Just when you think you’ve got this whole brand experience thing figured out, along comes another form of social media that threatens to shake your grasp on the status quo. Over the past year, Twitter has taken the spanner-in-the-works title from Facebook, which took it from YouTube, which took it from Flickr, and so on. While it can seem daunting to consider managing your company’s image over so many forms of new media, this phenomenon can benefit your company — you have more opportunities than ever to generate positive brand experiences with your customers. Of course, this means there are more chances to make a mess of things as well. So how do you make sure you do more of the former and less of the latter?

1. Be generous
2. Drop the facade
3. Follow through

These principles may be easier for smaller companies to adopt, since they are often in more direct contact with their customers. But just as the web helped to level the playing field for small businesses trying to wrestle mindshare from their larger competitors, social media offers big firms the chance to reconnect with their customers more directly. Perhaps the most appropriate way to introduce the guidelines below is to sum them up in 140 characters or less. Let’s call it the Social Media Golden Rule: Use social media to engage with your customers as you have your vendors to engage with you.

First, be generous
Most of what we think of as social media began life outside the corporation. Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, you name it – they all started as the pet project of small groups of individuals. Lacking corporate sponsorship, these sites relied on the support and contributions of online communities to evolve and to expand. This generosity remains part of the DNA of each of these tools to this day — they are referred to as consumer-generated media for a reason. To engage with these community-driven tools credibly, you must utilize their currency of free information and proper attribution.

While it may be appropriate to announce awards and accolades using social media channels, consider the value of that information to your potential and current customers. Does that announcement entertain, enlighten, or educate your viewers? Think of the difference between sharing the fact that your company won an award versus sharing freely the submission that won the award. To play on the old adage, share, don’t tell.

Self-promotion is a type of sharing, certainly, but it is by definition self-serving (or at least self-centered). The rapid growth of social media tools and sites is due to their ability to convey information with high potential for sharing. One of the best ways to raise your social media credibility, then, is to promote others instead of yourself (or your company). By acknowledging the contributions of others and by promoting their content, you engage in these media’s most definitive act: sharing. Doing so consistently and with relevance to your industry may increase both your credibility and your reach. Your company can become a trusted provider of useful and relevant content, regardless of its source.

The biggest downside to the proliferation of social media is the increasing sense of information overload. While it is to your advantage to share useful information, being an information curator provides an additional expert service to your customers. Any content your company generates will benefit from your reputation as a generous and knowledgeable member of the social media community. You won’t need to promote your company — others will do it for you.

Second, drop the facade
Being authentic does not mean simply representing your company accurately, it means stripping away the pretense. Nothing sets off BS detectors more than when companies use corporate lingo on the blog or via Twitter, or when they share only the most sanitized content on YouTube and Flickr. Press releases are not blog entries. Being authentic means being candid and being real.

You don’t have to air your company’s dirty laundry, but openness and transparency are inherent to the appeal of all social media. Whether they are prospective customers or employees, folks interested in learning more about your company and its corporate culture will look to see how you present yourself via these channels. They can sniff your pretense a mile away — and they won’t like it.

By participating in these media more as a member of the community and less as a corporation, you will be seen as a valued contributor to the culture around each of these tools. The bad news is that letting down your corporate guard is only the first step, if a crucial one. Interacting with your customers on their terms gets you into the game. They will appreciate your effort, but will not forget what you represent: your brand.

Lastly, follow through
Though these media may force you to engage with your customers on their terms, it does not change the fundamental nature of the relationship: They are your customers (or at least potentially so). As such, they will expect you to address their questions (or complaints) with the same attention as you would via more traditional customer service channels. These expectations may seem contradictory or even unfair in light of social media’s more informal atmosphere, but your willingness to accept these terms of engagement can set you apart from other brands.

Twitter may epitomize these competing expectations best, with its simultaneous drive for brevity and immediacy. Customers you please may or may not praise your efforts to their followers, but those you don’t will state their displeasure swiftly and bluntly. Whether broadcast as complaints on your Facebook fan page, or as 140-character open letters, your responses must reflect the same responsiveness and professionalism you would show a customer who has waited too long on hold for customer service. Servicing customer needs in such public forums may not be comfortable, but well-handled resolutions will demonstrate — and broadcast — your commitment to customer service more authentically than any slogan or tag line.

Those of you advocating on behalf of a more formal brand may need to shift your tone of voice when utilizing these media, but you cannot afford to make the mistake of thinking professional customer service etiquette does not apply. Edgy and more casual brands will likely find social media to be familiar ground, but may miss the opportunity to enhance their perceived accountability.

Conclusion
Social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube encourage candid dialog and responsive interactions. Most people appreciate those qualities in any relationship — not just the one they have with their vendors of choice. When combined with a willingness to be accountable, these elements provide the raw material your company can use to create positive brand experiences.

The barrier for entry to participate with these media is so low that it is tempting to just jump in and figure it out along the way. Some folks may advise you that since these media cost nothing, you have nothing to lose. That perspective forgets the possibility of a company damaging its brand reputation. So while it is untrue that engagement with social media has only upside, it is true that these tools offer potentially huge returns on your investment. Keep the three principles outlined in this article in mind as you craft your social media marketing strategy, but if in doubt, remember the Golden Rule: Engage with your customers as you would have your vendors engage with you.

[Written for and originally published at iMedia Connection]

For a while, I’ve been thinking it might be useful to compare the act of curating an exhibit and that of designing a user interface. By useful I mean helping folks who are not in the industry understand the value of good user interface design. Opening to the front page of the Sunday Styles section of this weekend’s New York Times, I thought: well, someone has finally done it. Below the fold was an illustration of the word “curate.” The related article, “On the Tip of Creative Tongues,” concerned the expanding use of the word outside the realm of museums and art galleries. But the author, Alex Williams, did not compare user interface design and curation in the article, which focuses on the use of the word to “self-inflate” other acts of selecting and editing. Since the Times article has left that particular analogy unexplored, let’s take a closer look.

Early in the piece, Williams asserts that the use of the term curator in the wider context is “code for ‘I have a discerning eye and great taste.’” While the examples cited might lead you to that conclusion, the term connoisseur better matches that definition. That said, the activities described—hosting fashion shows and booking just the right bands and food vendors—do involve more than just using one’s refined sense of taste: a discrete collection is culled from a much larger set. Whether night club or museum, the aesthetes who are making those choices do seem to be curating…at least according to the traditional definition. But just as connoisseurs have begun to act as curators, museum and exhibit curation itself has evolved. Contemporary curators do more than define collections, they create narratives.

Not being a curator myself, I have no insight into the evolution of this discipline. As a former student of architecture, I’d like to think that Frank Lloyd Wright (and the Guggenheims, of course) had something to do with this shift in curation. The Guggenheim building has its share of galleries and niches, but its defining feature is the spiral walkway. The very architecture of the building compels visitors along a predefined path and makes the visitor map superfluous for understanding how to engage with the building and, therefore, the exhibits themselves. The architecture also provides the framework for the museum’s curators to organize their collections in a similar way, with a start and a finish.

You need not visit New York to experience exhibits in this way. Many museums of science and natural history tell stories to set the context for each display and diorama. Museums of culture and art may organize their collections along a timeline, the most fundamental narrative construct. Truly memorable museums and exhibitions invite the visitor to engage with a point of view and to learn and discover new things about the works and their creators in that context. As Virginia Postrel is quoted in the article:

“Because there are more things to put together,” she said, “the juxtapositions become a big part of the interesting experience of those things. It is a creative activity in itself.”

Postrel’s quote hints at an important factor which informs the curator’s work: constraints. For museum curators, the physical space of the building or gallery becomes a key limiting factor. Time is another. Exhibit visitors have only so much time (and attention span). A good curator will take a collection, design a theme or narrative arc for the flow, and then make the best of use of the available space to create a coherent and compelling experience for the visitor. With limited space, time and budget, curators forge experiences out of collected works. User experience designers do the same thing with information, and they wrestle with analogous constraints.

As with curators, user interface designers are not merely collectors or connoisseurs of relevant information and good design, they create experiences. Though the gathering of information (the collection) and acting as a connoisseur (refining that collection) are critical activities for the UI designer, those tasks alone are unlikely to result in a compelling digital experience. A compelling digital interface engages the user in a narrative. This assertion is true even for the more prosaic websites where a well designed user interface can imbue tasks with context and meaning. Whereas a museum curator invites a visitor on a journey through physical space, the user interface designer performs the same feat in the digital realm.

User experience designers grapple with the constraints of space, time, and budget as well. While the canvas of the browser has become more expansive as monitors and resolutions have increased in capacity, there is only some much information a typical user can process at one time. That said, the number of screens of information are limited only by the client’s budget and the user’s patience. Where the digital space may be more forgiving than the curator’s physical space, the attention span of the user is much less so. Once a visitor has entered a museum, they are likely to stay and capitalize on their investment of time and, often, money. Website visitors are much more transient, so the interface provided must be that much more compelling.

Regardless of these differences, the analogy between user experience designers and curators reveals a key similarity: the importance of narrative to the user/visitor experience. Without an underlying story, theme, or message, an exhibition becomes merely one connoisseur’s taste on display. That kind of exhibition may be interesting, but it is less likely to educate or enlighten (or even entertain) the viewer. Similarly, a series of screens (even well designed) that lacks a meaningful context may allow a user to complete a task, but it is unlikely to leave them with a sense of understanding or accomplishment.

Good designers and curators do more than decide what to keep and what to leave out when designing experiences, they create a meaningful context for the user. Maybe the linguist Williams cites in the article is correct. Maybe comparing user experience design to curation is an “innocent form of self-inflation.” Or maybe the work of user interface designers is more important that you think.

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
- Charles Eames

There was something about the tail light of the Mini Cooper S in front of me that caught my eye. It took a moment, but as soon as the driver tapped the brakes again I saw it: the illuminated brake light did not fit inside its housing. I thought: that must be intentional. There is no obvious reason why the ring of of the light could not be made smaller or of a different shape, so why design the rear light in this way? I glanced around the rest of the car looking for clues (while paying close attention to the road, um, for the most part).

As I’d suspected, the evidence was there. Scanning the exterior details, particularly the curves of the side panels and the subtle tuck of various seams, it all made sense. The entire skin of the Mini appeared ready to burst from within, as if the envelope of the car were being distorted by the power of the machine underneath. That impression was being reinforced by the design gesture of the tail light: the housing appears to be too small to enclose the lamp.

None of these interpretations is true: the housing could be designed to contain the brake light easily and the panels are shaped on the assembly line, not by some barely contained force of the underlying machine. These construction details are designed to create the illusion that the Mini is brawnier than its size would imply. Whether the performance of the car lives up to the aesthetic is not relevant, I’ve already made this association.

What next came to mind was something I learned in one of my architecture courses back in school. Greek builders employed something called entasis when designing columns for temples and civic buildings. Entasis is a subtle bulging of the column in the middle to lower third of its length. Anthropomorphically, the column becomes a strained muscle, supporting the weight of the roof and pediment. But why would the architects bother? One theory holds that when perfectly straight, columns appear attenuated as if they *cannot* bear the load, so entasis is used to correct the visual illusion. Regardless of its intended purpose, entasis is a design detail of the column which affects how we relate to the building as a whole. We feel safer entering a building that appears well supported, whether that impression reflects reality or not.

The effect on the viewer is different, but the technique is similar with regard to the Mini. Even the small detail of the brake light sends us a message about how we should feel towards and ultimately interact with the car. These nuances transcend the purpose of the object to which they are applied and add a layer of interpretation beyond mere function. For the Mini, the implication is power, for the Greek forum, stability. In designing interfaces for the web and other digital media, we have the opportunity to affect user perception in similar ways. We should pay particular attention to what are called affordances, those visual cues that tell the user how to interact with the interface we have designed.

The earliest affordance in web design was the hyperlink. From the start, it communicated two things to the user: that the word is clickable and will bring you to another spot on the web and, after being clicked, that you have visited that target destination previously. Soon after came forms and buttons…true web interaction. Rather than just navigating existing web pages, the user could provide input and get feedback. Fast-forward to today, and not that much has changed. Of course, web site interactions are much more sophisticated…but the fundamental method of interaction — mouse and keyboard — remains largely unchanged (let’s leave aside the iPhone for now).

Despite the advances in web technologies over the last decade or more, the essential problem the user experience designer must tackle is still this: how to communicate what is clickable and what the user should expect when it is clicked. This is the domain of affordances…and this is where we as designers have the unique opportunity to illicit a response from the user beyond the successful completion of the task at hand. The attention to detail, or lack thereof, is what can make the difference between an interface that is merely usable and one that is enjoyable.

The examples of the Mini and the Greek column can be applied further. Earlier I claimed that the actual performance of the Mini has no bearing on the impression created by the designers. That assertion is only true before I drive the car for the first time. If the car’s capabilities do not match my expectations (or exceed them), my perception of the car is likely to be worse. The promise of underlying power would be broken. The same is true for the elegantly designed column which buckles under the weight of the temple roof: the building and my expectations are left in ruins.

By focusing on the detailed appearance of the affordances, I do not mean to suggest that we can leave behind well-considered and intuitive design. Once the interaction design is complete and tested, our goal should be to have the user not just click…but touch, and not just to interact, but to engage. It is the attention to detail which will make the experiences not just inviting…but irresistible.