Best of luck to all those designers out there who are fighting the good fight to get the best possible user experience to the end user.

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Let’s start with the move. The business world in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado seemed to have very few opportunities for someone who wanted to continue creating world-class UX strategy and design, and I had grown tired of jumping on an airplane every week to fly to where the work was. I also had a strong desire to try something completely different – working on the CLIENT side as a full-time team member rather than continuing as an agency creative or independent gun-for-hire. Why? Well, my hypothesis was that working client-side would allow me to take the initial design work done so often as a contractor beyond the initial execution so that it could be properly integrated with ALL of a company’s brand experiences and not merely be a one-off solution distinct from the rest of the customer touchpoints. Thus, I started searching for the right product design opportunity, considering firms around the world that seemed ripe with possibilities.

In the end, I took a job with Autodesk in San Francisco as a Senior UX Manager. The opportunities were excellent, with this venerable desktop CAD software company wanting to extend their desktop leadership into the web, mobile and cloud spaces. My wife and I packed up and moved back to the SF Bay area, renting a small apartment under the Bay Bridge. I was back.

Eleven months later, it was painfully obvious that while there are certainly many very bright people at Autodesk, the leadership – both overall and in the design discipline – were not ready, willing or capable of moving their traditional, stodgy, political, slow, annual-cycle software development processes into the innovative, rapidly-moving, quick and agile world of web or mobile. The “leadership” delivered no clear articulation of strategy, vision or plans, and at the “true” designer level, it was nearly impossible to execute any high-quality product design because the unfocused direction and confused organization shifted constantly underfoot.

My teams had begun several initiatives, ranging from cloud collaboration and web services to mobile apps and customer account management SaaS tools. Only a few were completed, including one well-designed mobile app that was crippled by executives but should see the light of day sometime later this year. In the end, I exited stage left, but hope to find opportunities to work with those smart Autodesk teammates somewhere else down the road.

What did I learn from the experience? I still hold out hope that product design on the client side can be a very rewarding role, but after putting in my time at Autodesk, working and chatting with many of the experienced UX designers there, and connecting with designers at several other larger Bay Area software companies, it seems apparent that “high quality” may not exist at any company of more than 300 employees. Large technology firms are too political, too “old boy network” and have too many “worried about keeping my job rather than doing my job” non-designers in design leadership roles. (I’d love for someone to prove me wrong – send me a note and let me know where the excellent large design businesses can be found!)

As for working on the other side of the table, it is very apparent that companies give their full-time employees FAR less attention and credibility than they do outside contractors. I saw this directly when Autodesk contracted to Smart Design for a couple of design projects, just as I saw it during my many years as a consultant. Perhaps because a company is paying an astronomical fee for a contractor, they treat those outside agencies with much more respect than they treat their own flesh and blood. It’s as though the firm has forgotten how much of the same time, effort and cost they expended to hire “experts” as full-time employees. And as far as “seeing design through to be integrated with all other brand experiences” goes, Autodesk was definitely NOT the place for that to happen, having grown almost completely by acquisition, and thus having one of the most siloed and dysfunctional organizations I’ve ever seen. Perhaps my “client-side” experiment was based on a flawed hypothesis, or perhaps I simply didn’t start out with the right “client”. I’ll continue my research elsewhere.

In any case, it was a great learning experience, allowing me the chance to work with some great new colleagues, explore mobile app design, and see what sorts of companies and “design cultures” I should look for and avoid at all costs. If nothing else, it brought me back to San Francisco, where I’ve reconnected with old friends and made quite a few new ones. And the story isn’t over yet. Next up: Startups.

The Greenbrier hired Resort Technology Partners (RTP), the industry-leader in resort marketing, to create a new website to support their renovation efforts. RTP subcontracted me to create the UX strategy & design for the project and I happily joined their outstanding creative team.

One of the most significant challenges for the Greenbrier was to attract an entirely new generation of visitors who knew next to nothing about the excellence of this 233-year-old resort, while also catering to the tradition and reserved elegance demanded by the “old guard,” long-term patrons. Additionally, the Greenbrier had grown over the years to include not only the vacation destination, which encompassed the hotel, casino, spa and golf facilities, but also a real estate community and health clinic, each of which had their own brand, website and organizational structure.

After performing a comprehensive content and usability study of the multiple websites, I spoke at length with sales and marketing staff within each organization. We quizzed the Greenbrier customer service team about their history of typical customer questions and challenges, and carefully reviewed analytics of the existing website.

Several brainstorming sessions with RTP staff led to a UX strategy of “modern elegance” and a site architecture that effectively integrated the disparate business units under a single, overarching brand umbrella.

Additional conversations with the client addressed the challenges of creating and maintaining a large amount of content in an organization that was already strapped for time and resources. We envisioned a content strategy that utilized third-party solutions to create their interactive maps in both the resort and real estate business.

After thorough development of user personas, scenarios, site map and page schematics, the visual design team at RTP, under the masterful direction of Creative Director Margaret Cyphers, took over and created a completely new online experience for the Greenbrier’s target audiences. By artfully combining traditional visuals and modern technology, we developed an experience that would appeal to both old and new customers, while perfectly supporting the resort’s renovation theme of “The Greenbrier Re-Imagined.”

The client was incredibly pleased and their re-opening activities proved to be a wild success. Our project’s greater impact is with the resort’s web customers, with online revenue increasing 300% from $1M to $4.5M last year.

Per my usual process, we set out to learn as much as possible about the business and their target audiences. The project was originally intended to create a single design that would accommodate customers in more than a dozen countries spread around the world, each with distinctly different shopping cultures, internet usage styles and connectivity infrastructures. This “one size fits all” attitude, along with severe time and budget constraints, would prove challenging throughout the project.

After meetings with the corporate brand group in Bentonville, AR, we learned that Walmart was in the process of transitioning not only their visual brand and tagline (Save money. Live better.), but also the environmental design of the customer experience in their retail stores. Their new theme of “wider aisles” in the retail stores directed our subsequent visual designs for the global site. More importantly, we used these corporate brand materials to remind the entire team of these new values while designing the user experience of the new global e-commerce website.

Customer research efforts were brief, utilizing existing video and transcripts of interviews and focus group sessions performed previously by the corporate branding group. These were also used to remind both Walmart and Deloitte technology teams that the target audiences were not typically young, technologically-savvy, early adopters like themselves.

The team spent long hours developing the functional requirements for the complex e-commerce design. Walmart’s “ship to store” and “multiple shipping address” policies created significant challenges for the checkout experience, but working closely with Deloitte’s retail experts resulted in ground-breaking solutions. I served as the “voice of the customer” in these sessions, ensuring that the customer experience was protected and enhanced with innovative solutions.

UX design then proceeded quickly, as I mentored a group of Deloitte consultants to document the personas, scenarios, user flows and subsequent site maps and page schematics. Creating an effective information architecture and logical hierarchy for the product catalog was complicated by Walmart’s organizational structure. And their desire to generate additional revenue by selling home page banner ad space to unrelated, third-party brands provoked a particularly vocal discussion about user-centric design.

Creating a collection of “best practices” that applied to all customers in the wildly different cultures around the world was another fascinating challenge, and I vocalized my cautions and caveats about the resulting design. When the single UX design was adapted to each country, the amount of localization and globalization needed to produce a meaningful and usable shopping experience for the different audiences would be significant.

In the end, we created a e-commerce website prototype that exemplified the new Walmart brand and presented a greatly improved UX that led a high-level client executive to remark that he wanted this new design to replace the current American walmart.com website. It remains to be seen if this design will be utilized globally, though several aspects of the final design have made their way into Walmart’s Canadian website.

You can read about the Johnson O’Connor philosophy at their website, or via the book “Your Natural Gifts” [Margaret E. Broadley]. My understanding is that O’Connor has determined that there are a basic set of core aptitudes that a person either has in abundance or does not. Each person’s aptitudes are part of their genetic makeup, and do not change over time. The key to professional success and/or happiness lies in finding a career that aligns with your personal collection of aptitudes.

Over two days, we were tested in a wide variety of ways, usually timed and with a test administrator. The tests explored a diverse range of exercises from manual dexterity to rhythm memory to “wiggly block” stacking, all intended to discover in which particular aptitudes we excelled. The overall experience was outstanding and mind-opening, as we were eager to gain some meaningful self-awareness and the JOCRF staff were wonderfully friendly and highly competent about their system.

As it turns out, I’m already doing a job that is close to my ideal path. In high school, I intuited that a career in architecture was the way to go, but ended up studying electrical engineering in college. That first instinct was spot on, according to the JOCRF results. Other possibilities include medicine/surgery, scientific research, urban planning, archaeology or music composition. Anything that uses my combination of convergent thinking, numerical, spatial, auditory and memory aptitudes would leverage my particular strengths and provide a rewarding career. Without telling the JOCRF staff what I currently do for a living, they informed me that I was highly suited for a job that observed multi-dimensional environments, diagnosed problems and developed solutions to fix them. I’d like to think that the VIBE process represents those aptitudes exactly.

Ironically, my wife the architect tested highly in the “Designer” pattern. Perhaps we could merely switch business cards and be done with it. The best part of the experience may be that we both became aware of aptitudes we didn’t think we had, as well as “missing aptitudes” that explained some frustrations in our current professional lives. Now comes the challenge to use my particular aptitudes to diagnose and fix those areas of my job that aren’t exactly aligned to those same aptitudes. Physician, heal thyself.

Especially interesting for me was how this “research” project was very much akin to the efforts that I strongly recommend to my clients. Very often, I push companies to use research methods to discover whether their products, marketing efforts and end-to-end customer experiences are designed to be in alignment with what their target audiences want and need. Now I find that I am the customer, with my set of wants and needs (professional satisfaction and happiness), trying to determine if my “customer experiences”, or choice of career and work environment, are in tune (vibing?) with those desires.

How “self-aware” are you about your customers and their wants, needs and passions? When was the last time you “tested” them to determine if the experiences you provide to them are in alignment with their particular “aptitudes”? Are you creating VIBE with them, or do you need to tweak and adjust your brand experience to narrow that gap? You should find out immediately. And if you need the assistance of someone with convergent thinking, numerical, spatial, auditory and memory aptitudes to help you diagnose your situation, now you know who to call.

Two fascinating books have held my attention for the past few months – “Fortune’s Formula” and “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”, both by William Poundstone. Both delve deeply into game theory, information theory and risk management, explaining these complex concepts via fun-to-read stories about such colorful characters as Bugsy Siegel, Warren Buffett, Rudy Giuliani, Meyer Lansky and Ivan Boesky. The real characters behind these theories and principles include mathematical luminaries John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Ed Thorp, John Kelly and John Nash – their stories are even more engrossing because of the immeasurable effects their thinking has had upon all facets of the world.

“The Prisoner’s Dilemma” is a historical overview of game theory, primarily focusing on John von Neumann and his development of this controversial topic. If you only read through the experiments and puzzles that von Neumann and his colleagues created to explore how humans deal with logic, greed, rational and irrational behavior, you’ll be sufficiently entertained and enlightened (and probably hungry for more). The stories about the personal lives of the mathematicians provides a even deeper understanding of how difficult it has been for the world to determine any practical applications of game theory.

“Fortune’s Formula” builds further upon these topics and takes on information theory, tying together the concepts of blackjack and hedge funds via the “Kelly Criterion”. More complex mathematics are explained via fascinating stories about gangsters, MIT professors and Wall Street gamblers of all kinds.

I found a wide variety of relevances and connections to the practice of brand experience strategy and design, especially when they relate to customer research and risk management (see my blog article “Betting Blind”) and irrational customer behavior (read about dollar auctions in “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”). Hopefully, you’ll find connections to your world as well – enjoy.

After a few years of trendiness, high-stakes professional poker has been relegated to late-nights on ESPN 8 (“The Ocho”). But businesses large and small continue to take wildly unnecessary risks on their brands in this same “betting blind” manner. Unfortunately, the results are about the same. The savvy, cunning experts who know both the odds and their competitors’ “tells” come out on top while the impatient, foolish rookies lose their entire stake and go home with their tails between their legs.

A few recent projects have all had one remarkable characteristic in common – brands willing to make enormous assumptions about their customers without actually talking to them. They launch million-dollar initiatives in the dark – betting blind – with only their “gut instincts”, personal viewpoints and sheer chutzpah to guide their product designs, marketing efforts and other brand experiences.

Note that these are the very same clients who claim that they don’t have the same marketing budgets they had in years past. They assert that they don’t have the money to spend on customer or market research. But in bypassing that effort, they end up wasting even more money launching in the wrong direction with the wrong message to the wrong targets.

What’s often worse is that the people making the assumptions are nothing like their target customers. Gen-Y, Amazon.com-loving computer programmers usually don’t empathize well with Gen-X, middle-aged mothers of three who shop at discount superstores. Computer whiz kids at high-tech Manhattan agencies usually can’t put themselves in the shoes of digitally-challenged, suburban forty-somethings who are looking for a better way to rent movies.

Why would you bet your stack of chips before the cards are dealt when it’s just as easy to look at the flop in order to determine your true odds and course of action? Why would you increase your RISK by ignoring or refusing data that would give you a tremendous advantage against failure? What is the logic here?

This phenomenon is not new, as evidenced by the existence of applicable maxims galore. “Penny-wise and pound foolish” describes those who would skimp on the basics and miss out on larger opportunities. “Measure twice and cut once” is the carpenter’s mantra to save money by putting in extra thought before risking irreversible mistakes. Perhaps the venerable Ben Franklin said it best: “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

Simply put, there is no substitute for solid market intelligence. Note that this doesn’t require large budgets, but merely clear, rational and EFFICIENT research and analysis activities. Once prospective customers are clearly identified, brands that perform surgical focus group sessions, surveys and even individual interviews learn a great deal about how their customers view the product/service category, product alternatives, competitors, brands, influencers/recommenders and all of the intangible aspects that affect buying decisions.

A recent brainstorming session for our own marketing efforts resulted in a clarified brand assertion : “We think before we create.” Just as many clients jump to action before performing sufficient discovery and strategy efforts, we’ve come to realize that many of OUR competitors do the same thing. If you watch television commercials (does anyone actually do this any more?), you’ll quickly see the results of that kind of process. Misguided, mis-targeted, miscommunicated mistakes abound. It seems obvious that these brands and their agencies didn’t actually talk with any customers before creating this drivel.

If you like gambling, go for it. Hopefully, you’ll guess correctly and win the big pot. But if you’d rather make your bets knowing that you have the best hand and are practically guaranteed wild success, we can help. Let us work with you to “think before you spend” and gain an advantage of your competitors through effective, efficient customer research and analysis. Give us a call and let’s get started.

Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the group dynamic in this room with its twelve cycling stations. Getting that many cyclists to agree on a single course can be challenging, but the more interesting negotiations revolve around a much larger issue. What music will we play on the sound system? In fact, many riders are so particular that they’ll plug in their ear buds and crank up their own playlist to 11, blocking out all other competing sound. The reason? When you’re struggling to beat your personal best from the last training session, inspirational music can be the difference between pushing through the pain and giving in to the temptation to quit. The right music inspires the right behavior.

During the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics, AT&T launched their “Team USA Soundtrack” campaign where customers could text and download songs recorded exclusively to inspire and support the American athletes. To explain their choice of “The Champion in Me” for the soundtrack, Brad Arnold from 3 Doors Down said, “It’s got energy, it’s a song that I think that if an Olympic athlete were out training and they had their iPod on, it might be a track that they were actually listening to, and when I was writing the lyrics to the song, I tried to keep that in mind.”

AT&T benefitted by associating their brand with musicians like Sheryl Crow, Chris Brown, Goo Goo Dolls, Queen Latifah, Nelly and Taylor Swift, as well as with the Olympic athletes. This campaign was a brilliant example of “sonic branding” that targeted customers’ sense of hearing in a way not done in the silent campaigns of print and (most) online advertising. It appealed to our desire to support “Team USA” as well as to be inspired by the athletes’ competitive drive for the gold. By listening to a common, inspirational soundtrack, customers connected with the musicians, the athletes, and – AT&T hopes – the brand.

QUESTION: How could your customers be influenced by music? What do your customers hear when they are in your physical store and does it inspire or annoy them? How well do you support your “visual” marketing and advertising campaigns with “audio” ingredients? What does your brand sound like?

Intel’s “sonic logo” has become such a large part of their branding that they are now airing TV spots with their employees singing “Bom bom bom bom!” in unison. (If you could read that and hear the music, you should recognize the power of long-term, consistent branding.) Starbucks Entertainment creates and sponsors a wide variety of CDs that reinforce their coffeehouse culture. But who has the better music experience, Pepsi or Coca-Cola?

Want more? Read about the retro bands whose music peppered the recent collection of Super Bowl ads. Check out Richard Jankovich’s analysis of how Crayola’s adventurous use of relatively unknown musicians is supporting their brand of “creative energy.” Or see the “Top Ten 2009 Song Commercials” at splendAd.com.

The bottom line is this: When your customers think of your brand, what do they hear?

Consultants: We think you need to integrate your global supply chain, move assembly overseas, and accelerate inventory velocity.

CEO: Great! Do it!

Consultants: [Confused looks on faces, then smirks and laughing]. Sir, we don’t actually do what we propose… we just propose it.

Perhaps I find this so amusing because of my experience working with “big firm” consultants and others who charge astronomical fees to deliver thick reports full of vague ideas, trite platitudes and hundreds of meaningless buzzwords that sum up to say practically nothing. At least in this TV spot, the consultants mention tactics, but in all likelihood these are broad, undefined concepts that come from their standard playbook of “strategic solutions.” (I worked with one “big firm” consultant who described a multinational, e-commerce platform for one of the largest retailers in the world as “a turkey sandwich.” I’m still not sure what that means.)

This old commercial came to mind recently after a conversation with a colleague who was finding that clients were having difficulty understanding exactly how his firm was different from other “interactive design agencies” who pitched themselves merely on the merits of their tactical execution. The problem sounded very familiar, and I realized that I had also been spending too much time and energy marketing myself as a “strategist” and “problem-solver” without clearly explaining what I actually “do” for my clients in the long run. As I often tell clients, we must be very careful what we assume our customers know and don’t know, and telling them too much is far better than telling them too little.

As a point of differentiation from UPS’s fictional consultants, I actually do things. Just like any other brand consultancy, interactive design firm, advertising agency or similar company – though likely far more effectively and far less expensively – I create actual, tangible websites, email & e-newsletters, advertising, printed collateral (brochures, etc.), social/viral/guerilla campaigns & events, logos & brandmarks, taglines & product names, real-time/mobile apps, physical store designs, employee guidelines & training, and a wide variety of other types of tactical marketing executions that make a significant impact on your actual bottom line.

Obviously, I work with some very smart partner-colleagues who help with the creation and production of all these deliverables, and each of them is an expert in their field with significant experience in executing brilliant ideas on paper, screen and airwaves. But most importantly – and the true differentiation between me/us and those other firms – is how I develop the sound strategy to determine what direction all of these deliverables should take a client’s brand and customers, then direct the execution experts to create outstanding deliverables. To read more about the process by which we can work together to develop a visionary, innovative brand experience strategy for your business, please see The Secret Formula.

We can actually do great things together, as opposed to merely delivering a list of vague proposals that you have to execute yourself. And you can be confident that our “doing” will result in tangible results that make your business far more successful in the right direction, for the right reasons, and with the right customers. Give me a call and let’s get started.