Juxt Interactive

SXSW 2010

Brian Jeremy Kupetz — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:49:40 +0000

jUXT will be attending South by Southwest this year and we are scouting new talent. We are specifically looking for Flash Developers, Project Managers, and Engineers. View our current job openings here. If you will be attending SXSW this year follow @juxtinteractive on Twitter for updates so you can find us.

JUXT Reel

Jesper Garneij — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:55:40 +0000

JUXT is a company that specializes in creative, digital solutions. We offer award-winning design coupled with proven interactive strategy and branding. Take a look at our work and if you'd like to hire JUXT we'd love to hear from you.

A Better LA

eric — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:53:40 +0000

JUXT was honored to be chosen by A Better LA to redesign their web site. Founded by former USC football coach Pete Carroll, A Better LA seeks to make history by creating large scale change in the inner city. The new web site provides a powerful communication platform for the internal team at ABLA, and will be an instrumental tool in spreading the message, recruiting volunteers, and saving lives.

User Experience and the Use of Metaphor

Brian Jeremy Kupetz — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:37:31 +0000

The breathless announcement of the iPad and its revolutionary promise were a bit at odds with the accompanying demonstrations. Interestingly, Apple chose to communicate the iPad’s abilities by showcasing just how closely the experience aligns with what is already familiar to us, leaning heavily on the iPhone experience and introducing new concepts by using very literal visual metaphors. The ibook app, for example, was presented as a bookshelf, and turning pages in a book was invoked by a swipe that curled and turned the page. In my mind, this announced the tablet as a device aimed squarely at casual computer users, and suggested that the innovation was actually in successfully porting familiar “analogue” experiences into a digital space. It also brought to light a tried and true method for addressing an audience: using metaphor as a way to communicate utility in an interactive experience.

There is certainly nothing new in this, as the very foundations of our computing experience are built on the metaphors of a desktop, folders, files, etc., but the passage of time and the inevitable bloat of features abstracted the experience to a point where the core metaphor became only loosely applicable. However, a quick survey of recent mass-market innovations in UI reveals an emergent trend: Guitar Hero, the Wii, and multitouch interfaces all rely on easy metaphors (some more literal than others) and return the user to a more familiar place.

The lesson to be learned from this is to understand that effectively engaging an audience may be accomplished by choosing the right metaphorical experience. This can only be a productive strategy if the core metaphor is respected throughout the development of an idea. It’s helpful to remember that the way that an idea is sold to the client is probably a good way to sell it to the audience. It is also important to know when to innovate, but understand when innovation abstracts the experience from the metaphor. Maybe “keep it real” is meaningful advice after all.

Sprite Slam Dunk Fan Faceoff

eric — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:15:40 +0000

How do you fire up young basketball fans for the 2010 Sprite Slam Dunk contest? You put them right in the middle of the action where they can show their support for their favorite NBA dunkers. The Fan Faceoff site lets you create your very own digital Dunkfan character, then cheer on the contestants in an addictive, fast-paced game. You can even print out and craft your own paper Dunkfan models!

Visit www.nba.com/dunk_fanfaceoff and see if you can charge up the arena crowd, reach the leaderboard, and spark your favorite slam dunk star to victory.

Doodle Madness

Todd Purgason — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:06:43 +0000

parkour motion reel from saggyarmpit on Vimeo.

In light of all the gadget euphoria oozing out of CES and onto the internet, the best thing I’ve seen this week is totally analog. You have to love what a little free time, creative thinking and talent can pull off in this day and age.

CES Dreams of TV Dinners

Todd Purgason — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:04:16 +0000

Ok, 3D is cool, Google phone cooler but the tablets seem to a very interesting opportunity for us as interactive designers. It is kind of like a laptop you can snuggle with. Take the ease of use of an iPhone, the power of you’re your lapto and through it into a Promethean monitor small enough to haul around in a man purse, and you have something. CES was swimming with these low cost digital Frisbees. Oddly when I looked at the Apple tablet mock up I flashbacked to myself at 10 sitting on the couch with a TV dinner watching the Tribble episode of Star Terk

ces 2010 the year of the tablet-pc/

The Sports Illustrated Prototype kind of says it all

The Threshold - An Alternate Reality Game

eric — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:37:20 +0000

In 2009, Cisco turned to JUXT Interactive and George P Johnson to help make their annual Global Sales Meeting a virtual event. A part of Juxt’s role on this project was to create an engagement strategy that got the online audience deeply involved in the content, motivated team work and generated a strong entertainment layer to the experience. Anchoring the execution of the engagement strategy was an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) entitled “The Threshold”. This immersive espionage game had Cisco Sales team members from across the globe collaborating several hours a day, digging through the content of the meeting and elsewhere for four weeks to solve the mystery and win bragging rights, not to mention some great prizes.

Please see The Threshold Case Study to learn how this ARG became an obsession for Cisco Sales members across the globe.

Cisco Global Sales Experience

eric — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:30:35 +0000

Working with Parent company George P Johnson, Juxt helped Cisco transition their annual global sales meeting from a real event to a virtual one. Juxt took on the challenge of making a secure virtual event for 19,000 busy sales people from around the globe effective and entertaining. Our focus was in developing and executing an engagement strategy that would compel the audience to become deeply engaged in the content, reinforce teamwork and deliver a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Please see the GSX Case Study to learn how we made this happen.

Designing small experiences

Jaeha Yoo — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:15:10 +0000

The battle that brands wage for the attention of users is often writ large with big production budgets and multi-million dollar media buys. For the interactive industry, this means an experiential website heavy on Flash and video, a Facebook fan page, a MySpace buy, assorted mobile apps that tie into the campaign, and a banner campaign that drives to the campaign site. This is all executed in the name of more click-throughs, more page views, and longer site visits. What gets lost in the metrics frenzy is meaningful engagement.

A simple Twitter campaign that United Airlines is currently running offers insight into how a small experience can reap much larger rewards. Every day, a single tweet is sent out that asks a United Airlines specific question. The first person to correctly answer back via Twitter wins a very modest prize. Simple.

The expense of running such a campaign is extremely low -- minimal administrative costs and the value of the prize. Fulfillment can be in the form of a coupon code. For the user, while the value of the prize itself is nominal, the barriers to entry for the contest are extremely low and the act of winning is a prize in itself. This is the digital form of the radio call-in contest (remember those?). To this day, my wife still talks about when she won an album from a random band by being the 8th caller to a local radio station. The salient fact is that she won, nevermind what the prize was.

The company running such a campaign creates an audience that becomes very receptive to the company’s marketing messages. As well, the messages are inadvertently echoed by the audience in the form of contest participation, and so what began as a single text-based message quickly ripples out to become thousands of very lightweight but high-value engagements. Easy peasy, right?