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Holly and Kristine were able to meet up over the Thanksgiving break in Arizona for a local "Turkey Trot" race.
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Each September, my co-workers at e! generously contribute to my fundraising for the Bike MS Washington Ride. The Bike MS event is a two-day cycling event through Skagit, Whatcom and Island Counties. The routes range from 22 to 92 miles on the first day, and 52 and 72 miles on the second day. There are scenic views along the routes, stocked rest-stops, and a festive finish line party. It’s a great event for a great cause and this year’s event didn’t disappoint with such amazing weather.
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| Three Column - Standard computer |
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| Two Column - Tablet in portrait orientation |
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| One Column - Phone |
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| One Column - Phone |
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| Three Column - Standard computer |
“The role of aesthetics in consumer goods like those you’d find on store shelves has been widely studied, but our research is novel in that we look at this effect in the extreme context of financial decision-making and what we find is just how boundless the role of aesthetics can be,” said Claudia Townsend, assistant professor of marketing at the School of Business, who conducted the research with Suzanne Shu at UCLA. “Better-looking documents produce increased pride of ownership for a company, and this pride increases valuation. People are not aware of the effect of aesthetics on their financial decisions and we found that when their attention was drawn to this issue they were able to overcome the bias and make wiser investments.”
Researchers conducted a series of three studies: one with finance students, one with members of the general population, and one with more experienced investors. Respondents in each study indicated that the design of a firm’s annual report would be of little significance in their valuation of a company. But after reviewing the first few pages and/or a sampling of annual reports, participants rated firms with more attractive reports higher than those with less attractive reports.
Specifically:
In the student study, in which participants were given the first three pages of two annual reports with the same financial information, the students priced the stock shares of a firm with the more attractive annual report nearly 70 percent higher than shares of a firm with the less attractive report.
In the general population study, respondents gave the product of a company with a more attractive annual report an average rating of 5.08 on a seven-point scale versus a rating of 4.79 for the product of a company with a less attractive annual report.
In the study involving experienced investors, in which participants were asked to rank companies based on how likely they would be to invest in those firms, the findings suggested that including an additional color throughout a firm’s annual report would have the same impact on an investor’s firm ranking as a 20 percent improvement in revenue from the previous year.
“The implications of these findings should point firms in the direction of good graphic designers,” added Townsend. “After all, it is a lot easier to add color to a printed piece of paper than to add revenue to a company’s bottom line.”
The research paper can be found online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057740810000677.
Here is the Annual Report e! recently designed for Plymouth Housing Group:
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| Image: Patently Apple |
A few months ago I wrote about the enormous potential I see for the future development of the iPad. For those of you who haven't read the post, I'll summarize. That device has changed my expectations for the web. It seems that tablets have created a platform that is satisfying on more levels than a simple desktop or laptop computer. Up until now, the experience of using the Internet instead of traditional print materials has been an exercise in give and take. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. It's easier to find information and there's much more of it, but we've been forced to accept a degraded level of enjoyment, satisfaction and ease of use.
A few weeks ago, CNN launched a beta version of what they're calling their Tablet View which is a version of the site that is re-imagined to present the news in a more visual way. The articles are presented with an image and headline, arranged from most important in the larger column on the left to least important in the smallest column on the right. When you select a story, it pops up and allows you to read a portion of the article, click through to the full story, or go to the next one.
