Notes, thoughts.

Opinion: Interruption and intimation, flushing toilets and arguing with ad agency strategists.

It started innocently enough - a few days ago with one of my students from UTS. In our afternoon studio class we were discussing their latest brief, to design a poster promoting a typography conference. One of the students had an idea to produce a poster of very bad typographic crimes, something that would repulse the target audience of graphic designers - thus gaining their attention through interruption.

Whilst I liked the idea, it wasn’t appropriate for this particular project’s brief. Add to this the fact they are first year students still struggling to make things look nice. Rather than simply say this, I went on a weird tangent, as is often my wont. I prattled on about the difference between advertising and design, how I thought advertising relies on such techniques (shock, repulsion and titillation) to interrupt. I theorized that design seeks to be appealing and create desire - thus whispering and drawing people to it, rather than shouting at them while they ran away.

This subject came up again on a Saturday night, on twitter, when I decided it’d be a good idea to reply to a tweet by @markpollard - a  digital strategy type from McCann Erickson in Sydney (or as i call them, M’Can’t Erickson). No I’m kidding, Mark seems like a pretty nice guy and from reading his blog, he’s a pretty smart cookie.

Here’s his tweet that I decided to reply to:

“Funny how the half-flush button is half the size of the full-flush button. On a website it would be the big one to encourage use.” @markpollard

Rather than give the whole blow by blow, he said she said, I’ll summarize it this way; Mark is saying that the way to make something used more, is to make it bigger. I drew a distinction between this thinking - and the existing paradigm - as a contrast between design thinking and marketing thinking. He thought I was wrong, and what followed were a few good natured tweets back and forth where I explained in quite rational, logical ways how the way it is now is just perfect, and the way he’s proposing, would complicate it.

What an elegant piece of interaction design this little thing is. If I’m blind, I can use this. If I’m in a foreign country and can’t read their writing, I can use this. It says quite simply; “I am a toilet flush button, and I have two presets - one is a big flush, and one is a little flush”. Purely by the format and sizing of the buttons, this design communicates so much in one effortless gesture.

By having 2 different shaped buttons, the user must decide “what do I need, lots of flushing power or only a little”. Implicit in this decision is an environmental consideration. Sure it might be easier to hit the big button, but perhaps being a little bit more accurate with my fingers is a subtle reinforcement that yes, considering the environment does require effort, but Mother Earth is worth it. Now go sort those plastic bottles from glass bottles, lazy boy.

There is no text. There is no graphic of a half filled in circle and a solid circle (another design paradigm for toilet flush buttons).

So, in the interests of marketing the environmental message, what if we were to reverse the sizing of the buttons, what happens? In aiming to ‘promote use’ we’ve cluttered a very simple message and made it counter-intuitive. Now we need those solid and half filled circles. But why stop there? Perhaps one of those email footer messages “Please consider the environment before flushing this toilet”. (incidentally, I’ve lost count of the number of times that small amount of additional text has resulted in an extra page being printed).

A marketer might consider a picture of a dolphin or a tree leaf to remind the user of who they are meant to be saving. Perhaps the half filled circles are now too subtle. They were a bit vague anyway. Let’s make the text descriptions bigger. And add braille. And multiple language versions. Wait a minute! Research is showing us people are still getting it wrong, we need to add a cancel button and perhaps a flashing countdown screen so the user is absolutely certain what button they pushed before all that water gets flushed away.

Perhaps I’ve taken this too far but you can see the point being made. It reminds me a lot of this video imagining what the stop sign would look like if was created by a modern corporation (pictured above).

The question of ‘what is the difference between design and advertising’ is being blurred more and more everyday. It’s a simple distinction in my mind, and it boils down to two models of connecting with an audience. One is the natural home of the designer, and the other is the natural home of the marketer.

Interruption: Seeks to knock you over the head, stopping you from what you were doing or where you were going in order to deliver a message. Often this message is jarring, shocking or titillating. Afterwards you return to your previous state, probably annoyed, perhaps a little bit more knowledgable about the brand.

Initimation: Draws upon your natural inquisitive and curious nature. It uses nuance and purpose to communicate complexity, effortlessly. Intimation isn’t about prettiness, it’s about being intuitive. It’s about utility and connecting on a deeper, instinctive level to help someone achieve what they were already trying to achieve, rather than getting in their way.

 The digital world offers a lot of hope for intuitive, intimate design but often fails, dismally. YouTubes pop-up in-move text ads are a great example. The most attention any user would ever give them is in searching for the close button, so they can get back to focusing on who keyboard cat is playing off this week.I’m not saying one is right, and the other is wrong.In the right context, interruption is a necessary, even appropriate, strategy.

These days, people are already pretty good at ignoring advertising, and getting better all the time. In response, marketers are putting more and more ads, in more places. There are literally ads near, on and in public toilets these days. No one has asked them to do this, and even fewer appreciate it. But I can’t imagine it’s doing their brands many favours, either.