The new web interface for Twitter has been sitting as “beta” for a few months now (as of this writing), and I’m quite sure my visual branding has suffered. If you think that’s not important, and that it’s only the 140 characters that count, please think again. If you have added a pictures with your head shot, or a company logo, or any kind of image to replace the anonymous silhouette, you have branded yourself visually. And that matters.

Here’s a screenshot of my old Twitter page:

Screenshot for @deanmeistr's account under the old Twitter design - 1024 x 768 pixels wide

Although the background was a static image, with no ability to link (either with text or to use mapping), one still could create the illusion of a standard web site with navigation in a left hand column. Twitter’s live content would float in the browser window, with a wide center column of tweets and some navigational features in the right.

What’s happening, indeed!

All of my branding is sucessfully blotted out with the new design, which absorbs so much of the browser’s live area you see something rather distracting rather than my carefully laid out background.

Here’s my page showing the new Twitter design, again at 1024 x 768 pixels. Notice my entire identity work is almost completely lost, as Twitter fills the central content with additional information. Note also that I have no ability to control the CSS they provide; that floating content is set in both in its width and placement, and I cannot put any background image underneath it to compensate for the space they have consumed.

And to be fair, I have tried this in all of the standard browsers, from IE to Safari to Firefox, on both major platforms (Windows and Mac).

Twitter's revised design in the browser for @deanmeistr's account - still at 1024 x 768 pixels wide.

Here’s my friend Tom Guarriello’s (@tomguarriello) Twitter page, in the “new” twitter. Looks fine? You can see his personal information that he put together in the left, again as a “mini branding” area. But look again. This is a screen shot taken with the browser opened up to over 1400 pixels wide, in order to compensate for the contents’ floating requirement center screen. This is not standard to most browsers running on the average desktop monitor.

@tomguarriello's Twitter page - at 1430 x 763 pixels!

Even the iPad and notebook user running Twitter from their browser would more likely see this:

@tomguarreillo on Twitter - at 1024 x 768 pixels

Visual Branding on Twitter? Limited Possibilities.

Twitter’s message on their ABOUT page states:

“Businesses use Twitter to quickly share information with people interested in their products and services, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and influential people. From brand lift [sic], to CRM, to direct sales, Twitter offers businesses a chance to reach an engaged audience.”

Brand lift? I like brand lift. However, I consider visual identity an important part of creating and owning a brand. I want every opportunity possible to identify my brand, and the background on the twitter page was just about the only area permitted. Essentially, visual branding has been deprecated to a single, smaller square image (often not bigger than a favicon, when seen on a mobile device). It’s really too bad that Twitter decided to remove the ability to enrich the visual branding experience by covering the background area (for most browsers), and not offering anywhere else in the foreground to uniquely identify the account holder.

Recently, Facebook changed their default landing page for people to view more pictures of the account holder in a more prominent place, right above the main content stream area. For branding, visuals matter, which is why we spend so much time and money creating visual branding identities. Will Twitter make a revision to the design of their browser page to allow for more visual branding opportunities if it offers them greater financial gain? I hope so. I’m ready for that.

In the meantime, I’ll think about how to squeeze my branding visual into a long, narrow channel about 50 pixels wide, and hope Twitter doesn’t remove that possibility completely in their next revision of the browser page.

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Storytelling can counteract hidden influencers

This is a snarky view of the truth about who really influences clients about their decision-making process. In particular, I often hear from clients of smaller businesses new to the web, “My son took a look at the site and said…,” or “Let me see what so-and-so thinks” about the navigation of a site. the mid-sized and enterprise client version is “the marketing department says”, or “the IT department thinks”. This is not to say that every client is unsophisticated, or mistrustful. Some of them hide their doubts by saying, “let me review this”, while they run to Google the terms “wireframe,” “user experience” and “below the fold.” New terminology, and an unknown way of doing business is, naturally, frightening to any normally-confident professional.

There are the clients who are ready to pull the trigger and have the site launch, until someone has asked them about adding more text, another button, another navigation tab. Who is this someone? Perhaps it’s a colleague, a long-term professional friend who knows their business. Or the consultant who is advising them on another aspect of their business, who’s looking at the site with fresh eyes, but has no knowledge of the goals set in the brief about the purpose and desired outcomes for the site.

That’s when it’s time to pull out the notes, the wireframes, the sketches, the sitemap, the doodles and brainstorming images you created with the client. Review the personas you have created as the target audience, play “squint at the screen” to show the client how much is really visible and what matters when a new user lands on the site.

Tell your client’s story to improve your influence

Give your client every opportunity to air their fears that the site won’t do well, or seems different than what they imagined it would look like. Learn and understand their story, as they become the owner and publisher of a web site, a mobile app, or a participant in a social network. Create the story of a successful experience for a new user coming to their site, and another story of an experience user returning to their site. Show them why that person would send the link to your client’s URL to a friend.

Be prepared and know the story of your client’s site. Your confidence that you’ve done your work properly and professionally, that you’ve covered all of the goals, whether coming from the perspective of branding, marketing, or sales, should be the strongest influencer on your client. If it’s not, review, refresh, and reboot.

Mindmap created using iThoughtHD on the iPad. To grab a copy of the Mindmap click on the image below:

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Note created with Penultimate iPad ap and a stylus

Perhaps I have fat fingertips. I haven’t measured them, but as deftly as I can wield an xacto knife  or carve a turkey, I have better control when using an opposable thumb. After loading Sketchbook on my iPhone and a handful of other sketching programs, I found that none of them were both fun and truly functional for my work, with its small screen and my fleshy fingertips. I gave up on the idea of writing and drawing with my bare finger on a touchscreen device. In comparison, I have a Wacom tablet for my MacBook Pro and I’ve put in the time to learn how to work with it. The Wacom features a pressure-sensitive surface and a pen-like tipped stylus. On the iPhone and, I feared, on the iPad, it would be back to coarse finger painting, at best.

I gave in and purchased an iPad after seeing a few new styluses appearing on the market, along with some videos showing them in action.

After a few weeks of testing three different capacitive styluses, I have settled into using one of the most frequently, a second as backup, and a third that went into the trash.

From weakest to strongest, here are my results after 2 weeks of testing and play:

THIRD PLACE— Into the Trash Bin

Sorry, Ten One Design, I think you were the first, and it was a valiant effort, but the pogo stylus can’t keep up with my pushy hands and desire for fast, precise movement.

I bought the pogo stylus originally for the iPhone. I also must admit that I have arthritis in both of my thumbs, which makes gripping thin implements and tools (or brushes) rather painful after a while. Therefore, the pogo’s thin dimensions makes it handy for the pocket but hard to use over long periods of time (for me).

The greater problem is the actual capacitive surface the pogo provides. It looks somewhat like a bulbous Q-tip end, and I discovered rather quickly that the tip would float around the screen from pressure. My strokes could slip and slide, and I really was afraid to overuse the stylus. Sure enough, over time, it became less and less accurate as the tip end wobbled around.

Summary: OK for first out of the gate; not really a useful tool over time, particularly for fine work on the screen, such as writing or drawing.

SECOND PLACE: “Curiously Refreshing”

Dagi Stylus tested in the Notes+ app on the iPad

The Dagi appeared shortly after the iPad came out, and promised terrific accuracy based on the hard, clear capacitive surface with a red dot to indicated where the precision point would be. Sounded good, and I liked the video on their website. I bought it via ebay, and waited about 10 days for delivery from China.

The Dagi isn’t kidding around: its thicker, pen-like body feels more like a pen. The odd, circular flat clear end of the pen has a small red dot to allow you to see the surface of the screen. Good idea. Handling of the stylus, however, does seem to need a little bit of managing to keep the flat surface of the stylus end in constant contact with the screen surface. Not so good. Add to that the difficulty of not being able to rest your palm on the surface of the iPad (it cannot distinguish between the flat end of your hand and a finger), and it’s even more difficult to keep it evenly touching. Circular strokes are quite hard to keep smooth. Finally, that red dot isn’t nearly as accurate as one might hope, especially with the lag between contact and what appears on the screen.

Summary: Almost there. I’ll keep using it and see if I become more proficient with it. You might like the Dagi, but I think the balancing act between writing without being able to rest your hand as you write/draw/doodle and keeping the pen flat will slow you down—annoyingly so. With the screen tilted, it’s not much better.

I also was afraid of breaking off the end of the stylus, even though it seems to be pretty well secured. I can’t be trusted when I clip a pen inside my shirt pocket. Yes, I still do that.

Testing the Boxwave stylus in the AirSketch app on the iPad

FIRST CHOICE: (for the moment) is the Box Wave stylus. Like the Dagi, it has a pen-weight, pen-sized body. The tip, however, is firm. Do not expect it to look like a wacom stylus: it has a thick tip end, fatter than a big Sharpee but smaller than my pinkie finger. The large drawing on the top of this post was done with it in Sketchbook Pro in about 2 minutes, with just a few undo’s to clean up the few times I inadvertently let the edge of my palm hit touch the screen. The sketch seen to the left was done in the AirSketch app, with my iPad set up to stand at an angle.

Summary: My vote for now goes to the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus (the link takes you to purchase the stylus from Amazon). Although this still doesn’t work as well as the Wacom tablet/Art Rage Studio Pro arrangement I’ve become accustomed to when I’m not using analog pen/pencil/marker and paper, I’m willing to keep working on getting used to it for graphic recording when I want to carry less equipment and avoid scanning and retouching images later.

I would offer a link to the Dagi Stylus, but I could only find it and purchase it directly from them via ebay.

To be completely fair, here is a link to purchase the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Stylus, also via Amazon. I hope they keep working on it.

I’ll probably have an update on this post in a few weeks, as well as more to say about sketching and notetaking apps for the iPad as I take it out more regularly into the field.

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Housing Works' Design on a Dime Benefit

Last Thursday evening I had the opportunity to peek into over 20 stranger’s bedrooms and other living spaces. Actually, I was invited to not only peruse, but to purchase the lamps, tables, beds….anything with a price tag on it. There were plenty of nice items to choose from, and it wasn’t just a shabby chic auction or a fire sale going on, it was Housing Works’ “Design on a Dime” Benefit show, held at The Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street in Manhattan. Is New York in a spring cleaning/home design frenzy? I ask because as the Benefit opened its doors the May 11, 2009  issue of New York Magazine cover article was Design Liberation: The 2009 Home Design Issue.

I don’t have an answer why home design is on the mind of New Yorkers right now, and you can just look at my pics below from the Design on a Dime Benefit show and not read anymore of this post. But it is a good time to think about design as something that isn’t just in the minds and hands of experts.

An Obama-inspired bedroom

We all design (by accident as well as on purpose), starting with our home and work spaces. Rather than being just an unconscious reflection of who we are (messy or neat, bright or somber), it can be what we want it to be by applying thought about how the contents of the room affects us, choosing colors that dominate the setting for each room, and displaying a few choice items that make a statement.  This is where visiting a show like this or reading the New York Magazine article can stimulate our creativity and inspire us.

Enjoy the picture show below. Look for color, shapes, organization. See what you like, and think about how it sets a mood. Imagine why you’d like to spend time in that room or why you wouldn’t even walk into a room like that. Design is proactive, and after you’ve looked at what other people have done to create an environment, think about what you might do to change yours.

Moving from 3-D to the flat spaces we design all the time as well, apply the same criteria: is this slide or page or web site inviting, welcoming, cold, formal, funky? Would I want to spend time here or just go past it quickly because it’s too messy and unorganized? Take a stroll through a presentation on Slideshare and see what others are designing that make you feel at home, and use it as an example. Hopefully a light bulb with a pretty lampshade will turn on in your mind.

Click here to see the slide show from the Design on a Dime Benefit

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Thanks to Howard Greenstein, I was able to get into the the Social Media Club meeting in New York City last week on short notice. The details about the meeting, along with video, is posted here: http://www.socialmediaclub.org/author/howard/

I didn’t want to tweet about it, which I am finding is now a great way of making notes, but I did bring pencil and pad to write down things that might interest me. The first speaker, Fraser Kelton (@fraser) spoke about Glue, and the issue of “walled gardens” keeping data from transferring between applications.  My pad and pencil responded with this:

The second speaker was Tina Alexander, talking about the community sites currently in beta on The Wall Street Journal’s site.I was struck by the idea of “Curated content”, a phrase she used, and drew this:

The images come from the talks, and they serve as reminders of the talks. Sometimes from listening, pictures are created in the mind that are more striking than anything projected on the screen. Sometimes, you have to close your eyes to see.

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Good storytelling sometimes has nothing to do with the story itself, particularly if it’s a story so familiar we can tell it to ourselves. Here’s an example of great storytelling that isn’t about the story, a familiar chestnut of a fairy tale, but the way it’s told: with humor, simplicity, and a surprising amount of data visualization that might hang around in your mind even after the story is done.

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

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