|December 10th, 2012
The new Coca Cola website is a great specimen for a new generation of corporate websites that turn the traditional monolithic company description into a humanised, dynamic and engaging narrative.
We have isolated 7 features that make this website an inspiration for any organisation looking to improve the way it engages with its audience.
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|October 16th, 2012
More likely than not, emotion is absent from your corporate communications. Why is emotion important and how can you introduce it?
How good are your website, mobile apps, intranet, customer extranet or CRM system? Do users go into a “Like” frenzy when in front of your content, or do they throw their hands up in the air in frustration and vow never to come back? The answer is probably neither. The likely scenario is that your digital properties are just ok; functional, usually reliable, offering an acceptable user experience and featuring adequate content. Not a bad feat considering the monstrosities corporations used to launch until recently. So is there a problem?
Unless you are one of the very few exceptions, your corporate communications are likely to be painting a not so exciting picture of your company: formal, sterile, dry, formulaic and above all impersonal. What is missing from this picture is the human touch: emotion, personality and a narrative to deliver it. The good news is that you are not the only one; your competitors, partners, suppliers and clients probably suffer the same ills. The bad news is that you are missing a great opportunity, first to differentiate and second to connect with your audiences in a more meaningful, rewarding and long-lasting way. Aarron Walter, lead user experience designer at MailChimp, recently said:
Until recently, emotional design has not been a high priority in web design because we’ve been fighting battles on other fronts–spreading the word about web standards, translating the history of layout in graphic design into our medium, and making our interface design process user-centric
In his book “Designing for Emotion” Aarron included the graph below (slightly amended by us) that illustrates the nature of the problem. Most companies have managed to reach a point where their digital properties might be functional, reliable and usable but, being devoid of any personality, they are also unable to evoke any emotions.
|July 3rd, 2012
With mobiles set to surpass desktops as the main access point to the internet sometime next year, the reign of your desktop website as the hub of your corporate communications is coming to an end. As you have no control over how your audiences choose to access your digital content, you need to make the right provisions and ensure that they enjoy the same high-quality brand experience regardless of the platform, screen size or device that they use.
Currently only a small number of companies have optimised their digital content for smartphones, but the number is set to grow exponentially over the next couple of years. So act now and you can still beat your competition.
But where do you start?
|June 14th, 2012
It’s a fact that annual reports have moved online en masse. More often than not, an online annual report is a digital version of the PDF with added interactive charts and maybe a video or two; an approach that does not exploit digital media to the fullest. As part of our on-going research into corporate digital communications we looked at a number of online 2011 annual reports published recently by global enterprises. With some exceptions, the design standard is high, so instead of focusing our review on the hygiene factors of aesthetics and usability, we will look at two other factors, very topical in 2012: emotional design and multi-screen optimisation.
Wooden corporate language is commonplace in corporate communications and this includes annual reports. Scrutinising an annual report will often reveal frequent use of emotional words such as people, teams, rewarding, community, social responsibility and sustainability, but glued together, the picture they paint is still that of a faceless corporation. A digital version of an annual report offers a great opportunity for the humanisation of such corporate language. This humanised annual report website will require the right tone of voice and can also be furnished with a number of emotional design elements such as:
Indeed, a small number of organisations have launched dedicated annual report mobile and tablet apps, whereas a few others have incorporated such information within their IR mobile apps. So why should they worry about optimising their annual report websites for multiple screens? Having a mobile app is a great way to build stronger ties with your audience and to put specific functionality and tools in the palm of their hands. But this app will not stop your audience from accessing your website from a mobile device. A non-optimised website will lead to a poor user experience which can compromise your organisation’s brand, as well as sales, marketing, and client management efforts. So as the web traffic from mobile devices is going through the roof (and is estimated to exceed desktop traffic in 2014), having a website optimised for multiple screens is becoming a usability and accessibility imperative.
Below we showcase 10 annual reports selected because they offer a mixture of approaches when it comes to emotional design. We also want to emphasise the difference between websites optimised for multiple screens and ones that are not.
The RBC annual report website is an emotionless desert sticking to the hard cold facts, decorated just with headshots and videos of the senior team. On the other hand, kudos for a truly responsive design! One of only two in the group.
|June 5th, 2012
LyondellBasell, one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturing companies, wanted to use their 2012 annual report to communicate a strong message of success, growth and determination. Skyron created an interactive experience rich in video, strong headlines and captivating photography. For maximum reach and impact we used responsive design to ensure that the experience can be enjoyed full-screen and optimised for any desktop, tablet or smartphone devices.
|May 18th, 2012
Most organisations we have recently worked with are grappling with the same challenge: having lost faith in the company’s monolithic intranet or extranet, employees have been creating and maintaining small, unauthorised communities on external social channels, mainly Facebook, LinkedIn Groups or Twitter. Organisations tend to respond in one of three ways: some throw up a fight, caution the perpetrators and even ban all social media use across the organisation; others turn a blind eye only to see such illicit activity gathering pace; and finally, the few left see this as an opportunity for transformation and embrace change putting their intranet or extranet at its core.
We have found that when it comes to intranets and extranets an important factor that determines a company’s strategy is the questions asked during the planning phase: if, for example, the main question is “what do we want in our intranet” companies find themselves discussing platforms, technologies, modules, webparts or departmental requests; on the other hand, companies brave enough to ask themselves “what kind of company do we want to be” discover that their intranet is only a means to an end and not an end in itself.
Before designing and building an intranet or extranet, our job (or even duty) as a experienced supplier it to use our analytical process to help the organisation fist ask the right questions and then find the right answers.
Below is a list of intranets and extranets we have created belonging to a number of diverse organisations that have chosen equally diverse paths for creating them:
Global extranet for London Business School
|May 6th, 2012
We have just put our video portfolio on Vimeo which gives me a great opportunity to visit the topic of the use of video in corporate communications. It’s not an accident that, without exception, every company we come across recognises the value of video and wishes that video was more extensively used in both their internal and external communications. It’s easy to see why. Switched-on professionals wrestle daily with an information tsunami that comes from countless sources and in nano-sized chunks. Video on the other hand offers a few moments of sitting back and enjoying the ride; a piece of well-crafted video communication delivers dense content in an engaging way that requires minimum effort to consume it and delivers maximum impact.
Below we list the five most typical uses of video in corporate communications and illustrate each with an example from our portfolio.
Bring to life sales presentations
A pacey 60 second opening will ensure that you grab your audience’s attention from the very beginning and that your key message remains etched in their brains long after you exit the room.
|April 29th, 2012
For most corporations, a mobile app catering for the investors’ voracious appetite for information is still considered a luxury. However, such an app makes perfect sense as not only does it make information available 24/7, but also it plants your brand in the hands of your target audience. Below we are exploring 10 such apps as well as 2 additional corporate apps that are not aimed at investors but still worth looking at for their exceptional user experience.
Unilever
This is one of the best looking apps. It is fast, simple, slick and rich in content. It makes great use of video and keeps PDFs to a minimum.
TVlogic
This app, probably created for the South Korean market, is rich in content, formats, as well as attitude. Although not the best looking app out there, it uses strong graphics that make browsing a more tactile experience.
|April 16th, 2012
Bring your content marketing to life with an interactive timeline. We did some research on the topic for a client and below are our best findings.
Visually interesting timeline created by the BBC and featuring zoom-in functionality and filters. It suffers a bit from the vertical text and the fact that there is no actual information provided until we zoom in.
Unusual pseudo-3D timeline created by the Guardian with information spread across the x and z axes. It looks good but it lacks any user controls other than navigating back and forth in time. Also, each link clicks through to a new page making this timeline more of a fancy index page rather than a contained experience.
Visual extravagance created by the British Library. It features filters, favourites, screen shots and a carousel-like navigation mechanism. The layout feels a bit cluttered and the information included is a bit of a let down; it leaves you wishing it was as elaborate as the navigation.
A very simple timeline created by The New York Times. It would work a lot better if the markers on the timeline were easier to click on.
Another pseudo-3D timeline featuring a long horizontal scroll. It has a nice feel to it, but it could benefit from a non-linear mechanism that allows users to jump to any point of the timeline without having to rely on the scroll-bar or wait for the animation to get them there.
A busy timeline marking events with dots, like the BBC’s timeline above. And like the BBC above, the issue is that the main “dotted” view does not provide any actual information and therefore offers zero value to the user. A close-up view like in the 9/11 timeline would ensure instant user engagement.
200 Years of the New England Journal of Medicine
A very complex timeline featuring a number of navigation tools and filters spread across multiple axes. Parts of it look good, but overall the UX has a whiff of interactive CDs from the late 90s. It could benefit from full screen viewing, more legible text and simplified navigation.
Visually arresting interactive infographic combining a timeline with multiple layers of information. The upside-down text is a bit of a UX nightmare and the physical split between the timeline and the info wheel requires the user to go back and forth between the two to make any sense of it, but it looks simple and it almost convinces that it actually is.
Created by No 10, this is the first non-Flash timeline we came across. It works really well, but is let down by the big image in the background that offers little value and makes the whole experience visually busy and tiring.
A simple timeline that features a neat filter and a series of flying panels holding the information. It works well, but the panel animation is a bit annoying after a while.
|February 8th, 2012
So you are creating your new corporate website.
Your web agency is beavering away on the designs, you have instructed various departments to submit their content, you have hired a copywriter to polish the copy, you are about to sign the new hosting contracts, the CMS training is in the calendar and you have even started planning for mobile optimisation. Life feels pretty good, until you get to the part where you have to source images to fill those large, grey placeholders in the wireframes.
If you are fortunate, your organisation produces über-sexy products like medical equipment, Audi car parts, or bicycles whose magnificent design is already captured and sitting in the corporate image library. But, if you are like a large number of corporations then your offering is either intangible, like services or software, or not handsome enough to front your marketing and sales. Your web agency probably suggested a conceptual photo shoot, but in the end that felt like one production headache too many. So you fall back to the safe cradle of stock photography and you wheel in the attractive people on their laptops and mobiles, the business gatherings in elegant surroundings and the smiley, racially balanced operators. And since most of your competitors, suppliers, partners and customers do the same, you sink your brand to the bottomless depths of obscurity.
Skyron is technology and marketing company helping clients achieve transformation through business insight, creativity, UX and technical innovation. Our analytical approach ensures that our strategic thinking, passion for creativity and technical capabilities deliver measurable results. The purpose of this blog is to share Skyron's news and launches, as well as our thoughts, observations and insights.
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