Adaptive Path Blog

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:

1. We rethought the design problem rather than simply executing their requirements. We took their ideas and vision into consideration and then took a step back and rethought the problem. The result was a refreshing and unexpected approach that they liked much better than their own initial ideas.
2. We scoped the project according to the budget and timeline allowed. The client needed a lot of work done in a short amount of time. So much work that there was no way it could all be done in the time allotted. The approach we took was to work closely with the client engineers and UX team to reveal only the essential design elements needed. We delivered only primary screens, a few key scenarios and prototyped interactions that needed more clarification. We also delivered design principles to enable the client team to stay focused on what’s important once we’re no longer there. What we didn’t do, which they appreciated, was deliver a big, fat document of every permutation possible. Instead we delivered high-level design guidelines.

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:

1. We had a client who set a vision and was open to the possibilities of where that vision might be taken.
2. The client gave us access to all the right people. Their program manager did an astounding job of getting the right people in the room with us each and every time.
3. They also had a system for decisions by proxy. If a decision maker was unable to attend, they identified a proxy who would speak on the behalf of the decision maker.
4. The UX, Engineering, and Product Management teams all have a deep respect and regard for one another. Yes they disagreed (lots of heated debates!), but they did so respectfully and with humor.
5. They leveraged our time together as efficiently as possible. Issues that didn’t pertain directly to our design problem were tabled for later discussions (without us).

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Last week, I sat in on a talk by Andrew Blau about Global Business Network’s scenario planning practice when he came by Adaptive Path as part of our Brown Bag lunch presentation series. I was struck by how his work relates to internal marketing practices, and am writing to share some of those connections. I should also say that my background is in marketing, and this is the focus of my work. I’ve recently joined AP and look forward to bringing some marketing related posts to this blog.

First, a word about scenario planning and internal marketing for those who are not familiar with these terms. The former is sometimes also referred to as “scenario thinking” and is a strategic planning method used to make flexible long-term plans. It is in large part an adaptation and generalization of classic methods used by military intelligence (I realize that may sound like an oxymoron).Internal marketing is an activity that is designed to align creative vision, purpose, processes, and culture in general. You can think of this as the Kool-Aid.

Andrew presented a scenario planning methodology that GBN uses to engage with organizations on a leadership level. The frame for this exercise was a ten year projection, which is far enough out as to limit the effectiveness of incremental visioning, but not so far out as to enter science fiction land. The process of building four divergent visions of the future helps the leadership get in touch with the culture within their organization, and understand how it will respond to different futures. It’s important to emphasize that the scenarios must be divergent from each other in order to address the broadest possible range of possibility. Andrew explained that each scenario becomes a caricature of sorts because it highlights predominant features within an organization that are teased out through specific scenarios.

This reminded me of Joseph Campbell’s mythological archetypes (The Hero with a Thousand Faces), because Campbell uses them to demonstrate that very similar features arise in creation myths across cultures. This approach was taken even earlier in Carl Jung’s use of archetypes as a psychological tool for individual analysis, and has also made it’s way into organizational psychology methods such as meta-analysis, which uses averages of individual assessments to represent larger groups. With this in mind, we touched on some common archetypes that arise within GBN’s scenario planning practice such as a disaster scenario, a utopian scenario, and a climate change scenario.

Internal marketing is relevant here because leadership teams must apply the knowledge that comes out of such exercises to their organizations in order to prepare for a myriad of possible futures. This practice recognizes that a culture of adaptation is key to success and must be fostered. I see internal marketing as an essential tool in cultivating adaptability because it distributes power throughout organizations while aligning resources with a larger cause. This leads to increased resiliency as well, not only because of its distributive nature but because it promotes multi-directional feedback from within an organization. At AP we embrace this approach by aligning our organizational purpose with employee behavior; this is represented through our conferences, Brown Bags, Open Design Sessions, management structure, and our commitment to the Designers’ Accord.

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I attended MX for the first time this year and as I was chatting with many inspiring UX managers and designers, I noticed the following common challenge in many in-house UX teams: They lack UX quality check points for marketing, advertising, and branding to create a holistic experience. I had the same challenge while I was working within the UX team at Microsoft. For the UX team to build relationships with marketing, advertising and branding, one of the tasks I had was to be a brand liaison that maintained contact between all teams. The goal was to meet and speak early and often and be a part of the product UX review/decision cycle to create holistic integration across web, marketing, and branding experience. As a solution to create UX quality check points for all teams, consider creating a UX liaison. The UX liaison should be a creative designer who can define brand and user experience language for various product experiences.

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Last weekend, the LA Times staff went on a retreat to map out their future. What was interesting to me is the output of that retreat.

This poster has all the hallmarks of a graphic recording exercise and is likely the result of a roomful of people and an intense discussion led or recorded by a graphic illustrator.

A few months ago, several of us had a chance to participate in a graphic facilitation workshop, put on by The Grove. I can barely draw a stick figure, so it was a great opportunity to broaden my horizons. Over the course of two days, a dozen of us learned a multitude of tricks for simple, evocative drawing. It was a remarkable experience to learn how to capture ideas with figures instead of just words.

One of the useful things about graphically facilitating - or recording - a discussion is that the creation of a poster during the discussion serves a few purposes. First, people remember things better if they can tie an idea to a picture. Second, in some cases it is very useful to have an instant artifact showing the outcome of a discussion, whether it’s the brainstorm or a roadmap.

Some of my co-workers who are much handier with a marker than I will be graphically recording some of the talks at MX next week, so those of you attending will get a chance to see the process up close.

Even more about graphic facilitation: The Center for Graphic Facilitation

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In the newest issue of Interactions magazine, Steve Portigal laments the use of personas. His point essentially is that personas “invite misuse” and therefore they should be avoided. Peter has responded, pointing out that Steve has thrown a baby or two out with the bath water by conflating personas with poorly conceived personas. To some degree it becomes a war of analogies, with Steve saying personas are like guns (i.e. inviting misuse and dire consequences) and Peter saying they are like movies (i.e. just because most are bad doesn’t mean that we should dismiss the activity of movie-making).

But neither of them addresses the underlying issue that is at the heart of all this fear and loathing, use and misuse. The power and danger of personas is their realism. Good personas use this realism to drive authentic understanding deep into the heart of an organization. As humans, we are highly attuned to observing, interpreting, and relating to other people. Good personas take advantage of this tendency and focus it on “people” that are highly relevant to a design, business, or engineering task. I have seen this have profound positive effects on organizations.

The issue is that personas are not real. They are realistic but, in the end, fictional. Knowing Steve, I can say that he is very uncomfortable with that element of fiction because of how it can affect the people creating and using personas. When handled poorly, organizations can begin (or continue) to talk about real people as characters or stereotypes. And that, as he would probably say, “freaks him out.” As it should. We all hate to see organizations misunderstanding the people they are trying to serve.

But does this potential really outweigh the benefits? In my experience, personas have always improved an organizations understanding of their customers because, if nothing else, they become a tangible and explicit artifact for focusing and catalyzing discussion about customers. While this may not always be inspiring, it moves things forward. Incremental change is better than no change at all.

Of course, Steve’s essay also raises an important question, what is the alternative to personas? (Peter makes this same point.) If we agree that qualitative, contextual, and in-depth research is important and necessary, how do we capture and communicate the things we learn in the field beyond giving people a mountain of raw video and audio to go through for themselves? (Assuming that video and audio actually substitutes for being in the field…). Steve says that we should “tell stories.” But every story told is an approximation. Details are left out or reordered to support a larger theme or message. This is true in journalism as much as in romance or sci-fi. In the same way, some level of fiction is necessary when it comes to personas. Personas are meant to represent archetypical customers or users of a product or service. Representing archetypes requires a certain level of aggregation and synthesis.

In my whole career, I have seen few things that inspire strong reactions like personas. Enthusiasm & excitement as well as fear and loathing. So, I can’t fault Steve for his strong reaction. Personas blur the line between truth and fiction, which can be disconcerting. But this all highlights the fact that personas are more a medium of communication than a tool. So, Steve’s gun analogy isn’t really appropriate. Peter’s movie analogy is better. Or consider painting, which actually had/has a movement called Realism. I think it’s a mistake to throw out the idea of painting or of Realism just because someone’s first attempt looks more like a toddler’s scrawl than a Rembrandt.

P.S. Congrats to Steve for such a provocative first column!

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Clients often come to us to help them develop a better sense of their users. To do so, we venture into the homes of people who are using or may be using our client’s product. Armed with audio and video recorders, we interview them at length. In the course of these interviews, we naturally develop a sense of empathy for these people: We see their homes, we meet their housemates, we make eye contact, and we share a physical space for over an hour.

After the interview, we are tasked with the challenge of articulating what we saw, heard and felt. We rummage through our interview transcripts and notes using a variety of methods and tools. We then produce personas and story-scenarios that document the characteristics, behaviors and motivations of the people we spoke to. Done right, these personas and scenarios help our clients develop a sense of empathy for their users.

But ultimately, there’s no substitute for actually being there, talking to real people, and experiencing it first-hand. To that end, we always encourage our clients to join in on our home interviews. Sometimes, all it takes is a day out of their office and into the lives of their users for a new perspective to settle in. Sometimes, it’s the real, live response to a question they’ve been holding on the tip of their tongue that finally convinces them.

So to all our clients, present and future: “Please, come with us. Take a plunge into the world of your users.”

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Dan noticed that on the Nov 1 episode of The Daily Show, Jerry Seinfeld brought the term “blog” to task.

“Is that the worst new word of the culture, blog? It’s so unattractive. It’s like something that you spit up and its, it has like, it congeals, and is, you know, and you kick dirt on it.”
- Jerry Seinfeld

Peter, who coined the term back in 1998 agrees with Jerry:

“I like that it’s roughly onomatopoeic of vomiting. These sites (mine included!) tend to be a kind of information upchucking.”
- Peter Merholz, August 30, 1999, email to Keith Dawson

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I’ll admit to being a total information visualization junkie.

When I’m stuck in a rut, shifting things around unlocks new perspectives. Reframing a problem can fundamentally change how I think about the situation and freshen my eyes to new possibilities. And having a full palette of visualization options is a great way to mix it up and uncover new patterns.

So, when I found the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, I got all verklempt. It’s a compelling way to preview different visualizations, and the organizing principle of the periodic table allows for a lot of metadata to be embedded in the summary view for quick reference.

Thanks to Ralph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler of visual-literacy.org for this nice gift.

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At Adaptive Path, many of us speak regularly at conferences. I’ve found that it is critical to understand the conference’s context, the organizer’s expectations, and any other constraints. Arming ourselves in advance with this information helps me prepare, tailor my message for the audience, and feel confident in my presentation.

When I first started speaking, I was just happy to be accepted. I didn’t ask too many questions. However, I’ve learned through experience (been burned once or twice) to ask some important questions of conference organizers before I agree to speak. Both the conference organizer and I need to make sure that my presentation will be interesting and useful to the audience.

Initially, I ask probing questions to determine if the conference is a good fit. Then, if I decide that I would like to speak there (and the conference organizer is still interested), I move on to more detailed questions.

I have compiled a checklist of questions I typically ask below. I hope this will be a useful reference to you. If you think of others I should add, please let me know.

The Basics

Some conference organizers are super busy or, for a variety of reasons, unable to share a lot of information. So, at the least, make sure you get these questions answered:

• Where, what, and when is the conference?
• What is my session about, how long is it, when is it?
• Who is the audience?
• How are you compensating me? (not necessarily $$$)

The Details

If you can have a full conversation with a program chair, you can ask a lot more:

First things first:

• Where is the conference? When?
• What is the conference about (generally)? Tech, design, something else?
• Who is putting it on? An academic group, professional org, or private group?
  This affects both what they expect of you and what you can expect compensation-wise.
• What is the topic you would like me to speak on?
• What is the topic *I* would like to speak on?
• Am I interested and available?

Then…

Audience

• Who is the audience?
  demographics, experience, interests, skills, level in organization, work context
• What are their motivations for attending?
• What is their experience level with my material? Familiarity with my topic?
• Are they the type to ask questions or sit back and listen?

Conference

• How many people will attend the conference?
• What are the themes of the conference?
• What other kinds of speakers will there be?
• Is this inspirational, academic or a hands-on conference?
• How long is the conference?

My session

• How long is my session?
• How many sessions will compete with mine?
• How many people do you anticipate in my session?
• When in the day will my session be?
• What sessions will happen before and after mine?
• What will the AV set up be like?
  they may not be able to tell you, so allow time to scout it out when you arrive
• What kind of room? How will it be set?
  they may not be able to tell you, so allow time to scout it out when you arrive

Logistics

• How will I be compensated (travel, hotel, meals, per diems, honorarium)?
• Who will book my hotel and flight?
• How many nights at the hotel will you cover?
  Most won’t cover more than two nights. Many will try to just cover one but you should definitely push for two nights - get rest before and recovery after.
• Will I receive a pass to the conference?
• When will you need my materials (abstract, bio, photos, etc)?

Good luck! Speak well!

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Yesterday on Twitter, Robert Scoble posted that he is giving up on email in favor of posting in the public forums of Twitter and Facebook. His dialog, including my response via tweet, is below. Basically, Scoble’s argument, as I understand it, is that an message left in a public space may be responded to by anyone. Also, a public message can be viewed by anyone, so we all learn a little. This is what he calls “scale.”

Is he right? Is one-to-one communication dead? I think not.

Email still has a very secure place in our online world. Most of my “important” communication is aimed for just one or two select people. I don’t need to go onto the rooftop with a megaphone if I want to let my colleague know that his work is complete. I just need to email him and the rest of the world isn’t bothered with a message that means nothing to them.

Communication to a single person, or a select group, is still important and will continue to use the mechanisms that serve it best, like phone and email. There’s a place for broadcasting and there is a place for personal one-to-one communication. Using a broadcast tool like Twitter or Facebook to talk to a single individual fills up the space with unnecessary clutter.

Partial transcript of Scobleizer from Twitter, latest at top:

@seekground: but the advantage of public messages is even if I ignore you others can answer your questions. A lot of my email is tech suppor

Translation to the past 20 tweets: I need an assistant to answer my email. Outsource what you hate. I hate email.

………

@dharrels called me a “tool.” OK wiseguy. You want to answer my email? I didn’t think so.

dharrels: Scoble is twittering that he is giving up on email and only using Twitter and Facebook to communicate. What a tool.

Basically this is my gesture to the world: I am not answering my email and I’m not going to start. I’m overloaded. Tweet me.

………

If something really needs to be private than email is great. But most of my email doesn’t need to be private.

I always answer things in public space first. Why? Because those communications scale.

@arikb: yeah, email still has SOME value. But going down all the time. I far prefer people not send me private notes. Scalable communication.

PR people are the worst in the email regard. Speaker planners are close. I don’t answer a lot of my email anymore. If I did, I’d never do.

It’s amazing that in this age of Twitter that people still send email. I hate email. I hate direct Tweets. I hate Facebook messages.

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