User Experience Design has become more important and relevant than ever. With all of the places a brand can exist making sure that there is a consistent and compelling experience can be a challenge. That is why it is critical to understand the lay of the land.
The more meetings, conferences, and meetups I attend the more I need my trusty GPS. It makes me more agile and less dependent- unless the GPS doesn’t know where I need to go. And that’s the user experience issue most clients deal with today.
What about Facebook? What about Twitter? Do I really need a blog? These are questions we hear more and more. And unfortunately the answer is, “it depends.” But we eventually get to the answer by understanding the client, audience, message, and value proposition.
The strategy behind answering where your brand should be and what the experience needs to be requires more work than most realize. We interview company executives, sales staff, and customer service reps. We intensively review the competition and their brand destinations. At the end of several weeks of research and interviews we then are able to provide more direct answers with qualifiers like: “Based upon your target audience and their appetite for your product we feel that creating and managing a Twitter presence is the best approach to support your new launch.”
Now that statement usually is bolstered with demographic profiles, potential reach, and ability to influence. But Twitter alone is not the only answer. It’s typically part of a larger awareness campaign that includes traditional media as well as a campaign site. At the end of the day all of these destinations have to be managed very carefully.
Gone are the days of simply creating a great web site. So too are the days of solo, weekly email campaigns. Creating a user experience in these times requires understanding the web in its totality. And there are no clear road maps.
We’ve gone down this path with our clients. We map out the brand message, determine the best mediums to use, test the effectiveness of the campaign, and tweak where we see deficits. We create messaging schedules for each channel and measure its effectiveness.
Most importantly though; you must know where you’re going before you start your journey. Getting there on time can make the difference between a successful brand launch or a reactionary campaign that will most likely be rushed and absent of good research.
Think of Modal as your user experience design sherpas. We know how to get you where you need to be even if your GPS doesn’t have the latest downloads of maps and traffic.
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COMMENTS (3)
GENE CRAWFORD
I think Twitter for the most part has just exposed this because of it’s simplicity and as a result it get’s all the glory, but “Twitter” isn’t a strategy. What you say here is so true, you’ve got to step back and look at the entire picture then start reaching out where it makes the most sense. The real trick of the trade seems to be getting clients to slow down long enough to actually take in the big picture and react strategically.
DAIMON
So true Gene. Pitching Twitter for Twitter sake is no strategy at all. That is why it’s so important to educate clients.
USER EXPERIENCE RESEARCH
Working in Sydney, I’ve adopted an almost identical approach. Rapid turnaround of reports is critical to the success of this methodology.