Over the last 10 years of meeting many fascinating people and learning a lot about the world of business and design, concepts and jargon have helped make sense of things. And intelligently talk with others. But examples are necessary for meaningful conversation.

Take for example CPFR (concept), which refers to ongoing dialogue among partners so supply meets demand, with as little wasted time, money, and effort as possible. This is particularly critical for humanitarian work.

Or take kerning (jargon), which refers to the amount of proportional white space between letters in visual design. It’s a very minor detail that can help make text more pronounced (when tight) or comfortable (when loose).

While we can probably see the role and place for these terms, they’re only helpful if the people you’re talking to know what they mean. The two previous examples though are fairly specific, and can be helpful among professionals.

Now let’s turn to the mother of abstractions though: Nominalizations.
Want a funny introduction? Read this New York Times opinion piece and come back.

This is when language goes extreme abstract.
Potentially attractive and inspirational too.
They help make better articles and speeches.
But they don’t help get things done. Individually or collectively.

Ask any creative agency and they’ll tell you how much vague language hurts the client relationship. The same thing applies within organizations too. This is exactly why lawyers, designers, and project managers have to enforce a common set of terms and ensure that everyone knows and agrees on what they mean.

If big change is necessary, let’s do ourselves, colleagues, and partners a favor.
Help make it possible be keeping language simple. Leave out all the technical words and concepts.

Aspiration can be sexy.

But Hope is easier.

After this job, I realized that nonprofits were in the business of selling outcomes.

The various ways we raised money below made me consider experience design opportunities within each.

• Memberships / subscriptions
• Sponsorships
• Grants
• Premium gifts
• Public fundraising: ongoing and campaigns
• Parties, concerts, presentations, and other charity events

Not just from a piecemeal perspective, but over time. For me at MAS, this entailed:

• CRM email, ecommerce, donations, memberships, and events
• CMS (web content) and DAM (digital asset managment) in various channels
• Social Media

But honestly, one person alone cannot do this job effectively. Those involved in fundraising, programs, initiatives, and communications should be able to do all 3 above with very little support from any available technical staff or 3rd parties.

We can create the conditions so it’s possible. One needs managers and consultants who can:

• Analyze content, interaction, and relationship architectures.
• Find and prioritize strengths and weaknesses in the near term; opportunities and threats in the long term.
• Lead and propose action, such as further inquiry or distinct solutions.
• Clearly communicate the current situation, proposed action, and progress to date.

And also understand that:

• The fewer software tools and providers to accomplish goals, the better. Do more with less.
• People learn software and procedures best in little chunks that are applicable to a specific task they are going to do now or soon, with provided documentation written for humans.
• Templates and visual editors make it easy for content administrators to get jobs done. Because nobody wants to learn HTML and CSS for little tweaks to make this or that prettier.
• A good information architecture makes everyone’s lives easier, including search engines. Now and in the future. This pertains to websites, shared asset directories, and 3rd party hosts.

It’s nice to know at this time my personal strengths and areas for improvement.

What’s next? Volunteering and exploring. An acquaintance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art said they just ordered a 3D printer and would need someone to experiment, document, and talk about it.

[Video Link]

On Wednesday, August 1st, SQFT (“square foot”) demonstrated the power of pop-ups in Mid-Market, San Francisco. Various locations along Market Street from 5th to 7th Street opened up their doors to new ideas and curious people.

I love the idea of matching temporary available space for temporary use. Now that’s maximizing space asset utilization rates (for good!). Look forward to seeing more from this organization.

Some months ago, I went to see the documentary film “This Space Available“, about the grassroots movement around the world fighting for the protection of public spaces from advertisers. I’m quite happy that people and city governments are addressing it. Without laws protecting citizens’ quality of life and enforcing them, advertising and promotion seeps into all corners of life. Balance must be ensured. It’s not just Sao Paolo that banned outdoor billboards. Since the early 80s, Houston, Texas has too.

In another clip below, the protestors had created a notice of condemnation under the guise of a supposedly official city organization. Funny part is, they altered my organization’s logo and letterhead to make it seem official

[Video Link]

Here’s some links for further exploration:

Adbusters
Public Ad Campaign (see their weblinks on their left sidebar)
This Space Available

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

Click on the cog in the YouTube player to watch in HD, or download it from their website. The soundtrack (recommended) is also on Spotify.

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 84min]

Especially in an org that had already been in the red for years, had gone through the last of its downsizing by the time you came onboard, has no money to spend on specialists or contractors, and in a down economy where getting funding is hard.

And you realize that the information architecture, social media, and eCRM had been severely neglected for so long, because predecessors only had time and experience for other important tasks, and because like many nonprofits, the org tried to do more than it could. That and the communication design is relatively poor in terms of concisely delivering the context, vision, and ask so as not to info-overload people.

Yet an optimistic, happy organizational culture keeps you motivated to make a difference, despite all the cleanup you have to do, and things you’re neglecting because there’s just no working time, because you need personal time, and there’s no tech interns interested because your challenges are 4-5 years old in comparison to what’s hip in Silicon Valley, Alley, or Allee (Berlin).

You’ll just have to do most of it yourself, progressively over time, prioritized, while cataloging your progress, and trying not to overwhelm yourself.

Knowing that the extra personal time invested for learning skills is meaningful, and will help you work better and faster with future 3rd party contractors. And in your own projects.

That’s where I am today. Tired yet optimistic that it’ll all pay off. So long as I remember to smile and be kind to myself in the process.

I’ve shown videos and ideas of Nancy’s here before, but this recorded webinar should provide a lot more than the usual bout of pithy, quick-ideas and inspiration candy that I’m coming to avoid (separate topic).

Nancy describes here how one can weave stories into presentations. One powerful technique is a chronological swaying between “What is” and “What could be”, as opposed to a single time block devoted to each question.

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 40min]

By doing so, we’re encouraging the audience members to think like designers. Contrasting the two states at a comfortable pace allows people to easier see parallels and differences; comparative strengths and weaknesses. I’m also keen to believe that such an approach can encourage co-ownership of proposed ideas and thus be far more attractive. That is, if the creator’s vision balances suggestion with normative statements.

I think you’ll particularly enjoy Nancy’s dissection of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Having played games much of my life, I’ve thought their function was to entertain us (although education is also possible).

Whatever the purpose is, one has to acknowledge that people enjoy interacting with systems and routines that challenge and reward them. From this psychological perspective then, there are lessons to be learned from game theory and mechanics, which can be applied to marketing, behavior change, and interaction design.

In reading Gamification by Design, the authors do a great job describing various types of games people play, motivations that keep them engaged, and how to employ tactics for doing so. In 109 pages (core topics) it’s an excellent primer that will help dispel many myths and biases against using game techniques.

Note: O’Reilly Media offered me a review copy of this book. While it was enjoyable, I recommend buying it from Amazon at $12 from 3rd party resellers. Alternatively, someone told me that Gabe’s other book, Game-Based Marketing, was a great book. So that may be of more interest to you.

For those of you who don’t care to explicitly make a game someday with such prominent features like points and badges, I still recommend reading and keeping it around for reference. For those very interested in gaming however, this book will be lite-fare, introductory material.

The more we can imagine ourselves as participants in designed interactions, the better we can build and adapt them for long term use and effectiveness. As an excellent complement, I suggest reading Emotional Design by Donald Norman.

With some research, I’ve found two organizations with transparent plans and pricing:

Give by Cell
$974 = $500 (setup) + $474 ($79/mo. for 6 mo. term)
$0.48 per donation (flat fee)

mGive
$2888 = $500 (setup) + $2388 ($199/mo. for 12 mo. term)
$0.35 per donation + 3.5 % card processing fee

An alternative approach is to send people text messages with links to mobile webforms, which users fill out with their payment information. One such provider is Obopay. While such a process isn’t as seamless, and considering not everyone has smartphones, it does make mobile commerce easy for whatever the purpose.

One of the companies I had interviewed with was LF USA, the subsidiary of a billion-dollar Chinese conglomerate that you’ve likely never heard of. While the position seemed interesting, involving the development of an employee social network as the company is planning to rapidly expand in the coming years, it was their highly visible commitment to sustainability that caught my eye.

Considering their specialty in the end-to-end design, sourcing, production, and distribution of various merchandise in 30+ countries, it’s relatively easy to understand how a commitment to eco-efficiency can be important to the bottom line. However, based on my impressions from the wording of the various posters and web copy I found online, there was an ethical imperative underlying it all.

With my smartphone at hand and the opportunity to grab some coffee in the break room, and see the restroom, I just had to snap the following photographs to share what I found to be a fantastic example of bringing the sustainability message to employees without being too subjective.

Only thing missing from these goals is a expected completion date for the quantified ones (#2 – 5).