Oscar Wilde: We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

I've been ordered, by my boss, to start blogging. (I work for an advertising agency as an Interactive Client Partner.) Now I anticipate that most of what I write to be from the gutter. And like most things that are found in the gutter, it's gonna stink. But the deal is that I persevere and hopefully, the stars will eventually emerge.

At the very least, this will provide me with an arena to vomit the endless stream of what passes for my musings, thoughts and ideas into.

Currently I am obsessed with usability. And findability. And ambient findability. Moreover, how usability effects but doesn't smother (in fact it feeds) inspirational web design. I'm afraid I am talking stats - web stats, demographics, user personas; mountains of data that needs to be crunched, organised and basically whipped into shape. I am in love with emotive and art-for-the-sake-of-art design. Design that makes you gasp, that communicates, that transcends barriers and informs one in a way that is beyond articulation. But the more I learn, the more usability, in all its forms, becomes the first question I ask when presented with a web-centric project. 

As users become evermore demanding and expect information to be handed to them on a silver platter, with a flourish heralded by a personalised trumpet composition, we need to pay attention to usability. We need to do more than pay attention - we need it to become fundamental and apply it with respect, objectivity and open mindedness. In other words, we need to start designing for the user, and how they want to be communicated with. No more designs based on the CEO's personal preferences and no more design for techies that enjoy figuring things out and dissecting them (unless they are the end user of course!). It's time for users, and consumers, to be catered to and respected. And no, I do not mean that we stop challenging and pushing boundaries, being innovative, brave, daring and revolutionary; merely that we don't do so gratuitously and to the detriment of the user who requires the information we are providing.

I increasingly suspect that the rise of social media might even make advertising (as a movement but not ever as an art form) increasingly honest. Sorry, that last sentence should have come with a *whisper* warning. It's a fact that in the noughties, as never before, we have immediate access to reviews and opinions on any product or company. I wonder if consumers would (as has been implied by many an article) take a stranger's word, via an online forum, on a service or product as an authority far above the company's deliberately portrayed brand ID. (More on this in later blogs - this gets me going on lifestyle brands.) Paradoxically, I am equally sure that the industry will find more ways of combating this - Ultimate Fighting eat your heart out, this'll be a fight to the death.

Social networking is getting more and more pervasive. It seems that honesty, integrity and quality of service might even become the differentiator between certain types of brands.

Is advertising dead? Marketing and product have converged. The consumer doesn't separate the marketing experience from the product experience. Thanks to social networking, brands and their products and campaigns can and are rapidly evaluated, validated or dismissed, ignored or at worst ridiculed, to a real time audience almost as soon as they are launched. We live in a web  3.0 world, where the private individual's opinions and experiences can travel across the globe in milliseconds. Will it transpire that brand perceptions will be fundamentally unable to be manipulated by the brand or their agencies? It's a thrilling thought. But are we prepared to be brave enough for this brave new world?

I don't believe that advertising (in all its truly glorious glory) is dead. But it's face has definitely changed.

On a more prosaic note, my washing machine has just died and the mouse pad on my laptop doesn't work. Ace.

For more concise ramblings, follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/evj

Coming soon: 

• Usability and why the user can't be trusted (you'll understand when I post!)
  
• Brands that are allowed to make mistakes and how they got there
  
• Social networking
  
• Social media
  
• Cool/funny stuff
  
• More mundane details of my life
  
• Studies, articles and other people's work
  
• How trends, art, fashion and advertising are intrinsically linked, on even the most basic levels
  

Disclaimer:

The above post are the inane ramblings entirely of my own invention; and consists neither of the opinions or inane ramblings of the industry I love, the company I work for, the friends that I socialise with or even the people I see on the street. I am not an expert, merely an interested observer who doesn't sleep that much and needs an outlet. I don't even suppose for one minute that this blog will be read by anyone other than myself and my boss. And even my boss will probably just lie and say that he has. I would also like to point out that I'm aware my sentences are too long for webcopy (ironically I flag this up on briefs to copywriters all the time!) but I'm trying and hoping some sort of coherence will eventually win through. I do make up words. My prose style could only be described as whimsical - and only then by people that love me. And I ramble. Incessantly.