We’re living in a time of information overload and complexity, inundated with too much information and too little time to get through it. I believe that visual explanations, such as video and online presentations, will be an important tool for organizations to convey their message, whether that’s selling a product or advocating action of some other kind. To that end, I’ve jumped in to developing online presentations, videos and screencasts as visual explanations. I’ve also recently become interested in ocean advocacy. So, I developed an online presentation to explain some of the issues concerning the health of our oceans in the hope of raising awareness. Check it out below. If you have trouble viewing the embedded version below, you can view it on my SlideShare page.
What I like about this online presentation format is that it easily allows a visual explanation to easily go viral, whether it’s of your product or service, or explaining an issue or a concept. The share and embed features, like you see on many videos, allow other web sites and blogs to put your explanation on their site.
If you’ve got a product, service, issue or concept that you’d like explained in an online presentation or screencast video, contact me. If you’re motivated by the presentation above to learn more about ocean issues and get involved, visit my SaveTheOcean blog for more information.
Choosing a domain name for your website these days isn’t as simple as you might think. A nice article on Web Guild today highlights some of the issues and provides some tips in choosing a domain name for your website. From the article, a 25 point checklist in choosing a domain name:
A to Z considerations (in directory / visibility terms, aardvark beats zulu, baby beats yup…)
Don’t be silly with the placement of the dots (that’s you I’m talking about, Delicious!)
Avoid negative connotations (depends on the target market of course, but in general this is a good idea…)
Punchy or plain weird FTW (hey, if you want memorable, why not try something a little off the wall?)
Avoid initials / acronyms (did anybody ever ask you “WTF does ROTFLOL mean?”)
Available on social media platforms (obviously handy if you can also bag the name on Twitter, Youtube, Digg, etc)
Avoid numbers (looks cheap, I hate textspeak, and using numbers also leads to spelling questions)
Multinational spelling (avoid z and s issues, for example… optimize / optimise)
Aesthetics (some letter combinations work better than others, as logo designers will no doubt testify)
Sound (does it roll off the tongue?)
Make it easy to pronounce (lest you have to spend big to educate people on how to say it…)
Cheap (why spend $28,000 on a ‘premium domain name’ when I can build you a whole business for that amount? There are some exceptions to this rule!)
Flexibility (it’s good to build in a little room for movement, in case your business changes direction)
No hyphens (we recently lost the hyphen in our brand name, and it caused all kinds of headaches… punctiation is to be avoided)
Singular (plurals suck nine big ones, especially when the singular alternative is out there)
Target market friendly (you must do some research and canvass opinion, lest you get it badly wrong)
Synonyms (think about related words and phrases associated with your sector, but don’t get too obscure… you shouldn’t need to explain yourself)
Keywords (if possible it is wise to include at least one strategic keyword; multiple keywords joined together do not always make for the best brand names)
Meaningful (but not necessarily descriptive! Remember to allow for flexibility. Dallas Carpets, last I heard, was not solely based in Dallas…)
Domain name must match the brand name (obvious, no?)
Unique (easy to track growth and watch your brand go viral via Google etc; avoid trademarks; it’s nice to have ownership of a new word / verb etc)
Available in .com and other key extensions (go for the set! You can do it!)
Short (up to 67 characters are allowed but at a brand level it is best to stay short, lest people start abbreviating your brand name…)
Easy to type (reduce guesswork. If anybody asks ‘how do you spell that’ then you might have failed…)
Memorable (only time will tell, but aim for something that is immediately memorable. If you forget about it the next day it may not be the best sign!)
I’m in the process of developing an online visual explanation SlideShare presentation about plastic water bottles and ocean pollution for my blog SaveTheOcean (and to share with other Ocean advocacy organizations). I’ve liked both Cliff Atkinson’s and Nancy Duarte’s presentation development methodologies, but for some reason have still felt the need to combine elements of both and customize.
Two tools that I’m finding to be really useful are a stack of index cards and mind mapping software (I’m using Nova Mind). The index cards are great for capturing key points in the brainstorming phase. In Nancy’s workshop at VizThink recently she had us use post-it notes, but personally I’m finding that index cards are easier to use. I don’t have a big whiteboard or wall to organize them all so I can just lay out my index cards on a table or the floor and rearrange as needed, then pack them all up in order when I need the space for something else.
At a certain point, the index cards started getting to be a bit unwieldy so I created a mind map in NovaMind to continue working on the structure of the presentation. I think any of the presentation gurus will tell you that defining your presentation content and structuring it all outside of PowerPoint or Keynote is a best practice. So, next time you have a presentation to develop, hold off on opening up PowerPoint, get some index cards and some mind mapping software (free versions are readily available if you don’t have any) and give it a try.
An example of the mind map I’m using to develop my presentation is shown below. It’s still a work in progress with more to flesh out.
As a web and multimedia developer, I work with photos provided by clients to incorporate into websites on a daily basis. A common problem I run into is that a lot of people don’t understand some really basic things about digital images. For example, I’m often provided photos that are way too small for the space needed on a web page. Since I’m expanding my service offerings to include online visual explanations, I thought it would be a good idea to create an explanatory video or screencast that explains some of the basics of using digital images on the web. The result is the following (click on full-screen mode to view it larger).
Now for some self-critiquing. One of my explicit goals in developing this video was to work out the process involved - what settings to use in the video screencapture, what images sizes to use for static images that I imported, R&D on audio capture, etc. While I’m not completely satisfied with the end result, I’m very satisfied with what I learned through the process.
The biggest lesson learned was that the script really needs more work and refinement. More time spent up front in developing the script will result in a better explanation and also reduce fixes and edits later on in the production process. For example, after creating all the visuals and audio and reviewing a rough cut of the video, I noticed an error in the narration that I should have caught when writing the script. It was minor, but I re-recorded a portion of the audio to correct it and also to find out if there would be a noticeable difference in the audio recorded at different times. Despite using all the same audio settings and same microphone, I can detect a difference. So, lesson learned - spend a lot of time developing, editing and nitpicking the script, then once it’s perfect, record all the audio at once, then synch up the audio with the visuals later in the production process.
The audio quality also leaves a bit to be desired, but this was expected since I just used the built-in microphone on my Mac Powerbook. Investing in a better quality external mic will fix this problem. There’s also a slight inconsistency at one point that I did just to make a point. In retrospect, it would probably be better to avoid this kind of thing.
As a web and multimedia developer, I work with photos provided by clients to incorporate into websites on a daily basis. A common problem I run into is that a lot of people don’t understand some really basic things about digital images. For example, I’m often provided photos that are way too small for the space needed on a web page. Since I’m expanding my service offerings to include online visual explanations, I thought it would be a good idea to create an explanatory video or screencast that explains some of the basics of using digital images on the web. The result is the following (click on full-screen mode to view it larger).
Now for some self-critiquing. One of my explicit goals in developing this video was to work out the process involved - what settings to use in the video screencapture, what images sizes to use for static images that I imported, R&D on audio capture, etc. While I’m not completely satisfied with the end result, I’m very satisfied with what I learned through the process.
The biggest lesson learned was that the script really needs more work and refinement. More time spent up front in developing the script will result in a better explanation and also reduce fixes and edits later on in the production process. For example, after creating all the visuals and audio and reviewing a rough cut of the video, I noticed an error in the narration that I should have caught when writing the script. It was minor, but I re-recorded a portion of the audio to correct it and also to find out if there would be a noticeable difference in the audio recorded at different times. Despite using all the same audio settings and same microphone, I can detect a difference. So, lesson learned - spend a lot of time developing, editing and nitpicking the script, then once it’s perfect, record all the audio at once, then synch up the audio with the visuals later in the production process.
The audio quality also leaves a bit to be desired, but this was expected since I just used the built-in microphone on my Mac Powerbook. Investing in a better quality external mic will fix this problem. There’s also a slight inconsistency at one point that I did just to make a point. In retrospect, it would probably be better to avoid this kind of thing.
Every visual thinking blogger in the blogosphere is going to be blogging about it, but it’s just so damn cool that I have to do it too. Information Architects have just released their Web Trend Map 4. Popular domains on the Web are mapped to the Tokyo Metro and organized by how they are most related to the cities. Heights represent success in traffic and branding. Subway lines are colored by area of interest. Check it out!
At VizThink ‘09, Ole Qvist-Sorensen challenged the audience during his general session presentation, “Survival Academy: Imagining a Better World with Visual Language, Thinking and Practice,” how we as visual thinkers could contribute to saving the world by putting our talents to work on global problems. That struck a chord with me, so one of my take-away goals from VizThink has been to get involved with at least one global issue that concerns me and apply visual thinking to address or raise awareness of the issue. Ole referenced Sylvia Earle’s recent TED wish which struck yet another chord and so I’ve decided to apply some visual thinking to the issue of raising awareness of the plight of our oceans. My original thought was to develop an online visual explanation either as a presentation and/or video. But I thought it also might be interesting to start up a blog wherein I can capture some of content ideas for the explanation as well as publish snippets from the explanation as I develop them. So, I’ve started yet another blog. One of the compelling issue I think needs highlighting in the visual explanation is what’s known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There’s a lot of visuals and infographics available on the web to depict this, but I thought it would be fun to develop my own infographic. The first draft is below.
At the recent TED conference, Pattie Maes presented Sixth Sense, a wearable device that projects images on the users’ environment, opening some really cool possibilities for data interaction with real life objects. Lots of people are comparing it to Minority Report, but to me it more closely resembles the world described by Vernor Vinge in Rainbows End. After reading Rainbows End and watching this TED presentation I suspect that this concept of our virtual world overlaid on top of our reality is what where we can expect virtual reality to go. Watch the presentation below and if you’re intrigued by the idea, I recommend checking out Rainbows End.
I brought along a tiny little video camera called the GoPro to VizThink and tried it out at Tuesday morning’s general session. It’s a wide angle lens camera with a limitation of 56 minutes of video and really limited audio. I set up the camera on the table during the general session and caught the preliminary announcements, presentations by Tableau and XPlane, some of the “live infographics” choreographed by Tom and part of Ole Qvist-Sorensen’s Survival Academy presentation. Aside from speeding up the video, I didn’t edit anything out. There’s also no audio and it’s pretty tough to see much of what’s on the presenter’s screen but I thought the video might be semi-interesting to folks who weren’t there to just get a flavor of what it’s like attending a VizThink general session.
