home > services
For a recent project, we analyzed strategies used by sites that thrive on user engagement to encourage people to sign up and get established. We presented our findings, including design and usage guidelines, in this visually-rich report. I’m excited to be able to share it with you, for reference and inspiration!
You can enjoy the preview below (click it for larger version) and download the full report here (FREE to Newsletter subscribers).
Microsoft catches a lot of flack for some of their user experience decisions, but one invention that received a lot of warm feelings from the community is the new Microsoft Office, featuring the Ribbon. Jensen Harris, who has been writing about the development of the new Office UI for years now, has just signed on to present his Story of the Ribbon at UX Week.
Don’t forget, if you register by Monday May 19th, $100 of your registration fee goes to support the LIVESTRONG Foundation.
Today is LIVESTRONG Day, the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s one-day initiative to raise awareness and funds for the cancer fight. This year more than 500 events will take place in communities across the country to raise awareness and funds for the fight against cancer.
Adaptive Path wants to support this cause by donating $100 from each UX Week and UX Intensive registration over the next 7 days. That’s right, if you register by next Monday the 19th then not only will you get an early bird discount, but you’ll also help to support those battling cancer.
We have a terrific line up of speakers this year for UX Week including…… Katherine Jones and Randall Macon presenting: Building Brands The Build Community: LIVESTRONG and Blanton Museum of Art!!!
So why wait? Register for UX Week and UX Intensive now, and use the promo code “blog” for an additional 10% off. Attend the premiere User Experience conferences in 2008 and support the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
In addition to the company’s efforts, Henning and I are cycling 100 miles in July and personally raising funds for the San Jose LIVESTRONG Challenge. If you’d like you can donate for he and I on our donation pages.
Are you a runner or a walker or a rider? Then you too can participate. In addition to the Foundation’s fund raising goals, there are goals to register people for the LIVESTRONG Challenge. If you register TODAY then you get 50% off your registration fee for the Challenge.
Alexa, Teresa and I recently finished a project that, from the beginning, had all the signs of trouble: a busy client team working weekends on other projects, an aggressive schedule, a tight budget and my own pre-planned vacation during the critical architecture phase. While this project had a lot of challenges, and was quite intense at times, we had fun and came up with some really well executed designs that we all love. The project ended with a very satisfied client team, too.
I was happily surprised when our client made a point of commending my team for our client management skills. At first I politely tried to diminish our part in making it such a great experience “Well you’re a great client!” and “That’s why you hire outside consultants!”, but he pursued his point by illustrating how his other vendors’ relationships hadn’t been handled the same way and more importantly, what we did right. His feedback seemed worth sharing; here’s a bit of a summary:
The Team’s Approach — There were a number of client relations techniques we used in making the project a success. Here are just a few:
Trust — We kept our eye on building and maintaining trust with the client throughout the project. We did this initially with a full day hands-on workshop that included key members from the Product Management, Engineering and UX teams. This built rapport, inclusion and unified our vision of the product and our goals for the project. We maintained the trust through frequent review periods and showing our thinking along the way (even half-baked ideas were shared).
Listening — We listened to the client’s ideas and vision, but didn’t limit our designs to how they thought that vision should be executed. We took their vision and added in our understanding of user needs, consumer behavior and context of use as the launching point for our designs.
Setting Expectations — We had an extremely aggressive schedule for this project. We set a schedule with reviews and milestone deliverables, but we communicated heavily on the idea that “things may change” and we would “see what we can get done by x date”. This prepared the client for when we delivered sketches and rough ideas instead of polished designs.
Flexibility — When the client called and asked for a redesign a few days before our last big deliverable, I didn’t let it phase me. I welcomed his need to get the designs right. I didn’t even mention the impact to the schedule/scope, I focused on simply listening to his needs. What was missing in the current designs? We immediately set a face-to-face meeting with the client and his Director to better understand their concerns. It was a hands-on design session, where we sketched through ideas on the markerboard. After that meeting, we talked about schedule impact. The question I asked was if we could slip the schedule and if not, where would we need to cut scope?
Under-promise, Over-deliver — This is a technique I try to employ with all of my projects if I can. Of course my clients reading this will now know, but hopefully they won’t hold it against me! I try to scope a project that is realistic in what my team is capable of in the time allotted, but I pad in a little time for unplanned client meetings, idea gestation periods, wait time and general unknowns. In most cases, that padding time gets used up by unforeseen circumstances, but that’s OK because we don’t go over the budget or beyond the schedule. Sometimes there are extra hours to which I try to over deliver: more screens, more scenarios, more concepts, more interaction explorations, more annotations - what ever might be needed to wow the client.
Since the schedule was so aggressive with this project, I was honest with the client and explained that I wasn’t sure how much we could deliver, but I promised a minimum amount (which was safely low). Not surprisingly, he figured out this technique mid-project and luckily he saw the value in it and we had a good laugh about it. He appreciated how flexible we were throughout the project and the only reason we were able to be so flexible was because of the extra hours I had included.
Desire for Success — Philosophically we all have to remember that everyone involved in a project truly has the best interest of the project at hand. They may not be approaching the project in the way we’d like, or they may have bad ideas, but their intentions are for a successful project. Rarely do clients or colleagues knowingly and willfully undermine a project. We need to always remember that their intentions are good.
Last but certainly not least is in how to be a good client. Dan Saffer composed a great essay on how to be a good client, but I thought I’d share a few specific traits our client possessed that enabled us to take the approach we did. These traits allowed us to deliver the best possible designs:
Among the podcasts I subscribe to is BusinessWeek’s “Innovation of the Week,” featuring interviews with people on the subject of design and innovation. So I was excited when BusinessWeek reporter Matt Vella asked me to talk with him about our MX 2008 conference, and our new book. You can listen to the interview.
Just a quick note that after tomorrow, the registration prices for our UX Intensive Minneapolis and UX Week 2008 events goes up. UX Intensive offers 4 days of intense training on core user experience practice. UX Week mixes inspiration with information, offering sessions on a variety of essential topics, half-day workshops on subjects like storytelling and sketching, and field trips to museums to learn how experiences work in other realms.
Use the promotional code BLOG and get an extra 10% off!
Join us to celebrate the release of our book, Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design. The party will be here at our offices:
363 Brannan St., San Francisco, CA
May 13th from 6-9pm
We’ll start off with some mingling, then the four authors will give a short talk followed by a book signing and more mingling. Adaptive Snacks will be providing light appetizers. Please join us! RSVP Here.
A little bit about the book:
To achieve success in today’s ever-changing and unpredictable markets, competitive businesses need to rethink and reframe their strategies across the board. Instead of approaching new product development from the inside out, companies have to begin by looking at the process from the outside in, beginning with the customer experience.
It’s a new way of thinking-and working-that can transform companies struggling to adapt to today’s environment into innovative, agile, and commercially successful organizations. Read more
Don Norman said he liked it:
“Short, but powerful. Easy to read, yet profound.
I’ve been searching for just this book: the one perfect book that summarizes the essence of modern product design. This is it. The lessons are as powerful as they are simple: The product is NOT the goal. Successful products are systems. Focus on the experience. This requires empathy, agile product management, real understanding of the target audience. This book practices what it preaches. I will use it in my courses for MBA students. You should use it for, well, for everyone. Short, simple, persuasive, and powerful.”
Don Norman
Co-Founder Nielsen Norman group
Author of “Emotional Design” and “Design of Future Things”
Buy the book on Amazon.
The schedule for UX Week 2008 continues to form, and with every update, there are amazing new speakers.
We have added a number of main-stage speakers. There is design critic, science fiction author, and all-around mindblower Bruce Sterling, the information architect for TheDailyShow.com Audrey Chen, and human-robot interaction designer Aaron Powers. Peter Samis, curator at SFMOMA, will discuss the design of the whole visitor experience for their upcoming Frida Kahlo exhibition. And Katherine Jones and Randall Macon from Milkshake Media, will talk about their experience designing brands that build community, including Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG Foundation.
We’ve also added workshops. Adaptive Path founder and book author Indi Young will teach how to Unpack Stories to Serve People Better. CMU Design professor Mark Baskinger will follow up his excellent article in the latest Interactions magazine with a workshop on Drawing Ideas: Quick Sketching for Interaction Design.
The workshops are new to UX Week this year. On Day 1 and Day 2 we’re having seven of them run simultaneously — you’ll have to choose one each day. We are giving preferential choice based on when you register. The earlier you register, the better chance you’ll get your top choice! We will launch a workshop picker closer to the event.
Also, Sign up by April 30 and save $400 off the full registration price. Use the promotional code BLOG and receive an additional 10% off!
To give an additional taste of what’s to come, you should see Johnny C. Lee’s presentation from TED. It’s only 6 minutes long (we’ll have him on stage much longer.)
And here’s a recent talk by Bruce Sterling at an Interaction Design conference in Germany.
It’s easy to forget when hearing someone give a presentation that the talk is a product too. And like products, the designer doesn’t always know what’s going to happen when the talk meets the users (the audience). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And like a product, good designers go back and revise the beta. Put out a better version.
This is a long preamble to saying that Kim Lenox and me have taught the interaction design day at UX Intensive four times now: in Chicago, Amsterdam, Vancouver, and San Francisco and each time was different. We’ve spent the last year tweaking the content until we (and the audience) were happy with it. As it turns out, it’s tricky to teach interaction design in a day. We went from a nearly all-lecture day to one that is mostly a hands-on, activity-centered workshop that tries to create a studio environment. It even requires having a first-aid kit on hand! I’m really happy how the day has evolved.
If you are interested in learning (or brushing up on your existing) IxD skillz, we hope you’ll join us at UX Intensive Minneapolis in June. Use the discount code BLOG and get 10% off admission!
Our forthcoming book, Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services in an Uncertain World, lands in bookstores (on- and offline) any day now. We’ve gotten our first copies in the office, and it looks great. (We know some of you have been waiting for a while… there was a printing problem with the first run, which set us back a little… But we’re on track now!)
I need to share with you the testimonial Don Norman wrote about the book:
Short, but powerful. Easy to read, yet profound.
I’ve been searching for just this book: the one perfect book that summarizes the essence of modern product design. This is it. The lessons are as powerful as they are simple: The product is NOT the goal. Successful products are systems. Focus on the experience. This requires empathy, agile product management, real understanding of the target audience. This book practices what it preaches. I will use it in my courses for MBA students. You should use it for, well, for everyone. Short, simple, persuasive, and powerful.
That excited us.
Also, Derrick Story from O’Reilly just posted a podcast interview/discussion with Brandon, David, and me. It hits on the high points of the book.You can preview the first chapter of the book.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Adaptive Path category.
Entries(RSS)