.com)
Do something productive while you’re bored on the Internet.

You’ve probably heard of this one before since it’s been around for ages – since 2007. FreeRice is a very simple online game that asks you to define a word for the chance to donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. The sponsors of this program allow you to flex your brain while giving food to those who desperately need it.

So there you have it – five really simple, really easy and really great ways to donate your time or money to help a good cause. So you have no more excuses for not getting involved, OK?

Now be a good Millennial and retweet this article to all your followers.

April 14th, 2011
Posted by Click Here

“Back in my day, son, we had to create all our wire frames in Visio! We had to link everything by hand if we wanted to create some kind of interactive version, or even hand-code them in static HTML…” – A 40-something information architect

Nowadays programs like Axure have made it incredibly easy to render small and medium-sized wire frame documents and interactive prototypes. While they can provide realistic, testable user experiences – there still are limitations, especially when creating a large catalog of pages or when the project has a quick turnaround time.

In Axure, the longer the list of pages, the longer the render time. One of our recent projects topped out at well over 100 pages. It took almost an hour to render a prototype. Even after all the work had been finalized and approved, the code Axure generated could not be reused by the development team. Developers still had to recreate the experience from scratch.

Generating....

Recently, I was asked to create a set of wire frames and render a prototype for a client’s blog. There were numerous revisions to the documents, and development was left with a shortened timeline. For another client, I had to build an interactive prototype based on a 150+ page site map/content matrix. Axure was just too cumbersome.

So lately I have been experimenting with a new method of prototyping – building the prototype in the actual content management system (CMS) that my team’s developer will use to render the final version of the site.

For example, a client might use WordPress as the CMS for their blog/static page site. I simply created a default, grayscale template and built the prototype using a few additional plug-ins. Even if some pages will ultimately contain more robust toolsets, the page structures, template types, site map and naming conventions are already complete. Only the presentation layer, styles and additional features or custom scripting remain.

Simple Add Pages plug-in

Above - Using the “Simple Add Pages” CMS plug-in creates an infinite amount of nested pages and corresponding navigation in one step.

I’ve found this method superior for making changes on the fly while collaborating with clients. Change page order, move pages to another section, rename entire areas – no problem. Different navigation systems can be tested on the fly and rapid iterative designs are much more, well, rapid. And again, all of the code, databases and XML data can be reused for the final version of the site.

The primary benefit – time savings for both information architecture and development. The 150+ page site that might take several weeks to create in Axure took a few days. Still, I would not recommend this solution for every project. Axure is far more nimble for prototyping more experiential sites, and the supporting specifications generator can be easily printed for client and development review.

While the CMS method of prototyping has yet to be fully vetted and tested, several of my colleagues in development are eager to collaborate with me on this type of prototyping. I’ll post updates in this blog with a client-approved example later this year.