bjbj< Brandon Schauer: We have a quick five minutes from Andrew Crow. We ve talked plenty
about multi-channel experiences. Andrew Crow is VP of experience design at Razorfish and
has been tackling this problem too, but he s ready to ask an interesting question about
how we go about it, which is do cross-channel experiences need more white space? Andrew?
Andrew Crow: Thank you very much everyone. So I wanna start off by saying that I love
Disneyland. Growing up in L.A. we would go to Disneyland as often as possible. It s truly
to use a clich for me as a kid it was truly a magical place, right? Now I go back there
with my kids, it s a completely different story. I m a little smarter now and I see
through some of that magic, but my kids and I will be walking down Main Street and all
I hear from them is, m hungry, I m tired, I m hungry , and of course my inner monologue
is like, Shut up , but I can t say that out loud, right? I m a parent. I have to provide
for their needs. So lo and behold Disneyland does that for m because I look across the
way and there s a food cart, or there s a little restaurant, and done. Taken care of,
right? They re fed. Now maybe a half-hour later when we find ourselves in Adventureland
or Tomorrowland and the first thing that I hear from my kids is, m hungry. I want a frozen
banana. I want a balloon. Then I look across the street and there s a frozen banana balloon
cart right there. Now as a kid I thought that was magic. How did they do that? But as an
adult and as a designer I know better. I know that because they have a team of Disneyland
designers and park producers that make that park run like clockwork. They know their customer
inside and out and they provide for those needs at any given moment. Now like a lot
of us in this room we re design managers, design leaders, designers, brand people, product
guys and girls, but we know that when we design products in sort of today s environment we
have to be aware of lots of different things, touch points, right? Touch points across an
entire experience, and that s what you guys have been hearing about a lot yesterday and
today. How do we design for these touch points? How do we make them holistic? All the different
buzzwords. How do we do that across multiple touch points, right? Now touch points for
products could be the actual product design. It could be the marketing efforts that we
ve put out there. It could be the different brand aspects. It could be the customer service.
It could be a whole slew of different things, but our goals as designers and as brand people
is to make sure that our touch points are met at every single point of the way across
our entire product experience. Ideally we don t want any dips in between these touch
points, right? Because we want to remain top of mind when consumers come to buy our products
or our services. Contrasting the Disneyland example is another sort of physical space
thing and that s one of a museum. Now what s interesting about a museum is that yes they
have different attractions that you re supposed to go see, right? There could be a piece of
art or a statue or something like that, but there s space between those attractions. Maybe
it s a white wall or a gray wall or something like that, but ideally there s gaps between
this artwork, and what I really like about those gaps is it allows me to sort of pause,
enjoy what I m looking at, and sort of refresh as I move to the next piece in the exhibit.
I m not inundated with Follow us on Facebook posters in between a couple of different really
nice paintings. There s actual space there for me to breathe and to appreciate what I
ve just experienced. Now as a graphic designer, I started out as a graphic designer about
20 years ago and I learned about graphic design and to appreciate the use of white space as
a design tool. White space is not something to be afraid of. In fact it s not leftover
space. It s not something that we should scramble to fill. It s not extra space. It s an intentional
design decision that we use to provide two things. The first thing is you provide focus
just like in the museum. White space allows me to focus on the thing that I am looking
at so I can enjoy that part of the experience in the moment. The second thing that white
space does is it provides a pause. Just like in the Disneyland example I come home often
from Disneyland and I feel completely overwhelmed and stressed out and I m tired, and it s not
because I ve just walked 25 miles, although that doesn t help either, but it s because
I m so overwhelmed with the Disney-ness that is in every aspect of that park. Everything
is completely thought out. So white space provides you to have a bit of a pause, a bit
of a break so that you can enjoy the experience that you re in now and you can then focus
rather on the experience that you just had. So I think going back to the touch points
idea, I think all of us want to design experiences that are set in an ideal world, right? We
wanna project across an entire perhaps product lifestyle or brand life cycle or customer
life cycle and we wanna say, okay, what are all the touch points? Can we design for ideal
solutions or ideal experiences across all those touch points? So good experience I think
are designed for the ideal, right? But we also know as smart people and as human beings,
people bring other stuff to those experiences that we can t control. They bring emotions,
they bring previous experiences, they bring influences from other people s brand and marketing
efforts, so we can t exactly control that experience every time. So yes, those experiences
are designed for the ideal, but I think the trick is that great experiences allow for
the unexpected. Great experiences allow for that space, that sort of user participation
if you will that allows people to bring what they have with them, mix it in with our ideal,
and they end up creating their own versions of these experiences that we can t control
yet we can still influence. s a little touchy but it s an interesting way of looking at
design. So I think, and I m probably out of time, I think the idea that I really wanted
to bring to this day is that white space allows you to provide an opportunity for people to
make your experience their own. It allows them to take a step back. It allows them to
focus on what you re trying to get them to focus on. So use white space as a design decision,
as a design tool, and see how we can try to sort of influence and change the way we approach
designing experiences. Thank you very much. [End of Audio] MX 2011 _ Andrew Crow Page
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