Church Communications by Chuck Scoggins

One of my favorite posts from Seth Godin is How to live happily with a great designer. In light of my recent post and upcoming discussions on frustrations that church communications professionals experience in their jobs, I thought this might be a good post to highlight. For those on church staffs who have to lead or work with communications folks, this will give you a little insight into our world.

Note: These posts might come across as a little condescending. I doubt Seth Godin meant them that way and I certainly don’t mean them that way. They are, however, really great food for thought.

Here are a few of my favorite points from Godin’s list:

5. You can’t tell me you’ll know it when you see it. First, you won’t. Second, it wastes too much time. Instead, you’ll need to have the patience to invest twenty minutes in accurately describing the strategy. 

8. You don’t know a lot about accounting so you don’t backseat drive your accountant. You hired a great designer, please don’t backseat drive here, either.

9. If you want to be part of the process, please go to school. Read design magazines or take a course from Milton Glaser or get a subscription to Before & After. By the way, that one link is the single best part of this post.

10. This one may surprise you: don’t change your existing design so often. Not when your kids or your colleagues tell you it’s time. Do it when your accountant says so.

11. Don’t get stressed about your logo.

12. Get very stressed about user interface and product design. And your packaging.

13. Say thank you.

What about you? What are your favorites from Seth’s post?

I love the church I attend. This weekend they did something that makes a lot of sense for church communications. They used QR codes during the weekend services to help people to connect to online content.

They included the slide above during the pre-service rotation this weekend. As you can see, it has a very large QR code on it that could be scanned on a phone by someone sitting in the seats. They also included the QR code in the printed program (aka bulletin). It points to an online copy of the program and in the platform announcements they informed us that this is a start of an effort to be more green and, I suspect, an eventual move to eliminate the printed version.

They also let everyone know that this year’s tax giving statements would only be available online.

I think these are brilliant moves for several reasons:

1. It is convenient
I can easily pull up the weekly program on my phone or iPad and refer to it during the week.

2. It saves money
I know of churches who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in printing. Why not try to reduce that by going digital and reallocate that money towards something that matters…like this (another effort my church is heavily involved in).

3. It moves toward a digital & attractional mindset
The church is usually way behind on leveraging technology. While I realize that tools are simply that, there is also something to be said about churches who embrace technology. Even churches that do not use technology to actively spread the gospel can be attractional to folks who like technology when they partake in its use. Besides, most people are already living their lives in the digital arena…we might as well join them there!

4. It’s adjustable
If there are changes in times or locations or any detail, the church can quickly update the program and republish it to the web. In some churches this alone should be motivation enough to go digital!

5. It is environmentally responsible
Whether you’re in to the green movement or not, reducing the amount of trees we cut down can never hurt, right?

What about you? Have you seen any good uses of QR codes in the church lately?

I’ve been doing a good bit of UI work lately, so I decided to brush up on some principles of user experience. Here are the ones that jumped out at me (taken from a variety of sources):

Target Audience
It is imperative that we know who will be experience our design. Questions to ask:

• What are their tendencies?
• What is their technical compentence?
• What are their cultural norms?
• What styles appeal to them?

Metaphors
What expectations does the user have with our design? How can we add similarities to other designs to help enhance the user’s experience? Are there life metaphors that can help the user (i.e. a physical desk with file folders on it is a familiar concept that helped users when MS Windows was first introduced).

Transparency
Don’t surprise users. Make all of the features visible and readily available.

Consistency
The design should be internally and externally consistent for the best user experience.

Focus
Some aspects of the design attract attention more than others do. The human eye and brain works in a non-linear fashion and design focus should help the user understand what is most important at any given time.

Safety
Let the user develop confidence by providing a safety net.

Aesthetics
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again…the prettiness of a design can say as much as the words, symbols, icons, etc. 

Structure
There should be a logical structure to the design. A user should be able to experience a “psychological outline” that helps provide stability and confidence. Using headers, images, bolded text, and colors can help create this structure.

Grouping
Similar functions, experiences, and design elements should be grouped together when possible. 

Disruptions
Never, ever, disrupt the user/user experience unless it is absolutely critical.

Progress & Status Updates
When possible and applicable, give the user an idea of progress or status.

Tone
Make sure the tone of your text is appropriate and grammar is helpful. Here are some tips from Microsoft:

• Avoid talking about the user in the third person. Say “You” instead of “The user.”
• Whenever possible, judiciously use “My name:” or “My E-Mail address:” instead of “Name:” or “E-Mail:”
• Underline text only if it is used for links. It confuses the user if the underlined text is not a link.
• Draw attention to important information with a bold label, but use it carefully. Too much bold text is confusing and reduces the overall impact of the form.
• When writing the text for a check box, make sure it is easy to know what will happen when it is selected and when it is unselected, or cleared. The recommended option is to write the text directly as the result of the check box being selected. For example, write “Send me helpful information from your partners” instead of “Do not send me helpful information from your partners.” While I can imagine many marketing people arguing about this particular example, I’m sure you know what I mean.

Mobile
Remember that much user experience happens on mobile devices. It is important to design with mobile in mind. (There is an entire subset of UI principles for mobile)

Hopefully you find this helpful. Be sure to add any other principles that you leverage regularly in the comments… 

Most people know that you can create guides in Photoshop to help you with design and layout. Typically guides are created by dragging them out from the ruler or by manually typing in a ruler measurement from the View > New Guide menu. However, they can also be created using percentages. This quick tutorial video shows you how…