On June 20, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel discussion at the MIT Media Lab entitled “Media Fabrics for Media Makers: Realizing an Expressive Landscape for Digital Dialogues.” My other panel participants came from a wide range of creative backgrounds including feature films, video games, and interactive advertising.

The title of the talk is “Cracking Peanuts: Gleaning Design Intution from Comics.” The video is now available on MIT’s Web site.

Corey McPherson Nash was honored to have its work for The Boston Museum appear in a segment on WCVB news last week. The poster campaign appears on the MBTA Blue Line trains throughout the summer and highlights the work done by students and teachers at East Boston’s Umana School Academy researching the urban history of Boston and the MBTA.

“On Track with Boston History” MBTA Campaign Feature from Corey, McPherson & Nash on Vimeo.

Who doesn’t know Charles Schulz’s Charlie Brown and Snoopy? We know about Charlie Brown’s yearly disappointment, trying to score even one run on the baseball diamond. We know about Snoopy’s rich fantasy life as a WWI aviator, wooing young women and drinking root beer. These characters are rich and detailed in our mind’s eye, but how did we come to know them? A comic strip only has four small panels, thin black and white lines, just a few short snatches of dialog. Not much to go on.

We understand Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy and all of the rest because we lived with them. We received a daily newspaper or read the strip online. Over the course of weeks, months, and years (even decades in the case of Peanuts) we built up rich mental models of these characters and their relationships. We know exactly how Lucy will act in a situation and how Snoopy will act differently.

Web sites are the same way. It’s rare that a user will spend hours digging into every nook and cranny of your site, following every link and trying every option. Instead, the user will return to your site again and again for short visits when the need arises: buy a book, update account information, print out driving directions.

How can you take advantage of these short, directed, repeated visits to your site? Just like Charles Schulz, maintaining consistency of treatment and experience across visits will help communicate your brand clearly to your visitors.

But more than just maintaining consistency, users have to see variations on the theme to understand the big picture. If every Peanuts strip was Lucy pulling the football out from under Charlie Brown’s kicking foot we’d learn very little about the characters. Instead, Schulz varied his themes and the situations his characters were placed in. This variation over time helped us understand, in more depth, the story Schulz had to tell us.

So what does this mean for your Web site? Maintain consistency but provide frequent variation to help repeat users grasp your overall story. Even if users don’t read every page on your site, they will notice new features and headlines on the pages they visit that will help them understand your company or organization.

So take a cue from Charlie Brown and the gang: think about repetition and variation over time as you design and maintain your Web site.

In March 2007, we discussed the Boston Brand. On the one hand Boston has enormous pride – the lofty institutions of Harvard and MIT, the hotbed of medical and technical talent and innovation, the hometown of the Kennedy’s (and now Deval Patrick), the Patriots and the Red Sox (underdogs make a comeback), but on the other hand, we’ve lost a lot of our institutional business pride to national players - P&G bought Gillette, the Wang won’t show “Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker” anymore because of declining ticket sales and it has been replaced with “The Rockettes”, Bay Bank and Bank Boston are gone, Jordan Marsh and Filene’s are gone, etc.

The panel discussion was with the leading figures from Boston’s cultural, VC and brand world. Joe Spaulding from the Wang [now Citi] Center, George Bell from General Catalyst, John Carroll from the media and Kathy Sherbrooke from the business world. Listen to the event and let us know your thoughts.

On iTunes

When we mention Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social networking platforms in meetings with clients we often hear “Who has the time?”. Indeed, who has the time to maintain a profile, post updates, keep tabs on colleagues when the benefits are so nebulous. There have to be better reasons than altruism for individuals or businesses to participate in online social networks.

Here’s an example of why someone might participate in a social network: A former client wrote an unsolicited recommendation for me on LinkedIn today. When I accepted his recommendation to be displayed on my profile I was immediately presented with a prompt to provide a reciprocal recommendation. I wrote a few sentences about the person right there on the spot.

Social networks thrive on reciprocity. Think your Facebook page is boring? Post stuff on your friend’s walls. Wish your brother was posting more photos of your new nephew? Post your own photos for him to see. Want to beef up your profile in LinkedIn? Recommend your colleagues.

In a virtual world, where the rewards are not directly financial, there have to be other reasons why people participate. Straight out altruism is one reason, but not one you can take to the bank. Peter Kollock has outlined three non-altruistic reasons people might participate:

* Anticipated reciprocity
* Increased recognition
* Sense of efficacy

All three of Kollock’s reasons are interesting to both individuals and to businesses.

What do you think?