On Sticker-Speak

Some of the stickers available within Facebook’s Messenger app.

In a March 2007 post subtitled ‘How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Just Get With The Blip-Post Programme’ I wrote that

“the ultimate logical step will be for someone to create a social networking site that just posts individual tag words on their own…” 

While I was positing that notion with tongue firmly in cheek, it is interesting to observe that we now do have the ability to communicate using absolutely simple, single-concept message units. The emojii-based stickers of today’s messaging apps are the example I have been thinking about recently. At first glance the idea behind these stickers appears trivial, indeed faintly silly. Scroll through the sticker selection panels in any messaging app and you will see rows of cute cartoon characters over-acting and gurning some exaggerated emotion.

But I think that if we look a little bit deeper there is something interesting going on here. So, while the audience for this blog is unlikely to embrace the use of pictographic stickers in their everyday messaging, it is always worthwhile for anyone working in branding, design and app development to observe the trends and be aware of what different kinds of communications are bubbling up.
People are choosing to use these stickers to communicate in some manner. So they definitely have a job-to-be-done. What that job may be, and indeed what might be the minimum that we need for viable digital communication seems worth exploring here.

Minimum Viable Communications
Firstly, I do not think that it is a given fact that the idea of simplified, single-concept message units would necessarily be seen as useful and become broadly accepted. That core idea needs to be provided as a service in a manner that people find appealing to use. In the mid-nineties, when I was doing a lot of design work for Telecom Eireann, mobile phones were still expensive products aimed at businesses. Telecom Eireann tried to kick-start a youth market for pagers as a more price-appropriate product. They launched a range of pagers in Ireland with a heavily promoted and expensive Eurotrash-themed advertising campaign which struggled and failed to make pagers seem hip. Although hobbled by ill-advised advertising creative, the real downfall of the product was that, given the available technology of the time, the low-budget devices could only send three-digit numeric codes. People could not message each other in plaintext. So to use a pager you needed to carry a booklet with an unwieldy list of arbitrary meanings ascribed to those numerical pager codes. Something like ‘234 = I am running late’ and ‘678 = Drinks later?’ The pager market never took off. The limitations imposed on communication outweighed the promise of being able to communicate on the move. The target audience just ignored pagers and waited for mobile phones to become affordable. So this was not a failure of the idea of simplified minimal communications per se, but rather of their service execution in a form that was difficult to use, and which did not convey meaning.

Jump forward to today and most smartphone operating systems have incorporated Japanese i-Mode emoji icons. These simple, single-concept icons are inter-operable with the Western character set within text messages. Most often I see people appending emoji as suffixes to text messages. Using just one character the senders can add information about whether they are being ironic or playful in their message. Emoji solve the problem where, writing so concisely, we often must sacrifice tonality. So, at least in the usage which I observe, they act as modifiers to the main text. These eight words may not necessarily clearly signify whether the sender is optimistic, sarcastic or infuriated. That is the additional role given to the little yellow character at the end.

Where I do see emoji used on their own are generally as replies to written texts. A text asking ‘How did the meeting go?’ might get a thumbs-up emoji response. No words being necessary, as a conversation will provide the relevant detail later.

Although it is not a usage I see amongst my peers, emoji can even be strung together as a rudimentary pictographic language. If only for humorous intent more than anything. Yet, I think that if that was the only way of using them, they would necessarily fail in the same way as the pager codes did. Perhaps these kinds of single-concept pictographic linguistic tools are really only useful as an adjunct to the written word?

Messenging App Stickers
Stickers – although related to the original emoji – offer a new set of affordance and a different communicative role. Stickers can only be used one at a time and can not be mixed with text. This makes them ill-suited as modifiers and so they serve a different purpose. So while these pictures are not worth a thousand words, they are intended to be worth one text message.

Stickers take the basic idea of image-based emoji to a new level. They take advantage of the larger screens and higher resolutions of today’s mobile devices. So they appear larger on-screen and can be more illustrative and expressive in style and not limited to the more iconic style needed for emoji. They are often based on cartoon characters and portray a wider range of emotions and behaviours then emoji. (The emoji character set was originally developed for the technological limitations of i-Mode phones in at the end of the nineties.) As they are not trying to be part of one standardised international character set the range of sticker designs varies from app to app. Developers can strike licensing deals with IP owners to ensure that particular characters are available exclusively in their app to attract more customers.

Facebook’s Messenger app expands the expressive range of their ‘Like’ icon. 

Selling sets of digital stickers is one of the revenue-generating features of messaging apps. Remember that this is a category of apps whose key benefit is communication at no cost to their users. So I assume stickers must be popular — and with more than just Japanese teenagers. Stickers are serving some purpose for a broader set of users. As I see it stickers answer the desire for a one-touch, single-concept message.

It is not that people are becoming too lazy to compose simple sentences. It is worth remembering – before any doom-sayers begin to predict the end of literacy and language again – that new forms of communication like this never replace what already exists, they sit alongside them. Rather it is the case that – just as something as barely noticeable as a raised eyebrow or a wink can signify a lot in our real-world conversations – so too perhaps can the emotions of an illustrated character in our online conversations. The semantic meaning encoded in the smallest gestures depends on the context and the relationship between the two people communicating.

An examples of some of the character-based stickers available within the Viber app.

I would not underestimate how many text messages are rote and formulaic. People keeping in touch simply by saying ‘good morning’ or ‘good-night’. The real meaning here is in reaffirming the connection rather than in the specific semantic content. So adding some visual flair, through colour, image and typography the way that many stickers do can enhance such simple regular messages. Even if simply through novelty and variety.

An examples of some of the text-based stickers available within the Viber app.

The visual language of emoticons and stickers sits alongside spoken languages and people all over the world can use them to communicate. Even so, it would be foolish to consider them serving as a proxy for a common global visual language. While the majority of human emotional expressions do share their meaning amongst all peoples, there are still many distinct cultural signals and messages that are learned. (That is why trying to decipher some of the obscure-to-me Japanese cultural references symbolised in the original i-Mode emoticon set seems beyond my West-of-Ireland background.)

Red = ‘I am angry’
As a final thought, I suppose it is again worth considering what comes next? What is the truly Minimal Viable Communication? Should we expect an app that allows us to communicate using just solid colours perhaps? Yellow meaning ‘I am happy’, blue saying ‘I am sad’ and red growling ‘I am angry’... Who knows?

Update 1: June 2014
Given my line of thinking on Minimal Viable Communication here, I guess that I really should have foreseen the ‘Yo’ app. Very minimal indeed.

Update 2: July 2014
Further to my point about stringing emoji together as a pictographic language for humorous intent. Turns out that you can sign-up today to ‘Emojli’ – the emoji-only social network. That may not even be a parody, and is launching soon apparently.

(I guess the Garfield licensing deal fell through.)

Perception Is Reality

I followed the Twitter back-channel commentary that ran alongside both last week’s five-man and yesterday’s three-man leadership debates on RTE. (We are currently in the run up to a General Election here in Ireland.) It is insightful and eye-opening to see just how much the preconceptions people bring with them effect their interpretations of such a shared communal events.

Give a Man a Hammer: Everything Looks Like a Nail

While this post does not fall neatly into the Leadership Module chronology of my Masters programme, it is still worth including it here. I am filing this anecdote under ‘analysis’, as it is also about awareness and how we each perceive the world through our own unique set of filters.

Today I received a well-written, considered and thoughtful corporate identity design brief from an accountancy firm. It was about twelve pages long. On one of the pages they had outlined their corporate brand values: Professionalism, Trust, Integrity, and so on (you can probably guess the rest of that list). There is nothing unusual in that, or indeed that they had also measured how they thought their current corporate identity rated against each of those values that they aspired to. What was really worth remarking on (to my eyes) was that they presented all of this as an Excel spreadsheet: with each brand value rated to two significant places of decimals (for example: Professionalism = 4.32). This was annotated with side-commentary giving statistical variance on each value – presumably for those readers with the accountancy firm itself who may be interested in querying some of the numbers.

At first I was gobsmacked on reading this. Then I was incredulous. My designer-brain knew that this laboriously-crafted slab of information was functionally useless in relation to the actual design project itself. However, pausing and giving it a second thought, what I then saw was a group of accountants working together, scratching their heads, most likely baffled by all of the unquantifiable ‘brand stuff’ and trying to articulate just what they needed as best as they could. Knowing something about the basic marketing principles involved, but struggling to grapple with them using their collective mental toolkit. In order to get something down on paper that they all could discuss and agree on they had to convert it into the lingua franca of their own profession: a mathematical table.

So while seeing oneself as working in an organisation with a Trust Score of 3.72 is probably one mental somersault too many for a designer’s mind, it must makes sense within these people’s world-view. Trying to see both sides, I have to guess that the incongruity of fuzzy-logic concepts like integrity and trust being pinned down in this way is as jarring to me as the ultimate business utility of those marketing concepts might be to these accountants.

Some useful questions arise here. What are my own mental filters? Which ones help me to perceive the world in an advantageous way? Which ones hinder my perception and create my own blind spots?

My Thought For The Day 15/12

“Finally, module one essay finished, typeset and proofed at 23:55. Triage of my atypical in-box backlog shall have to wait until morning.”
23:57 December 15 from my Twitter feed.

A Cup of Recession Joe

Marketing Analysis (6 of 6)

Denis spoke about how factors outside of your company’s direct sphere of activities have to inform and effect your marketing decisions. I came across a good example of this today reading about how McDonalds is aggressively targeting Starbucks in the US coffee market. I am unsure if the same is true over here in Ireland yet. Even up to earlier this year I would have been surprised by the thought that McDonalds could compete effectively in the same market space as Starbucks and appeal to the same target markets.

Lets look at the marketing factors in play here. Given the deteriorating Irish economic environment, people are either looking to rationalise their discretionary spending or, if they have been laid-off, they are having to abandon it. In this climate it is difficult to justify spending five of six euros for a Christmas Gingerbread-Topped Triple-Strength Mocha With Whipped Cream. So everyone is increasingly in the market for a price-sensitive morning coffee. OK, so Starbucks could theoretically make changes to their prices, but a substantial part of their marketing message is still the theme of ‘The Third Place’ – in essence the idea that you are paying premium for the environment, the service and the sense of place that is uniquely Starbucks. So getting into any downward pricing spiral will either damage their brand or really start to reposition it in people’s minds. On the other hand, McDonalds never makes any claims to providing a wonderful environment, but they have proved themselves pretty adept and nimble at successfully adapting to market changes over the years. They now sell a surprising amount of salads and have had their McCafe offering in play for a number of years.

Operationally, once you start selling espressos and mochas to attract in the customers who are open to migrating away from the Starbucks and its ilk, you are faced with an issue of educating your existing customers who have been used to ordering black coffee or white coffee (or perhaps a Latte if if they are feeling particularly adventurous). That poses another marketing challenge. I have found the online component of this campaign: UnsnobbyCoffee.com This site mostly works as customer education: training McDonald’s existing customers to understand the variations of coffee the company is now selling. I presume these marketing messages are mirrored in-store, but I have not been State-side to investigate.

The Machine Is Us/sing Us

Investigating some more about the topic of ‘User-Generated Content’ after Saturday’s MA class I located this fascinating short film ‘The Machine Is Us/sing Us’ on YouTube. It has been created by Michael Welsh who is the Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Kansas State University. So the thinking behind his film is backed up with some serious academic research. That said, I found this to be a most exemplary piece of communication. It really makes its complex points in the clearest manner.

‘Show don’t tell’ is one of the primary rules for effective writing, and this film informs us by showing in the most unique manner. I could use this film to explain Web_2.0 and UGC to my four-year old son. (That is, to people who are not as in love with their own web presence as I am.)

Get Persian: Introduce Some Constructive Conflict

I have located this document: ‘Lets Get Persian’ at changethis.com, an idea-propagating website which I been neglecting to visit since diving head-first into my Masters. The (user-generated) content at ChangeThis can be somewhat hit and miss, but the good material there is well worth truffling out. This particular essay has some interesting things to say about executive-level teamwork. I think that it adds some depth to some of the concepts we have been studying recently. Particularly maximising the performance of our teams. Here is one quote with a very useful list.

“In addition to using what might be called a second-chance meeting to review important decisions in an unbiased light, businesses should also take advantage of other means of introducing constructive contention into their decision-making, because disagreement, managed correctly, turns out to be crucial in avoiding errors. Our research found nine additional ways to introduce disagreement and manage that disagreement so it keeps everyone on their toes without harming the camaraderie of a management team:

• Informal devil’s advocacy
• Escalation systems
• Bets
• Staring into the abyss
• Finding history that fits
• Deciding (ahead of time) how to decide
• Smoothing out management ruts
• Constructing alarm systems
• A formal devil’s advocate review

The Johari Window And Facebook

I have been thinking further about the relationship model of the ‘Johari Window’ which was outlined in Saturday’s class and it has given me some small insight onto the success of Facebook and other social networking sites.

It takes a lot of effort on our own behalf to maintain the top-left quadrant in the Johari window: our Open information. The status-update features of social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter etc, provides a very low-friction method of letting your friends online know what you are doing. Thus enlarging that top-left quadrant of your Johari window with a far greater circle of people in a very efficient manner.

If I take some of friends in the US as an example of how this works off-line: after not speaking for months it becomes somewhat of a big deal to phone them to have a long catch-up. Equally when they visit Ireland you can spend lots of time informing each other of what has been happening in the last few years: essentially filling in that top-left quadrant.

Now look at the same scenario within a social-network enhanced world. It takes minimal effort for friends to update their status messages. ‘Knitting a sweater for my nephew.’ ‘Preparing for my quarterly evaluation tomorrow.’ ‘Going for my first extended bike ride in many a moon.’ Then on the other side of the window, equally little effort is required to read these. Just spending two minutes over coffee at my desk in the morning and I can have a update on the ‘open’ window quadrants of 30–40 friends and acquaintances.

This can in part explain the phenomenal success of social networking. In that it allows you to have a more open quadrant with your mid-level friends. Those whom are not your dearest friends, but whom you would probably be closer to if you were only more accessible to each other.