The Source has a new face! Welcome to the first issue of our new, improved monthly newsletter bringing you insights on strategic marketing with digital interactive media. There are so many disciplines that contribute to good interactive marketing and as a full service agency, we stay in touch with all of them. Because there is so much to cover, we have decided to focus on one theme per issue of The Source going forward, each one exploring a single topic related to interactive marketing. At the center of everything is design, acting as the glue that binds purpose, meaning, style, function and technology to express your brand and make an impact on your market. It naturally follows that we have chosen design as our theme for this important first issue.
We hope you find these insights informative and inspiring and as always, we welcome your feedback.
Tony Brinton, Creative Director & Editor in Chief
Evaluating User Experience Design: A Case for Qualitative Analysis
It’s an established fact that embracing a design mindset at the highest levels in an organization helps bring business success. A question many executives have is that once they’ve committed to placing a high value on design to the point that it is truly driving their business decisions, how do they know if their various design efforts are good or bad? While it may seem like the act of judging design quality is purely subjective, there are some evaluation methods that can remove the guesswork. And we caution you that your performance data may not be telling you the whole story.
The Process and Value of Design
A friend recently asked me why website design costs so much. I remember thinking to myself, what a difficult question to answer. There is no specific standard cost model for website design and development, and truthfully, costs can be extremely low to exorbitantly high. Before I tried to answer the question, several thoughts went through my mind.
Read the ArticleDon’t Add Features, Add Scenarios
In an attempt to offer customers more value, many marketers and website managers introduce new features to their sites. The process for deciding which features to develop can be convoluted, and unduly influenced by various forces such as politics, personal preference, knee-jerk reactions to what the competition is doing and misunderstood performance data. If the right steps aren’t taken, site upgrades invariably yield unexpected results and poor return on investment. In this article, we outline an approach to planning site improvements that puts users at the center of the process to ensure the highest chance of success.
Read the ArticleTrendwatch
While it’s difficult to predict the future, there are some clear indications about where design is going this year. Though design trends in general are often little more than stylistic fads, some are more substantive and happen for a good reason. The most interesting design trends usually tie into what’s going on in our world, reflect new advancements in technology, or help express certain political or social viewpoints. Considering all of these factors, following are a few noteworthy trends to keep your eye on in ‘09.
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