Behaviors: people and pixels.
If you have the same opinion as I have about advertising and advertisers you’ll know I’m twisting my nose here. On the other hand, I do have the ability to recognize good ideas even from the evil. :)
I was just forwarded this Nike ad for the competition between men and women through the Nike+ website. I happen to be working right now on a complex collaboration platform for a client at IDEO. I think my biggest learning – and that’s why this ad is so interesting – is that designing (collaborative) applications for the web moved from centrally controlled and static websites (the dreamweaver model) focused on individual users to the model we have almost everywhere now which is based on user generated content and all the 2.0 features and capabilities that derive from that.
Getting the collaboration going is far more complicated than designing beautiful pixel behaviors. It involves identifying what motivates us, how we measure and stimulate exchange between people, where and when it will happen and etc. We also won’t collaborate through software if we can do it easier in person. And why, should we? So, it’s also about what are the meaningful ways we should use technology to collaborate through.
It is 80% people’s behaviors and 20% pixel behaviors.
That said and back to the Nike ad. One could argue that their pixel behaviors are really nice but the core of the ad and the application are the simple and old people’s behaviors like men vs women games and how they can now be translated and augmented through technology.
I know it is a simple example but the lesson applies all the way to complex business collaboration platforms for companies that have branches pretty much all over the world.
