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Written by Tina Lee on January 24, 2012 with 0 comments |

Advertising on a Responsive Web

I’m unabashedly excited about responsive design (see my review of Ethan Marcotte’s book). I believe that it has the potential to take web design in directions we haven’t considered. At Mule we’ve been applying some of the principles to recent project, seeing where things work and where they don’t, and we’ve run into one big hurdle that we haven’t yet figured out how to clear:

Advertising.

Advertising online has been pretty much the same since day one:

• Take a block of space on the page
• Put something eye-catching (animated and/or garishly colored) in that block
• Count the clicks
• Count your money

The only things that have changed are the size and delivery technologies to take advantage of bigger screens and bigger pipes. And that’s the problem. The general pitch behind web advertising depends on there being a block of certain pixel dimensions that is sold along with position and number of clicks. The web advertising world is not set up to deal in percentage widths, and they’re certainly not going to deal with ads that may or may not show up depending on the width of a user’s browser window.

Continue reading "Advertising on a Responsive Web" »

Written by David McCreath on January 17, 2012 with 4 comments |

Written by Tina Lee on January 17, 2012 with 0 comments |

Written by Tina Lee on January 9, 2012 with 0 comments |

From Constraints Springs the Wild: On Research, Anthropology, & Anxious Marketeers

In an interview with Shadoe Huard, Katie draws on her background as an advocacy filmmaker and anthropologist to give a better sense of how the fields twine and influence our research process at Mule.

Most people do not just hang out and think about web pages for fun, they’re there to do something, so we need to think about the very specific tasks that they want to do there and the information they need to make decisions or complete tasks.

…I’m engaged everyday in producing ‘research’ and ‘creative’ things like the Let’s Make Mistakes podcast or my own film work or stuff with the Disposable Film Festival, [and] no matter what I’m doing I am trying to make sure that everyone has a totally clear understanding of what and why we’re doing things and that the things I’m spending time on are making things better. So I approach the beginning of a research period the same way I approach production of a film. Obviously there are different tasks involved, but the same themes are there throughout: figure out who the audience is, figure out what they want, agree on the medium and general purpose and then develop an idea with those contraints.

Read the full interview here, which includes talk on the web as a giant system in itself, the relationship between researcher and designer, and the best sum-up/put-down of bad marketing tactics: “A click is not love, despite how much it feels like it at 3am when you’re looking at analytics.”

Written by Tina Lee on January 5, 2012 with 0 comments |

10 New Year's Resolutions for Designers

For one, choose better problems to solve:

Designers are, by definition, problem-solvers. And the world has never been so blessedly full of problems. Our infrastructure is rotting, the economy is crap, Wall Street is awash with criminals and millions of people can’t get basic medical care, food, and water. We don’t need another app to rate your sandwich. We don’t need to know when we go to sleep and get up. We do not need digital farms. We need real ones. We need fresh water. We need solutions for the apocalypse.

—Over at .net magazine, Mike supplies a few ways you (yes, you!) can better approach design, shed excuses and doubt, and oh yeah, lay off your mother (for once). As the man says, this year’s gonna be a goddamned golden age. We couldn’t be more excited.

Written by Tina Lee on January 4, 2012 with 0 comments |

Written by Tina Lee on January 3, 2012 with 1 comment |

Written by Tina Lee on January 3, 2012 with 0 comments |

Written by Tina Lee on December 19, 2011 with 0 comments |

Written by Tina Lee on December 12, 2011 with 0 comments |

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