Can an existing org get real?

Thursday 4 Mar 2010 by Jeff Gothelf | Comments
Filed under: agile, startups Tags: , , , , , ,

I just finished reading @37Signals product design/development manifesto, "Getting Real." I came out on the other side of this read so full of energy -- motivated to go back to work in the morning, fire everyone except my favorite developer and product person (I'd do the design, natch) and set out to change the world with a kick-ass product. The no specs, get-it-out-in-the-wild and iterate, evolve and grow into something huge approach was the breath of fresh air I didn't know I was missing. But then I stopped and paused to reflect on my current (and frankly, the bulk of my career) situation and reconsidered.

Can an organization that is carrying a full complement of employees, roadmaps, operating plans and budgets adopt this lean philosophy wholesale? I don't think so. There are elements of the approach that can be watered down and used to augment some current behaviors but the kind of cultural shift required by this approach means retro-fitting an existing organization (of a certain size) is not possible.

Here are just three of the areas where I think the "Getting Real" philosophy breaks down with an existing organization:

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Elegant, efficient and sophisticated: my design philosophy

Monday 22 Feb 2010 by Jeff Gothelf | Comments
Filed under: Uncategorized

As my career has evolved and grown I’ve found myself in new positions being asked to articulate my views on design. The words have evolved but the core elements remain the same. In my work I strive to design experiences that are elegant, efficient and sophisticated. Here’s why:

Elegant – elegance covers the smoothness, coolness and appropriateness of the aesthetics of the experience. This is the visual design goodness that wraps a core experience in a palatable, and hopefully desired, aesthetic. It takes the core brand values of the business and conveys them in ways that make the experience engaging and in some cases fun. It also applies to the micro-interactions that take place throughout that experience. That slide-out menu, the tasty bit of microcopy that just informed a decision and/or made you smile, the transition from step to step – all part of the elegance of the solution.

Efficient – use only the exact amount of steps necessary to complete a task and no more. Efficiency reflects a drive to get users to their goal in the shortest amount of time on task. Ask only the absolutely necessary questions. Force only the mandatory decisions and learn from previous experiences so that future interactions are informed. Strive to balance the needs of the business with the goals of your users working with the belief that an efficient experience will breed many return, loyal customers who will spread the gospel of your product and it’s ease of use to their networks.

Sophisticated – this is the technology portion of the equation. Build experiences that learn and understand your users. Your products should recognize the user, know they’ve visited before, remember what they did or asked for and provide intuitive information along the way to facilitate an easier process each time they visit. Use the sophistication of the technology to reduce the inhuman nature of the web and bring emotion, empathy, recognition and personal interaction back. Sophistication is not complexity. In fact, it’s the opposite when surfaced on the experience level. The complexity lives behind the scenes and drives what can only be described as “amazing” experiences for your users.

That’s my design philosophy.

What’s yours?

[Jeff]


What's your work ethic?

Tuesday 16 Feb 2010 by Jeff Gothelf | Comments
Filed under: work ethic Tags: ,

There are some professions where the more time one spends at their station yields greater amounts of productivity. I imagine this dates back to the dawn of the industrial age where the longer a factory worker spent at his post, the more stuff was manufactured. This "work ethic" has transcended time and found its way to the information age. Even in the most enlightened software companies there is still a belief that hours in front of a monitor produce greater output (of whatever it is that you output).

Perhaps with software engineers this might be the case. I can see an argument being made that more lines of code are written as more time is spent at the keyboard. In a waterfall development environment, managers can argue that more time at the computer produces more deliverables and specifications.

I don't believe these arguments hold true for design.

Designers can spend hours in front of their monitors and produce nothing. Does that mean this time has been wasted? Does it mean that no forward progress was made? No. It means that the optimal solution has not yet been found. It could also mean that the monitor has not yet been used. Sketching, researching, and whiteboarding along with other forms of ideation can take place during the course of a "normal" day inching the designer closer to a convincing design solution.

In addition, design is a creative pursuit and, as such, is subject to the wills of each designer's creative muse. There are periods of time (sometimes minutes, sometimes days) where the inspiration has not yielded the right approach or has simply not "been there."

Does this mean designers have no work ethic? Does that mean designers are unreliable when it comes to producing as part of a team? No. It means that the forces that drive the best solutions for designers aren't necessarily at their peak between the hours of 8am and 6pm sitting in front of a monitor. Designers' processes need to be articulated to their teams and respected by their teammates.

So what is design work ethic? I believe design work ethic is deadline driven. Each designer knows their process for creating their best work. Mix into that the project requirements and deliverables and the designer should be able to articulate a timeline for producing a desirable outcome. Sticking to that deadline, communicating constantly, being available, raising awareness of challenges and risks -- those are elements of a good designer's work ethic.

Companies that recognize the unique needs of their designers and provide them with the flexibility to exorcise those needs will ultimately reap better output from those designers along with more successful products and services.

[Jeff]


You can have it all

Monday 8 Feb 2010 by Jeff Gothelf | Comments
Filed under: career path, startups Tags: , , ,

Progressing in a User Experience career leads most designers working for companies or agencies (i.e., not freelancers) to a fork in the road. In order to get to the "next level" in your career you need to decide whether you are going to become a manager or master craftsman (sometimes referred to as a subject matter expert). The choice here is stark.

Choose master craftsman and you get to design all day, all the time. You work tirelessly at becoming the best designer you can be but, in most cases, you max out your earning potential and career advancement very quickly. Pretty soon you're making lateral moves in your career focusing those career changes on the actual material you're working on rather than a potential "career move." Often, you end up designing at the whim of the design manager (CD, ECD, etc...) at your current company.

Choosing the managerial path often leads to less actual design work and more administrative work. Resource allocation, mentoring, hiring/firing, performance reviews, project prioritization -- the mere mention of any of these phrases to many designers causes them to shut down and start convulsing in the fetal position on the floor. Yet the rewards are different - there is a far longer career ladder to climb regardless of whether you're designing at an agency or inside a corporation. The effect you have on the design output of your organization grows as well. Your vision and aesthetic drive many decisions and you get to choose which designers to surround yourself with.

This choice is presented to designers relatively early in their career and many of us feel like it's truly a binary decision. I believe there's a third option - designing at a startup. Designing at a startup blends the best qualities of both of these career tracks by allowing you to do actual design work yet at the same time your vision and design philosophies get built into the company from a very early point. You determine the design direction and interaction experiences for a brand new product. You actually execute that design and, when the time is right, you get to help bring on other designers to work with you that you actually enjoy working with.

If you're lucky you get some equity as well and as the startup grows and reaches a point where you're once again faced with the "manage or SME" decision, you have the option to exit gracefully and move on to the next startup. This approach is not for everyone as the rigors, risk and general lawlessness of the startup environment can drive a designer crazy. But if you'd like to exert more control over a design vision and not be forced to worry about who will staff the upcoming conversion funnel overhaul, it can be a very viable and exciting choice.

[Jeff]


Push early, fail often

Tuesday 2 Feb 2010 by Jeff Gothelf | Comments
Filed under: brand, startups Tags: , , , , , ,

In a startup environment the mantra of “push early, push often” is often heralded as the right product development course. The theory is one driven by the Agile model – get value to customers in the form of working code as quickly as possible, get feedback, iterate and push more code. This also jives well with another popular mantra, “Fail early, fail often.” Similar? If we were to use (ok, not really) the transitive property (if a=b and b=c, you get the rest of it) you come up with the following formula:

Push (early, often) = Fail (early, often)

I’m not interested in getting into a debate about the merits of Agile. I’m actually quite bought in to the value it brings to a software shop and believe that UX design can be properly integrated into the process. What I think this equation speaks to is the image of your newly-birthed company in the market. This is also known as your brand.

Getting to minimal viable product and pushing code live may get you “to market” fast but the risks of doing so before you’ve reached minimum desirable product can outweigh the benefits. Prior to launch, your startup’s brand is a tabula rasa. It’s yours to own and shape and, as the old slogan goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Even early adopters are sensitive to the presentation of a new product. It doesn’t have to do 50 things. It only has to do 1 thing but it has to do it elegantly, efficiently and in a manner that speaks to its audience – sophistication, fun, exploration, etc. Early adopters (with the blogosphere counted among them) are often the loudest voices on the Web and can easily make or break your debut. At the very least they can put up enough of a stink to create a brand and PR hurdle to overcome before you’re even out of private Beta.

Consider the whole experience you’re pushing live before doing so. Yes, your product does what it’s supposed to do but how does it meet the minimum desirability standards of your target audience? The push early/often mantra gets your team focused on the details. But is anyone looking at the big picture? The whole experience?

It’s critical to involve design thinking in this process (as Dave McClure points out here) from a variety of angles. Ensure you’ve considered that first impression before actually going out in the market. Make a good enough one and the market (and blogosphere) will be far more forgiving to the updates you continue to push out. Make a poor first impression and each move will be attributed to you “fixing your product/brand/image” in the marketplace.

[Jeff]


Startup design: The Xmas Light Metaphor

Sunday 31 Jan 2010 by Jeff Gothelf | Comments
Filed under: startups Tags: , , ,

I would venture a guess that in most designers' experience they rarely get to create something from scratch. Typically, we're called in to rework, redesign and ultimately clean up somebody else's mess design. In the dot-com days this was not necessarily the case given the youth of the medium but the landscape is different today. The company is established. The business model and brand are in place. The design has been there for several years and has likely been redesigned several times. In addition, corporate politics have been taking root (if it's a younger company) and organizational ownership claims have been laid and fought over.

As a designer coming in to this situation the challenge goes far beyond design. Coming into an established company's redesign project means starting off with untangling the existing situation. In many ways it's like taking out the Christmas lights from last year and starting the process of this year's decoration.

You start here:

(yes, it's a cute pic)

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In the beginning (there should be UX)

Thursday 28 Jan 2010 by Jeff Gothelf | Comments
Filed under: startups Tags: ,

After some great conversations today it became even clearer to me that a startup founder who "gets" user experience and design will likely create a more successful product than one who does not. It's not just because a great user experience makes a product more enjoyable and ultimately fun to use. It's because this type of design thinking and understanding of the customer seeps into every other aspect of the product. Customer service, fluid interaction of back-end elements, copy tone and voice all benefit from a keen understanding of the user, their needs and pain points and the core benefits your solution brings.

The other upside of baking UX in early in a startup is the viral nature with which this focus will grow as the company grows. Each employee that is brought on will have to demonstrate an understanding and affinity for design and customer experience and will seek to drive that into their own area of specialization. Before long the startup is staffed with specialists who "get" customers and understand that whether they're writing code, pushing pixels or selling the product, they have a direct effect on the customer's experience.

[Jeff]



 

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