Based in London and New York we operate all over the connected world. Our team consists of researchers, planners and creative technologists as well as thousands of networked consumers and experts within our co-creation communities.
You know the drill, it’s links to things we like from the Internet:
Esther – Beardy Goodness Aparently A recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications found that bearded men were considered more trustworthy and amiable, compared to their clean-shaven counterparts.
I’m not sure I agree about that, but you have to commend these guys on their follicular facial prowess. Ace.
Sharmila – Making Your Mind Up
An attempt to encourage voting, probably had the opposite effect…
Warning: this video will induce extreme cringeing.
Job – Pedal Brain
For all you cyclists out there, your personalised cycling training scheme!
Marion - Zoofs
All the YouTube videos mentioned on Twitter, from the sublime to the ridiculous!
Nathan – Nmbrs.net
Record label run by the eclectic, energetic and amazingly consistent Jackmaster. Rising from the ashes of 3 other labels, Numbers put out future sounds synthesizing many styles including garage, dubstep, house, juke, grime, uk funky, hip-hop and 80s R&B from soon-to-be star producers including Deadboy, SRC, Hudson Mowhawke Rustie and Lazer Sword. The now iPad and iPhone friendly site has many a mix to move!
I was recently having a conversation with a friend about what the emergence of the iPad and subsequent touch screen tools would mean for webpage design in the future.
We thought back to the advent of Flash in the 90s, and what this meant in terms of website useability then. One key takeout was that we ended up with many websites that looked incredibly, well, flashy, but weren’t very useable. My friend asserted that a similar thing was bound to happen with touch screen – a ton of cool looking websites harnessing touch screen, but not actually delivering a useful and seamless user experience.
This got me thinking – will we see a similar thing happen with touch screen as we did with Flash? Will we be stuck with a ton of pretty but useless touch screen experiences, and how long will it all take to come good?
It’s pretty easy to assume that this will be the case. However, the one thing that feels like it counts in the favour of touch screen is that it just makes sense, especially for children. We’re already seeing incidence of children just assuming PC and laptop screens are touchscreen due to their exposure to parents’ iPhones. If you were a five-year old, why wouldn’t you? Touch screen presents a more instinctive model of interaction versus learning to use a keyboard, or navigation with a mouse. You want to look at something, you touch it, there and then. Makes sense, really.
As we see children versed in touchscreen get older, this will ultimately necessitate developers creating seamless and useful touch screen experiences. The very fact of users who have grown up with it, and see it is an intuitive form of interaction will hopefully force that. The other alternative will be a bunch of frustrated individuals manically prodding at their screens. I’m hoping for the former.
iPhone effect: my 5yo son was pressing his finger on my laptop screen to navigate a web page…daughter picked up an alarm clock w/a plastic face cover and swiped her fingers across it like it was an iPhone. She was disappointed. Hutch Carpenter, blogging innovation
There has been a lot of buzz in the twittersphere around infographics over the past year and i wanted to share some thoughts on how the research industry can make the most of this growing visual language.
The democratisation of data
The purpose of the information graphic is to give us all a new way of helping people understand concepts, ideas and data through art. Our brains are wired for pictures, rather than than text and data, which means that infographics enable more people to engage with complex issues such as social trends, product concepts and social media research findings.
Infographic story telling
Good infographic design when used in research debriefs enables your audience to quickly get the big picture, they can then begin to focus on the next level of data, which involves examining and interacting with the detailed information. This means that today researchers can tell complex stories in 10 minutes which in the past would have been told using 50 powerpoint slides in an hour long debrief.
To make the most of infographic led debriefs you need to present it a different way, throw out the powerpoint, and get your hands on a tool like Prezi which gives you the flexibility to make debriefs and pitches interactive and fluid by zooming in and out of the detail of the infographic to tell the story.
Data lives beyond the debrief
It is important to keep in mind that if you want your data to have longevity – make it beautiful. By making your data aesthetically appealing you give your research project the all important pass on factor both internally and externally, which means your results are more likely to be looked at and ultimately actioned with an organisation.
If you want some more inspiration take a look at some of these great infographics:
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