Experience Planner

Here’s some of what I’ve been reading and thinking about this week.

Fever, a Self-Hosted Feed Reader (TechCrunch)

Here’s another example of “Genius Design” in action. Shaun Inman designed a new type of RSS reader, which actually sounds really intriguing to me and would probably match well with my own style of managing RSS feeds. Previously, Shawn created other successful web products by designing with himself as the only intended audience. In fact, in the TechCrunch article he says, “I designed Fever (like Mint) first and foremost for myself. Any money I make on top of the personal utility I get out of it is just icing on the cake.”

That’s a totally valid approach to design, especially since he’s upfront about not caring who else gets benefit from the product. But Shaun is lucky to be working only on products for himself and where he already has deep knowledge of the space. For most design projects, I would argue that insights developed through user research are critical to making a great design.

Did Chase consider the importance of the customer experience before throwing out WaMu’s “Occasio”? (AdaptivePath)

I love this story, even though it’s kind of sad. When Chase took over Washington Mutual bank locations, they redesigned them to meet their usual business objective: aggressively cross-selling financial services. But in doing so, they (probably unwittingly) destroyed a customer utopia.

Customer experience has so many parallels to user experience design online. Yes, we need to design to achieve business objectives, but not at the cost of turning off customers. The key to good product design is finding the balance between meeting business objectives and serving customer needs.

Nielsen Debunks Myths On Teens And Media – They Still Watch TV! (TechCrunch)

Would you have guessed that adults between 21 and 35 watch online videos 35% more than teens? Or that adults spend 25 hours and 15 minutes per month browsing the internet, versus only 11 hours and 32 minutes per month for teenagers? This kind of research is so important for debunking myths about our target audiences and helping us keep a clear understanding of where and how to reach them.

The Semantic Web (Adaptive Path)

The semantic web really interests me since it holds the potential for us to finally build Star Trek-like computers — ones the actually understand what we’re saying and can intelligently answer our questions. Unfortunately, discussions of the semantic web have mostly been relegated to:

1. Confused nonsense about Web 3.0
2. Detailed discussions of the technology necessary to make it work

So I was encouraged to see Chiara Fox from Adaptive Path say that the industry is making progress. The technology is now reasonably well understood so we can now get busy actually doing it. In fact, just this year at the IA Summit, some people from the BBC presented about their thorough and very smart efforts to catalog and present all of the BBC’s content in a semantically valid way. Very clever stuff!

Hello World!

Today marks only my second day with Bridge but the boss wanted me to get a head start posting to this experience blog. I join the team, a graduate of the Digital Design discipline at the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP college, with a collection of past professional cooperative opportunities in the user-experience arena. I started off in web design and development and looked toward college to compliment those skills, fortunately what I found was exactly that; only not what I had expected at all.

Going into college I had a single talent and that was building websites. They were not the greatest websites and honestly they didn’t look very good either. However, DAAP introduced me to the right-side of my brain. In today’s work force the growing industries and explosive fields revolve around creative people, people who can connect with their clients and provide them exactly what they want. A now universal example of this is Apple and how they have reintroduced care for their users in their devices, software, and services. Experience planners live through this concept and they are committed to providing a service tuned to their clients’ needs. This is why I am here and this is exactly what I plan to do.

I have recently finished reading “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel Pink, a book I highly recommend. Pink has dissected today’s business economy and argues that we are transitioning from a very left-brained society to a much more right-brained society. He does this tastefully by introducing six aptitudes as a framework for developing your skills in transition to the new model. My favorite of his six is “Empathy” and how we must live in other people’s shoes and understand and respect their needs and objectives. This book has really molded my perspective of my career and I have recognized the importance of having a multi-faceted skillset, being open to everything around me. To practice this I have started sketching and reading more, something I encourage everyone to do.

I was chatting with a friend recently when I made a critical error and asked, What are you doing this weekend? No, no. It’s not what you think.

I genuinely enjoy hearing what people are planning on doing with their free time, but they always reciprocate and ask me what I’ll be up to. And I can’t think of anything. I run errands and go out to dinner like a normal person, but that doesn’t seem convo-worthy. Really, my weekends are often spent reading through a pile of New Yorkers or watching a movie (or in times of nuttiness, working).

However, a couple of weeks ago, I took a week off. I hung out at home, and I’m proud to say I read the following:

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell: I keep Gladwell’s books and New Yorker pieces handy, b/c they’re excellent for quick, entertaining, provocative reads.

Sources of Power by Gary Klein: I’ve read chapters from Dr Klein’s book, but not the whole chimichanga. I am fascinated by decision-making, and there is so much knowledge in this book. I have taken many lessons from it, but reading it through was even better. I think it’s a must-read for anyone who works in a team environment, develops products that other people will use, and/or plans experiences.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner: I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read the book, just the blog. Economics is fascinating, and Mssrs. Levitt and Dubner make it a thing of beauty.

Microtrends by Mark Penn: I love subcultures and little emerging pockets of interest. Very cool, especially since it’s an election year.

Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn: Surf/noir… the seedy underbelly of the California dream… cults… good stuff.

So, all in all, I had an excellent vacation. Expect to see references to some of these books in future posts.