Last Friday Adobe launched a new advertisement campaign @ the heart of New York City itself.
Located outside the Virgin Megastore in the 14th St and Union Square, Adobe setup an interactive wall that lets users handle a slider control located in the lower portion of the billboard, which in turn manages the animation being displayed in the wall.
I got to this news thru an internal email from a fellow Schematitian in NY, encouraging the guys from our NYC office, located just around the corner from the ad itself, to go check it out... I even twittered encouraging people passing by to go check it out themselves.
Some of our fellows from the UX department went in a corporate field trip, I love this kind of activities; and came back with their own opinions about it... but again given that I am thousands of miles away I just couldn't live with those statements and whish for a trip to NYC within this month to go check it out myself... but then: no need for a trip when you have Gizmodo to recorded - which Schematitians in it and all - for yourself entertainment and Stewart to let you know about it...
Now, as a geek as I am, lets do a simple analysis out Adobe's approach.
1. Check out the video, would you?
- Where did your attention went while looking at the wall?
- Was it at the amazing graphics being shown in the billboard or in the little unicolor slider that people chased in the bottom of the screens?
- Was that the same element that caught people's attention in the video?
2. From looking at the people interacting with it:
- Do you get some idea of what the message behind this interaction is?
- Did you learn anything new about Adobe's Creative Suite or how easy it does your job as a Photographer, Designer, Programmer or Media Producer? - remember NYC is full of geniuses artist in all fields.
- Would you go buy a box of CS3 after being in front of such a billboard? - this last one was a real question that got ask to one of my mates while in the field trip by a camera guy.
3. Now lets show a different video, a video of a different interaction wall - bare in mind the technical's approaches are similar... here it is (choose one): Windows Media, Real Player or QuickTime.
- How different the approach is in the second video? - I'm not trying to point which one is better, I just want to make sure you see differences between the two models.
4. How different would you have designed the Adobe's wall? - if you want post your thoughts in the comments area, you never know what can we get out of think tank activities...
Mine?
Well, given that I have some sort of past experience with the people involved in the Accenture one, I would keep the slider so that it can gets people's attention as they passes by - having Schematic worked with Accenture designing the UX for this wall one gets to learn that some how this was one of the key things they found difficult after it went live: how to make people approach the wall in JFK and O'Hare and get them to interact with it.
So, after the slider hooks people off and gets them in front of the wall I would:
1. Lock the slider and bring in a CS3 showroom and let people interact with the different feature sets and videos of the products being used - like their current product navigators in their website.
2. Allow for multiple users to play along... given that the UX is build in Flash, pretty much anything visual rich and interactive is possible.
3. Make people love your products!
4. Make them have fun while learning!
5. Keep them hooked!
4. Ok, so they go that means that after some time of idleness I'd resume the playing demo and unlock the slider and go people-fishing again.
... now let's see what you guys think of it!
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