Nine Resolutions for 2005

by The Adaptive Path Team

January 6, 2005

1. Build brand integrity.

Janice Fraser

One of the things I love to hate about traditional agencies is the degree to which they misunderstand brand. Landor defines brand as, “The sum of all the characteristics, tangible and intangible, that make the offer unique.”

It’s a definition so broad as to be nearly meaningless, which leaves room for agencies to overlook the most important component, a customer’s interaction with the offering. I’d rather the definition were, “the sum of all characteristics, perceived and experienced, that make an offer unique.” In other words, what’s missing from brand management in the traditional advertising agencies is the user.

Ad agencies and communications firms fail to recognize that brands are ultimately created not through imagery and advertisements, but through experiences. Will a company be perceived as “trustworthy, creative, and enterprising” when its website offers thoughtless navigation?

This year, I resolve to create products and websites that express brand through their structure and function. By creating experiences that embody brand attributes, I resolve to increase the brand’s integrity.

2. Shut up and make stuff.

Jesse James Garrett

As advocates of user-centered design, we often place a strong emphasis on research and planning before any design project. There’s a good reason for this emphasis: Most of the user experience problems we see with products in the marketplace could have been avoided with a little forethought. But the pitfall of this approach is that we sometimes place too much emphasis on planning at the expense of experimentation. In some cases, analysis will only get you so far. Eventually, you just have to try something and see if it works. The trick, of course, is to actually do that follow-up – to measure and monitor how design changes influence user behavior – and then be willing to act on what we’ve found.

For 2005, I’m resolving to keep an eye out for cases when we’ve reached the limit of what we can learn from research and analysis, and to be unafraid to try out solutions that aren’t grounded in analytic rigor.

3. Improve the quality of deliverables.

Tim Gasperak

As an industrial designer I used to draw for a living, and the success of my projects was largely dependent on my ability to communicate clearly through my sketches. I remember one project as a young designer when my team and I had spent weeks generating concepts for a medical imaging system.

I was responsible for documenting my team’s recommendations in a series of concept drawings. I spent hours on sketches and elaborate renderings, painstakingly documenting our solutions, only to fax the renderings to our client as an incoherent, blobby mess. Instantly the value of our ideas was lost, and worse, the ideas never reached the people who would most benefit from them: our client’s patients.

I learned an important lesson from that experience: The best ideas in the world are of no benefit to anyone if they aren’t communicated effectively. In this way, design deliverables are often just as important as the ideas embodied in them. My colleague, Jesse , has a knack for creating elegant, eminently useful diagrams that encapsulate months of thought, and that almost make his ideas seem obvious.

As designers, this is what we should be striving for. My resolution for 2005 is to improve the quality of our deliverables so that they measure up to the quality of our thoughts; so that our clients can use them to accomplish great things.

4. Forget the hard sell.

Laura Kirkwood Datta

Adaptive Path is different than many other organizations, in that our goal is not just to make money, but also to lead the field in what we do. Because of that, our sales philosophy is different, too.

In many businesses, the sales team is a silo entity bringing in work to feed the bottom line—regardless of the interest in, or value of, that work. We don’t see things that way.

We choose our projects based on two criteria: 1) We make sure that our services are genuinely what our clients need, and 2) We give weight to projects that will impact and advance the field.

As a sales executive, it can be excruciating to turn away lucrative projects, but doing so ensures that we’re available to partner with the companies that inspire us, and those that we can most aid.

In 2005, I resolve to forget about the hard sell, and to find partnerships that provide mutual value.

5. Put relationships over content management.

Peter Merholz

As an information architect, my tendency is to address the content of a website as a series of discrete elements. I prepare to analyze, organize, and present it. “Where should this content live?” and “How will people find it?” are typically the paramount questions.

This approach, however, ignores a fundamental question, “Why do we have this content in the first place?” Content isn’t interesting in and of itself. Content is interesting only in the way it allows readers to successfully perform some task, while creators achieve an organizational goal.

When you look at it that way, you realize that content is only relevant when it serves as a mediator between an organization and its customers (patrons, visitors, readers, and so on). Sound content helps both parties to get to know one another better, creating a mutually beneficial connection.

Because of this, I resolve to approach the user experience design of websites not as a matter of managing content, but as a matter of nurturing and maturing relationships.

(For more on the idea of information as simply a relationship broker, read “The Relationship Revolution”, an insightful essay by Michael Schrage.)

6. Ask the basic questions.

Lane Becker

There’s something about organizational websites that screams, “Complicate me!” Maybe it’s the nature of the beast. The scope of a website involves the entire company, so the entire company often gets involved. The backend technology is expensive, so the support system needs to justify the cost. But what users want out of a website, and what most websites need, is simplicity; ease of use; message clarity; a direct line between what people need to do and what can be done.

The best website I’ve ever seen is one my partner Jeff introduced me to, the USDA’s Hay.net. There are two reasons people come to Hay.net—you either have hay, or you need it. And so the site has two options: “Have hay.” “Need hay.” I show this to people and they say, “I wish our website could be like that.” Usually there’s no reason it can’t be. So in 2005, I resolve to ask these questions with every site I work on: Have hay? Need hay?

7. Watch my language.

Indi Young

User centered design is a worldwide field; I resolve to make my examples more applicable to worldwide audiences.

It’s amazing how many pop-culture references, colloquialisms, and even puns creep into my language. “Let’s try to parallelize, not paralyze” is amusing to English-speakers only. “Bread crumbs” means more than “bits of bread,” and there’s almost always a native-language equivalent for “a means to find your way back.”

If I take the time to review my writing and edit my speaking for a wider audience, even my English-speaking audience will benefit from the clarity.

8. Get rid of bullets.

Jeffrey Veen

I give lots of presentations. It seems like I’m always in boardrooms, classrooms, or giant auditoriums saying something about something. After standing in front of so many groups, I’ve learned an important lesson: The presentation is not the slides on the screen, it’s the words I’m saying.

Many of us, myself included, fall into a presentation rut. We organize our thoughts into a PowerPoint outline, add a template, and then recite each bullet point to our audience with a few verbal embellishments.

This year, I’m working on eliminating bullet points entirely from my presentations. I’ve been trying instead to show screenshots, illustrations, or metaphorical imagery while I speak. Then I print an outline and give that to the audience.

This year, I’ll get up there and tell a good story, and give visuals only when it adds something.

9. Build a community of design managers.

Bryan Mason

Adaptive Path just moved into our new offices in the South Park neighborhood of San Francisco. Several great design companies, consulting firms, and the like have offices within walking distance of our new place. When I thought of all the smart folks managing these companies – organizations like Technorati, Creative Commons, Cooper, Six Apart, Hot Studios, Method, Giant Ant, Mule Design, and Carbon Five – I realized that we’ve got to start getting together.

With so many big brains so near by, I resolve to help foster a community of design management professionals. There are loads of places designers go to talk to other designers, but where do design managers go to discuss, praise, lament, and compare tactics for managing the design process? The answer is, here.

The Adaptive Path team combines an industry-leading understanding of user behavior with a commitment to meeting the business goals of its clients.