Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Forbes recently released its top-ten list of U.S. cities best protected against the current economic downturn; Raleigh and Charlotte both made the cut.

To create the list, Forbes pulled the 50 largest metro areas of the country and ranked them, according to a set of criteria. 

Some of the criteria:

• net job losses or gains, as gleaned from data provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics

• job growth in non-farm payrolls (construction, education and health services, financial activities, information, leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, natural resources and mining, professional and business services, trade, transportation and utilities)

• annual gains in median home prices, as gleaned from data provided by the National Association of Realtors

Final rankings were adjusted by:

"using data from a November 2007 report, "U.S. Metro Economies: The Mortgage Crisis," by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. It lists each city's estimated gross metropolitan product growth by projecting how rising foreclosures and falling home prices would affect overall levels of productivity in local economies." 

To recap: this is fantastic news. Kudos to our friends/clients over at NCEDA and WCED. Read the original article.

 

It's Friday, which means I'm debating the usefulness of wireframes again. Wireframes, for the new and uninitiated, are like "stick-figures" of a website. They indicate importance, organization and functionality of a UI but do so in a way that tries not to be too descriptive of the design. There's a certain amount of layout and organization that is implied, but we try to make sure that we don't tie designers' hands too much.

And it doesn't always work.

At capstrat , our designers and developers do some really powerful work. What's more, they get user experience and usability. So as a UX designer here, I'm in a position where steely control over the design isn't always necessary. In many cases, it's not appropriate since it impinges on designers' and developers' abilities to better deliver a product. Wireframes, unfortunately, can be seen as very prescriptive. Using them can minimize the contributions and expertise of people whose experience is essential to the design.

So, where does that leave us? Well, there are alternatives - page description diagrams being one. I won't go into them too deep here (you can read for yourself here), but suffice it to say that I'm underwhelmed with them. Mostly, they seem to be too vague. They're too prone to error and misinterpretation and are uneven on detail. What's more, they lack the basic information to communicate page-level organization and choreography. As a UX designer, I feel that page description diagrams simply abdicate way too much of what is my responsibility.

But wireframes are also good. They set boundaries of expectations to clients and are concrete in a way that prosaic descriptions can't match.

So, is there a middle ground? I think so, and here's an idea I've been banging around. I call it Pidgin.

Pidgineering

Pidgin dialects arise as a common ground between speakers of different languages. They mix terms from both and create a hybrid. I'm extending the analogy to UX deliverables. In this case, I'm interested in finding a common ground between designers, UXDers and developers. The goal is to create a vocabulary that conveys capability and choreography but is less prescriptive of the design. For the impatient, here's what it looks like:

Essentially, Pidgin is based upon three concepts: blocks, relationships and views. Here's the legend:

Blocks

The idea is to identify meaningful blocks of content and function, and show how they relate to one another. What's a block? Well, that's up to you, but essentially it's a distinct piece of function or content that can be usefully separated. A block is somewhere in the middle. So, a textfield probably wouldn't be a block, but a collection of fields and the submission button would be.

Relationships

Blocks relate to each other through relationships, which are...wait for it...lines. With arrows! Arrows describe the relationship; the pointy end shows what the block belongs to. By default, a single arrow means that the block will only occur one time for the other block.

There can be double arrows too. These indicate multiplicity: that a block can occur many times within another. In an article listing, for example, an article block might appear many times.

The lines themselves are either solid or dashed, indicating the block is required or optional respectively. If you want to get all crazy with it, you can use an open ended arrow to indicate multiple states of an object. Personally, I would discourage this except for trivial states of change. You're better off showing the default state and creating a storyboard for the block that shows how it acts in other situations.

Views

Remember when I said that content blocks related to one another? You might be thinking: but to what do they eventually relate? Views. A view is your page. It can inherit from more basic pages if you want, but that's not necessary. For example, you might abstract the global navigation and relate it to a more generic view. This is shown in the diagram above. Overall, though, a view aligns to an entry on your sitemap.

Is there a catch? There's gotta be a catch.

Yes, Virginia and it's something I'm wrestling with. Pidgins aren't testable-at least, not testable in a conventional sense. You could place this in front of a user and ask them to complete a task, but the results wouldn't be valid in the final design. You could get an idea of gaps and missing functionality, but not a whole lot more. You might be able to test each block, but that's really not useful either since it doesn't test the choreography, which is critical. As a tool to engage both development and design, however, pidgins seem useful in the early stages of the design lifecycle.

Thoughts?

Capstrat recently wrapped up a pitch to a prospect whose name I will not mention here. It was a wonderfully draining experience.

Once a presentation date is set I, like my counterparts, switch into that special gear reserved only for high speed new business pursuits.

What you accomplish is only limited by the number of hours before you walk into that room full of judges.

The process starts off well-paced and methodical and ends up turning into a crescendo of last minute refinements and caffeine-induced second-guessing. I love it.

One minute I feel like I have helped solved the problem that will help us win the business.

The next minute, I feel like a miserable hack who should consider changing careers.

The curveballs come from all directions, and for a change, they are not being thrown by a client. Hindsight shows you they were all for good reasons.

In the end, the pieces all come together, the presentation gels and the team ends up on the same highly scrutinized page.

When you see the client nod his head in complete agreement, you know it was all worthwhile.

At the end of the day you are both exhausted and energized.

Win or lose, we are better off for having gone through the process.

I am ready to do it again, but not this week.

I have work to do.

And dishes to wash, groceries to buy...a supply run to my local home improvement warehouse to make, for a couple of projects that need closure.

So much to do on this, my day of much-needed rest, and all I want to do is play. Several of my creative colleagues and I have just returned from Flash Forward 2007 in Boston, where our brains were expanded, challenged and thrown outside the box. Of the major themes of the week, one that struck me the most was that of remembering, as creatives, to have fun in our work, and to follow the bend in the road when we can.

We work hard dreaming of and orchestrating award-winning work here at Capstrat - while simultaneously navigating a symphony of schedules and deadlines. The folks at Adobe are constantly providing us with deeper, more powerful tools with which to push the envelope on Flash design, production and development; it is easier than ever to find ourselves charging forward, head down, to bring an idea to life - using tried-and-true techniques and code - and in doing so undermining the power at our fingertips.

It is vital that we continue to strive to set the bars of performance and execution, and that means continuing to change the way we think - as our industries and clients continue to shape and change the way they do business. As creatives, it is through experimentation, collaboration and play that we can most effectively push ourselves toward this end. With the changing environment and theology of rich media development, and the user-centered evolution of the Web in general, designers and developers have to be willing to leave the sanctuary of traditional interfaces, navigation and functionality. The schedule at Flash Forward this year, was, as usual, rife with the newest and hottest trends, practices and client work. As a testament to this evolution of tool and trade, however, the week was peppered with inspiring and engaging discussions on staying ahead of the curve. Here are a few session titles in particular:

'Beyond the Knowledge; The Art of Playing'
'Finding Creative Techniques'
'Imagination + Technology'

The curiosity that drove me toward engineering years ago is the same that pushes me today to sharpen my skills as a flash developer. What's this button do? What if I try this effect with this crazy new microphone class I've been reading about? If I do it this way, can I really cut half my file size?!? Using every client project as a canvas on which to blow our own minds is good for us and good for our clients. It may not always work out, and tight schedules may not always allow for it - but setting a goal to experiment a little in your projects will keep you hungry and passionate.

For inspiration:

http://jot.eriknatzke.com/

http://www.reflektions.com/miniml/template.asp?pagename=all

http://lab.mathieu-badimon.com/

http://www.oneover.com/

When clients come to our firm for interactive recommendations they generally have a lot of ideas. The interactive world is scary. There are a lot of acronyms. There are nerds that keep information shrouded in secrecy so that you will have to continue to rely on them. Or worse, there are nerds that complicate things by overexplaining things you don’t need to know.

As a result, clients try to get up to speed on current Internet trends or hide behind their IT person. 

The first thing they will try to tackle and understand is the development language. Clients will often agonize over the language used to develop their site, but this is the wrong focus. Technology is going to change. Developers are smart and they will figure out a way to make new technology work with what you have established. If you build a site and continue to pay attention to the backend as well as the front end, you are going to make a long lasting Web site that will have a longer shelf life. If you build a site and don’t touch it again for 18 months, you are going to have to rebuild it the next time you touch it. So why agonize over the language? Trust the experts.

As a client, your focus should be...

The most important thing you can do as a client is decide what function your Web site will perform. Is it a brochure site? Is it an application? Is it core to your company's business?

There are plenty of companies out there that don’t need to create anything more than a brochure site. We don’t all need social networking sites.

The clients that are most successful are focused on the results, not the way we get there.

Instead of blowing all of your money on a redesign and then doing it again 18-48 months later, spend your money wisely. Invest as you go along. Pay attention to your analytics. Find an expert that is going to keep you up on technology without boring you with the details. You don’t care if Django or Python is the best solution, but you do care that users are finding the right information on the site.

This approach is not always applicable to large companies. When your Web site has to fit into a large-scale enterprise solution, it is very important to perform the due-dilligence to ensure the technologies you invest in will be supported later by your in-house technology team.

As an interactive professional for the past 10 years, I have seen a lot of languages and development theories come and go. Don’t agonize about the language, you’ll always be able to find someone to support it. Instead, focus on the content and the user experience.

Marketing is all about relating to humans. One way to truly be a step ahead is to take the budget you have for your redesign, double it and spend the second half on committed maintenance on your site. It will guarantee a longer lifespan and will help you focus on customers- the reason you made the site.