A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about Tumblr, which you can use to create and maintain a tumblelog. When I finished the article, I sorta stopped using Tumblr. Apparently, I didn’t have the time for 5-second tumblelog posts, despite that I knew how much you could benefit from it.

I started using it again the other day. And quickly got hooked. Now I’m constantly on the lookout for little snippets of interesting and relevant content to post. Photots, quotes, links, you name it - if it’s related to web site and application design, there’s a good chance I’ll post it. And I promise, it will always be relevant to you.

(The tumblelog includes RSS, by the way, so you can simply subscribe and never worry about it again.)

Without further ado, visit the rhjr tumblelog!

If you haven’t yet downloaded the free bonus chapter from the book (Chapter 2), then you might want to hurry. I’ll be taking it down this evening, at 8pm MST.

Download it here. Enjoy!

Part 1 was about unboxing the MacBook Pro. Part 2, Windows Vista. Part 3, Adobe CS3. In Part 4, I want to talk about why all of this matters and what elements make up a great out-of-box experience.

First impressions count

First impressions, as we all know, are vitally important. When you interview someone for a job, you expect them to dress appropriately, be polite, etc. When you spot someone on the street, you immediately make certain judgments about them based on how they dress, their body language, how they speak to other people, and so on. Sure, your long-term impression may change should you meet the person and get to know him or her better, but that first impression will always impact how you perceive the person.

When a person “hires” your product, the same rules apply. Unboxing a new product should feel like opening a Christmas present.

It’s your job to assure customers that they’re using the right product. When you make a great first impression, users are a little more willing to forgive the things that go wrong in the future, and a little more willing to tell their friends about the things that go right.

Apple knows this. When you open up a MacBook - or any Apple product, for that matter - things are presented as simply and cleanly as possible. Apple understands that the first impression may be only one of a million impressions it makes, but it’s also one of the most important, because it’s, well, first.

Microsoft tried to address this point with its sleek, new Vista packaging, but in its efforts to create an innovative new packaging technique, it failed to create something everyone understands. Sure, there are probably plenty of people who opened it correctly, but there are also probably a lot of people that had an experience similar to mine (like the people who drove to the library to get help opening the Vista box).

My first impression of Vista was a bunch of chipped plastic, a pair of scissors, box parts thrown everywhere, and frustration.

Apple, on the other hand, nailed it. There’s only one way to open the box, and it’s easy. There’s only one way to reveal the contents of the box - you simply life out the styrofoam - and it’s also very easy and clear. It even has finger-holes to facilitate the process. During setup, they immersed me in the process by encouraging me to take a photo for my account with the built-in iSight camera. My first impression of the MacBook Pro was not only extremely functional, it was fun.

Aesthetics play a role here, too. Unsurprisingly, Apple opted for the squeaky-clean visual design that showed almost nothing but images of the product waiting inside. They listed system requirements in a small area on one side of the box, and pointed out a couple of cool features on another side. The design was simple, and with a solid black background, the whole thing looked quite clean and classy.

Microsoft did a decent job with the visual design of the Vista box. And while the outer sleeve of the Adobe CS3 box was nothing to write home about, the box inside was quite stylish. But neither were as simple and elegant as the Apple box. Apple goes for simplicity inside and out. As a result, Apple boxes make a bold statement compared to most packaging, where feature lists and whiz-bang graphics constantly compete for attention on store shelves.

Aesthetics aside, there are two key elements that comprise a killer first impression. And they’re the things that make unboxing a new product or installing new software feel like opening a Christmas present. These elements are anticipation and surprise.

Anticipation

So, your customer ordered your product, she waited for it to be delivered, and when she finally got it into her hands, she ripped open the shipping box. She’s already built up quite a sense of anticipation on her own. But what happens next? What’s the message you want to deliver?

What you want is to continue that sweet sense of anticipation. You want her to feel like you’ve just given her the one thing she was missing, the one thing that will finally make her life complete, and that all she has to do is open up the package. Yes, this is a lofty goal, but it’s also quite reachable.

Apple shows you what you’re about to get right there on the box. Nothing clutters up the space - you just see the product, all by itself, the way you’ll see it every single day once you get it out of the box. It’s shown on a solid black background, so you see it in its most picturesque fashion. This fact enables you to grab the handle and boast to everyone in the house that you just received the coolest thing they’ve ever seen. It gives you a reason to boast. “I have something beautiful in my hands, and it’s all mine. I’m worthy of this beautiful thing.”

When you open the box, you see the imprint of the product name. You see the finger-holes in the styrofoam, inviting you to lift it out of the box and reveal your new MacBook Pro. One more step, and it’s all yours. You move the styrofoam and lift out the laptop, and slip off its cover. For the first time, you see the machine.

With a Christmas present, you slip off the ribbon, rip through the wrapping paper, and open the box to reveal what is surely bound to become your new favorite thing. See the similarity?

Each step is designed to heighten your sense of anticipation.

Listen up, Microsoft. A plastic box with impossible-to-open tabs is not going to heighten anyone’s sense of anticipation. At best, it creates a “So, what’s next?” feeling.

Surprise

Now for the surprise.

Since the Apple box itself reveals what inside, Apple included a couple of things you didn’t expect. First, the MacBook Pro comes with a remote, which you can use to control iLife applications from across the room. Not the most useful thing in the world, but the remote looks like an iPod Nano, and this fact makes you feel somehow cooler for owning it.

It also contains two booklets. Both have solid white covers, containing nothing but a single line of text. One is labeled “Everything Mac.” The other is labeled “Everything else.”

“Everything Mac” is the user manual. It tells you in clear language what everything does and how to get going with your new Mac. “Everything else” contains warranty information for your new machine.

And there’s a third surprise that probably only affects you if you own a second monitor or do a lot of speaking engagements. The third surprise is that the machine comes with an adapter, so you can plug your Mac into most monitors and projectors. This thing costs $50 or something from the Apple store, and you’re bound to need it at some point. Very nice of Apple to include it.

Are these surprises major? No. They certainly would not have helped you make up your mind when deciding to purchase the product. But they do provide small moments of “Oh, cool - check that out!”, which keep the momentum going. And they signify that you didn’t stop pursuing a great user experience when you finished designing the box. It means you kept going. It means that you still care about the customer after she’s opened the box.

In a user’s mind, this means the company is going to continue to care about her for a long, long time.

Microsoft didn’t include any surprises, except that Vista is shockingly slow if you only have 512MB of RAM dedicated to it. (Remember the days when 512MB was a healthy amount of RAM? What was that - three years ago?)

Adobe included a big surprise. They included a DVD full of stock images and other content, and they included another DVD containing an entire library of video tutorials to help users get the most from their software. Of course, the clunky, slow, unengaging installation process detracted from this, so while they started out great, they sort of lost momentum towards the tail end of the first impression.

Make a positive impression

To be clear, I’m no expert on out-of-box experiences. I’ve never read any research on them or studied them formally in any way. These are just my thoughts on how the great ones have gone and what I think made them successful.

Creating a killer first impression is vital, in software and product design, and in life. If you can create a strong sense of anticipation and surprise, you’re on to something great. In doing this, you set the stage for all future interactions with your company. Make a great first impression, and every impression after that will be positively affected by it.

What you do to make the first impression good is entirely up to you, and methods will vary as wildly as the companies that come up with them. The important thing is to show your customers that you care from the very beginning. Impress them at the start, and you’ll impress them every step of the way.

Good luck!

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about unboxing the Apple MacBook Pro. Next, we talked about the grueling experience of unboxing Windows Vista. Today, we look at Adobe CS3. (In Part 4, I’ll talk about why all this is important.)

With CS3, Adobe made a solid attempt to compete with Apple in terms of aesthetics. The packaging itself is quite stylish, and communicates only what it needs to. Sure, there’s a big block of text on the cover, but this list of products inside the box is important to make it clear to buyers which version they’ve picked up.

Here’s a slideshow of the unboxing experience (use the arrows at the bottom to navigate).

Nice, huh? The only real issue is that the outer sleeve wraps really tightly around the cardboard box, so when you pull the sleeve off of the box, the lid tends to go with it. The first time I did this, I pulled the sleeve upwards, which had the effect of removing the lid from the cardboard box. The lid was stuck inside the sleeve. So, the little moment of seeing the cardboard box for the first time wasn’t as perfect as it should have been. Not a big deal, but Adobe clearly intended to create a nice moment here, and pulling the lid off of the box with the outer sleeve sort of ruined it.

Removing the lid reveals a large booklet and a DVD case. The booklet contains a bunch of information about how to get started with CS3 products and how they integrate. It has a nice design and was quite informative overall. The DVD case was fairly generic, however, and didn’t positively affect my first impression. Adobe used printouts that slipped into the outer sleeve of a clear, blank DVD case. Nothing special there. That said, there were three DVDs inside - one for application installers, one for content, and one for a library of training videos from Lynda.com - so the lackluster DVD case didn’t bother me.

Moving on, here’s a slideshow of the install screens.

The first 9 screens were all part of the installation process (the last 2 were for registration, which I’ll talk about in a moment). That’s right - 9 screens. First, the DMG file opened. It didn’t look nearly as good as many Mac installers. This launched another window, which contained the Setup.app file. This ran an initialization process, which eventually lead to a License Agreement. After agreeing to the license, I was given the option to choose which applications I wanted to install. Next, I chose which drive to install them on. Then I waited.

The installer ran for a really long time. On my machine, it took at least 30 minutes for all the applications to install. I’ve heard it can take over an hour on slower machines.

This was a fairly clunky process. Adobe could have cut the number of screens in half quite easily, and probably could have even gotten it down to one or two to cretae a far more elegant install experience.

Adobe also missed an obvious oppportunity here to engage users during the long wait. They could have plugged in some screencasts or marketing demos - like the ones used on the site - to highlight the new features of CS3, talk about how to get started, and so on. Instead, they showed me only progress meters as each application was installed.

The registration screen appeared the first time I launched a CS3 product, and while I appreciate that this made the install process a tiny bit shorter, it created an interruption when I thought I was all done with the administrative work. I had gone through the whole installation process, which took a large number of clicks and a long boring wait, and when I was finally ready to pop open an application and start playing around, I was interrupted and asked to register the product.

Adobe’s packaging may have been stylish compared to most other software, but the install process certainly was not as nice as I would have expected from a company that focuses so much on design.

In Part 4 of this series, I’ll talk about why all of this matters and how to make a great first impression.

Tiny interruption:

I’ll be doing two sessions at TODCon 2007 in Las Vegas, NV in June. Should be a great event. Those who have attended before swear by it, and I since it’s chock full of familiar faces, there should plenty of opportunites to eat, drink, and be merry. Oh, and learn things.