TAKA DESIGNS

At the beginning of 2012, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom sat down with Kevin Rose to talk about the company, how it was started and what made it successful. A few months later, it was sold to Facebook for $1 billion.

When Instagram started it had 3 goals:

1. Make photos beautiful and inspiring
2. Integrate social so people would share photos
3. Create a great user experience

Make photos beautiful and inspiring

Unless you were a professional photographer or had amazing skills, it was hard to make photos look great. By creating filters, Instagram was able to turn ordinary photos into something beautiful. It inspired people and made them feel like they were a professional photographer.

Integrate social so people would share photos

Because Instagram made photos beautiful and inspiring, people inevitably wanted to share them. It provided a platform that allowed users to share their photos across multiple networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) all at once. It also created a discovery tool called the “popular page”, which highlighted the most popular photos on Instagram. This gave anyone the ability to discover and follow other users even if they didn’t have a friend on the service.

Create a great user experience

One of the key features that set Instagram apart was how fast image filters were added to photos and then uploaded. Other photo apps existed, but the process took too long.  Instagram set out to make the user experience as seamless as possible. When a user started to choose a filter and write a caption after taking a photo, Instagram immediately began the uploading process. By the time they were finished, the photo “appeared” to be instantly ready. Users couldn’t believe how fast it was.

As mobile usage continues to increase online, the number of high profile sites implementing responsive design is gaining momentum (Starbucks, Time, Nixon Watches). It’s been 8 months since we launched http://ucla.edu using responsive design and I thought I’d share the impact its had on our site with mobile devices. The numbers are quite impressive.

8 months (June 2012 – Feb 2013 vs June 2011 – Feb 2012)

Mobile visits up 403%
Mobile pageviews up 309%
Mobile unique pageviews up 340%
Mobile average time spent on page up 71%

Also, here’s a nice list of responsive design sites in higher education.

According to Billboard, as of last week the Harlem Shake has had a combined view of 30 million+ on YouTube. It’s the latest viral hit to succeed Psy’s Gangnum Style. Everyone from UCLA to Facebook employees and Obama have created their own versions of the Harlem Shake.

Why is it so popular? At its core, the Harlem Shake is an extended 30 second video meme. As Josh Constine explains, “A five-minute video? Ain’t nobody got time for that. Not to watch one, or to make one. But Harlem Shake dance videos are capped at 30 seconds. That’s why we’re so willing to watch just one more incarnation, and why it’s easy to recruit friends to make them.”

He even goes on to break down the video into a formula:

[14T x (A1 + V1)] => Δ => [14T x (A2 + V2)] => [2T x (A3+V3)]

Or

[14 seconds of (build-up music) played as (one person passively dances while others linger around them motionless)] then an instant video cut to [14 seconds of (bombastic dance music) played as (many people dance aggressively)] then [2 seconds of (a slurring sound) and (slow-motion video of the aggressive dancing)]

As daunting as it looks, the formula is easy to replicate, requires little video production skill, and allows anyone to participate and create their own version. All are important key factors that have lead to its viral nature.

Video memes are not new. They’ve been around for sometime, but have been gaining a lot more attention lately.  Most notably with Twitter’s recent acquisition of Vine, reportedly the company’s largest to date. Vine allows users to record videos (up to 6 seconds long) and is also easy to replicate.   Some have even predicted that Vine will be as revolutionary as Twitter.  Others have touted it as the next Instagram. It will be interesting to see how videos memes will evolve and how brands and marketers will use them. If the Harlem Shake is any indication, it’s clear there is captive audience willing to engage and participate. Will Vine help lead the way?

A big challenge at UCLA is the oversight of hundreds of different social media accounts for departments and organizations. As the Associate Director of Digital Marketing, one of my roles is to oversee UCLA’s main institutional social media channels. Like many universities, UCLA is a highly decentralized environment. Each department or organization has their own IT infrastructure, web team and social media presence. Anyone can create a website or social media account. (If you work in higher education you’ll know the feeling).

This past week we finally launched a website that outlines social media guidelines for the campus. It’s something UCLA has needed, and was created to provide support and guidance for departments and organizations in the management of their social media channels and activity online. When developing the website, we looked at existing universities and major brands for influence and inspiration and worked closely with our campus counsel and IT policy director.

These guidelines are a key component of social media governance at UCLA. We’ve also established a campus-wide social media group (with over 190 members and growing) which helps provide oversight, but more importantly collaboration. We have an active online discussion list and hold user meetings to share best practices and case studies on social media use at UCLA. We’ve also had a panel discussion on how UCLA students use social media in their academic and personal lives.

By providing these resources our goal is to help develop and support a community around social media at UCLA. We’ve received enormous amounts of support and positive feedback. As social media continues to grow and evolve, these resources will be key to sustaining a successful social media governance model at UCLA. We’re taking it one step at a time.

A common design pattern that is being used extensively on mobile apps has been the use of icons to illustrate specific functions. By now, there are specific icons that almost everyone is familiar with. An icon of a trash can represents deleting something or a printer represents the print function. But what happens when icons are used that users are unfamiliar with?

I’ve been using the Gmail app on my iPad and it helps illustrate a great example. There were quite a few icons that I was completely unfamiliar with, and as a result, I had never used them.

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