There has been a lot of buzz in the twittersphere around infographics over the past year and i wanted to share some thoughts on how the research industry can make the most of this growing visual language.
The democratisation of data
The purpose of the information graphic is to give us all a new way of helping people understand concepts, ideas and data through art. Our brains are wired for pictures, rather than than text and data, which means that infographics enable more people to engage with complex issues such as social trends, product concepts and social media research findings. read more
Last Sunday I was scheduled to fly from Damascus (Syria) to London. An easy 6-hour plane ride with a simple transfer in Istanbul turned into a very complicated journey. As a result of the volcanic ash cloud it took me 3 days to get home. I had to travel via Istanbul-Rome-Milan-Lausanne-Paris-Calais-Dover using 1 plane, 4 trains, 1 car, 2 taxis, 1 ferry, 1 bus, 2 tubes and a lot of long walks. Only by working together with other people was I able to reach London. My successful journey home was the result of collaborating and co-creation.
On arrival, at Istanbul airport Turkish airlines was in chaos. Later I found, this was also the case for the Italians at Rome Fiumicino airport. There was no information, no signs, no water or food, only very long queues. Speaking to local staff was confusing rather than helpful. The only thing brilliantly clear was that every flight was cancelled and all international forms of transport were sold out for the next couple of days.
As I tried to move on amongst this confusion I started to realise that something interesting was happening out of this disaster; a simple journey was turning into a voyage of discovery. As people’s travel plans were severely disrupted, travellers who would normally ignore each other, started to work together. They shared stories and exchanged information. As a result of the chaos, a community of travellers began the quest in trying to figure out a way to get home. The community fed information through social media. Facebook pages and Twitter tags sprang up to inform people and help them find alternative transportation, even supportive tips on where to find couches to sleep on. read more
In her paper about the World of Warcraft and Co-Creation Myriam Davidovici-Nora explains that Blizzard’s success lays in the combination of never-ending game-play, a high level of competition and the hyper-personalisation accessed through online add-ons.
However, Blizzard’s unique model is hardly suitable for other businesses– Can you imagine EA distributing “zombie kits” for Left 4 Dead?
This conundrum leaves us with a burning question: what is the best practice to handle / entice a group’s creativity in the online environment?
The Tool is the Tip of the Iceberg
Liz Sanders, a pioneer in the use of participatory research methods for the design of products, systems, services and spaces, addressed this topic when speaking at the Copenhagen Co’Creation 2010 Summit and Seminar. She explained that tools are the tip of the iceberg: they only become effective if applied with the right mindset and the right methods/methodologies. read more
Mark Earls, author of ‘Herd, How to Change Mass Behaviour by harnessing our true nature’, attended the launch of the London Co-creation Hub on 18th March. Co-creation at it’s core is about people co-operating, working together to create something. Mark’s book supports this assertion by claiming that we are a ‘we’ species, not an ‘I’ species, and that we don’t do anything in isolation, everything has a social element.
We had an interesting chat at the event about the fact that the advertising model does not reflect this fundamental insight into human nature, and that it is in effect broken and has to change. What surprises me most is that it has taken this long for the communications industry to wake up to this somewhat uncomfortable truth; that we have been developing communications in the wrong way, for a long time. And maybe that has been the barrier, that because the belief that doing things ‘at’ people has been the guiding principle for so long mean that it’s too big a deal to challenge it.
The combination of the recession and the emergence of social media has now forced the industry to do some soul searching. Some agencies have bought digital agencies and placed them at the same table as account and planning people, others have created ’social media divisions’ to bolt on to their existing range of services and meet the request from clients to ‘do some social media’. What’s staggering is that they are completely missing the point, that social media is not a cheap channel, to be approached in a broadcast manner. Social media represents ‘herd’ behaviour on a mass scale, something that has been the domain of the ‘events’ industry until now. So why are we still applying the old models? There are literally thousands of ways in which people can now connect with the things they love and the people they care about, and the opportunity for brands is to a) understand what people care about, why they care about them, and how they engage with these things, and b) identify the opportunity for the brand to legitimately become a part of those conversations. Following this approach shifts the conversation from being about ‘convincing’ people that they should buy the brand, to inviting them to share in its vision and beliefs. This requires brands to get closer to their audiences and to work with them throughout the process, effectively drawing up a new contract between brands and their audiences: read more
London is one of the biggest cities in the world; it is a massive player in the world’s finance, fashion, business, party, retail and social media industries. It’s a place where dreams can be made and literally anything can happen! But even though London has an unlistable amount of good points and amazing opportunities, it’s not perfect.
So on 24 February 2010, to compliment the launch of The Hub, we also unveiled a new initiative called ‘Co-Create London’. This is aimed at addressing the Capital’s main issues and annoyances by listening to the people who know the City best – the general public. Whether they’ve lived In London their whole life or just passed through, Co-Create London is asking people to answer a very simple question – ‘What Would You Do To make London A Better Place?’.
In just 3 weeks we’ve had loads of buzz worldwide; people have approached us from other countries asking about rolling it out in their cities and we have been covered across all the London blogs.
Last week we had a fantastic night at the launch of the London Co-creation Hub at the Design Council. Over 120 people turned up to hear more about what we are doing and why we are doing it; Ed Vaizey’s speech on “How co-creation will change the face of democracy” and the first exclusive results of our social initiative “Co-create London”. read more
London is one of the biggest cities in the world; it is a massive player in the worlds finance, fashion, business, party, retail and social media industries. It’s a place where dreams can be made and literally anything can happen! But even though London has an unlistable amount of good points and amazing opportunities, it’s not perfect.
Co-Create London is a new website aiming to address London’s main issues and annoyances by listening to the people who know the city best – the general public.
Whether you have lived in London for your whole life or just passed through Co-Create London would like you to answer a very simple question ‘What Would You Do To Make London a Better Place?’ By gathering ideas, solutions and fresh thinking about the city the site hopes to address issues that are important to people of London and give citizens the platform to make positive changes.
Over the next few weeks the site will be collecting ideas and encouraging users to vote on their favourites. The ideas that receive the most votes will be taken forward into a co-creation workshop. The workshop will see Londoners who contributed to the cocreatelondon.com website come together with London experts to turn the ideas into positive and real solutions.
These solutions will then be marched to Town Hall and presented in front of London Mayor Boris Johnson. The hope is that Bojo will listen to Co-Create London and the ideas taken from the website will become a reality, making London a better place to visit and live.
To let Boris know exactly what you would do to make London a better place – or just read & vote on some great ideas, head over to www.cocreatelondon.com
The newly formed Co-Creation Hub needed a logo and for a collective that prides itself in ‘doing things with people rather than at them’ we would obviously need to Co-Create this logo. We needed to walk the walk.
So first we got in touch with Headbox, the Hub’s online community of 16-24 year olds and set a 5,000 strong crowd the task of designing us a logo based around a brief of ‘doing things with people not at people’. Their incentive was a cash prize.
We got back some amazing results as well as some awful ones too. This is what makes crowd sourcing exciting but also on its own, limiting. Which is why the Hub’s philosophy is never to rely solely on the crowd; it is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.
This story begins in 2004, a year when 120 million Americans voted George Bush Jnr into government for a second term, The Lord of The Rings: Return of the King won 11 Oscars, Ireland introduced the smoking ban and a small start-up called Face started to get going. read more
