As I stopped to get my morning coffee, the woman behind the counter was going on about this newsletter she receives about her daughter’s preschool and how hard it was to decipher. She still wasn’t sure if her daughter actually had preschool that day or not. Her frustration was obvious, and reminded me of the ever-present challenge of usability in our lives. Nobody likes having a toaster you can’t figure out, roadsigns that are hard to understand or websites that are impossible to navigate. Product developers have an important task on their hands: to ensure consumers find the product useful. We consider ourselves product developers as well because websites can be more than brochure-ware; they are e-commerce engines, communications tools, educational resources and more. On the web, usability is a make or break element. If users can’t understand how to use a website or can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll be gone - probably forever. It is an avoidable obstacle, however, if given some thoughtful planning and consideration. There are numerous schools of thought out there on usability best practices, but a good place to start is to evaluate the current state of your site from a general usability perspective. Conducting a quick heuristics evaluation can shed a lot of light on glaring problems and obstacles. Below are seven questions to ask about your website in the context of your market, goals and target audience, based on heuristics standards set by Jakob Nielsen, 1. Does the website inform users about what’s going on during their engagement and give feedback in a timely and appropriate manner?, 2. Does the website use language and terminology that the user is familiar with and follow real-world logic and convention?, 3. Does the website provide adequate exit options, allowing users to correct mistakes and providing clear error messages?, 4. Does the website use consistent language, navigation and action standards across the entire site?, 5. Is the website structured to prevent or check for user error with tools like confirmation steps, etc?, 6. Does the website provide clear direction about where the user is in a process or in the site, eliminating the need for the user to have to remember where they came from or how they got there?, 7. Is the website content relevant to the section and the audience?

YouTube launched YouTube Insight earlier this week. It’s a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos they upload to the site. This means that uploaders (creatives, producers, directors, and aspiring Steven Spielberg’s) can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in a market at any given time.

Apparently YouTube has been gathering this data for some time now, as even videos that were uploaded last year have viewing statistics and geographic data attached.

This is a big move for Google, YouTube’s parent company. Ever since they purchased the video giant for a gazillion dollars last year, people have been wondering how they’re going to make money off the deal. Sure, there’s Adwords, but that clearly wasn’t enough to support the infrastructure costs and bandwidth needs of the online video behemoth.

YouTube Insight sets the stage for Google to really provide tangible services for big agency creatives and big media alike. It answers the question all the analysts were wondering - how is Google going to make money off online video?

By offering analytics data around who’s viewing what videos and where they’re at, media producers will now be able to utilize this service as a testing platform for ideas and strategies before forking over enormous amounts of $$ to traditional media outlets. Creative types will likely flock to this service and will pay for insight into what users are watching their ideas on the small screen to flesh out what works and what doesn’t.

See the story @ The YouTube Blog

I have been asked why I work with such unstable technology, such as wireless sensing, for my performance and dance pieces. I also ask myself that often. My answer is usually something along the lines of, “Any technology can fail.” Other times I say, “I have no idea.” There was a performance while I was at grad school at Arizona State University in which a live band was playing on stage with dancers. The microphone ended up not working so you could barely hear the singer. The microphone has been around since 1876 (according to Wikipedia) how can it fail? I have seen lights not come on or stay on, sound systems shutoff and MANY operator errors. I feel that the technology I use is no less stable than some of the things we use daily. Granted it has been a horrible technology dance season for me and many of my co-workers don’t let me near their iPods, cell phones or cameras, I still have faith. I mean it was all of my stable technology that failed me for the recent dance concert with the Nancy Hauser Dance Company. The first night of tech I could not get my computer to output sound. The second night of tech, I could run sound out of my computer but my Bluetooth mic would not record into my computer. The “unstable” part of my whole setup, the wireless sensing system and Max/MSP patch I had programmed, worked just great! :: continue reading this ocean post ::

Creative Director Chris Cortilet was admitted yesterday to Methodist Hospital after loosing his fingers in a vise grip. Chris and his team were out scouting possible imagery to illustrate a story they were doing on safety, when all of a sudden Chris was being tortured by a vise grip. “I didn’t even see it coming,” said Chris, “One minute I’m walking through the plant looking for a story to tell and the next minute I’m in the throws of a life struggle with a vise grip. It just wouldn’t let go, and I could hear the bones breaking and blood was everywhere. Eventually someone released the grip and I fell to the ground. The next thing I know I’m in the hospital. They brought the fingers back to the hospital, but there wasn’t anything that they could do at that point. They put them in a jar for me and I have them in my room.”

After Chris was removed from the facility around 2 pm OSHA sent a team in to examine the scene and to access the vise grip. It’s likely that they will have a report by the end of the week. One of the experts on the scene said, “We can’t understand what happened, vises just don’t do these things. We’ve never seen anything like it. It’s likely that we won’t have a complete picture until we finish the interviews with witnesses, clean up the scene and have a forensics expert review the fingers. At this time everything is a mess.”

Yesterday I was in the back of our office chatting with Joe, when all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off. I thought, “Are you kidding! A fire drill when it is 0 degrees outside!” Then, I smelled it…popcorn. Someone in our office, I will not name them, placed popcorn in our microwave and did not monitor it. As I heard later from bystanders, when the bag was opened up a huge amount of smoke billowed out of the bag.

As we opened the front door to air out the office, we saw our building manager out on a walkie-talkie and the one who will not be named telling them that it was us and it was just burnt popcorn. The whole 510 Marquette building fire alarm had gone off. A few minutes later the sound went off but not that annoying blinking light. Then after that there was an announcement that it was a false alarm and not to worry.

Once everyone was back in the office all we could do was laugh and run around like children, making jokes, and telling our version of the story.

Febreeze was sprayed and things finally settled back into our regular rhythm.

When I got into work today, there was a hint of burnt popcorn smell in the air. Every time someone microwaves something it brings back the smell. Another co-worker was heating up a Trader Joe’s Chicken Enchilada (try one they are great!). He placed it on defrost but instead of doing that our microwave just cooked it and burned the bottom of it. At least the fire alarm did not go off again but now it smells like burnt popcorn chicken enchilada.

So the question is…do we have a defective microwave or is it user error?

Please view the following video. Azul 7 Dies in a Fire.

When working through a creative exercise, you have to be willing to fall flat on your face. Taking risks and making mistakes can leave us in a vulnerable place, but it also releases us to be creative. It is a part of making something new and different. If we need to create work that captures minds and does not let go, then we need to be creating work that is memorable, using new ideas that break out of the norm–going beyond safe solutions and creating fearless creative.

Paula Scher, a principal at the Pentagram New York office, creates fearless work that has infiltrated American society. Her work comes out of a courageous mindset. She completely trusts herself and relies purely on her instincts. In an interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, Scher described how she approaches her projects. “I operate very strongly with my instincts … It is a very intuitive kind of process for me. I have never been a refiner. My best work has been big bold strokes that came very quickly.”

Working on an instinctual level can bring immediate results. Scher also states in her interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, “How can it be done in a second, but it is done in second? It is done in a second and forty-three years. It is done in a second and every experience, every move and every thing of my life that is in my head.” Scher trusts her creative instincts and the reservoir within her mind to create fearless, fresh, engaging work.

But creating fearless, fresh and engaging work takes guts. Stefan Sagmeister, founder of Sagmeister Inc., creates work that is gutsy and far from being just another safe solution. His work has a transparent quality that leaves every beautiful flaw visible. In a recent interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, Sagmeister talked about how he writes in his dairy as a way to reflect and improve. “I find the time when I write, I really am forced to look back and evaluate what went well and what did not go so well.”

Sagmeister takes every opportunity to learn from his successes as well as his failures. Engaging work comes when you push the boundaries, and I want to find myself in that place, creating something captivating and risky and avoiding what is truly detrimental–setting boundaries and creating limitations to try to prevent failure. Because mistakes are often a turning point. When a creative direction proves to be a failure, you are free to move on to a new idea and create something fearless and captivating.