On the design of Skimmer & what agency clients are clamoring for

When Chris Wiggins, Creative Director at Fallon, set out to create Skimmer he put a lot of thought into the design of the application. Working with freelance designer Andy Gugel, Wiggins said they were specifically going for something that sort of flew in the face of the Web 2.0 “not designed design.”

“We intentionally didn’t approach the design of Skimmer the way typical software developers do,” Wiggins said. “For this we put experience over data, experience over functions.”

There’s be a long-standing precedent of user-experience testing that results in design by committee, he said. “In my opinion, that’s not the best way to go anymore.”

Wiggins pointed to Apple’s steady decline of usability tests and how their products continually win acclaim for their usability and design.

“You just need to take products to a certain point before you even consider getting feedback,” he said. “You can’t always trust people to know what they want until they’ve seen something. Users would never had asked for the iPod, because it would have never crossed their minds to ask for something like that. At some point you have to have a vision and make something that you are confident about.”

Often times, Wiggins said, “design is considered superfluous eye candy that you don’t need for these kind of service.”

So part of their goal with the design of Skimmer was to see what people would think if this kind of application was presented in a beautiful and elegant way. The response to Skimmer as a whole (not just the design but the way it consolidates all social media networks) has been what Brenda Fogg, Interactive Producer, called “almost effervescent.”

“We were warned by our PR person not to get too excited,” Wiggins said. “The app was much more quickly well received than we anticipated. It blew away all our expectations.”

A few of the sites that picked up the Skimmer story right away include: Cool Hunting, AdWeek, TechCrunch, AdFreak, and Mashable.

Wiggins said it was a little hard not to get drunk on the positive buzz.

“Our clients are calling it a spectacular move, a bold move,” he said. “It’s exactly the kind of buzz an ad agency can use right now. One of the biggest fears of most traditional agencies is having the competence in the social web sphere because so many clients are clamoring for it.

“It shows that we’re about finding ways to get your brands out there and to make people do things they already want to do, better,” he said. “We’re a place where you can reliably turn to for this kind of thing.”

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