I came across a game developed with and for Amnesty International, called "Pictures for truth".

About the project: "This game was developed to support Amnesty International's campaign on China. The story and characters represented are fictional. The aim of this project is to sensitize the player to human rights violations"

About the game: "You are a journalist and photographer. A few months before the Beijing Olympic Games, your best friend, Jun Shen, a human rights defender and journalist, calls for help. You will do everything you can to help him. This adventure will take you to China where you will be confronted to many human rights violations.  By investigating, taking pictures and publishing your articles, you will work to solve the problems you encounter and eventually save your friend!"

Anyway... I played with the game for about an hour until I finished the game (Its a short game) with a score of 4000 fame points (Hurray!) and I must say that I liked it, It brought me back to the good old days of playing simple quests. But this is obviously not a game for gamers, its a very creative way to spread the amnesty agenda. And a good work doing so in this way, it really brought it to my attention.

In terms of usability the game is pretty intuitive, and I have just one main remark - It was really hard to learn how to start playing... Why?

This is the first screen you encounter after you load the game

Good idea to show me the game instruction before i play, but i kept looking and looking for the Start playing button, and couldn't find him. I just didn't know how to start the game. After a lot of air-clicking I pressed the instructions button F1 and the instruction disappeared and I could play the game. From my subjective view, this was not so intuitive... so please add a Close/Start/Play button instead of making us try and understand that this is not a pre-game screen, and just a layer of the instructions already opened...

Other than that, and on an ethic level something really bothered me

During the game you need to take pictures of "events" in order to publish articles (each article gives you more fame points). If you manage to get a better picture that shows things in different angels, for examples a bigger focus on the big bad Chinese police and in the background its prisoner, you gain more fame points then just a simple picture of both of them.

What is my problem?

• First, the game objective is to gain "Fame" points by revealing the truth and exposing the real deal. Do Amnesty people do it for the sake of fame?
• Second, the game enforces the art of taking the right picture? Do Amnesty encourage people touch up the pictures so that they will be more effective?

These things make me think a lot about the objectivity in reports, The entire conception looks a bit rotten, But the game is pretty cool, and it does deliver an important message, so go play it.

Came across a blog post in Techcrunch on a cool company Snapily, which is currently in Beta.

Snapily allows you to upload pictures you want to print (As Business card, Birthday invites and etc..) and create all sorts of effects on the printed version, for example - 3D effect, Morphing effect, flipping effect.

In addition to that, in the end of video, they mentioned that soon they will also be able to offer another product effect - To present a "video" in the printed picture (made from a couple of consecutive frames from a video you upload). This is an amazing effect. Can't wait to see that one!

It was done before in one way or another ,but their implementation just hits the target, a really cool product, Hope it looks the same in real life as in the video.

Saw today the Amazon Window Shop, looks cool, and more importantly simple to use.

The browsing can be done in 2 modes:

Zoom-in view (at the moment the default mode):

 

Regular view:

You can navigate by using the arrows - and zoom in and out by using the "spacebar" and the "enter" (they don't mention it for some reason). you can also navigate by using the mouse, using a dragging method (They also don't mention it, is it too obvious?).

Some anecdotes:

• The top navigation bar that allows you to navigation left to right between different content and dates is yet to be perfect
• Different content is presented in a different color - this is a good cognitive indication, my only concern is that there just too many colors to grasp the difference or even notice it (for example between movies and TV shows).
• There is lack of consistency - some categories are monthly and some weekly. This situation create a bit of confusing, as the order of categories is not consistent, and a bit confusing.
• I would add some sort of borders between update dates, for example an intuitive way to understand that now i switched between October updates to August updates and so on... this will ad another level of structure.
• This experience of easy browsing without using the mouse is good, but there is one little annoying bug here... if you give me the chance not to use the mouse why do you make me press on the "I" (help) icon to read the help? pressing the letter "I" should do the trick.
• The default way of navigation (zoomed in) in my mind is not the right way, because for someone who didn't see the feature before, found it difficult to get a good orientation, and it might create a negative first impression for the users.
• I think another level of information is missing - short reviews, rating or a reference to information on the site. In my mind i see an option to flip the item picture to see its back side, and in it will appear some additional information on the item.

I find the window shop pretty good compared to many semi-virtual environments I saw in the past. But keep in mind, this can not replace the rest of the shop/site (in this case amazon shop). It is not for no reason that the feature name is "Window shop", as this can be used effectively almost only to present new items in a sort of a "show case".

Occasionally I'm practicing being my very own StumbleUpon engine, when i start typing weird site names and hope for smooth landing.

Today i did just that thing and i was redirected to Johnny Walker site. Personally I'm a White Russian fan (and thanks to The  Dude and the Cohen  Brothers for making me a little more cooler, at least in my mind), but I can handle a few drops of good whisky.

Landing on that site triggered this blog post, as I once again wondered if covering our ass is better than doing the right thing, in terms of marketing of course.

When I landed on the home page of the site, I got a "Warning page" asking me two questions "where do you live" and "when were you born", the purpose of these questions are to verify that I'm in legal age to drink, according to my country minimum drinking age law. and yes it actually works, for "Israel" i said i was 19 and it was ok, and for the US the same age did not let me go through to the main site.

Anyway...

This "Warning page" exists also in other similar companies, such as Absolut Vodka. Yes the regulations require you the warn your visitors before you let them enter a site that will encourage them to drink alcohol, but is the super smart mechanism of age verification will actually stop a minor from entering the site? and what is the purpose of the law?

I understood the purpose of the law when I took my magnifying glass and   examined the "warning page" more closely... to give the "Drinkers" important information before to consume alcohol and to prevent minors from doing so.

The Absolut Vodka version (left) and the Johnny Walker version (right):

In a very small font size...:

• Here is what Absolut say: "ABSOLUT endorses responsible and moderate drinking. For this reason, we would like to recommend the following reading: Century Council, Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), and The European Forum for Responsible Drinking (EFRD)"
• Here is what Johnny Walker say (you need to click on the link to see the explanation page): "As we support responsible drinking, we need to ask you these questions to ensure that you're over the legal purchase age and that you're legally allowed to view this site in your country of access. We also need to be aware if anyone else using this computer could be under the legal purchase age. Rest assured that none of the information you provide here will be used to contact you in any way."

Both examples show us that these regulations gave the users the "opportunity" to gain information about alcohol consumption...

Once you finish getting educated by the companies and crack the age verification mechanism, you get to enter the site, But unfortunately you see no mention what so ever on the important alcohol education...

Johnny Walker HP:

Absolut HP:

Nice design, but where did company responsibility toward alcohol drinking went?

What is my point?

• Do you really think that by using such a warning page you prevent minors from entering the site? No!
• Do you really think you got to the attention of anyone, some knowledge about alcohol hazards? No!
• Minors can still access the site, and they nobody will ever see (except me) the alcohol public information.

So what good is this regulation for?

Well i have a suggestion, change the current regulation - Instead of that stupid age verification that also contains important information in a font size of 8 (or lower)... Request the companies to dedicate a part of the home page for alcohol education, and loose that "warning page".

By doing so you will improve the user MX (Marketing Experience(c)) of the actual customers (users who are of legal age), and you will also gain the attention of users to information regarding alcohol drinking - information that is important at all ages.

A win win situation.

On a personal note -

a marketing experience expert - a user experience expertise in marketing

why didn't i think about it before, Its a cool title to use.