Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

A co-worker shared a site with me that I find stunning: http://whatareyouwondering.com/. This site is meant to answer questions for new parents or soon to be parents.

At first glance I was overwhelmed with the beauty of the site. It's scalable and depricates well in many browsers. The concept is simple, but lovely. The questions are the content and the visual aspect of the site, is created by simply shadowing text. It is at once beautiful, human and content rich. 

However, when I began to play with the site I began to notice I did not like it as much. Do a search for crying. How many results do you get?

My first search resulted in 7, but only 3 questions. The rest were repeats.

I reduced the size of my browser window and I only received 4 results. I reduced it further and I receivd 3, but all three were not viewable on my screen.

If you click on a question, you go to the March of Dimes site to get more information. Is this beautiful site enough to get me engaged and then send me over to the real site where I can find more information? Will I be satisfied as a user?

What are your thoughts? How do you marry beauty and functionality? How would you make this better?

Visual thinking, best explained by Kermit the frog. Some things are timeless.

Kermit Scats

Imagining Shapes

Look at the big button on Soundcloud.com. This variable width beauty scales in at 920px wide on my 1280px monitor. Someone call the Dept of Game and Inland Fisheries--I think this might qualify as a new record.

 

 

Design research is an area that really interests me. In the field of User Experience, design research is really the portion of user experience design that encourages a blend of method and creativity with an observational social experience that helps User Experience Designers fully understand the people their designs will ultimately be communicating with on a very complex level.

At UX Intensive in Minneapolis, the topic of design research was dissected and analyzed extensively and masterfully by Todd Wilkens of Adaptive Path.

There were two aspects of Todd's presentation that really struck me as incredibly useful ideas to enhance the design research process and develop effective and meaningful results across the board that all project team members understand and actively implement. The first of these concepts is painfully simple: bring your client with you as you research their users. This concept can certainly be extended to include the fact that an Experience Designer should ideally involve as many project team members in the design research process as possible. This really helps all of those who will be handling the results of the experience designer's research to more adeptly understand the information that's pouring in and how it should be used.

The second aspect of Todd's presentation that I really clued in on was the concept of creating proto-personas. A proto-persona is basically a very primitive and rough edged version of a likely persona for a certain user set, based more or less entirely upon "gut feeling" about how a certain persona might be portrayed. One of the follow up concepts to this idea was an interesting and very clear approach to developing personas: creating a set of "dimensions" about an entire user set. A dimension is essentially a set of opposites to describe a characteristic. For example, a particular user set might be comprised of single mothers for a project that concerns a baby-sitter business: one dimension of this user set might define two opposites such as, "very cautious and concerned about who is watching her children" versus "just needs someone to keep them occupied while I go to work." This allows the user experience designer to place his/her research findings along clearly defined dimensions and see where patterns emerge. Certain attributes of the user set or actual users (based on user interviews) might fall in similar places along the predefined dimensions. Finding and extrapolating these "clusters" will help the designer clearly see where his/her personas are emerging from the research they've done.

These methods and concepts are extremely useful and provide a good deal of stucture to the experience design process without taking anything away from the creativity and deep thinking required to create a brilliant and comfortable user experience.  Don't be afraid to try them out.

It’s a sweltering Sunday afternoon at the mall. Inside The Apple Store it’s clean, cool and buzzing with hipsters that resemble that “Hi, I’m a Mac” guy. As a Mac user, I stop in occasionally to give props to Jobs and Co. for a brand well done. Sometimes I give mad props if I’m feeling like parting with money.

One of these hipsters glides past me on his cell phone. His conversation caught my ear. At first it sounded idiotic, then I realized prophetic.

“Yeah, I’m here” he says to his friend. “I’m at the iPod store.”

Wow! In a brief second, this yahoo reduced The Revolution of Zen Cool that Apple had been building to a single product.

Was this odd? Do others understand Apple’s greatness? Can you be an Apple user without being an enthusiast, or are we creative folks blinded by pretty stainless steel?

One thing I continue to struggle with is how relevant sitemaps are--and to whom?¹

Below is an example sitemap, which indicates the basic hierarchy of pages or categories within a site.

What's wrong with this picture?

Sitemaps don't represent pages...

Implicitly, they communicate pages of content. This is not necessarily the case. They are a quasi-system model that blurs the lines between content and page. This leads to misinterpretation.

Extending this, they are rooted in a page-centric approach that assumes pages have one state. Ajax-y interactions that reload different content into the same page aren't communicated. 

...and they don't really represent content.

They suggest content, but a through the lens of a page. This, I believe, is an artifact left over from the days where sitemaps were closely tied to the physical implementation. As we've evolved the idea of a sitemap away from actual pages, we didn't rethink how it is actually interpreted or used by either developers or clients. 

...and they don't reflect true navigation or interaction paths.

In fact, they indicate a hierarchical flow between pages. Sitemaps suggest that users typically access the site through the home page. Users who arrive via a search or a link from a friend are likely to be entering at a deeper level than the home page. Luke Wroblewski has a great podcast and set of slides on this.

And sitemaps don't account for related items--hyperlinks that bring together similar content that exist in different categories of the site. Similar information may be "nearer" than sitemaps suggest. The perceived distance is content too and associate navigation can be as important as the categorical navigation. 

So, what do they do well?

For me, they are good as a sketch -- not a final product -- for how content may be organized and how navigation may occur. They work well for initial scoping. But having to caveat what sitemaps are feels like a cop out. There's gotta be a better way.

 Any thoughts? Do sitemaps help you or confuse you?

¹I'm talking about the information architecture kind, but many of the points also extend to those junk drawer sitemap pages that many sites have. That's entirely another issue to address.

After a recent trip to the grocery store, my wife commented how genius the stores are to be selling recycled, reusable bags.

“Huh?” I said. “Smart yes, but genius?”

My wife believes that permanent bags reduce the stores’ cost in buying paper or plastic bags. Okay, I get that. She also believes the shopper has to buy a branded one from each store.

Again,“Huh?”

“I feel uncomfortable taking a Harris Teeter bag into Trader Joe’s. I bought at least one from each store” she says. She went on to say that it’s genius to SELL them, not give them away. Most cost a buck or two, so cheap enough to impulse buy but with enough value to keep– unlike its paper or plastic cousin.

See how sustainable design also proves to be smart business? What do you think?

Design education is a good thing. When my time came to fly the university nest, I remember thinking how I would set the world on fire. My naïveté initially worked to my advantage. I was cut some slack due to in experience. But I quickly learned that experience in inexperience would not build a career. Over the years of interviewing, teaching and mentoring young, eager talent I picked up a few simple, disputable truths that I sincerely hope can help you, a new graduate.

1. Write.

No one’s expecting you to be Tennyson or Tennessee Williams. Heck, not even Tennessee Ernie Ford! Simply be able to convert a complete thought to a well-written sentence. Writing is as much of a design process as creating a logo. It’s designing an emotional connection with words. This one skill has life-long benefits. We receive lots of resumes. It’s unbelievable how many have spelling and grammar errors. Even to the point of spelling our company’s name incorrectly. C’mon, you gotta get that right.

2. Soak up life.

Eat, drink, bathe in, touch, hear, squish between your toes and feel everything you can. This provides a repository for inspiration. I firmly believe original ideas come from original inspiration. Use your experiences to influence your work. It’ll have more heart, you’ll have more fun and be far more pleasant to be around.

3. Make everything and everyone better than you found them.

That goes for the planet, your colleagues, younger talent and most importantly, you. I believe that we should push others to do their best work, yet push ourselves even more. I also believe you should work with people better than you. You’ll do your best work and likely get rewarded with more good work. However, if you find yourself working for someone (or something) you don’t respect, leave. Your soul will thank you.

4. Concept always wins.

Good design is a memorable, smart solution. You get there with a bulletproof concept. If concept and “pretty” are in a cage match, concept will always win. Concept is the sticky part of an idea. It is NOT a Photoshop filter. Seek to strengthen the concept in everything you do. I promise you, no one will hand you an award-winning project. It’s up to you to really excel.

5. Focus on the right thing — achieving your client’s mission.

While we often forget, we wouldn’t be here without clients. Thank them often by always doing your best work. You’ll be repaid with the opportunity to do even more good work while earning their trust and partnership. It’s only with those qualities that your true brilliance shines. Live by this and I promise your reputation will thank you.

A year ago we started an employee-led group called Capstrat Green. Our purpose was to collectively understand sustainability. Most important for our professional lives, we have to understand how to communicate sustainability. We hope to know the sacrifices individuals may need to make and the expected outcomes. Then, understand the balance needed between the two.

This living experiment learning has simple objectives.

• We seek to help our clients better understand how sustainability plays into Corporate Social Responsibility by being a living example.

• We want to inspire our colleagues to think creatively, yet pragmatically when it comes to solving complex problems.

In short, sustainability is the ultimate in step ahead thinking. We’re required to learn, explore, analyze, refine and implement solutions that will have a guaranteed impact on our company’s culture, our client’s business and the environment. After determining our objectives here’s how we set it up:

Establisha cross-functional core team and a management representative.

We have representatives from all areas of our company, including accounting. We determined early that measurement is key. The team leads our company to find creative ideas that can be practically implemented. It’s worth noting, this is not planned as a Capstrat cost savings initiative. It’s reasonable to assume that conserving environmental resources may also have an impact on our spending. However, we are looking for the biggest impact we can make with the smallest sacrifice. Again, we want to create sustainable solutions to learn from and use to inspire others.

Solicit sustainable ideas from colleagues. The criteria are fairly simple.

Ideas must be implemented within reason. The team reviews ideas for:

• Expected impact versus cost to implement

• Ease to implement and adopt

• Results that can be documented

•Originality

Distribute rewards and recognition as appropriate to drive behavioral change.

The mission is to drive creative thinking with a purpose. Admittedly, that’s easy in a culture like Capstrat’s. Our passion for the world around us is hard to contain. The Green Team helps us balance all of the fantastic suggestions.

It’s easy to get bogged down trying to solve our environmental problems. But we have to do it. We caused it, we need to advocate solutions. Capstrat looks at sustainability as balancing all of the moving parts to understand all sides of the issue. Then using innovative thinking to design a solution that works fairly for all concerned. Finally documenting the results for future learning. It’s easy, try it.

It was announced today that troubled movie renter Blockbuster offered to buy troubled gadget seller Circuit City.

Never mind that analysts are scratching their heads on the economics, I’m intrigued that this signals a rapidly approaching new era of on-demand cocooning. This is just another sign of change that Blockbuster started twenty years ago.

I grew up in Raleigh with only a handful of big movie houses. One was The Cardinal Theatre. With two huge screens, great concessions and midnight showings every weekend, it was always packed. Sometime around the early 1990s, The Cardinal Theatre was replaced with…wait for it…a Blockbuster. It’s sadly ironic isn’t it? After all Faith Popcorn told us cocooning was the new wave back in the 90s.

My, how things progress. “The deal is a sign that Blockbuster doesn't have confidence in the retail video rental business anymore, says Shahid Khan, a partner at IBB Consulting. The movie rental store business is officially dead.”

The Blockbuster that replaced The Cardinal was closed a few years ago when the chain began facing online competition.

If designed correctly, the merger could result in a new customer experience for both companies. The new “CityBlock” or “CircuitBuster” has a chance to reinvent itself in a way that satisfies the entertainment buff in everyone. I just hope they understand that today’s retail environment HAS to be about the experience. Customers have easy online alternatives.