260 days ago / 3 Comments

Last month, I was interviewed by Jon Ward of the Washington Times for an article about the new Whitehouse.gov Web site. The article, published this morning, speculates that “information is harder to find on the Obama Web site than it was on the site created and run by the Bush administration.” Since the views represented in the article do not necessarily reflect my own, I thought it might be best to share my personal thoughts on the redesigned Whitehouse.gov site:

General impressions:
I remember visiting the Whitehouse.gov site prior to and immediately after President Obama’s inauguration. What first struck me about the new Whitehouse.gov site was the dramatic full-width carousel or messaging area. Whereas the previous site felt more like a news site with lots of useful information spread throughout, this administration’s version of Whitehouse.gov has more in common with product or service sites— there’s a clear central message being communicated. This design choice is consistent with the current administration, as President Obama has tried to remain firmly focused on a core set of issues. (If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, then you know how important I feel it is for leaders to cast a clear and compelling vision.)

Social Media
The second thing that really stood out was how the site — and this administration — is embracing social media tools like YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter. I remember hearing about how Obama would be using YouTube for his Weekly Addresses, a break with the traditional “radio” address. Moving to a video format demonstrates an awareness of how more people are communicating and sharing information. But, aside from just participating in these existing platforms, I’ve been more excited by the various areas created to facilitate a dialogue between individuals, neighborhoods and our nation’s leadership. From “crowdsourcing” topics to be addressed to making financial decisions transparent and accessible— it’s obvious that conversation and participation are a priority.

Visual Design
Beyond the structure and content changes, I’m impressed by the overall aesthetic. Whereas previous versions of Whitehouse.gov felt a bit stale and older, the new site manages to feel fresh and contemporary while retaining a sense of heritage. I appreciate subtle gestures like the textured backgrounds and attention to typography. I think the bold use of blue does a lot to create a modern feel, but then all the little accents, soft shading and nods to architectural details keep the pages distinctive and appropriate to the function of the site.

Content
I can’t say I ever frequented previous versions of Whitehouse.gov. That’s been different since this administration took office. Given the regularly updated blogs and video content, I feel a lot more connected to what’s going on in the Whitehouse. And the fact that this less “formal” content is integrated into the site (versus being buried behind a “blog” tab) creates a sense of… intimacy? I feel more connected to the conversations, issues and personalities in Washington, more so than ever before. Just look at the site navigation— “Contact Us” is part of the main navigation! With that said, I have read some articles indicating content (press briefings and presidential remarks) is missing from the site or not current— that concerns me. But the fact that we as a people, organized together online, can identify these gaps is a testament to new levels of accountability that elected officials and businesses now face.

Site Structure
Concerning main navigation, I also find the structure of the site to be intuitive. Moving from left to right you have

• content that changes frequently (“The Briefing Room” and “Issues”),
• …followed by information about our current administration (“Our Administration”),
• …which leaves the historical content that rarely changes (“About the White House” and “Our Government”).

I can stay current with the most recent events or zero in on a specific topic I care about— this structure seems natural and supports different ways people might interact with information.

Finding Information
While the new site makes it easy to browse through recent content by either the issue or media type, finding an older press release on a specific topic is best accomplished using the search tool.

To test out the previous and new versions of the site, I performed a few searches. Both versions face the same universal search problem— how do you best help people sift through thousands of documents? “Paging” results is a pretty common solution for dealing with too much content, though probably not so useful for finding a specific video or executive order. That said, the newer version of search results is better in several respects:

1. The “narrow results by:” sidebar allows you to quickly filter a long list of search results by specific categories.
2. Search results are much easier to visually scan, and
3. The “view all results on one page” feature is really useful for people who want to search within a page (with a browser search, for example).

(As a point of comparison, here is the same search on the previous version of the site. )

Also, Whitehouse.gov content hosted on external sites (such as video content on YouTube) is very well organized into different groups, making it very easy to browse through videos. And, in the case of YouTube, as the ability to search spoken words within videos becomes common, it’ll be much easier to find specific video content. This is another advantage to embracing social media— we can all benefit from the advances of those external sites who are financially motivated to improve their different technologies. One feature missing from the current site (that existed in the previous version) is the ability to browse news by date (my thoughts on this below).

I also performed a few different searches using the Whitehouse.gov search and Google site search— I didn’t find any discrepancies.

Concerning browsing behaviors, while the main “Issues” pages are obviously edited content, I feel much more comfortable with the newest versions of these pages. On the new site, the writing within the Issues area is much more terse and to the point. Comments are written like a progress report: a list of short, bulleted accomplishments, with— and this is important— links to supporting events or comments. Contrast this with lengthy fact sheets from the previous site, which often felt more like press releases and photo opps. And on the old site, where there were specific accomplishments called out, there were rarely any links to supporting information. It’s also worth noting that within the issues area, the new site surfaces related content in a sidebar area. This is useful for browsing content related to that specific issue.

Disagreement
Contrary to what the Washington Times article suggests, I do not believe the new Whitehouse.gov site has traded substance for style.

1. Style is important, not just for making a good overall impression but for also communicating information. The new Whitehouse.gov site does a much better job at communicating information.
2. Decentralizing content and making it sharable beyond the Whitehouse.gov domain not only demonstrates community participation but actually increases accountability and accessibility, and introduces a certain vulnerability to those external systems.
3. While organizing content by date is currently absent from the site, there are much better ways of finding information that have been introduced or improved (see above).
4. And what about not organizing content by date? From the article:

The biggest difference is that the Bush Web site archived all its information by year, month and day, with a sidebar menu that allowed a user to view virtually all the information from, for example, a day in 2002 — speech transcripts along with video and audio of the speech, press releases, official statements, nominations, letters to Congress, executive orders — with three clicks of the mouse.

This suggests that organizing news by chronology is a better (“three clicks!”) way to sort information. I beg to differ. Who can tell me the year/month/week that Bush stood on that carrier and declared “Mission Accomplished” with regards to Iraq? Unless it’s a significant event, or happened at or around the same time as a significant personal event, we aren’t going to think about information in terms of time stamps. Keyword searches and topical filters are going to be much more effective ways to sift through a high volume of information. “With three clicks of the mouse” assumes a user know the exact date, which is rarely the case!

There you go. My 2¢ on the Whitehouse.gov site. Is it an improvement over the previous version? I think so. Can the site be better? Of course. Is is as good as promised by Obama— the popular opinion is not yet. But, as anyone who designs Web sites and applications knows, a site is never done— only launched and then improved with time and usage.

317 days ago / 5 Comments

A good friend of mine recently stepped into an art director role and asked me for any advice I might have. I started to respond via email, but figured other people might find this useful. So, here you go!

1. Listen
   While you’ll have a strong urge to come in and “prove” you are a capable leader (usually through top-down, heavy handed actions), spending the first few weeks quietly listening, learning and observing will make you a far better leader in the long run. This is a new environment, with different members, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Make this about them— you want to learn everything you can about your team, the company, their clients, and their history.
2. Meet each person
   People are not all the same. You need to get to know each team member as an individual. You need to learn what each person’s strengths and weaknesses are. This is especially important with creative groups, where skills and talent can vary greatly, and where individuals hate being slotted neatly into (and rarely fit) a predefined role or job description. Most importantly, you need to learn what makes each person tick—why are they here, and not elsewhere. Fear? Satisfaction? To work with other team members? Convenience? Specific clients? It’s critical that you understand what motivates each team member to do their best. Tapping into these personal motivations will be the most effective way to accomplish your goals as a manager.
3. Cast a vision
   This is the tough one— your team (and depending on the size of the organization, your company) needs to have a clear and compelling sense of purpose. Call it vision, mission, mantra, strategic intent, purpose—whatever! Like the “put a man on the moon” mantra, you need to uncover the shared sense of purpose that unites everyone. Expect this to take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. It took me 5 months to figure this out at Viewzi.
4. Connect the group vision to personal motivations
   Perhaps farther down the road, the key to growing an excited, intrinsically motivated team to is to help your team members connect their personal goals and motivations to the larger group vision. If there isn’t a good fit, then maybe this isn’t the right place for that person. While this is a tough bridge to cross, it’s usually best for the company and individual— it’s critical that people be where they are happy, growing, and excited about the work they are doing.
5. Understand peers and bosses, politics
   As much as you want to focus on you and your team, it’s equally important to understand the culture (and politics) inside the organization you’re working at. If you succeed in truly creating a team culture, you—as a leader—will be looked at to pave the way and clear the road of barriers that would prevent the team from kicking a**. Your job will become less focused on the team and more externally focused on efforts that support the team— managing bad clients, navigating thorny political issues, etc. It’s important that you understand how to do such things.
6. Guide, don’t do
   As a manager, you need to learn to work through people. You cannot do their work for them. I’ll say that again: You cannot do your teams work for them. This is especially challenging if you are really good at what you do (and I know you are a perfectionist!). You will face a crossroad when you must choose: you can do people’s work for them, or figure out how to help them to do better work. The latter road is the much more difficult path, especially when you really want to just jump in and show them how it’s done, but this is your chosen path as a manager— to help those around you rise up and exceed your expectations. They’ll never do that if you’re doing their job for them. While challenging, this is the path that doesn’t lead you to dead ends, late nights, and burnout. What’s best, one day you’ll discover that you’ve surrounded yourself with people who can do what you used to do better than you ever could have dreamed. This is nirvana for managers.
7. Make the subjective objective
   So how do you get people to be better? Frame the problem to be solved. Establishing objective criteria for evaluation is critical to offering valid feedback. It should never be “because my boss doesn’t like it.” It should be “my boss helped me understand why it might not work, or how it could work better.” Whether you’re discussing a Web site or an ad campaign, clients pay you and your company to create these things in order to accomplish clear objectives. As a manager, making these business and design objectives clear to your team is key. Is this more or less usable? Will this increase conversion? How does this fit with our target market? At the end of the day, while expression and art are certainly a part of what we do, we are designers. And Design is concerned with accomplishing a particular purpose. It is these purposes against which we should evaluate our design decisions— not our personal opinions.
8. Meddle when necessary, but be clear about it
   Okay, not everything will be cut and dry. Sometimes you’ll have an idea you want to see given form. Or maybe someone is just not moving past the concept they’re stuck on. In these cases (and do keep them rare), it’s ok to cross the line— just be clear about it: “I’m meddling now.” However, even in these cases where you’re demonstrating how you would solve the problem, the goal is not that this employee would emulate your solution; no, you should want this different perspective to challenge them, inspire them, and provide them with a fresh way to look at the problem that will inspire their own, original solution. You’re jumpstarting their stalled engine, not programming the GPS (and if they do solve it in your way, they’ve made that choice as designers).
9. Designate clear owners…
   Resist the urge to be hands on, if that’s not your role as a director. A sense of ownership is critically important among creative professionals, regardless of talent level. It’s important to be clear about who owns what or who has the final say. Everyone should have some project or some piece of the project they can point to and say “I made this.” Whatever “this” is, be clear about it, and then help them hit a home run with whatever it is they own. This means understanding their unique solution to the problem and either nurturing this idea to be stellar, or helping them understand where the idea is lacking. In an environment with lots of small projects, it’s easier to parcel out the projects to individual owners. However, if there is only one or two project that everyone is working on, ownership can be a bit trickier…
10. …but also prioritize group collaboration
    While a sense of individual ownership is important, it’s often not that cut and dry. And some of your best ideas won’t come from any one individual. Pixar has assembled a stellar team of animators and engineers. They have a great practice of daily peer review sessions, where whoever attends provides feedback on work done the previous day. Programs like these encourage everyone to participate and feel that sense of ownership on a larger project. More importantly, these conversations quickly educate less mature team members on what constitutes a “good” solution. I’ve also found that almost all projects go through divergent and convergent phases; a phase for when you’re generating ideas and a phase for when you’re refining a selected idea. The nature of collaboration changes with these phases. I set aside ownership during the divergent phase, allowing everyone a chance to generate new ideas. Out of this process will generally come a few ideas worth pursuing. I believe it’s very important to let the originators of an idea (who are often the champions for that idea) see it through to completion. It’s at this point that I can say “you own this” and the team will help you make the best of a concept that everyone agreed was worth pursuing.
11. Don’t feel threatened by stellar employees
    Don’t be afraid of people knowing or being better at something than you are. Expect this—and be excited by it— it means your overall team, including you, has that much more to offer. You have your own strengths and weaknesses. And there’s far too much out there to know everything. Let your team and peers complement you where you are weak. And let them step up to the plate in these cases, either joining you in meetings or taking your place. Don’t ever feel threatened by a really strong team member— rather, count this as a blessing and do everything you can to keep this an environment they want to remain in.
12. Let individuals represent their own work
    This one can be risky, but hear me out. If someone has done great work, make sure they get the credit for it. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to see bad managers take their employees good work and represent it as their own. Or worse, credit the employee but present the ideas themselves and butcher the presentation. Let the idea owners present their work. And if they’re not so good at representing ideas yet, help them out. Being able to represent, explain and defend your ideas is a basic communication skill that everyone at all levels needs to learn at some point. Have reservations about doing this? A good friend (and mentor to me) repeatedly said his job was to work himself out of his current position. Help people on your team do those things that would groom them for your position.
13. And a few random comments…
    Most of what I’ve written assumes a fairly talented team. I personally favor the small, flat teams made up of mid-to-senior level folks. In these situations, your job as a manager is much easier. (It’s more like a group organizer than anything else.) However, your situation may involve many more levels and titles, and may include interns and junior level folks. I wouldn’t make exception to anything I’ve advised above. But, the projects people get to work on should be appropriate to their capabilities (and fit with their interest and talents). This means people who do great work with what is given to them will in effect earn the right to do more interesting work. And this has nothing to do with tenure or titles, but rather prior accomplishments.

In the end, the goal of all of these practices is to establish trust. If your team trusts you, well… things are so much easier! They’ll listen to feedback with an open mind. They’ll take you seriously. And on those occasions when the work is not so desirable (which will be more than you’d like), they’ll be more agreeable to continue doing their best work— knowing that you’re looking out for them. You want a team that trusts you, and knows that you are personally invested in their individual growth, wherever that growth may take them.

I could write a bit more about mentoring programs or some of the specific things I’ve tried over the years, but I’ll stop here. I feel this is a pretty good general list of principles that I try to practice. That said, I will point you to three additional sources of great management advice:

1. 10 Tips to Manage a Creative Environment — I first heard this at SxSW. As Sarah B. Nelson and Bryan Mason went through each of the ten tips, I found myself nodding my head vigorously to each one. You can check out their slides here (note: you really need to hear the accompanying audio for some of their points to make sense).
2. One thing I haven’t mentioned here are individual personality differences and how to account for those. For example, most people I’ve worked with enjoy representing their own work. However, for some individuals, this would freak them out. At Adptive Path’s MX 2008, Margaret Gould Stewart, User Experience Manager at Google, shared some practical tools for custom-tailoring your management style for different personalities . She’s put together a set of attribute cards you can use to help understand individual work styles your team members will have. This fun little exercise will help you understand what each member of your team needs from you as their manager.
3. I just came across this post over at randsinrepose.com . It’s a good complement to the advice that I’ve given here as it focuses more on what being a manager will mean for you.

I hope you find some of this helpful. Best of luck in your new position!

323 days ago / 5 Comments

See if any of these scenarios sound familiar:

• You’ve got a great product, but you can’t seem to get people to stick around long enough see why it’s so great
• All of the fun built into your application requires some basic registration information, but not enough folks are registering
• You have a high bounce rate— visitors just aren’t coming back
• You’re in a crowded market and the nuances that make your service unique are lost on the casual visitor
• You’re situation involves corporate software, where despite having hostage users, you’ve seen a really low adoption rate

Each of these scenarios point to the same business and user experience problem: How do we get people to stick around long enough to see and evaluate the value we’re offering? Or, to put it more crudely:

How do we get to first base? (with our users!)

This is the topic of my most recent presentation, “The Art and Science of Seductive Interactions,” in which I explore some of the more clever ways sites are leveraging basic human psychology to create what I would describe as “seductive interactions.”

Here’s the formal description from the IA Summit 2009 conference, where I debuted this presentation:

Remember that “percentage complete” feature that LinkedIn implemented a few years ago, and how quickly this accelerated people filling out their profiles? It wasn’t a clever interface, IA, or technical prowess that made this a successful feature– it was basic human psychology. To be good information architects we need to crack open some psych 101 textbooks, learn what motivates people, and then bake these ideas into our designs. We’ve spent the last decade perfecting how to create applications that serve our users needs. Now it’s time to create applications that are engaging. It’s time learn a bit about the art and science of seductive interactions.

We’ll look at specific examples of sites who’ve designed serendipity, arousal, rewards and other seductive elements into their application, especially during the post signup process when it is so easy to lose people. Examples will mostly include consumer applications such as Muxtape, Dopplr and iLike, where engaging with users through a process of playful discovery is vital to continued use; however, we’ll also look at how these same ideas might work in corporate environment, with a glimpse into a few corporate apps that have succeeded at being playful. Regardless of your current project, the psychological principles behind these example can be applied universally. In the spirit of “expanding our boundaries,” we’ll look to disciplines like social sciences, psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science for insights. However, attendees will leave with actionable tools and examples making it easier to bridge theory with tomorrow’s deadline.

As a profession, we talk about mapping user goals to business goals. But what if this focus on goals is no longer enough? And what if we can’t get users to stick around long enough to see the value in our apps? Come get inspired by examples of applications that have moved beyond just goals, and succeeded in both satisfying and delighting people.

I have much more planned for this topic, including the project I hint at beginning on slide 131. But, I’ll stop here and save these thoughts for future posts.

In the meanwhile, enjoy!

348 days ago / 3 Comments

For some time, I’ve described the design of experiences with this potent little phrase: 

It’s all about People, their Activities, and the Context of those activities.

That’s it, really. Whether we are designing a Web app or new office building, simply ask: Who are the people we are designing for? What is the activity (or activities) they are trying to do? And what are the contexts in which they are trying to operate? And ‘people’ can be an individual or group. It’s that simple. On the surface…

Behind every explicit piece of information, we can dive much deeper for a richer understanding of the space in which we are designing. People are much more than users (or markets, prospects, players, stakeholders, or…). An exploration of activities yields more insights than simple task or use case definition. And context is so much more than a device or platform— from the environment we as information architects define to the environmental and economic context in which we work.

It’s these ideas that form the basis of my “Fundamentals of Experience Design” Model, which I had the pleasure of unveiling at the recent IA Summit 2009 conference . Think of this as my “grand, unified model” of experience design. Or something like that!

Download The Fundamentals of Experience Design model
(10M print quality pdf file!)

Download The Fundamentals of Experience Design model
(not quite so large 2M png file)

The origins:
This model/poster, as with previous Summit posters, is a personal attempt to resolve a number of different threads and conversations, this time around “designing for experiences”— any kind of experience, from shopping online to going out for dinner to checking out a book from the library.

The model covers the basic UX stuff like moving from a focus on tasks to a focus on activities, as well as more theoretical discussions like activity centered design vs user centered design. I also wanted this model to represent where I’m moving professionally: As evident in my seductive interactions presentation, I’ve become more focused on subjects like psychology, social design, game mechanics and other “deeper” human considerations when designing for experiences.

The elements:
For years I’ve been discussing experience design in terms of people, activities and the context of those activities. These are the core elements of this model. FYI, the poster you see is actually the third iteration— for several years, I’ve been exploring (1) how these elements relate to each other, and (2) whether there should be any other core elements added (I wrestled with things like “objects,” “tools” and/or “content”). Along with the considerations listed below, I’m comfortable with this particular representation of the ideas:

This is a simplified explanation (the poster explains all this much better!):

• Experiences should focus on individuals and groups as people first, followed by our various roles as users, consumers, segments, stakeholders, employees, etc.

• Activities can be anything you do, and aren’t necessarily task-focused (this is a problem I have with many of the UCD and Agile discussions). Consider passive experiences like reading The Onion, or entertainment experiences like iSteam. There’s a motivation for these activities, but there isn’t always an explicit task involved.

• Context contains people and activities. Context for activities is fairly straightforward — environments, cultures, devices, etc. For people, there is a personal, implicit context that may affect an activity — having a bad day or finding out someone is in the hospital for example may have nothing directly to do with the activity (say, buying a pizza) but will affect the experience of that activity. Context also extends out further to consider the business, technological, cultural and social contexts that enable or affect the activity in some way. An easy example of this deeper cultural context is the editing out of the Twin Towers from the original Spider Man movie following 9/11— this editing decision recognized the emotions outside of the film itself that would have affected the movie enjoyment experience.

• With the resulting peanut shape, I draw horizontal a line between explicit considerations (tasks, users, business goals) and deeper considerations— the insights, motivations, behaviors and other “softer” focus areas that separate good experiences from the great ones.

Here’s a “Cliffs Notes” version of all this, using first person callouts:

Some things I learned making this:

• The importance of context.
  I’ll probably have to write a whole separate post on this. Needless to say, context is SO MUCH more than screen resolution and browser size! One theme that kept surfacing at the Summit was “context shapes behavior.” This is so true. On one hand, you do need to consider things like device constraints. On the other hand, you have to step back and look at the business context that is enabling (or standing in the way of) an experience.

• These fundamentals are largely input considerations.
  In describing how different UX tools and activities might map to this model, I realized it was best suited for those things that provide input and insights. The output will vary base on your discipline (interaction design, industrial design, etc.)

• Distinguishing between internal (personal, for people) and external (related to the activity) contexts. Basically, this is how something like “having a bad day” may affect an unrelated activity. How often do we factor in these personal contexts into our designs? This could be especially useful for contexts such as hiring sites, where a personal, emotional state might vary widely from individual to individual.

Feedback from the IA Summit:
During the reception and poster presentation, I got some great feedback from a ton of different folks. Here are some of the highlights:

• “Aren’t motivations specific to people, not activities?”
  I got this feedback from about 3 people, two of whom work at the same company. This was clearly a semantic issue, not an issue with meaning or intent. For me, motivation is specific to an activity— why you do something. I’d call those abstract motivations that get us up in the morning (to be happy, to change the world, to avoid conflict) “goals” or “desires.”

• “What about the cultural context for people?”
  Behind activities is a deeper cultural context, why not the same for people? I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m thinking this is part of the internal context specific to a person. But, something to consider…

• “Why are people separate from activities?”
  This has been the most challenging question, as there are good reasons to join people and activities within context (think two halves of a circle inside a larger circle). I’ve been sketching this, and while there is cause for this, it would also introduce new discrepancies — for example, business context is specific to an activity and not a person. I exist outside of a given activity until I choose to do whatever that is. This would introduce a problem not currently in the model.

• “Should behaviors be a core element?”
  I’ve also been thinking a lot about behaviors, specifically the idea that “context shapes behavior.” I think the model supports this just fine. We design for activities, and we design or consider the context. The behaviors are how the activities occur within a given context for a particular person or group of people.

• One final comment— people really connected with the floating chunk of earth! Apparently this a powerful visual metaphor for these ideas. Several people described this as a better iceberg model. I’ll go with that! When I chose this, I was thinking about tumbleweeds, and how badly designed experiences have no roots in natural human behaviors, desires or motivations. I like the idea that the deeper your roots go (more human insights and applied behavioral economics), the better the experience being designed will be… And I like the analogy that roots aren’t readily visible.

What’s next?
So, that’s some of the thinking behind my Fundamentals of Experience Design model. What are your thoughts? Does this help you in some way? In the poster, I list some ways this might be useful with clients or with practitioners. But, I’d like hear more about how you might be able to use this in your work…

446 days ago / 8 Comments

What do rock bands and guitar heroes have to do with management theory? This was the topic of my most recent presentation:

Groups and organizations, just like musicians, don’t all work and behave in the same way. In this presentation, I look to the music industry to describe four organizational archetypes—each with a different set of values and ways of working. By understanding each of these work cultures, the culture we work in, and the work style that best fits us personally, we can make sense of the conflicts we face at work and become more effective at our job, whether we’re employees, managers or—rock stars!

Where this originated
Needless to say, I’ve been really excited to share this with everyone. It was during the Q&A for my Star Wars presentation-- over a year ago— that I made a spur-of-the-moment comment about George Lucas and how his leadership style was quite different from that of Gene Roddenberry, the visionary behind Star Trek. That presentation was focused on various lessons we can learn from the making of the original Star Wars movie, lessons about change and making innovative ideas a reality. Of course, at least one thing I was left wondering about was the group dynamics behind great innovations. What personality traits are needed to lead a successful, innovative team? Do we have to be strong, demanding visionaries like George Lucas, Steve Jobs and Richard Branson ? How much credit should go to those people the team? What about innovative groups, like those at Pixar or the original Xerox PARC folks? It was this line of thinking led me to reflect on another popular form of creation that involves different personalities: songwriting (and performing).

Anyone who has ever been in a rock band— especially more than one— can testify to the interesting group dynamics that go on. Sometimes these groups are in constant conflict, sometimes everything is pure bliss. Sometime a few changes in lineup can dramatically alter the group and their output. Rock bands (and other kinds of musical groups) are a great petri dish for exploring team dynamics.

So based on personal experience and observations, I began looking to for patterns and archetypes. Along the way I discovered a fabulous book by business guru Charles Handy The Gods of Management . In it, Handy describes four organizational cultures, and identifies each with 4 different Greek gods. His four cultures matched closely with the where my research was leading (and certainly influenced my thinking, moving forward).

What I saw emerge were 4 (potentially 5) different kinds work cultures. Each culture values different things, operates in radically different ways and has their own sets of strengths and weaknesses. Mostly importantly, by understanding these cultures (and which one you value), it’s easy to push the fastforward button on most conflicts you might have at work. Forget the stereotypes (“creatives” vs “suits” being a popular one). It’s much deeper than that. Does authority come from what you’ve done, who you know, or seniority? Does your business operate in relatively stable environment, or are things changing all the time? What motivates people professionally? These archetypes have proven to be a great lens by which to understand different types of organizations.

So, what are the four types of organizational cultures? They are:

• The FrontMan – Though more common with small companies, folks like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Martha Stewart or George Lucas represent this organization. These are visionary leaders with pretty strong ideas about how things should be done; Power is the dominant theme of this group and success depends on how close you are to and how well you imitate the leader. If you want to work here, you will be executing someone else’s vision.

• The Studio Musicians – This is the dominant corporate work culture, where structure, rank, and hierarchy keep things going. Workers are hired to fill a role. Titles and promotions are key motivations.

• The Rock Band – This culture is typical of smaller, creative groups. Teams work together, focused on the project. Collaboration and creativity are valued here.

• The Rock Star(s) – These are your ‘A-Players.’ But they also tend to be mavericks, adhering to their own ideas about things, which often isolates them from other workers. They create tension, but it’s often in the best interest of their employer. and if you can tolerate their dissension, the rewards will be great. Loyalty to their profession and themselves is the dominant theme of this group.

Obviously, there’s much more to this. But, you get the idea. Anyone who is familiar with personality assessments like the four humours , the five love languages or more academic assessments like the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator will understand how useful these tools are for relating to people who don’t think like you do. In a similar fashion, these four organizational archetypes are useful for understanding different work cultures that exist, and the unique role each one plays. To be clear, this is a diagnostic tool. It’s not going to solve your conflicts, but it will help you gain a deeper understanding of where the conflicts come from— and how to overcome them.

Even more important now
The dominant work culture of the last century was the role-based organization. While this culture is great for manufacturing, where predictability and regulation are critical to success, it is the worst kind of culture for knowledge and information workers, especially in a space where things are in a constant state of change and businesses must deal with uncertain situations. Most of the information architects and user experience professionals I work with deal with uncertainty everyday. Our practice is about taming complexity. Unfortunately, the same thinking skills that makes us good at our practice also put as at odds with how most companies are run. This is also true of other “creative” groups—developers, architects, entrepreneurs, scientists. Few industries or businesses are immune to constant change, and the workforce needs more “creative” thinkers. Unfortunately, most businesses of any size struggle with how exactly to manage the entrepreneurial spirit within a culture of routine. Likewise, these individuals don’t understand and value the positive qualities of an organization focused on routine, predictability and efficiency.

Over the last decade I’ve led four different entrepreneurial (and intrapreneurial) teams. I cut my teeth at a startup. Moved on to consulting for many years. Became an “innie” for a some time, before returning to the startup world. I’ve been fortunate to work in a lot of different environments— each with their own unique management challenges. I’ve read plenty of books and articles by so called gurus. But it wasn’t until I framed things in exactly this way that all the conflicts I had observed (and been a part of!) suddenly made sense. “How do I manage a maverick employee?” “How do we prevent attrition following a merger & acquisition?” “Why are my boss and I always at odds?” “How do I manipulate that VP who is in the way of this project?” “Why am I so miserable in this position— I thought I’d be happier…” “What is the ideal job for me?” This way of thinking about different organizations with different value systems has helped me understand and respond to persistent management challenges. I’d love nothing more than to share this with other people. So, here’s looking at 2009 and taking this show on the road. What do you think— world tour?

457 days ago / 2 Comments

One of my passions is managing high-performance, collaborative teams. Accordingly, I like to note the subtleties that distinguish one team from another and affect overall success. Here’s an observation I made recently.

In collaborative environments, there’s a huge difference between saying “John’s idea” and “the idea John suggested.” A small semantic difference, perhaps. But consider the object of each phrase. And the effect.

“John’s idea”
In the first phrase, the object is the person. It is their idea. Their comment. Their opinion. Put this in context of an open and contentious dialogue about, say… how to implement a product feature. In this scenario, you are pitting people against each other. It is my idea against his idea. Someone wins. Someone loses. Moreover, even casual feedback and comments become associated with a person, who eventually has to defend what was merely a contribution thrown into the mix.

This is a destructive way to manage team dynamics. Not only does it create adversarial conditions, it frustrates coming to agreement on great ideas that are actually a fusion of contributions from several people. Instead of ‘this great idea we came up with’ you end up with ‘my idea with some of his thrown in’ is the idea that won.

Let’s contrast the first scenario with this second one…

“The idea John suggested”
In this scenario, the object is clearly the idea. Authorship is secondary, and only as a label. In fact, in these situations it good to get to a description of this idea that separates it from the contributor. What you end up with here is a gathering of people, all contributing and ‘playing’ with an idea— the thing being discussed. Think of this as the stewed pot that everyone is gathering around. What are people focused on? Not each other. The focus is on the thing being formed. And, if someone introduces a great idea (or a bad one), it’s more detached from the person.

Moreover, because the focus isn’t on individuals, but on the merits of the idea, people do feel more at ease to both contribute and comment on the ‘thing’ everyone is discussing. You get more ideas, because people feel at ease throwing in things that they would keep to themselves if their identity was tied to the merits of the idea. And it’s far easier for others to criticize an idea when it isn’t so inextricably linked to a person. End result? More conversation, for starters. And when you reach the ‘end result’, it was a collaborative effort. No one won or lost. And everyone (who participated) gets credit. They were part of a team.

One lingering question…
Does John ever get credit and recognition for his great idea?
Of course. If the great idea that saves the day can be traced back to an individual (and it’s not the result of a group effort), isn’t it obvious who came up the idea? They know it. You know it as their manager. And so does everyone else. But it’s not during a session that’s supposed to produce great ideas that you should recognize individual contributors. Or call out bad contributors. No. Save performance feedback for later. Use these collaborative sessions to produce ideas. And to create the best conditions for generating good ideas.

594 days ago

If you’re interested in some of the thinking that went into things like Target’s ClearRX program, or Karen Schriver’s redesign of the 1040 form, then you’ll want to make it out to Refresh Dallas tonight.

Wait. Scratch that.

If you build or design Web/desktop apps or Web sites for a living, or perhaps you customize business intelligence packages, or maybe you’re a technical writer or an IA or… Whatever your situation, tonight’s refresh meeting is for you! Co-worker Travis Isaacs and I are going to be speaking on information design. Specifically, we’ll be sharing some of our approaches to making ‘better’ screens (and forms). And, we’ll be running it a bit like a workshop, with some hands on activities…

Here’s the description:

“See What I Mean?”

We all work with information. In our web sites. Our web apps. Print communications. Graphs, and charts. But how exactly do you present information in a way that simplifies the complex, communicates powerfully, and actually delights people?

Join us, as Travis Isaacs and Stephen P. Anderson share their information design secrets. From travel plans to search results to quarterly earnings statements—they’ll present a handful of information design and data visualization case studies, identifying those principles we can apply to just about any project.

Learn how to identify and group related information, create a visual hierarchy, draw focus to the most important content, use images appropriately, see familiar data in a fresh new way, and much more!

As always, dinner will be provided, this time courtesy of Viewzi. I hope you can make it out! More details can be found at the Refresh Dallas Web site

604 days ago

For those of you in the DFW area, I’ll be speaking at Tuesday night’s DFW-UPA (Usability Professionals Association) meeting. That’s this Tuesday, July 15. If you can make it out, the meeting starts at 6pm; I’ll be presenting shortly thereafter (more info on meeting time and place here).

I’m excited, as this will be the first public appearance of my ‘Eye Candy’ presentation. I’m also curious as to how it will be received, especially by this audience. As I indicated in my original post on the topic, visual design— so called “eye candy”— get’s a bad rap, for the wrong reasons. This presentation is my way of stringing together some of the solid research and perspectives supporting the functional value of aesthetics.

Formal Description:
Graphics, eye candy, sexy interfaces— while these aren’t as seemingly strategic as say a mental model or BCG Matrix, it’s time to stand up for these misunderstand elements. Aesthetics play just as critical a role in business as picking the right server or insuring your data is accurate. But here’s the catch—it’s not about shiny buttons or gradient fades in and of themselves. Rather, it’s about “the psychological response to sensory stimulus.” It’s about people. And how people respond to these elements.

If we truly care about making things work for people, then we should care about aesthetics, or the science of “how things are know via the senses.” And it’s much more than graphic design: Sights. Sounds. Smells. Motion. Aesthetics is concerned about all the senses. And it’s about how people respond to these elements (and not the elements themselves).

To understand so-called “eye-candy” in proper context, it’s critical that we stop focusing on particular design elements (rounded corners or drop shadows, anyone?), and instead look at the response that is triggered by these elements. We’ll do just this, looking at a variety of design details, focusing not on their stylistic qualities but rather the cognitive and affective responses these details elicit. In doing so, we’ll skim across a variety of research findings from the last decade that will both confirm and challenge many of our assumptions about design.

Oh, and what do the chopsticks have to do with this presentation? You’ll have to make it out to find out! Hope to see you there.

624 days ago / 1 Comments

So, a bit about my ‘not-so-new-anymore’ gig.

As some of you already know, I joined Viewzi, a small startup in the Dallas area, back in mid-December. For various reasons, it was a fairly quiet transition. Why? For starters, it’s been a busy time!! I’ve also been speaking and writing more on topics that didn’t seem consistent with my being at a startup, topics pertaining to management, design thinking, being a corporate change agent, social design, innovative thinkers... Topics more fitting of a consultant or director at a large company (exactly the positions I had prior to this, which afforded me the experiences to write and speak about such things). Just as investors consider the financial investment they make in a startup, I’ve had to consider the professional investment I’m making. “How is this furthering my career?” Honestly, I struggled a bit with this. But in the end, I chose to invest myself in Viewzi because it’s something I really believe in (more on that in a moment).

That said, my biggest hesitation in not being more vocal has been a personal struggle to find the deep rooted story that gets someone truly fired up.

On the surface, there are a ton of cool things going on at Viewzi. Our product manager Jay Horne sums these things up rather nicely as ‘food, folks, and fun’. From Viewzi cafe on Fridays to getting to work with some of the best talent I know, to a really fun work environment and a fun product-- there’s plenty to love. But these aren’t the things that keep a curious, passionate learner around for the long haul. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most critical things a leader can do is to find that ‘story’ that gives everyone a sense of purpose in their role. The “we’re putting a man on the moon” message that gets everyone up in the morning and gives context and meaning to all the exciting and mundane tasks that will be required of you.

For me, I have to have a vision and a passion for the idea. To be clear, I’ve had various stories I’ve been trying out, but these weren’t the deep-rooted motivation I was searching for. It wasn’t until we started looking at the feedback and taking a long hard look at our core message that I finally ‘found’ my story, why I am here. And here’s the ironic part— it’s the same message I’ve been giving for the last 3 years…

“It’s all about experiences”
In 2006, I developed a model for understanding where exactly a product is in its maturity. Think of this as a ‘UX hierarchy of needs,’ with six levels ranging from useful/functional up to meaningful (the highest level a product can achieve). This was my way of resolving a lot of different ideas around what makes up an experience, and the relative priority of those things:

Moving from bottom to top, you have a basic product maturity continuum:

Functional
Ideas typically start off as functional solutions to a problem— something useful. Think of the first Motorola cell phone. Sure, it was a brick, but it allowed you to make calls untethered to a fixed spot!

Reliable
From there, things have to be reliable. This can be reliability of the service (5 9’s uptime?) as well as integrity of the data. If I purchase tickets on a travel site, the ticket prices need to be current and reliable. If I host with a site, I need to know my data is backed up and accessible at all times. This is reliability.

Usable & Convenient
It’s not enough to allow me to simply do something— it has to eventually be less awkward to use. This is where the next two levels, usable and convenient, come into play. I draw a distinction between usability and convenience. Both make something easier to use, but in my experience most usability groups focus on fixing known problems— removing the hurdles. A focus on convenience asks “is there a more natural way to make this work?” MapQuest and Google Maps are a great example of this contrast. MapQuest was perfectly usable. But Google Maps, with it’s draggable interface, physics, and other more ‘natural’ behaviors was a much more convenient way to interact with maps data.

Pleasurable
Whereas convenience focuses on cognition, the next level— ‘pleasurable’— focuses on affect and emotions. How can we make something emotionally engaging? (And a memorable experience!) This is typically accomplished through things like friendly language, aesthetics, humor, arousing curiosity, creating flow, leveraging game mechanics and other similar tactics.

Meaningful
The highest level is of course ‘meaning. And no, you can’t make something meaningful— that’s a personal area. But you can design for meaning by focusing on the preceding levels as well as shepherding beliefs and the communities surrounding the product or service experience. Also, whereas the other levels build on each other, a product can be meaningful without any of these levels (I have a 1966 Karmann Ghia that doesn’t even run— ‘function’; sheer ownership connects me with a group of people in a way that is meaningful to me).

The big takeaway from this is that if want to truly create a revolutionary product, you have to shift you’re thinking from a ‘bottom-up’ task focus (which will only get you so far) to a focus that starts from the ‘top-down’ with the experience you want people to have. By approaching things from this perspective we see a host of new ideas, not to mention better ways to implement the same ideas that have been around for a while.

But there’s another takeaway: In mature markets, where you have stable, usable products, taking it to the ‘next level’ means focusing on more experiential things like emotions, clever language, aesthetics. This was the topic of my pleasurable interface presentation, where I gathered dozens of examples of these experiential qualities:

But search?
So, all that’s nice. But what about a search engine? Can a utility tool like search offer an improved experience? And I’m not talking about the algorithms or the results themselves. But the experience of interacting with the search results themselves. Can, or should, searching for information be a fun activity?

The problem with search:
Travis has written an excellent and accurate description of Viewzi. I encourage you to read his explanation of what we’re about. But for the purposes of this post (and to understand why I am so excited by what we are doing at Viewzi), here’s a short description of what we are doing…

Viewzi is changing the face of search. Literally. We’re asking the question: Is there more than one way to look at search? Does everyone see things the same way?

With traditional text-based search engines, no matter what or how you search, your results are delivered the same way. Searching for “Bono” looks the same as searching for “chicken recipes” or “sports cars.”

We think there are better ways to present information than in a simple list. We start with specific topics or search terms and ask: “Is there a better way to present this data?” The result? Dozens of new, unique ‘views’, or ways to look at information, each custom-tailored for that content. It’s the right data, presented in the right way.

Changing the experience of search
When I first described Viewzi to my friend and mentor Rob Moore, he commented with some enthusiasm “you’re changing the experience of search. Most search folks I know are still focused on how to improve the performance by a few milliseconds. No one has really focused on how people actually interact with the data being returned.” (Or something like that!)

Rob nailed it on the head. We’re changing the experience of search. More specifically, we’re changing the experience of searching for [insert topic of choosing or manner of searching]. Contrary to some of the press that is going around, we are not a visual search engine, not exactly. We do place a premium on aesthetic considerations. However, we’re more about the right data presented in the right way. I like to think of ourselves as a designing custom search results for very specific scenarios. I was excited when Brian Oberkirch asked: ‘what can Stephen Anderson do with hyper-niched search contexts?’ That’s exactly it!

With Viewzi you can, eventually, experience search results however you prefer. On one end, this could be a crazy digg labs style visualization. On the other end, you could have something very much like Google, but with ‘that one little change’ you’ve always wanted. Think of Viewzi as ‘search results, exactly the way you want, how you want.’
We are really the platform upon which hundreds of ways to view information will eventually reside. We currently have 17 views, with many more planned. Some are “all purpose” search views (different ways to view and interact with general search results) and many more are specific to a niche topic (recipes, music, celebrity photos).

Here is an example of what I mean by scenario-based search views:

Searching for recipes
Here is what you get if you search for ‘chicken recipes’ on most search engines.

If our goal was simply to create better search results, you’d get little more than some light typographic treatment, or perhaps some subtle information design changes. Hardly the stuff of dreams. But, if you change the question to something based in the experiences people have, in this case ‘how can I make searching for recipes more enjoyable?’, you might end up with something like our current recipe view:

I’ll be the first to say, this is one of my favorite search views. It is (for many contexts) a far superior way to search for recipes. But is this the best way to display recipe search results? No. This view supports the offline behavior of flipping through a book to discover an appetizing recipe. But what about the scenario where…

• someone has 4 ingredients on hand and they want to find a recipe that uses those ingredients

• someone is focused on finding recipes that fit certain nutritional criteria

The resulting recipe view for these scenarios would be (a) quite different and (b) much less visual, as we would focus more on ingredients than appetizing photos. This is what I mean by search results custom-tailored for specific people, activities and contexts. And from this perspective, you can easily image dozens of different recipes views, many of which we will never think of, which leads me to my final though…

“But wait, there’s more…”
So far, I’ve only described the search views we are creating. But it’s ridiculous to think that a bunch of designers and tech geeks might know everything there is to know about [you name it]. The bigger story is the search platform we are creating, a platform that will allow anyone to create their own search views. For now, it’s an API than anyone with Flash AS3 or JavaScript skills can start using right away. In the future, we’d like to enable anyone to begin creating their own search views. That, is exciting. Whether it’s a better niche view or an entirely different way to experience search results— we’re building the platform that will enable user-generated (viewzer generated?) search views.

Pleasurable Interfaces + Search
And here’s why I am so fired up about Viewzi: everything I was talking about in the upper half of my pyramid— taking usable products and making them more convenient, pleasurable and meaningful— that’s exactly what I’m responsible for at Viewzi. I get to test out these ideas in a maturing field that is ripe for a focus on better experiences. When was the last time you described a search engine as fun? Viewzi is a company who’s business model is precisely that— to make search a pleasurable experience!

It’s a crude comment, but more than a few people have described Viewzi as the“‘iPhone of search.” If we can do for search what the iPhone did for mobile phones—change how people do what they’ve been doing for a decade—wow. Now that’s something I can believe in!

What about you?

663 days ago / 3 Comments

I’m excited to share with you my presentation from Adaptive Path MX.

It’s a version of my Star Wars presentation. But, only 6 of the 15 lessons are represented. (I joked that this was the first in a trilogy!) And I’ve made a few critical additions.

In the original presentation, I identify and share 15 lessons that might apply universally to anyone with a visionary idea. Basically, ‘You got an idea? Here’s some advice to help make that idea a reality’. Anyone could be someone founding a startup, or the maverick leader inside a large organization. But, while the lessons might apply universally, I wasn’t thinking of startups when I created this…

The backstory
Between my interview with Todd Wilkens and the opening slides , I think you’ll get a good idea of the backdrop that led to this presentation. There’s a lot of resistance to change inside large organizations (no surprise), but most resistance has little to nothing to do with the project or idea you have. In his book The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun dedicates a chapter to the myth that ‘People love new ideas” (no, they don’t).

On the surface, you’d think that people— companies— are looking for the ‘next big thing’ to invest their dollars in. The truth is, no one really wants to take a risk on the next big thing. We’d rather have “brave souls like Magellan, Galileo, and Neil Armstrong take intellectual and physical risks on our behalf, watching from a safe distance, following behind (or staying away) once we know the results.” Or put another way, “Innovation is expensive: no one wants to pay the price for ideas that turn out to be not quite ready for prime time.”

But, it’s about more than risky, or even safe ideas. It’s about a fear of change. Or an inability to understand truly new ideas. And this is where many innovative ideas fail. Again, Scott Berkun:

Many innovators give up when they learn that ideas, even with dazzling prototypes or plans in hand, are the beginning. The challenges that follow demand skills of persuasion more than brilliance.

And this…

Every great idea in history has the fat red stamp stamp of rejection on its face. It’s hard to see today, because once ideas gain acceptance, we gloss over the hard paths they took to get there. If you scratch any innovations surface, you’ll find the scars: they’ve been roughed up and thrashed around— by both the masses and leading minds- before they made it into your life.

“Behind the Music”
And here is the part that intrigues me: What are the stories behind the truly great ideas? What are the obstacles that got in the way of these ideas? And, what’s the real story behind visionary products that do manage to make it through otherwise hostile environments? From sticky notes to the RAZR phone, the stories of how these things came to be typically includes some form ‘rebellion’ against business as usual— which in large organizations has a tendency to be about power, position, predictability, and a score of other concerns fairly well-removed from the idea itself.

Somewhat familiar with Star Wars, I wanted to explore what it took to get this visionary film completed and in theaters. For starters, I love this film. But I also knew there were a host of challenges, as well as lessons about leadership, craftsmanship, and business that seemed to parallel much of what I have seen in the business world. That, and I can’t help myself— I love exploring patterns and connections between seemingly unrelated things.

Adaptive Path MX
So, when Adaptive Path contacted me to present this at MX, I was thrilled. Here was a chance to (1) share these ideas with a larger audience, but (2) bring out and comment on some of the elements that led to these musings (what I’ve shared here in this post), and (3) it was the perfect venue for my real topic: leading change.

The MX Conference is about ‘managing experiences’, and is targeted at PMs, Manager, Directors, and even VPs— those people ‘managing toward a vision’ (one of six MX themes). It’s not a conference about moving resources around on a Gantt chart. It a conference about promoting the value of a great customer centered strategies inside our organizations. And that can be a rebellious idea. One that may very well lead to adversity.

A business management perspective
Which leads me to a very encouraging paper: Gary Hamel’s ‘Strategy as Revolution’, published in the July-August 1996 issue of Harvard Business Review. Hamel speaks directly to executive leadership, urging them to embrace the revolutionaries within your company, as they may be the key to some much needed revolutionary ideas. Some notable quotes:

... in all too many companies, the entrepreneurial spark is more likely to be doused by a flood of corporate orthodoxy than fanned by resources and the support of senior executives.

If you’re a senior executive, ask yourself these questions: Has a decade or two or experience made me more willing or less willing to challenge my industry’s conventions? Have I become more curious or less curious about what is happening beyond the traditional boundaries of my industry? Be honest.

If you go down and out into your organization— out into the ranks of much maligned managers, for instance— you will find people straining against the bit of industrial orthodoxy. All too often, however, there is no process that lets those revolutionaries be heard… So, like economic refugees seeking greater opportunity in new lands, industry revolutionaries often abandon their employers to find more imaginative sponsors.

These were all very comforting words, especially coming from a credible business management guru. But for me, perhaps the most poignant statement was this:

Revolutionaries are subversive, but their goal is not subversion.

I’ve had profound difficulty articulating this sentiment is as concise a fashion. It’s not that visionaries are immature or obstinate. Quite the opposite: We’re rebellious because we care— not about politics, power, position, or the game (though perhaps we should). We care deeply about the business— creating value for our customers and the companies we work for. “People who care about their country— or their organization— don’t wait for permission to act.” (Hamel)

And this leads to a sad irony, “the secret tragedy of innovators is that their desire to improve the world is rarely matched by support from the people they hope to help.” (Berkun)

Words of advice?
So, what can we take away from this, if you are a revolutionary in your organization? Off the top of my head…

• Be realistic. A good idea is not even half of the challenge
• Politics are a part of corporate culture. Learn to play the game, or saddle up to someone who can.
• Don’t be discouraged when things don’t go smoothly— it’s human nature to resist the truly good ideas.
• Good ideas can and do come out of difficult situations.
• Rejection doesn’t necessarily mean your idea is wrong or bad.
• If you truly believe in the idea, keep shopping it around. Go around the roadblocks if necessary.
• If you must break some rules (we are talking about a rebellion here!), first understand the intent behind the rule you might be breaking or bending
• These are universal, human struggles, present wherever large groups of people gather together.
• Accordingly, encouragement and ideas can come from anywhere—even movies!

With that, I hope you enjoy the presentation. And, maybe you’ll find a few of the 6 (or 15) lessons we can all learn from the making of Star Wars useful or inspiring.