Thoughts on Digital Life

Just as we are all getting ready for the most festive time of the year - I'd like to look back at 2015 and look forward to 2016. I've done so every year on Facebook. But as Facebook is getting less personal and stuffed with promotional adverts I decided to use my blog. Lets start with the three themes of 2015. 2015 1. Living Video 2015 for me was all about background videos. AirBnB started a trend by using a video in the background of its header. Over the past year it has been described as 'living video', 'experience video', 'backdrop video' and more. 90% of clients have asked for it last year. So for me, this was the trend of 2015. I really wish people would look beyond the "living video" in 2016. 2. Social presence Another thing of the past year was social media. Where companies needed to get a website over the past years - because "the Yellow Pages just don't work anymore - you have to be online!" - they now seem to

Last Friday I got to visit the 2nd edition of Dsgnday in Amsterdam - many thanks to my employer Insiders for allowing me and 2 colleagues to visit Dsgnday. In this blog-post I would like to recap what I have seen and how I have experienced the talks. Simon Collison - The Designer's Guide to Being Essential The first speaker of the day was Simon Collison. Simon was very smart in combining his life story with his message. Simon explained how his life was modular and how he forgot some modules of his past and refound them over the past years. He continued that robots know it all. All the modules in webdesign can be designed by robots. So what makes a human webdesigner better than the machines? The answer to the question would be empathy. Simon quoted from an article by Travis Gertz. I've read it and I think its a must read. The part about AirBnb is very sadly so true. Its the most asked question of 2015 for me: can we have something like AirBnb? Great article , be sure

First of all I'd like to apologize for the delay in posting. I've been pretty busy (freelance) and I was doubting this blog for a while. It played a part in me losing my job, so I was a bit reluctant to post again... So my apologies, excuse me and let's give it another go. TV shows for kids Something struck me over the past weeks, something I noticed in TV shows my kids were watching. When I grew up there was Teddy Ruxpin, Fraggle Rock, Gummi Bears, Mask, Dungeons & Dragons and He-Man. There were more, take a look at some of the intro's here . Quite nostalgic to me, pretty dated when my kids look at them. I've seen a lot of more recent shows together with my daughter and my son. They watch shows like Dora, Diego, Bubble Guppies, Blaze and the Monster Machines, Paw Patrol, Ni Hao Kai Lan. All of these more recent shows have something in common. Something the old shows I enjoyed didn't have. Character interaction Dora, Diego, Kai Lan and all

Lately I've been reading more and more about H2H, Human 2 Human communication. And the more I read about it, the more I feel there's a simple truth in it. B2B, B2C, ... A lot of companies are promoting a proposition of a B2B, B2C or even C2C leader. They claim a position in one or both of these markets. Thats actually pretty smart. I believe that choices are a good thing. You need to make choices and follow through. This article isn't going to tell you any of these choices are a bad thing. This article is trying to tell you that I think the differences between B2B and B2C aren't that big as they are all floating towards H2H. User centered These days we're often working with persona's, user journeys and user testing. Everyone is shouting we need to include real users in our working ways. Good call. Ten years ago we imagined what people wanted to see or experience. These days we include users to understand what they need, want or expect. We have really e

This article is again about webshops. Webshops need conversion. Webshops need to sell products. I decided to take a look at my user journey when looking for a new laptop, Adobe software and some shoes. Here's how Zalando, Dell and Adobe made me feel and what they could improve. Zalando First of all Zalando isn't responsive. Your mobile experience is different from your desktop experience. The mobile experience is better, because the flow of information is positioned better. When you view a product on desktop format, the conditions of Zalando (about shipping and payment) seem to be the most important - as they are presented first. On the mobile version these are presented last. It gets better though! You can view a product at a larger format, ideal when looking for new shoes. You can see this in the image shown above. The bigger image is shown over the price and order button! Thats a conversion killer right there. The image below shows the same page if I don't roll over

A few weeks ago me and my employer decided it was best to split. Because I am the sole income for my family (mortgage, car, 2 kids...) I need to find a new job and prefer to find one soon. I decided I'd like to find out how and if social media could help me out on this one. I needed to get noticed and wondered if social media could help me do just that. LinkedIn. I've taken LinkedIn as the basis for my experiment. LinkedIn is the business network where you place your résumé online. Just like you "Google" your possible new employer, that employer Googles you. Most often your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account will be found. LinkedIn keeps a ranking. It gives you feedback on how you rank amongst the people you know. On LinkedIn I've got about 475 connections. At the beginning of this experiment I ranked at 128. That's not bad, but it isn't brilliant. It meant that my profile was viewed an average 1,5 times a week. And there was my challenge.

In this blog, the first in a long time - I apologize - three examples of User Frustration. Within a week I was dissappointed by 2 big (Dutch) webshops and by Google. Let's take a look at the cases. iPod Shuffle I was looking for an iPod Shuffle 4th Generation for my girlfriend. There's a reason I wanted the 4th Generation. Simply because it'll do and the 5th Generation is dubble the price for nothing extra. Just the number 5 makes it twice as expensive. I first take a look on Bol.com, because I have an account there and it'll be easy. As a user I want my search and buy to be easy. No way. Bol only sells the 5th Generation, so I keep getting pushed to buying the more expensive iPod Shuffle. Could be that they are out of the 4th Generation, but no alternatives are offered - I have to get the expensive 5th Generation. So I go to Google to search for the 4th Generation. Wehkamp I end up on the Wehkamp.nl website. Wehkamp still offers the 4th Generation at the decent p

Recently I've seen a lot of posts by people advocating designers to do what makes them happy. That's quite a statement, because very often you'll have to do work you don't find challenging. Here's a few thoughts on keeping your motivation and building ambitions. Taking on shit work First rule of the book. When you're working for an employer, expect them to accept shit work. Don't blame your boss too much, you have to understand his position. He needs money to flow through the company in order to pay you and your colleagues at the end of the month. That automatically implies taking on work he'd rather not - but pays well. No space for improvement The biggest challenge of every designer is time. Everybody expects your best work for the lowest price. I am not a big Steve Jobs fan, but the one thing you have to give him credit for: he knew why design matters. Design makes your product unique. Not investing in design means y

Over the past days I've seen a lot of blogs about design. I've read about digital design, mobile first, dynamic design, content first... Every blogger or company seems to have found a different approach or name for design. Is it all new then? Simply put - I don't think so. The term Digital Design for instance is a bit funky when you consider all printed work has been made on computers for the past 2 decades (at least). So design has been digital for a while. Obviously they mean the output will be viewed digitally - but to call it Digital Design to me is a little bit odd as that name covers more than intended. So why do we have to invent all these new names for the old fox called Design? I think a lot of it is down to being noticed. Companies and staff, now more than ever, have to be present. You have to be present to get more business, find clients, attract new staff, be noticed in the big field of players. Have an opinion and be noticed. The importance of design I t