Software Branding

In the intangible milieu of enterprise software, brand perception is acutely related to the emotions triggered by the user experience at all touch points. A user will perceive a brand to be superior when engaged in a good user experience.

So, what kinds of emotions are elicited while interacting with software? The negative emotions which are aroused while interacting with software can be anger, disgust or frustration when they stumble due to bugs or complicated task flows in the software. On the contrary, there can be positive emotions like satisfaction when the user finds it easier to perform a task which is also quicker; astonishment when coming across a very innovative feature (the WOW factor); and confidence as the user thinks that whenever they have similar task at hand, they can trust the software to do it for them.

Here are the ingredients to what you call emotionally charged products…

• Engaging, memorable and distinct visual design
• Intuitive, useful and useable interactions
• Innovative features based on user needs and context
• Superior and seamless technology
• Easy installations and deployment
• Great after-sales customer service

Microsoft has well etched guidelines on software branding for Windows Vista.

Expanding Role of Design

Globalization is linking cultures, economies and people to people. People from the developing nations are getting to see the ‘other’ world and panoply of consumables. To articulate the needs of this changed new world, designers are taking center stage equipped with their design tools. Design today is seen not only as a tool to make products aesthetically pleasing and desirable, but its dimensions are playing a key role in business, society and in people’s lives.

Design has the power to redefine our socio-economic thread. Its methodologies are at the core of business and innovation as it helps creating value and exploring new market opportunities.

In the business realm a good design would help increase sales, build brands which can meaningfully engage with people, find new markets, and innovate new products.

Well designed systems can qualitatively improve the standard of living of those at the bottom of the pyramid. By finding better ways to do things, design can solve needs and add value to people’s lives.

Design should encompass cultural relevance by binding cultural values with the form to make it accepted by the people who are going to use it. Today’s design should strive to be sustainable.

The Tongue Sucker

‘Tongue Sucker’ which received the first prize from INDEX Awards in the ‘Work’ category is an amazing life saving device. It is designed by a team of four design students from Imperial College and Royal College of Art after the London catastrophe in 2005. The research done by them reveals that a person in dearth of oxygen can die or suffer brain damage in four minutes. When a person gets unconscious, there is a tendency for the person’s tongue to fall back on the throat covering the trachea. There are chances of death by suffocation due to blocked trachea.

The tongue sucker consists of a round red-colored suction bulb made of rubber along with a tube. To use the device the rescuer has to squeeze the bulb, place it over the tongue to the unconscious person and then release the bulb. The bulb sucks the tongue of the victim in the tube facilitating free airway. The red bulb which remains outside the mouth is distinctly visible to the paramedics such that they can reach for help.

The user research conducted by the design team validated that one size of this device fits all the age groups of causalities.

This simple device is economical and can be used by untrained people by reading the instructions on the packaging.

Search for latest cricket scores on Google

This time Google has something to make me happy - they are showing live scores from the Twenty20 cricket championship!

All you cricket fans just type ‘cricket’ in the Google search box to see the live scores or status. You can also add ‘India’ or a country name of your choice to see the respective team scores.

Get going and enjoy cricket!

An offbeat brand channel

In India to reach customers also means to reach the vast marketable rural population of India. And Nokia literally did it through what they called as “Consumer education program” in rural India. The van traverses rural parts of India and shows people how to use mobile handsets. The blend of newness, enthusiasm and aspiration keeps the visitors to the van engaged.

Via Business Week:

Nokia is also in talks with the railways for branding train bogies. They will let passengers to experience Nokia handsets and also shop.

A great way of people-brand interaction!

Searching in Context

I certainly hope to see more and more subject specific search engines coming up which would hem a context (pertaining to the subject) for the user. Still, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ search engines can help the user to avoid getting flooded by a higher proportion of irrelevant search results.

Currently there are models which adopt a method of profiling user interests based on what websites they browse and what links they follow. But this becomes complex because the user searches in various contexts based on the task at hand. May be at one point the user is looking for some business proposal and later during the day is looking to buy a gift for someone.

A model adopted by Clusty.com, form clusters of similar search results. A user can pick from the relevant cluster to drill down to the information needed. Though this approach is certainly helpful, it imposes the site-generated clusters on users, which again may not be something that the user is interested in.

Instead of putting the load on the system to identify the context, I was wondering whether the generalist search engines would allow the user to provide a context of their search.

For example if the user is looking for research papers on neural networks, then ‘research paper’ become the search word and ‘neural networks’ becomes the context to look into. In popular search engines there is a provision of only one input field to enter information one is looking for. If the user enters ‘research papers on neural networks’ in the input field, the engine will treat ‘research’, ‘papers’, ‘neural’ and ‘network’ as independent search words. The initial few results may contain all the keywords, but later results may be obtained by making combinations of some of these search words.

May be I am trivializing the issue a bit too much, but can we not have two input boxes – one to enter the search word and the other for providing the context?

Note that this is not similar to ‘search with all of the words’. In the above example, we are searching only the search word. The search engines should map the user-provided context by parsing web pages and construing a context from the web page metadata.

To give a context while user searches for music, Google has a music search feature. Users have to enter their query after ‘music:’ in the input field and they get search results relevant to music. I hope search engines add such system-generated contexts by identifying popular searches from their search logs to do the least.

Subject Specific Search Engines

Heck! I am looking for some information and all I have is a ‘generalist’ Google.com. There was a time when I was in awe of Google search engine for its simplicity – the simple one step search, the gigantic result base and that too in fraction of seconds. Phew! But what after that? I still have to spend a huge time getting to the relevant information. Google (or for that matter any other search engine) doesn’t help me reach relevant information quickly.

Websites without any optimization for search engines may never make it to the first few search result pages. May be that information would be helpful to me, but since I don’t get to see it in the first few pages of the search result and I lose my patience, I never reach that piece of information.

In India there are Sunday ‘Haats’ which is a make-shift weekly market where you get everything from grocery, electronics, durables, appliances, clothing to almost everything one needs to buy. The only thing a buyer needs is lot of time to search for the right item from that maze. Instead, if the buyer goes to a particular shop that sells the item, she will spend little time getting what she wants.

Similarly, instead of searching for information in an all-in-one search engine, if there are specialized search engines for various fields, the users can find ‘relevant’ information quickly. To cite a few examples, there can be search engines dedicated to sciences, medicine, or the engines can be product-specific.

This would also make a positive impact on advertising as the advertisers can effectively focus on their audience base. With Subject Specific Search Engines, site owners can list their sites on relevant search engines. Just like advertising on a single outdoor hoarding is not enough and ensuring that the product is advertised at strategic locations; similarly a website should be listed on relevant search engines for better effectiveness.