A couple of weeks ago Brent, Doug and I were in New York for the ad:tech conference. I got to stay an extra day to attend a panel discussion called Design, Wit and the Creative Act. It was put together by Core 77 and hosted at the Art Director’s Club. Ze Frank played moderator to the four-person panel of Kelly Dobson (Technologist), Steven Heller (Writer/Editor), Tobias Wong (Artist) and Paul Budnitz (Founder, Kidrobot).

Ze was asking great questions, but some of the panel members were having trouble describing how they work. Paul Budnitz, however said the one thing that really got my mind working.

Kidrobot, Paul’s company, creates and retails limited edition art toys and apparel (Hang in there, CUers, it’s coming ‘round to you soon.). He was speaking about designing apparel carrying images of his characters. A literal translation of a character on a t-shirt or hoodie would be a medium sized head-to-toe image of it slapped right in the center. Their approach is to change-up literal translation. They take one part of a character (like the eyes, nose and mouth) and zoom in tight on it and that becomes the image. Like so:

So Literal Translation (Paul’s words) becomes Macro Translation (Mine, I think. I’m copyrighting it now just to be sure: Macro Translation©™®.)

How can we apply the idea of Macro Translation©™® to a credit union, or can we at all? And I’m not talking about design elements, necessarily, like cropping the logo tightly and huge in the corner. My question is, what about the concept and content can we zoom in on, simplify?

Let’s start with credit union website content. Is there too much to talk about? Yes. Good gracious, yes.

We are afraid to leave details out. Everything is important. Every department is vying to be a part of what gets distilled down into something more digestable, which brings the communication right back into horse pill territory. Every department want’s a little plot of prime real estate on the home page of the website (even though the login field is all anyone clicks on).

What if the home page of your website was just a login screen? What if that login bypassed all the digital brochure-ery and headed straight to a rich, deftly cross-pollinated online banking interface that pointed members to appropriate services only when their patterns displayed a need for them?

Now, what about Branches? I’ve put my own macro lens on my FI’s branch. I zoomed in on the drive-up ATM. I’ve darkened the actual door one time in the last year. Now, I’m sure branches with real people in them won’t go away any time soon, so which piece of the branch experience can we zoom in on, and would it make the experience better? Would it help people make better choices?

Brent had this to say:

On the branch level the macro lens for me is the conversation. Sometimes there are questions that a website can’t answer. I know if I make a call, ill most likely be on hold forever. So branches are less for anything transactional, to me, but more for something explanatory or conversation. Is explanatory a word?

What do you think? (About macro lenses, not about “explanatory” being, or not being a word.)

Chat with me.