Juxt Interactive

User Experience and the Use of Metaphor

2010-02-10T22:37:37Z

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.

JUXT Reel

2010-01-22T01:17:27Z

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.

Sprite Slam Dunk Fan Faceoff

2010-01-22T01:15:40Z

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

2010-01-08T19:06:43Z

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

2010-01-08T19:20:17Z

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

2010-01-05T19:00:44Z

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

2010-01-05T18:52:31Z

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

2009-12-07T22:00:06Z

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?

News in 140 characters or less

2009-12-07T22:00:30Z

The shift in news gathering and distribution that has taken place over the past few years has taken another turn with the introduction of Twitter Lists. Users are allowed to personalize the way they digest news and events by filtering them through the multiple lenses of the people they follow on Twitter. Curiously, there are quite a few parallels to the structure that Twitter Lists are taking to the traditional breakdown of news, and so users will find lists of current events, politics, sports, local news, etc., and probably organize their own lists along these somewhat familiar lines. The big difference is that because Twitter is so heavily focused on the personal ("What are you doing?"), the feeds from lists are peppered with personal opinion, random happenings, and decidedly off-topic musings.

Things will get quite interesting as more and more people begin to use Twitter as their initial entry into finding and digesting news. Rather than beginning the day by hitting a cycle of major news sites and blogs, users will simply check their lists. However, while Twitter is organized synchronously according to the latest tweets, the tweets themselves may contain asynchronous content. This makes discovery much more serendipitous than browsing the front page of the Times, for example.

It will be interesting to watch how traditional media outlets adapt to this change. An unspoken side of this is that lists will offer Twitter an obvious way to monetize their service, serving up ads that are topically related to lists. I can only imagine that this will further impact the ad revenue that primary news sources can generate. Thankfully, Twitter’s 140 character limit restricts a tweet to a link and a pithy remark, and so primary sources are still necessary. For now.

American Airlines Black Atlas

2009-10-21T18:17:17Z

BlackAtlas.com is a unique American Airlines travel site that blends aspects of social networking and communities into a novel user experience. BlackAtlas.com is geared toward African-American travelers or anyone who wants to experience travel with an African-American flavor. Destinations are chosen because of a connection to African-American culture or history, and in addition to finding fares and booking travel, users are invited to create profiles and share videos, pictures, and travel stories.