Building it right: web design Rule 1.1 (overhead from those who actually do it)

Long title I know. Punchy. 

Last night I attended the Conversation Thursday event, this time focusing on User Experience (UX). The speakers (Hammad Khan of Zabisco, Paul Rourke of PRWD and Adam Gutteridge of Elisa-DBI) and the crowd were a super interesting and friendly bunch. The phrase "bat shit insane" (check out the highly successful Lingscars.com and you'll know what we were talking about) was also used, which you have to appreciate in any presentation!

Amongst the aha moments for me (there was a lot given I'm neither from a UX or web analytics background), was one that really resonated. It's simple: 

Get everyone responsible for the delivery of the site involved. In the beginning. 

Sounds obvious. Is obvious. But so rarely done. In marketing, advertising, people are always moaning about what they were handed by the person above them in the chain. The finished artist creating from a concept design, the designer from the art director, the art director from the client handlers and the client handlers from the client. Remember Chinese whispers?

Same thing in web design - the people doing the build handed optimistic briefs by designers and the designer responding to a potentially non-expert brief from the client. In fact, I am sure I have been guilty of writing some of those!

Enough with moaning! There are so many brilliant people who really do 'get it' along the way. But if we don't connect with them, we miss the goodness we pay them for - their skill in their particular area. 


Hence Rule 1.1: Get everyone responsible for the delivery of the site involved. In the beginning. 

What's Building it right: web design Rule 1.0? Get everyone excited by the brilliant thing  the new site we are creating will achieve by making the vision clear, vivid and shared. In the beginning.

You can see @paulrouke's entertaining presentation here.

Legacy people

In the technology world we rapidly become familiar with the term legacy systems. This term is always accompanied by a grimace and a mental image of a world of expensive pain to move away from them. 


Sure, at the time they were implemented, they were the best, but now time and context has moved on...and often the business can't because we face the huge hurdle of moving from the legacy system. 


Speaking with a recruitment specialist today we discussed a term for the other oft-quoted problem for large organisations - legacy people. People who were once the best, the right person at the right time, but now are perceived as not quite what the company needs.


But what if we look at legacy and its positive meaning? 


A personal gift by Will. 


A body of persons sent on a mission. (the original 14c. meaning)


Just because someone is different from us, doesn't mean they don't have a gift or a mission to give to our team, our company. So often we look at older people at work as 'them', what if we feel that they are 'us'? 


What can we learn from their experience, relationships and advice? From their 'brand authenticity' that comes from 10 or 20 years of service? What happens if we have honest, adult conversations about how we can work together to build the business, acknowledging their background and situation and without fear? What awesomeness could we create? 

You? Do we have time for dialogue in an environment that is so pressured for rapid change, rapid profit. Is this kind of talking just not practical? Or have you had great experiences working with your whole staff, including the legacy ones?

The humble promo pen

Anyone in marketing (particularly medical and technology) will be familiar with the humble promo pen. Cheap, common and still strangely ubiquitous. 

The most common rationale for pens and other promotional products are that it is sustained brand exposure for a brand. Often, it is because sales people feel good having something to give to clients, no matter how small. Easy to dismiss, particularly when you see people actively making a game of collecting them for their children at trade shows. 

But it is not about the pen, it is about the moment of delight, no matter how small, that comes from being given a gift. 

The talented team at Truly Deeply use a phrase called Brand Gestures. A brand gesture can be a way of treating clients and guests at your trade show, it can be providing luxury hand cream to people on a flight or it can be a the provision of a humble promo pen. The better linked with the brand essence, the stronger the brand differentiation. 

As one organisation doing award winning promotional work, Zinc, says: we remember what we touch and feel. 

What brand gesture can you give your customers, remembering it is not the size of the gesture, but the gesture itself that is meaningful? 

You? What do you think? Are promotional gifts passe or do the right ones still have a powerful role to play for brands?

Obvious to you.

At a fabulous event to stimulate and inspire entrepreneurship from a surprising source - The British Library, I was reminded about the importance of placing yourself in your customers' shoes. 

Christina Richardson, founder of the Nurture Network, an outsourced marketing function for small business did a succinct presentation on key steps as you market your new business. 

With respect, to me it was obvious. With even more respect, I saw many people in the audience madly scribbling notes. 

It was a reminder to think about what of value can be shared, however obvious it may be to you. 

You? What could you share that may be obvious to you, but helpful to your customers? 

Fail, fickle or pivot?

This great article on job hopping by Jaclyn Schiff is a really useful way of looking at rapid career changes both for conversations with potential employers and with yourself too.


As someone who is curious and demanding of myself to do the best possible work I can contribute to this world, if I don't think role is right, I change it. But I feel terrible and like a bit of a failure every time I do it, because it is not what we're meant to do.


But by the same token, I simply cannot lead a life without constantly striving for the place where I can make the most contribution. I just don't work that way.


Thank you Jaclyn for presenting job-change as a step towards where you are meant to be, a choice, rather than failure or fickleness.


Notes:
* For people who have many diverse interests, which can be a driver of regular job change, you may find Barbara Sher's book Refuse to Choose book a helpful way of ordering your interests and doing as many of them as you want. It's amazing. 
* A post on job hopping from a younger Chinese perspective - Flyleaf
* Image source 

What's your hidden population?

I spend a lot of time working in different parts of the city and often it's most efficient for me to just find a cafe to work in between meetings.


Time and again places claim to have wi-fi (McDonalds, Starbucks and many smaller cafes) but it is in name only, with the non-functional reality leaving me silently enraged or worse, wondering through the cafe balancing my open laptop trying to chase signal strength. 


I wonder, what would a place that offered guaranteed high speed wi-fi in every location achieve? And what is the size of the hidden population that suddenly would flock to these stores on a regular basis? According to IDC the mobile workforce was 29% of the population in 2008 and is estimated to reach 34.9% or 1.2bn by 2013. 


There are an increasing number of organisations servicing the mobile worker such as Roam, The Hub, select Regus locations. In the U.S. Chick-fil-a not only offers Wi-Fi but a few locations have turned their play areas into business meeting rooms in order to accommodate the increasing demand.


So, perhaps this isn't the most hidden population, but the point is - what percent of the available traffic for your store would come back again and again if you absolutely committed to meeting their needs, every time? 


You? Why not get ethnographic and watch the behaviour in your store or showroom, what can you see that people aren't saying? Look for behaviour of people making things fit their needs. Is it someone pulling out their own USB stick? Struggling to find a place to put their shopping? Students from the nearby university that check the menu and then keep walking? What's your hidden population?

A powerful prelude to successful business change: the humble hunch

Recently I worked with an organisation which helps very large institutions positively change, and do so with speed and clarity. One of the interesting ways they do that is that they give credence to hunches. 


A hunch, or an intuitive reckoning, is a short-hand way for us to make sense of the information we have at hand and what this information might mean. Malcolm Gladwell explores a similar concept in depth in his book Blink, where he describes decision making on an even shorter time-scale, two seconds. He calls it rapid cognition. Pschologists call it 'thin slicing' or 'Rapid Primed Decision Making', which includes elements of pattern recognition and analysis. Gladwell explores examples of when using hunches can work, and when it should be approached with caution.
In business and in life we are taught to make decisions based on a more is better approach to information.  Making an effort to understand your situation, your customers, more deeply is never a bad thing. But the stasis that comes with too much information, the many consulting points of view can be. Because no decision is by default a decision to continue as-is. And the world never stays as-is. 


To move forward a business needs to make a decision and act on it. Using a hunch doesn't mean the hunch has to be right (although it is useful if it is, which is where having experienced heads together helps), it just needs to get you in motion. Scientists do it all the time, putting a stake in the ground as a hypothesis then actively working to prove or disprove it and its useful application along the way.

It's not easy to let go of the fear of moving in the wrong direction, wanting a little more information before we make a decision. When used by experienced professionals, however, hunches can be a very powerful way to act accurately and rapidly. An example from Gladwell's book is the Cook County Hospital, which deliberately uses hunches to diagnose chest pain. If it can be used in life and death, surely it can be used in some business decisions?


When used by people with less experience in a particular area, hunches can still tap into powerful insight around an issue, adding a fresh perspective to an or leading to new entrepreneurial ventures.

What makes the use of hunches by this organisation really powerful is that they then pair it with a form of rapid prototyping. Once they have a hunch, they describe that hunch or the how that hunch would play out into a real customer experience, directly to potential customers and other experts. Often, they play it out to other businesses facing a different view of the same challenge as a form of practical validation, gaining practical advice as to how this challenge has been successfully addressed in other ways. They rapidly prototype not products but ideas. 


Summing up this method:
1. Work up one to three hunches based on a team session with some experienced people and some different thinkers that may challenge the thinking in new ways. Start big, narrow down rapidly.
2. Validate the hunches with the ultimate decision-maker, the customer, as quickly as possible. If it turns out part of the hypothesis is wrong, they rapidly pivot the idea, often directly with the customer to make it right. 
3. The final but essential ingredient to add to this method is collaboration. One person working alone doing the above can have and present powerful ideas. A team of people doing this together, bringing people along with them, can create a movement. Think about how you can bring people along with you and your ideas develop.


The same applies not to just large organisations, but can apply to our daily life. My hunch: Using hunches for just one day will make me 20% more effective in my work. Now, to test it...


You? What do you think, is the use of hunches too risky? Or do you have ideas on how hunches can be used in an even better way? 


Please note: The company described in this article is very discrete, although they do work with some of the world's biggest brands. Please contact me directly if you would like an introduction.