My mind’s been a buzz since hearing Stamen’s Michal Migurski’s UX Week talk - Greebles, Nurnies, Tiles and Flair: Visualization By Analogy. Michal started his talk by explaining the concept of greebles (sometimes referred to as nurnies) - a small piece of detailing added to break up the surface of an object - often used for special effects in film. Greebles are used to make something look convincing - they are, as Michal said, a visual “sleight of hand”. They’re the visual texture on a prop that helps us believe the world behind what we’re looking at. Greebles are a special effect technique - the texture that make props look convincing.

Michal went on to talk about how advertising is kinda like a greeble. It “promotes” stuff, but it also functions as the surface marks of our experiences in the world. A billboard, a store sign, a commercial on TV - they’re all small pieces of texture that create our reality and help us orient and navigate in the world. Michal asked us to imagine experiences like Nascar or walking in Times Square to reinforce this idea. Advertising is a huge part of those experiences- the visual texture advertising provides is a defining characteristics of that reality. Without it, those experiences would be fundamentally very different.

Banner ads and ad sense seem to be the advertising greebles of PC Internet experiences. It’s interesting how ad banners feel like they are a format/greeble borrowed from the physical world reality of the the newspaper or magazine experience. Ad sense seems like an advertising experience that is unique to digital realities, though. Similar to advertising in the physical world, ad sense helps you navigate a space. It’s a visual surface mark that helps orient users to what they’re trying to find.

Which got me thinking about mobile advertising. I’ve mentioned before that this topic is “challenging” for me, but Michal’s ideas about greebles has given me some insight as to why. Mobile advertising is a weird and unique technology experience that carefully straddles both physical and digital realities. Unlike PC experiences, mobile contexts don’t really allow users to get immersed in the digital world. Folks in the mobile space have tried to borrow from the physical reality experience with stuff like “coupons” or the promise of “location-based advertising” as well as the digital reality with tiny little ad banners on mobile web pages — but neither seem terribly effective.

I was reminded of something Adam Greenfield, said - “I think things like the iPhone and N95 represent not a starting point, but an endpoint.” In many ways, the new functionality mobile phones have introduced in the last 18 months have fundamentally changed the “reality” of mobile experiences. That experience is yet to be defined - the mobile reality is in flux - so it’s kinda like a reality frontier. The appropriate surface marks needed to navigate the experience have yet to be determined, so it’s no wonder mobile advertising experiences feel… well, unconvincing. I wonder what advertising greebles will help us find our way in this new mobile reality?