My experience started with trying to sign up for the SilverLight challenge version of the Interface Design Challenge. First off, no where on the site does it mention the Silverlight challenge, at all. In fact when you look at the Interface Challenge the prize money is off, the deadlines are off, and the restrictions for who can apply aren’t listed for the Silverlight so it seems the whole time that you are in the wrong place. I know it’s only a few schools that can enter, but it’s still confusing and if they want people to apply they should make it easy.

So now that i’m throughly confused if this is even the right place, i start to wonder if the instructions on what to deliver are correct. If one thing can be wrong, how can i take it that anything is right? With a leap of faith I sign up and make a team with my friend. After that microsoft does provide a helpful checklist of what to do. Problem is you can’t click on the names in the list to go the location where you can fix that. I get to the step to fill out your information and go to the link where it has a list of what’s in green telling you what you need to fill out to continue. Good job microsoft because you actually need to fill out information not in the green, aka your personal information like name and address to continue. If it’s not mandatory why do you have to do it?

The next step was getting a live id. This is where the checklist gave no direction where to go. Eventually my roommate found it “conveniently listed in the extraneaous looking subpanels on the left.” The design was so distant from the rest of the site i always thought it was an advertisement on some other microsoft contest. Who is the genius to do that? Once we figured that out it was smoother sailing. But seriously, to get to this point we had to struggle so much, should microsoft have done some usability testing?

Lastly, could they try harder to mimic an adobe design style?

Project2

This problem of cross media advertising techniques is not the fault of the companies that are being advertised. The fault lies with the ad agencies that are working for those companies. Why don’t we see the problem where there is a static image on a TV commercial? It is because the heads of the ad agencies all watch tv and movies and can see the potential in advertising in this media. They are exposed to it so they can say how to enhance their marketing plans. But what if the agencies didn’t watch TV? They would be a lot more hesitant to change their original marketing methods which in the past have been a success. But look at what has come with marketing on television. How many people have you heard say they watch the superball for the commercials. Isn’t this the type of marketing we should be striving for with all of the types of media?

The newest and in my opinion greatest potential for marketing media source is the Internet. It has the ability to let the user see video and everything that is successful in television and allows for human interaction. The problem however is that leaders in the ad agencies are inexperienced with the internet’s potential and sticking with what has worked for them in the past; taking their static layouts and putting them on the screen: banner ads. Company leaders aren’t willing to risk new methods of advertising when they don’t know what’s possible because of fear, fear that they will loose business. I have personally experienced one of the largest ad agencies not willing to change because i feel they are afraid of losing clients. This fear will give too much power to the clients where they will be able to control deadlines and the quality of work will suffer. Engaging advertising will end.

Fortunately, smaller companies are willing to take the risks and propose new ideas. These companies are usually lead by designers who live on the internet to have fun. They are actually saving us and showing us experiences that we can say wow, that is amazing and i want to send this to my friends. It is these companies that will hopefully save the older and larger agencies so they can show clients the potential. The larger and more powerful the company though the longer it will take to change and bad design will continue to haunt the new forms of media.