Within 15 mins I had made up my mind to buy something at Coach and not something small — something of significance — for the person I love the most in my life. I’d never purchased anything at Coach before. I didn’t even know where the nearest store was, but my decision was made and it took less time than most gift buying decisions I’ve made.

This is an incredible story for any brand, nonetheless a brand I wasn’t familiar with, had no affinity for, and generally associated with high school. For the Christmas 2011 I used Pinterest in a way that helped to make my life unbelievably easy and my girlfriend unbelievably happy simply by shopping for her directly from her Pinterest account.

Pinterest is hot — seriously hot.

From VentureBeat “The still-invite-only, one year-old digital pin-board site attracted nearly 11 million visitors in the week ending Dec. 17, according to data intelligence company Hitwise. Hitwise counts Pinterest as one of the top 10 websites in the social networking and forums category.”

Top 10 is actually being disingenuous. Pinterest actually falls in as the #7 social networking website, ahead of the likes of Google+ and Tumblr. That along with $37 mil in the coffers means that investors get it and so do a large number of interneters.

But like most new platforms, brands have been slow to get involved. And this is surprising because Pinterest is ripe for brands — it’s a collection of beautiful/interesting/desired things that get captured, collected, shared and ultimately bought. It’s a crowd-sourced consumer magazine at its best. Pinterest’s pages look just like those of major catalogues, something I’m sure Pinterest re-purposed on, well, purpose. Pinterest was created for the ADD mind of the Internet, for the scrollers of blogs and for those that always called themselves visual learners when we we’re growing up.

But Pinterest is more than just a social website — it’s a place to discover the wants of an individual. Facebook gives you their life story, Twitter tells you what they are doing right now but Pinterest tells you what they want their house to look like, where they want to go for vacation and even what recipe they want to make for dinner. Once brands figure this out and create strategy to tap into this huge trove of knowledge, it’s game on.

Brands everywhere are going to quickly begin to take notice to Pinterest, but those that figure out why people love the platform will be the ones that succeed the quickest. Happy pinning!

We originally helped build the Cancer Talk website which first set the cancer talks in motion. After several weeks of the site being live, the FCancer team received feedback from  users and wanted to act on that feedback, make some revisions, and improve the experience on the site for the online community. With that, they really wanted to showcase the awesome celebrity videos they made for this campaign in a big (large) way. Who doesn’t want to see celebs talking about their awkward sex talk?

We enjoyed working closely with the FCancer team to identify and revise areas of the site. We used custom development to ensure designs were properly translated into editable modules in WordPress, for easy updates. The results are in and the page speaks for itself. The Cancer Talk site now features:

• Celebrity videos large, front and centre. Nearly full screen, the videos act has a great hook to get people onto the site and they keep users engaged, increasing the time on site.
• The videos are played on a new video player, DailyMotion.
• The site now allows for FCancer to continually make videos and update the site regularly. Check out the latest one by Ke$ha.

And as always, with FCancer, the site is not only entertaining, it’s educational too. Key messages being: 90 per cent of all cancers are curable if caught in stage one. That is why you should have the cancer talk.

Ready to have the cancer talk? Let the fine folks at FCancer help you get started. They provide the ice breaker, the info package, and even the questions to ask. Such as:
Has anyone in our family had cancer?
How old were they where they got it?
What kinds of cancer do we have in our family history?

Go on, check it out. Tell us what you think!

In need of a site re-design? We’re here to help. Email us at info@invokemedia.com

* This blog post is part of Invoke’s participation in the 2008 Vancouver Blogathon for Charity

Walking a tightrope between design and desire. A designer’s thoughts.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who has somehow survived six years freelancing as a graphic designer. “A client of mine insisted that I let her design the look and feel of the site before she gave feedback” was a comment he breezily made at one point – as if the irony of the statement hadn’t occurred to him yet.

Yes, it’s both an interesting and exciting moment; handing designs over to someone and waiting for them to view, judge and critique it, but it’s also a little like having Regis fly out of your closet as your alarm clock goes off – it would scare the hell out of you if you weren’t adequately prepared. See, what in your head may be functional, stylish or just plain cool may be totally be a Spiderman III moment for them. If it is, it’s redesign-or-tweakin’ time.

The worst type of feedback is the kind that morphs the design into a blob of ineffective mish-mash. It’s the feedback that usually runs along the lines of: “Ok… but could we make it more ‘wow!’?” or “I’d love to see a little more: ‘oooh!’ there…”. Basically, it’s like telling a baker to make the bread more ‘risey’, or like saying you like a sunset because it’s, y’know – whatever.

Useful feedback incorporates an understanding of things, what do I want changed and why? Is it because I like another colour more or because another colour would convey this emotion better? Is it because I had a crappy game of poker last night and I want to berate someone over the internet? … OK that’s only happened twice, but it’s actually after the feedback when things get interesting.

OK, so Sally Sacramento wants this colour changed. Can I make this work or is it going to end up looking like a pair of Crocs? (I don’t care how comfortable they are, that designer needs to be beaten over the head with a shovel…) If you misread the brief and screwed up, it’s a good time to correct the problem, but if it’s a matter of nitpicking it comes down to judgment. See taking feedback literally can be dangerous, taking it with a grain of salt can be tasty – but stupid.

So how should you deal with a troubling response? Well, sometimes people need to see that something won’t work. If you get a request for a logo to be blown up 300%, go ahead, do it, but present one with it at 50% too so things are in perspective. Want that body text in bold, italic size 47 Helvetica? OK well sometimes telling people it just won’t work is an option too…

In the end, it comes down more to personal taste and judgement than formula and rule. Use that eye and try to get your client enthused about the design you’ve laboured over. If that doesn’t work, well you can always take it out of your folio… or try that Regis trick…

In the category of ‘Interesting Self Promotion’ The Poetic Prophet drops some science on design and coding. I can live without the AOL browser reference but he nails everything else.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qMe7Z3EYg]

In just a brief one-twentieth of a second — less than half the time it takes to blink — people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an internet site.

The study was published in the latest issue of the Behaviour and Information Technology journal. The author said the findings had powerful implications for the field of website design.

“It really is just a physiological response,” Gitte Lindgaard told Reuters on Tuesday. “So web designers have to make sure they’re not offending users visually.

“If the first impression is negative, you’ll probably drive people off.”

In the study, researchers discovered that people could rate the visual appeal of sites after seeing them for just one-twentieth of a second. These judgments were not random, the researchers found — sites that were flashed up twice were given similar ratings both times.

They also matched the responses given by subjects who were shown the sites for longer.

But the results did not show how to win a positive reaction from users, said Lindgaard, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. “When we looked at the websites that we tested, there is really nothing there that tells us what leads to dislike or to like.”

And while further research may offer more clues, she said the vagaries of personal taste would always be a limiting factor.

“If design were reducible to a set of principles, wouldn’t we find an awful lot of similar houses, gardens, cars, rooms?” said Lindgaard. “You’d have no variety.”

This article originally posted on Wired News