“Present the data from one of the world’s most reliable sources of international development statistics.”

The magnitude of the project seemed inconceivable at first glance, and its social and economic ramifications staggering. But I am happy to report that our work for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has become one of our most successful projects to date. I write this blog entry after-the-fact, the project has gone ‘live’ and you can read more about the OECD here and learn about the project itself from 2Paths, the company that hired us to conduct user research and design the user interface to drive this web application.

The project began back in November 2007, with 2Paths having initiated a detailed scoping and budget phase with the client. They decided early on to bring design experts on to the team to lead the interface development for this project.  DesignStamp joined in January and development was to begin in March.  Our task was to gather as much knowledge about the project as possible, from the work 2Paths had already done, the various user types identified and also understand business requirements from the client.

1. Our search for this knowledge meant doing extensive interviews with users from around the world who came in contact with OECD data for a variety of reasons. We conducted in-person interviews, phone interviews and also relied on video conferencing technology to be able to do small focus group style interviews.
2. We then made the trip to Paris, to gather business requirements from the OECD and echo our understanding of their vision, as well as what the end-users desired.  It was important that we speak with the staff that managed the current databases on international development statistics.  We learnt about the issues OECD development staff had in using the OECD.Stat interface and also documented queries from users.
3. This knowledge combined with our user research gave us enough information to be able to create the set of user personae (PDF) that would inform the rest of the project work ahead. The persona process is invaluable in helping not only help keep the end-user in mind when designing solutions but also lend focus to project scope.
4. We moved quickly from a lo-fi wireframing deliverable whereby we explained our proposed solution to the client using sketches, to high fidelity prototypes that enabled us to present click through scenarios and validate our approach based on common tasks that users may undertake to extract data from the interface.
5. Having received approval on the wireframes, we worked with the 2Paths development team and the client to hit 2 to 3 week iterations and tackle off user stories that helped us build components of the project in a priority sequence.
6. We worked with 2Paths to merge our design with their agile development process.  DesignStamp designers were kept a minimum of 2 weeks ahead of developer work, so that we could get client approval on the interface decisions and be ready with assets for developers to complete the user stories in time.

Lessons learned from this project:

1. One of our big wins was to align ourselves with the client from the get-go and work with them as partners trying to solve the problem. We took the time to understand the “pain”, and appreciate their goals before we started to do any design work.
2. The time 2Paths spent educating the client on how an agile development process works was worth the effort. Having client buy-in was invaluable, as they knew what to expect, what not to expect and just how we would tackle off the project in incremental bits. 2Paths did a great job managing this.
3. The OECD was the perfect client in many ways. Perfect client=Accommodating, collaborative and open to providing us with the knowledge we needed to do our job well.
4. The agile process works only when the client, and the entire team appreciate the benefit of frequent deliverables. It was also important that designers were kept 2 weeks ahead of the developer work, so that we could have time to work on, and gain approval on interface decisions, prior to the developers needing graphic assets.
5. Modern communication tools helped our global team produce a global project. Say what you will but the project would have been severely impacted if we could not rely on web conferencing and being able to share our desktops in Vancouver with a client in Paris. We had weekly check-in points to keep the client in the loop at all times. Remote conferencing was invaluable for that (even if it meant that the Vancouver team was bleary eyed, attending conference calls at 7 am in the morning!).

This project tested our process by the shear magnitude of the design brief. This project has proved to us once again, that we don’t just create good looking work; we solve problems. We do so by following a user-centric design process that marries business objectives with user goals. And at the end of the project, our biggest rewards: The glowing testimonials from the client and the users who have tested our new interface. You can view our design solution for this project here or contact us if you would like to learn more about our process for solving complex business problems.

Flash forward, and we have more choice than we could ever need. Do we really need 285 varieties of cookies, 75 of iced tea, 230 soups, 175 salad dressings? We define happiness as having choices, and yet give us too many choices and we get stressed and would rather walk away and not make a decision than put in the effort required to make an informed choice. This is the subject of the book “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” by Barry Schwartz.

Happiness is when we feel like we have the time, the knowledge and the choice required to make the best possible decision. We need filters to help us make these decisions and live in that yellow zone. The Happiness Zone.

As a brand, you have to help people wade through choices and find you. You also have the following related problems to solve:

1. People don’t trust nameless corporations and advertising messages anymore (if they ever really did).
2. People are looking for ways to simplify life, and often make their buying decisions by tapping into trusted sources. According to Forrester Research, “83% of online consumers trust the opinion of a friend or acquaintance who has used a product or service”
3. Your brand is not special to your customer. It’s not the center of their life, as it is to you.

So what should brands do? How do you sell products and have your brand heard over the constant drone of your competitor’s messages? How do you cut through the noise and connect with your customer and have them ‘hear’ you.

Traditionally, brands have done some user and market research, built a product, advertised it’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and repeated the process to keep the product fresh and relevant in the market. This is a throwback to the industrial revolution and no longer relevant. In this world of flux and speed, the touch points with the customer need to be more natural, immediate and constant. Your brand needs to meet your customer where they are most comfortable, and truly engage with them.

Introducing social media. Social Media is the big broad term that takes many forms, from Facebook to a white label wiki. From media sharing sites such as YouTube, LastFM or Flickr, to life-sharing sites such as Twitter or MySpace. Forget stale forums where people post questions and no one relies, GetSatisfaction delivers the promise of community, by allowing companies and their customers to have lively exchange about products.

As brands grapple with the concept of social media, some view it as just another channel to advertise. But that’s one very thin slice of the possibility pie and dates back to thinking from a 100 years ago. Yes, you can create brand awareness, but how do you actually get your customer to care about you, and make you their preferred choice? Instead of using ad-copy, social media allows you to have a more real, meaningful engagement with your customer. You can now discuss things with your customer. And use language that is more natural and accessible to your customer about every subject that matters. To you and your customer.

The wide, wild, undefined world of social media is in it’s infancy. And brands that ‘get it’ are starting to see it’s true potential. It holds promise for creating deeper relationship between organizations and the people they serve, whether that organization is an online company, a bank, or a non-profit organization. If you have something to promote, and communicate about, social media will be a vital part of your communication strategy going forward.

The concept is simple, really. Don’t look at social media as an advertising vehicle. Instead thinks of it like a party. Your customers are attending this party. You are attending the party too. You are not the host, you are just a participant, as are they. Conversation is lively, noisy and on various subjects. How will you join in? How will you introduce yourself to others? How will you mingle in this party, get people to get to know you, appreciate your presence and really want to keep in touch with you, even outside of this party? In short, how will you become the life of the party?

Guido doesn’t get far anymore. People see through the greasy sheen of falseness. Here’s a suggestion: be authentic, and useful. Be(come) the nice guy. The brand that is helpful, and confident. Knowledgeable in what you do, and not arrogant. Proud not full-of-yourself. Communicative not sale-sy. Marriott has joined Twitter and won kudos for creating great conversations with travelers around the world. Even this hot dog vendor in Vancouver has leveraged their geek central location, to talk to their customers on Twitter with great success.

Before you jump into the social media pond, consider how best you will join in the conversation and what do you have to offer.

Here are a few questions to ask, that will help you humanize your brand, and make authentic decisions on his/her behalf:

1. What would your brand be like at the party? (E.g. The clown, the shy one, the chatty kathy)
2. Where would your brand hang out? What online communities would she or he be drawn to?
3. Who are your brand’s best friends? Who trusts your brand and loves them?
4. What are brands that your brand would buy? (Example: Starbucks or the local neighborhood cafe?)
5. What will your brand do or say at the party, that is typical of her/him, that will make people remember her (in a good way)?

On a somewhat related note, you will find DesignStamp on Twitter, but you won’t find us on Facebook. We haven’t figured out why/how we, as a design studio need to be there. And we refuse to attend the party unless we know that we’d look good going in. So we are talking about it internally, dressing for success (a new website is in the works) and making sure we are drinking the Kool-aid we serve. Be authentic, be useful.

We encourage you to contact us and let’s get to work on your social media strategy!

1. Keeping a customer is cheaper than finding new ones.
2. If you have high churn, you are viewed as selling a commodity not a brand people care for. You will need to start to compete by lowering price which is not a winning game unless you are a volume behemoth like Walmart.
3. Happy customers are more likely to become loyal customers, and loyal customers tend to become cheaper to maintain than servicing the needs of newbies that are partially willing to “try” you out.
4. History is littered with brands who became too big for their own shoes, and started to forget about who made them big in the first place. The happiest brands are those that keep their customers close, and value their experiences as they do their bottom-line.
5. What can your brand do, to make people say “I love [name of your brand here]“. Make people become irrational about their feelings about your brand. The glow that radiates from people in love is infectious. Try telling a Harley-lover that a Honda is better.
6. In the lean times, it’s your brand advocates that will stick by you. Loyalty is difficult to create, and once you have it, you must hold on it, by frequently checking every customer service point within your company (At Rouxbe, the CEO of the company reads every contact form that comes in).
7. Marketers should be part of the design process, so they understand the product that is being built and who it will satisfy. Slapping on marketing messages after the fact doesn’t work. It’s simply too late.
8. Designers should be part of the marketing process, they are trained to be stand-ins for the end-user. Tap into their knowledge to keep the design and the message unified. Apple does this best.
9. Do things differently. The best way to beat your competition is to stand out and be different. Be less annoying than your competition (maybe my bank machine can start to remember what language I speak, and not ask that question each time?), be more caring (don’t tell phone customers they will get through faster by staying on the line, offer to call them back) and more human (WestJet flight attendants crack jokes when making the same old boring “fasten your tray tables” announcements).
10. Be your own customer. Use your product before you unleash it to a market. Design things for yourself, and design the after-sales service for your family and friends. People who don’t know jack about the intricate details about your product. You owe them a good experience.
11. People talk. And in a myriad of new ways. If you run a business that has customers, you ought to be keeping an ear to the ground to listen to what people are saying about you. You should know about the various (new) ways people communicate.

And now a story:

I am on the phone with Fido (BC, where I live, has only 3 major cell phone carriers, sad). I have a nasty customer experience. The agent is unprofessional, absent and not helpful. He has asked me to repeat my mobile number 3 times now. I have been handed from one department to the next, and no one seems to be able to be able to tell me why my account balance is not being accurately displayed online. The call ends with me hanging up in frustration when they finally decide to blame my computer (Mac) even though I KNOW that there is no way that could be the problem.

My tweets during this call:

Sweet revenge.

Flash back, it used to be that when we would have a bad customer experience, we’d grumble about it to others, if the topic came up. Now, I tweet.

Generation Is uses Twitter. A Tweet refers to messages exchanged on Twitter to let people know what you are doing right now. Or what you think or feel about a particular subject. (Learn about what is Twitter and why it’s so popular and stats on it’s usage). So get searching and find out what people are saying about you on Twitter!

So be good to your customers. Bad stories are more fun to tell than good ones. Revenge is more important at times than spreading joy, and more and more,  your consumer understands the power she wields, in this hyper-connected world.

As I have mentioned before, very often we get people asking for us to design Web 2.0 sites that incorporate community to some level. And while I am all for shorthand (e.g. coffee ordering at Timmie Hoe’s) and I have already written about what web 2.0 means to me, this time let me unpack what community is not. Because sometimes by figuring out what something is not, we get to the core of what it is.

Words that I will use interchangeably to describe community: village, watering hole, gathering place…you get the idea.

Here’s what community is not:

1. It’s not a label to throw up on your site. If you ain’t got community, it’s OK, you’ll get one soon enough. Just stick to what you do best and aim that thing at people who care and sure enough they will gather around and talk you up. You have to have something substantial behind the label to merit making your user click on the “community” button!
2. It’s not what you want it to be. If there is no freedom, there is no community. Censor people, tell them what they can or cannot do inside “your” community and you lose the game even before you start. While communities need a sense of order, people will hack the system to make it what they want it to be, and if the system is too rigid, they will move on to the next gathering place.
3. It’s not a one-way street. Look for perfect circles. I give you feedback on your app. You read that feedback (let people know you read everything they send!), and find that it’s a really good point. Celebrate my input, make me a beta tester, give me “special” access and I will become your brand advocate. Look to complete the feedback and communication loop and you have a lasting relationship with your audience.
4. It’s not just about belonging. People used to join clubs and professional associations just to put that membership on their resume. That’s not enough anymore. People expect communities to be useful. People also like communicating, so let them. The best online communities have strong communication. LinkedIn is not just a professional network, it also offers tools and features that allow people to ask questions, post jobs and communicate with each other in meaningful ways. Providing useful ways to communicate and abiding by personal choices around privacy and noise levels creates stronger (more loyal) communities.
5. The world ain’t flat, and neither are communities. People also like a pecking order, so give it to them. Give people someone/something aspirational, reward them for valuable contributions, so they keep making them. Leading from #3, giving people special status either based on contribution or quality of input is a great way to encourage increased community involvement. Call it karma, call it ranking, call it badges, but provide some sort of tangible, recognition for those that help others. Last fm doesn’t provide any type of rankings beyond what you get if you pay them for the service. But do a search on google for last.fm badges, and you will find people who have created graphics to celebrate the momentous event, when your playlist at last.fm reaches beyond a certain number of songs. Apple provides points that add up to status levels in their support forums. People aspire to receive points by answering questions. Apple wins by having a free support system for their products. People win by being celebrated as Apple gurus.
6. They don’t need it, you do. Because there is big money in online communities, everyone’s got one! So if you have a topic worth talking about, it’s being discussed within an online community somewhere. So don’t create community because you think your user “needs it’. They don’t need your community. You need community features because you want to be loved or at least make people care enough to gather around to talk about you. If you want loyal users and you want to be transparent about everything you do, the best way you can do that is to create a dialog with your consumer.
7. Communities are not just a bunch of people. I want to watch a movie tonight. Flashback to 15 years ago > pick up the newspaper > choose a pretty poster from the movies section > take my chances > go to local theatre > pay $4.99 cheap Tuesday price. Today, it costs over $20 for a movie and I got little time. I also don’t trust my eyes to pick from posters because let’s face it, my mum reads the paper; I scroll, point and click. So I pick online communities to find out what people thought of a movie. I don’t just read individual reviews; I look to see what a bunch of people as an aggregate said about a movie because a bunch cancels swing votes from the the easy-to-please and the gripers. Subjectivity is lost in an aggregate made up of large numbers, I hope. I can also follow specific people that seem to mirror what I like/hate and they become my gurus to help me make decisions. Check out Rotten Tomatoes or Riffs. Communities can be a sophisticated glowing ball of wisdom.
8. It don’t get built overnight! Actually, that’s a lie. It seems like Twitter’s success can be solely attributed to its insanely popular introduction at SXSW. But most online communities need to be seeded, watered and tended to, like a delicate plant that could become a really big-ass tree someday, but not tomorrow. See above for all the seeding, tending things you should consider doing. Love your community and dedicate the amount of resources that you believe is worth building a loyal audience for your product.

So to the gym bunny grandpa: I agree that real people are great to have a conversation with. But in terms of levels of trust, this is how I see the world:

Highest level: I trust my inner circle of family and friends to give me opinions on things because I know them well. I know Robina loves every movie she sees, I know Jo-Ann won’t probably like most “hollywood” flicks, and so I can take their opinion, and self-adjust their subjective opinion to balance out what I have felt about their reviews in the past.

Second level: I would tap into what large crowds think about one thing at an aggregate level because I believe about the power of the collective wisdom of crowds for most things *.

Bottom of the trust totem pole: You, my gym-schmoozer friend. Not because of your oh-too-tight tank and the hefty weight belt that hangs below your beer belly. Only because you are one voice and I can’t rely on your solitary opinion. It’s too risky.

Communities have power, and strong communities can strong and have immense value when they work well.
(* This mp3, points out when crowds don’t work!)

To those who care to know (and Starbucks, if I were you, I would be searching Google everyday to find out what people think of you), here are the reasons why I have made it my mission to seek out alternatives sources to feed my caffeine addiction:

1. Starbucks coffee sucks? To me, the coffee has always tasted burnt. I am not a coffee connoisseur like the good people at 2paths but even to my relatively unsophisticated coffee palette, Starbucks never felt ‘good’.
2. It all began with ‘No free internet’ (Starbucks has changed that, but it’s too late)? Ok, so this is geek reason, but it had a ripple effect that lead to #3. Basically, I don’t understand why I would have to pay a zillion dollars for a “tall” coffee and then pay for a service that should be as basic as providing lighting and mind-numbing muzac.
3. I found ‘others’. Leading from # 2, I started looking for cafes that had free internet. Free internet lead me to cafes with great coffee! Take 5 café in Vancouver is great, as is Caffé Artigiano which has amazing coffee (and terrible baked goods). Lesson: sometimes your ancillary, supporting services are the reason why people buy into your primary brand offering.
4. I heart community. In this world of remote offices and telecommuting, cafés are the new networking opportunity. Starbucks tries to create a strategically comfortable environment with its big arm chairs and carefully positioned mood lighting, but I am thinking that it takes more than just soft cushions to make for a successful third place ! For example: Take 5 café lends its location to geek events in the evenings after open hours (fringe benefit: geeks tend to drink lots of java, and do so during these events too). Result: Now geeks flock to the café at all hours of the day! If you are looking to hire your next freelance coder/designer, chances are you will find them huddled in the back of the café, working on their laptops and guzzling down their third cup of java. Lesson: big brands need to work harder to give managers the freedom to operate each store as an independent business and make ‘authentic’ community contributions not the catch-all ones that are dictated at a corporate level.
5. Anonymous service. I have worked in retail and I have worked for a large global brand, so I know that customer service training can sometimes takes the humanity out of that service. It all becomes a timed science of making eye-contact within x number of seconds and saying thank you in just the right way. Again, I suggest that Starbucks and every other mega retail brand consider going back to the idea of creating “villages” around their stores. Look to hire people who genuinely enjoy people. Look to make each store unique, different and while it can have the comfort of leveraging familiarity of the same logo, same product, it should be courageous enough to respond to a particular community’s needs. Treat that 65 year old customer differently than the 30 year old who buys a low-fat, soya latte with extra foam from you every day. Keep your humanity, and don’t correct the customer when they order a “small” coffee.
6. Laughable brand extensions. OK, I guess I am a bit of a brand Nazi but I don’t want to give my hard earned money to a brand that thinks it’s so beautiful that it should be able to sell just about anything with its logo on it. How many types of tumblers does this world really need? What do plush toys have to do with the primary product i.e. a decent cup of coffee? Lesson: create a brand that is known for what it does best, keep a laser focus on that strength and don’t deviate from that focus. You seem wasteful and self-congratulatory when you overdo the logo placements.
7. I like local more then I like global. When I go to Europe, I resist the temptation of going to any American brand restaurant. Sure it’s easy to order a Royale with cheese at McDs. And it’s a linguistic and cultural challenge communicating with the owner of a petit bistrot. “I am asking for a medium rare steak but I would prefer if the cow were not still breathing when it is served to me”. But McD’s ain’t Paris. And Starbucks doesn’t feel local. If I want to feel posh, I go to 49^th Parallel. I want to feel like I am doin’ the drive so I go to Calabria café with its somewhat garish, fake Italian statues and unpretentious attitude. I want the local environment to impact my coffee experience. I don’t want the same lighting, same music and same artwork comfort but maybe that’s just me.
8. I want to curb the infection and not encourage it. Even if you love Starbucks and can’t live without it, you too would admit that the sheer number of stores that have cropped up in the last few years is a bit nutty. Do we really need a Starbucks store across the street from..another Starbucks? Vancouver seems to be hardest hit by the fungal growth of the green logo stores. “I’ve never seen so much coffee in all my life. The whole town is on a caffeine jag,” said Bette Midler, when she performed in Vancouver.
9. If I were a coffee shop I would be. Picture it, a little cafe with the bubbly, friendly tattooed crazy coffee girl (barista would be too pretentious, and not sure why she is a girl! Frued?). The smell of food and coffee would be mixed and the air would be warm and the music would be Radiohead-ish. Strange but hey, that’s me. I tend to try and use my money to vote up the brands that reflect who I am (or want to be). Little bit of narcissistic anthropomorphism . If I were a coffee brand I hope I am not seen as a Starbucks. Apparently a study of 8000 consumers found Starbucks to be “arrogant, intrusive and self-centered“.
10. I can’t stand the thought of sameness. I said it time and again in this little list, but one of the reasons that I am so fascinated by brand creation and management. I think we need to challenge how good brands are built. The whole idea of sameness is unnecessary. The idea of wrapping a marketing message around a product is such a throwback to the industrial revolution. We are now living in emotional times. I think the future of successful brands flips the equation on its head. As this brilliant article suggests, grassroots brands are cropping up that start with an emotion or thought and then manifest into a product that reflects that emotion best, not the other way around. Starbucks started that way but along the way it seems to have shifted its focus from coffee and experiences around that drink, to growing exponentially. Something got lost along the way and got replaced with this sameness/safeness that I question.

Back in June 06, I had written an article about a more human approach to brining users into the design equation. In the midst of packing and checking flight times, here is a PDF that has so far only been used by us internally and sent via email to our clients. It lists our process of highlighting user goals and marrying them with business goals. It is heavily influenced by Alan Cooper, and his book “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum“– a must-read for anyone involved in the design, management or development of an interactive project.

DesignStamp Persona Process

principality

For those of you who have never traveled with a designer, your photos must be, well, so normal. However, my poor camera frequently finds itself shooting odd subjects. From garbage cans, street signs or zooming in on random billboards. The world around us is highly designed. Everything we use, every object that helps us live our lives was designed by someone. Visiting a foreign country makes the designer in me work over-time. I want to capture the genius and the obtuse. As a tourist I am left staring at things I would ignore in my own city. I pay attention to what is probably mundane to the locals.

Here are 5 of the top photos that capture some interesting design solutions (4 good, 1 questionable)

London Tube.

Harry Beck created the London Underground map. By doing so he created a mapping system, now used around the world, to help people get from point A to point B. He ignored geographical accuracy and instead used color, lines and the circuit diagram metaphor to communicate clearly. The London Underground’s map and in-station signage are synced so even if you forget the name of the route, you can still find your way by finding the color of the line. Cognitive brilliance.

Antonio Gaudi.

If you are not familiar with Gaudi , you will be if you ever make a trip to Barcelona. Gaudi’s brilliant architecture dots the city and is now part of every tourist’s have-to-see list. Gaudi was very interested in blending what he learnt from nature into his work. So every building, every piece of furniture that Gaudi designed, ignores symmetry and instead focuses on the organic softness of curves or working with gravity and mathematics to create buildings that almost resemble living things. Gaudi didn’t just create beauty, he created work that was usable , livable and entirely experiential .

The Folding Pet Stores on the Las Rambla

Probably not as celebrated as the Gaudi buildings but still ingenious! On the busy Las Rambla you can stroll past tens of mini pet stores that sell everything from hamsters and snakes to various exotic birds. First of all, who would have thought that a row of pet stores on a busy pedestrian throughfare was necessary. Not sure. But what makes them so brilliant is that when the day is done, the store owner has to just pull in the walls of their store like the doors on a closet, put one lock, and viola their precious inventory is safe and concealed. The magic folding pet store doors function as part of the display during the day and secure the critters in a safe dark ventilated haven at night. Nifty!

Bicycling in Paris

Paris is dealing with the environmental and congestion issues posed by traffic by introducing the Velib bicycle system . Besides the kudos they deserve for the enviro-friendly bike program, I love their design solution to make it easy for people to tap into the system. Sign up using a well-designed interactive kiosk located at every bike parking station. Parking stations are located just about everywhere in Paris. Walk over to the bike stand, take out a bike and ride to your heart’s content (or till your time runs out). When it’s time to return the bike, simply find another bike stand (again, they are everywhere!) and put the bike in and boom you are done. Next day pick up another bike, and repeat. Simple, clean, elegant. (We saw Barcelona had it’s own smaller Bicing system).

Multi-Functional Garbage cans.

The last one, is in the "what were they thinking" category of design. Barcelona has recycling containers that replace old garbage cans in train stations. Awesome. Only problem, the labels to indicate what to put into which bin are uncolored, unlabelled, embossed icons on the container. I bet the contents have to sorted at the end of the day to account for laziness and mistakes, given the hard to see signage. The raised edges get dirty and scuffed as well. Paris has it’s own really big recycling solutions.

Client X (in email): XYZ referred me to you. We saw your work for Rouxbe and were impressed. We need a serious web2.0 redesign.

Me(in email): I would really appreciate it if you could complete our project initiation survey (it is only a few questions). This will help us to be better prepared for our meeting on Thursday.

Client X (in Survey): We want a best of breed, slick website that is just like myspace, linkedin, facebook, flickr and digg. Our site needs features from all of the above but be different.

Me (reading Survey): …Scratching head…

The above scenario is familiar to most designers. Everyone wants to be part of the big bandwagon called Web 2.0. Most have no idea what Web 2.0 is or it’s value. What they do know is that their current site doesn’t work and they want something better. I attended the DocTrain conference in Vancouver and the folks from Adaptive Path shared similar stories. In fact, they go one step further, and now use Web 2.0 as a shield to break through traditional bureaucracy. Tell people that what you are proposing is very web 2.0, and the cool, vague term opens doors for new ways of doing things.

This article is broken into several parts because this is a loaded topic, with lots of unknowns to unpack. This month, we look at how to know if it’s time to freshen up your website and redesign it. We will then make sense of the process of redesign and then apply Web 2.0 innovation , where appropriate, to bring the website in line with where we want it to be.

So…

Your company already has a website. And without knowing who you are, what your company does, and why you have come to DesignStamp to help you redesign your site, let me tell you what is probably wrong with your site right now:

1. Old, and Not In a Good Way:You had it designed about 5 years ago, and while it looked good then, it’s starting to feel tired today. It’s failing to display correctly on modern browsers, and the look and feel of the site is very 1990’s. Like a pair of jeans, it hugged your butt for a while, but now it’s starting to sag.
2. The Site Map ala the Winchester House .Time has taken it’s toll on planning as well, and every reactive addition to the website has resulted in several hundred orphaned pages. If you can’t draw a mental site map of your site’s structure, chances are your user most certainly cannot, so they may never find what they came looking for. You’ve inadvertently built stairs that lead to the ceiling!
3. Your Copy Lies About You. The market has done a 360°. Your customer has changed and so has your competition. You are no longer selling the same vision, and in some really bad cases, not even the same product(s). Your website is, essentially, lying about what you do and why you do it.
4. No Funnel, No Conversions, No Happy. Most websites that were designed in the 90’s and early 00’s lacked one small detail on their home page: stating the reason to exist or what the french call raison d’etre.Which means that while attention was paid to adding cool animations, we lacked the wisdom(that comes from failure), to make sure that people quickly understood what the website (and company) does, and then lead the user to the crux of the matter in the most targeted manner. See the home-page of Rouxbe.com: nothing stands in the way from telling people about the site and getting them signed up and all set to watch food videos. Now look at http://www.sap8.com/. Enough said.
5. Your Brand’s Clothes Don’t Match. Make sure the logo and colors of your website match with your biz card, your delivery van and the trade show collateral you just got designed. Your corporate identity are the clothes that your brand wears, and they need to match! A consistent, well-matched corporate identity builds trust and trust leads to the magic money-in-the-bank word… credibility!
6. You’re doing all the talkin’! In this brave new world, companies now have to have the courage to have a two-way conversation with their customer. So if your website features a lowly contact form as the only way for your customer to speak with you and create dialog, then perhaps, it’s time to consider creating a community around your website, and more importantly, around your brand.
7. Accessibility is a Dirty Word. Chances are that when your website was designed, the possibility of someone coming to your site unable to use a mouse was an edge-case not worth considering. There are several compelling business reasons to ensure that your website is accessible. One compelling way to think about accessibility and having xhtml standard compliant sites today is that they have a better chance of working on handheld devices and nifty little cell phones and Wii consoles. You never know where your customer thinks about you and wants access to your site.
8. Your Sales Staff Shudder, Your Tech Staff Dream Bad Dreams.Old websites usually have un-fresh first point of contact information and offer poor after-sales support. After all if the content is difficult to update then who will ever want to update it? And if the content is difficult to upkeep, your tech staff (or the guy who knows a lot about computers) is stressed out by just having to do simple text replaces in this very cumbersome website.
9. Your Competition Looks Better. While a me-too approach is never the best one, we do need to keep up with the Jones’ in this case. If your competition provides helpful features such as side-by-side comparisons, external online resources etc, they are stealing your online business from right under your nose. Your customer is turning to them as a trusted source for what they are looking for.
10. You Know It. Most organizations know that their website needs a refresh. While some may disagree about the extent of that refresh (a makeover, or a new beginning), most will acknowledge that the website has stopped meeting the organization’s needs. This checklist may just help you advocate internally for that change, and the need to hire professionals to do the job right!

Related footnote. I made a presentation entitled web design makeover in conjunction with VFS and Vancouver Public Library. Check out the PDF

We Belong

Tribe members are a brand’s strongest advocates. They feel like they helped build something (I am…trying…to resist another 80’s pop reference…but I can’t!!) and will go to bat for the website they are a part of. Brands have relied upon way tribes before social networking became cool. Avon and Mary Kay cosmetics relied upon women selling to women like themselves. Amazon relies on book lovers sharing their love for the written word with others like themselves. The key is to be driven by niche. If you share a deep love for something with someone else, you already have something in common, so relating with them becomes that much easier. And if you side with the small guy fighting the big guy than the community feeling is even stronger. Consider the linux community or the teeny bopper MySpace community. Both rely on people sharing what they have in common. Music, code, wanting to belong to just belong, whatever.

The Future of the Future

I love the promise of what they are about to become. I love them and I promise to love whatever they do next. I am in love with the future of this brand. Basecamp became successful even before it launched because it could rely on a strong fan base that read the 37 signals blog everyday. Google has future fans who flock it’s official and ‘fan’ blogs and scour it’s labs. This user consumes not just based on subject but based on what their idol is currently interested in or promoting. They are fanatical about their idol and will irrationally support it’s future endevours. So Google completes its grid and we follow and invent rationale to use their next beta app. Firefox built itself a brand by having loyal fans that cut and pasted banners promoting the new browser even when it was a fledgling. They had bought into the promise. Into the future.

I Just Can’t Stop Loving You

What started as a hobby has become something much bigger. And this love must be shared with others and celebrated whenever, wherever. The love could be for a hobby, a technology, a gadget, a game or even food. This person probably trolls sites such as mac rumors or wii’s world, has RSS feeds to sites dedicated to their favorite subject. They might be closet junkies choosing to only revel with others who share this love. They appear normal from the outside. Inside, however they hunger for new information and sharing with others (sometimes under aliases). They will spend some time everyday keeping up with their interest. This person will also sign up for newsgroups and even meet people IRL about a subject that is close to their hearts. It was love at first click. My friends at Industrial Brand are “out” as big-time foodies!

Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)

Just browsing as they call ‘em. The surfer starts out not knowing where they are going, just that they got time to kill. They bounce from one site to the next, clicking on blogrolls, del.icio.us links or just clicking for the sake of it. But sooner or later they realise that the web is really a small place and end up coming back to the same site. There is huge oppurtunity here as this user can be seduced into staying or coming back. They got time. Surfers will come back to sites that look, feel and behave differently than other sites because, they are more memorable and somehow managed to stand out from the other 50 sites that were pinged earlier that day. Give them a newsletter or a contest, get them to sign up and chances are they may just click their way back to you.

Daddy Cool

Give me the latest gossip. Tell me about the latest trend. Show me something new. I am a cool hunter on the prowl. I got people who rely on me to tell them the latest greatest and I can’t dissappoint! This person thrives on sharing and being the first. They depend on finding and dispersing information about new things to maintain their ‘cool’ status. They will forward, post on newsgroups and comment about the latest, greatest just to be the first to do so. This type of user created the buzz factor that surrounds the front-page of Digg and makes Tech crunch spit out one of the top RSS feeds on the internet.

Got to tell you, writing this article made me want to gel my hair, stitch some pleats in my pants and wear white socks (again). Not!

happy prosumer

1. The eBay seller who put up the camera for sale, listing it’s features, putting up photos of the camera, to get me to bid on that camera.
2. Me: I had a ability to take that photo of my dog, and then add meta data to that photo in Flickr by adding the photo to a set, submit it to a dog-lovers group, and add comments to the pic.

The Good: Power to the People

We can celebrate the power of being able to share content instantaneously. Tragic events such as the London Bombings are instantly found on various sites through “citizen journalism” around the world with cell-phone videos, podcasts, blogs and photos from every angle. Unedited or censored.

And let’s acknowledge that it is kinda cool to skip traditional distribution channels (and the tax-man?) by being able to buy and trade things even wholesale products from each other in easier ways than ever before.

The ability to create and distribute content has shifted power of content creation from the few (read media mogul Rupert Murdoch who interestingly enough owns MySpace, a cluttered example of user-generated content) to the many (at least to those that have the access to increasingly cheap technology). Get free web space, spit out your message and you have just created content for all to consume. You could have the attention of millions. No censorship , no barriers. You are now a publisher, a distributor and you could even surround your content with ways to monetize on your new found powers. If you are a musician, you are finding ways to get famous without the help of record companies. And you can even gain celebrity status for yourself by just picking on famous people. Just find your niche and create content for them. And they will consume it.

The Bad: (The Reason why user generated content…umm…sucks?)

The problem with this whole scenario is this. No one stopped me sharing that photo in the scenario above.
I might suck at taking photos but no one stopped me from adding that blurry photo to the trash heap that is the internet today.

Let’s talk about YouTube: how many videos are actually worth the bandwidth that was spent uploading them and then serving them up to unsuspecting bored explorers? And sites that accept user-submitted content realize this problem, so every user generated piece of content must offer features such as ratings, reviews. Tell the system if the piece of content is good, tell the system if it is miserably useless. Help us bury it or float it to the top. And even then fake content or hoaxes ends up tarnishing the credibility of good websites.

And while bad content rarely ever makes it up the ranks, it still leaves someone, somewhere having to take the time to watch the content to censor or celebrate it. And time is precious. The world is melting, we have crazy weather outside and frogs are going extinct at an alarming rate. But we are spending our time flagging content that should never have been made in the first place. Worse yet, we are provided more and more choices everyday to showcase our small lives in duplicate ways. And no one is asking why.

The Inevitable J.Lo Syndrome

Luckily, the system has a way of correcting itself. It’s called the the J.Lo syndrome. Remember when we couldn’t get enough of J.Lo’s well-endowed behind, her bling and her men? Well at some point we got bored and we turned away. She went into hiding, came out made a couple of movies but has not generated the same tabloid frenzy again. User-generated content is here to stay, don’t get me wrong (just like J.Lo’s behind). But we are going through the dreaded “Ben Affleck engagement” phase of the J.Lo syndrome at the moment. Over-hype and over-saturation. We have been provided too many ways to share pointless content.

At it’s best user-generated content gives us incredible, unprecedented power to share, contribute to a collective intelligence and find new ways to communicate with each other. But it is the emphasis on quantity (with ways to weed through the abysmal, to get to the average) that has to shift. We all want good content, not millions of ways to submit and access bad content.

Once the saturation point hits and websites with identical business models that live off or leverage user-generated content start to cannabalize each other and starve each other of investment dollars, we will gravitate back to sites that offer us good content, whether that content is created by one or many. Good content always wins. The author can be a “user”, a “pro” or a prosumer, it don’t really matter! What matters is that the focus will be back on quality and not the aggregation of masses of content submitted by the masses. And no more talk about seeding and weeding a gigantic compost heap of content.