Noise Between Stations

  • Web 2.0 Strategy: Customers Create Value

    Note: Over the next few weeks I’m blogging my notes on Amy Shuen’s book Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations. (O’Reilly Media). The book is both a good introduction and a synthesis of diverse theories that should offer something to even experienced strategists.

    Background: What is Web 2.0?
    Wikipedia entry
    What is Web 2.0?, the seminal article by Tim O’Reilly

    Chapter 1: Users Create Value / Flickr

    • Alvin Toffler predicted the “prosumer” in his 1980 book The Third Wave, and with recent technical advances in web and digital technology his vision is being realized.
    • Like so many startups, Flickr started out doing one thing (a game) and by listening to customers transitioned to another offering, online photos. The small team including technically-smart founders could turn customer feedback into rapid release cycles. A key to Flickr’s growth was making photos public by default.
    • The freemium business model was first described on Fred Wilson’s blog: “Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.“
    • Flickr’s platform was timely in compounding the positive network effects of broadband, digital cameras, blogging, social networking, and online syndication.
    • Flickr’s core business message: Don’t build applications. Build contexts for interaction.
    • Stages in the open systems movement: Linux; APIs; user-generated content. Flickr combines the last two to compound their use.
    • Flickr’s interestingness algorithm factors in popularity, interaction, identity, and time.
    • Flickr uses the first three of the six kinds of revenue models: Subscription/membership; advertising; transaction fee; volume/unit-based; licensing and syndication; and sponsorship/co-marketing/revenue-sharing.
    • They managed to avoid the four major cost drivers (inventory, payroll, IT, and marketing/advertising/CRM) compared to retail photo printing and online stock photo companies.
    • In March 2005 Yahoo! brought Flickr for an estimated $40 million, a value that can be calculated using a customer-based formula in which revenues are directly tied to customer fees, not unit prices. Tracking customer behavior and metrics on an ad-supported site can result in an average revenue expectation per customer; in 2006 it was $13 for Google. Flickr had advertising, premium services, and partner revenue, making the average revenue per customer about $20. Multiplied by Flickr’s 2 million customers, we arrive at the $40 million valuation. More sophisticated formulas might give different weights to customers based on how actively they use the platform.

  • Come Do RFP Jedi Mind Tricks, Jan 13

    If you’re a member of the AIGA and in New York, you might enjoy a fun little breakfast gathering planned for Tuesday, January 13, 2009…

    Redesigning the RFP response

    Maybe you’ve gotten one: the RFP that asks for mountains of miraculous work, for no money, delivered in 20 minutes. Or the one for a project so boring you wouldn’t give it to an intern. This morning’s Breakfast Club asks: Can we perform a Jedi mind trick and turn those nightmare RFPs into satisfying, rewarding work? 
Victor Lombardi, veteran consultant and teacher, will lead a discussion about rethinking how to conquer the dreaded RFP.

  • Nokia Offers New Email Accounts Via the Mobile Phone

    Niti has an intriguing post including this quote describing service for the Nokia 1202:

    the new devices will allow users to set up an e-mail account on Nokia’s Ovi Web portal without ever going near a PC. That’s an important distinction for the millions of mobile-phone users who live in regions without reliable electricity, much less computers and Internet connections. “It gives those millions of users their first identity on the Internet,” says Alex Lambeek, Nokia vice-president in charge of handsets aimed at low-income users.

    A brilliant move, IMHO, and makes me wonder about which other bits of the PC-oriented Internet could be mobilized.

    But Niti goes on to explore how an email address changes our identity or online presence differently.

  • Designing Better Proposal Price Tags

    Not long I was talking to a project manager who was writing her first request for proposal, explaining the common wisdom on budget disclosure: “You’ll want to give them a ballpark idea of what your budget is without telling them your actual budget; agencies will sometimes configure the work to take all the money on the table.”

    But as I, with fresh eyes, watch her go through the proposal process, I do wonder if simply telling the agencies the budget wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Floating this idea on Twitter sparked these replies, mostly from peeps on the agency side:

    “I always make them tell me the budget. If they can’t then I don’t send a proposal. That’s my tough love policy. Very few balk. I [tell them] we could propose $1M site, but its best that I know what the constraints are. 99% find it helpful.”

    “It would certainly decrease wasted effort.”

    “Absolutely! It would eliminate spinning our wheels too. Why waste the time proposing something they can’t afford?”

    “I’ve worked at agencies where we lost jobs because we proposed too large a project. This could have solved it.”

    “Agree…”

    Money is a great constraint for spurring creativity. And if the same budget were disclosed to all agencies, the client can still compare the relative value of each proposal. The only drawback I can think of is if the budget is far out of alignment with the work requested, and if this is the case the client should be working with an expert outside resource to craft the RFP anyway.

    (I’ll add this is specific to RFP situations. I still agree with the usual consultative selling advice to not talk about price until the very end of the sales process.)

  • Designing Lower Legal Fees

    So we all know that at the heart of creativity lie constraints. And one constraint I love is money.

    I thought of this today as I read about a friend’s company who spent “tens of thousands of dollars” on legal fees just for their domain name. Maybe that was money well spent, but from personal experience I know legal fees are one of those line items that is almost always expensive, difficult to predict, and difficult to control once set in motion. For a start-up, this problem can be turned around into a creativity driver to say, “Here’s how much similar companies say they wished they had spent on legal fees. We’re going to stick to that. Let’s figure out how.”

    Note that this is different than merely setting a limit on how much to spend. A simple cap could still allow for business-as-usual behavior that doesn’t generate any new solutions: “we did what we usually do until we ran out of money.”

    A real design approach would involve experimentation.

    With prototypes for solving legal problems.

    Working with lawyers.

    Measuring the costs of iteration and the opportunity costs.

    I haven’t heard about anyone doing this yet; it’s one of those ripe areas for true business design innovation.

  • Social Media as a Product Testing Audience (e.g. for Motrin)

    To catch you up, Motrin posted the below ad and people, particularly baby-carrying mothers, were so offended that the makers of Motrin pulled the ad.

    Many of the offended people (“Motrin Moms” there were dubbed) were on Twitter, as well as blogs and YouTube. As a result, marketers are starting to get scared of social media, just as social media is taking off as a legitimate communications approach.

    But another way of looking at it is, better the Motrin ad underwent a social media firestorm than a mass media firestorm. (more…)

  • Interview With Me Discussing Tangible Futures

    Stuart Candy, researcher at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies and research fellow of The Long Now Foundation, asked me a few questions about tangible futures and published the interview on his blog. While I’m more focused on near-term concept design these days, it was helpful for me to reflect on why and how I was originally drawn to the practice…

    …So we started to consider this problem through the lens of our design experience, asking, “How can we help managers experience futures and strategy so that it can more substantially be understood, shared, and acted on?” The working definition became: Tangible Futures are the output of applying design-fueled disciplines like visualization, drama, and film to represent futures and strategies.

  • Finally, The Iraq War Ends

    Iraq War Ends

    …not really, unfortunately. But that was the headline on a “special edition” of the “New York Times” today. The credibility was in question from the start, as the paper was handed out free at the subway which is never the case with the Times. The production is quite accurate, but a quick glance at the date reveals July 4, 2009.

    I love it as a clear example of a tangible future. But the editorial is so far to the left that we’re not really fooled. Only those that already hold these positions will think, “Yes! This is what we could create by July of next year!” So essentially, it’s propaganda. Personally I would have liked to see an editorial stance much closer to reality but with enough difference to be inspirational. (Just for the record, I’m fairly progressive socially, and excited about the results of the elections.)

    Of course, we’re talking about the future, so I could be completely wrong about what happens.

  • A New Service: Future Practice Webinars

    We’re pleased as punch to partner with our good friend Lou Rosenfeld at Rosenfeld Media to offer you Future Practice Webinars. Our first two events are Modern Web Form Design with Luke Wroblewski and Using Mental Models for Tactics and Strategy with Indi Young.

    When we created them we wanted to accomplish two things:

    1. Provide a forum for advanced practitioners in the field of user experience design to share with us their best thinking on topics that have immediate practical value and to show us where the practice is going in the long-term to help us prepare. Hence the series title, Future Practice
    2. Enable practitioners like yourself to benefit from this education at a lower price than in-person seminars and conferences, without having to travel and emit all that nasty carbon.

    For more information and registration, go to the Rosenfeld Media webinar page. For 20% off, use discount code NBSWBNR

  • Did You Know Brainstorming Is 70 Years Old?

    That’s right, Alex Osborn started popularizing brainstorming in the late 1930’s. It’s a classic tool I still use, but I have to wonder if there’s something better.

    Brainstorming is simple, and I would bet this simplicity is the key to its popularity. Yet even the basic rules that Osborn set out aren’t very common. Brainstorming is too often reduced to sitting around a conference table discussing a topic rather than storming an objective.

    I tried a little experiment with my Business & Design students tonight, introducing them to three different idea generation tools: brainstorming, “yes, and…,” and question the brief. Brainstorming and Yes, and… were slow and stiff. Part of this is probably due to my skill as a facilitator, but I also think these tools require some experience to use proficiently. I liken it to building muscles; it takes some time doing it to see results.

    Question the brief, on the other hand, more easily generated plenty of usable ideas, and there were even some explicit comments preferring this method, so that we returned to it. My theory is that it’s simple enough to remember but has just enough structure to produce specific kinds of ideas. That’s a balance I’m going to seek with my other concept design tools.

    question.the.brief

    See also my concept design page at Smart Experience.

  • Spontaneous Interaction Design Group Work Styles

    There was a New York City IxDA event at Roundarch last night that challenged 10 teams of designers to invent the portable electronic ink magic paper of the future. In addition to the usual functional stuff, fun ideas emerged like using it as a yoga mat, a DDR mat, or modules that could be connected together to make various sizes.

    There wasn’t enough time to do a lot of critique of the designs, but it was fascinating to see how each group of 3-4 people self-organized. One group compared their process to speed chess — each person took a short time to iterate on the design and then ‘hit the clock’ passing the baton to the next person. Two groups talked about working together to define the problem and environment, then working independently on separate tasks. One of these groups actually moved apart physically.

    The composition of the groups of course was pivotal. One father of a 3-year old was inspired by his son’s toys. A business analyst on another team ensured specific requirements were achieved.

    And the methods varied too. Most accepted the advice in the brief to prescribe and describe scenarios, but others just picked a strong theme like “magic” and riffed on this pleasingly, having the device learn your gestures and automatically load images from a camera. It was a great reminder to me that the questions you ask determine the conclusions you reach.

  • How Can I Be More Strategic?

    Designers often ask this question. Sometimes I think the question arises from a genuine desire to be doing something else which is more strategic in nature, and sometimes I think what is being asked is, how can I convince or influence others to do things my way?

    The answer might be the same or it might not. I’ve started to keep track of the answers I hear to shed some light here.

    1. Change your title, brand identity, clothing, etc. in order to change perceptions of what you offer.
    2. Charge more money so that only the people who have real strategic influence can afford you.
    3. Bootstrap your way into different work.
    4. Be strategic. In Porter’s definition, strategic is long-term planning. Avail yourself of strategic tools both simple (e.g. roadmaps) and complex (futures analysis and design).
    5. Illustrate the strategic implications of seemingly tactical efforts. If strategic = long-term, show the long-term effects.
    6. Be more thoughtful, for example go beyond providing expertise to providing decision-making frameworks.
    7. Educate yourself. Strategy may be harder than finance, operations, and other business topics. Take the time to learn what strategists really do.
    8. Don’t be strategic in the usual sense. Instead, elevate your craft and expand its boundaries. See the influence and flexibility of a breakout designer like Joshua Davis.

    What else have you heard?

  • Three Resources for Learning Web Analytics from Marko Hurst

    A friend is contracting with a design firm for work that will include web analytics, so I asked my colleague and expert Marko Hurst for resources that would provide a gentle introduction, mostly from a marketing perspective. He recommends:

    1. Web Analytics Demystified — A bit more technical, but not a tech book geared for someone who wants to learn analytics
    2. Call To Action — Good mix of marketing & analytics
    3. Waiting For Your Cat To Bark — More of a marketing first, then analytics, but a fantastic read that everyone should read regardless. Introduces Persuasion Architecture, very cool stuff.

    btw, congratulations to Marko and Lou Rosenfeld who are teaming up to write the Search Analytics book.

  • New Article on Concept Design Tools

    The nice folks at Digital Web Magazine published my new article on Concept Design Tools. It’s already received some nice reviews in the Twitterverse…

    For those of you who haven’t seen Victor Lombardi’s new article on concept design tools, it’s a must read…

    …it’s brilliant stuff and super accessible. It’s great to see solid thinking around the topic. There isn’t enough of it.

    …great article on concept design!!!!

    Here’s some reactions from bloggers I keep hearing over and over, confirming why I think this topic is important for digital designers. Steven Clark asks, Where is the breadth of our design?…

    where is our design process preceding the implementation phase? The moment we receive the brief we’re practically falling over ourselves to push forward, and implementation seems to go on at the same time that we’re figuring out what the product should do. This is as applicable to web solutions as to applications, we jump in boots and all with predetermined assumptions.

    And Martin Belam writes…

    One strong theme that came out of it for me personally though was that, unlike industrial designers, when we make web applications and sites we tend to rush to wireframes and ‘colouring in’ before we have explored multiple potential solutions. Victor’s championing of questioning the brief looked like a good way to try and break out of that vice.

    Since writing it I’ve already discovered similar work that’s been done over the past several decades. My approach is different in that the tools are simple and fast enough for any designer to use without having to learn a lot about method, but I will be spending some time with the masters to learn how I can climb onto their shoulders.

    selective memory design concept tool

  • Thoughts on the Euro Information Architecture Summit 2008

    I’m just back from the Euro IA Summit held in Amsterdam, September 26-27th. Overall it was a good event with many warm, interesting people in attendance. I was considering attending PICNIC as well but as I heard it was “very corporate… lots of white men with PowerPoint” I spent my time with the city instead. Hearing a speech is slightly better than reading it or watching it online, but only slightly.

    The Summit kicked off with a talk from Adam Greenfield called “Why I’m Not an Information Architect and You Shouldn’t Be Either.” Where the community used to be filled with electricity — taking on great new challenges — he lamented it’s now focused on creating wireframes for websites. This doesn’t feel like the field that will create Bruce Sterling’s Spimes. Adam’s focus lately has been Ubicomp, and he talked about how “power and grandeur lie beneath the user interface, in the API” and that “IT has dissolved into behavior” like the swipe of an RFID-enabled train card.

    There’s a lot to react to there. I agree the field is not nearly as exciting as it was seven years ago, and this state makes a lot of us that are comfortable with innovation wonder what communities we should mix in and what IA should be (see Matt Milan’s thoughts for another perspective). At the moment I’m trying to pull back and see information architecture as a new but somewhat established field. Invention used to be necessary of everyone, but now it’s only needed from a few. Compare it to an established field like electrical engineering. At the beginning there was a lot invention, but now we know enough to simply do it. Today, some engineers continue to push the envelope with the design of microprocessors while others specify the wiring in the next model of speaker phone. I would expect IA to settle into the same spread.

    Ruud Ruissaard of Informaat discussed the current state of content management which can be summarized by satisfaction rates around 37%. He advocated for a more holistic approach to address systems and processes and management. I have to think CMS will go the way of portals, with everyone realizing there’s a lack of flexibility in large installed systems. Instead, let’s move content to the cloud and pull it out with flexible APIs.
    (more…)