Iconic Packaging

1) Packaging is an extremely important aspect in the marketing of a product. The packaging of a product can make or break a sale, for example if the product is intended to be classy and sophisticated yet comes in a plain and dated box, buyers will be hesitant. The packaging of iconic items, like Coca-Cola, is difficult because it needs to retain the original image while having new modern twists integrated into it. Packaging that has influenced my purchase is the bottle design of Fiji water. Most water bottles are round or cylindrical in some way, but Fiji water comes in a rectangular shaped container, which peaked my interest. After drinking the water I realized that it is shockingly, just water, and the packaging of the item had driven me to purchase it.

2) A product that has iconic packaging is the Big Mac from McDonald’s. Another product that has iconic packaging is Ramen Noodles, the color and design of their package gives buyers a sense or comfort and reliability on the product.

3) When I think about the usability issues of packaging, one prominent example comes to mind, the packaging of scissors. I had purchased a pair of siscorrs because mine could no longer be found, and when I went to open the scissors, they were heat wrapped. The only way to get into this package of scissors was to use another pair of scissors, or a knife, I had neither. This seems to me to be a major design flaw and should have been caught before the product went to market. When I think of good packaging design, I think of individual bottles of soda. Bottles are more usable than cans because bottles can travel with less likelihood of spilling. This seems to be good design because if a customer is looking to travel with the soda, the bottle is the answer.

Target Observations

1) I observed the Target in Novi, Michigan. Target markets to basically all customers; they have everything from toys for young children to adult things such as housekeeping supplies, graphic novels and innovative electronics.

2a)This Target was very large, almost a little daunting. The store has a vinyl finish outside, with bricks around the lower potion and resembles a warehouse. There were 8 total doors for customers to enter the store. The doors to enter are left of the doors to exit, which is unorthodox for many Americans.

b) There were a lot of different sounds once one enters the store. There is the sound of people talking and talking, the sound of parents scolding children, and low elevator-type background music. There are many conversations between customers, other customers and employees that it is somewhat difficult to focus. The sound of employees trying to sell products and interest customers in things they may not have originally come to Target for.

c) The merchandise is displayed like most big retail stores. The goods were on shelves, racks, and the more expensive items, in cases. There is usually one product chosen to be displayed in front of the others, a medium priced product that still looks nice and represents the rest of the products well.

d) The floors were all tile. They had stains, gashes and portions missing. The floor is very unattractive and dated. The floor had so many things spilled on it that some parts are sticky, which was a very big deterrent for me.

e) Target had many large displays signs. Most of the signs I noticed were in the clothing area, they had images of happy families wearing clothes purchased at Target. The store also had large hanging signs to indicate the contents of each isle. Target also had fairly large signs displaying the items on sale, the original price and the sale price.

f) The cashier area resembled that of a grocery store. There were many different checkout lanes, which were indicated by a light with a number on it. If the light was on it means that the lane was open to customers. Target also had an express lane checkout for customers with 15 items or less. There were coolers with assorted beverages in the front of each lane, and in the middle of each lane there were packs of gum, mints and magazines for customers to look and hopefully buy impulsively.

3) Target tries to project the “classy” image while maintaining a relatively inexpensive price. The outside of the building has a professional look with the vinyl finish and has an appealing and attractive look with brick around the lower portion of the outer walls. Upon entering the store, customers are hit with signs representing items that are on sale, large posters of excited people modeling Target products and cheap children’s toys.

4) As I observed customers the design of the store aided customers greatly. Without large hanging signs above each isle, customers could wonder aimlessly for hours attempting to find what they were searching for. The large signs really helped customers narrow down their search. Also on the end of each isle there were various items that could be found in each isle, this also aided customers because instead of just seeing a sign listing the items, they could physically touch each item without having to go down the isle. I saw many shoppers physically feeling and touching the items before purchasing them. I saw employees and experts interacting with customers and given them their best advice.

5) The thing that I found most interesting about the design this particular Target was they designed it to get customers in and out as quick as possible. Usually stores will attempt to keep customers in the store as long as possible, but it seemed as if this store attempted to aid customers in getting in the store and leaving quickly. The design of the store did not entice customers to walk a certain way around the store. Usually stores will funnel customers one way, getting them to walk around the entire store but this Target was very open and customers were not persuaded to walk any direction around the store.

Shopping Smart

1) Gladwell makes not only many interesting but many important points throughout this piece. The different theories that he explains such as the Butt-Brush Theory and the Decompression Zone are interesting to the reader, but to a designer or to an engineer would be very useful towards increasing sales for the store. Another important point is the subconscious efforts of the customer. He explains that if your store is next to a boring and bland building like a bank, customers will not notice it because they have already deterred their vision from the plain looking bank. He also talks about how items on the right hand side are more examined than items on the left. The reasoning behind this is the left side of the brain is where the processing of this object takes place, he also offers the reasoning that it’s because most customers are right handed. Also a very important point reiterated that the designers should tailor their stores to the customers, and the customer should not have to deal with a poorly designed store. There are also large differences between sexes and demographics that should be addressed by each designer, without sacrificing sales from another demographic.

2) After reading this article, I realized how much I fall for the design of the store. I am a shopper who wants to get in and out and like most males, and as explained in the article, I don’t try on half of the clothes I buy. However when shopping with females, they take much longer than me, trying on and basically modeling every item they pick up. Also I have bought many clothes, displayed on tables, for the way they feel, how soft they are and how their potential comfort level. Gladwell explains that this is a natural tendency of many shoppers and thus, they put the comfortable sweaters out on the tables. However, advertisements and the placement of merchandise does not effect me as much as it may other customers. I usually go into the store with not only a set price but also a set list in mind, so it’s exceptionally hard to convince me to buy something I didn’t want to buy before I entered the store.

3) My checklist would consist of:

1) Is the merchandise approximately placed in the store?

2) Do the surrounding stores “turn off” potential customers attention due to their own blandness?

3) What things will drive customers away? Will they be intimidated like Norman spoke of when he discussed Diesel stores?

4) How can we get customers to purchase more items? Not how can we draw more customers to the store, but the ones that do come in need to buy more.

Biggest mistakes in web design

1) One of the largest, if not the largest point of the article was to focus not on your own design preferences, but the user’s preferences. Flanders says that the website should be geared totally towards the user and any difficulties or dislikes the user has of the website will only result in them leaving the page you have designed. If the website is not usable and functional, then it has absolutely no purpose to the user, according to Flanders.

2) The article has many significant points. One of those points was the functionality and usability of the site. If the site does not function quickly and without problems, then it is useless to the users and they will find a new, better and more efficient site. Another major point was the importance of text on the website. If the text is too small the user may leave the site, if the color of the text does not contrast well with the background of the page the use may leave the site, and if graphics are used in place of text, users will most likely get confused and leave the site. The next major point pertains to the content of the site. The site needs great content or “Heroin content” in Flander’s words. Sites such as google.com and youtube.com have great content. Users enjoy using the sites because they are important and useful to them primarily due to the content.

3) My list of important webpage design factors:

1) Content

2) Functionality

3) Conciseness

4) Solves my problems

The content of a website is very important, if the content is useless to everyone and has no meaning, then people have no need to visit the website. If the website does not function well, has slow loading large images, and the links don’t travel to the appropriate place, then the website will become frustrating and another site can do the job better. The site also needs to be concise, taken three pages to explain each little task or product is unnecessary and will only lead users to other, less verbose pages. Finally a website needs to solve problems. When I want to look up a somewhat obscure topic, Wikipedia helps me out. If it did a poor job of this then the user would not use the page and it would not be as popular as it is.

Know it All

1) One of the author’s main points is that Wikipedia goes to strenuous lengths to protect its legitimacy. Not only are there rules for publishing such as the entry must be written from a neutral point of view and all content must be verifiable and previous published. There are specific members like Essjay, who spend their time editing content and structure of the entries. There are also five robots that patrol the entries; they search for obscenities and mass deletions of text. Another main point made by the author is that like other encyclopedias, Wikipedia is not perfect. In a study comparing Wikipedia to Britannica, for every four errors Wikipedia had Britannica had only three. Even though Wikipedia is not perfect, it’s still the most accessible and efficient encyclopedia.

“The encyclopedic impulse dates back more than two thousand years and has rarely balked at national borders. Among the first general reference works was Emperor’s Mirror, commissioned in 220 A.D. by a Chinese emperor, for use by civil servants. The quest to catalogue all human knowledge accelerated in the eighteenth century. In the seventeen-seventies, the Germans, champions of thoroughness, began assembling a two-hundred-and-forty-two-volume masterwork. A few decades earlier, Johann Heinrich Zedler, a Leipzig bookseller, had alarmed local competitors when he solicited articles for his Universal-Lexicon. His rivals, fearing that the work would put them out of business by rendering all other books obsolete, tried unsuccessfully to sabotage the project.

It took a devious Frenchman, Pierre Bayle, to conceive of an encyclopedia composed solely of errors. After the idea failed to generate much enthusiasm among potential readers, he instead compiled a “Dictionnaire Historique et Critique,” which consisted almost entirely of footnotes, many highlighting flaws of earlier scholarship. Bayle taught readers to doubt, a lesson in subversion that Diderot and d’Alembert, the authors of the Encyclopédie (1751-80), learned well. Their thirty-five-volume work preached rationalism at the expense of church and state. The more stolid Britannica was born of cross-channel rivalry and an Anglo-Saxon passion for utility.”

2) The supporting detail of this passage is effective because Schiff starts the passage by talking about the evolution of the encyclopedia, and how it never belonged to just one country. She gave many examples such as the Chinese encyclopedia and a German attempt too. She then concluded it with Pierre Bayle, who constructed the first encyclopedia, even though it was “composed solely of errors.”

3) Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica have both similar and contrasting designs. For starters they are both encyclopedias. However the large difference is one is based solely on paper, the other purely Internet based. Wikipedia is based solely on the Internet and is designed to be all-inclusive. Wikipedia is updated numerous times each day whereas the Encyclopedia Britannica is updated physically every year. Wikipedia was designed to be accessable and efficient and the Encylopedia Britannica was designed to be reference based and to have no questions of legitimacy arise.

Wikipedia Topic

I would like to do my wikipedia paper on Nike's sweatshops.

Preparation and Organization

1) The three main points of Reynolds piece are that the presentation has to be clear and understandable to the audience, good presentations are planned out thoughtfully on paper before they are put into PowerPoint or other similar programs, this helps with organization and flow. Finally, good presentations need to be practiced many times before it will given, this will almost eliminate nervousness.

2) This advice is very applicable to the presentation we have been assigned to give. Before I jump right into putting my ideas into PowerPoint, I’m going to write them down and outline them on paper. I also will practice the presentation over and over, and formulate possible questions so that I am not caught off guard. It will also force me to think about the audience that I’m presenting too and how my partner and I can best capture and maintain their attention throughout the presentation.

3) Presentation preparation and product design have a lot of similar aspects. Reynolds explains that if one opens PowerPoint and starts making a presentation, it will be confusing and unclear because it needs to be planned on paper first. This tip holds true to design teams too because they cannot just sit down and build the finished product. The designers need to plan for months the best and most efficient way to manufacture their product and that helps by planning it out on paper and making models prior to the final product. Just like presenters and speakers, design teams need to make usability of the product simple. If a complex product is too difficult to use, it won’t be as efficient, usable or economically beneficial to the company as if it were simple to use. If a presentation is too jumbled and confusing, the audience will divert their attention minimizing the effect the presentation will have.

An area of design that I would like to cover in class is the advertising and marketing aspect and also I would like to explore the reflective level of design more.