According to recent data, Internet users in the I quarter of 2011 accounted for 34.4% of the population in Kazakhstan and constituted nearly 5.6 million people. This statistics has been provided by Kazakh Minister of Communications and Information Askar Zhumagaliev.

“Today 2,685 mass media are operating in the country. They are represented by newspapers and magazines (1,441 editions), electronic media (233 – 20 television channels, 43 radio companies and 134 operators of cable television), information agencies (11),” the Minister said.

At the end of 2010, 16.4-million Kazakhstan reported 4.3 million Internet users.

In Uzbekistan, the most populated country of the region, estimated number of Internet users is even higher – up to 7.55 million people. This data reported by director-general of the Uzbek Agency of Communication and Information (UzACI) Hakim Muhitdinov at the session of the agency dedicated to the first quarter of 2011.

The UzACI head said that number of internet users made up 265.3 users per 1,000 habitants. He added that number of enterprises rendering data transfer service, including Internet, reached 903 and collective internet access points (Internet cafes) – 968.

Hakim Muhitdinov said that the investments and loans for US$64.12 million (110.1 billion soums) were utilized within investment programme for 2011.

The UzACI chief said that the level of digitalization of Uzbekistan made up 93.7%. He said that 10,914 educational establishments were connected to ZiyoNet network. He said that all information-library centers, 9403 schools, 131 lyceums, 1,204 colleges, 14 branches of Kamolot, 23 museums, 89 higher educational establishments and 35 scientific-research institutes were connected to ZiyoNet.

Revenue from courier services, rendered to economic courts, tax bodies, banks and other enterprise, made up 574.3 million soums.

In the first quarter of 2011, fund of information-library centers grew by 2,000 samples of literature and their total number reached 4.936 million copies. Currently, electronic catalogues of information-library centers has about 497,000 bibliographic records.

Source: CA-NEWS

The small signs, handles, tubes, stairs that I was taking for granted started to tell me story about their creators, users, producers. They all have personality and even small features do matter.

I’ve learned a lot in interactive design. Designing process is constant and has many iterations. It’s always beta. The successful design is synonymous of simplicity. Simplicity makes designed product democratic.

In modern digital age, the importance of well designed and aesthetically attractive products is growing as Internet dramatically amplifies competition. Though there are a lot of different approaches to design it’s important to follow main principles.

Interactive design should be user-centered that means careful consideration of your audience, technological constraints, cultural context, and a message, which you want to sent. For instance, Google focuses on search, Ebay – on diversity and variety of choices, Facebook – on friends.

The interesting case that demonstrates how good designed idea can facilitate new conversation has happened with me when I was trying to propose the design strategy for mobile app of UW libraries. The blog post with my proposal has attracted attention of a designer from UW libraries and provided opportunity for creative collaboration. The discussion that we had was very inspiring and helpful for both of us in relation to discovering small but important features for the future mobile app.

Another practical example that helped to uncover various nuances of interactive design is infographics about social media and Egypt revolution. The historical event had provided a lot of food for communication through social media but not much statistics and data were available. The lack of information made me become more creative and invent Twitter ‘mushroom’ – a 3D object describing exponential growth of tweets during the revolution. I understood how important to have appropriate design strategy to create infographics. I wanted to demonstrate data through emotional lenses and show not only figures but dynamic as well. Trying to design for the sake of design didn’t work. Only through thoughtful process of understanding an audience, a process, visual perception, the actual creation of infographics in Adobe Photoshop has become possible. Colors, typography and composition are extremely flexible and can be used to enrich your message or distort it. It is important to try to simplify your design so potential users can focus on message.

Why design is not an art? It has laws. The main law is that people percept the world and things around them through mental models. Mental models are framing every design and every designer. The good designer sees mental models as channels to create good product and not as limits created by human nature.

The matching mental models with your own creativity makes you powerful.

Timeline of Egypt’s revolution – A chronicle of the revolution that ended the three-decade-long presidency of Hosni Mubarak (Al Jazeera).

Here is the infographic about Twitter usage during the revolution.

The idea of “Central Asian News Service” CA-NEWS website is oriented to develop the high-quality online resource of accurate information that reflects variety of opinions and meaningful discussions about development of democratic society in Central Asia. CA-NEWS provides instant news reports and analytical materials, reviews, comments on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

CA-NEWS produces up to 100 news items in Russian and 50 news items in English about politics, economy, society, culture, science, and sport in Central Asian region. Its interactive features include traditional push-channels of content: RSS, maillist, online bookmarks and social networks: Facebook, Twitter.

Products

Content includes news reports, while the number of analytical articles, op-eds and reviews is quite insignificant due to lack of human and financial resources for adequate stimulation of authors. News are available 24/7.

CA-NEWS provides subscription for online news database. News subscription enables subscribers to have real-time coverage of issues and events across Central Asia throughout the day to support their decision-making. The subscription allows accessing closed behind-the-walls part of the website that includes archive and account management system.

Ads placement on the website pages is the commercial service for businesses and organizations. There are two products: banners and context ads. Ads can be placed for certain time or for number of views.

Draft design strategy

Business goals

• Increase monthly audience of CA-NEWS website to 300,000 visitors.
• Growth of new subscribers by 50%
• Become financially sustainable and have positive profit.
• Keep position in TOP 3 of news providers in Central Asia.
• Maintain competitive salaries and benefits for staff and freelancers.

Marketing and branding goals

• Latest news from the region 24/7
• One of the leading news sources in the region
• The place where people can not only read, but discuss critical issues
• News website that people can trust and rely on
• High quality and easy access to content
• Harmonic balance of images and text

Target audience

Central Asia:

• Business community
• Journalists and reporters
• Nongovernmental organizations
• Students and academia
• Policy makers and governmental agencies
• Labor migrants

English speaking audience:

• Diplomatic missions and embassies
• International NGOs
• Analytics and academia
• Journalists and mass-media

Personas

Reporter: Woman, 25 years old, office worker. She reads online news sites on daily basis, checking them morning and afternoon to keep in touch with events in own country and in the region. She pays attention to details and quality of news reports to find new ideas for own reports and articles.

Businessman: Man, 36 years old, active reader. He regularly reads variety of both print and online mass media. Checks news websites and compares different sources to get full picture of situation on markets. Subscribed to several outlets simultaneously. As a businessman he pays attention not only to content but ads as well.

Student: Man, 20 years old. Usually access news websites irregularly, and finds news on secondary sites or through search engines. Mostly interested in entertainment, sport, science and accidents. Prefer to read short texts and easily lose interest in case of big articles. Likes to share links in social networks: Facebook, Twitter.

Technological constraints

• Linux based server with several mirrors
• CMS is based on MySQL and php
• Website has to be compatible with all major browsers
• Compatibility with accessibility policy
• Integration with third-party API (Facebook, Twitter)
• Availability of https for closed part of the website (subscribers)

General tasks

• Browse articles: geographically, chronologically, by topic
• Browse archive of news
• Search through website
• Browse company info
• Comment articles on the website
• Print article
• Send links via email
• Subscribe to RSS channel
• Subscribe to maillist of headlines
• Share articles via Facebook, Twitter
• Share bookmarks via online bookmarking services (Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc)
• Subscribe to online news packages
• Manage users account information

Critical success factors

• Increased number of visitors
• Increased number of subscribers
• Increased number of ads sales
• Increased number of comments and links in social media
• Increased number of citation in mass media

“The University of Washington Libraries enriches the quality of life and advances intellectual discovery by connecting people with knowledge.”

As the part of UW libraries strategy, we suggesting the development of mobile application to make its resources accessible for users of mobile devices, phones. tablets.

The design strategy includes:

Business goals:

Here we suggest some examples of the mobile app pages. Wireframe is designed to fit mobile phone screen in portrait mode.

The intro page of the mobile app

As the mobile app will be integrated with the UW Netid system, it’s expected that users can login to their account using their Netid and password. However, the public that doesn’t have passwords may use guest mode without using Netid.

The main menu of the mobile UW Libraries

The menu lets users to navigate through the mobile app by tapping on one of the five available buttons.

The Events page with a map

The Events part of the mobile app allows to check available events, conferences, meetings in UW libraries on the go. The first page returns the chronological list of events with a name, location and time. After tapping on a particular events, users will see a map where that event is going.

The lower footer will allow to return to a previous page or to the main menu.

The My Account page

The mobile app has the function of managing of existing reservations, checked out books, overdue fees and library card for the public. These data imitates the online accounts of  UW libraries information system and allows to get alerts about possible overdue fees, new books.

Kinect Xbox

The newest game console from Microsoft Kinect Xbox brings amazing impression to every gamer. Never tried Xbox before I was surprised by its concept of playing and moving body. It’s really energy consuming game. I felt myself as I had workout session.

Kinect Xbox requires time to learn its features and navigation principles as it’s based on gestures. There is no controller. I tried dance game that requires special skills. You have to learn movements during pre-game training session and later to try earn points by dancing as accurate as possible. You need to repeat everything that virtual instructor shows you on screen.

The game is fun as it has vibrant graphic and such features  as gamers’  movements recording and freestyle dance entertain you while you playing a game. But, personally, I was discouraged to hear that the game doesn’t support multi-player mode. There is only option to compare your results with general scoreboard online.

Navigation is can be problematic too as Kinect has limited space where it can recognize human body and loses it if a gamer steps a little bit over this spot.

Wii

The Wii was the second game console that I’ve tried the first time. The sequence – I tried Wii after Kinect – made me feel a little bit bored by the concept of Wii games. Though they I well designed and have more variety than Kinect, a controller doesn’t require so many movements. A player may just move his/her hand and not whole body. Compared to Kinect, it has a controller and requires more time to learn how to use it.

In some games, it’s an advantage to have a physical device in your hands (for instance, golf game) that can give you feedback: light buzz. It has more options to play in multiple gamers mode and is not so strictly limited by space as Kinect.

I played Golf game on Wii, skill based game, and it was very challenging as it requires very precise movements to hit a ball. The user interface (UI) navigation was a little bit complicated as every step has required to push combination of buttons (A+B) and settings adjustment were long.

Wii Controller

Wii Golf  Game

Wii Golf Flowchart

Facebook games: Texas Poker and Bejeweled Blitz

The types of games that I prefer most are social games on Facebook. They do not require special equipment or installation of games on a computer and allow you to interact with other players. Of course, there are many options to post and share your game status on your Facebook wall. I played Texas Poker and Bejeweled Blitz games that both are puzzles type.

The Texas Poker is online version of classic poker and it even allows to buy virtual money  (for real money) and share them with your friends. The concept of game is very simple and doesn’t require special skills. Game of luck appeals as it has the principle of variability and unpredictability.  The game allows you earn not only money but it gives you titles based on your experience level and different chips level. Moreover, you can pick a server in different city/country to play poker and you can chat and send virtual gifts to other players while playing.

Texas Poker

Texas Poker Flowchart

The Bejeweled Puzzle is another puzzle game that is less complicated than Texas Poker. The game is similar to Tetris and requires creating sequences of stones (3-5 stones) to blow them and earn points. It has different boosts which allow you to blow stones easier and multiply your points. As a social game, it has a scoreboard on right side where you can see scores/positions of friends. As a gamer progresses he/she also earns level titles.

Bejeweled Blitz

Bejeweled Blitz Flowchart

RFE/RL broadcasts in 28 languages to 21 countries including Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and the audience size reaches 17.6 million/week (radio, web, streaming audio). Its multilingual website www.rferl.org features both live and on-demand audio and text, pictures. One of RFE/RL products is a mobile site actively promoted on its webpages.

Mobile site

The mobile version of the website is located at www.rferl.org/m and based on RSS feeds with news and pictures optimized for mobile phones. The size of the homepage is about 5 KB including two pictures: a logo and a picture of the top story. The size of an entire article can be larger, depending on the text’s length.

The structure of the homepage’s content has three main elements:

-          Top stories: headlines of three articles and a picture of the top article,

-          Top sections: menu of available content (7 sections: news, features, commentary, etc.)

-          Search box and the link to a full desktop version.

The last two elements are static in inner mobile pages and represent a lower footer menu. If a user clicks opens an article he will be transferred to a page with the entire article, including a picture on the top of a page, and the lower footer with the menu and search box. However, in sections view the structure is limited and consists of 10 headlines sorted in chronological order and the menu in the bottom of a page without the search box. The search results’ page also features 10 links with results and the lower footer.

Usability

From the prospective of mobile users, news sites play important informational and entertaining role while they are on the move or have some problems with access to computers. For instance, we can consider a scenario when RFE/RL mobile site can be accessed by travelers on a vacation or low-income youth in developing countries, who might not have computer at home. In the current stage, the design and content of RFE/RL are mostly oriented to feature phone users, who can have only WAP browsers, providing some flexibility and access to news and other materials.

In general, we can see that RFE/RL mobile version meets to Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 requirements. We found that links are easy to click and select both on feature and touchscreen phones, text of articles are large enough to read it on small screen, headings and paragraphs are divided by blank space to navigate a reader through an article. The search function should also be highlighted as helpful tool for mobile users taking into account that the core competency of every news site is content, including archives. The location of the menu in the lower footer is also convenient as there are more chances that a user may need it after completion of reading.

However, compared to the full desktop website the content and structure of the mobile site requires additional efforts to use it and do not meet some important expectations from the navigation point of view:

-          no time stamps of articles on the homepage so users don’t know if news are updated;

-          articles in Commentary and Feature sections are so long that it takes significant effort to reach the lower menu to move to another page;

-          no options to save links of articles or share them via email/social media;

-          the limited number of search results without options to read older articles.

The navigation is becoming more important as the target audience of RFE/RL represents more educated and socially active people, whose mobile phones could have Internet browsers.

Enhancing mobile experience

The main problem for readers on RFE/RL mobile site is in text-rich structure of the menu and the lack of navigation through content. Here we would like to suggest some recommendations that potentially can help to simplify the current mobile website and make it more user-friendly:

1) Date stamps. For mobile users, it is important to have access to the most recent information and therefore to see what information is fresh.

2) Page breaks for long articles. Breaking of long texts for several pages allows users to use menu in case they decide to stop reading (didn’t like/wrong choice). It will save time and nerves compared to vertical scrolling through entire site.

3) Multiple pages for Sections and Search Results. Instead of the limited number of articles in those two parts of the site, it will be more useful to present information on multiple pages, allowing users to list them. It’s win-win decision for RFE/RL and users as the larger amount of content can be presented and consumed.

4) Incorporating of saving/sharing links via email/social media. While on the move readers will be less interested in writing down or memorizing a location of article they liked or will need in the future. However, the sending/sharing links will be helpful if they want to use information after they reach office/home.

Along with these issues on the mobile site that could be easily fixed and do not require large investments, there is an opportunity to add new content, interesting for mobile users:

Geographic menu. Compared to the full desktop website, the structure of the content on a mobile site is based on genre of content and doesn’t provide options for browsing based geographic principle (Eastern Europe, Central Asia, etc.).

Multimedia. Adding of photo, video and especially audio podcasts, optimized for mobile, can be asked-for by growing audience of smartphone users.

We believe that RFE/RL can increase the readership through its mobile site by providing better designed and optimized for mobile devices content and meeting the needs of people on the move by improving navigation.

Where the campaign is promoted

We started from Google where we found the IKEA Mobile Seattle official website http://info.ikea-usa.com/mobile/seattle/. There is huge banner on the homepage that invites to join a $500 gift card giveaway by sending SMS to shortcode. Short description under the ad banner describes perks of this promo that includes enrollment in the Free IKEA Mobile program to get mobile alerts and special deals.

The steps involved in participating

To engage with this promotion IKEA Seattle asks to send SMS with the keyword WINNER to shortcode 62345. The fine print has the disclosure about standard text messaging rates, required by the MMA. After you send the keyword to the shortcode you’ll get the next reply:

“Welcome! Please reply w/your 5-digit ZIP Code & you’re on the list. With IKEA Mobile you’ll get up to 4 msgs/mo. Std txt rates apply. Reply STOP to opt out.”

This message looks reasonable and simple to perform for users. We’ve sent the ZIP code and got another reply:

“IKEA bCODE [entire barcode] Scan this at any IKEA Mobile Kiosk, choose your offer and print coupon. Only @ IKEA Seattle. Exp 11/30/10”

There were no other messages from IKEA that day.

The ‘payoff’

The SMS campaign is well designed and convincing for establishing brand loyalty and driving customers to the store. The SMS replies allow easy enrolling into the program and number of the promo text messages (4 per month) corresponds with consumers behavior to keep them informed and do not annoy them with spam. This messages could potentially motivate subscribers to buy from IKEA.

The quality of the experience

The quality of particular SMS sweepstake leaves rooms for consumers confusion and suspicion as replies from IKEA didn’t mention anything about the drawing of the prize. For example, we expected a reply that will tell about sweepstake, drawing dates or a prize. In our eyes, this promo campaign looks as a method to collect phone numbers without any probability of getting of any prize.

The additional infestation has revealed that this sweepstake has ended in September 2010 according to the “Official rules” page. However, on the main page we haven’t found anything about the status of this promotion and it looks like active ongoing campaign. We didn’t get a reply text message with explanation that this campaign is not available/active.

What can be changed

This case again demonstrates the problem of uncoordinated online and mobile marketing efforts. The ad on IKEA’s official online site has live webpage of promo campaign, but mobile part of it was already deactivated after the end date. This inconsistent marketing efforts can lead to the growth of bounce rate and damaging IKEA’s brand.

In this particular case, we would recommend to pay attention to post-campaign communication to attract subscribers by possible future opportunities. For instance, the expected reply could indicate that IKEA has finished this campaign, a winner was selected, but senders may enter into future drawings. This provides hope for future opportunities and can influence a decision of subscribers about possible opting out.

I’ve decided to check ads and found a website with pretty interesting opportunity to check my luck in a lottery. It was OfficeMax that promised a trip to Disney World – huge colorful banner on the home page.

Entrance into the sweepstake was very easy – just to send the keyword “Parade” to the short code 30364. You don’t need to feel long forms, share your email. That is why I was convinced to take my cell phone to enter to drawing.

The sending of the keyword to 30364 was simple, done it in a minute and was expecting the confirmation message. It was the first time for me when I participated in a sweepstake via SMS. However, what I’ve received was totally disappointing:

“Sorry, this service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

Come on, guys!!! Such tricks before Thanksgiving?! Cheap marketing technologies!

This event happens only once a year and this promo campaign could be organized much smoother. Failure!

SMS technology should simplify communication with brands, creating new bonds and trust via instant dialogue. Such failures can cause psychological discomfort to your customers making them feel betrayed, tricked. There is very thin line between promo campaign and scam in SMS marketing.

Thursday  evening I was reading a new issue of “The Stranger”, a local newspaper, and particularly, the events’ section, where you usually can find ads and announcements about coming events, shows, happy hours, bars.

My attention was attracted by the “Tiki Bob’s Cantina” bar that promoted SMS service to receive special offers and invites. To get specials and join the TBC’s Text Club they asked to send the keyword “TIKI” to the short number 313131. Actually, it is appropriate service for newspaper readers on a go. I was pretty far from the bar. It was the simplest and most convenient way to find information instantly as no one would bother himself by searching online.

To check this service I’ve sent “Tiki” to 313131 and received a reply in a jiff. It was the message:

“Sorry, this service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

After that “Tiki Bob’s Cantina” has lost the image of tech-savvy bar for me.

However, it is not the end of the story.

The next day I somehow have decided to try this service again. There was a chance that something was wrong with my phone or network provider, I thought. I’ve sent the second “tiki” and it worked… Technically…

The message was:

“Thank you for joining our list! We will be texting you some great offers soon J Mahalo, TBC. Reply STOP tiki 2 optout.”

No discounts, no specials, no invitations…

From the marketing point of view, this result can be considered like a failure of this SMS service even if the reply was appropriate in the legal aspect. There is discordance in the promise between the advertisement and the reply. Users expect to get offers after texting the keyword and for new customers, who use the SMS service to collect preliminary information about the bar, the reply with another promise makes the task more complicated compared to simple voice call to check what’s going on in the bar.

In my opinion, if you want to promote a bar through SMS channel it is better to provide the “welcome kit” – information about current or future events with dates, prices. In the TBC’s case the SMS service should be linked to its website as it contains more detailed information, and, actually, it has events, specials and over offers that can be suggested through text messages.