Smartphones & Usability

Dick Stroud points us to a newsletter by Web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen:

How do you design mobile applications for older people? With great care.
The Jakob Nielsen newsletter has a very useful article about the challenges of designing applications for small screens.

His “bottom line” message is that: “Mobile devices require a tight focus in content presentation, with the first screen limited to only the most essential information.”

(Unless you have very slippery fingers…)

Dr. Nielsen backs up what I’ve been saying for over a year about advertising and smartphones:

Foretellings (01 May 2010)
The more people use smartphones, the less they’ll tolerate silly graphical doodads mucking up their small  screens.

Foretellings II
The Pew report … found that 87 percent of the smartphone owners surveyed used their device to access the Web or e-mail at least once a day. And 25 percent said they go online on their smartphone more than they do with a regular computer…

Just A Few Gazillion Dollars
… The death knell for the personal computer will sound like: ‘Mainly I use my phone/pad, but I still use my PC to write long e-mails and documents.’ Most people aren’t there yet, but that’s where we’re headed.

A pretty piss-poor advertising medium.
Consumers weren’t motivated by display ads, as evidenced by the share of the online audience that bothered to click on them.

Not everyone loves Jakob Nielsen:

Nielsen has been criticized by some graphic designers for failing to balance the importance of other user experience considerations such as eye appeal.

What a shock.  After all …

Goodbye, Fancy-Schmancy Web Sites
Online, content is a tool. We use it. It's not passive and neither are we. And if its design hinders that use, we get irritable.

There is no way anybody, no matter what age, will put up with graphic gizmo advertising on smartphones.

Simple Fact: The real estate isn’t there.

Don’t Call Them Old (Is Old)

I saw this headline floating on my monitor, and clicked:

Don't call them old
By Bruce Posten
31 July 2011
Many baby boomers are in their 60s but not ready to retire or seek services for senior citizens … many defiant baby boomers apparently prefer to believe in encores rather than final acts. For them, aging and retirement have become somewhat problematic in a variety of ways…

Looked familiar.  At least the headline.  I dug into my dusty ethereal drawers and found this from almost eight years ago:

Don't call them old
by Jean Starr
14 December 2003
No old standards
Chuck Nyren is a leading creative consultant, copywriter, and columnist, who focuses on baby boomer demography, sociology and culture.
"Not wanting to get/be/look older isn't anything new. However, baby boomers will do it a bit differently," he said. "Looking and being healthy will be more important than toupees and botox. While botox and the like are getting a lot of press, I'm guessing only a small percentage of people are using stuff like that. Being able to ride a bike, play tennis and garden will be more important than looking good and feeling (bad)."

The more things stay the same, the more they stay the same.

The Press Release Parade

I’m on the list.

That doesn’t make me special by any standards. Press Releases are like virtual confetti nowadays.*

Most are daft, pointless blather.  While the salutation “Hi Chuck” makes it appear as if the sender has some clue about what my blog is about, it’s usually a tip-off that whatever PR genius it is has never read my posts. 

And they usually have no idea what they’re writing about. A recent (expurgated) one:

Hi Chuck,
Meredith, the publisher of large-circulation magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies' Home Journal, is beginning to guarantee some of its biggest advertisers that major ad campaigns in Meredith titles will actually increase their sales by a certain amount. But will this be a big enough incentive to make advertisers switch to print?

Advertisers aren’t switching to print.  They’ve been using print advertising successfully for hundreds of years. If anything, they may be thinking about switching to ether. 

More from the press release:

The attractiveness of internet advertising lies in its innate ability to track returns and manage spending to a very fine degree due to the immediate nature of response it is able to generate.

Ah, yes.  Tracking returns:

Click this ad. 0.051% do.

The Click: Brand Marketing's Most Misleading Measure
… a tiny fraction of people ever click on an ad. In fact, 99% of stable cookies examined never click on an ad … optimization of campaigns to achieve higher CTR may in fact be reducing brand ROI.

I won’t comment on Meredith’s ‘guarantee’ and if it’s good  for them, or for advertisers.  My guess is that it’s simply a promotional vehicle that has to do with flattening ad revenue across all media – not a response to web advertising as implied by the misleading press release.  More than likely, Meredith is focusing on major advertisers, competing for print dollars and, perhaps, TV revenue.  Web advertising is actually a big dud:

The Real Thing vs. The Virtual Thing

* Disclosure: I toss handfuls for clients every so often.

Disclaimer: This post is in no way a commentary on the Public Relations industry. Many well-respected professionals condemn confetti press releases.

The Best Anti-Aging Products, Services, and Activities: Guaranteed!

I was on the phone the other day with Marilynn Larkin:

Editing/writing: all areas, but especially health, wellness, fitness, medical (user-friendly interpretations and practical advice in areas listed above), related technologies, informed consumer.

She was interviewing me for a piece in The Journal on Active Aging®, a publication put out by The International Council on Active Aging:

This burgeoning demographic spent 79 billion dollars in 2009 on products and services that claim to slow the aging process — despite the fact that “most of those products and services don’t deliver what they claim to,” says Colin Milner, CEO of the International Council on Active Aging (ICAA).

A bit more about it all:

The sale of putative anti-aging products such as nutrition, physical fitness, skin care, hormone replacements, vitamins, supplements and herbs is a lucrative global industry, with the US market generating about $50 billion of revenue each year. Medical experts state that the use of such products has not been shown to affect the aging process, and many claims of anti-aging medicine advocates have been roundly criticized by medical experts, including the American Medical Association.

I beg to differ.  There are plenty of anti-aging products, services, and activities that are staggeringly effective.  They stop the aging process almost immediately. 

For example: War, pestilences, diseases, famines, natural disasters, and accidents of all types top the list of anti-aging services and activities.  For fast-acting anti-aging, there are pills and/or herbs.  Try cyanide, hemlock, arsenic.  Some exercises are effective. Jump off a building. If you’re anti-aging, they work!

Of course, not everybody is in favor of anti-aging.  Many are pro-age.  For them, eating healthy stuff and exercising will probably help (I’ve dabbled in both).  Keeping your brain active is not anti-aging, might even be pro-aging (but don’t count on it).  Some modern medicine and public sanitation are pro-aging.  Other than those – and if you happen to have lucky-ducky genes – that’s about all the help you’ll get.

Unfortunately, there’s not much money to be made with pro-aging – so marketers and advertisers ignore it, preferring to push an anti-aging agenda.

Caveat: Personally, I’m in favor of the anti-aging services provided by this admirable organization. Other than that, keep those anti-aging products and services away from me. The more wrinkles I see, the happier I’ll be.

Foretellings II

From the The New York Times:

Smartphones and Mobile Internet Use Grow, Report Says
The Pew report … found that 87 percent of the smartphone owners surveyed used their device to access the Web or e-mail at least once a day. And 25 percent said they go online on their smartphone more than they do with a regular computer — a trend that will most likely continue as wireless technologies become faster and more reliable.

Sounds familiar:

Foretellings (May 2010)
The visual power of the web will fade as more people use handheld devices … With the exception of the workplace, smartphones (along with iPads and Kindles or something like them) might just make desktops and laptops and the web as we know it obsolete.  If ‘being connected’ mostly means communicating with friends, doing simple search, reading the news - then all that’s really needed is a smartphone. 

Also from the over-a-year-old post above:

That silly retronym “traditional advertising” will remain the premiere force for introducing people to a product or service, along with sustaining its shelf life. Television, print, radio, and billboard ads will continue to have the visceral power they’ve always had – if only for their sheer size, simplicity, and cutting-edge audio/visual qualities.  Advertising on smartphones will be considered an annoyance, invasive, and rather dinky – while marketing (coupons on steroids, and more) will flourish and dominate.

Dick Stroud points us to a fascinating advertising/marketing campaign in South Korea:

Apps for Baby Boomers
A terrific demonstration of the power of smartphones and how they link to the physical world:

Tesco/Korea

Although I don’t think this particular model would work in the U.S. (lots of people love to explore grocery stores), the concept is marketing on steroids.  And (as I’ve said over and over) it involves traditional advertising (in this case, billboards) introducing you to a product or service – while shopping with the assistance of a smartphone.

How revolutionary!  How clever we are in this modern day and age!  Imagine! Using your phone to order from a grocery store and having your items delivered!  What’ll they think of next?