Archive for the 'Delivering Results' Category

Leading With Insight

When you’re part of a department called Insight and Planning it’s probably a good idea to know what you stand for, and where your value lies. Even more importantly, you need to know how your capability helps your organization to offer a competitive point of differentiation.

Over the last year, we’ve been internally debating what it means to be insightful, and the result is this presentation. We’ve shown it to clients, peers and our own teams in what I’ll refer to as a “healthy” dialog. Over the last month, we’ve had it out in the wild on Slideshare as well where it’s been getting some healthy linkage. One of the really interesting outcomes has been the discussion about how often we abuse or misunderstand the term “insight.” More often than not, we’re confusing insights with ideas, or elevating “findings” to the status of insights. The risk with loose definitions is that you can’t really be clear about the value you provide - you’re just creating noise. As a team, we’ve got a lot of thinking rolled up in this deck, but the the bottom line is this: we have a clear view on what we think insight is, how we generate insight and how we communicate its value. Subject to change of course, but then that’s why we’re talking about it.

So what’s the value of insight to your business?

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Confessions of an Interaction Designer

When it comes to designing the experience of an end product (be it a web site or a remote control), is it better to work inside the enterprise or outside, in an agency or design consultancy? For interaction designers, both choices have pluses and minuses but both paths start with thinking about the customer.

Customer knowledge is the Holy Grail of what we do: IA, IxD, usability, etc. Typically the first words out of our mouths at the beginning of a project are “So, who are the customers? What do they want?”

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Weekly Points of Interest 2008-03-15 (Innovation Edition)

Innovation Quick Hits

Regular Quick Hits

Sites of the Week

Less Talking, More Doing

The Information Architect/Interaction Design field is awash in web sites and discussion lists, though the former are (unfortunately) significantly more worthwhile than the latter. The lists are constantly filled with requests for ‘best practices’ around the simplest of interface issues (e.g., “Should I put my text above or to the left of a form field?”), seemingly endless debates on ‘what is IA?’ and, most recently, an impressively daft call—based solely on anecdotal evidence—for IAs to pursue accreditation. It is enough to make you ‘want to tear out (your) eyeballs,’ as one of my coworkers recently put it.

On the rare occasions that someone does offer up a solution they created for a project, responses typically range from “It’s not that great” to “How dare you suggest that’s the right answer for all users!” It makes for a nice distraction on a slow work day but the problem is that all the arguing is getting us nowhere. Debates only serve to pull IAs away from the real work to be done: improving customer experience online.

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2008 Predictions: Online Trends in Financial Services

I spend most of my time working in the financial services space. Part of my role is to keep a tab on developments in online financial services as well as have an opinion on whether these developments are important to our work or not. As 2008 begins to unfold, here are four trends I’m thinking about and expect to see develop over the course of the year:

  1. Banks get serious about customer experience
  2. Mobile banking still isn’t ready for prime time
  3. Metrics drive experience design decisions
  4. Banks look to innovative personal financial management start-ups for inspiration

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Google Maps in (a) Flash!

Yesterday, we posted a new part to Rolex.com: the ability to find a local Authorised Rolex Dealer. This on its own is hardly breaking any new ground — it’s a fairly routine piece of functionality. To help you find your local dealer, we provided a map — a Google Map.

Google Maps Flash Interface

Those of you who know the two technologies are probably now scratching your heads. Google Maps. Flash. Aren’t they incompatible?

Not any more.

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Moving at the Speed of Light: Upgrading NASA.gov from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

We were recently approached by NASA to rethink the overall NASA.gov experience.

NASA had been losing relevance with the 18-24 year olds in the past few years. Understanding that this younger audience is more sophisticated and comfortable with web 2.0 and social networks, this allowed us to draw on these key insights to deliver a new and innovative experience that attracts and appeals to a younger and broader audience while keeping their existing core.

Although web 2.0 features are very seldom seen in government agency websites, NASA-as its innovative nature predicts-has taken a leap far ahead of other such government groups. With the launch of a website suited for a younger audience, NASA is paving its path for future generations.

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Things found in meeting rooms, Part 1

We keep a clean shop here, making sure that client-sensitive information remains secret and safe. But not every meeting is solely about client work, and sometimes you find something interesting sitting in a meeting room.

In this particular case, I happened to glance up at an easel sitting in the corner of the Ancho Room (the second floor in Calgary has meeting rooms named after peppers), and witnessed a wonderful diagram created by Chrissie, Senior IA in our I&P group.

What makes a site successful

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ABB - Always be briefing …

Have you watched this scene from Glengarry Glen Ross? “Coffee is for closers. Always be closing.” I saw this for the first time about three weeks ago. Wow. It left an impression.

I’ve since discovered that this is hugely popular monologue for auditioning actors. And apparently, salespeople refer to it all the time (but not as an example of good salesmanship).

But what if an account planner had written it?

Examples of Online Shopping Experience

We’ve been talking a lot about ideas. But ideas don’t always translate well without examples. Thankfully, the internet is replete with experiences great and poor.

Good and Bad

The single most often-used benefit of the internet is information. Wikipedia, online newspapers, blogs, and all their associated links and RSS feeds. People tend to be more tolerant with information experiences (hey, you read my entries, don’t you?), but when money gets involved — people listen. And more importantly, they’ll turn away if they don’t like what they experience.

Two specific (and very different) examples to consider: Victoria’s Secret, and the International Standards Organization. Comparing apples to oranges? Only in product. When it comes to online shopping, it doesn’t matter if it’s underwear or a whitepaper — if you don’t get what you need, you’re not likely to happy about it.

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