Module 3 activity 2

Researching Flash Activity

So what is Flash good for? There are about a million terrific uses for Flash in internet marketing. Here are just three: Online training videos. Currently, I am developing a number of online training videos for a client. The videos are in Flash. Many of the training videos at my other internet marketing site are also in Flash. My stats show that people like short, online video tutorials. They spend minutes or hours watching these Flash movies — and they frequently bookmark them as a reference — and they come back again and again. Done well, online training videos in Flash are very effective for marketing and customer service as well as training. Online games. Flash games can be tremendously fun and they can spread like viral wildfire. They are great for branding when you associate your site with something positive – a place where people want to hang out and play. And because fun games often generate a wealth of inbound links to your site, Flash games can help with search engine traffic as well as with bookmark, word-of-mouth, and other inbound referral traffic. Other interactive tools. Design tools. Quizzes. Surveys. Show and tell. These kinds of Flash components let your audience interact with your site or your product. You can increase the amount of time people spend at your site when you provide them with interesting, useful, interactive tools. So what do these three good uses for Flash have in common? In a word, permission. Give your audience a choice — i.e., ask for permission. You can generate excitement for your online Flash component with benefits-driven direct marketing web copy. Tell your audience what to expect — if you have a Flash game, tell them how fun the game is and what the rules are. If you have an online tutorial, tell your audience what they will learn and how long your lesson is. The point is to use your words to sell your audience on experiencing your Flash component. Get them excited about clicking that link! Provide a strong call to action. Next, tell your audience that by clicking on the link, they get to play the game, watch the video, or work with the online tool. That way, they get to decide whether they want to experience your Flash component. You can even use your copy to provide other calls to action — bookmark this video, tell-a-friend, etc. This simple marketing technique can make your Flash component go viral! *from: http://battractive.com/blog/2007/03/26/what-is-flash-goodl-for/ What is Flash bad for? Flash tends to degrade websites for three reasons: it encourages design abuse, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction principles, and it distracts attention from the site's core value. Encourages Design Abuse Splash pages were an early sin of abusive Web design. Luckily, almost all professional websites have removed this usability barrier. However, we're now seeing the rise of Flash intros that have the same obnoxious effect: They delay users' ability to get what they came for. On the upside, most Flash intros feature a "skip intro" button. However, their very existence encourages design abuse in several ways. First, Flash encourages gratuitous animation: Since we can make things move, why not make things move? Animation clearly has its place in online communication. However, as my 1995 guidelines discuss, that place is limited. Second, one of the Web's most powerful features is that it lets users control their own destiny. Users go where they want, when they want. This quality is what makes the Web so usable, despite its many usability problems. Unfortunately, many Flash designers decrease the granularity of user control and revert to presentation styles that resemble television rather than interactive media. Websites that force users to sit through sequences with nothing to do will be boring and pacifying, regardless of how cool they look. Third, many Flash designers introduce their own nonstandard GUI controls. How many scrollbar designs do we need? Actually, we probably do need a new scrollbar design for online content; the current scrollbar was designed for office automation content that users wrote themselves. However, the specification of a new GUI widget is a major human-factors exercise. The current Macintosh and Windows scrollbars emerged after the world's best interaction designers worked for years testing numerous design alternatives. A new scrollbar designed over the weekend is likely to get many details wrong. And, even if the new design was workable, it would still reduce a site's overall usability because users would have to figure out how it worked. They know how to operate the standard widget. When you use standards, users can focus on content and their reasons for visiting your site. Deviate, and you reduce their feeling of environmental mastery. None of these usability problems are inherent in Flash. You can design usable multimedia objects that comply with the guidelines and are easy to use. The problem is simply that current Flash design tends to encourage abuse. Breaks Web Fundamentals The second set of issues relates to the very notion of using a plug-in rather than standard Web technology. In the future, multimedia features may well be better integrated with browsers and thus these problems will be solved. For now, though, the fact that Flash is not standard HTML creates a host of nasty usability issues: • The "Back" button does not work. If you navigate within a Flash object, the standard backtracking method takes you out of the multimedia object and not, as expected, to the previous state. • Link colors don't work. Given this, you cannot easily see where you've been and which links you've yet to visit. This lack of orientation creates navigational confusion. • The "Make text bigger/smaller" button does not work. Users are thus forced to read text in the designer-specified font size, which is almost always too small since designers tend to have excellent vision. • Flash reduces accessibility for users with disabilities. • The "Find in page" feature does not work. In general, Flash integrates poorly with search. • Internationalization and localization is complicated. Local websites must enlist a Flash professional to translate content. Also, text that moves is harder to read for users who lack fluency in the language. Distracts from a Site's Core Values Perhaps the worst problem with Flash is that its use consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing the website's core value by: • Frequently updating content (Flash content tends to be created once and then left alone). • Providing informative content that answers users' key questions at all depth levels (Flash content is typically superficial). • Identifying better ways to support customers by task analyzing their real problems (Flash is typically created by outside agents who don't understand the business). If Flash was cheap to produce and if all content creators could make a Flash object as easily as they write a standard Web page, then perhaps many of these problems would be alleviated. For now, they remain serious issues. I thus recommend that Web designers interested in enhancing usability and their site's overall business presence use Flash sparingly. * from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/2001029.html