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What if Everything We Believe About Ux Is Wrong?

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 14:30:30 -0400

A few years back, I watched two parts of the same company solve the same problem in radically different ways—and the contrast revealed everything wrong with how we think about UX today. I was embedded with a multi-billion dollar distributor, studying how their B2B and B2C divisions served customers. When an entrepreneur needed an unusual quantity of seasonal product that would make or break his quarter, the B2B sales rep sent him to a retail location to complete the order.

What happened next was a masterclass in the difference between user experience and customer creation.

The retail location was a marvel of modern UX thinking, with a carefully orchestrated customer journey from entrance to checkout. Staff trained in customer delight. Every touchpoint had been researched, prototyped, and optimized based on thousands of hours of customer feedback.

But when this entrepreneur walked in with his make-or-break order, the beautiful system stuttered. The store manager saw disrupted inventory projections. The staff saw a workflow exception that would derail their carefully choreographed day. The optimized experience had no path for this edge case. They’d fulfill the order, grudgingly, but every perfectly designed system treated this customer as an anomaly to be managed rather than an opportunity to be seized.

Meanwhile, the B2B salesman saw something entirely different. He saw a business owner whose success or failure hung in the balance. So he didn’t just send an email and move on. He drove forty minutes across town. He rolled up his sleeves and helped load two trucks in the parking lot. He followed those trucks to the customer’s location and spent an hour stocking shelves. No app. No journey map. No service blueprint.

Here’s what should keep every product leader up at night → The retail team had millions invested in CX. They had design systems, research protocols, and NPS scores that would make any UX team proud. The salesman had none of that—just a clear understanding that his job was to create a customer, not optimize a touchpoint.

Guess which approach built a customer for life?

Guess which one actually created enterprise value?

This is the uncomfortable truth the design community doesn’t want to hear:

We’ve become so obsessed with perfecting the experience that we’ve forgotten experiences don’t pay bills—customers do.

The Great Divergence

This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s symptomatic of a fundamental misunderstanding that’s infected the entire UX community. Somewhere along the journey from “making things usable” to “delighting users,” we lost the plot entirely.

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, had it right all along: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Not to create experiences. Not to delight users. To create customers.

Yet walk into any design conference, browse any UX blog, or sit in any design review, and you’ll hear a completely different gospel being preached. One where business constraints are the enemy, where user needs are sacred above all else, and where anyone who questions the supremacy of user-centered design is branded a heretic.

The Moral High Ground Problem

The UX community has developed something I call the “moral superiority complex.” We’ve positioned ourselves as the noble defenders of users against the evil forces of business. We’re the ones who “care” while everyone else is just trying to make a buck.

This self-righteousness shows up everywhere:

In the eye-rolling at business constraints (“They just don’t get design!”)
In the cult-like devotion to methodologies that prioritize user research over market realities
In the dismissal of sales and marketing as somehow “less pure” than design

But here’s the thing: this moral high ground is built on quicksand. Because without a viable business, there’s no product for users to experience. Without customers willing to pay, there’s no funding for that beautiful design system. Without revenue, your perfectly crafted user experience is just an expensive exercise in self-indulgence.

The Theory of the Business Problem

Peter Drucker wrote extensively about “the theory of the business” - the assumptions that shape how an organization creates value. When UX operates from a different theory than the business itself, friction is inevitable.

The UX community operates from these assumptions:

Users are sacred; their needs supersede business constraints
Good design is inherently valuable
If we make users happy, business success will follow
We are the moral guardians protecting users from exploitation

Meanwhile, Drucker’s theory of business is brutally simple:

The purpose of business is to create a customer
Everything else serves this goal
Profit is the test of validity, not the purpose

When these theories collide, UX professionals find themselves in an impossible position. They’re optimizing for user delight while the business needs customer creation. They’re playing a different game on the same field.

When Business Reality Trumps User Needs

Remember that multi-billion dollar distributor I mentioned at the beginning? The one where the B2B salesman understood customer creation while the retail team perfected experiences? Well, there’s more to that story.

I wasn’t just observing their operations—I was leading UX for their massive ecommerce platform. We were struggling to support both the B2B and B2C business models without doubling our technical overhead. It was a fascinating challenge from a design perspective.

Our UX research uncovered countless ways to improve both experiences. We had journey maps for both customer types, personas that brought their needs to life, and a backlog full of user-validated improvements that would genuinely make our users’ lives better. The retail team loved our recommendations. The B2B sales team was excited about the possibilities.

We had to put all of it aside.

Instead, we focused on platform integration and merger strategies—none of which helped the user experience, but all of which were vital for the business to control costs and remain competitive. Some of my team was furious. They felt we were “selling out” and “abandoning our users.” They couldn’t understand why we’d witnessed that salesman creating such customer value through pure human effort, yet we were choosing to focus on backend systems instead of making those experiences better.

But here’s what they missed: without that platform consolidation, there wouldn’t be a business to design for. The same company that empowered that B2B salesman to drive across town and stock shelves needed to control costs to keep giving him that flexibility. We weren’t abandoning our users—we were ensuring we’d still exist to serve them in the future.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here we were, the UX team, learning the same lesson that salesman already knew: sometimes creating customers means doing the unglamorous work that nobody sees.

Porter’s Reality Check for UX

Michael Porter’s value chain provides a sobering reality check for where UX actually fits in business value creation. Porter identified primary activities (inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing & sales, service) and support activities (infrastructure, HR, technology, procurement).

Here’s the uncomfortable truth → UX isn’t a primary activity. It’s not even a distinct support activity. Instead, UX is a capability that enhances other activities when properly deployed:

Marketing & Sales → UX makes value propositions clearer and more compelling
Service → UX reduces friction in customer interactions
Operations → UX improves internal tools and processes

But when UX tries to stand alone as its own pillar of value creation, it becomes what I call “innovation theater.”

Innovation Theater - All Show, No Business

You’ve seen it. The walls covered in sticky notes. The elaborate journey maps that took months to create. The empathy exercises that generated hundreds of insights. The design sprints that produced beautiful prototypes.

It all feels so productive. So innovative. So user-centered.

But ask yourself: How many of those sticky notes turned into shipped features? How many journey maps actually changed the customer acquisition strategy? How many of those prototypes generated actual revenue?

This is innovation theater—activity that looks and feels like innovation but doesn’t actually create customers or drive business value. It happens because UX teams are often:

Disconnected from revenue responsibility
Measured on process rather than outcomes
Rewarded for following methodology rather than creating customers

Drucker identified only two basic functions of business: innovation and marketing. UX can powerfully advance both functions, but only when it stops performing theater and starts creating real value.

The Customer vs. User Trap

Here’s where things get really uncomfortable for the UX orthodoxy. In many business models, the user and the customer aren’t the same person:

In B2B software, users are employees but customers are procurement departments
In ad-supported products, users consume content but advertisers are the customers
In healthcare, patients use services but insurance companies are often the true customers

When UX focuses myopically on the user without understanding who’s actually paying the bills, they optimize for the wrong outcomes. They create beautiful, intuitive interfaces that users love but that fail to create economic value for the actual customer—the one Drucker says we must create.

This isn’t about ignoring users. It’s about understanding that serving users is a means to creating customers, not an end in itself.

A Better Lens for UX Professionals

So what should UX professionals do differently? Here are concrete steps to realign with business fundamentals:

1. Learn the Language of Business: Stop talking about "delighting users" and start talking about "creating customers." Understand your company's unit economics. Know what customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and churn rate mean for your work.

2. Map Your Work to Revenue: For every design decision, ask: "How does this help create or retain a paying customer?" If you can't draw a clear line from your work to revenue, you're creating art, not business value.

3. Embrace Constraints as Strategy: Instead of viewing business constraints as obstacles to good design, see them as strategic boundaries that focus your creativity. Great UX works within reality, not despite it.

4. Partner with Sales and Customer Success: Spend time with the people who actually create and retain customers. Understand their challenges. Design solutions that help them win, not just solutions that look good in a portfolio.

5. Measure What Matters: Stop celebrating usability scores and start measuring customer acquisition and retention. Your NPS score means nothing if the business is losing customers.

UX as Strategic Advantage (When Done Right)

Here’s what I want the UX community to understand—this isn’t about diminishing design or abandoning user advocacy. It’s about elevating UX to its true potential as a strategic business capability.

When UX professionals embrace Drucker’s lens and align their craft with creating customers, magical things happen:

Design decisions become clearer because they’re grounded in business reality
UX gains a seat at the strategic table because they’re speaking the language of value creation
The tension between “good design” and “business needs” dissolves because they’re aligned to the same goal

The most successful companies—Amazon, Apple, Netflix—don’t see UX and business strategy as separate disciplines. They see UX as one of many capabilities that, when properly orchestrated, create customers more effectively than the competition.

The Choice Before Us

I’ve spent 25 years in this field, and I understand the appeal of the UX orthodoxy. It feels noble to be the user’s champion. It feels pure to focus on craft above commerce.

But as Drucker reminds us, without customers, there is no business. And without business, there is no platform for our craft.

The UX (product design, HCD, ect.) community stands at a crossroads. We can continue down the path of self-righteous isolation, creating beautiful things that don’t create customers. Or we can embrace our role in the larger business ecosystem, using our unique skills to help organizations create and keep customers better than ever before.

The companies that will dominate the next decade won’t be the ones with the best user experience. They’ll be the ones who understand that UX is a means to an end—creating customers who choose them over the competition, again and again.

The question is: Will you be designing for them, or will you still be arranging sticky notes while your competitors eat your lunch?

The choice is yours. But only one path leads to relevance, impact, and meaningful work that actually matters.

Photo by Adrian Sulyok on Unsplash

Culture Reality

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Culture doesn’t support strategy. Culture IS strategy.

You can have the most brilliant customer insights, build the most sophisticated capabilities, outmaneuver your competition, and optimize your costs - but if culture resists your choices, none of it matters.

Culture is the immune system of organizations. When it encounters something foreign - a new way of thinking, a different approach to customers, an unfamiliar definition of value - it attacks. And unless you’re prepared for that immune response, culture will kill your strategy before it has a chance to prove itself.

The distribution company learned this lesson the hard way. Their strategic transformation didn’t fail because the market rejected it. It failed because their own culture rejected it.

The Cultural Hierarchy

To understand how culture killed strategy at the distribution company, you need to understand their cultural hierarchy.

Sales was at the top. Not just in terms of revenue generation, but in terms of organizational influence, decision-making power, and cultural identity. The company saw itself as a sales organization first, with everything else - operations, technology, finance, marketing - existing to support sales success.

This wasn’t accidental. The sales team had built the company’s most important customer relationships. They generated the revenue that funded everything else. They understood the market in ways that other departments couldn’t match.

But cultural hierarchies create cultural antibodies. When the CX team arrived with different ideas about customer value, they weren’t just proposing process changes - they were challenging the fundamental power structure of the organization.

The Language of Resistance

As tensions mounted between the sales team and the CX team, leadership faced a choice. They could challenge the sales culture that was resisting necessary change, or they could protect it by sacrificing the change agents.

They chose protection.

But here’s what made their choice so effective: the language they used to justify it.

With each reorganization, each downsizing, each leadership change, the retreat was positioned as “returning to our customer focus” and “aligning to our values.” The CX team wasn’t being eliminated because they were right and threatening - they were being eliminated because they had lost sight of what really mattered.

This language was brilliant in its deception. It made strategic failure sound like strategic clarity. It turned cultural resistance into cultural wisdom. It transformed the rejection of customer insights into the protection of customer relationships.

The Choice Between Realities

The most telling moment came when the president had to choose between the future his VP of Sales saw and the one his VP of Customer Experience saw.

Both were talented leaders. Both had valid perspectives about customer needs and market direction. Both were advocating for strategies they genuinely believed would benefit the organization.

But only one represented the cultural status quo.

The VP of Sales embodied everything the organization valued: relationship building, revenue generation, market knowledge, and customer loyalty. He spoke the language the culture understood and advocated for approaches the culture trusted.

The VP of Customer Experience represented change: new methods, different metrics, challenging assumptions, and unfamiliar priorities. She spoke a language the culture found foreign and advocated for approaches the culture viewed as threatening.

When the president was forced to choose, there was never really a choice at all. The VP of Customer Experience was gone within a month.

The Antibody Response

What happened next was predictable. With the threat neutralized, the cultural antibodies went to work eliminating any remaining traces of the foreign strategy.

Projects that had been championed by the CX team were quietly defunded. Technologies that supported self-service capabilities were deprioritized. Metrics that measured customer experience independently of sales performance were discontinued.

The organization’s immune system was thorough and efficient. Within six months, it was as if the customer experience transformation had never happened.

But the market hadn’t stopped changing. Customer expectations continued evolving. Competitors continued gaining ground. The evidence that had originally motivated the transformation strategy kept mounting.

The culture had successfully defended itself against internal change. But it couldn’t defend itself against external reality.

The Five-Year Wake-Up Call

It took five years for the distribution company to admit that their cultural choice had been a strategic mistake.

By then, their competitors had captured significant market share through the digital capabilities they had rejected. Customer satisfaction surveys consistently showed preference for competitors’ self-service tools and transparent pricing. New market entrants were building entire business models around the customer experience approaches they had abandoned.

The evidence was overwhelming and undeniable. The culture could no longer rationalize away the market reality.

But the cost of cultural resistance was enormous. They had lost market position, competitive advantage, customer relationships, and millions in revenue. More importantly, they had lost five years of organizational learning that could have kept them ahead of market changes instead of behind them.

The Cultural Lessons

Looking back, there were three critical interventions that might have changed the outcome:

Bring the Antibodies Along for the Ride: Instead of building CX capabilities in isolation, they could have involved the sales team in customer discovery. Let them hear directly from customers about digital preferences. Let them see the data firsthand. People have to see change to believe it, especially when it challenges deeply held cultural assumptions.

Force Future Focus: Leadership needed to challenge the organization’s backward-looking orientation. What got you here won’t get you there. But this requires more than inspirational speeches - it requires systematic examination of changing customer expectations and competitive threats that make cultural comfort impossible to maintain.

Coalition Building Over Capability Building: The most sophisticated capabilities in the world can’t overcome cultural resistance. Before investing in new teams and technologies, they needed to invest in cultural alignment. Change management isn’t a nice-to-have when implementing strategy - it’s the foundation everything else rests on.

The Strategic Tests for Culture Reality

Culture is the ultimate test of strategic coherence. Here are the questions every leadership team should ask:

The Conflict Test: When strategy conflicts with existing culture, which wins in practice? How do you know? What examples can you point to where strategic choices overcame cultural resistance?

The Language Test: How does your organization talk about change? Do you position necessary changes as threats to be managed or opportunities to be captured? What does the language reveal about cultural readiness for transformation?

The Power Test: Who has real influence in your organization, and what do they believe about your strategic direction? Are your most culturally powerful people allies or obstacles to the changes you need to make?

The Antibody Test: When your organization encounters unfamiliar ideas or approaches, what happens? Are they explored openly or attacked reflexively? How does your culture respond to information that challenges established beliefs?

The Choice Test: If you had to choose between protecting your current culture and implementing your strategy, which would you choose? What does that choice reveal about your commitment to strategic transformation?

Beyond the Five Realities

The distribution company’s story illustrates something crucial about strategic success: you can’t address these realities one at a time. They’re interconnected, interdependent, and mutually reinforcing.

Customer insights without capability support create frustration. Capabilities without competitive differentiation create waste. Competitive advantages without cost discipline create unsustainability. And none of it matters if culture rejects the fundamental premises of your strategy.

But when all five realities align - when customer insights drive capability development, when capabilities create competitive advantage, when competitive choices enable cost optimization, and when culture embraces the necessary changes - something powerful happens.

Strategy becomes more than a document or a plan. It becomes the operating system of your organization.

The Path Forward

If you’re leading strategic transformation in your organization, start with an honest assessment of all five realities:

Customer Reality: Do different parts of your organization serve different customer definitions? How will you resolve conflicts between customer insights and organizational assumptions?

Capability Reality: Are your new capabilities enhancing or competing with existing ones? How will you manage the transition from old strengths to new ones?

Competition Reality: What makes you legitimately different from alternatives? Where are you betting differently about the future than your competitors?

Cost Reality: What tradeoffs are you willing to make to fund transformation? Are you adding capabilities or replacing them?

Culture Reality: Who has the power to kill your strategy, and what do they believe about the changes you're proposing? How will you bring cultural influencers along on the transformation journey?

Because here’s what I’ve learned after watching countless strategies succeed and fail:

Strategy isn’t about being clever. It’s about being coherent.

And coherence requires aligning with all five realities, not just the comfortable ones.

The organizations that succeed don’t ignore uncomfortable realities - they face them directly and plan for them systematically. They understand that dropping any one reality eventually causes all the others to collapse.

The organizations that fail keep trying to have it both ways until the market forces them to choose.

Which organization will you be?

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

Competition and Cost Realities

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Strategy is about making choices. But when organizations refuse to make the hard choices - about competition, about costs, about tradeoffs - they end up trapped between their past and their future, serving neither well.

The distribution company faced this trap directly when their major competitor made a bold move that should have validated their own digital strategy. Instead, it exposed how false beliefs about competition can combine with unwillingness to make cost tradeoffs to create strategic paralysis.

The Competitor’s Move

One of their major rivals began putting their entire catalog online. Full pricing transparency. Self-service ordering. Digital account management. Everything the distribution company’s CX team had been advocating for.

This should have been a validation moment. Here was proof that digital transformation wasn’t just theoretical - it was happening in their market, with their customers, by their direct competitors.

Instead, leadership saw it as an opportunity.

“Their customers are going to leave them,” the prediction went. “Technology makes relationships transactional. When they remove the personal touch, we’ll capture their market share.”

This reaction revealed a fundamental belief that had been driving their resistance to change: EASY = LESS VALUE.

The False Belief That Killed Strategy

The EASY = LESS VALUE belief seemed logical from inside the sales-driven culture. If customers could get what they needed without talking to a salesperson, how could the relationship be as strong? If pricing was transparent, how could they demonstrate additional value? If processes were automated, where was the personal service that justified their premium?

This belief led to a series of strategic assumptions that seemed reasonable but were completely wrong:

Customers who used self-service tools would become price-focused and disloyal
Digital interactions would replace relationship value with transactional thinking
Competitors who emphasized efficiency would lose customers who valued service quality
Making things easy for customers would commoditize their offering

The organization convinced itself that their friction wasn’t a bug - it was a feature. The difficulty customers experienced in placing orders, getting pricing information, and managing their accounts wasn’t a problem to solve. It was proof of their superior service model.

Reality Checks the Market Ignored

Meanwhile, the market was providing clear signals that the EASY = LESS VALUE belief was wrong.

Customer research consistently showed demand for the features their competitor was implementing. In surveys and interviews, customers explicitly requested self-service options, pricing transparency, and faster order processing.

New entrants began offering procurement technologies that integrated specifically with the competitor’s digital platform. These weren’t fly-by-night startups - they were established B2B software companies seeing opportunity in the market shift.

Digital disruption was accelerating across industries. Customer expectations shaped by consumer experiences were reshaping B2B buying behaviors. The evidence was everywhere.

But when evidence conflicts with deeply held beliefs, most organizations choose their beliefs.

The leadership team rationalized every piece of contradictory data:

Customer research was skewed toward price-sensitive segments
New procurement tools were just temporary market noise
Digital disruption was overhyped by technology vendors
Their loyal customer base was different from the general market

They had an answer for everything except the most important question: What if they were wrong?

The Cost of Refusing Tradeoffs

The distribution company understood they needed to invest in digital capabilities. What they refused to understand was what they needed to stop investing in to make room for those capabilities.

The math was straightforward. If customers could place routine orders online instead of calling their salesperson, each salesperson could handle significantly more accounts. Instead of needing one salesperson for every 50 customers, they might need one for every 100 or 150 customers.

This created an obvious efficiency opportunity: reduce the sales force size, maintain customer coverage, and redirect those salary and benefit costs toward technology development and customer experience improvements.

The cost savings would be substantial. The competitive advantage would be clear. The customer experience would improve.

But the organization couldn’t bring itself to make this tradeoff.

The Cultural Cost of Change

The sales team wasn’t just an expense line - they were the cultural heart of the company. Reducing headcount felt like an attack on organizational identity. Leadership worried about losing institutional knowledge, damaging morale, and signaling that relationship building was no longer valued.

They also feared customer reaction. What if loyal customers felt abandoned when their familiar salesperson disappeared? What if the transition period created service gaps? What if they were wrong about customer willingness to adopt self-service tools?

These weren’t unreasonable concerns. Change always involves risk. But by refusing to accept any risk, they guaranteed a different kind of failure.

Instead of transformation, they achieved expensive redundancy. They kept the full sales force AND built the technology capabilities. They maintained the old model AND created the new one. They tried to have it both ways.

The Expensive Overlay

The CX team became what consultants politely call an “expensive overlay” - new capabilities that don’t replace existing ones but simply add cost and complexity.

Instead of streamlined customer experiences, they created parallel paths. Customers could call their salesperson OR use the digital tools. They could get pricing through relationship conversations OR through online tools. They could place orders through traditional processes OR through automated systems.

This approach satisfied no one:

Customers were confused by inconsistent experiences across channels
Salespeople felt threatened by tools that seemed designed to replace them
Technology costs ballooned without corresponding revenue increases
The CX team couldn’t demonstrate clear ROI because they weren’t actually replacing anything

The organization was paying for two different business models without getting the full benefits of either.

The Competitive Reality Check

Two years into this expensive experiment, the competitive landscape had shifted dramatically.

Their rival’s digital platform wasn’t losing customers - it was gaining them. The self-service tools that were supposed to damage relationships were actually strengthening them by making routine interactions frictionless, freeing up time for salespeople to focus on strategic conversations.

New competitors entered the market specifically targeting digitally-native customers. These weren’t traditional distributors adding technology - they were technology companies entering distribution, with cost structures and customer expectations built around digital efficiency.

Most painfully, they began losing customers not to price competition, but to experience competition. Customers weren’t leaving for cheaper alternatives - they were leaving for easier alternatives.

The Strategic Tests for Competition and Costs

The distribution company’s failure to address competition and costs simultaneously created a strategic trap. Here are the tests that could have prevented it:

The Belief Test: What fundamental beliefs about customer value are driving your competitive strategy? Are these beliefs based on current evidence or historical experience? How would you know if they were wrong?

The Evidence Test: When market evidence contradicts your competitive assumptions, how do you respond? Do you investigate further or rationalize the contradiction? Who in your organization is responsible for challenging strategic beliefs?

The Tradeoff Test: What are you willing to stop doing to fund what matters most? Are you making real tradeoffs or just adding expenses? Can you articulate what you're trading off and why?

The Math Test: Do the economics of your strategic choices actually work? Are you building sustainable competitive advantage or expensive redundancy? What would have to be true about customer behavior for your strategy to succeed?

The Timeline Test: How long are you willing to maintain dual systems, parallel processes, or redundant capabilities? What's your plan for moving from the old model to the new one?

The Price of Strategic Paralysis

Five years later, the distribution company was forced to make the choices they could have made earlier. Their competitors had captured significant market share through digital capabilities. Customer satisfaction was declining due to outdated processes. The expensive overlay had become financially unsustainable.

They eventually reduced their sales force, implemented self-service tools, and embraced pricing transparency - exactly what the CX team had recommended years earlier.

But the delay cost them market position, competitive advantage, and millions in lost revenue. More importantly, it cost them the opportunity to lead transformation in their industry instead of following it.

The lesson isn’t that traditional relationship-based selling was wrong or that digital transformation was inevitably right. The lesson is that strategic paralysis - refusing to make choices about competition and costs - is always wrong.

Strategy requires choosing a direction and accepting the tradeoffs that choice demands. The organizations that succeed make those choices decisively, learn from the results, and adjust course as needed.

The organizations that fail keep trying to have it both ways until the market forces them to choose.

Photo by Rosie Steggles on Unsplash

Capability Reality

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Building new capabilities sounds straightforward. Identify what you need, hire the right people, invest in the right tools, and watch your organization transform.

The reality is messier.

New capabilities don’t just slide smoothly into existing organizations. They challenge established ways of working, threaten existing power structures, and often require abandoning strengths that took years to develop.

At the distribution company, this reality played out like a slow-motion organizational civil war. The new customer experience capabilities they invested millions to build didn’t complement their existing sales capabilities - they declared war on them.

The Philosophy Wars

The conflict wasn’t just about processes or reporting structures. It was about fundamentally different beliefs about how value gets created.

The sales team had spent decades building capabilities around relationship management, consultative selling, and personalized service. Their philosophy was simple: customers buy from people they trust, and trust comes from understanding their business deeply enough to provide tailored solutions.

Every system, every process, every metric reinforced this philosophy. Salespeople were measured on relationship depth, not transaction efficiency. Customer interactions were designed for maximum personal engagement, not minimum time investment. Success meant becoming so embedded in a customer’s business that switching vendors would be painful.

The CX team brought a completely different philosophy: customers want to buy efficiently, and efficiency comes from removing human friction wherever possible. They believed value was created through transparency, speed, and customer control.

Their capabilities centered on digital self-service, automated workflows, and data-driven insights. Success meant making purchasing so smooth that customers barely noticed the vendor - they just got what they needed, when they needed it, without hassle.

These weren’t just different approaches to the same goal. They were opposing theories about what customers actually valued.

The Transparency Wars

The capability conflict became visible immediately in debates over pricing transparency.

The CX team wanted to display pricing online, allowing customers to see costs, compare options, and make decisions independently. From their perspective, transparency built trust and enabled efficient purchasing.

The sales team viewed pricing transparency as strategic suicide. Their pricing model was complex, relationship-dependent, and designed to reward loyalty. Different customers paid different prices for the same products based on volume, history, and negotiation. Making this visible would expose the inconsistencies and eliminate the sales team’s ability to craft customized deals.

More fundamentally, the sales team believed that pricing conversations were relationship opportunities. When a customer called to discuss costs, that was a chance to understand their business better, identify additional needs, and strengthen the partnership.

The CX team saw those same conversations as friction points. Why force customers to call for information they could get instantly online? Why make them wait for a salesperson’s schedule when they needed to make purchasing decisions?

Both teams were building capabilities to support their philosophy. The CX team developed transparent pricing tools, comparison features, and instant quote generation. The sales team refined relationship management systems, deal customization tools, and consultative selling processes.

They were building conflicting definitions of customer value into the foundation of the business.

Caught in the Middle

The technology team found themselves in an impossible position. As an internal support function, they were constantly forced to choose between what the CX team was requesting and what the legacy sales culture demanded.

The CX team would submit requirements for customer self-service features: online account management, automated ordering, transparent inventory visibility. The sales team would push back, arguing these features would “commoditize” their relationships and reduce customer engagement.

The tech team would build compromises that satisfied no one. Self-service tools that required sales approval. Transparent pricing that was hidden behind login requirements. Automation that still routed through manual processes.

Every development cycle became a negotiation between competing visions of how the business should operate. The tech team couldn’t build coherent capabilities because the organization hadn’t made coherent choices about what capabilities it actually wanted.

The Integration Illusion

Leadership kept insisting that the new CX capabilities would “enhance” the existing sales capabilities, not replace them. They painted a picture of harmony: technology handling routine transactions while salespeople focused on strategic relationships.

But capabilities don’t integrate automatically just because leadership declares they should.

The sales team’s capabilities were designed around control - controlling customer interactions, controlling information flow, controlling the pace of transactions. The CX team’s capabilities were designed around customer autonomy - letting customers interact when and how they wanted.

These philosophies couldn’t coexist without fundamental changes to how the sales team operated. Either salespeople needed to become facilitators of customer self-service, or the self-service tools needed to maintain sales involvement.

Neither team was willing to make those changes.

The sales team wasn’t interested in becoming order facilitators instead of relationship builders. The CX team wasn’t interested in building tools that perpetuated inefficient processes.

The Capability Death Spiral

As the conflict intensified, both teams began building defensive capabilities.

The sales team invested more heavily in relationship management tools, customer entertainment budgets, and consultative training. They were doubling down on what made them valuable in the old model.

The CX team accelerated their digital transformation efforts, building more sophisticated self-service tools and automated workflows. They were racing to prove the new model could work.

Instead of capability integration, the organization achieved capability duplication. They had two customer service philosophies, two technology platforms, two measurement systems, and two definitions of success - all competing for the same customers and the same resources.

The Strategic Tests for Capability Reality

The distribution company’s capability conflict was predictable and preventable. Here are the tests that could have identified the problem early:

The Customer Evidence Test: What specific customer behaviors, feedback, or pain points drove you to build this capability? Can you point to concrete evidence that customers are asking for this solution, struggling without it, or choosing competitors who offer it?

The Philosophy Test: Do your new capabilities assume the same things about customer value as your existing capabilities? If not, how will you manage the conflict?

The Integration Test: Are you adding capabilities or transforming them? Addition is easier but often creates redundancy. Transformation is harder but creates coherence.

The Resource Test: Are your new capabilities competing with existing ones for customer attention, organizational resources, or leadership support? Competition between internal capabilities is usually more destructive than competition with external threats.

The Measurement Test: Are you measuring success in ways that reward capability integration or capability protection? If different teams are optimizing for different metrics, they'll build different capabilities.

The Path Not Taken

What could the distribution company have done differently?

Instead of building CX capabilities alongside sales capabilities, they could have built hybrid capabilities that served both philosophies. Customer-controlled pricing for routine orders, relationship-managed pricing for complex deals. Self-service tools for familiar transactions, consultative support for new challenges.

Instead of letting teams build defensive capabilities, they could have required collaborative capability development. Every new tool needed to enhance both efficiency and relationship value. Every process change needed buy-in from both customer self-service and sales engagement perspectives.

Instead of measuring teams separately, they could have measured them together. Customer satisfaction scores that required both efficiency and relationship quality. Revenue metrics that rewarded both transaction volume and relationship depth.

But these approaches would have required something the organization wasn’t willing to provide: clear strategic choices about how they wanted to compete.

Without those choices, capability conflicts became capability wars. And in capability wars, customers always lose.

Photo by Christine on Unsplash

Customer Reality

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The first crack in any failing strategy usually appears here: in conflicting definitions of who the customer actually is.

It sounds absurd, right? How can an organization not know its own customers? But I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and it’s always the same pattern. Different teams, different departments, different leaders - all confident they understand the customer, all serving completely different people.

The distribution company I wrote about in Part 1 faced exactly this reality. And the collision between their sales team’s customer and their CX team’s customer destroyed a multimillion-dollar transformation before it could take root.

The Sales Team’s Customer

Any good salesperson knows that the strength of the relationship determines the strength of the account. At this distribution company, the sales team had built their entire approach around that principle.

They knew their customers by name. They understood their businesses, their challenges, their personalities. They were available when customers called, responsive when problems arose, and consultative when big decisions loomed.

Their customer valued personal relationships. Trusted advice. The comfort of knowing that when something went wrong, they had a person - not a system - to call.

This wasn’t just theory. The sales team had decades of evidence supporting this customer reality. Long-term accounts. Personal referrals. Customers who stayed loyal even when cheaper alternatives emerged.

Their customer definition was simple: businesses that value relationships over transactions, quality over efficiency, and personal service over self-service.

The CX Team’s Customer

The newly hired customer experience team started with a different approach entirely. Instead of relying on relationship history, they conducted systematic research. Surveys. Interviews. Behavioral analysis. Data.

What they discovered challenged everything the sales team believed.

B2B customers were increasingly frustrated with having to wait for their salesperson to process simple orders. They wanted self-service options for routine transactions. They wanted faster response times, not just personal attention. They wanted technology that removed friction rather than requiring human intervention.

Most tellingly, when asked to define a “strong relationship” with a vendor, customers emphasized value delivery over personal rapport. Speed and reliability mattered more than familiarity. Solving their problems efficiently was more important than having coffee together.

The CX team’s customer definition was equally clear: businesses that prioritize efficiency, transparency, and control over their purchasing process.

Two Teams, Two Customers, One Company

Here’s what made this situation so dangerous: both teams were right about their customers.

The sales team wasn’t wrong about relationship importance. The CX team wasn’t wrong about efficiency demands. But they were serving fundamentally different customer segments with completely incompatible service models.

The sales team was serving traditional B2B buyers who expected consultative relationships and were willing to trade efficiency for expertise. These customers did value the personal touch, did appreciate having a dedicated contact, and did define strong relationships through trust and accessibility.

The CX team was discovering a growing segment of customers who had been shaped by consumer digital experiences. These buyers expected B2B interactions to be as smooth and self-directed as their personal purchasing. They defined strong relationships through consistent value delivery, not personal connection.

The problem wasn’t that either team misunderstood their customers. The problem was that the company was trying to serve both customer types with the same business model.

When Customer Definitions Collide

The collision between these customer realities created chaos throughout the organization.

Product development couldn’t decide which customer to design for. Should the new ordering system prioritize relationship tools for sales engagement, or efficiency tools for customer self-service?

Marketing couldn’t craft coherent messaging. Should they emphasize personal service and relationship depth, or speed and digital convenience?

Operations couldn’t optimize processes. Should they design workflows around sales team involvement, or around customer independence?

Most destructively, the sales team began to feel threatened by the CX team’s customer insights. If customers really wanted self-service options, what did that say about the value of the sales relationship? If efficiency mattered more than rapport, were their core skills becoming obsolete?

The sales team’s response was predictable: they questioned the research methodology, doubted the customer feedback, and defended their customer definition with increasing intensity.

“Those aren’t our real customers,” became the rallying cry. “Our customers understand value. They appreciate relationships. This data must be skewed toward price shoppers who don’t represent our core market.”

The Fatal Assumption

But the deepest problem wasn’t the conflicting customer definitions. It was the assumption that they had to choose between them.

The sales team assumed that embracing digital efficiency meant abandoning relationship value. The CX team assumed that improving self-service meant eliminating sales involvement. Leadership assumed they had to pick one customer reality and abandon the other.

This binary thinking killed any possibility of strategic coherence.

Instead of designing a system that could serve both customer types effectively, they designed a system where one had to win and the other had to lose. Instead of creating customer choice between high-touch and low-touch experiences, they created internal warfare over which experience should exist.

The Strategic Tests for Customer Reality

Looking back, there were clear warning signs that customer reality was fracturing. Here are the tests every leadership team should run:

The Definition Test: Can every team leader describe your ideal customer in the same way? If your sales team, marketing team, and product team are describing different people, you don't have customer clarity - you have customer chaos.

The Segment Test: Are you trying to serve customer segments with fundamentally different expectations using the same business model? Sometimes the answer is yes, and that's okay - but only if you design for that intentionally.

The Evidence Test: Are customer insights driving decisions, or justifying predetermined choices? When research conflicts with assumptions, which wins? How you handle contradictory customer data reveals whether you're truly customer-focused or just customer-informed.

The Conflict Resolution Test: When different parts of your organization disagree about customer needs, how do you resolve it? Do you have a systematic way to investigate conflicts, or do politics and seniority decide?

Moving Beyond Customer Wars

The distribution company never solved their customer reality problem. Instead, they chose sides. They decided the sales team’s customer was the “real” customer and dismissed the CX team’s research as flawed or irrelevant.

But the market didn’t care about their internal politics. Competitors who embraced both customer realities - offering high-touch service for complex needs and self-service efficiency for routine transactions - began capturing market share from both segments.

The lesson here isn’t that one customer definition was right and the other wrong. The lesson is that customer reality must be faced honestly, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Sometimes that means acknowledging you’re serving multiple customer types and designing different experiences for each. Sometimes it means recognizing that your traditional customer base is evolving and you need to evolve with them. Sometimes it means admitting that what got you here won’t get you there.

But it always means choosing truth over comfort.

Photo by Rosie Steggles on https://unsplash.com/photos/a-road-sign-pointing-in-opposite-directions-in-the-desert-h1OhvEIIcxs?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash

How a Strategy With All the Right Pieces Still Failed

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Most strategies fail before they even begin.

Not because the market shifts. Not because execution breaks down. But because they were never real choices to begin with.

The deck looked great. The words were ambitious. The diagrams were clean.

But the choices? They were safe. Vague. Politely agreed to in a room and then quietly ignored.

If you’ve led a strategy, you know the difference between what’s on the slide and what actually shapes decisions, behavior, and results. You’ve sat through presentations where everyone nods enthusiastically, only to watch those same people quietly undermine every meaningful change the strategy requires.

Real strategy isn’t a document. It’s a set of visible, risky, committed choices.

And there are five realities—undeniable forces—you have to align with if you want that strategy to hold up in the real world. I’ve seen this play out in corporate and product strategy work for years: the organizations that win align with all five. The ones that struggle almost always drop one. Or two. Or all of them.

And when you drop one, the others start to fall apart.

The Multi-Million Dollar Strategy That Wasn’t

Several years ago, I worked with a national distribution company attempting what looked like a textbook strategic pivot. They were investing millions in customer experience capabilities - not just capital investments, but complete organizational restructuring, new technologies, and entirely new teams with talent recruited from across the globe.

On paper, it was brilliant. The market was demanding digital transformation. Their competitors were moving online. Customer expectations were evolving. The strategy made perfect sense.

What could go wrong?

Everything.

Within three years, the entire CX team was dismantled. Leadership was fired. Teams were scattered. Millions of dollars evaporated. My own reporting structure changed seven times in a single year - a telling indicator of the organizational chaos this “strategy” created.

But here’s the kicker: the strategy wasn’t wrong about the market. It wasn’t wrong about customer needs. It was wrong about reality.

They had dropped not one, but multiple realities. And once the first domino fell, the rest followed in rapid succession.

The Five Realities Every Strategy Must Face

Through working with dozens of organizations over the years, I’ve identified five fundamental realities that every strategy must align with to succeed:

1. Customer: If you can’t name them clearly, you can’t serve them meaningfully. But it goes deeper than demographics - different parts of your organization often serve completely different customer realities.

2. Capabilities: Strategy without unique capability is just ambition. But new capabilities don’t just appear - they often conflict directly with existing ones, creating internal wars that tear strategies apart.

3. Competition: If your strategy sounds good regardless of who else is playing, it’s not a strategy. It’s about difference, contrast, and betting differently about the future than your competitors.

4. Costs: Every choice has a cost, and strategy means owning it. The organizations that succeed make deliberate tradeoffs - they stop doing things to make room for what matters most.

5. Culture: Culture doesn’t support strategy - it delivers it. Or kills it. When strategy conflicts with culture, culture wins every time unless you plan for that conflict.

Drop One, Drop Them All

These five realities aren’t independent modules you can address separately. They’re interconnected like a spider web - when one strand breaks, the vibration affects everything else.

At the distribution company, the failure cascade looked like this:

They started with conflicting customer realities between their sales team and new CX team. This led them to build capabilities that directly opposed each other. When competitors proved their market assumptions wrong, they refused to adapt. They wouldn’t make the cost tradeoffs necessary to fund transformation properly. And when culture resisted change, leadership chose comfort over customer value.

One broken reality became five broken realities in rapid succession.

What’s Coming Next

Over the next four posts, we’ll dive deep into each of these realities using the distribution company’s story as our guide. You’ll see exactly how each reality was ignored or mismanaged, and more importantly, you’ll get practical frameworks for ensuring your strategy aligns with all five.

Part 2 explores Customer Reality - how the same organization can serve completely different customer definitions, and why that misalignment kills even the best strategies.

Part 3 dives into Capability Reality - why new strengths often fight with old ones, and how to manage capability evolution without destroying what you’ve built.

Part 4 tackles Competition and Costs together - how false beliefs about competitors combine with unwillingness to make tradeoffs to create strategic paralysis.

Part 5 concludes with Culture Reality - the ultimate test of whether your strategy will live or die in the real world.

Because here’s what I’ve learned after watching countless strategies succeed and fail:

Strategy isn’t about being clever. It’s about being coherent.

And coherence requires aligning with all five realities, not just the comfortable ones.

Photo by Yuvraj Singh Parmar on Unsplash

The Dangerous Conflation of Strategy and Marketing

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Let's talk about a dangerous misconception that's lurking in the shadows of the business world. It's a silent killer, and it's time we dragged it into the light.

Here it is: Many people, even seasoned professionals, are confusing strategy with marketing.

They’re not the same. Not even close.

And this confusion? It’s killing businesses left and right.

The Blurred Lines of Business

Titles like “Marketing Strategist” don’t help. They blur the lines between two distinct, crucial elements of business success. It’s like calling a chef a “Cooking Nutritionist” - sure, there’s overlap, but they’re fundamentally different roles.

This blurring of lines isn’t just a semantic issue. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding that can lead businesses down a treacherous path. When you conflate strategy and marketing, you risk focusing on the wrong things at the wrong times. You might find yourself pouring resources into flashy campaigns when what you really need is a complete overhaul of your business model.

Let’s be clear: both strategy and marketing are vital. But they serve different purposes, require different skills, and focus on different aspects of your business. Mixing them up is like trying to fix a leaky pipe with a paint brush. You might make it look pretty, but you haven’t solved the underlying problem.

Let’s unpack this assertion and explored why it’s so detrimental to business success.

What is Marketing?

First things first. Let’s talk about marketing.

Marketing is crucial. It’s not just important - it’s a lifeline for your business.

It’s the critical function that shapes how your company interacts with its customers. Think of it as the voice of your business, the face you show to the world.

Marketing is about finding that sweet spot where your product meets your market. It’s about figuring out where to place and how to price your offerings so that customers see value you’re promoting. It’s the art and science of communicating your value proposition in a way that makes customers sit up and take notice.

Don’t miss this: marketing is also your ear to the ground. It’s the feedback mechanism that tells you what your customers really think about your product or service.

In essence, marketing is the megaphone of your business. It’s the bridge between your business and your customer’s wallet.

Sounds a lot like strategy, doesn’t it?

It’s not.

What is Strategy?

Now, let’s talk about strategy.

Strategy is about creating advantage. Full stop.

It’s not about making noise. It’s about making moves that matter.

Strategy is about carving out a winning position in your customer’s mind. It’s about crafting a value proposition so strong and differentiated that customers can’t help but choose you. It’s the art of making your business the obvious choice in a sea of options.

But it goes deeper than that.

Strategy leverages your company’s unique capabilities to drive customer behavior and secure sustainable profit. It’s not just about what you do - it’s about what you do better than anyone else.

Strategy is about over-investing in capabilities that drive differentiated value while capturing value on the bottom line for sustainable profits. It’s about driving customer behavior - the ultimate litmus test of an effective strategy.

In short, strategy is the chess game of business. It’s about thinking several moves ahead and positioning yourself for long-term success.

The Crucial Differences: Why Marketing Isn’t Strategy

Now that we’ve laid out what marketing and strategy are, let’s dive into the crucial differences. Because understanding these differences could be the key to unlocking your business’s true potential.

1. Scope and Focus

Marketing informs strategy, but it’s not strategy itself. Strategy’s scope is broader, deeper, and more foundational. While marketing focuses on current customers and how to reach them effectively, strategy considers the entire business landscape.

Think about it this way: Marketing is like a spotlight, illuminating your current audience and how to serve them better. Strategy, on the other hand, is like a floodlight, illuminating not just your current customers, but potential future customers, competitors, market trends, and internal capabilities.

2. Customer Focus

Here’s where things get really interesting. Marketing primarily looks at your current customers. It’s about understanding their needs, preferences, and behaviors to serve them better.

Strategy, however, doesn’t just look at your current customers. It considers the vast majority who aren’t your customers… yet. Most innovation comes from people who aren’t buying from you today but could tomorrow with the right strategy.

This is a crucial distinction. By focusing only on current customers, you might miss out on massive opportunities for growth and innovation. Remember Blockbuster? They were so focused on serving their current customers better that they missed the shift to streaming. Netflix, on the other hand, had a strategy that looked beyond current customers to where the market was heading.

3. Competitive Positioning

Marketing is concerned with how you’re positioned in a customer’s mind relative to competitors. It’s about crafting messages and experiences that make you stand out.

Strategy, however, goes much deeper. It’s about finding what Roger Martin calls a strong “Where to Play” choice - a place on the competitive landscape where you can compete from a position of strength. This isn’t just about perception; it’s about fundamentally aligning your capabilities with market opportunities in a way that’s hard for competitors to replicate.

4. Cost Structure Optimization

Here’s something that often gets overlooked: Strategy obsesses over the cost of delivering value. It’s about balancing over-investment in value-creating activities with offsetting costs through higher prices or lower operating costs elsewhere.

Marketing might influence pricing strategies, but it doesn’t typically delve into the nitty-gritty of cost structures. Strategy, on the other hand, is all about this balance. If you’re not focused on this, you’ll end up “Stuck in the Middle,” as Porter would say - neither the low-cost leader nor the differentiated provider.

5. Cultural Alignment

Lastly, and this is a big one: Good strategy evolves, and so must the culture that supports it. Strategy addresses this head-on, using management systems as a bridge between culture and strategy.

Good strategy evolves, and so must the culture that supports it.

Marketing might influence company culture, particularly in terms of brand values. But strategy shapes the entire organizational culture to align with long-term goals. It’s about creating an environment where every decision, from the C-suite to the front lines, aligns with your strategic direction.

Understanding these differences isn’t just an academic exercise. It’s about recognizing the unique value that both marketing and strategy bring to the table. When you align them properly, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when your business doesn’t just compete - it dominates.

The Dangers of Conflation: A Recipe for Disaster

Mistaking marketing for strategy is like mistaking the map for the territory. It’s dangerous, and here’s why:

Narrow focus and short-term thinking: You’ll end up obsessing over communication and promotion while neglecting other crucial aspects of your business. You’ll chase quick wins at the expense of sustainable growth.
Resource misallocation and lack of competitive advantage: If you think marketing is your strategy, you’ll pour resources into marketing at the expense of other critical strategic initiatives. You’ll find yourself easily copied by competitors who have a robust strategy backing their marketing efforts.
Neglecting internal capabilities and cost structure: You might overlook your own strengths and weaknesses, leading to unsustainable business models.
Cultural misalignment and reactive posture: You’ll overlook the importance of cultural alignment and end up constantly reacting to market conditions instead of shaping them.
Imbalanced focus: You’ll overemphasize customer acquisition at the expense of retention and lifetime value. You’ll neglect non-customer stakeholders like employees, suppliers, and the community.

In short, conflating marketing and strategy is a recipe for disaster. It’s like trying to win a chess game by only moving your pawns. You might make some progress, but you’re not using all the pieces at your disposal.

The Interplay Between Strategy and Marketing: A Delicate Dance

Despite their differences, strategy and marketing are dance partners in the business ballroom. They move together, each informing and supporting the other.

Strategy guides marketing efforts by defining the playing field, setting the overall value proposition, allocating resources, determining brand positioning, and identifying key product features to emphasize.

Meanwhile, marketing insights inform strategic decisions by providing customer feedback and market trends, identifying new opportunities, offering competitive intelligence, testing strategic hypotheses, and evaluating the effectiveness of the current value proposition.

This symbiotic relationship creates an iterative process of strategy formulation and marketing execution. Marketing metrics align with strategic goals, and marketing becomes a tool for strategic differentiation.

It’s a delicate dance, but when done right, it’s beautiful to behold.

The Often Overlooked Aspect: Culture - The Secret Sauce of Strategy

Now, let’s talk about something that often gets left out of these discussions: culture.

Culture is the key to animating strategy. It’s the often-forgotten force that makes or breaks strategic success.

Culture is the key to animating strategy.

Many strategies fail because they neglect culture. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if your culture doesn’t support it, it’s doomed to fail. Management systems are the bridge between culture and strategy, shaping behaviors and decision-making processes to align with strategic goals.

Wrapping Up: The Battle for Your Business’s Future

Let’s bring it all home.

Strategy and marketing are not the same. They’re distinct, crucial elements of business success. Strategy creates the advantage, while marketing communicates and reinforces it.

Strategy creates the advantage, while marketing communicates and reinforces it.

Understanding this difference isn’t just important - it’s vital. It’s time to reassess your business approach. Are you conflating strategy and marketing? If so, it’s time to separate them, respect their unique roles, and leverage both for true business success.

The battle for your business’s future is won or lost in how you think about strategy and marketing.

Pixels, Politics, and Performance

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the fast-paced world of political campaigns, engagement is everything. During my time leading the UX and digital design work for Governor Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign, we pioneered strategies that transformed how campaigns interact with supporters online. Our approach wasn’t just about creating a digital presence; it was about forging connections, inspiring action, and building a community. Here’s how we did it.

More Than Just a Pretty Face: Reimagining the Campaign Website

Gone were the days when a campaign website could simply be a digital brochure. We envisioned something more dynamic, more engaging, and ultimately, more powerful. Our website became a hub of activity, serving multiple crucial functions:

A robust donation platform that made giving not just easy, but compelling
A toolkit for campaign supporters, equipping them with everything they needed to spread the word
A real-time information center for policy updates, events, news, and campaign activities
An addictive destination that gave people reasons to come back, again and again

Every feature, from embeddable widgets to interactive timelines, was designed from the ground up with user needs in mind. I started with rough sketches, mapping out data requirements, before moving to high-fidelity comps. This user-centric approach ensured that every element served a purpose and enhanced engagement.

Gamification: The Secret Sauce of Supporter Engagement

One of our most innovative and successful strategies was the introduction of gamification elements. At the heart of this was the “Huckabee Rangers” program. Inspired by Chuck Norris’s involvement in the campaign (and his role in “Walker, Texas Ranger”), we created a suite of tools that turned campaign support into an engaging, competitive experience.

We implemented a points system and leaderboard that recognized and rewarded active supporters. This wasn’t just about creating a fun experience (though that was certainly part of it). It was about tapping into the human desire for recognition and achievement, channeling it into meaningful campaign actions.

The results were astounding. The campaign team began inviting our most active online supporters to private events, recognizing the significant impact they were making in the digital space. In an online landscape dominated by other candidates’ supporters, our Rangers were making waves.

Innovation in Visualization: Making Progress Tangible

Some of our most effective features centered around visualizing campaign progress:

Donation Visualizations: We created a US map that filled with a red wave as we approached our donation goals. This simple yet powerful visual gave supporters a tangible sense of progress and momentum.
Interactive Timeline: We developed a timeline of Huckabee’s life and career, split into hundreds of tiles. As donation milestones were hit, new tiles were revealed, often unlocking exclusive digital content. This drove constant engagement, with supporters checking back regularly to see what new revelations awaited.

These visualizations weren’t just eye candy. They tapped into fundamental human motivations - the desire to see progress, to uncover secrets, to be part of something bigger than ourselves. By making these abstract concepts visual and interactive, we turned campaign support from a one-time action into an ongoing journey.

Leveraging Emerging Platforms: YouTube and Beyond

In 2007-2008, social media was just beginning to show its potential as a campaign tool. We were at the forefront, particularly in our use of YouTube. Our campaign blog became a hub for video content, a novel concept at the time. This approach allowed us to humanize the candidate, share campaign moments in real-time, and create a sense of immediacy and connection that traditional media couldn’t match.

Co-Creating the Campaign: Harnessing User-Generated Wisdom

We didn’t just broadcast - we listened. Our approach to user feedback was multi-faceted:

We maintained an active blog that allowed supporters to comment and create community.
We established a working group of our most engaged supporters, giving them early access to new features and actively incorporating their feedback.
We closely monitored online news and blogger comments, using their insights to refine our approach.

This feedback loop wasn’t just about fixing bugs (though we did that rapidly when needed). It was about co-creating the campaign experience with our most dedicated supporters. By giving them a voice in the process, we turned them into our most vocal online advocates.

Measuring Success: Beyond the Usual Metrics

While we tracked traditional metrics like site visits and donation rates, our success measures went deeper:

We looked at first-time use and continued engagement with new features.
Repeat visitor rates were crucial, indicating we were creating reasons for supporters to come back.
Our gamification leaderboard served as a public-facing engagement metric.
We closely monitored donation completion rates and referral program adoption.

These metrics didn’t just tell us about site performance - they gave us insight into the health and engagement of our supporter community.

Lessons Learned: The Long-Term Impact

The strategies we pioneered on the Huckabee campaign have shaped my approach to user engagement ever since:

Direct user feedback is critical: Both before and after feature development, understanding user needs and experiences is paramount.
Never underestimate the power of fun: The success of the Huckabee Rangers program showed that even in serious endeavors like political campaigns, engagement soars when users enjoy what they’re doing.
Design with outcomes and users in mind: Every feature, every interaction should be anchored in campaign goals and user needs. This alignment is the foundation of successful engagement.

In the end, our campaign might not have clinched the nomination, but it set new standards for digital engagement in politics. By keeping our focus squarely on user needs and campaign goals, we created a digital presence that didn’t just inform or persuade - it inspired, it connected, and it mobilized. In today’s digital-first world, these lessons are more relevant than ever, not just for political campaigns, but for any organization looking to build a committed, engaged online community.

I took this photo of Chuck and his wife at the CNN YouTube debates in St. Petersburg, FL

Agile Insights From the Huckabee Campaign

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the world of political campaigns, things move fast. Really fast. The team behind Mike Huckabee’s campaign website knew this all too well. We had to be nimble, ready to pivot at a moment’s notice. Why? Because in politics, change is the only constant.

Agile wasn’t just a buzzword for us—it was our lifeline. We had to turn on a dime. Sometimes it was an event on the ground that forced us to change course. Other times, user feedback or breaking news pushed us to innovate on the fly. Our development and design framework was built for one thing: speed and agility.

The Power of Iterative Development: Responding to User Needs

We built our process on quick, feature-focused cycles. Here’s what that looked like:

Daily morning huddles to set priorities
Multiple deployments throughout the day (yes, you read that right)
Instant incorporation of user feedback
Short, laser-focused development sprints

Why did we choose this approach? Simple. We wanted to test our ideas with real users, fast. So we deployed features as quickly as we could build them—often several times a day. We knew that quick feedback would guide each iteration and keep us from wandering down unproductive paths.

With the clock always ticking, we made sure every release counted. Real-time feedback was our North Star. This user-focused approach paid off, leading to widespread adoption of our platform. And being a small team meant we had to zero in on one feature at a time.

Technological Infrastructure: Our Digital Toolkit

To keep up with our breakneck pace, we leveraged some cutting-edge tools:

Git for version control (a game-changer for us)
A database-backed CMS that could keep up
Advanced design automation and prototyping tools
An ever-evolving design system

These weren’t just fancy toys—they were the glue that held our collaborative efforts together, helping us maintain quality even as we raced against time.

Navigating Challenges: It Wasn’t All Smooth Sailing

Let’s be real—our rapid-fire approach came with its share of hurdles:

Bringing new developers up to speed in a blink
Keeping everyone’s databases in sync (a constant battle)
Managing the relentless pace without burning out

Our team’s bedrock of trust and open communication was our secret weapon.

But here’s the thing: our team’s bedrock of trust and open communication was our secret weapon. When things went sideways (and they did), our tight-knit crew pulled together to set it right, fast.

Instant messaging was our lifeline, with frantic calls for help flying back and forth when crises hit. But that high level of trust meant we could resolve issues in record time.

Impact: Building Trust, One Feature at a Time

Our laser focus on users paid off big time:

New features were snapped up as soon as they launched
Issues were squashed almost as quickly as they appeared
User trust skyrocketed—they knew we had their backs
We cultivated a core group of super-engaged supporters

By building with users “in our ear,” we created features we knew they’d love. And they did. Our rapid-fire feature releases and fixes built a mountain of trust. Users knew we were listening and ready to act.

One of our best moves was creating a campaign working group with our top supporters. They helped evaluate and improve the site, which not only gave us priceless insights but also turned them into our most vocal online advocates.

Lessons Learned: Speed, Empathy, and the Power of Design

While Governor Huckabee didn’t clinch the nomination, our web strategy proved the power of user-centric, rapid-response development in the political arena.

This experience drove home some crucial lessons:

Speed is king when you’re trying to seize a moment in time.
A robust design system can be a game-changer for scaling and moving fast.
Never underestimate the impact of small design decisions on real users.
Empathy for your users should be at the heart of every design choice.

By keeping our ears to the ground and our fingers on the pulse of user needs, we created a digital presence that truly made a difference.

In the end, it all comes down to this: in the fast-paced world of political campaigns, an agile, user-focused approach isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential. By keeping our ears to the ground and our fingers on the pulse of user needs, we created a digital presence that truly made a difference.

I took this photo at the CNN YouTube debates in St. Petersburg, FL

Pioneering UX in Politics

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2007, I found myself in an unexpected position - leading the UX and digital-design work for Governor Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign. It wasn’t a role I had sought out. In fact, at GSL Solutions where I worked, we had previously decided to steer clear of campaign work after a small project proved to be more demanding than anticipated. But when a friend needed a favor, we decided to help Governor Huckabee with what we thought would be a minor project. Little did we know, this “small favor” would turn into one of the most innovative digital campaigns of its time.

Crammed a lot of life into a short window with these men—notice the Hillary pin? He was the lead developer, and a delegate for Hillary.

The Digital Landscape of 2007-2008: A Web in Transition

Before we dive into the specifics of our campaign strategy, it’s crucial to understand the digital landscape of 2007-2008. This was a pivotal time in web technology, with significant shifts that would reshape how we interact online.

Web 2.0 was just coming into its own. JavaScript libraries were bringing web UIs to life, allowing for more dynamic and interactive experiences. Browsers were beginning to handle increasingly complex tasks, and most sites were now rendered with robust CSS, moving away from table-based layouts.

Social media was gaining serious momentum. YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Meetup, Eventful, and Flickr were all vying for users’ attention. Twitter was growing at a breakneck pace. This shift towards social platforms was changing how people connected and shared information online, opening new avenues for engagement that we were eager to explore.

On the development front, Agile methodologies were gaining traction, changing how teams approached web projects. While Cold Fusion was still a heavy hitter, Flash was falling out of favor. CSS3 and HTML5 were advancing rapidly, offering new possibilities for design and functionality. Version control was evolving too, with Git on the rise.

Mobile technology was on the cusp of a revolution. The first iPhone had just been released, but its impact hadn’t yet been fully realized. Most mobile development was still catering to Blackberry and Microsoft standards, which were restrictive and incompatible with desktop browsers. This made mobile a challenging frontier that we knew would be important but wasn’t yet central to our strategy.

Compared to today’s web landscape, we faced significant limitations. Screens were generally smaller, forcing more constrained design layouts. There were no real offline capabilities, and bandwidth was still very limited. The lack of sophisticated build tools meant we had to be more creative in our development processes.

Perhaps the most significant difference was in user behavior. Almost all internet activity was still happening on desktops, not mobile devices. The web was transitioning from being primarily a content repository to becoming more application-like. Social media was just beginning to show its potential, and while we sensed it would be significant, none of us truly grasped how transformative it would become.

We weren’t just designing a website; we were navigating a shifting digital landscape, trying to harness new technologies and user behaviors to create something truly innovative in the political sphere.

It’s within this context of rapid change and emerging possibilities that we embarked on our UX journey for the Huckabee campaign. We weren’t just designing a website; we were navigating a shifting digital landscape, trying to harness new technologies and user behaviors to create something truly innovative in the political sphere.

As we explore the strategies and decisions we made, keep in mind that I’m not here to offer political analysis. Instead, I’m sharing my experiences as a UX professional in the trenches, grappling with these technological shifts to create a groundbreaking digital campaign. With this context set, let’s dive into how we approached our primary challenge: making a candidate approachable in this new digital age.

The Challenge: Making a Candidate Approachable

We inherited a make-shift site that didn’t perform well or align to the mounting demands of the campaign. When we took over, our primary objective was deceptively simple: make Huckabee feel approachable. As a relatively unknown candidate at the start, creating an engaging and accessible user experience was crucial. We opted for a blog-like feel, which in 2007/8 was how people typically got to know others online. Web2.0 and Social media were ramping up, and blogs were a popular way to communicate with the growing number of new internet users.

But we didn’t stop at just a blog. We created a digital ecosystem that invited supporters into Huckabee’s world. We hosted a blogroll, allowing other Huckabee supporters to be part of the conversation. We enabled comments on blog posts, organized in-person events for online supporters, and even created a Huckabee “user group” that invited top engagers to provide feedback on the website.

We carefully curated photography that highlighted Huckabee’s personality - whether it was him playing his bass guitar or working closely with his daughter on the campaign trail. We created countless badges that supporters could use on their own websites. Every pixel was designed to connect people with Huckabee on a personal level.

Breaking the Mold: Innovation in Political UX

While most candidates treated their websites as glorified brochures, donation platforms, and email capture tools, we saw an opportunity to do more. We used technology to advance the campaign’s ground game, equipping users to advocate, promote, and gain status as they engaged with the Huckabee campaign.

We were delivering features at a breakneck pace, constantly responding to different campaign initiatives happening on the ground and trying to do so in real time.

We introduced gamification elements that were revolutionary for political campaigns at the time. Engagement leaderboards, point systems, and time-based activities transformed the online experience into something interactive and addictive. We were delivering features at a breakneck pace, constantly responding to different campaign initiatives happening on the ground and trying to do so in real time.

Rapid Development: A New Paradigm

Our development process was as innovative as our features. We had tight feedback loops, working side-by-side through pair programming, pair designing, and developer/designer pairing. This approach allowed us to rapidly develop and iterate on every aspect of the project.

Ideation happened in standing meetings where we’d kick around ideas as a team. When it came to prototyping, I would often sketch an idea on a sheet of paper while sitting next to the developer. He’d provide immediate feedback on technical feasibility, and we’d start fleshing out the rest. This close collaboration allowed us to move at an incredible speed, releasing new features daily.

Overcoming Obstacles: Convincing the Campaign

In 2008, there wasn’t a precedent for how to run a campaign online. Technology was advancing rapidly, social media was on the rise, and CNN and YouTube had just hosted the first-ever online debate. We were in uncharted territory.

We always made our case based on expected outcomes, aligning our work with the campaign’s goals.

Our approach was simple: we’d come up with an idea to drive more engagement and donations, work with the campaign team to shape it in response to ground activities, and then implement it, always reporting back on performance. Not every feature was a hit, but most were so wildly successful that the campaign team quickly learned to trust our judgment. We always made our case based on expected outcomes, aligning our work with the campaign’s goals.

Key Takeaways: Lessons for UX Professionals

This experience taught me several crucial lessons that have shaped my approach to UX throughout my career:

Speed has its own value: I learned that you can move faster than you think possible. Sometimes, getting features to market within a certain window is more important than perfection. That window will close, and you can capture some or zero value. Go for more than zero by getting there fast!
Understand your medium: Designers should know the capabilities and constraints of the medium they’re designing for. My understanding of web technologies allowed me to design with feasibility in mind, streamlining our development process.
Close collaboration is key: The tight integration between design and development was crucial to our speed and success. This experience showed me the immense value of breaking down silos between these disciplines.
User feedback is gold: We were constantly looking at data, but the most valuable insights about what to do next came from our trusted user group. These highly engaged users knew how the wind was blowing long before the data showed us anything predictive.
Embrace impermanence: Knowing that all of our work would be discarded after the campaign allowed us to focus on immediate impact rather than long-term maintenance.

In the end, this unexpected journey into political UX taught me that innovation often happens when you’re pushed out of your comfort zone. It showed me the power of rapid iteration, close collaboration, and always keeping the end-user - in this case, the voters - at the heart of every decision. These lessons have stayed with me throughout my career, shaping my approach to UX in ways I never could have anticipated when we first agreed to that “small favor” for Governor Huckabee.

Maximizing Product Impact

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The success of a company hinges not just on the performance of individual products, but on the strategic alignment of the entire product portfolio with the overarching corporate objectives. Product and portfolio management is the discipline that ensures this harmonious alignment, enabling organizations to make informed decisions about where to invest, where to divest, and how to position products in the market. By creating a compelling product vision, optimizing the product portfolio, and developing an effective go-to-market strategy, companies can navigate the complexities of the market, drive innovation, and achieve sustainable growth.

Crafting a Compelling Product Vision

A strong product vision acts as the guiding star for all product-related decisions and activities. It aligns the team, provides a clear direction, and inspires stakeholders. Crucially, the product vision must also be aligned with the overarching company strategy to ensure coherence and synergy across the organization. Crafting a compelling vision requires a deep understanding of market needs, customer pain points, and the unique value proposition your product offers.

I vividly recall working with a team on developing a new software product aimed at simplifying a B2B commerce platform. Initially, the vision was vague, leading to confusion and misalignment among team members. After a few turbulent sprints, we decided to revisit and refine our product vision. We engaged directly with customers, conducted thorough market research, and clarified our unique value proposition. Importantly, we also ensured that our refined vision was closely aligned with the company’s broader strategic goals. This clear vision not only motivated the team but also resonated deeply with our customers, setting us on a path to success.

How clear and compelling is your product vision? Does it truly align with the needs and aspirations of your target market as well as the overarching company strategy?

Optimizing the Product Portfolio

Optimizing the product portfolio involves strategically managing and aligning all products to support the company’s overarching strategy. It ensures that resources are allocated effectively, and the product mix maximizes value while minimizing risk.

During my tenure at a large publishing company, I encountered a scenario where the organization was heavily invested in maintaining a legacy product that consumed significant resources but contributed minimally to revenue. By conducting a comprehensive portfolio analysis and prioritizing high-value products, we reallocated resources strategically, driving growth and fostering innovation. This pivotal shift not only boosted profitability but also revitalized the company’s market presence.

Which products in your portfolio are consuming more resources than they are worth, and how can you strategically reallocate those resources to more promising products?

Developing a Robust Go-To-Market Strategy

A robust go-to-market strategy is crucial for launching new products successfully. It involves detailed planning on market entry, positioning, pricing, and promotion to ensure the product reaches the target audience effectively and efficiently.

In my experience working with a consumer-facing tech startup, we developed a go-to-market strategy for a new mobile app. Initially, our approach was too broad, attempting to capture various market segments simultaneously. After a strategic review, we narrowed our focus to a specific niche with the highest demand and tailored our messaging accordingly. This targeted approach significantly improved market penetration and sales performance.

How targeted and specific is your go-to-market strategy, and does it effectively address the needs of your primary customer segment?

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Actionable Advice

Regularly Review and Adjust the Product Portfolio: Ensure it remains aligned with strategic goals to optimize resource allocation.
Be Willing to Deprioritize or Discontinue Products: Focus resources on those that align with the strategic direction.
Develop a Detailed Go-To-Market Plan: Include comprehensive market analysis, customer segmentation, and tailored marketing strategies.

Conclusion

Product and portfolio management is not merely about overseeing individual products but about aligning all products to the company’s strategic objectives. By creating a compelling product vision, optimizing the product portfolio, and developing a robust go-to-market strategy, companies can drive growth, foster innovation, and achieve market success.

Innovate to Differentiate

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Many product leaders find themselves trapped in a cycle of incremental changes, overlooking the transformative potential of true innovation. This common hesitation is often driven by the fear of failure and the perceived high costs of innovation. However, embracing innovation and creating distinct market differentiators are crucial for gaining a competitive edge and propelling organizations forward. Innovation and differentiation are the keys to standing out in the market and providing a lasting competitive advantage.

Innovation is not merely about having a great idea; it’s about bringing that idea to life, putting it in front of the customer, and allowing the customer to determine its value. Embracing innovation demands a new way of thinking and doing business. It challenges leaders, their teams, and even their customers in ways that can be uncomfortable but ultimately rewarding.

Focusing on Differentiation

Differentiation is the key to standing out in a crowded market. It involves creating unique value propositions that set your product or service apart from competitors, while simultaneously creating superior margins for your enterprise.

I vividly recall working with a team that was struggling to differentiate their product in a saturated market. We conducted an in-depth analysis of our competitors and realized that most were offering similar features. We decided to focus on a unique aspect of our service—personalized customer experiences. By leveraging customer data and feedback, we tailored our offerings to meet specific needs, creating a strong differentiator that competitors couldn’t easily replicate.

What unique value can you offer your customers that sets you apart from your competitors?

Investing in Innovation

Investing in innovation is crucial for long-term success. It requires commitment, resources, and a willingness to take calculated risks.

Several years ago, I had the privilege of working with a startup founder who was taking on industry giants in the medical supply chain sector. She ingeniously combined existing technology with new data sources to create a compelling business model. Despite limited resources, she invested heavily in research and development and moved swiftly to secure patents and market her product. Her sense of urgency and investment in innovation paid off, positioning her company as a leader in the industry.

How much are you willing to invest in innovation to secure your company’s future?

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Next Steps

Identify Unique Value Propositions: Conduct a thorough analysis of your market and competitors. Identify what makes your product or service truly unique and focus on enhancing those aspects.
Commit to Innovation: Allocate resources and invest in research and development. Foster a culture that encourages creativity and embraces calculated risk-taking.

Conclusion

Innovation and differentiation are not optional; they are essential for staying competitive in today’s fast-paced market. By focusing on unique value propositions and investing in innovation, leaders can create a competitive advantage that drives long-term success and propels their organizations to new heights.

Strategic Customer Focus

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While maintaining a customer-centric approach is undoubtedly essential, an overemphasis on immediate customer feedback can inadvertently hinder long-term strategic thinking. To truly thrive, product leaders must strike a delicate balance between customer focus and strategic foresight, ensuring sustainable growth and a lasting competitive advantage.

Giving Voice to Customer Insights

Developing a deep understanding of your customers is the bedrock upon which successful products and services are built. However, it’s crucial to go beyond merely listening to what customers say they want and instead delve into their true, underlying needs.

I once had the opportunity to work with a company that was obsessed with customer feedback. Every new feature, every minor tweak, was based solely on the latest customer surveys. Initially, this approach seemed like a solid strategy, but we soon noticed a pattern emerge: short-term gains would be followed by periods of stagnation. By fixating solely on what customers were vocalizing, we missed crucial opportunities to anticipate market shifts and emerging needs. It wasn’t until we started analyzing broader market trends and integrating strategic foresight into our decision-making that we truly began to innovate effectively and sustainably.

How can you leverage customer insights to not only meet current demands but also anticipate future needs?

Prioritizing Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) should be a key metric guiding your customer-centric strategies. Success isn’t measured solely by immediate sales but by fostering long-term relationships that generate sustained revenue and loyalty.

During my tenure working with a distribution company, we made the strategic decision to shift our focus from short-term sales to enhancing customer lifetime value. We started offering value-added services and prioritized exceptional customer support. This shift not only improved our customer retention rates but also increased our revenue from existing customers. By focusing on CLV, we were able to build deeper, more profitable relationships with our customers.

How can you enhance your customer relationships to increase their lifetime value?

Forging a Continuous Feedback Loop

Creating a continuous feedback loop is essential to ensure that your products and services evolve in lockstep with customer needs and market trends. However, it’s crucial to balance this with strategic objectives and long-term vision.

I vividly recall a time when our team implemented a robust feedback loop system. We gathered continuous feedback and rapidly iterated on our product. However, without the guiding light of strategic oversight, we found ourselves constantly firefighting and making short-term fixes. By integrating strategic reviews into our feedback process, we were able to strike a harmonious balance between immediate customer needs and long-term vision, resulting in a more coherent and successful product strategy.

How can you balance real-time customer feedback with strategy objectives to ensure sustainable growth?

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Actionable Advice

Use Customer Insights to Forecast Future Trends and Needs:
- Analyze customer feedback through the lens of broader market trends.
- Conduct regular strategic reviews to anticipate future customer needs.
Enhance Customer Lifetime Value:
- Develop programs and services that foster long-term customer relationships.
- Prioritize exceptional customer support and post-purchase engagement.
Create a Continuous Feedback Loop:
- Implement systems for gathering continuous customer feedback.
- Regularly review feedback within the context of strategic goals and market trends.

Conclusion

Striking the right balance between a customer-centric approach and strategic foresight is essential for long-term success. By developing a deep understanding of customer needs, anticipating future trends, focusing on customer lifetime value, and creating a balanced feedback loop, product leaders can pave the way for sustainable growth and maintain a lasting competitive edge.

Aligning for Success

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Oftentimes, product leaders find themselves operating in silos, myopically focused on their product's success without considering the broader corporate strategy. However, by aligning product goals with the company's overarching strategic objectives and fostering cross-functional collaboration, organizations can enhance their overall performance and maximize their true potential.

Navigating the Corporate Terrain

As a product leader, you must ensure your goals align with the broader objectives of the company to amplify impact and secure executive buy-in.

I once had the pleasure of working with Jessica, a product leader whose passion for innovative ideas was truly infectious. However, her enthusiasm occasionally led her to stray from the company’s strategic goals. After a particularly intense quarterly review, where her team’s project faced scrutiny for being misaligned with the corporate strategy, Jessica realized the importance of harmonizing her vision with the company’s broader objectives. By integrating her goals with the organization’s strategy, she not only secured executive support but also enhanced the impact of her product in the market.

How frequently do you evaluate your product goals to ensure they align with the overarching corporate strategy, and what steps can you take to improve this alignment?

Breaking Down Boundaries

Cross-functional collaboration is the key to dismantling silos within an organization. By fostering an environment where different departments work together seamlessly, companies can leverage diverse perspectives and skills, leading to more innovative solutions and better alignment with corporate objectives.

During my tenure in higher education, I witnessed the transformative power of cross-functional collaboration firsthand. One major project involved launching a new content management system, and it required input from diverse stakeholders, including academic leaders, engineering, admissions, athletics, support teams, and donor development. Initially, we encountered resistance due to differing priorities. However, once we established regular cross-functional meetings and shared goals, we successfully launched a new platform that exceeded our expectations.

What barriers exist within your organization that hinder cross-functional collaboration, and how can you dismantle them to foster a more collaborative environment?

Forging Strategic Alliances

Strategic partnerships can provide access to new markets, technologies, and expertise. By aligning with partners who share your vision and complement your capabilities, you can accelerate growth and drive innovation.

At a previous company, we formed a strategic partnership with a leading AI/machine-learning firm. This collaboration allowed us to integrate advanced AI/ML capabilities into our product, significantly enhancing its value proposition. The partnership not only expanded our technical capabilities but also opened up new market opportunities that we wouldn’t have been able to access alone.

Who are the potential strategic partners that could complement your company’s strengths and help you achieve your strategic goals, and how can you initiate these partnerships?

Cultivating an Ecosystem

Developing an ecosystem around your product can create a network of value that benefits all stakeholders. This involves engaging with customers, partners, and even competitors in a way that builds a supportive and innovative community.

I had the privilege of working with Matt, a leader who was adept at building ecosystems. He organized regular industry forums and workshops, bringing together various stakeholders to discuss challenges and opportunities. This not only positioned our company as a thought leader but also fostered a collaborative environment that spurred innovation across the industry.

What steps can you take to build and nurture an ecosystem around your product that fosters collaboration and innovation?

The Compliance Imperative

Regulatory compliance is not just a legal obligation but also a strategic advantage. Companies that proactively address regulatory requirements can avoid costly penalties and build trust with their customers.

In a project for a healthcare company, we faced stringent regulatory requirements. By investing in compliance from the outset and working closely with legal experts, we were able to navigate the complex landscape effectively. This not only saved us from potential legal issues but also enhanced our reputation in the industry.

How proactive is your organization in addressing regulatory compliance, and what measures can you implement to ensure you stay ahead of regulatory changes?

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Actionable Advice

Foster Continuous Dialogue: Schedule regular check-ins with other departments to ensure continuous alignment with the corporate strategy.
Map Product Goals to Corporate Strategies: Create a visual roadmap that clearly maps your product goals to the company’s strategic objectives.
Establish Cross-Functional Collaboration: Set up recurring meetings that bring together different departments to discuss progress, challenges, and opportunities for collaboration.
Identify and Pursue Strategic Partnerships: Conduct a thorough analysis to identify potential partners that complement your strengths and initiate collaboration.
Build an Ecosystem Around Your Product: Engage with customers, partners, and industry stakeholders to create a supportive and innovative ecosystem.
Stay Ahead of Regulatory Changes: Work closely with legal experts to proactively address regulatory requirements and ensure compliance.

Conclusion

Aligning product goals with corporate strategy, fostering cross-functional collaboration, developing strategic partnerships, focusing on ecosystem development, and ensuring regulatory compliance are essential for maximizing a company’s potential. By addressing these areas, you can propel your organizations towards sustained innovation and long-term success.

Are you ready to align your product goals with the corporate strategy to unlock new levels of alignment and innovation?

Remember, understanding the broader corporate context is not a distraction from product development; it’s a vital component of strategic leadership that can unlock new opportunities and elevate your product to new heights within the organization.

From Feedback to Foresight

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the ever-evolving landscape of product development, it's easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of customer feedback and incremental improvements. While addressing these immediate concerns is undoubtedly crucial, a truly strategic approach demands a broader perspective – one that involves continuous analysis of the competitive environment and market dynamics. This panoramic view can unlock opportunities for differentiation and help product leaders stay ahead of the curve.

Unraveling the Competitive Landscape

As a product leader, you often find yourself laser-focused on the here and now – responding to customer feedback, tweaking features, and ensuring that your current offerings meet user expectations. However, to truly innovate and lead the market, you must expand your vision to encompass a comprehensive understanding of your competitive landscape. This goes beyond simply knowing who your competitors are; it’s about understanding their strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and how they are positioning themselves within the market. This knowledge can inform your own strategy, enabling you to carve out unique ways to differentiate your product.

Let me share a story about Mike, a leader whose ambition and competitive spirit were palpable. Each year, his team eagerly awaited the results of the Congressional Management Foundation’s evaluations. Mike’s drive to understand and outmaneuver competitors fueled our continuous innovation, propelling us to consistently top the leaderboard, thanks to our deep understanding of the competitive landscape.

How well do you truly understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and how can you leverage this knowledge to create a unique advantage for your product?

Keeping Pace with Industry Trends

Industry trends provide crucial context for where the market is headed, highlighting emerging opportunities or potential threats. Keeping a pulse on these trends enables you to anticipate changes and adapt your strategy accordingly.

I once worked with a startup founder who was taking on the industry giants in the medical supply chain sector. She ingeniously combined existing technology with a new data source to create a compelling business model. Recognizing the urgency of her situation, she worked tirelessly to bring her product to market before her larger competitors could respond. Her ability to swiftly move and adapt to industry trends was a key factor in her success.

What emerging trends in your industry could significantly impact your product’s success, and how can you proactively adapt to stay ahead of the curve?

Prioritizing Market Research

Market research forms the backbone of strategic product development. It involves gathering data on customer needs, market conditions, and potential opportunities. This research should inform every major decision, ensuring that your product not only meets current demands but also anticipates future needs.

During a transformative period at a publishing company I worked with, we faced significant disruption from emerging digital platforms like the release of the iPad. While many saw this as a threat, our team viewed it as an opportunity. Through rigorous market research, we identified new ways to integrate rich media into our offerings, creating a unique value proposition that resonated with our customers.

Are you gathering enough comprehensive market data to anticipate future customer needs, and how can you seamlessly integrate these insights into your product development process?

Embracing Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is a strategic planning method that helps you prepare for various potential futures. By considering different scenarios, you can develop flexible strategies that allow your product to adapt and thrive regardless of market changes.

I once worked with the executive team of a nonprofit organization that found themselves in the midst of a foggy, ambiguous journey towards innovation. They brought me in to help them envision what it would take to reposition their organization towards a new market with a new set of capabilities they had been building. We began with a scenario planning exercise, envisioning various potential futures and the paths that could lead to each one.

As the team engaged in this exercise, they started to see a future scenario that aligned with their vision and goals. This scenario highlighted the need to realign their current capabilities to meet new and growing customer needs. The process of considering different future possibilities helped them identify not just where they wanted to go, but also the fundamental changes necessary to get there.

Through scenario planning, the team realized that achieving their desired future scenario demanded more than just aligning capabilities; it required a comprehensive reevaluation of how their organization delivered value. This led them to restructure their organization to better serve their customers and address gaps in their mission statement.

How prepared is your team to navigate multiple potential future scenarios, and what strategies can you implement now to ensure your product thrives in various market conditions?

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Actionable Advice

Here are some practical steps to help you incorporate competitive and market analysis into your strategic planning:

Regular Competitive Analysis: Schedule dedicated time for competitive analysis on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on the pace of your industry.
Integrate Insights into Roadmaps: Use insights from your competitive and market analysis to inform and shape your product roadmap. This ensures your product evolves in alignment with market dynamics.
Engage in Scenario Planning: Regularly engage your team in scenario planning exercises. This helps you develop strategies that are robust and resilient against a range of possible future conditions.

Conclusion

Shifting your mindset to include continuous competitive and market analysis is not just beneficial – it’s essential for long-term success. By understanding your competitive landscape, monitoring industry trends, prioritizing market research, and embracing scenario planning, you can position your product for sustained innovation and market leadership.

Remember, true innovation requires ambition and foresight. Use this drive to enhance your market strategy and elevate your product to new heights.

By dedicating time and resources to these strategic activities, you can ensure that your product remains competitive and poised for long-term success. Understanding the broader market context is not a distraction from product development; it’s a vital component of strategic leadership that can unlock new opportunities and propel your product to the forefront of your industry.

Cancer Didn't Win - It Made Me More Generous Instead

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The surgeon snatched a pamphlet from the side table and proceeded to draw a line chart. The first line represented the life expectancy of someone without my type of cancer. The second, a touch below the first, represented the life expectancy of someone who beats my type of cancer.

I spaced out staring at that gap between the lines, cotton mouthed, as my pounding heart drown out the voice of the physician.

There it was, with a stroke of his pen, my life, only less of it.

Processing the Cancer Diagnosis

I hadn’t given much thought to how life would change if I beat cancer. I was laser focused on treatment and recovery, not on the fallout of being “cancer free.”

“Cancer free”… yeah, that is a myth. Once you have it, you are never rid of its affects.

I’m almost 10 years removed from treatment and recovery. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel the effects of cancer.

Some aspects of being “cancer free” have had more impact than others. I take a life-giving prescription every morning — inconvenient, but no big deal. Not being able to get life insurance, that is an unwelcome level of stress. Extra blood-draws, ultrasounds, and doctor visits, year after year, have become routine. Waiting for the results, wondering what might be hiding in my body, is anything but routine.

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Cancer is disruptive. It’s not polite about barging in and demanding to be the center of attention. Some days it’s a niggle in the back of my mind. Other days it is an unavoidable reminder, in the prick of a needle or the cold gel of an ultrasound.

Those disruptions pale in comparison to how that simple chart has shaped the way I see myself in the world.

As I was going through recovery, a mentor of mine was teaching on how to live a satisfied life. A primary theme stitched together the relationship between satisfaction and generosity.

The notion of satisfaction felt distant, but generosity felt familiar. My parents modeled extreme generosity through their work as missionaries. I have been the recipient of extreme generosity. I knew what it looked like.

Moments of Convenience, Not Sacrifice

Over the next few months, Amelia and I wrested with what it might look like to lean into generosity. We tested the waters. We tried to fit it in to how we had been doing life. Turns out, generosity isn’t a willing lab rat. Generosity doesn’t thrive when limited to whether it fits with your lifestyle.

Generosity is built on sacrifice, not convenience.

Leaning into generosity meant having an honest conversation about sacrifice. If generosity is the destination, sacrifice is the path.

Until then I considered myself a generous person. I would respond to a need if I stumbled across one. I would reflect on these sporadic moments of generosity and use them to convince myself that I was indeed a generous person.

The truth is those moments were not much of a sacrifice. The immediate need of the situation demanded a quick response. A quick response requires liquidity. Because I didn’t plan on being generous, sacrificing a meal out as a family, or buying some new clothes was about as liquid as I was in those moments of need.

Whala, my moment of generosity would consist of $100 here or $200 there, a few times a year. Those were the moments I would use to convince myself that I was a generous person.

Evaluating Our Yearly Giving

As that year wrapped up, the year-end receipts from various nonprofits trickled in. I was now looking at a new line chart: the percentage of my income that I gave away, and it barely registered. Those feel-good moments of generosity didn’t look like a sacrifice in the context of an entire year.

Developing a Generosity Plan

We decided to make some life-changing decisions. We decided to start making sacrifices so we could become more generous. We made a generosity plan and put that plan to work.

The plan included some big moves like selling the home we had just built, and buying one half the size. It also included smaller moves, like contributing to a family giving fund for those impromptu needs, and regularly volunteering with non-profits that make a difference in our community.

We’ve gone from sporadic generosity, to intentional and systematic generosity and sacrifice.

The Contagious Effect of Generosity

Here’s the thing, generosity is contagious. When I hear about the joy others receive because of generosity, it inspires me to be more generous! Generosity is a way to make your line count for something other than yourself. Generosity is a way to impact someone else’s line.

We don’t get to a better society by being stingy with one another, without being generous, without sacrifice.

We don’t become better leaders by hoarding resources, recognition, or opportunity.

Don’t Wait for a Wake-Up Call

We’re coming into the season where non-profits send their appeal for a year-end gift. Take this opprotunity to not only make a sacrafice, but to make generosity part of the plan going forward.

The opposite of generosity takes and never gives. The opposite isn’t willing to sacrifice personal gain for something bigger.

The opposite of generosity is cancer.

Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

Balance or Bust - Why Growth Shouldn't Eclipse Your Strategy

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Navigating the world of business can feel like embarking on a cross-country road trip. But don't worry, there's something that can guide you: the dynamic duo of strategy and growth.

Think of strategy as your trusty GPS, pointing you toward success, and growth as the fuel that propels your journey. Both are essential, but understanding how they work together is key. It’s all about having the right navigation tools and enough gas for your business road trip—let’s explore how to use them!

GPS for Success: Understanding Strategy

Your business strategy is like a GPS for your company. You know how a GPS helps you find your way when you’re lost? That’s what a strategy does. It helps you figure out your unique path using what you’re good at in a way that’s hard for others to follow. It’s all about understanding what your customers want, like finding the perfect gift for a friend. By focusing on your customers this way, you’re keeping them happy and attracting new ones. In short, a good strategy is like having a GPS that points you in the right direction, helps you stand out, and keeps your customers coming back for more!

Fuel Up: The Importance of Growth

Growth, on the other hand, is like the fuel for your journey. New opportunities are exciting and full of promise, but keeping your strategy in focus ensures you stay on track. Taking your focus off your strategy can feel like taking a wrong turn in your car. You’ll lose momentum and it takes time to get back on track.

Steering Straight: The Balance of Strategy and Growth

Sticking to a competitive strategy is more valuable than jumping at every new opportunity. While growth is exciting, balancing it with a solid strategy ensures that you’re driving in the right direction. Keep your eyes on the road and don’t lose sight of the bigger picture!

In the bustling marketplace of today, strategy and growth are your navigation and fuel. Think of strategy as your unique map for gaining a competitive edge, guiding you to win in the long run. Growth is the energy that powers your journey, helping you expand and thrive.

Your Perfect Road Trip: Combining Strategy and Growth

Putting strategy and growth together is like planning the perfect road trip. Strategy outlines the unique path that sets you apart, while growth adds the energy that keeps the journey exciting. So, why not let strategy be your guiding GPS? It’ll lead you to success in a way that makes you stand out. Keep an eye on growth opportunities as the fuel that keeps you moving. Together, they’ll help you navigate the road to long-lasting success, letting you cruise confidently in the competitive landscape!

Photo by Mladen Šćekić on Unsplash

Is Cx Killing Innovation?

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Is your CX strategy putting the breaks on innovation? It is more common than you might think! Let's talk about how CX and innovation can work together.

Photo by Jake Allen on Unsplash

5 Ways Design Thinking Can Help Your Nonprofit

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Is your nonprofit taking full advantage of design thinking? This video will introduce you to 5 ways design thinking can help your nonprofit.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Experience, Values, and Integrity

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

"What a dump!"

My teammate was commenting on a vendor’s HQ, and he wasn’t wrong. Beyond the claustrophobic architecture, the shag carpet had long lost its shag and the wood paneling was imbued with decades of cigarette smoke. Indeed, it was a dump.

Technically speaking, the physical space has nothing in common with the digital space. The differences don’t interest me tho. The overlap, the parallels, those, however, are ripe with insights about the human experience.

They both reflect how and what you value about experience.

As with this vendor, if you’re fine with subjecting your customers to a dingy, dank, and disgusting physical experience, than an equally depressing digital experience will surprise no one.

If, on the other hand, you express hospitality, accessibility, cleanliness, and attention to detail through your physical environment, your digital experience should follow suit.

I work with a client who gets this. They inspire me. They have translated their expectations for quality and their care for people into a resonant physical and digital experience. When I walk into their office I feel considered and I can see their values expressed in the craftsmanship. They approach their digital properties with the same care.

Their physical and digital experience has integrity.

Integrity.

We don’t talk about integrity enough in the digital space. The conversation gets muddled by “brand”.

The digital experience is an expression of values. Like all expressions, we have to continually ask: does this expression adequately represent my values? When they do, the experience has integrity. When they don’t, people notice the lack of integrity.

I help leaders express their values through a digital experience. I help leaders build integrity.

Photo by Ivan Vranić on Unsplash

Reduce risk with the right research

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 19:15:50 -0500

No one wants to spend their energy, time, and resources on an initiative that doesn't resonate with our customers! Let's explore an effective way to minimize that risk.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Lifeless Customer Data

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Most customer data is lifeless and uninspiring. We can fix this by adding a human touch to our customer knowledge with this simple tool.

Photo by Ivars Krutainis on Unsplash

Where are your customers experiencing friction?

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Do you know where your donors or, where your clients or where your customers are experiencing friction when they are interacting with your organization? Let’s look at a vital tool that will help bring clarity to how your customers interact with your organization and provide clear insights into where you can dial it up a notch.

Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map is a visual tool that highlights the steps a customer goes through when using your product or service. It helps you to visualize the experience of your customers and how they interact with different aspects of your product/service. It can help you identify important moments in the customer experience, as well as opportunities to deliver above and beyond at just the right moments.

Start by observing real customer interactions

It’s important to talk to a lot of customers and observe the customer journey before you start mapping it. This is because no one knows a customer’s journey better than the customers themselves.

It would be a great idea to make sure that customer journey maps are informed by observational research, instead of just your intuition. Customer journey maps will be more accurate and relevant if they are based on the input from real customers.

There are two key ways to collect insights for your customer journey map - observational research and qualitative research.

Observational research is an interview-free way of building empathy with the customer. You get a chance to observe how they interact with your product or service, and you can use these observations to guide your next steps in designing your customer journey map. Qualitative research can be done through interviews, surveys, or focus groups. It helps you understand what customers want and why they want it.

Many companies stop at one type of research because it’s faster or easier, but combining both types of research will give you the best chance at truly understanding what customers want from your product or service.

Here are a few simple ways you can begin gathering data

Observe customers. Watch what they do. Record how, when, where, why they interact with the specific aspects of your organization.
Get comfortable with analytics. Observe click paths and UX engagement metrics.
Screenshare as your customers work. Watch how they get the job done.
Invite customers to document their experiences. Provide a simple way for customers to capture their own experiences and share them with you.

It is necessary to identify which moments in the customer journey are important to the experience. Personas are an excellent way to understand which moments are truly important.

Personas help us create a clear understanding of who our customers are and what they want. This enables us to build effective, delightful, and meaningful experiences that resonate with the right people. If done correctly, personas help us identify the moments when customers need that extra special attention from your organization.

Quantifying the customer journey is key. It simplifies everything and gives you a clear path on how to manage performance. It enables you to systematically make it better by identifying where the pain points and friction are.

Visualizing the customer journey is a technique that helps businesses to align their organizational efforts with the needs of the customer.

The process starts by identifying all of the moments and interactions that customers have with your company. Once these moments are identified, it is very important to prioritize them in order to identify which moments are most important for your business. Once you know which moments are most important, you can start aligning your team towards serving the right moments and prioritizing customer needs.

Visualizing a customer’s journey will help any business to grow because it provides an understanding of what customers need from every touchpoint and how they interact with your company.

You now have the basics you need in order to start building your own customer journey map! I’ve been helping organizations build their customer journey maps for years. If you get stuck, reach out and I’d be happy to help you gain a better understanding of your customers and how you can serve them better.

Photo by Sandeep Singh on Unsplash

Leadership Lessons From 2020

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

2020 taught me a lot about myself and my own personal leadership. Here are 3 things I'm leaving behind in 2020, and 3 things I'm picking up in 2021.

Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash

3 Lessons From A Poor Customer Experience

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I recently had a terrible customer experience at a car dealership, and here are 3 lessons from that experience that we should all keep in mind.

How Disney Dashed My Dreams

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My childhood dream was to become a Disney animator. My experience at The Magic of Disney Animation changed that. Here are 3 lessons from an unfortunate guest experience.

Me, nonstop animating and drawing

The Magic of Disney Animation tour opened with a short film, staring Walter Cronkite and Robin Williams.

Evolved Understanding of Design

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 20:14:04 -0500

I didn’t know much about design when I first started my career. I began in graphic design, followed by interaction design, then information architecture, and user experience design. 10 years ago a mentor introduced me to the idea that design is a catalyst for innovation and everything changed.

I went to grad school, focused on design and innovation management. That program anchored my understand of design as a way to unlock new ideas for leaders, teams, and organizations.

I now frame design in three modes of work, stitched together by five activities that feed one another, and loops back on itself in a never-ending cycle. Kind of like a design ouroboros.

These 3 modes of work help me think about design in ways that reflect the goals and the types of insights that I’m looking for along the way.

The first mode is Encounter, then Explore, and the third is Evolve.

Encounter

Encounter is about opening yourself up to new ideas and about taking a fresh breath of air. It’s about getting a new perspective and seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. You have to get out from behind the desk and talk to people. Get new input, new sources of information, and new insights into the problem you’re trying to solve.

Start with a fresh slate. This requires a lot of introspection and the ability to set your biases aside.

Explore

The next mode of work is to Explore, which is to follow those ideas and see where they go. Push the boundaries and look for new sparks of insight that aren’t lying on the surface. Work to make sense of the observations and findings you discovered in Encounter.

Learn to live with conflict, the inevitable paradox, and the fog of ambiguity. You have to master holding tension in the air so you can see where the sparks pop from.

Evolve

The third mode is to Evolve. Take those insights and ideas and turn them into something tangible that people can react to. Put your idea out there, evolve them, learn, and never settle for the first idea.

Evolving a concept requires investment. Make sure to give your ideas enough time and room to show some promise. Some of the best ideas are not the most obvious ones.

Design Activities

Five activities connect Encounter, Explore, and Evolve together. They are sequential, one leads to the next. At any moment, you might find yourself with an insight or an idea that pushes you out of the sequence and back to a previous step in the process. The activities present themselves in a linear fashion, but creativity is anything but linear.

Contextualize

The first activity is to Contextualize; get familiar with the people, the problem, and the constraints.

Set aside your biases and see the world anew. Anchor yourself in a firm understanding of who it is you’re trying to serve, what the specific problem you’re trying to solve, and what the constraints are.

Synthesize

Contextualizing leads you to Synthesize. Refine and focus, make meaning of what you discovered. Take those ideas, and identify patterns, anomalies, and bell curves. Look for edge cases. Put order on the context that you’ve discovered.

Ideate

The next activity is to ideate, explore ideas, push the boundaries, get creative, and have fun. I can’t over-emphasize the value of having fun! Great ideas come from having fun. If you’re not having fun, you’re not tapping into your creative potential.

Having fun is messy. Make a mess! Try a lot of things on for size while you’re trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. The main goal is to produce a ton of ideas and see where that takes you, versus trying to refine and polish the perfect idea. Quantity over quality!

Out of Ideation, there will be certain concepts that resonate and you feel pulled towards. Flag those ideas and give them extra room to breathe and see what kind of potential is there. They’re young ideas and still rough around the edges. You don’t know if they’re going to work but you need to give them room to breathe. Try to get some roots before you squash them and move on to the next thing. Let ideas live longer than you’re comfortable with.

Hold onto a few ideas that feel risky and push your comfort zone. Those ideas will lead you to unexpected insights.

Prototype

The next activity is to Prototype. Take those ideas and begin to give them shape. Get them into a level of fidelity that others can react to. Do people connect with your idea, and does it solve their needs?

A prototype is an early form of validation. It’s not meant to be the entire experience. You’re trying to test different concepts that you created during Ideation to seeing which one of those ideas shows promise.

Learning

Prototyping is going to push you right into the Learning activity. Expose those ideas to real people and look for moments of insight. Put your prototypes in front of real customers, real users, and get their feedback.

The feedback you get by testing your prototypes link back to understanding the people you’re trying to serve, and the problem you’re trying to solve.

These five activities connect Encounter, Explore, and Evolve in a never-ending cycle. Mastering these 3 modes of work with Contextualize, Synthesize, Ideate, Prototype, and Learn will help you get the most out of design-driven innovation.

Photo by Avinash Kumar on Unsplash

Get Your Free Course on Unlocking Innovation

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I tussled with fear much of the summer. Concerned about the economy and whether I'd be able to provide for my family while feeling powerless to do anything about it.

I heard Michael Hyatt challenge his team with finding ways to not simply survive 2020 but to make it an exceptional year. I was barely surviving, and it took several days wrestling with that challenge before I was able to consider the possibility.

That prompt lead me back to a truth that shaped the rest of my summer and fall. That is…

Fixing your eyes on serving others is a powerful way to conquer fear.

Serving others during a pandemic requires thinking differently… it requires innovating…

As it turns out, we’re all trying to innovate. The old ways are not the new ways, and the new ways are not defined. Peter Drucker’s quote “Innovate or die” has never felt more real.

Eureka!

If innovation is our way forward, could innovation be a means of serving others?

That question lead me to consider, how might I use my schooling and practice in design-driven innovation to serve others?

I was now on a quest, and fear’s grip began to loosen.

This quest lead me to translate my 20+ years of experience helping leaders innovate into a free course that will help you unlock new innovation in your organization.

This free course is exactly that: free. There are no strings attached. Signing up for this course doesn’t put you on a mailing list. Email is simply the mechanism I’m using to throttle the pace of delivery.

I firmly believe that leaders need this course, now more than ever. It will help you think differently about innovation.

Here is a quick overview of the course:

This is my way conquering fear and innovating when it comes to serving others.

I’ve poured a ton of effort and energy into this, and I want you to have it.

Get the course

Photo by Nikolay Tarashchenko on Unsplash

My Quarantine 2020 Podcast Recommendations

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

What are you doing to stay connected with like-minded people with so many meetups and conferences canceled this year? Losing those regular connections leaves me feeling isolated and stranded. I miss the face-to-face exchanges of shop-talk. I'm exhausted thinking about getting on yet another group video call.

Podcasts are my substitutes this year for hanging around other leaders and successful people who are going places.

A mentor once told me:

Never read a good book. There are too many great ones, and good ones are a waste of time.

Podcasts are the same. There are too many great ones to listen to, and good ones are a waste of time.

One of the best ways I’ve found great content, whether books, music, or podcasts, is through a recommendation from someone I trust. I’ll admit, I’ve not stuck with every recommendation, but they have introduce me to voices I would have never learned from.

When it comes to podcasts, I stick with ones that:

Move in a positive, uplifting direction
Cover a topic that interests me
I personally connect with

Here are the few that check those boxes.

My Podcast Recommendations

If Disney Ran Your Life

Jeff Noel built his career at Disney. His podcast applies lessons he learned at Disney to every area of life, encouraging personal vibrancy. I first discovered Jeff while he was at The Disney Institute and have come to appreciate his positive outlook when it comes to raising the bar on excellence.

The Jody Maberry Show

Jody Maberry is a park ranger turned business consultant. I discovered Jody's podcast through Jeff's. Jody is also the host for Jeff's and Dan's podcast. He is down to earth, humble, and a captivating story teller. His, more than any other, is one I go through and listen to past episodes. He is full of insight and wisdom.

Come Rain or Shine

Dan Cockerell retired as VP of The Magic Kingdom, after 27 years at Disney. Dan's podcast focuses on how leaders shape culture. He shares stories from his time at Disney and has an occasional guest. Dan is a leader of leaders, and although he retired from Disney, he is still an entrepreneur. His drive is contagious. I look forward to catching him each week.

Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast

Craig Groeschel is the pastor of Life.Church. In this podcast, Craig laser focuses on developing leaders. Each episode is like taking a college class on leadership. You'll drink from the fire hose! Thankfully, his team also provides a helpful leadership guide that goes with each episode. The guide helps you apply the principles in each episode. It is a first-class resource, and honestly, I'm surprised it is free.

At The Table with Patrick Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni is a best selling author, speaker, and leadership coach. Gordon Food Service required leaders to read his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team when I worked there. I loved it. It should be required reading for every leader. This podcast is an extension of his consulting group. He shares the mic with others on his team, and they discuss practical leadership tips to help you shape a healthy culture. Don't miss it!

Lead to Win

I first became familiar Michael Hyatt when he was CEO of Thomas Nelson, a large publishing company. He has since left publishing and has started a successful leadership consultancy with his daughter, Megan Hyatt Miller. This podcast focuses leadership, and is presented through a conversation between father and daughter. That unique combination is what makes it work. Although intertwined, they each approach leadership from their own perspective. I hope to have that kind of relationship with my daughter when she is off conquering the world.

3 Point Perspective: The Illustration Podcast

3 Point Perspective is hosted by Will Terry, Lee White, and Jake Parker, all which are professional illustrators. Each episode addresses an aspect of being a professional illustrator. Each member of the team shares his perspective and experience on the topic. I enjoy the banter and insight. I've always loved illustration, and listening to their podcast keeps me connected to that world.

The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast

This podcast is hosted by 2 legendary animators, Tony and Tom Bancroft. I fell in love with drawing as a kid and dreamed of animating for Disney as a grown up. Tom and Tony pull back the curtain on the animation industry, share stories, and have fascinating conversations with other animators. I have no ambitions to animate for Disney these days, but it sure is a joy to see that world through their eyes.

Robservations with Rob Liefeld

Rob Liefeldis a living comic book legend. Rob takes you through comic book history as it maps to his own journey from consuming comics as a youngster, to building a comic book empire. Rob is full of energy and his enthusiasm for comics is contagious. I've long dreamt of illustrating my own comic book some day, inspired in large part by Rob's work. This podcast is a gift to the comic book industry, and a treasure trove for anyone interested in an art form that has profoundly impacted culture.

These podcasts have been a huge blessing during these past few months. They’re a critical part of my self-development journey, especially while we’re not able to gather in other professional settings. I’m grateful for each one of them, and all their contributors.

What podcasts lift your spirts and challenge you to grow?

Photo by C D-X on Unsplash

Lessons from 18 Years of Blogging

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I published my first blog post in 2002 after being prompted to write something by friend and coworker, Topher. Since then, I've blogged under several different domains, changed topics, changed tech stacks and publishing platforms, along with exploring different ways of communicating.

I recently came across my first blog post (see below) and I was surprised at how relevant the concerns are for today: asking why, what problem are we solving, who does this effect, how does this shape the user experience? Sure, Flash is no longer a thing, but you can easily replace Flash with JavaScript.

Apart from the relevant concerns, reading that first post got me reflecting on what writing has taught me over the years. Here are 3 things you can expect to learn along the way:

When I started writing we lived in a knowledge economy, which is a tricky space to quantify your contribution to solving problems and adding value. Demonstrating knowledge is a great way to do that, which is what got me started. In the early days, writing about user experience, design and business, and innovation was a way to demonstrate I cared about a topic enough to frame an opinion about it, and even further, expose that opinion to the critique of the infinite web.

Nearly 20 years later, I write and record as a way to share with others the hard lessons I’ve learned, in hopes that others can accelerate their own growth.

Articulating your thinking clarifies your thinking

I’ve heard it said that you don’t know a topic until you’re able to teach it. Writing is a form of teaching, and it has forced me to think deeply about leadership, innovation, and design. Reflecting on my experiences, looking for truths, testing them, and sharing them with the world is a way to refine and solidify a point of view.

The older I get, the more life has to teach me, and the more I have to share. I’ve gotten into the habit of reflecting on my thoughts and practices. Thinking about the way I think and work. My friend Shawn calls these moments “learning loops” - a phrase that has stuck with me for years, and accurately describes the cyclical rhythm of letting your thoughts shape the way you think.

Changing your mind in public is hard

I used to be concerned with metrics like unique visitors and time-on-site, insisting we demand ROI from our design efforts (still do FTR), and I used my own site to prove and test my assertions. After reading “You Are Not A Gadget”, by Jaron Lanier I did some serious soul searching and decided that my corner of the internet was going to be different. I wasn’t going to harvest, sell, or trade the bits of information my site visitors unwittingly gave me.

In many ways, I felt like I was abandoning the demands I placed on measuring the value of design and design’s ability to make a difference. I’ll admit, letting go of that data was a lot harder than I expected it to be. I took pride in watching engagement go up as I would try new things. It was fun watching the live visitor count jump after publishing something new. It felt like validation for the ideas I was sharing, and letting go of that felt foolish.

Sharing what I’ve learned, thinking about my thoughts, and being willing to change publicly change my mind have been 3 highlights (of many) that blogging has brought me. I’m looking forward to many more.

For the curious, here is the first post I ever shared:

Published: March 2002

Caught Flashing?

5ive easy steps to avoiding the pitfalls of Flash

Macromedia introduced Flash in 1996 bringing a wonderful new medium to the web. In doing so, a plethora of upstart web designers flocked to the developing platform that offered them an easy and interactive way to display their web savvy. Since its release there have been many enhancements to the software making it a complete multimedia development platform. As with many exciting new technologies, people stampede to be first in line to use it often without asking the most fundamental question; why?

The answer to this basic question determines whether a designer will maximize the technology or abuse it. Assuming the question has been asked, here are few guidelines to keep in mind that will help you avoid inappropriate Flashing.

1. Making a Flash splash

One of the most common abuses of Flash is the “splash page.” Anyone who has ever been on the web has had the unfortunate experience of waiting a ghastly amount of time for an intro page to load. There is a time and place for an intro page, and it does have value. The real question is, why do I need a splash page? If the answer supports your communication objective, go ahead and make your splash.

2. Flash forward

You have determined that a splash page is the most effective way to communicate your idea. That’s great! One of the biggest blunders in creating a splash page is assuming your end user has the time to sit through it. So, be sure to give the user an option to Flash forward to the meat of your site.

3. Shoo browser, don’t bother me

One of the biggest drawbacks to using Flash is the fact that it is a plug-in. Granted, most users have the plug-in, or at least they could go get it. However, Flash is not available on every Internet enabled device. The answer? Give your user the option to view your site with or without Flash. Also be sure to make the plug-in easily accessible by providing a quick link to the Flash download page.

4. Keeping Flash on a diet

Flash is an exciting way to communicate your idea over the web! It adds that “TV” feel to an otherwise static site. For some reason, many designers forget that they have to push their wonderful new Flash project over the Internet to a P133 on a 28.8k connection. The solution is simple. Keep your Flash files on a strict diet. Be sure to follow all of the Kb saving tips in your Flash manual. Doing so will not only save your users download time, you will win their hearts when they know that you considered their 28.8k connection.

5. DeFlashing the experience

Now that you have created a stunning splash page and a lean presentation, consider the alternatives. That’s right. Ask yourself, “why is EVERYTHING developed in Flash?” The beauty of Flash is that it does not have to be the sole media in your presentation. The challenge is defining when and where to use flash. Keep in mind that you can integrate Flash with your existing user experience. If you are able to dice things up, you may be able to decrease some download time which will keep your users with you and score points with your marketing manager!

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

How to work for a boss you don't respect

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Many of us have been in the situation where we're working for someone we don't have a lot of respect for. This can be frustrating, but here are 4 tips, plus 2 bonus hacks that you can use today to move things in a positive direction.

Your Team Judges You, and Here is How

Sun, 24 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Your team evaluates whether or not to follow you based on 4 lenses. These 4 lenses align with 5 attributes that Gallup identifies in exceptional managers.

Gallup - State of the American Manager

Photo by patricia serna on Unsplash

The Product Manager Said What???

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered why some products are so hard to use? This story might explain that very reason—plus a powerful tip to fix the problem.

Photo by Sarah Pflug from Burst

3 Ways to Get More Out of Qualitative Research

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Qualitative research is a powerful ways to collect insights. It can also presents some challenges. Here are 3 things you can do to get more value out of this kind of research.

Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

3 Digital Communication Tips for Leaders

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As leaders, we need to remember that digital communication is cold and impersonal by default. These 3 tips will help warm and humanize.

4 Powerful Tips for Impactful User Research

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

User research is valuable time spent, and here are 4 things to consider that will help you get the most out of user interviews.

Do This for a Better Critique

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Whether you're giving or getting a design critique, this mindset and method will help you get more value out of the critique process.

In-house vs Agency Designer

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between being an in-house designer vs working at an agency? I've worked at both, and here are 4 difference worth considering when choosing between the two.

Beyond Performance & Efficiency

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It is easy to get focused on maximizing performance and efficiency when it comes to our design work. Although those are important considerations it can be just as easy to lose sight of the human component of design. Here are 3 considerations to keep in mind as you balance these concerns.

Is Empathy Holding You Back

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Empathy is having a moment right now, but have you ever thought that it might be holding you back? Here are 2 aspects of empathy worth considering and 1 powerful way to activate it.

3 Must-haves for a Design Driven Culture

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

What does it take to foster a design friendly culture? What characteristics support a design way of thinking within your team? Here I share 3 requirements for a thriving design friendly culture.

How to Know When to Zoom Out and Ask for Help

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As a designer, it can be easy to get so focused on the thing that we are making, that we lose sight of the inspiration around us. Here I share how I identify moments when I need help, and the kind of help I seek in those moments.

4 Key Ingredients to a Thriving Creative Culture

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered how to have a more creative team with greater creative energy and output? Here I share 4 ingredients that you can start including today that will add to a thriving creative culture.

A new way to think about innovation

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It is easy to put blinders on when we label something innovative. That can be dangerous. This is my approach to zooming out and considering the implications of pursuing innovation.

Is design thinking killing innovation?

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Design Thinking promises new and creative ideas, but does it deliver on that promise? I'll share my experience with design thinking, and things you can do to increase your creative output.

What is design thinking?

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

There are countless definitions of Design Thinking. Some are helpful, most are not. Here is the definition that I find to be the most helpful, and I picked it up from a design legend!

What is design anyway?

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Design is a fuzzy word. It has a different definition, depending on who you ask. Here are 3 anchors I hold to when I define design.

Phone Design Prompts

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We look at our phones north of 100 times a day. That's a lot. Most of the time my phone is waking up from a dark screen and the first thing I see is the lock screen wallpaper. I've started to play around with wallpapers that provoke me to think about my craft. Little did I know, it would provoke onlookers to think and ask questions. It's been a fun little experiment.

Here are a few iPhone wallpapers that I’ve been playing with. Feel free to save them to your device and see what kind of reaction you get from wandering eyes.

Right-click or long-press to download/save

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Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

What Designers Need To Know About Design Thinking

Mon, 04 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I'm a designer, first and foremost. My undergraduate and graduate work are both in Business Administration. Design Thinking straddles these two disciplines, and as a result, many designers are utterly confused, frustrated and even combative when it comes to the topic of design thinking. I'm going to attempt to clear the air, in hopes that we can all have a more productive and informed conversation.

First, I totally get why so many designers are put off by the topic of design thinking. It is hard to find a good definition, and when you do, it’s often part of a company’s approach or methodology that’s declared as their unique approach to solving problems. Blah blah blah.

Most definitions that I see people use aren’t really definitions at all, but rather a model or workflow, which further confuses everyone involved. Webster’s Dictionary isn’t a picture book.

In order to begin to understand what design thinking is, we first have to wade through an endless amount of agencies marketing propagandas. Empathy, hexagons, iteration, gag, gag, gag.

To further confuse things, the business world talks more about design thinking than the design world does! As such, many designers simply assume that design thinking is the business world’s way of valuing design, and MBA students are being taught to think like designers. I chuckle when I see designers puff up with pride when the make the connection that design is now part of business strategy. I also want to vomit a little.

Design Thinking is not Human Centered Design.
Design Thinking is not thinking like a designer.
Design Thinking is not scientific inquiry.
Design Thinking does NOT make you a designer.

If it’s not empathy and hexagons, then what is design thinking?

The late Bill Moggridge, when asked to define Design Thinking, gave us the best definition I’ve ever heard. He said:

Design Thinking is a multidisciplinary approach to solving problems using design methodologies.

Do you see mention of a designer, an artifact, or output? Nope. Design methods are as close as we get to any reference to design. So what are design methods? Read this and come back.

The truth is, design thinking is a business word, not a design word. Design thinking is an approach that the businesses uses to generate new and creative ideas to help solve problems. It’s simply a way that businesses extract value from the design discipline, outside the traditional design departments.

By now, many designers are feeling left out. MBA students stole a word that designer’s have used to define themselves for ages. Designer thinkers are driving strategy, while clashing with traditional designers. Fear not designers, here are a few things to keep in mind.

A Designer’s tips for surviving design thinking

Let go. You don’t own the word design. As much as it pains you (and I) to see non-designers use the word design to describe what they do, it’s ok. No one is trying to undermine the craft of design.
Articulate your craft and the value you bring, apart from an agencies approach to selling work. Design has value, apart from design thinking.
Get an MBA. Seriously. If you can’t though, start by reading everything from Michael Porter, Roger Martin, and Harvard Business Review. If you want to be a part of the design thinking conversation, you have GOT to level up your business acumen.
Designers think differently than MBA graduates, and the differences are important and valuable. Don’t forget that.

Now, a note to the business world. The confusion goes both ways. Many of the designers you know aren’t ready to be part of the design thinking conversation. That’s ok. Bring them in anyway. Teach them. Help them understand the value they bring to the conversation as designers. Design thinking is multidisciplinary, and in my opinion, best executed with practicing designers.

Design and design thinking are not at all the same, but they are a powerful duo.

Confessions of a White Male Manager

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As a GenXer, I grew up during a time when the cultural narrative was beginning to embrace the notion that men, white men in particular, were at the center of all that was wrong in the world. Growing up in the 70s & 80s, and entering adulthood in 90s, you could not escape the blind hatred spewing from both sides of the debate.

Coming of age was confusing. I resented being held responsible for centuries of poor judgment and I resented being part of a class that was responsible for centuries of poor judgment. I was collateral damage, and I hated it. For many years.

I spent most of my 20s and 30s feeling like I was either a villain or a victim. Both roles seemed to be forced upon me and I struggled to find my own say in the matter.

It wasn’t until I was working at a male dominated software consultancy that I began to wrestle with my role and responsibility as a white male. Apart from the sheer lack of racial diversity, this software shop often referred to itself as a pirate ship, where many of the men spoke and acted like pirates.

It dawned on me shortly after losing a second female teammate due to a hostile and unprofessional work environment, that it would terrify me if my own daughter made a career in software. And yet, more female and diverse perspectives are exactly what the software industry needs! OIY!

I knew I couldn’t be a part of an organization that elevated the kind of behavior the drove talented and qualified women out. So I left.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself tasked with building a UX team from the ground up—a task that would prove to the most rewarding journey of my professional career.

History and experience taught me how white male “villains” treated female and diverse coworkers. I knew that wasn’t for me.

I was also appalled by peers who made it their crusade to be the “hero” for women and minorities. I don’t believe women and minorities need a hero. They are fully capable of playing that role themselves.

If villain and hero are off the table, then that left me with my go-to option; playing the victim. After all, it’s easy to throw my hands up and use my gender as an excuse for failing to be an effective leader. In fact, it’s even applauded by those that believe being a white man is my core problem.

It’s taking me years to figure this out:

Playing the victim perpetuates the problem as much as playing the villain.

Playing the victim is nothing more than a coward’s disguise. It’s an excuse, and I had to reconcile with that.

I needed to embrace a fourth narrative.

I’ve been awarded favor for being a white man, and that weighed on me as I wrestled through my position and responsibility as a hiring manager.

Here are 2 profound lessons I learned through my journey:

First and foremost; I needed help. I found it through my strong and fearless female boss, the examples around me, and most of all in the very team I was building.

Help came in the form of confidence, competence, hard work and smarts—not my own mind you, but that of my team! I’m sure they didn’t realize they were helping me by being awesome, that’s simply who they are. Their character allowed me to get past my own fears of being a white male manager. I had built up a crippling fear that I was destined to play one of the roles I had grown to resent. Their character gave me freedom; freedom to lean into who I am as a leader.

Which leads me to the second lesson.

Whether I liked it or not, I was part of “the good ‘ole boys club.” I was reminded of that reality when I looked around at who was getting promoted or fired, who was making decisions and ultimately who controlled the power. Therein lied the problem. Power.

It dawned on me, that if I truly valued diversity, than the power structure had to become diverse. In order for that to happen, white men had to give power away. I had to give power away.

Here is the interesting twist. My position, whether deserved or not, granted me the power to transfer power to my team. Once I realized that, I saw it as my responsibility to be the conduit.

Here are a few thoughts that gripped me through this lesson:

Diversity means nothing if I’m not willing to transfer power to a diverse team.
Having less power doesn’t mean I have less credibility. It is easy to get caught in that lie.
Leadership isn’t about having all the power, although most leaders are reluctant to give it away.
There is a difference between being right and doing good. I had to shift my focus from being right, to doing good.
My experience and expertise was holding my team back. I had to make room for others to gain experience and expertise.
To step out of the villain, hero, or victim role, I had to shift the balance of power. This was the key to having a more diverse and inclusive culture.

When all is said and done, I couldn’t be more proud of this team. They made me a better leader. They made me a better white guy.

LTR: Dana, Kedron, Kalie, Mari-Megan

UX Crime Fighters, thank you. I love each one of you.

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

Anchoring UX

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

What does your team stand for and where are you headed? These are tough questions to ask, especially if you're charged with leading a team and managing performance.

If you lead a team and can’t answer these questions, I’m guessing that your team suffers from that lack of clarity. How do I know? I’ve been there!

There are a host of things that influence the nature of a team, many of which leaders can affect. I’ve found it helpful to codify the things you can put a label on. Giving things a name gives them a sense of belonging. Simply put; name the things you stand for and articulate the places you’re going.

My team has chosen to put this into practice by identifying a list of team values along with a mission and vision statement. Although getting to a point-of-view with these things has not come easy, it has paid dividends again and again. Here is how.

Name the things you want to grow

We started out by listing all of the things that we felt compelled to own. These were a list of attributes and ideas that resonated with the team. Giving them a name has given us a language to talk about the things we want to grow within the team.

Some of these notions stretch our individual capabilities and mindsets, but they stretch us towards unity. They anchor us in a common understanding of what it means to be a part of the team.

Name the places you’re going

After we identified the attributes we wanted to own, we sifted through those attributes for clues as to how they would impact the direction and nature of our work. This lead us to flesh out a vision statement (where are we headed) and a mission statement (how will we get there).

Getting these things nailed down is anything but easy, but they give us something to rally behind. They give us focus. They guide us and inform how we interact within the team and within the organization.

Here is what we came up with:

UX Values

Put the User First
We optimize first and foremost for the user through empathy and compassion.

Collaborate
We believe that radical collaboration drives breakthrough results.

Leverage Data
We believe the best decisions come from a rigorous exploration of both qualitative and quantitative data.

Be Optimistic
We continually imagine a future full of opportunities and solutions, with multiple paths forward.

Embrace Ambiguity
We openly embrace the foggy nature of designing the future.

Pursue Scalability
We believe that good solutions scale over time, bend with constraints and reach into the future.

Take Ownership
We believe that owning our craft and the challenges in front of us drive us to superior results.

Teach & Learn
Our relentless curiosity drives us to continually learn new things and we echo that learning back to those we collaborate with.

UX Vision

Transform Gordon Food Service into a human-centered, design-forward leader in our industry.

UX Mission

Elevate the execution of business & user needs through human-centered design.

If you haven’t done the work of defining who you are and where you’re going, there is no better time to do that than right now. You’ll bring clarity, direction and unity to your team, and they’ll thank you for it.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

10 Tours and 10 Lessons

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I have only been a designer for 19 years. When I think about the total number of years, it strikes me as a long time to do just one thing. When I consider the fact that I've worked at 10 different places over those 19 years, it doesn't seem like long at all. That breaks down to less than 2 years a tour.

It would be fair to conclude that I’m not one to stay put for very long, and although the evidence is there to prove that hypothesis, I can tell you that changing jobs has never been easy.

There are some positive aspects that come from changing jobs, including the wide variety of experience that come with the so much churn. There are also a slew of learning opportunities that come along with so much change. Here are 10, of the 100s that I’ve picked up along the way.

1. RBC Ministries (Our Daily Bread) - 1998

My first boss invested into me in a way that no other boss has since. Despite the fact that he had poured so much value into my life, his hands were tied when it came to giving me an opportunity to advance. The turnover was so low that there was literally no where on his team that I could go to advance my career.

As I look back, I can see how that experience has filtered the way in which I see my work. As a result, I’ve been acutely aware of the glass ceilings within an organization—and that experience taught me early on that there is often only one way through that ceiling, and that is to find a different one altogether.

Lesson #1

When you work for someone else, they control the glass ceiling.

2. Cornerstone University - 2000

I’ve written about this before.

Lesson #2

Excellence and hard work don’t guarantee anything, but if you leave it all on the field, you won’t leave with any regrets.

3. The University of Tampa - 2003

The University of Tampa was a great place to work. I didn’t make much money at all, but the people were great and I felt like I was a part of something important. Culturally it was a good fit, and I took that for granted.

I fell in love with academia while at UT. The combination of heritage, student energy, faculty and staff commitment to growth, and the consistent pursuit of excellence resonates with me. Looking back, I didn’t (and maybe still don’t) have a good way of quantifying that in a working tour. It’s worth more than I thought it was.

Lesson #3

There is more to a tour than a paycheck.

4. The Crossing Church - 2005

There are some lessons that I’m just slow to learn. Combine charisma with meaningful work and I’m like a lemming ready to march off a cliff! I genuinely want to see the best in people, and sometimes that clouds my ability to spot danger.

Lesson #4

Charisma is dangerous—a lesson I’ve had to learn more than once.

5. GSL Solutions - 2006

I had watched the DOTCOM rise and fall from inside the walls of corporate America and felt like I had missed something special about the rise of the Web. GSL Solutions made up for that with regular foosball tournaments, movie outings and epic “GSL Days” that drove home the value of working hard and playing hard.

We were a small close knit team, scrappy, fun and hard working. That combination built a camaraderie and respect for one another that’s hard to replicate.

Lesson #5

Fun is a critical component to high performing teams.

6. Zondervan (HarperCollins) - 2009

I joined a book publisher at the beginning of the great recession. Seriously? Publishing?

The publishing industry was, and still is, in the midst of extraordinary change, and as a result, a lot of leadership and strategy churn. That amount of churn doesn’t always bring out the best in people. Self included.

I felt the burden of a hemorrhaging industry, and I poured myself into being a part of the solution. Despite the noise, churn and chaos, I sometimes wonder if I’d ever be capable of producing the level quality I did then.

Lesson #6

Channel the pressure of chaos into your work, and let your work speak for itself.

7. Atomic Object - 2011

Atomic Object has a well deserved reputation for being technological superstars. I have a hard time imagining any other firm being more technically competent than AO—on par, yes, but better? Hardly.

For the first time in my career, I was surrounded by 30+ other makers that cared about the discipline of making software the same way that I did. Being surrounded by that kind of talent drove me to work and think harder about my craft than ever before.

Lesson #7

If you want to level up, get on a next-level team.

8. Agathon Group - 2014

Agathon Group is something special. Not only was the work rewarding, challenging and interesting, the team and clients were/are fantastic. When I think about the transition and leaving an organization, leaving AG was the toughest by far. I cried my eyes out on the last day. Seriously.

So why did I leave? Honestly, the fear of not mattering—not mattering to my team, my peers, my discipline. Sounds foolish, I know.

See, AG was the first time I had ever worked 100% remote. It was my 8th design job, and I was used to a 3-6 month assimilation window. Working remote takes longer, and honestly, I didn’t give it long enough. Working remote is a learning curve in it’s own right, and I hadn’t given myself long enough to figure that aspect out.

Lesson #8

If you want something to work, speak up, hold on, and give it a chance to blossom.

9. Designvox - 2015

Designvox was the first design agency I’ve ever worked at, and although they were the shortest tour, I learned a great deal about creativity while serving with that team. This was the first place that I had ever worked that put a premium on design, above all else. There was a respect for the uncontrollable nature of creativity there that I had never been exposed to. Magic.

Lesson #9

If you want the magic of design, you can’t confine it to a box.

10. Gordon Food Service - 2016

Until Gordon Food Service I had spent nearly half of my professional life as a consultant, working directly with decision makers, from CEO’s, startup founders, policy makers and every position in between, all while building and broadening a skill set to meet the high demands of consultancies. All that, really means jack when you work in a large company. You fill a position with clearly defined boundaries, fitting neatly in an org chart.

The truth of the matter is, it’s been incredibly humbling—which is exactly what I needed.

I’ll admit it, I had begun watering seeds of entitlement as successes piled up. The fruit of entitlement is ugly.

Lesson #10

Stay humble.

These have been tough lessons to learn, some of which I seem to learn over and over again. The truth of the matter is, I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, and they’ve each taught me something, and maybe there is something in this list that you can learn from as well.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

4 Key Aspects of a Thriving Creative Culture

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The culture of an organization can, in many ways, determine success or failure. We’ve seen examples of how the cultural acceptance of a nod leads to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, and where a culture of customer service distinguishes an organization from the masses.

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing we have something in common. We place a premium on a culture that is collaborative, generative, innovative and inspiring. We place a premium on a creative culture.

We can do great things when we’re supported by a creative culture. Ideas mature into something far more inspiring and captivating. Teams have the freedom to explore and make mistakes, and we feel the deep satisfaction of shaping a brighter future together.

The future belongs to the creators.

I’ve been on a mission to discover what it means to support a thriving creative culture. I’ve worked within organizations that seem determined to squash creativity and organizations that actively protect the creative spirit. Over the years, I’ve picked up on four elements that support creative cultures. When it comes to cultures that ooze creative energy, you can do yourself no harm by ratcheting up these four attributes within your organization.

Candor

Ed Catmull, one of the founders of Pixar, describes candor in “Creativity Inc.,” the freedom and willingness to share insights, opinions and even criticism, as one of the hallmarks of a creative culture.

Creativity, in large part, is fueled by the collision of differing ideas and perspectives. Candor paves the way for ideas to collide. Lack of freedom or willingness to share ideas—even when they conflict with the prevailing winds—stifles creativity at best, and at worst, it sows seeds of resentment.

Candor isn’t, however, an excuse to be a jerk. Candor, to be effective, demands tact, kindness and humility. Creativity can take a nosedive when someone jumps into a conversation with their elbows out, leaving people feeling bruised and belittled. Candor isn’t an excuse to speak before you think.

Resource: Creativity Inc.

Whimsy

It took me several years to put my finger on this one, in part, because the business person in me doesn’t know what to do with it! Whimsy doesn’t surface in our design vocabulary very often, but I think it should.

Google defines whimsy as: playfully quaint or fanciful behavior or humor.

The first design team I had the privilege of serving with began to teach me the value of whimsy. Two of the designers in particular exhibited whimsy as a core part of what made them such talented creatives.

For example; Steve, one of the senior designers took it upon himself to draw a caricature of each of us to display on our cubical name tags. Why? Because it was fun, and at the same time, it humanized us a bit more to our colleagues.

They’re playful nature compelled them to reach for odd or unusual connections. They allowed themselves to follow the unusual path where their playfulness took them, which lead to countless creative breakthroughs.

Encouraging whimsy in the workplace gives people the freedom to make unusual connections. Whimsy pushes back against the fallacy that says that success is only for the serious.

We’re less likely to make creative leaps when we feel judged. In my experience, when there is a lack of whimsy, there is a clear presence of judgment.

Resource: Serious Play - Tim Brown

I’ll admit, I can be a little stuffy at times.

Optimism

Someone once told me that people and projects generally rise to their lowest level of expectation. When every new idea is met with criticism and reasons it won’t work, the creative energy within a person or project deflates like a punctured life raft.

Environments that focus on mitigating risk will often reward individuals for their pessimism. If you focus on why new ideas can’t or won’t work, then you never take risks because you never try anything new. Oddly enough, many organizational cultures reward this behavior while at the same time trying to be creative.

On the contrary, greeting new ideas with optimism gives the idea a chance to grow. Not all ideas will blossom, but you’ll never know which ones might if you never give them a chance to prove themselves.

Anyone can think of countless reasons why a new idea won’t work. It takes an optimistic perspective to imagine a new and different future—which is what we expect from a creative culture.

On the flip side, don’t let optimism prevent you from critically thinking about an opportunity or challenge.

Resource: Optimism and critique

Transparency

The collision of design and software development has been the source of countless debates and breakthroughs. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from software development practices is to place a premium on transparency.

Steve Denning, a agile development champion, outlines a great argument for increasing transparency across your organization in his book “The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management.” He points out that transparency enables a team to maintain forward momentum by supporting organizational alignment and the removal of impediments.

Qualitrics takes transparency seriously and publishes every employee’s, from the CEO to the newest member, performance goals and accomplishments. They’ve found that this level of transparency reduces stress and builds trust across their organization, allowing individuals to free their creative problem solving skills to do more meaningful work.

When it comes to supporting a creative culture, transparency exposes the edges—the edges of a problem, of the constraints, of the path forward. These edges are vital in the creative process, and therefore vital in supporting a creative culture.

Conversely, when we lack transparency, we swirl in the unknown, we’re derailed by unpleasant surprises, and we’re constantly stifled by unclear expectations.

Wrapping up

There are, of course, many attributes that comprise a vibrant and creative culture. In my experience, these 4 are some of the easy markers to identify in a team, project and organization. You can’t go wrong by looking out for these attributes and making sure they have room to grow, in you and around you.

What other attributes have you come to rely on in your creative culture?

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Wizards of the Digital Age

Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Matthew Russel, from [Rapid Growth](http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com), reached out for a [quick interview](http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com/features/101316_Wizards-of-the-digital-age-in-West-Michigan.aspx) on the future of IoT. Not only is Matthew a gifted writer, he looped in the talented Adam Bird to make an image.

Full article

Author: Matthew Russell

Photographer: Adam Bird

Many thanks to Rapid Growth, Mr. Russel & Mr. Bird!

Photo by Marius Masalar on Unsplash

Technology — The Thrill of Discovery

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

My [alma mater](https://www.cornerstone.edu/) reached out this summer to profile alumni leading in the field of STEM. To my surprise and honor, they reached out to me for a [profile piece](https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/fullscreen/55700747/2016-alumni-journal-summer-issue/2016-alumni-journal-summer-issue)!

Full article

Many thanks to Cornerstone University.

Photo by Ales Nesetril on Unsplash

Design is More Than Methods

Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

As design continues to penetrate the C suite in business, methodologies take the limelight. Methodologies are an effective way to identify efficiency gaps and opportunities for growth, as well as applying a sense of structure (read predictability) around design.

As much as I appreciate the emphasis on method, I think it’s important to remind ourselves that good design is more than methods.

You can adhere to all of the methods, but that doesn’t make you a good designer, nor does it guarantee good design (looking at you, UX community).

Methods are the systematic deconstruction of the design discipline, and are crucial to any designer’s toolkit. Design tools are only as good as the person using them.

The danger with a method approach to design is that it creates a false sense of security for the non-designer. A non-designer can read, understand and apply a method, and confidently move forward with crap. This naive approach to design undermines the credibility of the method, and ultimately our profession as designers.

You can’t substitute a good designer for design methods.

Photo by NEW DATA SERVICES on Unsplash

3 Critical Factors to Decision Making

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Historically, design and innovation have been plagued by intuition-only decision making. A creative person intuits a solution from deep within, and behold, the future is created! Although innovation depends heavily on creativity, the business world has grown weary of betting on intuition—as they should.

The design community has answered the call to leverage creativity while at the same time, reducing risk, by adopting a human centered approach to design and innovation. In fact, it’s become increasingly difficult to make any decision about where to innovate without someone asking about the user research.

Design-driven innovation is more than user research. It’s more than empathy. It’s more than observing customer behavior. As a design community, we may be in danger of focusing too much on user research.

Consider these 3 critical factors for design-driven innovation

Experience

The trouble with experience is that is often the reason we’re in a corner and need to innovate in the first place! Doing things the way we’ve always done them leads to the same results quarter after quarter. Senior leadership finally gets tired of the same or worsening results and hires an innovation consultant to shake things up. The next thing you know, those with the most experience doing things the old way are the least relevant in any plans to move forward.

That’s gotta stop.

Whether it’s personal experience or the collective experience of an organization, experience is a critical part of the decision making process!

The beauty of experience is that it creates evidence. Some evidence points to clear wins, and some points to tired results. Regardless, experience is the bedrock of learning.

The key to leveraging experience is actually pretty hard work. It requires an objective look at the evidence it creates, and if you’re the one creating evidence, it’s nearly impossible to be objective about it.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you should throw the baby out with the bath water! Find yourself a trusted partner that will wade through the evidence with you and help you identify the key learning that will expose new opportunities and reduce risks that other, more creative exercises, will introduce.

Intuition

Intuition has gotten a bad rap over the past few years thanks to design thinking and human centered design. These approaches to design place a premium on insights coming from outside the traditional design discipline. As a result, intuition has been labeled dangerous, risky and far too subjective to be meaningful within business (yes, I’m being dramatic, but I’m not far from the truth in this portrayal).

The real danger with intuition is when it’s left unchecked.

Intuition, however, is one of the key elements that separates design from reductionary forms of problem solving. It accounts for the human creativity and experience component of design. It’s often what we call the ‘designers touch’.

I like how Roger Martin puts it:

“Designers have the unique ability to make fine distinctions in quality.” - Roger Martin

Insight

In the world of Human Centered Design, insight is the star of the show. Insight is all about discovering and validating the solution, outside of the of the designer.

Gathering insights without looking through the lens of intuition and experience can lead to tragic results. Mr. Alan Cooper puts it like this:

The next time you’re up against a design decision, consider weighing these 3 inputs into the process.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

The Hidden Power of Design

Thu, 07 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

There is no shortage of aspirational chatter about design in the business community. Designers and MBAs alike are dreaming of design lead futures. Hey, I'm right there with them, but sometimes I think it's good to remind ourselves of the specific value design brings to the table—if for no other reason than to make sure we're actually capitalizing on the promise of design.

There are, of course, many aspects of design that hold great promises for the world of business. I’ve come to depend on one in particular that deserves our attention:

Design has the extraordinary power to align.

Design, as an alignment tool, aims to express ideas and points of view that elicit a reaction from others. Its express purpose is to make ideas tangible, pull them out of the abstract and give them form. Until we’re able to give an idea form, we’re often unable to connect our ideas with the ideas of others.

Giving ideas form often starts with a story. The problem with stories however, is that they change based on who is telling the story. Don’t get me wrong, story is a powerful tool in your tool belt, but give those stories form by applying design as soon as possible.

The majority of my work over the past two decades has been focused on digital product design. For many of those years, teams spent countless hours thinking and writing and thinking some more about what the software should do. They would create stacks of documentation, and swirl in the details until stakeholders tapped out with fatigue. Once everyone was satisfied with the amount of words on a page, the project was moved in to the design and build phase, and inevitably, as soon as those ideas had form, stakeholders had something they could react to. You can imagine what those conversations were like: Wait, that’s not at all what I meant-or-where did that come from?

Now days, I advocate and fight for bringing design practices all the way to the front of the product definition phase, constantly bringing form to ideas, starting with design research.

If you haven’t leveraged design to align, let me suggest starting with something simple. The next time you’re in a meeting, and words aren’t getting you anywhere, grab a marker and step up to the white board and draw the ideas. I know that some of you get a little anxious about the idea of drawing, but I’m not suggesting that you need to be an artist. You know how to draw shapes and stick figures, so use those forms to express ideas, and echo back the ideas you’re hearing. You’ll be amazed at how quickly a little design can bring clarity and alignment.

As you ratchet up your design skills, consider using diagrams, wireframes and even context scenarios to facilitate alignment. It doesn’t take a lot, but every bit of design you can bring to the conversation, the easier it becomes to realize alignment.

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

Leadership and Strategy Are Nothing Without It

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Leadership and strategy are easy to talk about. In my experience, the two get more lip service than most other topics in business these days. After all, it's far easier to talk about leadership and strategy than it is to put them into practice.

I’ve been wrestling with these two topics, trying to understand why there is such a large gap between the words we use and the reality we encounter in the field. I’ve worked at consultancies that pride themselves on the strategic direction they offer, and I’ve watched countless leaders wax eloquently about a new direction or initiative. Time and time again, the smoke fades, and there is little substance left. Why is that?

As I’ve struggled to understand the gap, I’ve stumbled onto a way to mitigate the underwhelming sensation of empty leadership and strategy.

Leadership and strategy require proof. Without proof, they’re meaningless.

Let me explain.

Leadership and strategy both suffer from academic abstraction. What I mean by that is that they’re both complicated, nuanced domains, that require a level of reflection and abstraction that make it fodder for endless academic debate. They are domains that demand to be theorized about. This theorization, for better or worse, makes it difficult to exercise in real life.

The disconnect lies in that we demand more out of leadership and strategy than theory. We demand proof.

I worked at a consultancy not long ago that serves as a great example of making sure there was evidence behind leadership and strategy. The CEO decided to expand the company’s value proposition by incorporating stronger influences of human centered design. This was a new direction, and required a heavy dose of leadership and strategy. Sure, he theorized what this direction would mean for his company with his C-Suite, but just as important, he generated proof! He set the direction, changed operations to support it and lead the team by example. Proof!

Theory is the luxury of the no-difference-maker. Combine that theory with practice and boom, you’re onto something!

So what does it look like to generate proof for these seemingly abstract ideas?

Proof of leadership

This is how I know leadership is in motion:

Leaders have followers. If you look around and no one is following you, you might be blowing smoke.
Leaders can point to change. If you can’t point to a specific change, then you might be blowing smoke.
Leader take responsibility. If you can’t name the pieces and direction you’re responsible for, then you might be blowing smoke.

Proof of strategy

This is how I know that strategy is in place:

Strategy is about measurable activity. If all you have is a plan, then you don’t have a strategy.
Strategy is equally all the things you’re not. If you don’t know what you’re not, then you don’t have a strategy.
Strategy is about position. If you can’t name your position in the marketplace and the context that surrounds it, then you don’t have a strategy.

These are just a few things that haunt me when I consider leadership and strategy. Do I have proof? Can I point to evidence?

If you can’t identify proof of leadership and strategy, it’s time to make the abstract tangible.

Photo by ål nik on Unsplash

In Pursuit of Greatness

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I care deeply about this thing we call design, and it's relationship to people and problems. If you're reading this blog, I'm guessing that you do to. I'm a perpetual student of the domain and am constantly trying to improve. That drive pushes me forward, both in my craft and career; I want to be great at this!

Or so I thought.

Being great, or at least the pursuit of it, has lead me to some costly mistakes.

In order to set this up, it’s helpful to start with a simple question: What does it mean to be great? Google defines it like this:

of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above the normal or average.

I’m compelled by this definition, after all, I want to be above average! Don’t we all? Culturally, being average, or heaven forbid, less than average, is unthinkable! Everything around us demands that we be more, that we stand out, that we make the world recognize our worth.

My pursuit to be above average has been a blind one. Simply put, I’ve chased greatness at the cost of goodness.

At first glance, goodness doesn’t sound that much different than greatness. In fact, it sounds less compelling. After all, who wants to be good, when you can be great?

Here is what I lost sight of: Being great is simply a comparison. Nothing more. Good, on the other hand, demands virtue.

Consider this: China, Britain and America are all great nations, but are they are good? Maybe. Maybe not. Being great has nothing to do with being good.

I have, more than once, traded good for the promise of great. I’ve traded good co-workers for great ones. I’ve traded good companies for great ones. I’ve traded good career paths for great ones. Sure, those choices may have pushed me further towards greatness, but at what cost?

In hindsight, here are some common ingredients of great that I’ve been tripped up by:

Passion ≠ good
Visibility ≠ good
Charisma ≠ good
Nice ≠ good
Notoriety ≠ good
Dedication ≠ good

That’s not to say that these attributes are mutually exclusive. I’m simply stating that they are not the same as good.

I’ve bought the lie that says that in order to matter, I must be great. I must stand out and above.

I suspect that you and I are similar in that we both want our work and life to matter.

The truth is: You don’t have to be great to matter. Start with the pursuit of good, and you’re well on your way.

Is the pursuit of great getting in the way of good? I’m learning to ask myself that question every day.

Photo by Alfred Aloushy on Unsplash

Integrating Strategy Into the Customer Experience

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Mapping the customer experience is par for the course when it comes to product and service design. Formulating a strategy to support products and services even precedes the maturing of the customer experience map. Both are critical to the success of a new venture, yet rarely do the two align.

I’ve ran into this disconnect on several occasions and have struggled to find a way to bridge strategy work with mapping the customer experience. This struggle, and it’s been a tough one, has led me to create what I’m calling a CX Matrix. This matrix aligns the customer journey to considerations ranging between strategy and customer experience.

The model I’ve been working with is tailored to a digital product/service, but you could easily taylor it to your own context. This digital model identifies 7 key moments in the customer journey:

Awareness
Consideration
Signup
Onboarding
Ongoing Use
Support
Discontinue

These key moments capture critical aspects of the customer experience that represent opportunities to interact with the customer to help shape their experience and deliver value.

These 7 key moments are then supported by 6 considerations that are informed by business objectives, technology constraints and customer goals. They include:

Business Objectives - what does business aspire to in each step of the customer journey?
Strategy - What are the unique and necessary set of activities at each step in the customer’s journey that play to our strengths and are sustainable?
Automation - What efficiencies do we gain through automation and what vulnerabilities do we introduce through automation?
Touch-Point - What does the customer interact with as they engage with each step of their journey?
Customer Goal - What does the customer want and expect from this step in their journey?
Customer Experience - What is the ideal customer experience as they engage with each step of their journey?

As you lay this matrix out, you’ll quickly identify 42 intersections between the key moments and the supporting strategy. These intersections identify the critical elements needed to align business value with customer goals. It gives the organization clear visibility into the goals of the customer along with how the business can help meet that goal.

At the end of the day, this matrix aims to provide alignment between desirability, feasibility, and viability—all wrapped up into one visualization that should require little-to-no explanation.

Taking this a step further, this matrix provides a granular way to measure the effectiveness of both the strategy and the execution. Each of the 42 intersections will likely have a handful of acceptance criteria, which is effectively 42 × n of levers to pull.

If you’ve been struggling, as I have, to align strategy and experience, consider the CX Matrix. Kick the tires and let me know what works and what doesn’t.

Photo by Luemen Carlson on Unsplash

Talking Human-Centered Design

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The fine folks at Digital Telepathy (DT) reached out with a few questions about what life has taught me along my journey as a UXer. You can read it here.

The dangers of empathy

Tue, 05 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The word empathy is having a moment in the sun right now, in large part due to the insightful work of Tom Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO. Empathy, as an approach, is being taught in disciplines ranging from design, to leadership, teaching, hospitality, medicine and the list goes on. Having empathy is key to understanding someone else's point of view, which means that if you’re in the business of connecting with people, you need to employ some empathy.

Empathy may be holding you back.

Our brains are wired to connect with one another, and it uses empathy to do so. But did you know that cognitive science points to two types of empathy? Cognitive and Affective empathy.

Cognitive empathy, sometimes referred to as perspective taking, refers to our ability to understand the emotions or mental state of someone else. This is, in my own estimation, the general understanding of the word empathy.

Affective empathy, on the other hand, refers to our ability to actually feel what someone else is feeling. When we practice or experience affective empathy, science suggest that the mirror neurons in our brain create an echo of the emotion we’re observing in our own brain, causing us to feel the emotions, first hand.

Of the two types of empathy, cognitive empathy, might be the one holding you back. Here is why. Psychologist observe what’s called the “too cold to care” effect:

When people try to understand another person’s point of view without internalizing his or her emotions, they can be so detached that they’re not motivated to do anything to actually help that person. - Greater Good

I remember the first time I encountered the “too cold to care” effect. I was working with a smart team of developers on a particularly squirly part of a user interface. We had been working on a solution based on how we saw users behave in the application and how we understood their mental state at this particular interaction. We had been deliberately looking for ways to increase empathy for the users by using personas and journey maps.

I’ll never forget how the tension began to rise as we were faced with the dilemma of either pushing through the engineering complexities in order to deliver a user-centered solution or to cave to the complexity and sacrifice the empathic solution we were aiming for.

The conversation came to an end when the developer on the project, who was also the project leader, declared that he no longer cared what the user needed, it was too complicated to pull off.

This is the danger with cognitive empathy, it doesn’t require you to take action.

Affective empathy isn’t necessarily the solution to the empathy problem either. Those that experience acute levels of affective empathy can easily become overwhelmed with emotion, rendering them paralyzed or exhausted, while others struggle to experience affective empathy at all.

Empathy is important, but it isn’t enough to propel us towards great design, leadership, teaching, hospitality or medicine.

Regardless of how well you’re able to tap into empathy, in either form, you’re wasting your time unless you activate empathy with compassion.

Compassion is the key to unlocking the value of empathy. Without compassion, empathy has no teeth.

Compassion demands that we consider the needs of others, and act in their best interest.

Is empathy holding you back? Compassion can launch you forward.

3 steps to a better critique

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The critique is an embedded part of design education. As designers move through academia, the critique is where they’re challenged to think harder, take a new perspective, and sharpen their skills. The critique is delivered by their professors and peers, both of which are educated in the critique process, and have an understanding of the design principles in play.

Although this can be an uncomfortable process, the fact that the critic has a margin of credibility makes up for those inevitable rough moments.

Fast forward to graduation and the working sector. Many designers find themselves far from the rigor of a design critique and instead face an armchair design critic who has little or no design training. Not only is the feedback all over the place, it’s rarely given in a framework that allows for ideas to be expressed and explored. The feedback is reduced to drivel like, “it needs more pop” or “what about a carousel instead.”

As a designer, this can be incredibly frustrating!

If the critique process puts you on edge, or if you’re new to giving a critique, here is a framework you can use to ensure they’re productive and positive.

First and foremost you need to set the team’s expectations. Be clear about the elements you’re looking for feedback on, and guide the conversation to stay on point. If you hand over an idea for critique with “what do you think?”, don’t expect a productive conversation.

Once you set the expectations, ask the critic to follow these simple steps as they think through their response.

Start with “I like”

Have the critic start with something they think is working about the piece you’re asking for feedback on. Getting people started on a positive note is more likely to get them in a positive frame of mind. This is more important than you may think. Having a positive posture in the conversation positions the critic to be open minded, generative, and solution oriented. Starting off on a negative tone can send the critique spiraling into a black hole of pessimism and defeatism.

Example: I like how the navigation is shaping up. I’ve seen this pattern before, but your take on it feels fresh and relevant.

Move to “I wish”

Using the phrase “I wish” continues to position the conversation toward possibilities. “I wish” speaks to aspirations, where as “I don’t like” leads to a quick a dead end. Using this phrase helps the critic formulate what they feel is missing in the piece they are critiquing. It forces them to think deeper than a knee jerk reaction.

Example: I wish the titles carried more weight and felt more like an authoritative presence on the screen.

End with “What if”

The simple phrase “what if” is a generative one. This is an opportunity for the critics to explore solutions and express how they might solve the problem. It puts them in the hot seat where they can be a part of the solution! When a critic has skin in the game, they’re more likely to give you valuable feedback!

Example: What if we darkened the titles just a bit and increased the size a notch or two?

You don’t need a design degree to conduct or give an effective critique. This framework steers the conversation toward solutions, building trust along the way. Critiques should be a positive experience for everyone involved! They should result in more and better ideas that push the quality of the piece higher and higher.

The design critique should be energizing and generative. If it’s not, try this approach.

If you try it, I’d love to hear how it goes! Ping me on Twitter @kedronrhodes

Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

3 Ways Generosity Builds Effective Leadership

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever busted your tail on a project, worked extra hours, took extra responsibility, and made personal sacrifices, all to see the project succeed? If you’re a responsible, hard working person you know just what I’m talking about. And doesn’t it feel great to see the project go well? There is something immensely gratifying about those team high-fives, swapping close-call stories over an evening drink, and the occasional project bonus.

During the 2008 presidential campaign I was the creative director for Governor Mike Huckabee’s digital presence. We were a small team, one and a half developers and one and a half designers. Needless to say, we worked hard, long hours while the campaign was in full swing.

The team felt the pressure as the mid-terms approached and Mike Gains, my boss, saw it wearing on us. As we approached the next critical deadline, Mike challenged us with an incentive. If we could hit our goal, he was going to score the other developer and me some trending tech at Best Buy.

Until then, I had never considered the power of generosity as a leader. Even now, almost a decade removed, Mike’s generosity shapes the way I view leadership. I’ve come to realize that leadership embraces generosity.

Leadership is generous with recognition

I’m convinced that we’re most effective when we’re working together as a team. I’m also convinced that we’re unique, and that our uniqueness is what makes teams more effective. When our unique contributions are overlooked and unrecognized we can quickly become resentful, even when we’re taking great pride in the team’s effort.

Effective leadership recognizes the team and the individual. Mike challenged the team, and rewarded us individually. He made it a point to recognize our unique contributions.

Recognizing the contributions of your team members can be as simple as highlighting individual accomplishments when the project is being discussed. These small gestures go long way in building a sense of pride and ownership within the team.

Leadership is generous with resources

The value the Huckabee team created for the company dwarfed the expenditure of the Best Buy visit. Generosity doesn’t mean you have to break the bank. It’s simply showing you care by going above and beyond.

Being generous with resources is an effective way to communicate that you value someone’s hard work, their craft and the problem they’re trying to solve.

Leadership is generous with time

We all worked long hours, and Mike was right there with us. The night we scrambled to hit our target, he hung out in the office with us, cheering us on. I remember that it was dark out when we finally called it a night, satisfied with our results. The other developer and I hopped into Mike’s truck and we went down the street to Best Buy, just before they closed. He could have left us to lock up the office. He could have placed a Best Buy order online. He could have waited until the next day to take us.

Effective leaders know when to show up and be generous with their time. The time spent with a team, rubbing shoulders, sharing tears and high-fives, can be the most meaningful investment we make into our teams.

Next steps

As you read this, it may be helpful to think about the adverse effects that not being generous might be causing in your team. Do team members jockey for recognition? Does your team take unnecessary shortcuts in order to avoid making a request for more resources? Does your team hesitate to or avoid making requests for your time?

Generosity doesn’t come easy for many, but I believe generosity is an indispensable quality of an effective leader.

How can you be more generous as a leader?

Photo by Coco Tafoya on Unsplash

Removing the Marketplace

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It appears to me, that as the Internet gets more sophisticated, we're losing more and more personal privacy. We've come to expect that the Internet is a marketplace in which we exchange portions of our privacy for goods and services.

In some cases, this seems like an equitable exchange.

I aim to express a point of view with each iteration of this blog. I’ve been thinking a lot about your privacy as I’ve been retooling this little corner of the Web.

This version, at the core, is about your privacy.

I’ve never asked anything of the readers that stop by. There are no ads asking for your attention. This has always been a free resource to those interested in exploring the intersection of design, innovation and leadership with me.

I’ve been blogging for over a decade with this perspective on starting and sharing a dialog, but this is the first iteration that the actual markup has reflected those ideas.

This ethos is expressed in the markup by it’s simplicity and structure, designed to allow you to read the content easily outside of this site with your favorite read-later or RSS services. But more importantly, there is NO tracking software running—not Google analytics, no iframes or 3rd party anything of any kind.

Even as I read that last sentence it sounds so foreign to me - almost too foreign - and that’s actually kind of sad.

Photo by Lianhao Qu on Unsplash

Design Week at Michigan House

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Michigan House hosted a panel on the value of design during the 2015 West Michigan Design Week. I chimed in. :)

Thanks Aaron for sending this along!

Design as a Team Sport

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I had the privilege to contribute to Digital Telepathy's (DT) amazing blog on the power of collaboration between designers and developers. You can read it here.

Photo by Emilio Garcia on Unsplash

6 Lessons Cancer Taught Me that You Should Learn

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Nervous energy coursed through my body. The anesthetics weren’t kicking in as fast I expected them to. To break my body’s tension as the nurses steered my hospital bed under the bright lights, and to let them know I was still awake, I commented about the music booming through the operating room.

“The doctor likes to listen to the radio while he performs surgery,” one nurse replied.

The next thing I remember is waking up in recovery.

Surgery was a year ago today, and the cancer is gone.

Cancer, as destructive as it is, has, in many ways, been a good teacher. Here are a few of the life and leadership lessons I’m learning along the way.

1. We choose the view

I kept my diagnosis quiet for as long as I could responsibly be silent about the issue. As news spread, conversations revolved almost completely around the C word. I either answered a litany of questions about what type, how long the treatment is, etc. etc. Or, I listened to everyone’s story about someone they knew who had cancer.

I’ve written about perspective before, and I’m a firm believer that we get to choose our perspectives. The challenge about perspective is it suggests we can see or envision the outcomes of the path we’re on. Cancer taught me that as much as you can wish for a positive perspective, the facts aren’t always clear. In fact, sometimes there are no facts! In these moments, perspective, the lens through which we choose to see the world, is an act of faith.

When we’re faced with situations where the future is fogged over, choosing a optimistic perspective can feel a bit delusional. Yet, when we choose a positive perspective we carve out a bigger slice of joy and happiness while we wait for the fog to clear. If the fog clears and the perspective isn’t in our favor, at least we didn’t prematurely sacrifice our own happiness while we waited.

I’m learning to choose a positive view when I can’t see.

2. Showing up means more than words

I didn’t expect many visitors while I was in recovery. In fact, I didn’t expect to see anyone other than family. It wasn’t until my dear friend Nathan Smith showed up with his youngest son that I realized how meaningful it is to show up for someone when they’re down without a choice. He could have sent a text or even a card, but instead, he drove to the hospital just to be in the same space.

Showing up for someone can mean the difference between hope and discouragement, between comfort and aloneness. Never underestimate the power of sharing space with another human being.

I’m learning to show up.

3. Alignment and selling out

I’m convinced we all want to pursue meaningful work with people we trust and respect. I’m also convinced many of us find ourselves in work situations that don’t inspire us, or even worse, cause us to compromise our values.

I’m embarrassed to tell you it took a medical crisis to force me to reevaluate my own integrity. I found myself asking questions like: Is this the work that I want to be remembered for? Is this my price for doing this type of work? Is this my price for working with this type of person? Is this my price for aligning myself with these sets of values?

As I asked these questions, I didn’t like the answer. Something had to change.

When we pause to ask ourselves these tough questions they expose our internal alignment. Where there is misalignment, or when we don’t like the answer, or when we begin to justify our conscience away, we’re selling out. Life is too short to align yourself with work and individuals that push the boundaries of your integrity.

I’m learning to align my work and my association with my internal compass.

4. There is no pause button

I was traveling for work when I got the first message that my blood work didn’t look right. I was leading a client through a large design-driven innovation project and didn’t have time to process the voicemail. A couple of weeks later I was with the same client and received the news the biopsy was cancerous. During that same time I was putting together and hosting a conference for nonprofits.

Life doesn’t pause and wait to see if you’ll hit a curveball.

When we’re faced with what seems like insurmountable obstacles we can either resign ourselves to defeat, or we can keep moving forward one step at a time. Keep moving! There is no pause!

I’m learning to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

5. Crucibles refine and expose us

I grew up with the perspective that crisis and hard luck are opportunities to choose who we’ll become on the other side of tough situations. I took this perspective for granted. It wasn’t until I was surrounded with other people’s stories of cancer, and watching how people react to bad news, that it began to sink in. Tough moments forge us into our future selves, and we get to choose what that future looks like.

Tough seasons also have a way of exposing our character in more detail than less turbulent seasons. The pressure squeezes out the character deep within us, sometimes exposing bits of ourselves we didn’t know existed. If we don’t like what we see, we can forge a new future.

I’m learning to forge a better version of myself.

6. The enemy within

I remember driving home from work a few days after I had been diagnosed and realizing something was growing inside my body that wanted to kill me. It was an eery realization. I remember feeling violated. An uninvited guest was reeking havoc on my body. How long had it been there? Unsettling! Had my doctor not ordered a routine blood panel, this disease may have taken up permanent residence!

The lesson glaring at me through this experience is that a routine audit can catch things growing without our consent.

I’m learning to audit.

Wrapping up

I’m learning cancer is one of those things that sticks with you, even if you have a clean bill of health for now. In many ways, cancer has brought out my will to not only survive, but to live aligned with my internal compass, and furthermore, be intentional about the future I’m creating.

We’re all choosing who we’re becoming, and it doesn’t require a crisis to be intentional about our future.

Photo by Matthew Henry

Simply Flat

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

For a time, it was hard to have a conversation about visual design without someone asking my opinion on “flat vs skeuomorphic.” I would do my best to dodge the question, in hopes for a less heated conversation. Those flame wars have since smoldered out, thankfully.

Although I prefer, in most cases, a flatter approach to visual design, it’s not because it’s a more honest approach to the medium, or more authentic, or because visual metaphors are so “2000.” I think those arguments miss the point completely. I believe the flat trend reflects two very specific aspects of our relationship with technology. A flatter approach to visual design reflects our growing familiarity with technology, and our longing for permanence.

Familiarity

The balance between simplicity and clarity is always in motion. The more familiar we are with something, the less we need from it in order to understand its meaning. Familiarity influences affordance. As a result, we need less visual cues from the UI to make an intelligent decision. This, however, doesn’t imply that the interface should be less – Google’s Material Design is a great example of being more with less. Even the Material Design approach builds off how we expect physical objects to respond to touch, with easing and ripples – a physics form of skeuomorphism.

Flat design still leans heavily on visual metaphors to prompt users toward the appropriate actions. It does, however, express those metaphors in a dramatically simpler fashion. This reflects our familiarity with technology.

Permanence

I believe the flat design trend is less about the technology’s authenticity, and more about humanity’s longing for something with a bit more permanence (ie: affinity for the printed piece and the lasting properties it evokes in our collective memory) in an ever-increasing world of ephemeral ideas around knowledge, identity, ownership, etc. The trend toward handcrafted, well, anything, points in that direction.

Flat design reaches back into the properties of print design, where the aesthetic qualities are derived from the constraints of both the medium and craft. RGB screens aren’t bound by many of the same constraints. In fact, the technology eliminates many of those constraints allowing for visually rich, textured and even 3D interfaces. Yet we present artifacts and interface as though they were constrained by layering ink, press registration, and fibers.

An honest approach and use of the medium exploits the technology for the design’s intended purpose, but it also reflects our cultural understanding of the medium as well as our understanding of ourselves. We’re building a visual language in a young medium, which is going to be volatile for years to come. As designers, we should focus less on visual shifts and more on our users’ understanding of our medium and the cultural context which informs us all.

Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash

Familiarity Breeds Simplicity

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A natural constraint to any design engagement is striking the balance between simplicity and clarity. On one end of the spectrum, if the design is too simple, we lose clarity, making it unusable. On the other end of the spectrum, if the design focuses too much on clarity we sacrifice simplicity, decreasing usability.

Good design finds the optimal balance between simplicity and clarity, resulting in elegance.

Familiarity determines where on this spectrum we should design. As users become more familiar with the metaphors, language and interactions of technology/products/services they demand a simpler interface. Conversely, when users are new to the technology/product/service they demand more clarity. This, of course, means we’re designing for a moving target.

Take, for example, the journey society has taken with Facebook. In order to connect with someone during the early days of Facebook we would start the conversation with something like this:

Have you ever heard of Facebook?

Do you have a Facebook account?

No? Well you should.

When you go to facebook.com you can sign up.

After you sign up, you should search for my name.

If you’re able to find me in the search results you should add me to your friends list.

New users to Facebook demanded this level of clarity because they were unfamiliar with the idea of connecting with others online.

Now consider this: Facebook me. We all know what that means! The process is much simpler, but just as clear because we’ve grown in familiarity with Facebook and understand its language.

Mobile applications often take a layered approach to helping the user understand the language and metaphors being used. Quite often this takes the form of an onboarding process that is explicit in its clarity, maybe through a tutorial or introduction sequence. Once the introductions are over, the designer relies on the user’s comprehension to simplify the interface into interactions and metaphors that might otherwise be obscure.

Over simplifying an interface requires the user to think, to use their imagination, and to guess. The less of those activities, the better.

The danger that many designers face is that when we first create, we create at the ideal intersection of simplicity and clarity. We fall in love with our creation, and as familiarity grows, we’re not willing to recognize that our creation isn’t as relevant as it was when we first created it.

As designers, we must keep our ear to the ground, listening to the way our users interact with the things we create. Simplicity IS a competitive advantage.

Photo by Rhythm Goyal on Unsplash

Managing The Partnership Spectrum

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The older I get and the more experience I have to offer, the more I’m concerned with where I’m engaging on the partnership spectrum. What is the partnership spectrum? The partnership spectrum is a model I use to understand the type of relationship I have with a client. On one end of the spectrum, the relationship is transactional, operating purely on a production level. On the other end of the spectrum the relationship is deeply rooted in trust, operating at the strategic level. I’m constantly auditing these relationships, looking for opportunities to advance the engagement further towards the strategic end of the spectrum.

Whether you’re a freelancer or running an consultancy, knowing where you and your clients fit on the partnership spectrum is critical to your future.

The truth of the matter is, as a consultant, many clients start with a transactional engagement. They have a defined problem to solve, lack the internal capacity to solve it, and are looking for a suitable partner to complete the work. At this end of the spectrum the work is purely transactional, often nothing more than staff augmentation. The scope of work is often very rigid, meticulously defined, and offers little room for creative exploration.

Before I lead you to believe that production work is undesirable, it’s important to note the value it brings to the table. Production work is great for teams that are still mastering their craft. It doesn’t require a taxing amount of divergent thinking, and gives the team an opportunity to sharpen their skills. In my experience, production work is often a reliable staple of a healthy portfolio, as it is generally easier to acquire and deliver.

There are some undesirable aspects of production work that are worth noting as well. First and foremost, the work skews towards the non-creative. Clients aren’t looking for new ideas or ways of doing things, they are simply asking you to do the things they’ve already defined. A steady diet of this can be stifling for creative teams.

Apart from not being all that creative, production work will force you to compete in the margins of your domain. As processes and methodologies mature, production work quickly becomes a commodity (e.g. outsourcing software production to Eastern Europe). As a commodity, the market drives and keeps prices low.

Production work is, in many cases, the beginning of a relationship. Like all healthy relationships, it takes time to build trust, and production work can be the catalyst needed to begin the trust-building process. It’s a crucible in which we prove we can deliver what we promise, but beyond that, it’s our opportunity to hint at what a strategic partnership would hold for both parties.

As the relationship builds trust, one natural outcome is that the client invites you to help them solve more complex problems. You’re beginning to move beyond being a production-level partner. Clients are no longer showing up with an order list of features and deliverables, but instead, they are showing up with a list of ideas they want your help exploring.

As you move closer to a strategic partnership, and this takes an extraordinary amount of trust, clients begin to not only ask you to help explore new ideas, they ask you to help frame the problems that drive the exploration of new ideas. Framing the problems worth solving is at the absolute core of any business. These questions drive organizational purpose, direction, as well as product offering.

As you and your organization build experience, it’s critical to move clients further towards the strategic end of the partnership spectrum. The younger you or the organization is, the less likely you’ll have many strategic partnerships, and that’s ok! After all no one wants a 22-year-old strategist! If you’ve been around awhile and have found that you’re frustrated with a steady diet of production work, let me offer a few ways to help you move clients down the partnership spectrum.

Tell better stories

First of all, don’t assume your clients know that you have more to offer. If the relationship began as a production level engagement, don’t assume they know you can deliver any further value. It’s up to us to keep the broader picture in view. One of the most natural ways to introduce a broader offering is through the stories we’re able to tell of how we’ve helped clients in the past. Identify compelling stories that introduce the client to your broader offering. Be mindful that your client may not be interested in a strategic partnership, so explaining that role you’ve played with another organization might be too much of a stretch for where they are at now. So find a story that stretches their view, but doesn’t portray you as irrelevant.

Another key aspect of telling better stories is that you should just stop referring to production level value. Listing production level value only caters to those looking for a production level partnership. For example, If you’re talking about ‘visual design’ and ‘development’ as your business offering, then you’ve painted yourself into the production partnership corner. Instead, talk about the types of problems you’re skilled at solving, and then describe the way in which you go about solving them, including the tools and technology used to solve them. This will give current and future clients a broader view of what you have to offer, including both production and strategic level work.

Broaden your offering

Moving down the partnership spectrum requires that you can actually deliver strategic value. This might involve learning new skills, along with building a t-shaped team. I started my first design job in 1998, and it didn’t take long to realize that if I wanted to solve more complex and interesting challenges, I needed to offer more than the visual design skills of type, color, and shape. This is the primary reason my undergraduate and graduate work has been focused on business and leadership. Understanding organizational complexity, market competitiveness, and the complexities of human behavior are key to engaging at a strategic level.

As you broaden your skills it’s important to stop thinking of yourself as a consultant, and begin thinking of yourself as an owner. An owner mindset postures you to look for what’s best for your clients, even when it may not be optimal for you. Thinking like an owner keeps you mindful of ROI and long-term success factors.

Balance your portfolio

In many cases, your portfolio is a representation of your reputation. It describes the work you’re willing to do, at the level of quality you’re willing to do it at. If you find yourself with a steady diet of production level work, you may need to stop accepting that type of work in order to make room for more strategic work. Saying no can be difficult, but saying yes to uninspiring work comes at a greater cost.

At the end of the day you should know what level of partnership you’re able to deliver, and where you’d like to expand. You should also know where your current clients sit on the partnership spectrum and how you can continue to deliver more strategic value.

Photo by Tom van Hoogstraten on Unsplash

Critical by Nature and How to Stop

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A hallmark of a great designer leader is the ability to see through the mess, complexity and bureaucracy and envision a solution. In a word, optimism. So why do so many designers come across bitterly critical? I’ve observed (and been guilty) these 3 reasons.

1 Designers are forged through the fire of critique. The design critique is a foundational aspect of design school, and a constant part of the design profession. The design critique is a gauntlet of objective and subjective interpretations of a designer’s work, all aimed at shaping a piece into it’s best possible form. The process, by it’s very nature, is critical. We’re trained to see what’s wrong with something, or how something can be better.

Unchecked, critique becomes a way of looking at the world, and we end up broadcasting the notion that nothing and no one can meet our expectation. No one likes to be around this person.

2 Designers can get caught up in their own lens of interpreting the world, and begin to believe that their lens is the only right lens. The world is visual, and design disciplines are built around interpreting this visual world. We’re often the only one in the room with a trained eye towards what is ‘pleasing’ to the human eye. As a designer, awareness can be frustrating, because we’re acutely aware of how amazing everything is designed, never.

Unchecked, this awareness breeds cynicism, and cynicism is an ugly way of seeing the world.

3 Designers can be jerks. Let’s face it, we all have off days. A designer’s off day taps into the critical world of critique and brooding cynicism, and transforms it into a venomous cocktail of seething hatred for anything that isn’t fresh.

Unchecked, you live a lonely life, because who wants to be around that person?!

So as designers, how do we avoid these pitfalls? Here are a couple of rules that I’ve found helpful.

Rule 1: Know the difference between a critique and being critical. They have similar characteristics, with one major difference: A critique is given in the context where value is being built through criticism. If you’re not in the position to influence something for the better, then offering a critique is simply being critical. Stop it.

Rule 2: When wrestling with how aware you are of design fails, learn to appreciate the differences and variety in the human experience. I’ve found that the more critical I am of my surroundings, the less appreciation and understanding I have for others. Turn it around.

Don’t let criticism rob you of being an effective design leader.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

Dangers of Success

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Success isn’t always a friend to professional growth.

I’ve worked in 3 professional service firms over the last 16 years, and each one has been successful from their own perspective. While at GSL Solutions, we won more Congressional Management Foundation awards than any other firm, year after year. Atomic Object is one of the most efficient and scrupulous software engineering firms in the country. Agathon Group has diversified their business model to be a full-services technology partner. Each one, truly successful.

Success breeds a host of positive aspects within a company ranging from the ability to attract top talent to healthy bottom lines and happy customers. I’ve seen it breed less than positive aspects as well. Here are 3 that I’ve witnessed, and ways you can combat them.

Craftsmanship skills atrophy

Waning skills are often the easiest to spot, but one of the most thorny topics to engage with. I’m guilty! I don’t like hearing that I’m slipping or that I’ve missed the curve on a new approach.

This is the classic case of resting on your laurels, and it’s an easy trap to fall into. The feedback loops often encourage it. Let me explain.

Quite often the only catalyst moving us forward is pain. We respond to pain by making a course correction. In the professional services industry that pain often comes from angry clients. The client gets mad, and we respond with improving our process, sharpening our skills and raising the bar.

If you’re reasonably good at your job however, you don’t have angry clients very often. This fact lulls us into thinking we’re at the top of our game. The danger in measuring success based on happy clients alone is that, in many cases, the client isn’t a good judge of your craft. By the very nature of them hiring you, they are expressing that you do better work than they do. If your feedback loops only consist of opinions from someone less skilled than you are, you’re bound to atrophy.

Another danger of measuring success based on happy clients is that you’ve left your fate in the hands of someone who is not likely to be a fair or accurate judge of the quality of work. This gives ALL of the power in the relationship to the client, which is neither ethical or wise.

Becoming an echo chamber

Echo chambers are harder to spot, but just as dangerous. They are harder to spot because they require dissent to be heard, evaluated and acted upon. The major challenge here is actually hearing of an area of weakness over the constant drumbeat of success.

Finding someone brave enough to point out an area of weakness can also be hard to find, but when we do, it’s important to pause and reflect.

Blindsided by industry growth

While unaware that our own skill sets aren’t growing, the rest of the world continues to advance.

I recently had a conversation with another design professional whose first experience with research driven personae was when the client brought them to the project. If you’ve been paying attention to the design profession within the last 10 years, personae should be old hat by now. They are so common and expected that, as a professional services provider, more and more clients are bringing research driven personae to project kickoffs!

The important takeaway here is that as the design profession continues to mature, design process, artifacts and strategy spill over into other disciplines. This is a clear sign of design success! It also requires the designer to stay current because we’re required to bring more value to the table than the client can muster on their own!

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Rethinking the Wireframe

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever spent time putting together a low fidelity wireframe only to find the rough design doesn’t hold up as you add fidelity? In some cases, the integrity of the design crumbles and you are forced to drop back into rough design. Of course, even this clumsy method is more efficient than starting with high fidelity, where changes are costly.

I’ve been in that boat, and it’s frustrating. Not only do unknown constraints offer an invalid picture of the future, the client must have an extraordinary amount of trust in the designer to bridge the rough wireframes to high fidelity interfaces.

I’ve tried style tiles a handful of times, and I’ve found clients get lost in the missing details. The level of fidelity paints a clear picture of the future, but the interface doesn’t support that same level of fidelity. The client has a hard time separating visual fidelity from functional fidelity, and the mismatch causes confusion.

Our job is to eliminate confusion.

I’ve been tackling this problem with a 4 step process that identifies constraints and complexity early, while laying foundational building blocks for production-ready artifacts.

Step 1 – Conceptual Wireframes

Conceptual wireframes are the lowest fidelity wireframes. Create these with pen and paper or a whiteboard. Conceptual wireframes communicate how content and functionality relate to one another in an interface. Keep these light-weight and easy to iterate on. Quite often you can co-create with the client at this level. Co-creation eliminates mystery and begins to build trust between the designer and the client.

Step 2 – Information Wireframes

Information wireframes discover constraints that real data puts on a design. These capture all of the nuances of the data and how they affect the density, utility and affordance within an interface. This is a critical step in converging towards a production ready artifact, and a natural progression of the conceptual wireframe.

It’s important to note this is where fidelity begins to weigh on production. In this step, context informs aspects of type, contrast and size. Consider what production will look and feel like minus color, texture and pattern.

I spent many years trying to make the leap from rough wireframes to high fidelity interfaces with varying degrees of success. Success often came not because of the process, but because clients weren’t engaged (which hardly feels like success) or displayed a blind trust.

A solid information wireframe is structurally sound, to the point a team can begin building the interface for the appropriate device.

Step 3 – Interaction wireframes

Interaction wireframes account for how the application will respond to the user over time and through input. Communicate this aspect to the client for two reasons. First, an off-canvas menu is a vastly different experience than that of a drop-down. The affordance in the interface may not indicate what the intent is, and failing to visualize it creates opportunity for misunderstanding. Second, interactions are critical elements in the user experience and should be budgeted accordingly. I’ve watched many unexpressed interactions get cut in production because they weren’t budgeted for, resulting in a drastically different experience.

Step 4 – High fidelity Interfaces

High fidelity interfaces are straight forward at this point. While you will spend time and care in this stage, much of the critical thinking has already taken place. There are no big jumps between the information and interaction wireframes to the high fidelity interfaces. Not only is this easier on the designer, it’s also easier on the client, as they have witnessed a natural transition from one level of fidelity to the next.

Although this may not be true bio-mimicry, we find building a structure from the inside out all around us in nature. I liken conceptual wireframes to the skeletal structure of an animal. Based on this structure we have a sense of the animal’s size, if it has a tail, and how many legs it has. The information and interaction wireframes are like the muscles and organs. We’re able to see if this animal is thin or stocky, and if it thrives in water or on land. The high fidelity interfaces equate to the skin of the animal showing if it has feathers, scales or fur. When combined, these layers create a healthy, robust animal ready to function in its natural environment.

If you find yourself frustrated when full, rich interfaces break the structure of low fidelity wireframes, give this approach a try. If you’re using something entirely different with great success, please share!

Photo by EJ Yao on Unsplash

5 Steps to Better Design

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I've been approached countless times by developers asking me to help them bring rhythm and balance to a page in their app. My typical response is not to wave the design wand, but rather to show them where they can apply a few simple principles and techniques to bring rhythm and balance on their own. I'm a firm believer that anyone can learn enough design basics to put together a pleasing piece.

Here are 5 things you can do today that will make your designs better.

1. Proportion

The size of each element ought to be informed by the importance it plays in the context — this includes type, interactive elements, photos and images.

By visualizing the relative importance of an object, you communicate to the viewer how they should interpret the information you’re providing.

Tip: Proportion can be established by the visual density of an object, as well as the negative space around it.

2. Direction

Establish a clear direction you want your viewer to follow.

The viewer should be able to identify a logical sequence and direction, leading them to the next desired interaction.

Tip: Proportion informs direction, but should not be left on its own to do the job.

3. Consistency

Consistency builds a shared language between the design and the viewer.

Consistency is the way we begin establishing the rules of engagement with the viewer. When we violate those rules, we undermine the trust a viewer has with the design.

Tip: Deviating from consistency is an important part of the communication process, and should be done with intention.

4. Contrast

Contrast controls the energy of the design.

Contrast, by nature, draws the viewers attention. Use contrast to bring attention to or away from an object.

Tip: Squinting while looking at the design will let you know where the energy of the page lies.

5. Restraint

Aim for simplicity.

Every visual element you introduce to the viewer demands that the viewer learn and hold its meaning in their mind while they are engaged. The more elements you add, the more challenging you make it for the viewer to keep all of the cognitive plates spinning. A simpler design is a better design.

Tip: Before introducing something new to the viewer, ask yourself if you can accomplish what you need by using the first 4 items in this list.

I hope this helps you out the next time you face adding rhythm and balance to a design.

Credits

I have recommended “Looking Good in Print” countless times, where you’ll find examples of these concepts and many more useful design principles and techniques.

Most of what I know about design, including these principles, I learned 15 years ago from Terry B., a design mentor and friend.

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

T-Shaped by Demand

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most fundamental ingredients for successfully bringing a product to market is an effective and diverse team. With all the talk about Broken-Comb and T-Shaped individuals, it's helpful to know how to evaluate what will work best for you and your team.

	Pros	Cons
Broken-Comb	Skilled at adapting to new context Broad knowledge of available solutions Flexible contributor	Lacks efficiency Exceptional quality comes at a greater cost – if at all
T-shaped	Deep domain and discipline knowledge Efficiency built on experience Exceptional quality	Not easily interchangeable with other team roles Narrow view of available solutions

This isn’t a definitive list, but I think it covers the basics pretty well. So how do you decide which is best for your team? I think that depends on the type of work you anticipate accomplishing.

For example, as a consultancy you may want to staff your team with Broken-Combs, which reduces the pain for the sales team (they can sell a broader portfolio of work) and production managers (who have an easier time keeping people billable).

On the other hand, if you’re the product owner, hiring T-Shaped team players optimizes for quality and efficiency.

Savvy customers demand higher quality and lower prices. This demand for quality and efficiency (where many businesses first look to lower the cost of production and distribution) is forcing many people to reconsider the sustainability of Broken-Comb.

There is an overlooked reality when it comes to delivering quality — your average skills plus my average skills don’t produce above average products and services. Granted, you may be able to gain a little ground, but it doesn’t compare to the results of a synergistic team stacked with excellence.

Visualizing the continued demand for quality and how teams have the potential to deliver against increased demand might look like this (fig 1: broken comb, fig 2: t-shaped):

Stacking your team with T-Shaped teammates comes with a leadership challenge, above and beyond that of a team of Broken-Combs. Individuals with a deep understanding of their craft and domain generally have higher standards and are more apt to defend those standards.

The demand for excellence, by its very nature, demands courageous leadership — leadership that accepts constraints, but never compromises.

For a counterpoint, let me suggest David Cole’s article, “The Myth of the Myth of the Unicorn Designer”.

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

Design Innovation for Old and New Alike

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Innovation has gone through a metamorphosis over the last decade as it has transitioned focus from efficiency to the customer. There is still plenty of room for innovation to happen at the efficiency level, much of which is incremental and formulaic.

As the customer has taken center stage, design has been elevated as a strategic approach towards innovation. Design innovation’s unique, customer-centered approach addresses the increasing disconnect that many companies experience with customers.

Much of the design innovation effort is focused around creating new offerings, whereas efficiency innovation tends to focus on existing systems. That doesn’t mean that existing systems can’t benefit from design innovation, however.

Vijay Kumar illustrates an ideal opportunity for design innovation to refocus existing systems towards the customer in his insightful article “Daily life, not markets: customer-centered design” for the Journal of Business Strategy.

Ignoring this trend often looks like this:

The organization creates more and more features, for fewer and fewer customers, until they’ve created everything for no one. (Read more about holding onto a product vision here.)

Design innovation addresses the downward trend as it relates to the offering and understanding the customers needs.

Photo by Martin Widenka on Unsplash

Design Poser or Legit?

Mon, 08 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ripping off another designer's work has become the norm in many circles. I think, in part, it reflects a broader trend of regurgitating ideas instead of hatching your own. These ripoffs are easy to spot if you're able to get past the surface, and increasingly harder to camouflage.

As designers, I believe we’re responsible for the future we’re creating, which demands a measure of honesty that ought to inspire a society to rise to a new level. Ripping off a fellow creative’s work isn’t creating a future worth pursuing.

I’ve personally witnessed younger designers stealing work and ideas in order to enhance their portfolio or build their reputation. They fail to realize that it does the exact opposite.

Original vs Stolen

Getting to fresh, original ideas takes time and discipline. Stealing another’s work robs you from the learning journey it takes to create great work, and robs the originator from the credit they deserve. In the end, it is nothing more than a lie.

As a design community I think it’s important that we call out fellow designers for being dishonest about their work (I’m speaking primarily about those who represent someone else’s work as their own). Allowing dishonest behavior within our ranks to flourish hurts us all.

One note of caution to young designers, don’t put a fellow designer’s work in your portfolio. Ever.

Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

MVP vs MVE

Mon, 08 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

As the lean startup approach has saturated much of the tech world, I've watched a handful of interesting MVPs (minimal viable product) crumble after the first — and fatal — introduction to users.

I’m quite confident that some of these misfortunes could have been avoided had the product owners tweaked their perspective on what they were delivering from MVP to MVE (minimal viable experience).

An unfortunate interpretation of the lean methodology is that products are often viewed as a sum of their features, and getting to an MVP is a matter of stripping the offering down to the core value proposition. It’s an effective way to manage technical complexity, but fails to address the fact that humans use the technology for a complex set of reasons, far beyond features alone.

By focusing on the MVE, we’re compelled to factor in these complexities and consider the offering from a design perspective.

When we develop the initial MVE from a design perspective, we posture our offering in a way that respects the complexities of humanity. The results are worth the effort. After all, customers aren’t searching for new technology, they’re searching for better experiences.

Photo by Alessandra Caretto on Unsplash

5 Marks of a Great Designer

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Finding good design help goes further than evaluating their portfolio. The portfolio can be a litmus test for the type of quality a designer might be able to produce, unfortunately, the portfolio is a tragically inadequate tool to measure the real qualities of a good designer. If you find yourself in need of good design help, here are 5 things you should look for in your next hire.

Optimism

Hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.

I firmly believe one of the primary responsibilities of a designer is the act of creating the future. If that’s true, then I think it’s safe to say we want optimistic people doing that sort of work.

An optimistic designer also sees opportunities where others don’t. They are constantly looking for solutions to make the future a brighter place.

Creativity

Creativity is the generation of new ideas. Either new ways of looking at existing problems, or the discovery of new opportunities.

It should go without saying that a good designer is a creative one. Unfortunately, many design positions are little more than production jobs (Knowing the end ahead of time is a production job not a creative job. via @kevinbudelmann), which requires little or no creativity. Finding a creative designer requires you to understand how they come to a solution given the inspiration and constraints at hand. *Pro Tip: Trend watchers and copycats are not creative. They may produce beautiful work, but that’s not the same as being creative.*

Empathy

The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Tom Kelly, general manager of IDEO, reminds us that design starts with empathy. Understanding and sharing the feelings of others is no small task, and is quite counter culture in competitive markets. Being able to park your own feelings at the door requires a fair dose of humility and emotional maturity. Being able to understand and share the feelings of someone else is nearly magical. If you want a good designer, find one who practices empathy in their daily life.

Synergistic

The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

Stephen Covey unpacks the power of synergy in his timeless book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. A good designer values differences in opinion and motivations and is able to drive towards a win-win solution.

Valuing differences is the essence of synergy.
Stephen Covey

Meekness

Demonstrating power without undue harshness.
from the Greek word praus

Meekness probably doesn’t make it to many lists of desired attributes, but I think it’s one of the most telling attributes of a good designer. The designer’s work shapes the product in a way that directly interacts with the customer, and that carries a lot of power. A meek designer knows his or her strength, is mindful of how and when to use it, and is always in control of it. Meekness also introduces the idea of humility, which is also a vital attribute of a designer. Combine controlled strength and power with humility, and you have the makings of a brighter future.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of attributes that make a great designer, but I think these are a solid place to start.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Designing the Future

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I've been inspired by the way Erwin McManus has articulated the creative process over the years. I recall a particularly moving presentation he made at Story Conference in 2012, where he drove home the point that everything that is visible, started in the invisible. Everything that has been made, started as a thought.

As a designer, this hits close to home. I’ve always seen design as the vehicle that brings a thought to life, as the conduit in which ideas become reality, as the proof of the invisible.

I think there is an important distinction to be made between creativity and design. Many people get the two confused or assume they are the same thing.

I hold the belief that creativity is what happens before design can even begin. Creativity is often the invisible. Design, by its very nature, is more than just a thought, it is a real thing.

Although many designers lack creativity, a good designer is a creative one. Furthermore, a great designer knows how to tap into his or her own creativity and that of his or her team.

As designers, I feel we have the responsibility to reach into the future, into the invisible, and bring back with us a better reality.

We’re responsible for making the future. Lets make it a good one.

Photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash

5 Challenges to Becoming a Better Designer

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I started my design career fifteen years ago as a graphic designer in the publishing industry. I would pulled my designs together in QuarkXpress and sent them on to the Linotype film processors and hoped there wasn't a PostScript error waiting for me. I dragged myself to the press floor at 2 a.m. to work with the press operator — making sure the blue was the right shade, that the foil wasn't getting bound up in the paper fibers, that the registration was acceptable, that the folds were hitting in the right place, and the list goes on.

As a communication designer, I was responsible for picking the paper, cut, fold, ink and any other embellishments the piece needed. I was responsible for understanding the constraints of each variation as well as communicating the options these constraints generated back to the client. Understanding those constraints is no small task which is why a good designer shows up for a press check — your last chance to react to the constraints.

Story

I recently attended an event where the local design community pooled their talents and resources to help local nonprofit organizations with their design needs — many of which included Web work. I led one of the teams that weekend.

My team’s task was to create a Web site for one of the nonprofits. Within the first hour, one of my teammates approached me about narrowing down a template to use so they could begin filling in the content. My knee-jerk response was “These nonprofits need our design help, not template help.”

As the weekend progressed, I was struck by the fact that all of the teams that needed Web work resorted to a pre-built WordPress template.

I came to two conclusions about the design community that weekend

1) Too many of us opt for the lazy approach and just see design as a way of making things look better.

No designer worth their salt would download a brochure template and just fill in the content. The templates are for NON-designers.

A decent designer uses the content to advise the brochure, not the other way around.

The same applies to the Web.

2) Too many of us design for a medium we’re not disciplined enough to learn.

A print designer knows what paper qualities make for good letterpress and which ones are good for foil stamping. They understand the constraints of their medium.

The same goes for digital design. You must understand the constraints of the medium!

I’m not saying that designers should become developers, just as I’m not saying that designers should become press operators. What I am saying is that when you don’t understand the constraints, your design suffers, the client suffers, and ultimately you and your craft suffer.

So here is my challenge to the design community (myself included):

Make it your business to deliver more than pretty.
Understand the constraints. All of them.
Embrace the medium you design for.
Don’t abdicate understanding to someone else down the production line.
Stop making excuses.

Photo by He Junhui on Unsplash

Design driven software is the next evolution

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Design driven software has consequences for the way we've been building software with the agile method. Agile is a proven method for building and delivering software, but lets stop pretending its a formula for building the right software. It's just one piece of the puzzle.

Over the years I’ve found that design driven software is at odds with many agile driven software projects. Here are some of the pain points I’ve seen, along with some possible solutions.

1. Front loading design tasks is confused with waterfall

I’ve watched designers get shredded over producing comprehensive comps and wireframes by the hardcore agile enthusiast who sees that amount of upfront thinking as a wasteful waterfall activity.

Good design requires a complete understanding of the constraints involved, not only from a technical perspective, but also from the business and user perspective. These constraints always inform the visual and interactive makeup of an application.

When you shortchange that understanding, you end up with one of two things: unexpected rework or a son of Frankenstein interface.

2. Estimating features before a clear design direction always robs the user

Many agile enthusiast are quick to put points on a feature in order to deliver estimates and understand scope. If these estimates are being done without understanding the design direction and interactions, they are only useful for measuring the complexity of code, effectively shortchanging the design process from the start.

I’ve seen some projects include estimates for design tasks before the design is even started. I think it’s helpful to time-box design activities as a constraint, but estimating design points around features is a fools errand. On that note, once the design has been started and the interactions are understood, then I think its fair to begin estimating points around features.

3. Design requires divergent thinking and making

A clear danger in estimating design activities in agile, prior to understanding the breadth of constraints, is that convergence often happens too quickly. Design requires exploration and iteration, and shortchanging that process in order to fit design tasks into a poorly estimated story is a recipe for disaster.

4. Optimizing for quantity of features over user needs and desires

Don’t let the feature become the hero. If we estimate features without a responsible design consideration, we priorities features over users. The user is always the hero.

Features that have been estimated without a responsible design consideration only represent the utility of that feature from the user perspective. Humans are drawn to a much wider experience than utility alone. In many cases, utility isn’t the primary motivation for a users engagement, and its never the sole ingredient of user delight.

As designers, we take the unique position as advocate for the user. That requires us to make room in agile for the users voice to be heard. Don’t let agile stand in the way of that! (FTR, I don’t believe agile intends to undermine design, it is, however, a consequence in many cases.)

If you’re not, start:

Making room, upfront, to understand the constraints around desirability, feasibility and viability.
Investing more into upfront design activities. Don’t sacrifice the whole for the part.
Estimating design tasks after a design path is clear.
Time-boxing upfront design tasks to force convergence, but be mindful of the time required for divergent thinking and exploration.
Optimizing for user delight instead of quantity of features.

Design driven software is the next evolution, building on the important principles that agile has taught us.

Photo by Vitalijus Daukantas on Unsplash

Stop Playing Favorites

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

As leaders, playing favorites is a quick way to destroy your team and lose trust. I've watched it happen countless times. If you're setting clear expectations and a clear direction then you've established the currency in which your team can effectively participate. Playing favorites introduces an exclusive type of currency that will quickly create divisions between the "haves" and the "have nots", causing moral to suffer and team members to disengage.

Early in my design career I took a job as a Web designer with a small in-house team. Within 2 years the creative director stepped down to start a family (this was not maternity leave mind you – she quit) and the senior designer stepped in to fill her shoes. Between the two of us we were designing and producing over 300 print projects a year (including full magazines, annual reports, countless brochures and fliers, etc) and managing several large Web sites. 6 months or so into the creative director position, my fellow designer was let go. We hired one part time designer, and I continued on with the same workload the following year.

Needless to say, I was burnt out. My pay had not increased and my workload had more than tripled.

I was excited one morning when my VP asked me to join him for lunch. I was sure that all of my hard work had finally paid off and I was going to get a much deserved raise ($28k was a joke, even back then). Two weeks prior I was named “Staff Member of the Year” and awarded a “Presidential Honor” for my innovative work on the Web.

My VP sat me down over deli sandwiches that afternoon and thanked me for all of my hard work and long hours, and then proceeded to tell me that he was going to rehire the creative director that had stepped down.

Although I was hurt, I wasn’t all that surprised. He had always favored her in a way that I could never compete with (to this day, I’m convinced it has everything to do with gender). I had no access to the currency in play. No amount of hard work or excellence could have ever advanced my position.

Two months later I took a job 1,200 miles away, having learned a valuable leadership lesson.

As leaders, we have a responsibility to our teams to make sure the currency is fair. Here are 3 ways to spot favoritism and how you can put a stop to it.

1. Stop making excuses

If you find yourself making excuses for a team member who falls behind or has sub-par work, then you’re playing favorites.

2. Listen for envy

If you hear your team members make comments like “Steve can get away with that sort of thing, but I never could.” then you know you’re playing favorites. If your team has picked up on your favoritism to this level of perception, then there is a good chance that they have already moved from envy to resentment – for both you and your favorite.

3. Watch the applause

If you find yourself carving out extra opportunity and praise for a team member, above and beyond the norm, then you’re playing favorites.

Favoritism sneaks up in many different forms ranging from personality to gender. It’s our jobs as leaders, to be on guard against it.

If you’re the victim or recipient of favoritism, then let me recommend Jacquelyn Smith article at Forbes, “How to Deal With Favoritism in the Office”.

Photo by Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis on Unsplash

Frustrated with design then, and now

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I've been a full-time, professional designer going on 15 years. I've been blogging for almost 10 of those 15. I trolled through a slew of old posts recently and thought I'd follow up with one, 9 years later.

A bit of context: this was written in 2004, while I living in Florida, working at The University of Tampa, and running a small design consultancy on the side (onPO!NT Media Group).

Adding value; More than just design

The design industry can be frustrating sometimes. Anyone with a computer and a pirated version of Photoshop calls themselves a designer these days. The industry has been flooded with mediocre work at rock bottom prices. As a result, many clients don't want to pay for design (good or bad).

That's why I don't consider myself a designer. That's also why I went back to school and finished a business degree.

Yeah, you heard me; I have a business degree. Yes, I know, creatives generally stay far away from the business end of things (that's one of the reasons I went for it).

Here's the point

I believe that if OPMG is to stay competitive we have to partner with our clients to deliver a comprehensive experience. That means more than a brochure or Web site. That means understanding their business from the ground up and helping them communicate their value from every angle. Good marketing penetrates the entire business process.

Designers don't cut the mustard.

Apart from being a cocky 20 something, I can still relate to that frustration. I’ve since embraced the title “designer”, even though I know FULL well that the title is overlooked by those looking for “UX Designer” and other such nonsense titles. (rant: Design implies a solution for the user. So if you’re not designing for the user “experience” you’re not really designing. Adding UX in front of design generally tells me you don’t understand design.)

9 years later, I’m less frustrated with hacks providing crummy design on the cheep. A savvy business person knows the difference between someone who is a hack and someone with talent, and is willing to pay the difference.

I’m still frustrated, however, with the gap between design and business. The conversation around design and business has been flourishing for years, and I feel like we should all be on the same page by now! Unfortunately, in my personal circles, my “business” friends get design better than many of my “design” friends.

I’m not sure what resources for understanding the relationship between business and design I would have pointed designers towards 9 years ago. Since then, however, there are a slew of them. Here are a few of my favorites:

Change by Design – Tim Brown

The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage – Roger Martin

Design – Tom Peters

If you’re a designer (or business person), and you haven’t read any or all of these books, please don’t use the term “Design Thinking”. Pretty please. Thank you.

If you’re new to the Design conversation and how it relates to innovation, let me suggest starting here and here.

FTR: Designers DO cut the mustard, and I’m still a bit cocky.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

It's Time to Deepen Our Empathy

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In design, empathy is about getting a new perspective. It’s about understanding our customers at multiple levels. These levels are often broken down like this:

Physical Understanding - What does the customer see, feel, hear, smell and taste?
Cognitive Understanding - How do our customers think and understand a product or experience?
Emotional Understanding - What motivates and touches our customers?

Brown, Tim. Change by Design. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Print.

Understanding our customers at these levels is critical. Now consider this:

The number of Americans with faith in a spiritual being—nearly nine in 10—has not changed much over the past two decades, according to historical polling. Seventy-eight percent said prayer was an important part of daily life, an increase of 2 points since 1987. Eighty-five percent said religion is "very important" or "fairly important" in their own lives—a number that hasn't changed much since 1992. Nearly half (48 percent) described themselves as both "religious and spiritual," while another 30 percent said they were "spiritual but not religious." Only 9 percent said they were neither religious nor spiritual.

Stone, Daniel. “One Nation Under God?” Newsweek, 6 April 2009.

The design community avoids these facts. It’s taboo to talk about religion ~~and politics~~. We don’t have good frameworks for understanding this reality in business and therefore I think the design community has taken a pass on the issue (if not become hostile).

I believe that to deepen our understanding of our customers we must also cultivate spiritual empathy.

Spiritual Understanding – How does one’s faith effect his or her understanding of our product or experience?

Having spiritual empathy for our customers could be the most challenging type of understanding yet. Most of us aren’t comfortable “going there” with our colleagues, let alone our customers.

Design is fundamentally about humans. Let’s not forget that, and let’s not forget that our job, as designers, it to understand the whole human.

I hope this is a conversation starter. We owe it to our customers. We owe it to our craft.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Stop Integrating Design Into Development

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There is a myth that I've watched circulate in the I.T. and software development circles for years now. It goes like this: If we hire designers, and put them on our dev teams, we will deliver better software.

It’s a myth. Stop!

Imagine with me that you are about to build a new home, and your brother-in-law is a plumber. You approach your bother-in-law to build your house, after all, he’s a plumber, and plumbing is essential to your chi.

Three months pass, and you check in with him at the location of your new home and discover a plumber’s dream and your nightmare! He’s biased all of his decisions towards plumbing. The pipes are on the outside of the walls to showcase his ability to sweat copper. There are 12 sinks, 8 toilets and 5 showers, and a state-of-the-art water heater on each floor.

Ridiculous right? Absolutely. Who would be foolish enough to have a plumber build a home?! A successful home is first designed by an architect, and then built by a team of skilled craftsmen, each of which support and live with the constraints of the architects plans.

Now, before you get your briefs in a bunch, I’m not suggesting that designers are the architects. Okay, I am, but wait. I’m not saying visual designers are the architects. The value of design is realized through the design process – which an optimistic, creative and reasonable person can do, regardless of title.

Okay, back to the myth. Bringing designers into the development process was thought to be a way to solve a set of problems many software folks were having revolving around agile and user satisfaction. Many of these software shops are still experiencing the same problems, even with talented designers on staff.

I believe this problem is solved by a paradigm shift in the way we view design and development. We need to move our thinking from “development-driven software” to “design-driven software”. (If you’re hung up on the idea of design being a visual exercise, it’s time to read this: Design 101)

Those that have made that paradigm shift (e.g. Atomic Object along with many others) are helping clients increase their bottom line as well as customer satisfaction. (A Design Counsel survey reveals that design lead companies out perform their competitors by 25%.)

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

Motivation driven design

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Design starts with empathy, in order to understand our customers motivations. Empathy opens the door for understanding motivations – among other things. As a designer, working through the design process, we gain insights from observing our customers behavior. Too many times we observe our customers experiencing a problem or solving one in a unique way and we respond specifically to that behavior with a solution to the very thing we've witnessed.

Here is a personal example. Lets say you’re designer for Sears. You could have recently observed me at our local Sears store shopping for some basic tools. You would have seen me earnestly browsing from aisle to aisle and eventually noticed that I was looking for small tools. You could make some basic assumptions about my hunt from small tools as well. Maybe I was looking for tools to fit in a kitchen drawer or to fit in small hands. After seeing my frustration, you could have gone back to Sears HQ and determined that Sears needed to put all their small tools in one place, or even made more small tools. You could tell your VP about the exciting product strategy you’re rolling out based on the insights you gained by observing me shop. You would also miss an opportunity to innovate.

**What you don’t see, by purely observing, is WHY I’m shopping for small tools. What is my motivation? **

The valuable outcome of observation is delivering a solution that is informed by motivation. I think this visual will go a long way in explaining what I mean. It was shared with me from an ex-IDEO friend.

Observation starts in the lower left quadrant; observing me hunt for small tools. Without understanding my motivations for purchasing small tools, you could create a product offering that solved my search pain. This linier approach to solving a problem is often passed as innovative design observation and research. Hogwash. The results of “observation only offerings” are generally very limited and barely scratch the surface of consumer desire.

If we first gain insights (outliers, patterns, etc.) from our observations, we’ll be able to uncover our customers motivations behind their behavior (our favorite tool for doing this is the simple question: “Why?”). Understanding the motivations behind the behavior gives us the opportunity to solve the problem in many different ways, all of which will resinate with our customers at some level (there is loads of work to be done to determine which ideas will work best, but that’s another post).

Notice the over sized tool belt?

If you’ve stuck with me this far, you might be wondering why I was hunting for small tools. I was shopping for my son, who was about to turn 6 years old.

Here is where the designer begins uncovering motivations!

Why?

A: Because he loves hanging out with me in the garage when I’m building a piece of furniture.

Why do you want to encourage that behavior?

A: Because I think it is important to be able to think with your hands and to make things that were once trapped in your head and bring them to real life.

Why do you want to teach that to your son?

A: Because I want to prepare him to think and create. Because I want him to have a bright future. Because I want to be a dad that equips his kids to be creative contributors to society. Because my dad taught me. Because I want to be a good dad.

Now, as a designer for Sears, can you see how much MORE you could offer dads like me? Far more than putting small tools together on a shelf.**

The opportunities to design and innovate become exciting and meaningful when we understand motivations!

Photo by Ben Sweet on Unsplash

Fit for design

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I was recently asked: How did you know, nearly 15 years ago when you took the job of Jr. Designer at a publishing company, that it was going to be a good fit?

Up until that point I had short list of illustration awards and an even shorter list of actual design work, and although I would not have been able to articulate it then, this is why I feel design is a good fit for me:

Design is a beautiful intersection of service, creativity and making.

Service

Design is executed most often for someone else. It’s a service the designer provides. I dig that.

Creativity

I love the generative and optimistic nature of design – it’s a very “can do” discipline.

Making

The process of making is where the rubber hits the road, and proves if the creativity has merit. Without the making aspect of design, I find it too abstract to enjoy.

I’m sure my personality type plays a big role in why I value these aspects of design. In the Myers-Briggs world I am a ISFJ.

What makes you a good fit for design? Do you know your Myers-Briggs personality type? I’d love to hear your response!

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Leading Beyond Product and Service

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

With all the buzz around designing great products and services that take hold in the marketplace, the admonishment of Steven Covey to insure our ladder of success is leaning against the right wall feels antiquated and hard to fund. The focus on lean, pivots and paydays has energized the entrepreneur to capitalize on this moment in history – as they should.

When Mr. Covey talks about leaning your ladder against the right wall, he’s not talking about making sure your product or service is being driven by market demand. He’s talking about arriving at a milestone and liking who you’ve become and the culture you’ve created.

I don’t believe many leaders imagine that in 5, 10, 20 years that they will become something they wince at. I also don’t believe many leaders imagine much of anything when it comes to their future selves and the culture they’re building, 5 to 20 years down the road.

Not having a leadership stance, true north, core values – or whatever you want to label it – is a surefire way to end come up short. As the old saying goes; If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Here are 3 tangible things I’ve used to help plan where I want to be 5 to 20 years down the road.

Identify your core values and the values you want to nurture. If you are unsure where to start, let me recommend:

Keep your vision and value in front of you. You cannot, I repeat, CANNOT underestimate the power of time and success will have on pulling you away from your vision and values. Keep them in front of you – daily.

Be on guard that your mission statement doesn’t unravel your vision statement. Mission statements will often take center stage in daily operations as they speak to how the work gets done (as opposed to a vision statement that speaks to the type of people we are and are becoming). Their is a REAL danger in allowing the mission statement to “infect” the very essence of what your vision statement is trying to protect against. The perspective the mission statement offers provokes a response – which centers on process and execution, resulting in judgment. If you allow that perspective to define your vision and values, you will inevitably breed a culture of criticism, finger pointing and mistrust. (Pro-Tip: keeping your vision and values in front of you and those you lead will guide your team in how the mission is executed.)

Invest in your team. I don’t mean you should hang motivational photography and quotes around the office (although I’m sure that is better than nothing at all). Leadership implies one thing – you have followers. Its our job as leaders to make sure our team has a clear path to follow, especially when it comes to vision and values.

Photo by Biao Xie on Unsplash

The Difference Between Art and Design

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I have to bite my tongue when I hear art being talked about as if it were design, and when design is being discussed as if it's art. The words and meaning are not interchangeable.

art: The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture.
design: a specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints.

I love how legendary designer, Charles Eames, put it in “Design Q & A”

Q: What is your definition of ‘Design,’ Monsieur Eames?: A: One could describe Design as a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose.
Q: Is Design an expression of art?: A: I would rather say it’s an expression of purpose. It may, if it is good enough, later be judged as art.

Art and design have a lot in common, which causes confusion differentiating the two. Both art and design revolve around the tangible, aesthetic, taste, craft, constraints, inspiration and vision (to name a few). Where they differ is around purpose and utility.

Some would argue that good design is invisible; it solves the problem before you feel the pain. Art, on the other hand, demands a response.

If you have not seen “Design Q & A with Charles Eames”, then you are missing truly insightful work. Spare 5 minutes and watch this.

Photo by Amauri Mejía on Unsplash

Get a New Perspective

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Tom Kelly states that design starts with empathy. In my observation, empathy gets loads more lip service than action. Empathy takes grit and perseverance to push past our own narcissistic behaviors. It's not easy, but endlessly wealthy.

Here is where I, and many others, struggle with empathy; perspective. On one hand, perspective is the missing key to insights and discovery, and on the other, it’s the very thing that prevents us from seeing life with fresh eyes.

per·spec·tive

the state of existing in space before the eye: The elevations look all right, but the building’s composition is a failure in perspective.

the state of one’s ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship: You have to live here a few years to see local conditions in perspective.

The magic sauce in developing strong empathy is strengthening your ability to step in and out of new and different perspectives. It can be a bit of a mind fake at first, trying to grasp ahold of more than one perspective at a time (especially when they are competing perspectives!).

Don’t know where to start? Stretch your comfort zone.

Most people have predictable routines that essentially blind them to seeing things differently. We take the same rout to and from work, we talk to the same people every day, we go to the same eateries, etc. STOP!

Well, don’t stop all of it, just stop one or two things and trade them in for something different. The more you’re willing to risk, the stronger that muscle is going to be.

Consider these as kick starters!

Ask someone with a different political view to tell you a story of how they came to vote a certain way – and listen. Don’t battle it out, just listen and try to understand their perspective.
Go to a church (or a different church/faith) and respectuflly inquire into what makes them different than the 10 other churches in your town. Just listen. This isn’t about being right or voicing an opinion. It’s about seeing life from a new perspective.
Grab a cup of coffee with someone from a drastically different economic class than your own, and listen to what they consider their most exciting moment of the last year was. Don’t one-up the story or judge, just listen.

If you’re not feeling quite so risky, try starting with something as simple as listening to a grandparent tell of life growing up 2 or 3 generations removed from your own. If you’re on the grandparent end of that spectrum, listen to a 8 year old explain what an average day at school looks like.

Here is the beauty of embracing and understanding a new perspective that I missed for a long time; we don’t have to keep it. Perspective is about SEEING and doesn’t require BEING. It’s about a moment in time, landscape and context. We don’t need to be afraid of it.

Before you go, consider checking out Roger Martin’s book “Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking He takes the topic to a whole new level, one that I think you’ll appreciate and learn from.

Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash

Transforming Demographics into Personas

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not a fan of provisional personas. Yes, they are better than nothing, but they are generally nothing more than an excuse used in order to protect our ideas from REAL people. Developing a real persona means we risk that people might think our baby is ugly. No one wants to hear their baby is ugly. No one.

Fear of risk isn’t the only reason provisional personas still get traction. Sometimes it is simply that people don’t know how to go about building a real one. Here are 3 simple tips I’ve found useful in creating real personas.

Start with data

If you have an existing customer base that you’re trying to innovate for, let the numbers begin painting a picture for you. You can identify groups of customers based on their behavior, general demographic information, etc. You can use this segmentation as a launch point for building a real persona. (yes, a designer just suggested using your marketing data to shape your solution)

Look for outliers

Broad customer segmentation is helpful, but finding the deviant and ultra conformist customers can often yield the most beneficial insights. They will often tell you what the masses wont. They’ll surprise you, make you mad, and show you things about yourself you never saw before. Find them. Learn from them.

Make contact

Identifying people is not the same as actually talking with them or observing their behavior. If you know the individuals, call them up. If you don’t, call them up, or use a service to help you out. If at all possible, get in the same space as your customer. Watch them interact with your product or service. Leave your intuition at the door and be prepared for a surprise.

**With these 3 simple tips, you have all you need to get started making real personas. I’d love to hear what tips you’ve found useful! **

Photo by mauro mora on Unsplash

Design is the Heartbeat of Innovation

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Design plays a unique and strategic role in innovation. Design is what connects creativity to innovation, and this is why I believe design is the heartbeat of innovation.

Let me explain it like this:

Creativity is the generation of new ideas. Either new ways of looking at existing problems, or the discovery of new opportunities.

Innovation is the exploitation of new ideas. It is the process that carries a concept through to new products, services, or ways of operating the business.

Design is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas so that they become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers.

Design is the act of translating an idea into a blueprint, while keeping the solution focused on the customer.

I'd love to give you a reference for ‘creativity', ‘innovation' and ‘design', as these definitions are not my own. Unfortunately however, these are notes I picked up in a graduate course on design and innovation management, and I have no idea where they originated.

For a richer understand of design and innovation, start here:

Photo by Genessa Panainte on Unsplash

The Broken Comb is Broken

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The "broken comb" is a metaphor used to describe the next evolution of the T shaped designer. Maybe you'd call me a Tim Brown Fan Boy, but I think the T shaped designer is still the trump card. Here is where I think the Broken Comb fails:

The Broken Comb is a challenge to go deeper into different fields of expertise, which on the face, looks aspirational. My immediate response to that aspiration is: Jack of all trades, master of none. We live in an age that exposes less than exceptional work, and I’d argue that exceptional developers are rarely exceptional designers, and exceptional designers are rarely exceptional business analysts, etc.

To be exceptional at anything requires extraordinary effort and attention. That’s not to say that developers aren’t good designers, but the Broken Comb suggest that you can be exceptional at several aspects of product development while building a successful business.

While I believe we all can get better (go deeper) at various aspects of our profession, I don’t believe this is a substitute for building a strong team – one that makes up for the areas you lack in.

This is where the Broken Comb fails the hardest. There is no substitute for a diverse and skilled team. The Broken Comb metaphor props up the individual as a unicorn or rockstar team member, which I see as toxic – not only to the team but also to the product itself.

If you’re going to put effort into something outside of your tangible tasks, I’d recommend putting more effort into what it takes to build trust, collaboration and respect among your teammates. After all, the magic in Design Thinking isn’t locked away exclusively in having empathy towards other fields of expertise, it shares equal space with a diverse intake of ideas and opinions, which only come from other people.

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

3 Steps to Build a Culture of Optimism

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Here's the thing. I like being around positive optimistic people, and I don't think I'm unique in that regard.

I’m constantly on the look out for the ingredients that make places like IDEO the success they are. I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with some of their Chicago crew, and one thing that catches my attention is that the optimism is practically palpable!

Tim Brown goes so far to include optimism as value they look for during the hiring process.

So what does it mean to foster a culture of optimism? Here are a 3 simple steps.

Celebrate solutions

It’s easy to get caught up in identifying the edge cases and building arguments for why something shouldn’t be done. It helps us avoid risk, it keeps us from getting egg on our face, and in many workplaces it’s like having an ace up your sleeve.

Although it is important to identify potential risks, it’s important to celebrate the solution that avoids the risk. Quite often that sounds like, “I believe there is too much risk there, but this other option might be a workable solution.”

The simple addition of adding a solution goes a long way in keeping a team optimistic about the future.

Avoid water cooler gossip

Who doesn’t like a good scoop? I sure do! Making a steady diet of “who did what” around the water cooler however, can quickly send a team into a negative tail spin.

If you need to vent, find a healthy outlet. Talk to a superior, hit the gym, go for a walk or just… wait for it… keep your mouth shut!

Start the day with something hopeful

I often catch NPR on my morning commute, and quite often by the time I get to work I’m already cynical about they day. To regroup, I force myself to list 3 – 5 things I’m excited about. Sometimes that includes my kids and family, sometimes it includes business or learning opportunities, and sometimes it’s as simple as the release of a new single or movie. Whatever it is, make it tangible. Get it in front of you.

Not convinced it? Check out what Inc. and RealSimple have to say about it. It might be good for you!

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Stick Figure vs Photographs

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Provisional personas are a small step towards empathy, but you're kidding yourself if you think they are a substitute for actually observing a real person. I liken them to stick figures, while a real persona would be a photograph. One is completely subjective, and the other represents an objective reality.

I’m amazed at how much effort designers, developers and engineers put into building stick figures that can’t withstand the scrutiny of observation. Provisional personas are founded in intuition, not observation. Building from intuition is a risk ridden way to bring products to market.

3 reasons for building real personas

1. Real personas expose the flaws in your assumptions and intuition. Exposing your ideas to reality can be a scary thing, but how else are you going to know if the ideas have merit? Sure, spend countless hours and hoards of money building a product for an imaginary stick figure… which is more scary?

2. Real personas constrain competing agendas during the design and build process. Having observed reality gives you a solid position to design from. You can confidently defend a behavior, attitude or action when it truly exists. Subjective, provisional personas, crumble to competing agendas because they are so easy to undermine with opinion.

3. Real personas uncover new opportunities. Quite often, observing a fellow human being in action and understanding their motivations behind those actions will uncover opportunities you had no prior visibility to.

**Stop using provisional personas to build products! Getting out of your own head not only helps reduce the risk in bringing a product to market, but it also uncovers opportunities you never saw coming! **

Need help building a real persona? “Transforming Demographics into Personas” is a good place to start!

Photo by Yoann Siloine on Unsplash

Transformational Influence

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever been stuck in a thought process that you know has holes in it and lack the perspective to flesh it out and move on? I’ll be honest, I’m there a lot! I have a few tricks I use to get my thoughts out of my head in hopes of making sense of them while they are laid bare in front of me, but sometimes that’s not enough. I need an outside perspective. I need someone to exact transformational influence in my own mind and thought process.

In my experience there are 3 ingredients needed for transformational influence to take place: Time (exposure), Accessibility (access), and Credibility (proven knowledge and track record). If there are any one of these 3 missing, it can be terribly frustrating.

Here is how I think this rolls out when you’re missing one ingredient.

Time & Accessibility

Having a history with someone whom you have regular access to equates to a buddy. This is the person you’ve known for many years and you have regular interactions with, they don’t, however, carry much credibility.

Accessibility & Credibility

Having access to someone with credibility, whom you don’t have a history with equates to a skeptical reference. You haven’t known this person long enough to fully trust them, but you have access to them on an as needed basis and they carry a lot of credibility.

Credibility & Time

A credible source who has a longstanding history equates to a trusted reference. This credible source has been a knowledge expert in their field for many years, but you don’t have direct or immediate access to them.

Transformational Influence

So, if you are stuck on something (like I often am), maybe it is related to work, family, community involvement, a spiritual matter, or whatever, here is what I’ve learned to do; seek someone who has all three ingredients. Make it a point to find that person, and if s/he is a newcomer to your circle of influence, put the time in that is need to build the trust.

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

3 Steps to Design Thinking

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Design West Michigan, in conjunction with Steelcase and Kendall College of Art & Design, hosted Tom Kelley, general manager of IDEO, for a evening focused on Design Thinking.

Mr. Kelley’s presentation, “3 Steps to Design Thinking”, was lively, engaging, and thought provoking. Here are a few of my take-aways.

Step 1

Start with Empathy

“The real act of discovery consists not of finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. — Marcel Proust

The act of human centered design begins with seeing the world from a new perspective, and empathy is how you gain that new perspective.

Seeing with fresh eyes.

Mr. Kelley reminded us our employers hired us because of a specific skill, which is great, but not always sufficient for seeing a problem with a fresh set of eyes. Bringing multiple disciplines together to solve complex problems widens our perspective and allows us to see the challenge from a new perspective.

Step 2

Treat Life as an Experiment

Creating an environment that discourages the fear of failure allows for people to take the risk of being innovative.

Step 3

Leverage the Power of Storytelling

Referencing the book “Made to Stick”, Kelley spells out 6 keys to crafting a compelling story.

Keep it simple.
Introduce the unexpected.
Use concrete reference points.
Build credibility.
Keep it emotionally engaging.
Craft it in a story format.

Wrapping it up

Start with empathy, experiment all the time, and leverage the power of storytelling and you’ll be well on your way building an innovation centered strategy.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

How to Deconstruct UX for Development

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

As a UX professional you've spent countless hours putting together a narrative, mapping activity spaces, sketching interaction frameworks, and pinpointing key experiences. Now it's time to translate all of that work into something a development team can work with. It's heartbreaking to watch all of that work get eroded away by a project manager trying to keep a team cranking out code.

Here are a few helpful ways to preserve your work, while getting the developers what they need to deliver on the work you’ve done.

First

Break down your key experiences into stories. You can think of stories as context scenarios if that helps. Depending on the experience you’re deconstructing, you may have 2-4 stories per experience – this is now a story map.

Second

Break down story maps into tasks or features. The number of tasks per story will vary with the complexity of each task. These features can be used to begin building responsible estimates of time and complexity.

Third

Place each experience on a grid, mapped to tasks. You can use this visualization to responsibly tackle the most useful key experience (that supports your MVP). I call this a task matrix.

Fourth

Now your project manager (maybe that is you) has an affective way to move stories and tasks through a delivery cycle.

Need help visualizing this? You can download a large version of this process here!

Download

Note: I learned most of this from Cooper.

Photo by Saad Salim on Unsplash

Lessons from Cooper UX Bootcamp 2012

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I recently spent a week with fellow co-workers and UX professionals at Cooper’s UX Bootcamp in Columbus, OH. It was held at Spark Space, which is hands down the best team meeting space I’ve ever had the privlage of crashing.

Although UX took center stage during the bootcamp, leadership and team dynamics were my biggest learning spheres. During each designated time of reflection, I found myself focusing on these two topics.

The instructors (Kendra @kshimmell & Teresa @TeresaBrazen) delegated the majority of team structuring and problem solving to the UX cadets. Had Kendra not been the skilled facilitator that she is, this would have been a complete train wreck.

As the week unfolded, the group was presented with several opportunities to work towards consensus, even amongst some extreme deadlines and uncertainty. **The conditions were ideal for anxiety and fear to flourish. **

These were also conditions for leadership to shine.

Without diving into the specific scenarios that promoted these reflections, here are some of the points that stuck home with me.

I’d rather work with a cohesive team than be apart of a disgruntled fraction.

I found that I value “the Team” more than I value uniqueness or being in control. I knew this about myself, but there were several opportunities throughout the week where I had to choose between “the Team” and being part of a fraction. Personally, I hate that sort of social pressure.

Working in pairs is not the same as working in teams.

There is a subculture within software development that exemplifies the qualities of not working alone – it’s called pair programming, and is truly effective in many circumstances. Pair programing requires a learned set of skills in order to be effective, but it’s important to realize that these skills don’t equate to being a effective team player.

Dominant personalities, when paired with a few degrees of less dominance, can get away with being a bully. In a team, however, this sort of behaviour is toxic. Learning to work with a broader team than two takes a new skill set – even new values.

Designing a team takes steady leadership.

It’s not enough to just put a bunch of smart people together and let them try to solve a problem. You have to know how to balance leadership styles and personalities. You have to know which personalities to bench and which ones to hand the reigns to. If you don’t, dominant personalities will… dominate.

Leading a design challenge requires asking hard questions.

As a designer (big D design), I’m frustrated quite often when I don’t feel like the right questions are being considered. Design is fundamentally about solving a problem. I like solving problems. I like solving the right problems more than just the exercise of solving problems though.

As a designer who often gets tasked with “make this pretty”, it’s frustrating to be left out of the “real” problem solving stage.

You exponentially decrease the value of design the further you remove it from the problem in which you are trying to solve.

Personal Leadership Challenge

As a result of a UX Bootcamp, I’ve found a deeper commitment to build my own personal leadership skills, specifically in these areas:

Identify, early on, the fears and anxiety that leads to toxic behaviours.
Learn how to direct those fears and anxieties into a healthy resolution or activity.
Be bold in asking tough design questions in order to solve the right problem.
Sharpen skills in building consensus, even when dominant personalities try to bully their way to a solution.
Better understand how to design a team for success.

Photo by Oz Seyrek on Unsplash

Invention is Not Innovation

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I spent a couple of years in an industry (publishing) that is battling the winds of change and looking for ways to stay relevant in the digital age. This is, perhaps, the reason innovation has such a high value placed on it within the publishing industry.

Innovation is great, and the publishers could benefit from (and are) insightful innovation. Here’s my concern though; invention does not equal innovation.

Inventions aren't inherently innovative.

There are 3 simple questions to ask before inventing something in the name of innovation:

What problem am I trying to solve?
Who am I solving the problem for?
How can business gain from this?

If you start by asking those 3 questions, you might find that your invention actually fills a need somewhere. These, are of course, not the end-all litmus tests to your innovation process, but it’s a good place to start.

The push to build mobile applications is a shining example of invention over innovation.

Yes, the mobile app market has a lot of potential. The app market is also a wasteland of applications that don’t solve anyone’s stated or perceived need – invention over innovation.

Keep the innovations coming, and a useful invention just might pop up along the way!

Here are a few inventions that make me smile, but aren’t even close to useful. Enjoy!

Photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash

Customer Driven Mediocrity

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

As designers, regardless of craft, it’s our job to advocate for, and empathize with the user. However, that doesn’t imply that we bend to the user’s every wish.

Applications or products that respond to expressed or implicit needs of a user drastically increases its potential for adoption.

Conversely, applications or products that respond to every expressed or implicit need of a user drastically decrease its potential for adoption.

The mobile application market is a shining example of how this pattern tends to work.

Application A aims to solve a small handful of the users’ expressed or implied needs, and limits its features by that constraint.

Application B aims to solve a small handful of users’ expressed or implied needs, and opens the flood gates to user generated features.

At first blush, many of us would applaud Application B for listening to users’ requests by adding more “value” to the application with each feature. However, upon closer evaluation, Application B may be building itself into extinction.

I think this quote and graph explain this quite nicely.

Create more and more features, for fewer and fewer people, until we’ve created everything for no one.

- Neil Martin, IDEO London

Know When To Say No

Knowing when to say no to a user can be complicated. I’d like to offer a few simple ideas that can help filter out the onslaught of feature requests.

Have a product vision.
Having a product vision gives you a clear picture of what the application is, but also, what the application is NOT. Knowing what it’s not is often the missing key.
Measure requests, don’t react blindly to them.
Knowing how many requests, who made the requests and how often the request was made can give you insight into actual value.
Dig deeper and understand motivations.
Quite often, there is little value in turning a request into a feature. Taking the time to understand the users’ motivations for making the request can yield a variety of solutions that can potentially deliver a more meaningful engagement.

Follow the Directions

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Titus curled up on my lap this evening and asked me if I would draw him two dragons. This isn’t an out of the ordinary request around our house; drawing, building or making something is all fair game. In fact, we’re either drawing, building or making something nearly every day of the week.

Having young kids has forced me to put my creative process into a framework in which I can explain it to them. It’s pretty simple:

Follow the directions in your mind.

I tell this to my kiddos every time they ask, “Wow dad, that is so cool! How did you do that?”

I follow the directions in my mind.

I’ve come to realize that visualizing something before it’s created is a skill not everyone has, and one that takes consistent effort to maintain. If you’re in a creative profession, you know just what I’m talking about.

Here are a few simple tips that I use to help visualize the unseen:

Focus. First and foremost, you have to be able to shut the noise down in your mind in order to construct anything with detail. Building the unseen is nothing more than a house of cards, and with one little distraction or wondering thought, the whole thing can come crashing down.

Get detailed. Construct as many details as your mind can maintain before you begin manifesting your creation. This isn’t to say that you should have it all detailed in your mind before you begin. If you waited for that kind of clarity, you’d never begin.

Use milestones. As you strengthen your ability to convert your creative thoughts into reality, you may need to get really rough prototypes out early and often in order to keep building. Getting a rough prototype out is also a great way to save a seed of an idea that you can build on later.

Practice daily. Seriously.

Fill in the gaps. If you find yourself struggling with visualizing your idea, do some research to help flesh it out. Knowledge gaps can often be filled pretty quickly and shouldn’t hold up the process too much. Feasibility gaps are a whole different story.

What do you do to help visualize, before you create? Ping me on Twitter @kedronrhodes

Photo by Ruthie on Unsplash

Worry Is Not The Aim

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Worry is not an attribute to aspire to or admire.

Maybe that seems obvious, but here is why I'm voicing my option on the matter: A few short days ago I was conversing with a fellow designer who relayed a conversation he was apart of in which a developer suggested that designers can't/wont be good project leads because they aren't the worrying type.

Confused, I asked him to clarify what the developer meant by that statement. He proceeded to explain to me that this developer holds the opinion that designers are too carefree to be trusted with worrying about the level of detail a project lead is responsible to care for.

As a responsible, professional designer, I’m completely offended by that statement (on many levels).

First of all, that kind of blanket statement is generally made by the arrogant and naive – a disgusting combination.

Second, since when is worry a quality to be sought after? Worry is absolutely unproductive! Worry is a negative trait that should be avoided by mature, responsible people. (Which is not to say that mature, responsible people should not have concern for things, on the contrary.)

It’s up to the individual developer and designer to nurture the necessary skills to be a project lead - both of which have predisposed strengths and weaknesses – both of which have proven to be excellent project leads.

Photo by Pablò on Unsplash

Innovation 101

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Innovation is about capitalizing on new ideas. Easy to say, but few pull it off with any amount of grace. Fundamentally, it’s about delivering new value to the customer.

There are lots of ingredients needed to make innovation impactful, substantive and sustainable. One model, widely accepted, is by generating new products or services focused on feasibility, viability and desirability.

Feasibility addresses innovation from a technical point of view. Can we actually build this new product or service?

Viability addresses innovation from a business point of view. Can this new product or service fit in our business model?

Desirability addresses innovation from the customer point of view. What does the customer actually need or desire?

I firmly believe that a human centered design approach, addressing desirability, is the most impactful way to innovate.

Design 101

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Design is a loaded word. It means something different depending who you talk to. For example, design in the context of an innovation services firm (like IDEO) means something entirely different than design at an ad agency.

Unfortunately for many, lack of understanding for what design is and what it can do for products, goods and services traps them in a monotonous rut of lack luster performance.

Nailing down a universally agreed upon definition of design is challenging, but I think this is a good place to start:

“design: (noun) a specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design

Yes, that’s a mouth full. Illustrated, it looks like this:

Design lives at the intersection of people, problem and constraint.

GOOD Design asks:

What is the problem we’re trying to solve?
Who are we solving this problem for?
What are the constraints?

Pretty broad definition. Hence the confusion and misunderstanding around the D word.

It’s helpful to break it down a little further.

Design functions at 3 levels: Strategy, Process, and Tangibles.

Design @ Strategy

Design serves to connect the strategic, policy and mission agendas.

Design @ Process

Design serves to connect teams, process and systems of specific business units.

Design @ Tangible

Design manifests itself in the physical, tangible, services and experiences that a customer (user) would interact with and touch.

Source: Sean Blair

By now, the lights are coming on for some of you. Design is critically important.

Job titles don’t often include the word “Designer” at the strategic and process levels. At the tangible level there is a wide range of titles, from Creative Director to Graphic Designer.

Some of the best Strategic and Process Designers aren’t Tangible Designers at all! To be clear, this shouldn’t be viewed as a progression of value in the design food chain. Each level of design expertise is critically dependent on the other. It should also be noted that designers at the tangible level are quite often not interested or qualified to execute at the strategic and process level.

As Shawn, a colleague, recently posted, design isn’t art or even a mystery. It’s a lot of hard work, but there is a process that good designers use that helps clarify, manage and measure their efforts.

Design ABCs

Breathe In

Set aside your assumptions and take in something new, and not a new spreadsheet or marketing report. Good design starts by understanding who we’re solving the problem for – which means getting out of the office (in most cases) and getting close to our customers, with one objective – to learn. Not to impose our assumptions or our intuition, but to learn from them – first hand.

Synthesis

Identify patterns and anomalies. Smash your qualitative and quantitative data together and identify gaps, opportunities and bloat. Be prepared to see things that hurt and make you uncomfortable. Don’t flinch if you realize you haven’t even been asking the right questions and you need to get back in front of your customers again.

Brainstorm

Based on your new insights, begin asking how you might solve the problem. Push boundaries, wonder aloud, be specific, don’t be too specific, don’t over analyze, question constraints, have fun, and for heaven’s sake, don’t form a committee.

Prototype

Give your ideas a glimmer of hope. Risk more. Risk longer. Give new ideas a chance to prove themselves. Iterate on what works, and don’t be afraid to fail.

Be prepared, at any stage, to loop back and begin again.

Next Steps

Now that you have a fuller understanding of what design is, I’m sure you can see bits of “design” in the work you do, day-in and day-out. Your title may not have “Designer” in it, but, if you’re solving real people’s problems, under specific constraints, you design.

In my own vocabulary I often use “Big D Design” to distinguish Strategy and Process from the Tangible, where I often use “Visual Design” to describe the craft. I’ve found this helpful in communicating the value of design to stakeholders and clients, as well as gaining a shared understanding of the D word.

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Taming Application UX

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Kedron Rhodes @kedronrhodes explains the benefits of a UX Library for maintaining consistency in visual and response paradigms for Application design in an Agile environment.

Presented on Sept 26th 2011, for GR WebDev at the Mutually Human offices.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash