ICOM 101 Final

Digital media and technology has had so many impacts on our society and lately has progressed to heights that quite literally were only possible in our imaginations and could only be found on a Hollywood set. Yes technology has made all of our wildest dreams become realities, but it is the dreams that we must never lose because without them there is no creativity and as a result no way that we would have what we do today. In the article Living in a Dream World, under the section A Key to Creativity, (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=e0b20225-4199-442b-96cb-197b6dcbec5a%40sessionmgr104&vid=1&hid=106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=59264840) it is stated that those who can catch themselves day dreaming are more creative than those who cannot. This day dreaming can allow you to escape what is going on at a specific moment in time and can allow us to make sense of the many stimulants that we are exposed to in any given day and can allows us to think of new ways to approach the problems we are confronted with.

One of the places where technology has taken us to new levels is in business, and more specifically marketing and advertising. The focus of marketing and advertising is to get your product or your company in the eyes of consumer and try to convince them that they should invest in your business. With the invention of cell phones and the many updates made to them marketers have been able to go directly to potential customers through mobile marketing. Two articles, 8 Key Mobile Marketing Trends(http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/20034/8-Key-Mobile-Marketing-Trends.aspx)  and Five Can’t-Miss Mobile Marketing Trends for 2010 (http://smallbiztrends.com/2009/12/five-cant-miss-mobile-marketing-trends-for-2010.html) go into more depth about how markets have been attempting to go right to the finger tips of potential customers. Some ways that they do this are by texting and emailing customers about deals and specials, coupons, or information about new products. In the Five Can’t-Miss Mobile Marketing Trends article, research shows that people from (18-29) see their phone as their most important device. It just so happens that this demographic is also a large consumer group and has a great willingness to spend. The use of technology has greatly opened up the market place and has lead to a great deal of business transaction in consumer society.

Business isn’t the only place where technology has been making a great impact, its impact can also be seen in some of the more leisurely sides of our society as well. This impact can be seen bringing about some more “Hollywood” ideas. One of the biggest effects can be seen coming from augmented reality. AR can be best explained visually by the new BMW commercial at the nine second mark. . This is currently just alive in Hollywood, but thanks to augmented reality it will not belong before you will be able to own a car that has all the gauges and GPS’ projected on the windshield. National Geographic’s article the “Revealed World” (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/14/augmented-reality) discusses how this same technology is already available for smartphones and is even being developed for use in glasses. Users are able to hold up their smartphone to their location and the program will bring up restaurant reviews, locations of attractions, gas stations and their prices, and even a GPS.

This has led to the newest update in technology and that is in the television industry.   The first way the televisions will be improved is through making it more user driven by incorporation Artificial Intelligence (AI).

 AI will make television more customized and will give users more choice of what content they want to view and can in theory read the users mind. This will make the television experience more special and more engaging for everyone who watches. AI will also be able to allow users to communicate with their television and other appliances, another idea that for years was only able to be done in Hollywood. Both “Disruptions: A TV That Can Read Me” (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/disruptions-a-tv-that-can-read-me/) and “Xbox Upgrades Aim to be ‘Future of TV'” (http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/05/tech/gaming-gadgets/xbox-upgrades-microsoft/index.html) discuss how the Microsoft company has developed a way for users to talk to and use their body movements to control their TV. This will end up making televisions more user friendly by eliminating the need for multiple remotes and allowing users to be able to control their television from virtually anywhere in the house. This technology can even be, and most likely will be, used for other household appliances and will make our home life simpler and our homes smarter.

Technology has greatly advanced and has brought some very cool and very useful advances to our society.  These advances will end up greatly benefiting our society. I look forward to seeing some of the great inventions and improvements that people will dream up and can only imagine how fast they will get here.

Contrasting View Points: QR Codes; catching on or falling off?

In recent years if you have been paying attention you may have noticed checkerboard patterns showing up on products, fliers, billboards, newspapers, and even tattoos. These patterns are known as  Quick Response or QR codes. They have been used as a marketing and advertising tool that can be scanned by a smart phone and take potential customers to a product website or a promotion that can only be accessed by scanning the code. Exactly how effective are these QR codes? There has been talk that they will soon be everywhere, but there is also the view that they are slowly starting to die out and be a non-factor. 

In the CNN article “Why QR Codes Aren’t Catching On” (http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/08/tech/mobile/qr-codes-gahran/index.html?iref=allsearch) it is stated that 8 of 10 college students don’t know how to work a QR code. This demographic of society is supposed to be the most tech savy and up to date group of people out there, but the majority of them do not understand what a QR code is or what it does. If this group can’t figure them out, then there is not a great deal of hope that they will grow and catch on. The study goes on to say that 75% were unlikely to scan a QR code if they saw one. This will also add to the downfall of this relatively new idea, if a majority of people won’t even scan the codes then there is not much use for them and will be a wasteful expense for most business that are currently using them. I would have to agree that QR codes will have a short lived life in the tech world. In public I have never really noticed someone stop to take out their phone to scan a QR code. If I were a CEO seeing studies like this one and my business used QR codes I would highly reevaluate our business strategy and consider dropping the expense all together. 

A counter to this idea appears in an article called “QR Codes Grow Further in Popularity; Print Appearances Rise by 476%” (http://www.simplyzesty.com/advertising-and-marketing/qr-codes-grow-further-in-popularity-print-appearances-rise-by-476/) on Simply Zesty. This article shows that the use of QR codes has greatly risen, especially in the print form. In January of this year there were only 88 QR codes in the top 100 magazines in the US, by the time September hit there were 507. This growth in use has been an ever increasing trend. This shows that advertisers see an ever growing use and ever growing market for them. Even though they are becoming even more prevalent in society, I still don’t believe that this shows that they are growing in popularity among those who actually use them. The numbers on usage, or lack there of, demonstrate that there is a decrease in their popularity among the group that matters the most; the consumers. 

Although QR codes have the potential to be great tools, I just don’t see them taking off it the most technological demographic in our society do not know how to effectively use them, and if they do know how ultimately won’t use them. If this trend continues, then QR codes will go by the way side and a new form of reaching customers will soon take it’s place. 

 

Final Project

The website was developed to be part of the start of a new business, the plan is to use it to generate interest from potential investors and give a background of what our business is and how we plan to develop it. The following link will take you to the Caps for Cancer development site, http://capsforcancericom101.weebly.com/index.html

Site development, video, and logos by Kyle Connelly

Research and Products by Jared Martin

Final Project Feedback

This list goes through some of our most important feedback for our project. 

• Link to facebook and twitter.
• More info how cancer is effecting people
• Avoid Repetition with link and page title
• Testimonials and Statistics?
• Donation page
• Facebook pages for each color 

   

Interactive Design

Over all I found this presentation to be very interesting and informative, especially the section covering Intuitive Interaction. I feel like what I took from it is information that will be useful to me in my planned career of marketing when in comes time for me to work on developing different marketing strategies.

The first point that I really found useful to my intended career path was the idea of Intuitive Interaction it self in that the goal is to minimize the time people need to spend thinking about how to operate a system, or in many cases a product. This idea may seem simple, but it is very important. In today’s fast paced society people don’t want to purchase a product that they are going to have to spend time reading directions to try and figure out. Many people realize the opportunity cost of the time spent trying to learn a complicated system and they want to be able to use their system to it’s fullest as soon as possible. They want something they are familiar with or something that expands an existing idea and it must be easy to use. Like discussed in the presentation the iPhone does a great job of following this idea. It builds off of two existing ideas, the iPod Touch and the cell phone. It’s a new product, but not a new idea. It’s also a very easy to use system.  As you can see the apps are labeled clearly  and the user knows exactly what they are clicking on and exactly what it does.

Under Interactivity Design there were a few concepts that I found very interesting, one of them was Human Perception and the idea of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts and how it goes along with Design and Aesthetic Theories. If you have too much going on in the background of a website it can distract the browser from the content. For example if you were to go to retrojunk.com you would find a website that has a background with a lot of images and videos that distract the user from the actual content of the site. If you go to starck.com you will find a website with a white background with important content in the upper left hand corner, to follow the “F” pattern and in a dark navigation bar that allows for content to pop. To keep the page interesting images will continuously change on the white background.

These three topics were some of the most important ideas that I took away from the presentation and could see myself using in my future career. I was so intrigued by Interactive Design that I decided to drop one of my courses for next semester and postpone it to a later semester so I could take the design course next semester and not go over 18 credit hours.

How to Fix the Music Industry: Five Main Points

1. Constant flow of music motorization
2. Lower ticket prices
3. There is a role for the expert
4. Don’t call yourself a record company
5. Major labels found all the good stuff

In this video  two men that work in the music industry set out to find out how to fix the music industry. I personally don’t feel like the music industry is broke, rather it is struggling to find its new direction in this age of technology.  The idea that the music industry is broken comes from the ability of fans to download music for free and artists being able to record their own music, and as a result the record companies fear that they will lose money or become nonexistent.

As one point from the video states, there is a role for the expert. Yes artists can record on their own, but what they record can be made better by people who have the know how of more high end recording programs and equipment. So if the artist is good enough and promots them self well they will have a shot at getting picked up by a label. Which leads to another point that the video brought up and that is that major labels have found all the good stuff. Again, yes an artist can record their own music, but if they are not good and don’t have a strong following they are no threat to the record companies and will in no way bring about their end.

Another point from the video that will help the music industry find its way is for record companies to stop calling themselves record companies. What this means that to stay relevant record companies must not only produce records, but also promote their artists, run or sponsor their concerts, and anything else that can be used to make the company more dynamic. By promoting their artists the company will generate a better following which will boost record sales and downloads as well as attendance to live concerts. If the company starts to run or sponsor concerts they can collect a percentage of the profit made from ticket and merchandise sales. With more revenue coming in from these ventures this fear that the industry is dying will start to fade out.

A point that as an avid concert goer that I agree with strongly support is the lowering of ticket prices because this would mean I get the chance to see more of my favorite artists live. From a business aspect of this point though I would have to disagree because lowering ticket sales would, at a point, cause a loss of money. Although it is true more people would likely attend concerts if prices were lower, but the costs for putting on a concert are so high that ticket prices must be high in order to cover the expenses. In the end implementing this point could end up hurting the music industry and in the end could actually end up breaking it.

Moby Video Main Points

1. Record companies are falling apart an artists are becoming more self sufficient.
2. Record companies won’t be around in five years.
3. No loyalty in record companies

In these three points there are a few ideas that I agree with and a few that I disagree with as well. I agree with the third point that there is no loyalty in record companies. It is evident that many record companies want to pick up an artist with a hot single and has potential to have a strong fan base, but many times the artist will end up being a one hit wonder because the company does not develop the artist and does not have a strong follow up single and as a result the artist will end up falling off the map. I also agree with part of the first point. I agree that more artists are becoming self sufficient, but I do not believe that record companies are falling apart. As technology has advanced the opportunity for artists to record on their own has greatly increased and as a result many artists do not have to rely on a big record company to produce their music. But most of these artists are using a microphone that they plug into their computer and run through a recording program that they downloaded. This leads to rough quality recording, and brings about the need for a record company who has the tools and the people that are required to produce a good quality sound on a recording which is why I disagree with the second point that record companies won’t be around in five years. I believe there will always be a need for people who are trained and skilled in a specific area over those who are not. That is one of the main reasons why a college education is so important today, because employers want to hire someone who is trained and has the skills required of a specific field.

Creative Project Rough Draft

The following link leads to the rough draft of the icom 101 creative project for Jared Martin and Kyle Connelly http://capsforcancericom101.weebly.com/

ICOM 101 Project Outline

For my multimedia creative project I plan to see how digital and social media can be used to help start a business.  My business idea is one similar to TOMS shoes and Livestrong bracelets, in that I want to develop a product to sell that can use profits to benefit humanity. My idea is to produce knit hats and benies to sell and have proceeds go towards cancer research. I came up with this idea as one that relates to cancer because patients going through chemotherapy often will lose their hair. To achieve this I plan on developing a website that covers product development in business. I plan to research the steps included in product development, explaining them on my website, and apply them to developing my product and business idea. Then I plan to research how social media can be used to generate interest in a new business and post that to my website as well. Along with that I plan on developing a Facebook page and a Twitter account and using them to see who would be interested in the idea to develop a target market. I also plan on using the website to post information and links about cancer research, types of cancer, and treatments and cures ( if there are any known cures). This section of the website will be used to help potential customers understand how purchasing the product will not only benefit them, but humanity as well. Finally I plan to use Photoshop to develop a logo for the company.

Different Uses of Animation

Education: This video uses animation to discuss diffusion. More and more people are becoming visual learners. The use of videos and animations like this one can make it easier for people to better understand a subject material that was challenging to them in the past.

http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=248121&title=Gummy_Bear_Diffusion

Entertainment: In the early years of animation, two dimensional hand sketches were used and much of the motion is jumpy and like a flip book, whereas today’s animation is more three dimensional and rounded with a humanoid aspect. These differences can be seen in a video clip of a Charlie Brown cartoon and the Finding Nemo trailer.  

Marketing: Using animation in marketing allows for marketers to cut back on the costs of major production of a commercial while still making the production seem high end, reach a more current demographic, and can defy reality and as a result can generate more attention from viewers.