Adaptive Path Blog

An interview with Scott Berkun, author and public speaker on
Show Length: 20 minutes

In 1956 a documentary called The Mystery of Picasso was released, showing two hours of Pablo Picasso doing what he did best: making paintings. This film gave the public a first-hand glimpse directly into this infamous artist’s creative process. Public speaker and writer Scott Berkun and I got together for tea to talk about the film and our own experiences around creativity. As both managers of creative teams and creators of work ourselves, we looked at how our processes aligned with Picasso’s…or where we could learn from him. As the discussion unfolded, we came up with an interesting set of guidelines that enable creativity to flourish.

Listen to podcast on www.TeaWithTeresa.com

I just finished working on a project where half of my team was in our Austin office and half was here in San Francisco, which meant 2 different time zones. In addition, our client was in yet another city. Since this was my first time working with such a split team, my learning curve around remote communication, meeting facilitation, and maintaining a strong team dynamic was pretty steep. I thought I’d take a moment to compile those learnings and share.

Tackling Time Zones

• Adjust daily schedule for both offices: A couple of days per week, work on the other team’s schedule/time zone (and vice versa).
• Create a clock for the other time zone on the dashboard of your computer for easy reference.
• People naturally assume you are talking about their time zone, which you may not be. So, make it a habit to always give the time in both times zones when discussing scheduling, no matter what the mode of communication (conversation in the hall, phone calls, IM, email, etc…).

Make It Feel Like Your WHOLE Team Is Right There With You

Use a monitor with dedicated web cam in your project room—sit it at project table (permanently) as if the remote team member(s) is sitting at a spot at the table. It makes them feel a bit more like a real person. (Note: use a Logitec web cam if you can afford it ($100)—quality is much better than iSite webcams.)

Remote Meeting Facilitation

• Adobe Acrobat Connect seems to be a great tool for me thus far. It has video (so you can see the other person/team), document sharing (everyone looks at the same thing at the same time), and the ability to mark on documents (you can point out, specifically, what you are talking about/needs changes).
• During remote meetings, I find that typing live notes about what is said on the shared screen really helps. That way, everyone sees and confirms what was heard and you get double-clarity/reinforcement.
• The downside of Adobe Acrobat Connect: Document resolution is so-so, so don’t use for visual design. Or, send the visual design documents and use the Adobe Acrobat Connect screen simply for reference/orientation during the meeting.

File Sharing

While I don’t like the interface, DropSend.com has biggest file limit out there for the price (it’s free depending on your use).

Shared Calendars

I like creating a shared Google project calendar and embedding it in Basecamp. I give the appropriate people (client team and internal team) the right to add/edit events, meetings, etc. And, you can also make Basecamp milestones feed directly into the calendar.

This is my list of learnings thus far. Please add to this post if you have good tips and tricks to share with the rest of us! And I’d love to hear about tools that you like better than the ones I’ve listed — I’m always on the lookout for better ways of doing things.

Part 1 of this interview.
Part 2 of this interview.

Margret Schmidt is among our speakers at MX 2009, taking place 2-3 March in San Francisco. You can register for MX 2009 using the promotional code BLOG and get 10% off. Prices increase January 31st.

PM: We met at a conference last fall where you were speaking about the design and launch of the new TiVo.com website. I believe you mentioned that the site design had not significantly changed for 5 or so years before this most recent launch (and looking at the Internet Archive confirms this. What had been the organizational barriers to change? How were you able to overcome those barriers and launch a radically new design? What did it take to make the site more of an extension of the TiVo product experience?

MS: Historically, tivo.com was treated as an online version of our marketing materials. It was about selling DVRs, and marketing was responsible for that function. Because there wasn’t an interaction design team within marketing, overhauls of the site involved external agencies and lots of money, and didn’t happen that often. As the company evolved the web site did too, and we added product features like online scheduling, and we enhanced customer support tools.

Over the five years where the site didn’t change much, we actually undertook two different redesigns that never launched. They failed for many reasons, but mostly for lack of communication, teamwork, and a shared vision. Different teams had different agendas, and we sent conflicting messages to our agencies.

This last redesign was successful because everyone came together with a common vision. The site as “owned” by marketing, and the redesign project was “lead” by user experience. We had very open communication and shared responsibility. We modeled the project after the way we ship DVRs and features – collaboration and iteration. We did use an agency for vision and high-level design, but also a strong internal team that kept the principles of TiVo’s ease and simplicity in focus during the detailed design and implementation. It was a lot of hard work, but everyone involved knew the end result would be worth it.

Once the redesign was complete, we immediately jumped into the metrics to figure out what needed to be tweaked, and then launched further updates to the home page, “What is TiVo?”, and “Shop” based on what what was working, and what wasn’t. This ongoing work is done internally, with user experience as a service organization working for marketing, product management, or customer support (depending on the site section).

PM: Now to something a little less pleasant. In TiVo’s SEC filings (PDF), it’s recorded that in the last two years, TiVo’s total subscription numbers have gone from 4.4 million to 3.5 million. Obviously, TiVo is in a wickedly competitive market, and, frankly, it’s a testament to the quality of your experience that you’re still around, when what you are competing with is essentially “free”. Still, it must be quite worrisome. As VP of User Experience Research and Design, for what are you and your group held accountable? Do you have any metrics for which you must deliver? What is the charter of the User Experience group in improving the bottom line?

Also, in your seven years at TiVo, what have you had to learn about how businesses operate? How has that changed your view of the role of User Experience in business?

MS: User Experience is responsible for supporting the business needs of various groups. We strive to deliver the best experience for our products, and the best research to inform decision making. We don’t have our own metrics — we share the metrics of our businesses, like selling DVRs or shipping features on a schedule. Over my (nearly eight!) years at TiVo I have had increasing exposure to the business. UE participates actively in product strategy, and shares insights from customers in all aspects of the business, including pricing, packaging, marketing, and support. We bring the customer viewpoint into the conversation, so that the decision maker can weigh it along with the business needs and the technical implications. I think it is critical that businesses have this perspective.

PM: Obviously, I agree that businesses need to have that customer experience perspective, but, clearly, many don’t. As such, I like to use companies with strong UX practices as exemplars. Thinking about that, and the challenges that TiVo is facing, how do you see User Experience maintaining and even improving TiVo’s marketshare or bottom line? What new value opportunities has User Experience identified for TiVo?

MS: It is pretty much the standard stuff. Anything we can do to reduce support costs or increase sales helps the bottom line. When we design features, we think about how to minimize the reasons people might call for support; and we add online self-service tools to tivo.com. To help increase sales, we analyze the reasons people don’t complete a purchase (like they couldn’t tell if the particular model of TiVo DVR would work with the setup they have in their home) and we identify ways to address them. We’re adding a tool to the web site that asks a few questions about your home A/V and networking setup, and then identifies the DVR models that will work for you. We want to give customers confidence in their purchase decision.

PM: I want to wrap up our little conversation here with a look toward TiVo’s future. What new experiences can we look forward to? Thank you for your time!

MS: You’ll see us continue to focus on getting great content to your TV. And we’ll give you new ways to discover the best TV for you – ways that help you get the most out of the channels you already pay for. In these times, when people are cutting back on their entertainment spending, we want TiVo to be a great value for finding and enjoying the TV and movies that are most interesting to you.

Thank you Peter. I enjoyed the interview and look forward to MX 2009!

Part 1 of this interview.

Margret Schmidt is among our speakers at MX 2009, taking place 2-3 March in San Francisco. You can register for MX 2009 using the promotional code BLOG and get 10% off. Prices increase January 31st.

Peter Merholz: In your earlier discussion of the departments involved in product development, Marketing was not mentioned. In many organizations, User Experience is located within the Marketing Department. What is User Experience’s relationship to Marketing? Marketing clearly has an impact on your customers’ experience, whether through advertising or your Web site. How do you achieve a holistic user experience that spans all these touchpoints?

Margret Schmidt: Marketing is outside of the Product Development organization, and User Experience is inside Product Development. The VP of Marketing is very engaged in the executive reviews of all products and designs. The feedback from Marketing is frequently about how the feature affects the marketing of the product, and what impact it has on the brand. The “user experience” of tivo.com is owned by the User Experience team. Marketing is the “business owner” of the site. Basically, UE is a service organization with the task of designing a site that best meets the needs of the marketing organization. Marketing sets the requirements (like product management does for product) and they are heavily involved in reviews. Once again it really comes down to collaboration and iteration. Whether it is a new feature, a new DVR, or an update to the web site, we involve many different roles, each with their individual responsibilities, but all welcome to share their feedback and ideas on any area. Of course, the most valuable feedback comes from our user research.

PM: You’ve made it pretty clear how collaboration occurs internally, and how that’s lead to consistently high quality experiences. When I asked my colleagues what they wanted to know about TiVo, the most common question is how TiVo interacts with external partners, particularly broadcasters and television service providers who might not share TiVo’s cusotmer-oriented mantras. How have you handled these relationships and maintained TiVo’s personality and elegance?

MS: In general, our relationships with partners start because they believe the TiVo experience will add some goodness to their brand. That means at project kickoff they already have quite a bit of confidence that we know what we’re doing. We keep that confidence intact by actively engaging with our partners throughout the design process. We listen to their requirements, we design experiences that meet the requirements, we review the concepts together, and we are very open about feedback and research findings. Sometimes our partners have wacky ideas, and we educate them by sharing research and experiences. Sometimes our partners have great ideas, and we take them! It is important that we don’t have an ego in this – we need to ship a great product *together*.

PM: You make it sound so easy! I want dirt! I want the messy details! Well, I know there are probably limits to what you’re willing to share, but I think those who read this would benefit from more specifics as to how you created that kind of alignment with your partners. I’m thinking there are two areas where this is key — at the outset when you establish a project’s vision, and throughout the project when reality prevents elements of that vision from being realized. So, have some follow-on questions: How do you establish a common vision at the outset of a project? (Documentation? Special types of meetings?) How do you educate them along the way? What works best, and, perhaps more importantly, what hasn’t worked? What mistakes have you made that we can learn from?

MS: Surprisingly, there really isn’t dirt. (Which is probably why I love my job so much.)

The relationship typically starts with a project kickoff meeting. It is attended by program, engineering, and executive leadership from both companies. These are one to two day meetings where much is shared on both sides about requirements, logistics, communication, etc. A portion of the meeting is dedicated to the user experience. We walk through our current UI, show them some designs in the works, have them walk through their product, and we talk. We talk about what they like (and don’t) about our UI, and what they like (and don’t) about their own. We hear their hopes and dreams for the product, and we share ours. We explain our design and research process. Our goal in the meeting is to listen, build trust, and learn the personalities of the players. This is the beginning of a long relationship where we need to be responsive, accommodating, and continue to show leadership in the design-for-TV space.

Sure, there were times when it got sticky. At the beginning of one project, a partner seemed most interested in creating an experience that had some areas that looked like our UI, and some areas that looked like theirs, so as you went from feature to feature you would have a different look and feel. Through patience (and lots of examples of what that experience would look like) they were eventually won over from what I called “the Frankenstein UI” to an intact TiVo UI. We had to do it in a way that they actually believed it was going to be a better experience and not that we were bullying them into it. We understood their motivation for wanting to maintain some of their experiences (brand and consistency with other devices in the home) but we needed them to really feel what it would be like for a user.

As far as documentation, there is typically a PRD from Product Management detailing requirements, but we often get high-level agreement earlier based on a set of UI Concepts. We use PowerPoint to show screens and walk through typical use cases. It is SO much easier to explain features by showing them. The team will engage better and have a deeper understanding if they see a few screens showing what a feature might look like instead of reading some bullets about its functionality. We use these concept decks throughout the design and development process. If we’ve had to change a design because we ran into a challenge, we send them a deck that shows the new behavior. Our partners are typically remote, so once we’ve had that initial face-to-face meeting we review concepts over the phone. Once you’ve met the personalities involved, you can understand the feedback they are giving. Trying to explain your designs, design philosophy, and that you are really open to feedback — when you’ve never had that personal connection — is one of my worst nightmares. If you don’t connect well in the beginning of the relationship, everything else is harder. You need to establish mutual trust.

The discussion will conclude in one additional post.

Earlier this week I got to see what Brian Cronin will be sharing at the end of our Managing Design Projects event, coming up on February 5, 2009, and I got really excited at the end of his presentation. This past year or so I’ve spent some time talking to experts in the field about managing visual design, and sharing ideas about project management. But in my conversation with Brian, he had me commit to something that I’m going to do to expand my practice of program management, and I’ve been bubbling with excitement ever since (yes, I said bubbling). I look forward to sharing with you, on the day of the event, what I’ve committed to, and learning from you all what you’re going to do to expand your practice.

If you’re a program, project, or product manager, come learn about conflict management, facilitation, client relationship management and much much more. Creating a community, and having you all meet each other, is just as important to us as the event itself, so please join us at the beautiful Ft. Mason in San Francisco! Pricing increases to $295 tomorrow, so register today.

Our old colleague Dan Saffer asked a brief question to the IxDA mailing list, “What should interaction designers know about strategy?” It set off an excellent discussion. I responded in the thread, but I wanted to rephrase the post here for the AP Blog.

For starters, there’s a tendency to equate “strategy” with “business”, and I think that can be harmful. There are many examples of design that aren’t suited to business, but none that aren’t suited to strategy.

When I think of strategy in the context of our design work, I think of three things:

• philosophy
• vision
• planning

Philosophy asks, “What are you about? What do you stand for, what is your approach?” Whatever it is that you will be designing needs to be informed by some underlying philosophy, some point of view. The “design mantras” for TiVo that Margret Schmidt shared with Matt Haughey are an excellent example:

* It’s entertainment, stupid.
* It’s TV, stupid.
* It’s video, damnit.
* Everything is smooth and gentle.
* No modality or deep hierarchy.
* Respect the viewer’s privacy.
* It’s a robust appliance, like a TV.

(Margret Schmidt is speaking at MX 2009, by the way. Use RNSB and get 15% off!)

Vision asks, “Where are you headed? How will you know you’re successful?” This vision is an articulation of the philosophy that motivates action. Sometimes the vision can be captured in a single compelling statement, such as Kodak’s classic, “You press the button, we do the rest.” Or the exemplar from bestseller Made To Stick, John Kennedy’s pledge: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” A philosophy is insufficient for driving design, particularly something as complex as interaction design. Vision provides the north star that guides your efforts toward a successful outcome.

Planning asks, “How will you get there?” I find that in most discussions of strategy, planning is overlooked, with people more interested in talking about positioning, competition or other big picture items. But when I’ve seen products and projects fail, it’s often because there was bad planning — the go-to-market strategy was flawed, either too ambitious or not ambitious enough, resulting in the release of products that either aren’t yet ready for prime time (say, the first release of Apple Newton) or woefully behind the pack (the first release of Microsoft Zune). Perhaps the single most useful technique we teach at Adaptive Path’s UX Intensive Design Strategy day is the Product Evolution Map, which brings rationality and sensibility to the standard product roadmap.

It’s important to recognize that planning alone is insufficient — most plans have to change, and it’s important that you have a vision and philosophy that keeps the plans on track.

With these three elements in place, your design work is grounded, and set up to succeed.

Last month we announced Managing Design Projects, a ‘grassroots’ Adaptive Path conference, coming up on February 5th 2009. Since we announced the event, we’ve had people from around the world register. We’re thrilled to create this new community of people that help make design work happen behind the scenes.

We also announced that Scott Berkun will be keynoting at the event. He is not only author of Myths of Innovation, and Making Things Happen, but a kick-ass speaker with great stories from his experience managing projects at Microsoft.

Lynne Waldera, founder and CEO of InMomentum, Inc, a management consultancy, will also be speaking at the event. She’s an expert in organization strategy and one of the wisest people I’ve ever met. She will be talking with us about: Conflict Maneuvers:  Navigating disagreement, politics and emotions to “make things happen”. I’ve had a preview of what Lynne will be sharing with us, and I believe it will be valuable to anyone that’s works with creative teams on making big things happen.

Come join us to hear Scott & Lynne speak.

Space is limited to 60 people for this deeply discounted event, so register today! Price increases to $299 on January 15th.

We are happy to announce that Scott Berkun will keynote our Managing Design Projects conference in February. This is very exciting for us and having heard Scott present in the past I am confident he will really get things off on the right foot. We have also posted the schedule of the day’s activities to give everyone a taste of what is to come.

As my colleague Julia mentioned a few weeks ago, after looking for events that focused on project management we found the field largely dominated by tools developers (Hello Microsoft!) and the Project Management Institute both of which didn’t feel like they addressed the particular needs of project managers who work in the design field. So we created our own!

The goals of the event are to identify some best practices, common work-arounds, key tools and begin a conversation with our peers that we have admired seeing our colleagues enjoy with both the IXDA and IA Summit. Since PMs don’t necessarily go to the same places to get information about how they do their work and how they can do it better, I am asking you to forward this to a PM that you know.

As this is the first time we are holding this type of an event, we have priced it below our other events at a thrifty $249. As of January 15th the price will increase to $295. If you have 2008 education budget left you can take advantage of the current event sale that will give you an additional %15 off until 2009! What a deal!

Register today!

Although UX Week is coming up, it doesn’t mean things are all quiet for our other events. We have a slew of new speaker videos from this spring’s MX Conference up for you this week. These aren’t just excerpts, these are their full presentations.

Ryan Armbruster, Chief Experience Officer for OnCURE Medical Corp.: How Emotion Transforms Experience

By the way, Ryan is hiring service designers.

Björn Hartmann, Stanford University & Microsoft Research: New Interactions: Enlightened Trial and Error

Stephen Anderson, VP of Design, Viewzi: Leading the Rebellion: Turning Ideas into Reality

At the end of the conference, Brandon challenged everyone to take one idea that they had heard and to try it out in practice. Inspired partially by Brian Cronin’s talk about Earth Day, the Designer’s Accord and going green, Thomas Obrey and our friends at PixelMEDIA in Portsmouth, NH are taking steps, both internally and with clients, to make a difference.

You can already register for next year’s MX Conference, March 1-3, 2009. It will be held in San Francisco. Use the code BLOG and get 10% off.