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Next Level Collaboration: The Future of Content and Web Design
47:05 with Rebekah CancinoTomorrow’s complex digital experiences and responsive design challenges require a new kind of cross-discipline approach to content creation. Successful outcomes demand collaboration and co-creation. Yet, siloed workflows and legacy processes can hold you back. Learn how designers and developers play a key role in creating future-ready content, and leave with skills and actionable approaches you’ll need to transform the way your team produces together.
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All right, well I am here today to talk to you
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about collaboration and content design, and what it means to the
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web experiences that we're creating in the future, so before I
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get started, I wanna tell you, a little bit about myself.
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I work at Site Wire, it's a firm of a 100 people in Phoenix, digital agency.
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Just joined the team about two months ago and, these are my people.
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Well, some of them.
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[LAUGH] This is my parents and my husband in the back and my sister.
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Got two more siblings.
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And the reason I wanted to tell you little bit about my family, is because I think.
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Knowing my background will help you understand how
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I've come to think of things a little bit.
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So, my dad was a GIS developer.
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And I grew up, in a really small town in
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Northern Florida and my dad was hearing impaired, he was deaf.
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And so when I was 13, 14 I
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started interpreting for his ESRI word courses right?
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And learning about typography and that vector and raster word data
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and information systems and, how we can interpret rich complex information
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visually and my Mom, sort of the opposite of that my
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Mom is an artist and i learned from my Mom that.
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How you shape things visually and how you combine
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them with words can really shape how people feel.
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And guide them through processes because she also does set design.
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So I learned a lot from them growing up.
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And I was also homeschooled.
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So it really affected, I think, the work that I do today.
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And I'm from Phoenix, which is super awesome.
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If any of you guys wanna come for a visit,
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I can tell you where to find the best tacos.
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And in Phoenix, I have this little guy: Omar Jackson.
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He is amazing.
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He does not like computers.
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Okay.
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So enough about me.
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[LAUGH] Let's talk about collaboration and content design.
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So, before we take a look at the future.
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I thought it would be helpful just for a moment to go back to the past.
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Right.
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So, a lot of times when we think about the industrial revolution
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we think about some of the negative things that came along with it.
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Tenaments, overcrowded cities, non-existent worker rights.
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But, there was actually a lot of advances during the time, right, in health care.
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And literacy and in people marching forward, right?
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And one of the most remarkable things I think about the industrial
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revolution is, that the way people worked and produced together was forever changed.
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There was a little bit of that magic that happens, when the whole is greater.,
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than the sum of it's parts, right?
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And that's, that's, when we unlock that magic, that's what drives us forward.
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So, flash forward to today.
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We see that, digital experiences have dramatically
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changed since the birth of the web, right?
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They're extremely interconnected.
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They flow from one device to the next device and,
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and through people's lives through digital and in person experiences.
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There's almost no way to distinguish them.
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They're really interconnected.
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Walgreens, has this amazing App.
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It was, it was amazing before they did their last update.
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It won a webbie award.
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But what's so amazing about this App, Is they,
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they studied the usage stats for it and they
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found that most people using the App, were actually
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in Walgreens at the time they were using it.
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This was really remarkable to them.
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They hadn't planned the experience for that.
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They hadn't thought about that context.
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So, they changed the functionality of the App to suite that.
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So now, when you're using the App, at home you can scan
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bar codes and make a quick list of things you have to pick
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up and when you walk into the store, the App will light up
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a store floor map and guide you to the items on your list.
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Or say that you're waiting for your prescriptions or maybe a
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take care clinic appointment, kind of bored no one likes to wait.
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You can browse through your Instagram or Facebook pics
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and have prints instantly ready, when you're done, right?
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You can scan coupons, it basically is a partner.
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It elevates the in-person experience.
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They're very intertwined, both contextually, and with the
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data nad information that's being transferred back and forth.
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So it really is a whole new world.
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Sorry for the Disney TV reference.
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We have devices that we haven't even dreamed of yet.
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I know a lot of people make fun of the Google Glass and
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all of these wearables that we have, because they seem a little bit silly.
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We know they're just in the middle, of what's coming next.
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But the point is, is that we can't plan, for
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what's coming next, because we haven't even dreamed it yet.
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And so we have to change the way that we produce
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things, because we've been stuck producing content and digital experiences for
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things that we can plan for and when all of the
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constraints and bets are off, we're left with sort of broken processes.
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So it's getting really hard to tell where
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the code ends and the content begins, isn't it?
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Jerod Spool likes to say that everything is content.
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Content is what the user needs or wants right now.
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And that's wrapped in interaction, design.
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It's wrapped in meta data that helps people find it easily and categorize it.
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Content is at the heart of every experience that we design.
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And yet, here we are in 2014, still producing content
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and still producing web experiences like each element is completely interdependent.
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We have, the writerly people, the designer type people, the developers who don't
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get looped in until the end and then, wonder why the heck we thought.
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We can have that sort of interaction design.
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And on that platform or on this device.
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Right, in fact with responsive design, we've
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started to see that these work flows that
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we have and these silos that we've built,
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are starting to really cause us some trouble.
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There's been a lot of articles and things said and talks given.
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About, how with responsive design and adaptive
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content, the friction that we feel, in
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those siloed work processes and our waterfall
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methods are becoming more and more apparent.
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Right?
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There was an article recently posted, I think just
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a couple of weeks ago, on a list apart.
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And, the author was talking about how they
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had landed this new web project and, this web
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project was going to be responsive, it was
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a high profile project, and they were ultra stoked.
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Because they were gonna try all of these new toys and tricks
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and, and methods of building things that they had been wanting to try.
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They were going to try HTML wire frames, and Atomic
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design, adaptive content style ties, all of these awesome things.
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And then, when they actually went to go do them, and try to
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fit those new ways of making things,
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this new methodology into their current workflow.
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They got stuck.
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And what the author came to the conclusion is, is that meeting the demands of a
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multidevice web is much less a problem of
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technique and much more one about how we communicate.
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And communication, is essential to collaboration.
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So, remember earlier how I was talking about the Industrial Revolution?
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There's something interesting, about being in the present time.
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We have this great luxury of being able
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to look back and see quite clearly what happened.
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But if you imagined the people who were living, in the Industrial Revolution.
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I'm sure that they were just going about their daily jobs trying to get through,
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focusing on the task at hand, no idea that they were in the middle of something
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as big as a revolution, so I may sound a little crazy but if you look.
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And how where we are now, and, and contrasted and
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parallel it with what was happening in the Industrial Revolution.
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I think that we're in the midst of another one right now,
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because we're at the point where if we don't learn how to work
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together, in a new way, and change the way we produce,we'll either
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stop making progress, or the companies that don't learn will get left behind.
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Right?
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So, it's time to be greater than the sum of our parts yet again, in a new and
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different way and move from merely collaborating and the
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exchange of ideas and having inputs to actual co-design.
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The co-design is not easy.
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Just like the author of that [UNKNOWN] part article
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noted, you can have the most talented designers and developers.
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Interaction designers and writers on your team.
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But if the processes aren't in place and the communication skills you
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need to make those things happen aren't there, you'll fall short every time.
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Right?
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So, the revolution is already underway, and we see it.
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We see it in projects that we think, how, how was that possible?
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How are they able to build this amazing website or this amazing App?
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It's noticeably different, than everything else that's out there.
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We see these high functioning teams and, I wanted to find out how they did it.
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And so, my normal way of doing a talk
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is I'll research information and try to piece it together.
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On my own, and I realised that was completely
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counter intuitive to the talk that I was giving,
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which was all about communication and collaboration and that
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two or three, four heads are much better than one.
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So what I decided to do instead,is I decided
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to look at projects that really inspired me lately.
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Those projects that I wondered, how did they accomplish this ,what was different.
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And, I called them up I interviewed them on the phone sometimes on the back of a
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über on the way to my next business meeting so, I hadn't intended to share the
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phone recordings with you because they're a little
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ghetto but I thought it'd be much more
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fan, to hear even a low quality phone
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recording then listen to me talk the whole time.
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So, we'll have some of those clips and the people that I interviewed, first
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off, how many of you have seen the new Virgin America site that just launched?
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Only a few?
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It's so rad.
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It's the world's first fully responsive airline website.
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And it's amazing.
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It functions more like a web App.
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And this is the homepage, that is all that's on it isn't this amazing?
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I looked at this and thought how, on earth did they
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get such a large cooperation to whittle down the amount of stuff
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they wanted to cram on the homepage to something as focused
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and streamlined as this and how did they create such a seamless?
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Web App experience, when it's powered by something as old as Sabre?
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Sabre is, is the system that powers all of the flight's information.
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It's, it's archaic.
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So, I interviewed the design team from WorkingCo, to get some of their invites,
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their insights, and we'll hear a few of their stories in a little bit.
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Happy Cog.
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Happy Cog does great work.
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One of the projects that they did that
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really impressed me was a higher education site rebuild.
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I looked at this and I thought, why
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there's a lot of politics that go into that.
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How many times have you been in a project where it's steeped in
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tradition, there's so many people who have opinions and wanna weigh in on things.
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And the end result ends up kind of Frankenstein like.
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This wasn't like that at all.
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It was clear and focused and an amazing experience.
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So, I talked to the designer who worked on this project to get some of her thoughts.
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And then finally, Nicole Fenton is a friend of
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mine and she teamed up with her friend, Kate
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Keifer, from Mail Chimp and they recently wrote this
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book called Writing For the Web With Style and Purpose.
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And what's really interesting about these two ladies
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is, they're really sort of cross discipline people themselves.
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So Kate is steeped in UX she's learned mark down.
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Ooops, What just happened?
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Okay, we're good.
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She's learned mark down to make things easier on her team.
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And Nicole, works hand in hand with developers all the time.
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In fact, sometimes she makes changes to content right in get.
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That's not a normal copywriter.
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And she understands what she's dealing with and how digital is different and
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we need that material literacy, all of us do in order to create
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experiences that matter and, and not have to redo work so I talked
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to them to get a few insights as well, so throughout this talk.
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We, we have a few stories from them peppered in.
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But really all of the insights that I have,
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are sort of distillation of those interviews and those
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conversations that I had, trying to find patterns of
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these high-functioning teams and share them with all of you.
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So, the first step I think.
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To being able to code design.
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And to have true collaboration, where the whole is greater than the sum of the part.
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It's to be open.
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And by being open, I mean being open to possibilities, being open to being wrong.
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Being open, to the fact that maybe our version of idea isn't the best.
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It's always up for grabs.
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Testing is the true answer, right?
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So, the first step in being open is ask a lot of questions.
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Ask a lot of questions, whether it's research, whether it's
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from your co-workers who are also on the same projects.
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I don't know about you and your workplaces but, from some
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of the people that I've talked to, sometimes they don't even
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realize that a project is going on, that really intersects with
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their discipline or their expertise, because
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there's so many blocks in communication.
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So ask, have lunch, take new people to lunch.
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Take, take a department.
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That use, someone from a department that you normally don't talk to.
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See what's going on.
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Be willing to say, I don't know.
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That's the biggest thing.
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We can't make progress and we can't be open to suggestions and improvement, if
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we insist on being right all the time and we insist on making mistakes.
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I've done this plenty of times.
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Ask for feedback, and consider criticisms.
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So, this is huge.
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Feedback in a way, it's a, it's a microversion of being mentored.
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We open ourself up, for someone elses perspective
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to help improve our work or make it better.
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How many of you have read moon rocking with Einstein?
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I was just talking with someone about it last night at dinner.
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Isn't it a great book?
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That book is by Joshua Foer, and
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he proposes that practice doesn't make perfect.
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That, seeing and observing someone who is doing something better than you.
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That you want to be like.
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And, looking at their steps and analyzing
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how those are different from yours helps close
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that gap, and that's the only way to
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achieve excellence, and cruise past the okay plateau.
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There's a video on it on 99U.
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Highly recommend it, check it out.
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But feedback is sort of a miniature version of that, right?
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We can go and we can talk to someone who maybe has more experience in
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a certain area, and just get quick information,
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and don't, don't wait until the next meeting.
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Try to do it right away, quickly.
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And with criticism, criticism can sting the
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most, especially when it's not delivered well.
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That doesn't mean that there isn't value to it.
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With criticism, I would say consider all of it.
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If it doesn't stick after you've considered
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and really thought through if that's something that
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could make a difference or help you improve what you are doing then let it go.
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That's okay, but at least consider it.
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And finally always be learning.
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Learning new methods.
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Learning new ways of talking to people.
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And staying on top, of course, of our industry knowledge.
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There's one thing that I think is really important to mention
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about this how many of you are familiar with Carol Dwecht?
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She's a PhD psychologist.
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She's done research.
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On what it takes to grow.
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What does it mean to have a growth mindset.
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And one of the key things, that's scientifically
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proven that lets someone grow and develop past where
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they are as an adult, cuz most of us tend to plateau, is having an open mindset.
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Lots of interesting research but check that out
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as well, there's a lot of details to it.
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So, the second thing I wanted to mention, was just jump in.
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So, I recently joined a company and one of the things that I'm
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trying to instill in the junior team members, is don't wait to be invited.
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Don't wait for someone to invite you to a meeting.
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Don't be, hurt if you don't.
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If you think that there's an area.
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That you can help in, just go there.
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Nicole Fenton, when I was talking with her, said something really interesting.
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She said, content doesn't belong to content, design doesn't
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belong to design, and code doesn't belong to dev,
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because we are all responsible for the end experience,
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and I think that thinking of it in that way.
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Helps me jump in, in ways where maybe I
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feel like is a little outside of my comfort zone.
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I know that they're interrelated.
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So, I go ahead and get in there.
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Actually, I just mentioned this already.
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So, don't wait to be invited, jump in.
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All of the same principles that you use to design, amazing experiences apply
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to writing, how many of you are familiar with this hierarchy of design goals
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I use it all the time I love it basically?
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We start with functionality and we slowly graduate up to delight.
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We can't have delight if we
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dont' have functionality and intuitiveness and efficiency.
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The same thing, the same principles apply to writing.
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You can't have a personality and focus on brand tone and all
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of those things if you don't have basic clarity and functionality in place.
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So, my main reason for pointing this out, was that if
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you're a designer you're already perfectly poised, to start thinking about content
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and designing things that matter, by starting from the content first, because
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that's what informs our design and
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helps us create contextually relevent experiences.
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And sometimes, content is like code, for all of you developers out there.
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And Nicole has something to say about that, so I'm gonna let her talk to you.
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So this is Nicole.
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You can tweet her @nicoleslaw.
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>> But I think that interface writing is code.
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Like it's code for people, it's code for readers.
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It's like, I'm doing this step.
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What am I supposed to do next?
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You know, and that's a very
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like, programmatic way of dealing with something.
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Like if you're going through a checkout flow and something happens, or you have a
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question, like, an interface writer has to think of it almost like a programmer.
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>> An interface writer has to think of it almost like a programmer.
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So really what she's saying is, its as simple as thinking
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through the steps what's the best way to guide someone through
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this, user journey what's the best way to help someone get
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the information that they need its very logical it branches off.
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There's different possibilities, we have if, then, requirements as well.
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So, if that is a useful framework for you as a developer in
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terms of thinking how to write things more clearly, think of it that way.
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The main point I'm trying to make here is, I think there's a lot of value.
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19:18
And becoming T shaped individuals.
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IDEO talks a lot about this and what they mean by
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T shaped individuals are people who have a really deep expertise.
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So really really skilled and knowledgeable in
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one area, but have that material literacy.
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That broad knowledge, that compliments their expertise and
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allows them, to create things that are relevant.
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And work in a way that's more productive, and efficient with their team.
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Michael Evans talked a little bit about his T shaped team members.
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He is the product manager for Work and CO.
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The company who recently redesigned Versions website.
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And so I'll let you guys hear a little bit from him about his thoughts on that.
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For us, it wasn't, we didn't think about it
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as content, we more thought about as like, how
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do we present products to the user in a
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way that really makes it as simple as possible.
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With also presenting like, information that they care about.
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But I mean the whole project was super collaborative.
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Like that's the only way we could do this.
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With the team, our team is very, like our designers can
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20:31
program our junior product managers are a little bit our developers are
-
20:36
pretty so it's like everybody can sort of be in everybody's
-
20:40
business a little bit and sort of know what's right or wrong.
-
20:46
>> So, I apologize, the last captions didn't come up for that screen.
-
20:50
He says, our designers can code, our developers
-
20:55
know a little bit of UX design, and
-
20:58
having this cross discipline training and knowledge and
-
21:00
broad expertise, everybody can be in everybody's business.
-
21:04
And know when something's going right or wrong.
-
21:06
This is how we will create efficiencies and be able to produce things quicker.
-
21:12
So even if content isn't in your job description, it's
-
21:16
something that can bring a lot of relevance to your work
-
21:19
that you get to the right answers faster and help
-
21:22
you produce and design things that mean something, and that work.
-
21:27
The third point I wanted to make was to make friends and play nice.
-
21:30
So, join forces, right, if you're working in one area, maybe
-
21:36
you have another designer who has a slightly different role than you.
-
21:40
Again, two heads are better than one.
-
21:42
Jump in and do it together, you'll be surprised
-
21:44
how much faster you get to the right answers.
-
21:47
One of the things that work in co mentioned over and
-
21:50
over again was that they were really really focused on getting that
-
21:56
virgin america site into development as quickly as possible because they wanted
-
22:01
to be able to rapidly test it, and iterate on the design.
-
22:04
So in order to get something into development
-
22:07
as quickly as possible, you really have to
-
22:09
have a strong deep knowledge of what you're
-
22:13
designing for, what the most important information is.
-
22:16
The hierarchy of importance and, and what user flows makes sense,
-
22:20
in order to get that in and start testing and tweaking.
-
22:23
So, Joe Stewart talks a little bit about his process, and how he
-
22:27
got started and he was on the team was working co as well.
-
22:31
I'll let him tell you a little bit about that.
-
22:36
>> For the Virgin project there were two lead designers
-
22:41
on it, me and my background in graphic design and then this other guy Felipe
-
22:47
Memoria who's background is with more of a traditional UX and so.
-
22:53
We started doing the concept work together.
-
22:58
Were just sitting in the same room, next to each other, you know, usually
-
23:04
we just stared talking about it a
-
23:07
little bit of research and client interviews [INAUDIBLE].
-
23:13
We draw a lot together like most of the time
-
23:16
what we're doing is basically drawing really loose wire frames together.
-
23:20
So like, they'll look like four lines on a piece of paper.
-
23:24
But you know, we try to talk through it.
-
23:27
You know, so that part of what
-
23:29
co-designing which was a, a really big thing.
-
23:33
>> So, to give you a little context to what
-
23:36
I had asked him before he told me that story.
-
23:38
I said, how did you get started?
-
23:40
How did you even prioritize what was important
-
23:43
if you were jumping in and doing wire frames?
-
23:45
Did you work with a content strategist?
-
23:47
Did you work with someone who knew about the information.
-
23:52
Who had written for Virgin before, and he said, we didn't.
-
23:56
Between the project manager, between the UX design experience that Filipe
-
24:02
had, and Joe's design experience, they were able to put their heads together.
-
24:06
Put themselves in the user's shoe, right?
-
24:09
You noticed he mentioned they had done research, they had
-
24:12
done stake holders interviews, to find out what mattered right?
-
24:17
And in doing this, they were able to
-
24:18
get together and really prioritize what information works best.
-
24:22
So one of the things that I would
-
24:24
recommend, and one of the things that I like
-
24:26
to do with my team, is anytime we're
-
24:28
starting on a new project, we get everyone together.
-
24:31
We throw out every piece of information that has to be included in
-
24:35
the experience, and just put it up on the board, kinda like content modeling.
-
24:39
So we understand the little building blocks that we're
-
24:41
dealing with and in doing that, we're able to force
-
24:44
the priority of each one of those elements, and
-
24:48
get to wire frames that makes sense a lot faster.
-
24:50
Alright, so the second thing that was a theme in everyone's
-
24:55
conversations that I talked to, was to make sure that everyone's invited.
-
25:00
Time and time again they said you can't
-
25:02
co-design, with just a select amount of people.
-
25:05
So even though they would start the process, with maybe two or three of them.
-
25:09
They would very quickly and even before then so remember he mentioned that
-
25:14
they had done the stakeholder interviews that was getting a lot of people
-
25:16
in the room to see what mattered and they checked in with them
-
25:19
often so your designers your devs your UX people your strategists, art director.
-
25:25
He mentions that all of these people were
-
25:28
heavily involved in every step of the project
-
25:31
and there's absolutely no way they could have
-
25:33
designed something together had those people not been invited.
-
25:37
I'll let him tell you a little bit about that.
-
25:41
>> The magic was really when where it, our executive
-
25:46
had them involve one unbelievably smart thing that Virgin did was.
-
25:51
They had a lot of stakeholders from a
-
25:55
lot of different departments all there, all the time.
-
26:00
So we, we moved into Virgin's office to be there every single day
-
26:05
and it wasn't like there was one person that we were working with.
-
26:09
Beta director was there, head of IQ was there, head of
-
26:12
operations was there, you know, all the different people that understand
-
26:16
all the different parts, what's gonna make this airline website work
-
26:21
with us were all there, so it's are you all together.
-
26:25
It's not like this person works with this person
-
26:28
and then you have to do this to this person.
-
26:30
We're all there all together.
-
26:34
>> They are all there all together.
-
26:36
I like how he said they are all in the room so
-
26:38
they could all argue, right, 'cuz you have to hash it out.
-
26:42
That's one of the things that I think was so amazing when I
-
26:44
saw that homepage and saw how streamlined that information was on the front.
-
26:48
Homepages are extremely political.
-
26:50
Especially when you deal with large
-
26:51
organizations who have different department heads.
-
26:54
Sometimes the department heads have competing goals right?
-
26:59
They got everyone together to make sure they had people's buy-in.
-
27:03
To make sure that people knew what was happening to gain efficiencies.
-
27:07
They don't have to go back and explain something or present it.
-
27:10
One of the things that Joe mentioned was
-
27:12
they never ever put together a presentation deck.
-
27:16
Because every time they put together a presentation deck for a client.
-
27:20
Is time that they didn't spend actually making something
-
27:23
that mattered to the client and making a difference.
-
27:27
I thought that was pretty impressive.
-
27:29
One of the caveats to this, though, is I asked him,
-
27:34
how are you able to get by doing all of this?
-
27:37
And he mentioned that Virgin was an exceptional
-
27:40
client, it was really the right client fit.
-
27:43
I don't know if any of you are wondering those things but, but I did.
-
27:47
Cuz, some of the things that they were talking
-
27:48
about, like moving into virgin's office for a year.
-
27:52
Having an hour meeting with their team every day, making sure
-
27:56
that all of the senior level executives where in the room.
-
27:59
These are not easy things to ask of a company.
-
28:03
A lot of times you'll get turned down.
-
28:05
So I think one of the things I learned in
-
28:07
talking to him, is that in order to code design
-
28:09
to be possible, we always have to be working at
-
28:13
educating our clients and selling them on why this matters.
-
28:17
How it reaches their bottom line.
-
28:18
Not that it's some fluffy, happier way of doing things.
-
28:22
But really hitting home on getting things into development faster.
-
28:26
Not wasting time and money on
-
28:28
presentations that don't affect their bottom line.
-
28:31
And making sure that you have everyone's who's opinions matter.
-
28:36
And who knows about the product and
-
28:38
understands what it takes to make something work.
-
28:40
In the room to avoid costly redesigns, going back and forth,
-
28:45
making simple changes that could have been done had those people been together, but
-
28:51
in order for that to happen, we have to learn to let go
-
28:54
and there's a couple things I think about this that are really tough.
-
29:01
As an individual sometimes when I'm working with proj, our projects and
-
29:06
someone has maybe an idea or a different way of doing something,
-
29:10
and I know that's not gonna work or I've been working on
-
29:13
that project a really long time and I'm deeply invested in it.
-
29:17
It, it can sting a little bit and
-
29:19
be a little uncomfortable to trust someone else.
-
29:22
Enough to really work with them.
-
29:24
Because you can't co-design with someone and co-create if
-
29:27
you think that your opinion's better or you're holding
-
29:29
on to something really tightly because you're not creating
-
29:32
the room or the space that allows that to happen.
-
29:35
Right?
-
29:36
And that can happen in any department.
-
29:39
Ora, the designer who worked on the higher ed project for Happy Cog.
-
29:44
Had something interesting to say.
-
29:45
Her, she's a designer so she focused it on
-
29:48
what letting go of control looks like as a designer.
-
29:51
I had asked her or a you worked
-
29:54
really closely with a client, you worked really closely
-
29:56
with a content, you started from the content
-
29:58
first and built this in a really collaborative fashion.
-
30:01
What would you say to a designer that might hold them back.
-
30:05
From doing the same thing.
-
30:06
What are some of the challenges that you want them to be aware of?
-
30:09
And she had this to say.
-
30:11
This is Aura, by the way.
-
30:14
>> So, if you're a designer chances are
-
30:18
like, an assumption I'll make but it's casly true.
-
30:23
A somewhat controlling person when it comes to what you're creating.
-
30:28
And I think what sets your client up for success, is for what
-
30:35
you're trying to control so deeply to actually, like, take into account.
-
30:41
That extra variable, right?
-
30:43
And the, one of the [INAUDIBLE] here or testaments
-
30:46
to the success of a site is once a
-
30:50
client puts all their content in does the design
-
30:54
system that you built still function the way you intended.
-
30:57
>> Yeah.
-
30:58
>> And that, that's twofold.
-
31:00
Like, that has to do, did you build a system that like, has enough needs.
-
31:03
And then also there's an education guide, like did you teach
-
31:06
the client what to use where, or what each piece is for?
-
31:12
So I think the sooner you open yourself up to
-
31:14
using two accounts for those things rather than trying to like
-
31:20
jam a square into a circle, you know there's
-
31:23
I think that you'll be happier once your sites launch.
-
31:27
You will be able to show them on your website so long.
-
31:29
[LAUGH]
-
31:33
>> So some of the things that she said, I want
-
31:35
to, I want to unpack it because it's easy to gloss over.
-
31:38
Some of the.
-
31:40
Challenges she said that we faced.
-
31:42
Some of the things that stand in our way from having co-design
-
31:44
and what it means to let go of controllers, a few things, on
-
31:47
she said making haunting considerations first, was a challenge for her because it
-
31:52
meant letting go of he older notion of how things should be designed.
-
31:58
It meant saying well, what are all of the content types and information needs first?
-
32:04
How can that inform the design?
-
32:07
And so it means the design sort of flexes and
-
32:10
bends to fit the content, rather than the other way around.
-
32:13
So that's one of the ways of giving up control.
-
32:16
She mentioned something else.
-
32:17
She said,.
-
32:19
Educating clients.
-
32:21
Educating clients and making sure that they understand how the system works.
-
32:27
That's letting go of the control making sure that we can manage it for them.
-
32:32
Or sometimes re design things in a way that really
-
32:34
doesn't even account, we think so much about the users.
-
32:37
That we forget about the people who have to use the CMS, the people
-
32:41
who will be responsible for keeping this
-
32:43
project alive and updated long after they're gone.
-
32:46
So, and sharing the control earlier on, we ensure that our projects will live longer,
-
32:51
healthier lives, and stay relevant, far beyond the
-
32:55
time that we stop working with the team.
-
32:59
Sorry this, that keeps happening you guys.
-
33:01
I'm not sure what's up there.
-
33:06
So, the fourth thing that I wanted to talk about was planning ahead.
-
33:11
So we've talked a lot about being open and collaborating,
-
33:15
getting together with other people, making sure you get all the.
-
33:19
Right people in the room at the same time.
-
33:21
But one of the things that I really have to mention or I would be doing you
-
33:25
disservice, is that in order to have really effective
-
33:29
productive, co-design working sessions, you have to be prepared.
-
33:34
You cannot go in and not have your agenda planned to a T.
-
33:39
I don't mean getting really granular, and
-
33:41
trying to be prescriptive in your approach.
-
33:43
I just mean being really intentional about how you're gonna use your time.
-
33:46
And I'll tell you about some of the things I do to prepare for co-design sessions.
-
33:52
I always do my research and discovery with my team, right?
-
33:56
To build those shared insights.
-
33:58
So it can really slow someone down if only one person is
-
34:03
interfacing a client, only one person is in on the stakeholder interviews.
-
34:08
Maybe development isn't included in that part at all.
-
34:12
What can happen is, is that we lose insights
-
34:15
and we end up having to redo work or regurgitate.
-
34:19
Information to certain team members.
-
34:21
So if we can build smaller project teams and make sure that everyone can
-
34:25
be involved in that discovery and research
-
34:28
phase, we can have shared roles and responsibilities.
-
34:31
We, we build that common knowledge and we're able to
-
34:34
be really informed and work together as a team more efficiently.
-
34:38
Just a tip: Nicole wanted me to let you guys know that she has some really
-
34:44
great research questions to get you started on
-
34:46
the resources section of Nicely Said, the book's website.
-
34:50
So some of these questions are the exact same
-
34:52
questions that I use when I'm doing discovery projects, and.
-
34:56
Getting started when I'm thinking about what to
-
34:58
consider in terms of both content and design.
-
35:00
So a really great useful tool.
-
35:05
The next thing that I think is really
-
35:07
important is that we have to consider the context.
-
35:09
And clearly state our project goals.
-
35:12
We're not going to be able to get together and
-
35:14
produce anything of meaning, no matter how collaborative it is.
-
35:18
If we have it, first consider the context in which we're designing for,
-
35:22
and made sure that our goals
-
35:23
are overlapping, with user needs, business goals.
-
35:28
So I like to state those openly.
-
35:29
It can seem a little funny and stilted when you get into a, a meeting and every
-
35:34
time you're going into a co-design session to just
-
35:37
jot it down, but it kind of becomes routine.
-
35:39
And it really helps you stay focused and I was really pleased to
-
35:42
hear when I was talking to Joe from Workingco that they do this aswell.
-
35:47
They have a crystal clear goal when it came to their
-
35:49
redesign of Virgin America's site and that was to increase bookings.
-
35:54
So, all of the design decisions they made.
-
35:58
Of course, wanted to make things easier and focused
-
36:00
on the user where we are all in service of
-
36:03
reaching that business goal, which is the whole reason, no
-
36:05
team was there in the first place, re-doing that site.
-
36:07
And so, by reminding ourselves, every
-
36:10
time, we get into create something together.
-
36:12
Just real quickly, having them up someplace visual.
-
36:15
We make sure that we don't get off course.
-
36:16
And that we don't make decisions that down align to
-
36:19
our, what we're trying to achieve, in the first place.
-
36:23
By the way, when it comes to user needs.
-
36:26
If you're curious, the Virgin America project.
-
36:29
They realy really heavily user testing.
-
36:31
So.
-
36:32
Everything they did was shaped by watching something, seeing how
-
36:36
people were using it, and then iterating on that approach.
-
36:38
So, really in alignment with this principle.
-
36:42
And then finally, considering someone's context, even if you
-
36:47
don't have the time to go through and read all
-
36:49
the research, maybe you weren't in as a team together
-
36:52
when you were going through and doing that discovery finding.
-
36:55
Maybe you're struggling with having one of the stakeholders trying to micro manage a
-
37:00
project or trying to slow down a productive working session.
-
37:06
It helps to just jump back in really
-
37:08
quickly and go through, what is the user thinking,
-
37:11
feeling and doing at this moment, when we are
-
37:14
in this user flow, when we're on this screen.
-
37:17
And sometimes, I even use this to put myself in my client's shoes.
-
37:21
To make sure that I'm really being a true partner to them.
-
37:24
So sometimes, when friction comes up again.
-
37:27
May-,
-
37:27
maybe I don't have the right answer.
-
37:30
Maybe I just need to take a step back,
-
37:32
and have a little bit of empathy for the client.
-
37:34
And respect them as a subject matter expert.
-
37:36
And as a true.
-
37:37
Co creator with me.
-
37:39
Because there's is that habit a lot of times that we have of
-
37:43
to separate people who are non-designers
-
37:45
or non-developers who don't have that expertise.
-
37:49
From being true experts who can make a
-
37:51
great decision but that's not always the case.
-
37:53
Great ideas can come from anywhere.
-
37:55
This can work for both users and co-workers, clients, et cetera.
-
38:00
Finally, when it gets down to actually designing the working meeting.
-
38:05
I like to get really basic.
-
38:07
So, I put up a visual agenda.
-
38:11
Some of my friends who can sketch a little bit
-
38:13
better than me, actually put it out like a real clock.
-
38:16
I can't do that.
-
38:16
I can never draw a full circle.
-
38:19
But I wanna make sure that everyone knows what's going on that day, how
-
38:24
much time we have to do it, what the goals we need to accomplish are.
-
38:30
So that everyone's working towards the same thing
-
38:33
and we can see progress in the meeting.
-
38:35
This is especially useful if you're doing this with client
-
38:38
stakeholders because a lot of times it can feel really uncomfortable.
-
38:42
For clients to be in a situation where you're creating things on the fly.
-
38:46
It can feel a little bit like am I going to get my money's worth.
-
38:49
Will they actually accomplish this goal?
-
38:52
So making sure that you clearly state what
-
38:56
each collaborative working session is meant to accomplish.
-
38:59
Having it up and then checking it off as you go through.
-
39:02
Really helps build trust, keeps people on task, and helps
-
39:05
ensure that those working sessions are productive as they can be.
-
39:10
Finally, diverge and converge.
-
39:14
The whole concept of building buy in means
-
39:17
that everyone needs to feel heard and listened to.
-
39:20
That's great, you can start with brainstorming.
-
39:23
but you can never have a brainstorm session and not end
-
39:27
with actually narrowing it down and making decisions there's some really
-
39:30
cool games that you can use gamestorming has them and stanford
-
39:35
design school has great resources on how to construct more meaningful.
-
39:40
Divergent and convergent thinking processes.
-
39:43
So, it's always a flow of getting by in, making sure all of the ideas are heard,
-
39:48
and then, narrowing down, grouping, prioritizing, organizing,and getting
-
39:53
to that final decision that you're going to make.
-
39:56
So, those are the main four areas.
-
39:58
That I wanted to cover.
-
40:00
And one of the things I wanted to, to end with is that I've heard a few
-
40:05
people say this in different ways, people don't
-
40:08
experience content separately from design, UX, and code ever.
-
40:12
Like, have you ever talked to your mom?
-
40:15
My mom has never once said to me, well
-
40:17
the words sucked but the interaction design was amazing.
-
40:21
She doesn't need to know what that means, to her they're all
-
40:24
one thing, and that's how it is to most of our users.
-
40:28
And so, when we make things, we can't separate them, we
-
40:31
can't be that way either, we have to do it together,
-
40:33
because in the end it's all one experience, it's all about
-
40:37
designing the best experience we can, it'll come from doing it together.
-
40:41
So.
-
40:44
Let's create things that matter.
-
40:46
Let's work together.
-
40:47
Let's find faster ways to build
-
40:49
more efficient products and start the revolution.
-
40:53
Thanks guys.
-
40:56
[APPLAUSE].
-
41:03
We've got a couple minutes for questions.
-
41:06
>> I concur we have a couple minutes
-
41:08
for questions would anyone like to ask Rebecca anything,
-
41:13
I've got one.
-
41:14
>> Okay.
-
41:16
>> What's a project so I know you just
-
41:17
recently changed jobs, you were at Forty before that, right?
-
41:20
>> Mm-hm, mm-hm.
-
41:20
>> What is the project that you did at
-
41:22
Forty where it it first sort of opened your
-
41:25
eyes that it went a lot better when you
-
41:27
collaborated in this fashion as opposed to an old one.
-
41:31
>> Sure, sure.
-
41:32
But you know it was actually a project where we didn't
-
41:35
start in a collaborative session, it was for a mobile app.
-
41:39
The client had come to us, and they had specked out all
-
41:42
their design requirements really laid out how they wanted it to be accomplished.
-
41:47
And we kind of, just jumped in and went to work.
-
41:49
We did our normal discovery process, but once
-
41:52
we kind of got that information from them,
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41:54
we went off to create it on our own, and then came back with some wire frames.
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41:57
And.
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41:58
For them it really missed the mark.
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42:00
It wasn't what they were expecting.
-
42:02
There were some requirements that we hadn't considered for the type
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42:05
of development that they needed and what their developers could do.
-
42:09
And so we thought, you know, instead of going back
-
42:11
and forth and iterating on this and trying to get feedback.
-
42:14
Why don't we just have a meeting where.
-
42:17
These product managers can be with us, call the developer in, have
-
42:21
your designer come in and we'll all, we'll all sketch these together.
-
42:25
So what would normally be like a week long process
-
42:28
turned into a six hour working session, and we had
-
42:31
the entire user flow and really fast sketches done that
-
42:35
informed the more formal wire frames that we had to do.
-
42:38
For some of the higher ups and execs.
-
42:40
So it was immediate, it was literally this
-
42:43
realization of, this could of taken a week.
-
42:47
But because we were all there, and if we had questions we could ask them.
-
42:51
If someone had input or concerns it could get
-
42:53
put in and influence the design right then and there.
-
42:55
It was amazing.
-
42:57
>> anyone, as soon as anyone has a question
-
42:59
just raise your hand cuz I'm just gonna keep going.
-
43:03
So a lot of you talked about be open, have an open mind, be receptive to criticism.
-
43:08
>> Mm-hm.
-
43:08
>> There's gonna be somebody who's hot
-
43:10
head and doesn't like hearing what they say.
-
43:12
How do you diffuse tension in some of those co-working experiences-
-
43:15
>> Sure.
-
43:16
>> Where you say okay let's, you know, how, how do you go through that process.
-
43:20
>> Sure.
-
43:20
So typically I find, this is mostly the case that the people I work with,
-
43:25
who we have tension with, whether it's a
-
43:26
client or a coworker, they're not bad people.
-
43:28
They're not nefarious and wanna make my day suck really bad.
-
43:33
[LAUGH] Typically what's happening is, something
-
43:35
they really care about feels threatened.
-
43:37
Right?
-
43:38
Something that they think is really important
-
43:39
to the project, feels like it's at risk.
-
43:42
And so I try to find out what that is, and why they're feeling that way.
-
43:45
So I usually do a lit of, a little bit of digging.
-
43:47
Like, tell me about this, or what's bothering you here?
-
43:51
And I, I ask.
-
43:53
A lot of times, we see someone that's kind of upset.
-
43:55
And we'll never say, hey, is something bothering you?
-
43:58
Is there any way that I can help?
-
43:59
Or, is something going wrong here?
-
44:01
Do you have any concerns about this project.
-
44:03
A lot of times.
-
44:04
I found that, in just having a conversation with him.
-
44:08
And considering that they're not attacking me.
-
44:12
That I'm able to find out what they were concerned about,
-
44:14
and it's usually pretty easy to fix, does that make sense?
-
44:17
>> Absolutely.
-
44:19
And that, it definitely plays into
-
44:20
the, the homepage's political comment [CROSSTALK] which
-
44:23
I thought was really dead on, here's the question right here on the front.
-
44:27
>> Hey this is more of like a organization or even a sales question.
-
44:32
>> Okay.
-
44:32
>> But in my experience one of the hardest things about being able to collaborate
-
44:35
and have everybody involved in user research,
-
44:38
is that clients will cut the research parts.
-
44:41
>> Yes.
-
44:41
>> Or they'll try to cut out member s of the team to trim the budget back.
-
44:44
>> Yes, mm-hm.
-
44:44
>> Cuz they think my nephew makes websites, why can't you
-
44:48
guys just have two people and do it in two weeks?
-
44:50
So I'm always interested to hear like what's your approach to, making
-
44:54
sure that the whole team is able to stay there through the
-
44:57
duration of a project and selling in the research phases and really
-
45:01
preserving all the, the time and people you need to do it right?
-
45:04
>> Sure.
-
45:05
There's a couple of things.
-
45:06
It's a two fold question and I can talk to you afterwards about it at length.
-
45:10
But there's two things.
-
45:11
One.
-
45:13
I usually try and find out who's holding the purse strings and why they're tight
-
45:17
on that budget, why do they think that they only have x amount to spend.
-
45:20
I also try to find out where they're spending other things
-
45:24
and I try to put actual value whether it's in experience metrics.
-
45:29
Or I've actually tied UX and persona development directly to loss of organic
-
45:35
traffic with panda 4.0 and Hummingbird, because those Google algorithms consider
-
45:40
the entire experience, so once, once I can translate how what I'm
-
45:44
doing ties back directly to what they want, whether it's traffic or ROI.
-
45:49
And make it a lot less fuzzy, putting tangible frameworks around it on
-
45:54
what they can see, what they can expect from this I'll get better results.
-
45:59
On the other hand, sometimes you just gotta work with what you've got,
-
46:03
sometimes you're not gonna be able to get more research budget and what
-
46:06
I like to do there, is I like to just scale back some
-
46:10
of the processes that i'm using so it's not that I ever stop applying.
-
46:13
Best practices or the way I'm thinking about it, it's just that
-
46:17
maybe, I've got to really condense down the process that I'm going through.
-
46:21
So perhaps I'm doing just a couple qualitative interviews.
-
46:25
Right?
-
46:25
Qualitative interviews are a lot cheaper than backing it up with surveys.
-
46:30
Or maybe, if I can't do, if they don't have a budget for
-
46:33
qualitative interviews, I'll say, well, can I talk to your customer service reps?
-
46:37
The people who interface most directly with your customers.
-
46:40
That's free, just a couple hours of their time.
-
46:43
So, I'll usually try and improvise and use the best
-
46:47
practice methods but in a condensed or scaled back framework.
-
46:51
Does that make sense?
-
46:53
>> Great.
-
46:54
Rebecca that was awesome.
-
46:55
So, we're out of time, but Rebecca will be in the expo hall during the
-
46:59
afternoon break, so you can go up and ask her any more questions you might have.
-
47:02
Let's put our hands together for her, for her right now.
-
47:04
[APPLAUSE]
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