Today’s NYTimes had an intriguing ad in its masthead, which I actually clicked:
“Sponsors of Tomorrow” is a little cheesy, but as an avid reader of the Science Times and a techno-fetishist, ii was drawn to it. When I clicked it, I got the usual metaphor of a room and cluster of objects as a way to engage me:
As everyone knows, people, especially NYTimes readers, are afraid of technology, so you need to give them a “virtual space” to lower blood pressure and reduce techno anxiety. In fact, so scared is the audience that you want to avoid text, and let users explore the almost-engaging images presented. (But they’re not clickable!)
So, the piece leads with the Virtual Wind Tunnel. That sounds geeky/futuristic/cool enough to check out:
Again, because I am so techno-phobic, I am gently eased into a screen with a picture with an explanatory sentence. When I click to say “Yes, when I said I wanted to explore the virtual wind tunnel I really meant it, so take me to the fucking virtual wind tunnel already”, I get this:
Now, I might be getting somewhere. There are clickable things at the bottom of the screen! Time to learn how Intel is creating the future, sponsoring tomorrow, blowing my mind with the possibilities of integated electronics. So I click the banana:
Ha ha! Funny! The “Aero Dynamic status” of the banana is “Non-existent”! (In the full sized-version of the screen, the punch line, or rather the “pay-off”, is buried in the upper left corner, in type barely distinguishable from the atmospheric data in the upper left. So, yeah, the actual design is pretty bad too.)
What about the bunny man? Is he aerodynamic?
No!! He “Might as well be a brick wall”! And that concludes the interactivity of this Virtual Wind Tunnel. I get to click five different objects and read the copywriter’s jokes.
In fairness, I have to admit some professional jealousy. I once had Intel as a client and I dreamed of being able to tell customers the deeper story of the amazing things Intel does. The making of micro-processors is, once you look a little closer, fascinating and nearly miraculous. Why not build the brand by telling that story? So, when I see something like this, it bums me out cuz it’s a missed opportunity (and blown budget), and it’s just plain bad click-n-play interactive.
Some things I would suggest to the next team who gets a shot at this (assuming they haven’t poisoned the idea for the next crew):
Remember that interactive is more than just an on/off switch — this experience is essentially an animation player and a weak one at that. It offers no information, no opportunity to go deeper, and, most important, no chance for experimentation and what if. (Actually, for Intel, the most important miss is that this really doesn’t make Intel look that smart or future looking — no processing power was needed for the conclusions we drew. Without the benefit of a computer, a 4th grader who has held his hand out of the window of a moving car could surmise that the able-to-fly humingbird is more aerodynamic than a guy in a bulky suit, and that scientifically dimpled golf balls have more jump than a banana. They might not know why that is the case, but this experience doesn’t help them with that.)
Don’t assume your audience is as dumb as you are — that’s really rude, but I have to believe that the on-the-ground creative team, who grew up with technology, were ready to tell a much smarter, deeper story. I’m guessing that the ECD-level people, who still have troubles with Flickr and computer games and are outraged at what txting is doing to language, insisted that they were the voice of the customer and they were the bar for the level of dialogue — so keep it really simple.
Remember why you bought the space — you went to the NYTimes to engage serious-minded, reasonably intelligent people, so why not talk to them at that level? Even when David Pogue is at his cutesiest accessible, he gets into speeds and feeds and explains real things.
Broaden the range of emotions you engage — go beyond wow, giggle, smirk, cool!, ha! pleasing, soothing, and allow that there are other emotions that can engage people: fascination, the thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of learning, the empowering nature of knowledge. People, especially those in the NYT reader demographics, actually make big life decisions in their careers and education around things that fascinate them, spark their imagination, and make them think.
What a shame. Will agencies ever learn to do truly interactive experiences?
