Tag Archives: Interaction
photo credit: Rachel Ford James
This year is the first year I am within rock-throwing distance of the convention center, allowing me to pack selectively for the sessions. I’ve stripped down my load to a notebook, cell phone and iPad.
Previous years wireless connectivity and lack of power has left my thoughts recorded with pen and paper. Looking around this year, I see a prevalence of tablets, most notably iPads and dominance of cell phones. Gone are the rows and rows of open laptops and netbooks. Is this an improvement?
Distracted driving has now led into distracted conferencing. Whether tweeting a narrative of each session, browsing down tangents of topics mentioned, or just catching up on things back home, speakers are now competing to keep the attention of the crowd. Could panels’ success be derived from the amount of traffic emanating from the room? Would successful panels have more upload data vs. download?
Now that the attention of everyone is at a premium and note-taking is a collective activity, can we anticipate future panels to be driven by the community much like the now infamous Zuckerberg keynote a few years back or is this just approaching the annoying audience reaction meter news agencies throw up during presidential debates? I have not seen any requests for panel feedback this year, but my hope is that with real-time feedback devices throughout the audience, panels will become dynamically tailored to what people are looking for, eliminating the need for the distractions in the first place.
Dave Vieser is a VP of Technology in our Chicago office.
Celia Jones | Critical Mass Chicago
A couple weeks ago, I was returning home from a business trip and came across this scene at a gate in the United concourse of O’Hare. I took note not only because United is a Critical Mass client, but also because of the brilliantly simple idea behind this display. 
To promote their Economy Plus offering, they placed a couple of airplane seats in the gate and invited the captive audience of travelers to sit in the seats and feel the difference for themselves. Rather than a just battery of signage touting the benefits of extra legroom (the message), passengers could test out the seats, kick back with a magazine or set up their virtual office for a half-hour of extra productivity before boarding the plane (the experience).
Beyond those stretched out in the chairs, passers-by could observe these real people, relaxed and comfortable—quite a contrast to the typical airport image of crabby passengers stuffing themselves into cramped quarters, whether at the gate or worse, on the plane. Observers could log this “warm and fuzzy” scene, tucking it away into their memories until the next time they booked a trip online and maybe, just maybe, they might chip in the extra fee for the increased comfort and productivity.
The Economy Plus seating display is a great example of how the ability to “see, touch and feel” the benefits of a product or service can actually lead someone to purchase it. The interplay between the message and the experience is a powerful combination—a “one-two” punch in terms of reaching consumers and driving them to a desired action.
Now translate that dynamic to the digital space. Digital, by its nature, invites interactivity. Touch screen technologies, devices like the iPhone and iPad, and augmented reality have added a layer of sensory sizzle to consumers’ experience of brands. Now more than ever, we can design experiences that mirror the “see, touch and feel” interaction that previously could only be achieved in person, in real-life.
Harnessing the power of this technology as a complement or wrapper to your message can be the difference between merely encouraging engagement and compelling action.
Adam Bracegirdle | Critical Mass Calgary
This year marked my second at the SXSW interactive festival and it’s escalation was palpable. As one firmly rooted in the cerebral, esoteric environs of the creative department, I was expected by many to attend those “creative” sessions in which my peers debate, among other things, the value of the word press theme, or typography on the web. Although important work, I found conversations on the future of my medium to be a far more tantalizing proposition this time around. With that in mind I siphoned a rather crowded schedule down to a multitude of unfamiliar topics ranging from scaled multi-touch platforms to the economics of high quality content creation online. Much to my delight I found something compelling in nearly every one short of a distant few (some were vain attempts at self marketing rather then an argument of any substance. I haven’t the appetite for that.). After a short while, in fact from the very first of my lectures, I began to notice a pervading thought in nearly every talk I attended.
Convergence seemed to be on the minds of every eminent social guru and internet famous CEO at the conference. Wary as I am of the dreaded interactive meme, I could not help but feel that convergence wasn’t just another passing interweb buzzword. It seemed to permeate every lecture regardless of bent. Hardware discussions would invariably turn to talk of real-time repositories that could be accessed from anywhere; hardware as we know it becoming usurped by its more powerful, cloud-based counterpart. And although I suppose one could say that it’s an obvious (and dated) example of where convergence is headed, the example becomes substantive when watching a mob of displeased technophiles assault Mark Cuban, chairman of HDNet, demanding access to a`la carte content at a whim, from anywhere.
Talk of convergence extended well out of the traditional confines of platform and hardware though. Point in case, “social” was a virtual non-event this year as it has become almost totally ubiquitous; no longer considered a back channel for passive content. The emergence of the front channel was happening before us at SXSW as Twitter blew up during the keynotes with a frenzy of discussion, valuable or not, and location based services like Gowalla begin to provide tangible value in finding anything from Migas for breakfast 
to the best dive bar in Texas. I found myself at one point wondering if I was the only one in my lecture becoming confused by the direction of the conversation, only to find that several others were tweeting from within the room and getting informed responses from the moderator, in real-time. The convergence of channels is happening rapidly in these circles as the term “multi-channel” exits the lexicon and is replaced simply by “interaction”.
Companies are much like people. They like to talk about themselves. Also like people, they sometimes forget to praise the brilliance of others. There are two observations that the Critical Mass twitter profile receives quite a bit: 1) A lot of great links are shared. 2) Most of those links are to other people’s work. Those two comments prompted a thought which resulted in a sizable response:
This concept doesn’t just apply to Twitter, it easily translates to various content-producing social networks, but for the sake of this short case study, let’s keep it to just one.
Participation: Twitter requires a certain frequency of communication to be considered an “active member.” Even if it’s 4-5 a day, you’re hitting enough people to make your presence known. A single entity (outside of media outlets) generally doesn’t produce enough content everyday in order to have 4-5 things worth mentioning to promote itself. The subsequent reality? If you want to tweet, you need to tweet something created by someone else.
Reciprocation: People who share content with others, generally want those others to also share that content with another set of people. It can come in the form of a “retweet” or a link to a blog post. Whatever the method, when we distribute information, we want that information to snowball among the rest of a given audience. In order for that to take place you need a community of people who are willing to share your content. That community of sharers grows exponentially if you are also actively sharing their content in reciprocation. If you’re not, then you need to be an absolute leader in your field to blindly receive praise and pass-along.
Modesty: Stemming from the above, even if you ARE the absolute leader in your field, by not sharing the thoughts of others you are indirectly making the implication that your thoughts/products/services are better than everyone else’s. That could very well be true, but arrogance can cost you the attention of those who genuinely would want to hear what you have to say. Share information. It sends the message that you value other’s time as much as they should value yours.
Originality: After you’ve established yourself as an entity that contributes to the community you’re having a conversation in, remember to balance goodwill with originality. Sharing other’s links too much can be detrimental to a twitter brand as well since it may lead some to think you lack originality. Make sure that your reciprocation always has a nice share of your own original thoughts.
Thanks to @jasondrohn @Stuartcfoster @jamiecalder @KWhite16131 @louiebaur @sarahkatharine@PaigeCalvert @mthinker @mattDavidson @NicoledeB @TimMoore for passing along this thought.
