While I was looking around for inspiration, I found this interesting post here on visual design trends in 2008.

I look forward to your comments as I refresh the site… of course, let me know if anything breaks! 8-)

I enjoyed a session on general Agile/Scrum and roles, another on Agile best practices and horror stories with Ross Hobbie. I was interested in others managing content and/or marketing via Scrum processes, but no others were. After the session though, I spoke with several people that had great product marketing teams and development teams, but no user-centered design or UX resources. They were interested in how UX could help with their prototyping and products, several good discussions!

The Global Product Mgmt session was a little too open and unfocused, but to be fair, it’s a REALLY broad and complex topic, it could have been broken into 3-4 different sessions.

I jumped into UX 101 with Ben Phenix late, but it was well recieved by all, clear, simple concepts that were easy to apply. I’ve been through and given a lot of UX presos, and this one was good.

Pat Scherer gave more of a presentation rather than a discussion, but her detailed points on Priorities and Roadmaps was very complete and clearly well proven in the real world.

Next up was a Product Management Tools roundtable… very well moderated by (I think) Cindy Phillips. We covered a lot, from requirements gathering, to basic excel templates, into productivity tools. Here are the ones I captured: Blackblot, xcelsius, devonthink, xmind, “montecarlo analysis” excel plug-ins, Mindmap, MindMeister, Google Trends, search volume, surveys with Survey Monkey and QuestionPro, customer wiki’s and communities, Salesforce QA (? not sure of the name), Markettools, Passenger, PHPBB communities, BasecampHQ, fogbugs (tracks accuracy of estimates), Jira, JOTT, Rally, Webex, Breeze, Camtasia, Snagit, Yugma, Netmeeting, Lifehacker. Whew!!!

My last session was with Charlie Ray on navigating political minefields. Charlie was very entertaining, and also shared many good insights… management styles aside, there was a lot of good info to bring to daily life. My favorite quote is “Nip the G.M.O.O.T” meaning stop CEO’s from saying “Get Me One Of Those” when seeing features and adding them willy-nilly to products. Charlie also won the award for best session at the end of the day. Good job Charlie!!!

Throughout several of the sessions, the differences between startups with scarce time, personnel and financial resources versus larger, mature companies with sometimes too many resources and plenty of budget were apparent. Some of us discussed the idea of a StartupCamp, either a seperate BarCamp, or as a track at the next Product or BarCamp. We’ll be gathering thoughts and discuss further, so contact me if you are interested.

I really want to thank the organizers of the event, Paul Young and John Milburn, they did a great job.

Sponsors took care of the space, coffee/snacks, lunch, tshirts and mugs, thanks!

I certainly recommend the BarCamp concept and certainly will participate in the next Product or any other Camp. (Full world wide list here.)

Hope to see you at the next BarCamp event!

ProductCamp, BarCamp, UX, product management, product marketing, Austin, agile, global products, StartupCamp

Technorati Tags: ProductCamp, BarCamp, UX, product management, product marketing, Austin, agile, global products, StartupCamp

OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site.

I’ve been using it for as many online sites/services as I can, including my Basecamp projects with 37Signals’ Openbar which ads simple project switching and even product (to Highrise) switching!, online mind mapping at MindMeister, and will soon get some plugins for Wordpress to use it on my blogs.

As a site or product owner, I’m not sure how easy it is to enable it’s use yet, but I do know it does a lot to lower the bar for signups and participation. How many times have you stopped reading an article, downloading something, commented, or even join a new service because you didn’t want to go through a long painful signup process? It certainly has stopped me.

But OpenID makes it easy to join any online community activity, as you can control how long your authentication lasts, how much data/info is shared, etc.

There are several providers, but you can also use the url of many common services you may already be on, from Blogger, flickr, Technorati and AOL. I went with VerisignLabs Personal Identity Protection, part of the website security/trust company Verisign.

I’m certainly going to be recommending an optional OpenID implementations to all my clients with sites. If you own a website with logins, what’s keeping you from implementing OpenID as a login/password option and making it easier for new signups/users?

openid, open id, data portability, usability, product management

Technorati Tags: openid, open id, data portability, usability, product management

Check out Crowdspring, a marketplace for simple logos and other design work. Most of them going for well under $500 bucks. Some designs are certainly crap, but some aren’t so bad. Yes, you may get what you pay for, but a very small business/startup may also get something pretty reasonable to tide them over until they need more complete/custom design work.

First product production outsourcing to other countries hits America… not long after, simple open markets in customer service and technology/coding transform businesses, (not always in a good way) now its visual design. Many differences in levels of quality exist… (especially in customer service) but it’s certainly a trend that’s hitting many industries and disciplines.

I think my career value is in “communication” with other humans… it evolves in format, medium and technology, but it also stays the same. Marketing, branding, UX, product management, social media… yes they depend on technology, but they are really about communication. That isn’t changing. (yet I hope! 8-)

How is/will your company (and you) planning for this type of open market? Is it a serious threat or something that won’t ever hit you?

visual design, branding, logo design, offshoring

Technorati Tags: visual design, branding, logo design, offshoring

I’ve heard of about 3 of the companies that have video pitches up, but I’ve found a few things worth checking out. I have no idea why they “style” the videos with that annoying cartoon filter… some startup called BeFunky provided it. May be fun for personal videos, but annoying in this context.

I’ve encouraged several clients to create similar videos for their websites to quickly and personally show customers the value of their site/service/product. I think it’s a great way to get personal with customers and quickly get your primary message out.

Would a quick video overview of your company help your customers understand your value better?

Thanks to StartupDistrict on twitter for the link!

ProductCamp is a collaborative unconference about Product Marketing and Management

In the spirit of BarCamp, ProductCamp is a collaborative, user organized unconference, focused on Product Marketing and Management topics. At ProductCamp there are no “attendees,” since everyone participates in some manner: presenting, leading a roundtable discussion, helping with logistics, securing sponsorship, setting up wifi, or volunteering. ProductCamp is a great opportunity for you to learn from, teach to, and network with professionals involved in the Product Management, Marketing, and Development process from the Austin area!

In my new (contract) role, I’m responsible for both general marketing and our product as well… a social and video sharing community website. It’s very early stage, built on top of a purchased platform with basic/generic functionality. The big task we are facing is how to develop the product, the design and the content… preparing to attract the community.

I’ve had less than a year experience with Agile - Scrum processes, but I’m pretty excited about it’s potential, especially with user experience/ UX and site development/ management. I’ll go into an overview of how we are managing this site/product/community via our own version of Agile/ Scrum on this blog soon. But for now, I hope to learn a lot and fine tune our process/ priorities at ProductCamp Austin.

By the way, Paul also has a great blog I’ve just discovered, Product Beautiful. It’s focused on (what else?) product management and marketing. 8-)

I’ll be there, hope to see you!

ProductCampAustin, product management, agile, scrum UX, Barcamp

Technorati Tags: ProductCampAustin, product management, agile, scrum UX, Barcamp

Pick your favorite term for this stuff we are doing: web 2.0, community, conversation marketing, viral, viral loops, guerilla marketing, word of mouth, social media, etc. Now we have “velcro marketing”! Heh… I’m sure my mom will really understand what I do now. 8-)

While I find that adding another descriptive term to the pile slightly troubling, it’s an interesting metaphor and a good explanation.

Marketers, designers and developers alike are scrambling to figure how two things:

1. What are the viral “hooks” that capture people’s attention?
2. What are the viral “loops,” which create infinite engagement that spreads like wildfire?

David is one of my favorite bloggers (his Logic + Emotion Blog) for his great synthesis of trends down to simpler concepts.

For example, here is a deck he’s sharing on “Micro interactions composing the brand experience.” It’s not a ground-breaking discovery, it’s really just a reminder that “small things matter,” but he reminds marketers/business how much more true it is online in this “conversation economy” we have now. Here’s his summation quote:

“We live in a world where the little things really do matter. Each encounter no matter how brief is a micro interaction which makes a deposit or withdrawal from our rational and emotional subconscious. The sum of these interactions and encounters adds up to how we feel about a particular product, brand or service. Little things. Feelings. They influence our everyday behaviors more than we realize.”

Are you looking at the details of all your company’s interactions? The emails, the “thank you” pages, the phone system directory on your main line? What happens to customer comments? Try this fun little exercise: Get your granny/significant other to make a suggestion to your company… see how long, or IF it ever is brought up in your meetings or roadmaps.

Nice quick report from B2B’s NetMarketing Breakfast in NY this week.

Paul Dunay, global director of integrated marketing at BearingPoint, said he actively reuses and retargets existing content in ways that make sense to provide value to customers.

Dunay said there is no “campaign” in social media: “It’s a state of being your company has to take on, and marketing has to lead the charge for that. You can’t be social this week and decide to be antisocial next week. It’s an ongoing process.”

Good stuff Paul, let’s get that message out there to the marketers and management that still think they can start a social network presence, forum or blog and not dedicate people to work/participate on it.

Loved this bit from an IBM social media manager Pauline Ores too. There is a LOT to be gained by keeping an eye on what your users are searching for and talking about online.

Ores said search and social media go hand in hand, and that by interacting with its community of customers, social media informs IBM’s search strategy. By “listening to social media” to learn what people are talking about, IBM is able to buy relevant keywords against those conversations.

Is your organization conversing and listening to what your customers are talking about online?

Forbes.com has a full section devoted to CEO Compensation, it’s a very interesting read.

Are you a shareholder or customer of any of these companies?
Sprint, Marriot, Black and Decker, Eli Lilly, Home Depot, Citigroup, Ford Motor, General Motors, Countrywide Financial, Toll Brothers, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Caremark/CVS, Chevron, Deere & Co., Alcoa and ExxonMobil.

University of Florida marketing professors Chris Janiszewski and Dan Uy suspected that something fundamental might be going on, that some characteristic of the opening bid itself might influence the way the brain thinks about value and shapes bidding behavior. In particular, they wanted to see if the degree of precision of the opening bid might be important to how the brain acts at an auction. Or, to put it in more familiar terms: Are we really fooled when storekeepers price something at $19.95 instead of a round 20 bucks?

They present some interesting data from home sales, initial pricing points vs. actual negotiated sale prices… and found that rounded initial prices such as $500,000 flexed more to sell, while more specific prices such as $494,500, had sales closer to that number.

What I got out of the article is “the more specific the price is the less flexible it seems to a buyer.” By “specific” I mean not rounded, but precise… I think it looks more “computed” and calculated, vs. someone “ballparking” it and making up a price. To me, it says they’ve spent time reasoning through the price, and there may be less flexibility in it.

The other side of “$19.95″ though is the experienced and critical consumer… ask someone how much something costs, and they’ll never say $19.95, they’ll always round to $20. Maybe we’ve just seen that “trick” to make it seem like a lower price too often. 8-)

Do you consciously make an effort to have your pricing be “precise” versus rounded? Why or why not?

“In a recession, marketers typically cut interactive spending. But our survey of 333 interactive marketers revealed strong support for maintaining or increasing budgets in categories including social networking, email, blogging, and search optimization. Among 12 major categories only online displays ads looked soft. Professional services, financial services, and media marketers are most likely to plan increases in interactive marketing. In a recession like this, marketers should focus on the measurability of their online and social applications and think in terms of building long-term assets, not one-off campaigns to boost quarterly sales.”

Forrester’s Groundswell Blog shows a nice graphic of the results too.

I certainly have seen an increase in activity and interest around social media/online conversations, such as clients asking about blogging, site comments/reviews and either participating in online communities or even starting their own. I think the sometimes immediate results and very measurable nature of online campaigns give these a permanent place in marketer’s toolboxes.

I was a little surprised about online video and mobile marketing showing only 20-30% growth optimism. But I suppose the survey was at large to medium sized companies/agencies, and not all of their client’s business may have mobile or video content needs. I do think that many companies could give much more personal impressions if they used video more… for example, why not have the CEO introduce the company via video on the main “About” page of your site? Why not have the VP of HR tell you why you should come work for that company in a quick video? These are quick, contextual and very rich interactions that would benefit greatly from online video.

Email, the old standby is still working quite well and marketers are optimistic about in in the future. Although most of the emails and landing pages I’ve seen lately could certainly use some work, email is still producing results.

I was not super surprised about the only online marketing area not producing much growth (10ish%) is display ads. I know many websites depend on those types of ads, but between crap creative, poor targeting and obnoxious execution, as well as general “banner blindness” fewer customers are finding them interesting and relevant.

Are these results reflective of your plans for the next year?

See the full list here.

Of course, to me the list is a great way to find new blogs and people that are putting out some effort and great ideas.

Having just built a UX team at my former job, and now looking for new opportunities, I’ve seen first hand the specialization and fragmentation of roles in UX groups. I certainly understand specialization and a very focused approach to a career, but I agree with Cordell’s point about too narrow a focus by many people in the field. I have a heck of a time describing what some of these folks do… to some extent my own skills are a bit hard to define to someone not experienced in this field. That, I’ll have to work on. 8-)

One of my pet peeves is with the specialized labels that have evolved within our profession. We have user interface designers, usability engineers, user experience specialists, visual designers, interaction designers, etc. The distinction between these many roles is fuzzy and confusing to those both inside and outside the design profession. Personally, I blame the information architects for this — they think they need to classify everything.

Funny! Blame the IA’s, nice…. 8-)

He also talks about the competitive advantage many companies gain from focusing not just on technology (what’s technically possible) but design as well (what’s desirable, efficient and productive). As I’ve been in sales/biz dev conversations with customers over the last few years, this topic is coming up again and again… technology is cheap, the experience and context will be the way a product gets sold and successful.

More and more companies appreciate the strategic value of design and see design as a way to solve business problems. This is a great direction for designers, but it means we all have to get more business savvy. There are a few things driving this trend. First, technology is a commodity. The cost of technology and the time to bring it to market are both decreasing. Technology leads are fleeting. Google launches a new feature. A few weeks later, you’ll see it on Yahoo. When technology and time-to-market are no longer competitive advantages, design — and the experience it provides to customers — can be a strong differentiator.

All emphasis is mine.

He makes a few other good points… on how to drive UX awareness in a large company that has a technology background. It’s worth a read, enjoy!

Here are some sample companies that have already launched: Google, Oracle, LinkedIn, Yahoo, eBay, even the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I think it’s a great evolution of the featureset that LinkedIn has, including some basic corporate info (like Hoover’s) as well as links to research, “previous” and “after” careers of employees, your connections at the company, recent promotions and hires.

It’s yet to be determined if the company has direct access to edit the page, or how frequently they could update it. I could see daily updates pushing the “status update” of the company high on individual’s “dashboard” pages and getting out of hand quickly. Overall, it can make a very positive impact on:

• PR for the company
• Recruiting efforts
• Moral/Recognition of the employees
• Natural Search/SEO

I’m sure there is a downside in making it even easier to poach employees from targeted companies, but that’s really a fair price don’t you think? 8-)

Will your company post/make available and keep your Company LinkedIn Profile up to date?

Evidently, they built and are doing at least some testing of the systems, but it sounds like they fell into the classic “waterfall” development trap: build it out, then test it.

Big worries for the nation’s first high-tech census should have been obvious when tests showed some of the door-to-door headcounters couldn’t figure out their fancy new handheld computers.

Agile User Experience Design (Agile UX) would likely have prevented this problem by introducing low-detail (paper-prototype) testing earlier in the development process. By testing with paper prototypes and even more functional prototypes on computers much earlier in the development process, the problems with the interface and system logic could have been found, and new solutions created that worked better BEFORE the systems were written and constructed. As it is, the budget may QUADRUPLE for this project… not anything I´d like on my resume!

Of course the CEO of the company that built the devices offers this excuse:

“After you spend about 30 minutes to an hour familiarizing yourself with it, it’s as easy to use as a modern cell phone,” Raimondi said.

As “easy as a modern cell phone”? You´ve got to be kidding me… modern cell phones, with some notable exceptions, (iPhone and a few others) are a total confusing mess of features and functions. Most tech-savvy people take days of focused use to master some of the interactions and complexity. They can probably make a phone call, but I´d hardly call modern cell phones “easy to use” in general. You can take the massive migration to the iPhone as some small proof of that.

Besides the obvious error in logic above, the CEO also ignores the demographic and usage scenarios of the users… Census takers are likely not to be super-tech saavy computer enthusiasts, and they may not have days to train or get familiar with the systems.

I´m not belittling how tough the problem of designing this system is, but their process and understanding of how to design systems could use some modernization… I think they should try going back to pencil and paper themselves… 8-)

Yale Business and Management
From problem-solving to experimental design and innovation.
iTunes link.

Stanford University’s Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
From usability testing and designing for simplicity to human cognition and sketching experience design.
iTunes link.

Stanford University’s Technology Ventures Program
From startups and social networking to successful negotiations, branding and leadership.
iTunes link.

MIT Business and Leadership
Guanxi, the Art of Relatinships: Microsoft and China
iTunes link.

AmEx OPEN Forum Videos
With Seth Godin the marketing visionary, Sean Parker of Facebook and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.
Web link.

What are your favorites?

Here he has a great article on the concept of platform security vs. the age-old business concept of “lock-in” - raising the bar of cost/pain to switch to a competitive product. He talks about Apple iPhone/iTunes a lot, but the Microsoft examples (NGSCB or Next-Generation Secure Computing Base) are more telling to me. When you think of his examples, lock-in is pretty pervasive in tech and non-tech areas.

Lock-in applied to Software Services
It makes me think of the “lock-in” concept as it pertains to software services… In many methodologies, including “waterfall” and traditional marketing/advertising processes, the delivery process is the lock-in mechanism. That is, the client doesn’t get work until the end of the project, until then, clients only see documentation, comps and so forth. Very little that can be useful to another team, so the incumbent is locked-in to finishing the project. Clearly that’s good for the service provider, but sometimes it can be a real risk/problem for a client engaging them.

One of the interesting benefits of Agile methodologies and the concept of Agile User Experience, (Agile UX) is that at each “sprint” or short term milestone (usually 3-4 weeks) clients get a set of formed deliverables. Not perfect deliverables, but something that is technically able to be brought in-house or to another development team without losing the entire value.

Now some would say that the lock-in concept here is a very good thing… so would the companies that Bruce references in his article. But for the end client, whether it’s us as consumers, or software services clients, the ability to “switch horses” to keep their project on track is a very good thing. It decreases the risk associated with selecting a software vendor.

Services without the Lock-in
For firms using Agile or Agile UX, (and us at Neudesic) this “non-lock-in” approach lowers the bar for selection and lowers the risk for clients. The strategy is to “lock-in” clients by keeping them happy, and by more frequent interaction and small course corrections. It’s a “soft lock-in” based on client satisfaction… in my opinion, that’s the way to go. 8-)

What do you think?

An overview of some of the new advertising technologies coming out of adCenter labs, many are focused on search, but here are a few others.

Another used speech recognition to make a transcript of a video, then served up ads — in the demonstration, they were text links — alongside the video. As the topics discussed on screen changed, so did the ads.

and

The third program scanned a video for surfaces where ads or product images could be inserted later. The demo showed how the same frames could display a Coke ad one moment and a Pepsi ad the next, without having to reshoot the video.

In searching for the main adCenter Labs page, I also found this interesting labs tool to “predict” the demographics of either a search term or a website url. According to this tool, Seven87.com is male oriented with a .57 confidence. 8-) It also has age orientation too. Interesting stuff. MS adCenter Labs: Demographics Prediction Page.

Some other neat stuff too, including the “Video Hyperlink,” and “Detecting Sensitive Webpages.” They don’t quantify what they mean by “sensitive” but Microsoft.com is only rated “not sensitive” by a confidence factor or 60.4%… so who knows what they are measuring. This is also hilarious… I put in “YouP*rn.com” and it’ is “not sensitive” by a 79.3% confidence! 8-) I guess they have a long way to go with that project…

The PhizzPop Design Challenge pits top interactive, Web, and design agencies against one another to push the limits of technology and creativity in a battle royale. Think Mad Max for design.

The regional teams have been selected and will duke it out in New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, and Los Angeles, with the regional winners competing against one another, and San Francisco winner AKQA, at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, TX.

http://phizzpop.visitmix.com

Here are several third party video podcasts covering the Chicago Design Challenge:
http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/26197.html

—
As many of you know, I manage the User Experience Practice at Neudesic… we are competing this week against the likes of FrogDesign, Telligent and others for the regional win, and the chance to compete again at SXSW in March ‘08!

Wish us luck!