Since a number of years I have been working with personas. They are an effective way to make the fuzzy area of target groups, online customers, and online survey results tangible for us, designers.

And what is tangible for designers is tangible for business. Personas give concrete directions for the online strategy. Because personas give answers to the question what your users need and what are we going to do for them.

This is not new anymore, fortunately. Personas are an accepted methodology for our clients.

Up to now this has been based on 'best practice' and gut feeling. There has been little evidence on the actual effectiveness of personas. Now, the results of a first study on persona effectiveness have been published: Research Paper - Real or Imaginary: The effectiveness of using personas in product design.

In short, the study confirms that personas do work. They provide the teams better insights so they create better design solutions, faster.

Author Frank Long elaborates in a LinkedIn forum:

Based on the tutors comments, the persona groups were more motivated and focused in their research. They were also more innovative in their concept ideas showing a greater variety of potential solutions - based on user functionality. The control group [that did not use personas] were more focused on aesthetic styling as an entry point onto the project. Once they settled on a look they started to focus on the functionality.
However it took them longer than the persona groups to reach the same level of detail.

For me, one of the other interesting findings is that the picture used on the persona description makes all the difference. Teams in the test that worked with a photographic picture adhered to the persona description, while teams that worked with an illustration tended to have less empathy and even went so far as picking their favorite attributes.

This reveals an important aspect of the psychological effect of personas, and why they must be presented as real as possible. Empathy and focus are the key arguments: personas invoke empathy to achieve focus, so the team can create solutions for real-world motivations, needs and goals.

Apparently, a photographic picture frames our thoughts to the real world, and brings focus to the needs of that persona instead of our own.

We can draw a lesson from this. Some professionals try to teach us that a website is about personalities, and propose to use the 4 buying types (Competitive, Humanistic, Methodical, Spontaneous, sometimes referred to as the (simplified) Myers-Briggs personality types). This way of thinking will frame your thoughts to the world of stereotypes, and will too easily lead you to conventional solutions.

Personality types may be used as additional input for your personas; they should never drive them.

Last night I dreamed that my daughter of eight had moved into the body of her 2 years younger self. As I preferred her more grown-up and verbal version of eight years, I tried to convince her to move back again. But she was too self absorbed, and didn't look very interested in that idea at all. What could I do?

Real world parenthood is not too different sometimes.

How we are ever going to provide enough food for our growing population? This question touches politics, engineering and the environment. It is a case that affects us all, and we, both citizens and policy makers, need to be informed objectively and unbiased.

One of the solutions, Genetically Modified Foods, divides us deeply. Between fears about environmental damage on the one hand, and an optimistic economic outlook on the other hand.

My position is somewhat in between, and without much thinking I have positioned myself in a gray zone, in between a slight worry about environmental impact and a simultaneous longing for progress. My slightly undecided (uninformed) point of view has made me, and a lot of Americans, the perfect victim for framing.

Framing

The concept of Framing has been made famous by George Lakoff through his book Don't Think of an Elephant. It explains how far-right strategists have taken over the political agenda for the past decades.

Framing is about the meaning that our brain associates with words. This has been used to influence mass media to let people see the issue in a desired way. For example, "war against terror" sets the stage of a country at stake and sacrifices to be made. "Pro-life" turns the issue from abortion to life itself, and makes the pro-abortion activists sound like being against life.

In an interview in 2006, Lakoff explained how his pupil Barack Obama used framing to win over (traditionally labeled) conservatives for more progressive themes:

What Obama does is this: he says there are traditional American values, unity being among them, and he appeals to those values. We share a lot of those values and you hear in his speeches that there are plenty of them. Among those values have to do, as he points out, with religion--there are a lot of religious people in the country. They are not mostly conservatives, and that's the thing he understands. He knows that most people who are religious Christians are, in fact, progressive Christians, and he wants to appeal to them. He wants to be able to talk to them as well as to people who don't happen to be Christians and don't happen to have other religions, but are also moral beings. And when he talks about religion what he immediately gets to is morality. The morality he gets to is progressive morality. Why? Because he talks about the empathy deficit. Empathy is at the heart of progressive morality--that's what progressive morality is about. Immediately, he is able to talk to a huge audience about central progressive themes without using a word like progressive, without mentioning the ideology, but mentioning what is behind the ideology: caring and empathy. That is also what is behind the values that were there at the founding of this country.

Framing is not always bad, but it always has a purpose.

Monsanto

Leader in Genetically Modified Foods is Monsanto. Their homepage says: "Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more fiber, while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment."

Let's take a look at these words. From a branding point of view, they have done a very professional job. The website starts off by talking the major benefits:

1. We help farmers produce more
2. We help produce healthier foods
3. We improve farmer's lives
4. We help to conserve nature

How could anyone be against that? If you browse around the website you will find these messages repeated consistently. They paint a picture of a responsible, open company that has Corporate Responsibility high on the agenda.

Not a surprise, because Monsanto hired the best. Brain behind the brand strategy is Donna Heckler, co-author of The Truth About Creating Brands People Love (2008). I haven't read it yet, but looking at the preview it seems a solid primer about brand strategy, even ethical. She is a professional.

Although executed professionally, this won't hold up in todays information society. One afternoon Googling gave me these pieces of information about the company:

• Monsanto is one of the biggest chemical companies in the world (not just 'agricultural'). brittanica.com. Monsanto reported record net sales of $4 billion for the second quarter of fiscal year 2009, which were 8 percent higher than sales in the same period in fiscal year 2008.
• Monsanto has produced products as DDT and Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam war containing high doses of dioxin, that Monsanto still denies having any toxic effects. Agent Orange is affecting the lives of US veterans and Vietnam people even in the 3rd generation. bbc.co.uk
• Monsanto's popular pesticide Roundup is now 4 times stronger than in 1996 and contains 70% Agent Orange. It is used by people all over the world that are not aware of the imminent dangers.
• Monsanto is the world's biggest seed maker. Yes, maker, as they 'create' seeds by modifying existing seeds to make them resistant, mostly to the pesticides Monsanto sells. Farmers that buy Monsanto seeds are not allowed to use their plants for seeds; instead they need to buy new seeds.
• Monsanto increases its market shared by buying competitors, big (nytimes.com) and small. GMOs can be part of a drive to establish ever-stronger agricultural monopolies (bbc.co.uk). In India Monsanto now has a near monopoly on seeds, and asks prices that are 4 times higher than previously. Unsurprisingly, Monsanto's sales have jumped. bbc.co.uk
• Monsanto's business goals are supported by successive US governments through the "revolving doors" techique. edmonds-institute.org For example, Michael Taylor worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company’s vice president for public policy. In 2009 he has become minister of agriculture under Obama. huffingtonpost.com

Dangers

Let's dive in a little further. We can learn a bit more about the dangers of Genetically Modified Foods:

• GM companies do not have to do extensive field testing. Successive US governments did not want any unneccessary regulation (Bush senior: "We're in the dereg biz"). This process was facilitated by Michael Taylor from the FDA (just after he worked at Monsanto) who created the policies around GM products in 1991.
• Although Monsanto claims that no health issues have been raised in peer reviewed reports, this is simply not true.
  • On Nov. 11 2008, Austria's Ministries for Agriculture and Health released the results of a long-term study (PDF) of genetically modified organisms. A widely used strain of GM corn, they found, appears to decrease both birthrates and the size of offspring in mice - and the problems seem to grow with each generation.
  • The risks of gene jumping are inherent to the GM technology. GM genes may have jumped from GM pollen to bacteria and yeasts in the gut of baby bees. Barnett, A. (2000). GM genes ‘jump species barrier’ The Observer May 28, 2000.

The background is this:

GM genetic material is not like ordinary genetic material. Natural genetic material in non-GM food is broken down by special enzymes to provide energy and building-blocks for growth and repair. And should the foreign genetic material get into a cell’s own genetic material - its genome – other enzymes can still put it out of action. All these are part of the biological barrier that keeps species distinct, so gene exchange across species is held in check.

But along come the genome invaders, genetic engineers and the artificial constructs they make, which are designed to cross all species barriers and to literally invade genomes. Genetic material of dangerous bacteria, viruses and other genetic parasites from widely different origins are combined into new constructs that have never existed in billions of years of evolution. And genes are transferred between species that would never interbreed. These constructs include antibiotic resistance genes that make bacterial infections untreatable. They include aggressive gene-switches or promoters from viruses that make genes over-express continuously – something which never happens in healthy organisms – and are active across a wide range of species. One such promoter, from the cauliflower mosaic virus, or CaMV, is in practically all GM crops already commercialized or undergoing field trials. Colleagues and I have reviewed the scientific evidence surrounding the CaMV promoter and called for all these crops to be withdrawn on grounds that they are unsafe..

GM constructs are designed to jump into genomes. Unfortunately, they can also jump out again, to invade other genomes. GM lines are well-known to be unstable, partly because the integrated GM construct can be lost, and the viral promoter makes it worse.

Experiments have shown that GM genes can transfer from plants to soil fungi and bacteria. Two German geneticists monitored fields where GM sugar beet was planted. They found that the GM construct has persisted in the soil for at least two years after the plants were removed, and some bacteria in the soil may have taken up different parts of the construct.

[...] GM crops are turning out to be useless as well as unsafe. The bacterial bt-toxins, engineered into many crops are poisonous for beneficial and endangered species such as lacewings and the Monarch butterfly. They also encourage new resistant pests to evolve. Stink Bugs in North Carolina and Georgia are eating up the bt-cotton crops. Monsanto recommends spraying with toxic pesticides including methyl parathion, among the deadliest chemicals used in American agriculture. Studies in the University of Nebraska indicate that GM Roundup Ready soya yielded 6-11% less than non-GM soya, and needed 2-5 times more herbicide.

Source: GM Crops – How Corporations Rule and Ruin the World

Claims

If GM does not provide healthier food, what about the other claims?

According to US research, GM crops 'may give lower yields' (bbc.co.uk). If the crop is not substantially larger, with Monsanto's high seed prices, farmer's lives will not be improved much. Because farmers are forced to use more and more pesticides, their health is in danger too.

Documentary

Available on YouTube is the French documentary “The world according to Monsanto”. Directed by independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin, it paints a grim picture of a company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals.

Link to all fragments

In defense, Monsanto has responded with their own blog: 'Monsanto according to Monsanto'. "The title Monsanto According to Monsanto is a spoof of The World According to Monsanto, a horribly biased documentary which portrays Monsanto in a very negative light. Aside from the shoddy journalism, we at Monsanto found it incredibly arrogant that the filmmaker would present her own twisted view of Monsanto as the company’s view of the world."

Be an enlighted and informed citizen, do your research, and judge yourself.

Framing gone bad

A brand strategy that is consistenly and purposefully different from reality, designed not just to paint a brighter picture but to force the debate in the opposite direction, is unethical and belongs more to shoddy politics than to branding. It is a shame that Donna Heckler has lent her talents to this company.

It is our jobs as consumers (and farmers!) to learn to be aware of these tactics and to see through them.

The world I work in is about creating a vision, and about doing absolutely everything to make that vision shine through.

Some call that world simply website design - but how boring and unpretentious! (would you want to work there?) I prefer to call it: the passion and art of creating interaction.

"Art" has something hard to define - something in the creation process that lays outside your normal perception. Something ordinary people cannot understand, let alone conceive.

But wait, isn't the building of a website based on clearly defined business goals, measurable user research and best practices in design and programming?

This is all true. But the reality is that good interaction only results from synthesis. That is where art comes into play. Synthesis - weaving threads into something new and meaningful - is a lot more difficult than analysis.

Strangely enough most teams are not set up to develop synthesis.

Having a team of specialists is not enough. Having T-Shaped people to bridge the disciplines isn't either. Having team members talk Scrum doesn't cut it either: again too much analysis.

To generate synthesis you will have to introduce the glue right into the working process. Have people really work together on a problem. Stop letting people work alone on a task. Leverage their differences. Make them see your vision. Let them define their shared goal and make them responsible, together.

I am an admirer of Sofia Gubaidulina since 1994 when she featured on Dutch television in the documentary series "Toonmeesters" (Reinbert de Leeuw en Cherry Duyns, 1994).

In that television series - actually a series of documentaries - each film highlighted one composer. Besides Gubaidulina also Messiaen, Górecki and Oestvolskaja where featured. Each film let us step into the world of the composer, the origins and insprirations of their music, how they conceived music, and how they overlooked a live performance. A perfect way to learn about contemporary music and composers, with full attention to the composer in all its humanness.

If you are new to the music of Sofia Gubaidulina, her Viola Concerto is a nice introduction - visit YouTube to view and listen.

Although Gubaidulina is recognized as one of the most important contemporary composers, her work is not performed that often, and I only own a handful of her works.

So I was searching iTunes yesterday if any new works of her had been added when I came across an album played by Anna Vinnitskaya (new name to me) that contains a work of Gubaidulina, next to Rachmaninov, Medtner and Prokofiev. It appeared to be a very recent album, only out for 5 days. The 30 second clips on iTunes were immediately convincing to buy the album, even if I usually don't listen to Rachmaninov. But such a vigor and balance and depth! It is exceptional to hear music expressed in such a way that you know it should not sound any other way.

I googled a bit on Anna Vinnitskaya and learned that her parents had destined her to become piano virtuoso from the age of 6 with the obvious pressures to play and perform. Anna persevered (and perservered more) and eventually won the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition for Piano in 2007.

See Anna in action in the final round of the competition, with the second piano concerto of Prokofiev:

One year ago I have given a presentation to my colleagues at Lost Boys to introduce them to Cocoa programming. I am now sharing the presentation and example source code.

The goal of the presentation was to provide an underpinning on Cocoa before starting on iPhone specific development. You won't find anything on iPhones or Cocoa Touch though.

This tutorial walks you through the fundamentals of Cocoa: XCode Tools, Interface Builder, Objective-C (variables, methods and memory management), and goes on to explain useful Cocoa principles for building an Image Resizer application: how to open and process files (using both a dialog screen and drag and drop), NSImage, messaging and saving.

I know, I should not redo Aaron Hillegass' excellent Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (which I recommend everyone starting with Cocoa). Regard this tutorial as a getting your toes wet using a real world example.

Enjoy.

Files

• IntroductionToCocoa.pdf - PDF of presentation
• ImageResizerProject.zip - XCode Project

I have been reviving SoundField using Processing. I am still pleased with the simple and intuitive audio interface, but what bugs me is the design of the stereo controls.

Especially with multiple overlapping sound areas, the stereo circles create "circle noise" - it becomes difficult so see which circle belongs to which sound.

Time for a little research for alternative designs.

The following diagrams show the sound area move control in red, and the stereo sound control in blue.
At the left side the left and right channels are in balance; at the right the audio is panned halfway the right.

The current stereo control:

Possible alternatives...

The stereo sound as a masked background:

As a curved line segment, with a smaller circle as control:

The curved line segment as draggable control:

A small draggable line inside (below) the move control:

I like the clean look of the last design best. But because of the small size the affordance needs some work.

Some months ago HEMA launched a highly viral animation.

A great idea - and beautifully executed by the FlashFabriek at Satama - that has attracted a lot of people to the redesigned site of the HEMA. For non-Dutch readers: this is the department store where 90% of the Dutch population shops. I was member of the small team at Lost Boys that created the redesign of the online HEMA shop that went live summer 2007. As the shop feels (partly) mine, I wished I had created that viral as well!

This animation comes with a tradition.

Firstly it brings to mind the 2003 Honda Cog commercial for the Honda Accord.

(for better quality see the high res QuickTime movie)

This kind of cause and effect is called a Rube Goldberg machine, named after the famous American cartoonist that created complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways (Wikipedia entry).

Of course the goal of these contraptions is the ingenuity of the chains. It is a world in itself where ordinary things and sudden relationships between things become carrier of creative findings. A loftier goal than the - somewhat related - Domino Day championships.

Since 2002 the Japanse television show PythagoraSwitch for young children shows short Rube Goldberg type videos to show world phenomena.

But the creative team of Wieden and Kennedy UK must have been inspired by much earlier work. The setting of the commercial, a museum floor and walls, gives away the reference to art.

In 1987 the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss created the video Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go). It is a 30 minutes video showing a long chain reaction, but without any clear purpose - the film just ends. It has a definite roughness, as the setting is not a museum but an old industrial hall, and fire, steam and fluids play a prominent role.

From the Wikipedia entry:

The film evolved out of work the artists did on their earlier photography series, "Quiet afternoon," (German: Stiller Nachmittag) of 1984-1985. As the delicately unstable assemblages they constructed for the photos were apt to almost immediately collapse, they decided that they wanted to make use of this energy.

Looking at the fragment, the aesthetics of the Honda commercial are far away. One only has to view the start with the rotating garbage bag. This is a commercial, and these are other times. The commercial has been inspired by, not based on the art movie. Still, according to Wikipedia, Wieden and Kennedy eventually admitted to copying a sequence of weighted tires rolling uphill. Was that meant to be another hint to their inspirers?

"The Way Things Go" is available from Amazon.

I would like to point you to the new site for Inn Amsterdam: http://www.inn-site.com/

Inn is an international agency for Dutch photographers Marcel Christ and Morad Bouchakour (who has also created the new photography style for HEMA).

Design: Esther Noyons. ActionScript: me. Created with ASAP Framework. CMS created with TWiki.

The interface I created with Dessislava Karoushkova (concepting) for the Open Ateliers of the Rijksakademie Amsterdam where we did our final year (2000). Created with Macromedia Director.

Some notes on the design:

• Every artist (participant) had one virtual room to show his or her work. They could choose which sides (of 6 ) to use.
• The images of the work made up the walls.
• Video works were possible. To show videos in 3d I created 10 second animated GIFs from the movies to show on the walls. On clicking the zoomed image would change into a QuickTime movie. The QT movies was often smaller than the animated GIF! (ahem)
• The entrance to each studio was through a name cloud. The cloud had 4 appearances: dense cloud, dispersed cloud, alphabetical vertical list and scrolling horizontal list. A mouse rollover on a name would evoke a piano sound. I created more liveliness by randomly changing the loudness of each note.
• I built a CMS to manage participant names, images and locations of the images in the virtual room, all in Director as well.