Creative work, particularly visual design, is often labelled as subjective and determined by personal taste. When it comes to Art that may be the case, but when it concerns creative work for marketing or user experiences there should be as little subjectivity as possible. Creative ideas that feed into the process do simply pop out of the air and are subject to the inspiration of the person producing them. However, everything that follows that initial inspiration should be guided by rationales and logical choices such as:
- What is most appropriate for the intended audience
- What options have performed successfully or not in user research
- Adherence to standards for the brand, campaign or product
- Culture preferences and norms (particularly international differences)
- Faithfulness to the message or vision to be conveyed
- Ability to achieve the desired objectives
Not only does the rationale guide the creative work to be more effective and targetted, but it also provides a compelling set of talking points when presenting the creative to stakeholders, and also powerful lines of reasoning in response to questions or challenges to the creative. I am a huge believer in big ideas and the power of a great creative vision, but when it comes to the management and development of those things there’s no excuse for not having a reasoned approach.
Filed under: creative delivery, method, style , big ideas, creative, creativity, design, inspiration, method, rationale, vision
The long standing ‘page’ paradigm of websites is on its way out, and the complexity and functionality of an individual page is becoming more on a par with a software UI. Before, it was quite reasonable to map out your user experience with static page designs and do some user testing to iron out any issues. Now, the only way to be sure how the interactive functionality within each page will work is to build and a prototype.
Forrester recently put up an article pointing out (and they’re not the first) that with the power of AJAX, Flash and other web 2.0 techonologies comes responsibility. The complexity of these features is unpredictable as a customer experience. The experience and knowledge of how to successfully implement these things hasn’t yet grown much in the web community either.
Prototypes are the best way to cut through these issues. You’ll see the UI in action and immediately spot interaction flaws that weren’t apparent on the static designs. You can put it in front of customers and identify areas that need better usability – ideally several times, so you can chip away until the solution is 90% good.
Prototypes offer value beyond developing a good user experience too: They’re a great sales tool for showing clients or internal stakeholders your vision, for getting that all important buy-in. They’re also a great way of pulling your team out of a linear, waterfall process and having everyone actively engaged at the same time on developing the solution.
A final thought: The best scenario of all is that you can actually develop your site in place of the prototype and iteratively test and refine the site itself. If you’re in a position to do that, you can take the same approach but with your actual site build. We don’t all have that luxury though.
PS. There’s a good rounded article about the value of prototyping on A List Apart
Filed under: creative delivery , AJAX, buy-in, Flex, prototypes, prototyping, user testing, UX, wireframes
Blinkers are those things that are often put on horses so that their peripheral vision is cut off. That way they can’t see what’s around them and all their attention is focused in front, where the rider/driver wants them to go. There’s a comparable mentality when someone says about their business ‘this is what we do’ and define it in terms of your main successful product. There’s a customer base that repeatedly comes to the site and does X and Y, so putting all effort into optimising X and Y seems the best thing to do.
Here’s the problem with this approach: First or second time around you should have made X and Y effective to around 90% (if you can’t achieve that you’ve got some other issues to solve). After that, if you keep working on X and Y, you will be putting in a lot of effort in trying to squeeze out a few extra percent. It’s likely that a better approach is to take off the blinkers and look around at what else your customers may want to do, identify opportunities and unfulfilled needs, and go after those. You’ll find new revenue streams and maybe even new markets.
Spending time and energy on the things that are not ‘the most important’ will seem hard to justify, but a good way to position it is in terms of your customers – you want to know your customers better, and seek out the best value in both the core market and the peripheries.
Filed under: folly, general , base, blinkers, blinkers syndrome, core business, customers, mentality, periphery, strategy
I saw this great snippet on Bruce Temkin’s obit for Tim Russert about leadership lessons that he saw Russert exemplify during his life. I thought these were great guideposts for anyone taking a leadership role and wanted to share:
- Tackle complicated situations, but simplify your communications.
- Expect a lot from your people, but help them succeed.
- Push for excellence, but do it with enthusiasm.
- Ask the hard questions, but stay fair.
- Focus on the issue, not yourself.
- Act professionally, but don’t lose your humanity.
I like how these show the value of drive, vision and asking more from your people – yet with a balanced, human and fair approach.
Filed under: general , leadership, russert, bruce temkin
This is a blast from the past: WebMonkey by Wired
The site is much different but seeing that little monkey character at the top brings back memories from back in the day of chugging through tutorials on hot new web design tricks (probably laughable now). Apparently the site is more of a wiki format. I noticed a set of tutorials on Information Architecture and can’t help wondering how hotly contested the how-to-do-IA tutorials will become!
Filed under: creative delivery, folly, general , blast from the past, tutorials, web design, webmonkey, wiki, wired
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