3.3: Final Direct Mailers

Today, we reflect on our work on the OU Recruitment Services direct mailers and our stakeholders throughout Lesson 3, as well as Chapter 3 of Designing for Emotion!

Reflection

Over the course of Lesson 3, we’ve been learning about how to identify stakeholders within an organization, then design direct mailers that address the needs of said stakeholders in Photoshop by issuing a “call to action.” Instead of selecting an organization ourselves, we were asked to work with OU Recruitment Services, which serves a wide audience of potential/current students, parents, donors, and more.

I carefully considered the types of stakeholders I felt were likely to be out of the loop on OU’s many provided services. I remembered, as a freshman, feeling like there weren’t many options for a low income student like myself; yet, it seems like there’s always been a few groups aimed toward supporting students as they gain their footing. Financial Education Services, or fED, caught my eye, and I decided to target 16 to 18-year old incoming freshman with low income families or no family support with brief, informative mailers. Further through the project, I also expanded my reach to parents of those same freshman. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure students and families are aware of the support structure for students and reduce drop out rates.

Working in Photoshop (PS) feels different. Ever since I’ve chosen to focus my career on design, InDesign and Illustrator have been my go-to tools for producing my final images, while PS stays closed unless I need to do photo manipulation or, in my free time, I’m doing some digital painting. In a way, tapping into PS again reminds me of when I was 12, learning to make forum signatures and avatars for fun… Of course, nowadays, the work I do in PS is considered a tad more sophisticated! Since we were asked to use PS, I chose to work with photos from OU’s official Flickr account for my work. This limited my design choices a bit, but it ultimately worked out pretty well. My work feels simple, as it often does, but with an extra punch from the photos.

Does my type fully utilize the photos? Not so much, but the photos do reference my message in each mailer. My student mailer shows The Sower statue at the end of the South Oval, which references the literal concept of growing plants and food (“Sooner fED”) but also the philosophy of OU reaching out to the community. The parent mailer is more straightforward, showing 3 students at various events at OU that, hopefully, reminds the parents of their own children.

Whenever I do work, I want there to be some amount of unity in the visual and metaphorical approach it takes. Photography is a fantastic way to capture an idea or message and a fun way to design. I know I’ve been neglectful of photography in my work over the past few years, and I think it’s time I update my personal design policy to include more.

Check out my final student (grey-blue) and parent (black) mailers here!

Designing for Emotion: Chapter 3

Chapter 3, titled “Personality,” explores how interface design can emulate human-to-human interaction—as opposed to the less friendly sounding human-to-computer dynamic—via personas. Aarron Walter even describes a detailed process for people to use to create their own “design personas,” or the personality of a website, app, or similar tool, and provides a template.

Admittedly, it’s difficult for me to be critical of this book, considering how closely I relate to Walter’s design philosophies. My cynical side wants to critique the optimistic tone of the book more than anything, really, but I don’t believe that criticism is valid, just pessimistic. It’s not as if this book is the end-all of emotional design books, and Walter sets the stage for you early on. My most genuine criticism would likely be that the book hasn’t presented a ton of evidence supporting emotionally-focused design as the most effective visual communication technique we know, but I also know that friendly, simple user interface and user experience design is pretty new. All we have right now are recent sales and growth figures. We can’t determine the sustainability of emotional design quite yet… but we can be reasonably sure it’s going to turn out well.

Walter makes the assertion that “products are people, too;” what I believe he means is that products can, and sometimes do, carry a level of emotional weight we ignore. Sure, people has long accepted brands like Coca-Cola or Nike, which have their own personalities, but the modern era ushered in a mass of new types of products that don’t receive the sort of loving treatment a new shoe design does. Digital services require the user and the site to work side-by-side, yet we often end up fighting the site for control or getting horribly lost. Outspoken customers have made Comcast infamous for delivering poor customer service experiences on the phone and the web. Touch screens at airports offer tons of options but rarely work quickly or efficiently (when you really don’t have the time to wait). All of these those things need better design. All of them need to address the actual humans who want to engage with their products. Walter’s book offers a vehicle to configure a brand to be approachable, and it would be in the best interest of some companies to stop dragging their feet on the matter. We deserve good design.

Onward to Lesson 4! Looks like we’re going to have to hit the ground running to get everything done. Good luck, and have fun!

---

Written for PR Publications course at the University of Oklahoma, Lesson 3.3