My buddies at Avenue A | Razorfish provided me this copy of a study called “Fast Forward: Designing for Constant Change.” It consists of thirteen essays and research that explore how consumers’ digital media habits affect the ways that companies should design user experiences and digital brands. The company wrote the report for marketers who are trying to design more effective online ads and websites in the face of rapid technological change. It is the result of 500 interviews conducted in July, 2007

Topics include social shopping, web site design, video, widgets, AJAX, RSS feeds, user interface, and mobile media devices. Here two key findings from the study:

Marketers need to stop thinking of creating online ads or websites in isolation. Instead marketers should design experiences for consumers wherever they live in the digital world, across websites, blogs, mobile devices, or on desktops. (These conclusions are discussed in more detail in the first chapter, “Avenue A | Razorfish Digital Consumer Behavior Study.”)

Marketers should stop thinking of the web as just another channel to express their offline brands. Instead marketers should build digital brands that take advantage of the web’s unique attributes, such as its immersive nature. (To that end, Avenue A | Razorfish introduced a scorecard for marketers to measure the effectiveness of digital brands. The details are reported in the chapter, “Digital Darwinism.”)

Avenue A | Razorfish also started blog about the topic called Digital Design Blog.

Guy Kawasaki

This piece was originally published on Guy’s blog How to Change the World and is posted on DMW with the author's permission. Guy’s bio can be viewed here.

Flickr Image By Webkim