Domain7 Blog

Introducing the Guiding Concept: Part 3

amanda — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:14:59 +0000

You’ve been introduced to the Guiding Concept as an important part of your web project, and you’ve adjusted your workflow to build it into your Content Strategy. Now you face the challenge of explaining and presenting the idea.

It may be your job to convince others that this “big idea” should indeed be the unifying concept that guides a project forward.

How can you package and explain your research and ideas in a way that’s memorable and meaningful? How will you persuade and influence the relevant stakeholders?

Here are 6 tips we use when presenting to our clients at Domain7:

1/ Simplify: Try to boil down the main idea to 2 or 3 key points. You can always supplement with more research beyond your presentation, but your goal here is to make yourself understood. Can you sum up the whole idea in a few key “pillars”?

2/ Make a screencast: We turn our Guiding Concept presentations into screencasts and share them privately on Vimeo. It means the presentation can be reviewed and shared among all the client’s decision-makers. It also helps keep a narrative flow to the core ideas so they aren’t lost in a game of telephone later.

3/ Storify: Through your research, you’ve discovered key data points and interesting tidbits that illustrate the urgency and need for your specific idea. Talk about what you found to help others see the same need you’re seeing.

4/ Sketch: Drawing what you’re trying to describe is a great way to make the idea real. If your idea happens to involve a specific visual approach, don’t be afraid to include a messy, paper-napkin sketch. (I sketch on paper and use TurboScan on my iPhone to digitize them). I do always make sure to double-check with our designers first, to make sure we’re not committing to a specific layout or idea that would be horrible for them to inherit.

5/ Encourage: What is your client doing well right now? Don’t disparage the current approach as you introduce new ideas. Affirm things that are being done well, and describe your ideas as ways you can draw out these positives.

6/ Collaborate: Sharing early drafts with your own colleagues and the client can help refine before the presentation stage. During your collaboration, you’ll gain great insight from your client, and bring them into your way of thinking early on so the presentation is less of a big reveal, and more of a natural agreement.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, a Guiding Concept is absolutely different for every single project. In the case of UBC Continuing Studies, the Guiding Concept was actually a sample set of storyboards following a fictitious character. For an upcoming project with an architecture client, the Guiding Concept is a set of “rules” the rest of the content and design need to follow.

Since every Guiding Concept is different, here’re two ways to know if you’re on the right track:

1/ Little to no fanfare: If your idea is strong, it feel will natural to the client. Don’t expect handclaps and ovations—in fact, aim for subtle head-nods. The Guiding Concept should be a natural evolution from their earlier expectations in the project.

2/ Skipping to later details: If you’re on the right track, implementation details will soon start being discussed, like “How would this look in design?” This is a great sign. It suggests your Guiding Concept was strong enough to serve as a springboard into making it realized.

The last and final part of this series, part 4, will talk about implementing a Guiding Concept throughout the rest of the project. Stay tuned! [Missed the earlier posts? Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2.]

Kevan Gilbert

To Improvise or Standardize: Rethinking Process

amanda — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:24:12 +0000

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about process.

Last week I spent a day at Interlink’s Web Strategy, Creativity & Storytelling conference.

Fantastic speakers (like Steph Hay and David Shea) covered a breadth of topics, but it became clear that what bound all their insights together was their effect on process.

Domain7 has been growing at a steady pace and our process has evolved organically. We’ve recently undertaken efforts to clarify and articulate our process internally—making it more agile, more multi-disciplinary, more collaborative with clients, and better documented (so we’ll learn from our triumphs and our mistakes).

An unintended discovery through this exercise was the pushback whenever fellow employees sniffed a hint of standardization: it seems our team is naturally averse to factory-style, assembly-line repetition. We really like to customize.

It became clear that any process framework we landed on still needed to offer flexibility both to personalize for the particular client and to try new things.

As I listened at Interlink 2013, that’s exactly what was emerging in my mind: ways to keep our web workflow tight but open, free-flowing but standardized, tuned into both user and clients needs.

Here are some of the ideas we’ll be considering and exploring at D7:

Create an environment for unplanned moments of discovery by immersing yourself in the client’s or user's natural environment
Develop a list of design hypotheses to validate early on. These may come from external inspiration or direction interpreted by the designer in discovery. They should come before designing style tiles, layouts, or comps.
Report on sprints in narrative form: have the production team report on their work in a story framework, including: a) context b) choices c) decisions d) results.
Reimagine web accessibility as an opportunity to create an amazing experience for every audience rather than just ticking items off a prescribed checklist.
Build on audience profiles (or personas) during the planning phase by creating a user experience journey map that articulates how the user will interact with various content/functionality over time.
Throw every possible idea at whatever problem, challenge or opportunity you’ve identified. Then weigh those ideas against technical and fiscal feasibility, instead of starting with a scope of work that limits potential solutions.

These are great new ideas to try on the right projects and I know my colleagues have even more of them—the challenge is just trying them. Any new idea needs its first kick at the can, and some of our best work happens when our team has no existing process for a particular problem—because everything we throw at it is more purposeful improv than re-enactment.

As a creative professional, would you be so bold as to suggest a new approach to discovery, UX, design, or development if you knew it would have the best results (even though it isn’t in the Statement of Work)? Would you apply that extra time to each project?

As clients, would you be bold as to try a new idea together? to work through the bumps in the name of creativity, innovation and results that stand out from the crowd?

Tim Booker

Introducing the Guiding Concept: Part 2

amanda — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:35:06 +0000

In content strategy it’s tempting to jump right into organizing a website. But there is some important thinking to do first—and it means thinking beyond just your site.

Don’t fall into the trap of seeing your corporate website as the centre of your online presence. It will be a useful hub but it’s just one channel. The first question to ask is not “What should we put on our website,” but rather, “What content does our audience need, and what is the best way to get it to them?”

The answer to that question will shape your Guiding Concept—the key idea that will guide all of your future-organizing work.

When we helped Arconas sell their iconic Bouloum chair, the Guiding Concept was this: inspire creatives to imagine themselves as chair-owners. Basically, sell it like a luxury car.

We didn’t start by collecting Arconas’ existing text and images. We wanted to tell a cohesive story—so we started researching the chair and how people used it in the real world. Then we chose a direction that seeded the chair’s personality through every detail. The writing and design then followed that concept, start to finish.

Before we could do any content strategy work we had to know the overall vibe / approach / personality / purpose / vision. The Big Idea.

Because customers aren’t just looking for well-organized content. They are looking for something that helps and inspires them. That’s the Guiding Concept.

So how do you create a Guiding Concept?

First you need some key ingredients. I’ve mentioned them before in 4 Lessons from Content Strategy, but I’ll rephrase them here. You can determine you Guiding Concept by taking the following steps:

1/ Study the data to show what habits users have already formed.

2/ Talk to your audience (in person AND online) to help form a picture ofwho they are, and what they need.

3/ Checked out the competition. Learn what styles and approaches are working and failing.

4/ Truly tune in to your own purpose as an organization—the real reason you exist.

Once you’ve taken these key steps, Guiding Concept ahoy! Grab a chair (maybe your Bouloum?) and a sketchpad and imagine the different ways to do what you’re trying to do: prototype, sketch, share, talk. Dream, write, draw, browse. Collaborate, isolate, walk, talk, shower, sing, play.

How do you come up with amazing ideas? Fill your brain with the data it needs, let your subconscious go to work, then test your idea back against the original data.

Remember: Without the north star of a Guiding Concept influencing strategy, all you end up with is a well-organized website. But no magic.

Our vision, and yours too, is for more than that: we want customers to find amazing content that truly helps them on their journey. We want companies that put humans first.

Happy dreaming!

Read part 1 of the series.

Kevan Gilbert

Calling on the Chief Digital Officer

amanda — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:37:08 +0000

Imagine your CEO approached your Leadership Team with this challenge: "We need to cut costs, increase revenue, improve our product and create an amazing client experience."

Would you quit? Write it off as impossible? Accept the challenge but struggle with where to start?

I would give my Chief Digital Officer the charge.

Here’s the fact: Modern customers interact with organizations digitally. They expect the quality brand experience they’ve experienced in-person to transition to the web in an efficient, user-friendly, self-serve manner. It’s an opportunity for organizations to regain footing, clarify their priorities and lead a charge for business growth. The best person to tackle the problem has the marketing savvy of a CMO and the IT chops of a CIO. That’s the CDO.

Here's how the Chief Digital Officer would tackle this challenge.

1/ Simplification

What is the core of your business? Your product and service.

The survival of the modern company will depend on refocusing the business on the core of what you bring to market.

Over time, organizations tend to get bloated and distracted from their core offering. Staff are brought in to assist with providing services to support the business needs. But these areas are not the core of why the organization exists and, while nice, can distract from the core of the business: the product / service.

Pursue simplification and focus as organization leaders. Where your processes start to distract or weigh you down, tackle them head-on.

2/ Mechanization

The work of service and support staff is important and must get done. But these key players can have a role in pushing for a higher-order. By digitizing and mechanizing routine processes, these people are freed up to pursue areas of greatest opportunity.

Consider the hands that touch the customer cycle: marketing reaches the target audience, sales converts a prospect, production meets and delivers on customers needs, accounting and administrative staff support through the delivery cycle. How many of these touch points can be managed through the web? That interaction point would need to be consistent with who the organization is.

Mechanizing business flow in a way that’s consistent with your amazing offline customer experience puts responsibility on the customer to engage with you, but retains the value that sets your organization apart.

3/ Human Potential

Cost reduction, revenue increases, and experience augmentation aren’t about human reduction but human potential. Reshaping how your organization works through technology simplifies processes to free up mind-share and help teams reach their full capabilities.

We need people to bring intelligence to the business. We need to understand what is going in with the business and look for opportunities to improve. We need to engage with our customers at key intervals and step back at others.

Organizations that embrace technology smartly are actually embracing humanity—enabling people to meet their full potential. These organizations will be the ones that win in the digital era.

Ryan Hanawalt

Introducing the Guiding Concept: Part 1

amanda — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 18:17:46 +0000

When I first started reading content strategy books, I kept feeling like one thing was missing: where was the “big idea”?

There was plenty to guide content strategists through the details: organizing content, wrangling stakeholders, designing page tables. But where was the creative and strategic vision that would shape that detailed work?

At Domain7 we introduced the Guiding Concept as a central feature of our content strategy. It occurs before we proceed to any other content strategy deliverables.

The Guiding Concept is about imagining the future your business (and customers) need, and laying aside all else to focus on achieving that vision.

It helps bring all those future-ideas into alignment as pillars we can come back to throughout the project. It becomes a “north star” we use to make sure we’re always on track.

The Guiding Concept yields extraordinary results. It injects focus and purpose into your work. It’s so vital we won’t even whisper about page tables or metadata until we’ve agreed on that clear, unified vision. Strategy first, content second.

It’s still surprising to me that many content strategists don’t touch this at all.

So, stay tuned for Part 2 soon: we’ll talk about the ingredients that go into creating a Guiding Concept.

Kevan Gilbert

What MOOCs Mean for Digital Marketing: 5 ways to stand out in the new higher ed landscape

amanda — Wed, 29 May 2013 22:56:37 +0000

Disruption is rippling through the higher education community—spreading much excitement, fear and speculation about the future of the traditional university.

The main threat? MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses. MOOCs are full-blown university courses, offered online, usually for free. Take any class—no need for prerequisites. Drop in and out. Customize your own learning track. (Some notable players: EdX, Coursera, Khan Academy, Udacity.)

Access to information used to be a college’s main product—now, that kind of access is open to anyone with a smartphone. So where does it leave the “traditional” university? If information is trending toward free, what is the value and the future of higher ed?

We believe MOOCs should not be seen as a threat, but as a great excuse for a college or university to return to their truly special characteristics. Information itself is no longer a competitive advantage, so universities need to capture and market their unique strengths more than ever.

What are those strengths? Here are the five things we think no MOOC can offer than universities must cultivate as their product, and celebrate in their marketing:

1. A distinctive system of thought

Universities represent thought systems and pedagogies, worldviews and ethical frameworks, methods and tools. When you choose a university, you are choosing to have your mind sharpened in a very particular way. Someone who goes to Reed in Oregon chooses a very different approach to thought than a student who chooses, say, Imperial College London.

Joining a university is buying into a certain way of problem solving. This cohesiveness will not be easy to mimic through a buffet-style online experience.

Consider for the web:
What is your institution’s system of thought? How can you explain, describe, illustrate it in your marketing?
Finding ways to defend and describe the value (and mechanics) of your school’s worldview will be key in the future. Does “how you see the world” come out in your design and content?

2. Life-changing growth experience

The ultimate product of higher ed is whole-person development, in a climate perfectly suited for dramatic growth. An online course can never compete with that.

For every student who planned their start-up in their highschool bedroom, there are a dozen more who actually need four formative years to figure life (and themselves) out. Campus architecture, dorm life, fraternity traditions, professor office hours, fellow students—they come together to create a life-defining experience. And experience trumps mere information-access any day.

Consider for the web:
Millions of future undergrads will choose university based solely on their perception of the university experience. Develop and showcase your unique experience to attract the minds, talent, and personalities your school wants more of.

3. Authentic credibility

The name on your diploma may mean less (globally) than it did in 1995, but that hardly means it is irrelevant. There are firms in New York and DC that only hire graduates from four law schools in the entire world (Harvard, Yale, NYU, Stanford). Valid or not, a student buys a certain reputation from a school.

Consider for the web:
How can you use the web to cement and build your credibility as an institution? How can you share this reputation in authentic, attractive way? How can you publish valuable content and share big achievements in a way that continues to benefit alumni and cement your brand?

4. An active network

A student—whether they know it or not—buys a job network. A graduate is much more likely to get a job through a personal connection than an online job application process. Getting an internship at your roommate’s dad’s company is a process that leads people to their first jobs everywhere. A university needs to know just whose “dads” are in their network, and build that truthfully into their promise.

Consider for the web:
How can the web help alumni connect with each other? And how can you use the web invite alumni to participate in the school’s future? How can you show off the strength of your network to prospective and current students?

5. Advancing civilization

Higher education views the advancement of civilization as its chief aim, and MOOCs are a wonderful collaborator in this societal journey. The price of information is going down, access is easier than ever, and the value and quality of this free information is increasing—and this is not a bad thing for universities. It means schools are free to focus on what a university setting truly excels at: training the mind, providing mentorship, changing lives, extending the network. MOOCs are an excuse to become more relevant and tuned in to students’ needs.

Consider for the web:
How can you develop learning content that stays in touch with students’ needs, making it more fluid, adaptable and accessible, like a MOOC? How can you unleash your research and teaching content on the web even now, serving up your own MOOCs? Can you grow your publishing muscle to help extend your brand and influence the world? In the classroom, how can you leverage MOOCs to free up profs to do more research and mentorship?

Kevan Gilbert

Run for Water Race Day Video

amanda — Tue, 28 May 2013 18:03:50 +0000

We've been proud sponsors of Run for Water for six years running—since this charity race first began.

It's an incredibly cool event that started in the same town we did :) Not only is Run for Water a Boston-qualifying marathon, all proceeds go directly to clean water projects in Ethiopia.

This year our team volunteered our social media skills on race day and created this video of the fantastic (if a little rainy) event.

Amanda Lee Smith

The Future of Retail is “Phygital”

amanda — Fri, 24 May 2013 22:38:51 +0000

I thought I knew a lot about retail. I mean, if my closet is any indication, I’m a really good shopper.

We’ve done a number of medium- and large-scale ecommerce projects at Domain7, with more on the horizon. We're increasingly pushing our clients to think about the potential the web offers their businesses online, but I'd never considered the potential the web also offers their physical brick and mortar stores.

This past week I got a crash course in the future of retail from Doug Stephens—”the Retail Prophet”—at the annual BCAMA Vision Conference here in Vancouver. He painted a pretty exciting picture of how the web is shaping retail, and frankly, I can’t wait to get on board and be a part of moving digital retail forward.

Here’s what I learned about the future of retail:

1. The middle income earner is disappearing.

In the ‘60s a slough of retail giants (Target, Kmart, Wal-mart) emerged to meet the needs of baby boomers. The largest segment of the largest group of consumers ever had come to market and could sustain a market of plenty of discount goods. They were easy to identify and easy to market to. But that segment is becoming the minority. We’re increasingly single/gay/alternative/immigrants/etc. So why is retail still calibrated for white middle-class families?

2. What we just went through wasn’t just a recession. It was a complete reset.

We’re still calling it a recession, but as we gradually come out the other side, marketers and retailers are beginning to see that all the rules have changed. Nothing we knew before applies. Retail is emerging as a completely different entity. It’s a new game.

3. The primary shopping destination is us.

In the old model, the store marked the end of the path to purchase. Now there are multiple opportunities to purchase all along the path. The store is just one of those opportunities, as is a computer. Eventually, it will just be a matter of the best available surface in a given context—our fridge orders more Cheez Whiz and our laundry machine orders more Tide. Wherever we are, that’s the point of purchase.

4. Media becomes the Store. The Store becomes Media.

The store’s function used to be to distribute products. Now their function is to deliver experiences. The in-store experience is all about production value and the online experience is all about ease of purchase. Stores are becoming less about sales conversion and more about making brand converts. Stores will be less intrusive and more inclusive. The store is where we go to discover; the web is where we buy at just the right moment.

5. The “Retail Clerk” era is over

To support the immersive in-store experience, sales-people need to be experts, invested connoisseurs, or what Stephens calls “superusers” (think of the girls at the MAC Cosmetics counter or the guys in Bass Pro Shops). Retailers must hire people who LOVE what they sell. These in-store experts can become co-creators—helping you customize your perfect Nike trainers or your dream fixed gear bike.

6. Software doesn’t eat retail. Software eats average.

Those who predicted ecommerce will be the death of traditional retail have been proven wrong. In fact, many retailers that started out strictly online, now have brick and mortar outlets—like Bonobos “Guideshops” or local success story, Indochino’s “Traveling Tailor”. Ecommerce doesn’t kill retail, but it does weed out bad customer service and oldschool thinking. According to Stephens, the future of retail is both physical AND digital. It’s “phygital”. One will never replace the other. They’ll just force each other to be better.

Amanda Lee Smith

What if Pitching was Playing? A Fresh Look at Business Development

amanda — Thu, 23 May 2013 22:05:07 +0000

Confession: I love pitching.

I love bringing a big bold idea to the table, knowing it can change the game for a client and bring us that killer deal.

A ton of thought and preparation goes into it and, for me, there are few things in life as exciting.

Sitting in the lobby of the prospective client, my mouth goes dry, I see our slides in my mind’s eye and I can barely talk to my team members as we wait. (And wait.) Then, into the boardroom we go: projector, laptops, notebooks and business cards in hand. High on adrenaline and JJ Bean americanos, we proudly present our agency, team, process and concept.

It’s the ultimate performance art. However, as much as I love pitching, it’s not perfect. And I suspect that you––our prospective client––know it too.

Some say the traditional approach to awarding creative services is fatally flawed. Can we, as agencies, fairly communicate our story, articulate our distinct process and demonstrate our problem solving approach in a 60-minute monologue?

Maybe we’ll razzle-dazzle you with design mockups for that extra je ne sais quois. Winning isn’t about being the best agency for you—but about presenting our most alluring selves. And sometimes that means that you, the client, lose. Surely this approach deserves some new thinking. And since pretty much everything else around us is changing, why not?

BC-based speaker and author Blair Enns is leading the charge, imploring agencies to stop this method of selling. His Win Without Pitching Manifesto tells agencies to specialize, turn pitches into conversations, charge for all work performed (including pitching!) and to be selective in who they choose to work with. This is great advice for the creative industry, but has its challenges. Pitching really does afford you the opportunity to really get to know us and what we can do.

Over the past 12 months, I’ve found myself in several workshop environments. Last year I attended a Hyper Island Master Class and recently participated in the Museum of Vancouver’s Design Sundays: Upcycled Urbanism series. In both instances, facilitators led participants through a brief presentation which was followed by a series of mind-stretching exercises.

What was the intended outcome? Learning by doing. It’s given me a vision for what the pitch can be.

What if, rather than pitching, we tried playing together? Instead of responding to a standard request-for-proposal with a list of (assumed) requirements, what if we explore your brand and communication challenge together––from scratch? We could brainstorm new ideas, understand the challenge from new perspectives, imagine new concepts and ultimately co-create a brand new solution.

A solution that imaginative and helpful would never have found its way into an RFP response. We’d come to know what it’s like to work together. We’d collaborate rather than demonstrate—co-create instead of present. This isn’t pitching, it’s playing. And both of us––agencies and clients alike––would be better for it.

Now, I’m dead serious about this. If you’d like to play with Domain7, email me. We’ll book a time and––rather than pitch––we’ll play. I betcha the outcome will be amazing!

Jordan Eshpeter

Embracing Indecision in Project Management

amanda — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:24:01 +0000

I often find myself stuck in the middle.

I’m a middle child, middle aged, parent of needy children and child of needy parents. In addition to that, I’m often debating in my head between two options, or sides. Work or home? Red or white? Star Wars Ewan McGregor or Long Way Round Ewan McGregor?

What if the answer is not to pick a side, but to embrace indecision? What if the result can be something far better? Is it a bad thing to see more than one possible outcome in a situation? Maybe that—let’s call it “open-mindedness”—is the best way to help people reach a common goal and see each other's sides?

As a project manager I've got, on one hand, a highly skilled team of strategists, designers and developers. On the other hand, a client with their website hopes and expectations (and, sadly sometimes conflicting, budget). Project managers want to help everyone have a great experience and feel proud of what we worked together to create. I want to help us all soar! I want to be the wind beneath your wings! (You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy having that song in your head for the rest of the day.)

It turns out, managing client projects is so much more than just the three sides of the time-budget-scope triangle. It’s genuinely caring that the people working on the project have the opportunity to create something they’re proud of, and also that the client is wowed by what they receive.

PMs need to dwell in the middle of giving the project team personal satisfaction, and giving the client something that makes their jobs easier. The art of managing any project well means taking a deep and genuine interest in all sides and working hard to keep all parties positive and realistic.

And making that happen often means you have to scootch in between the two sides, settle into that middle seat, and enjoy the ride!

What sometimes feels like being wedged between conflicting priorities is often actually an opportunity to find a better answer for everything.

And if that’s the case, I can confidently answer:

Work or home? Work at home.
Red or white? Rosé.
Star Wars Ewan McGregor or Long Way Round Ewan McGregor? Long Way Round. That one’s a no-brainer.

Renita Wiebe