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http://uxstorytellers.blogspot.com/2009/01/about-this-project.html

Does this situation seem familiar to you? … You're at a conference or a party or another occasion, you're talking IA and UX and suddenly someone tells a remarkable story. You and your pals either laugh or shudder; perhaps the story made your skin crawl. Days later, when you think back, your hair stands on end, and every time you face a certain situation, you remember what you learned through this particular story.

At UX Storytellers, we want to collect those stories and publish them here on this blog, as a free PDF, an online magazine and as a book (translated into various languages).

Do you have a great story from the realm of IA or UX? Please tell us about it. More info on how to submit a story and become an official UX Storyteller can be found here: Submit a story.

Download the PDF here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13448882/UX_Storytellers_v1.1.pdf 

UX Storytellers

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Check out a little of how this incredible video was made ---> http://najork.net/mt_bts.html 

Excerpt: "All the animation in this video was done in After Effects.Tracking dots all over the actor where used to move around matte shapes (isolating and shading sections of the actor's body), as well as the non-anatomical pieces added in later. Both tasks made extensive use of AE's puppet tool. "

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THEINSPIRATION.COM Interviews George Lois

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[From Forbes]

On April 25th I turned 26, and a few weeks later my web marketing agency turned two. What started as a single person mini-business, has turned into a 27 person global web marketing firm in just two short years. I’ve been immensely grateful for the opportunities life has presented me with. And, as I look forward to the future, it would only be fair to look back as well.

Here are 26 lessons I have learned as a young entrepreneur and CEO: 

1. A written vision of what you want your company to look like in 3 years is important. The pen (or keyboard!) has power. It isn’t enough to envision your goals in your mind. You must have a blueprint on paper. Every decision you make, ask yourself: does this help me get closer to my vision? 
   
   
2. Learn to listen to your clients. When we started, we were only offering social media consulting services. But, clients quickly demanded more. We eventually ended up serving as their web marketing department. The marketplace will tell you what it needs. You have to listen, and then deliver.
   
   
3. Half the job is keeping up. The pace of technology will only continue to quicken. It doesn’t matter what your industry is, you have to keep up in order to constantly leverage it for your business.
   
   
4. Always think in terms of value — not price. Always judge based on the value something or someone brings to the table. Price is arbitrary.
   
   
5. Only hire people who have fire. This is especially true if you are running a small to medium sized business. In a large corporation, there is room for many types of personalities and people. In a smaller business, passion is a must in every position. Hire people who are driven to do well and see your business succeed.
   
   
6. If you must fire, be graceful and professional about it.This is hands down the worst part of being a CEO. It is tough to let people go, but for the greater good of the business, sometimes it must be done. It doesn’t matter if you are firing or being fired, don’t burn bridges.
   
   
7. Learn to forgive. Things happen. People change. You can’t move forward in business — or in life — if you can’t forgive and move on.
   
   
8. Cash flow is crucial. This is especially true in a recessionary economy, and if you are growing quickly. Work with clients to get payments upfront.
   
   
9. Balance is overrated. Aim for joy. When work is fun, you don’t feel the need to take as many breaks. Balance in today’s world looks very different than it did just 20 years ago. Embrace it.
   
   
10. Don’t underestimate the power of PR. The power of the press may now be in more than just the hands of journalists (umm…social media, anyone?). Learn to be a friend to the press.
    
    
11. Treat your team well. People will follow a leader who treats them with respect. Learn to value your team’s input, and always reward them for a job well done.
    
    
12. Focus is the most underrated skill that you must master.90 percent of the time, what is on your computer screen is not resulting in a positive ROI. Learn to focus on what truly matters in your business. Then, do it consistently.
    
    
13. Multitasking doesn’t mean greater productivity. Don’t put “good multitasker” on your resume. Numerous studies have shown that multitasking decreases brain power.
    
    
14. Age isn’t just a number. Age does matter. Managing a Gen Y employee is different than managing a baby boomer.
    
    
15. Appearances matter. I just interviewed an intern who showed up in an outfit more appropriate for an 8 a.m. class. I had to wonder how he would represent us in front of clients. Whether we like it or not, appearances matter. Dress appropriately.
    
    
16. Learn to view situations objectively. Just because you would or wouldn’t do something, doesn’t mean others are the same way.
    
    
17. Life is short, and very easy to take for granted. Sounds like something you’d read in a self-help book, but true nonetheless. Life is temporary, and the only thing that matters at the end of the day is how you treated those around you.
    
    
18. Pets make the workplace better. I propose that every office should have a mascot. Ours is a little Maltese-Poodle mix named Snoopy. No day is a sad day.
    
    
19. A support network is crucial. As much as you try, you can’t do it alone. Building a personal and professional support network is imperative.
    
    
20. Give luck its due. Luck has played a huge part in my life. I don’t deny it. I am just grateful for it.
    
    
21. Hard work is a given. Struggle doesn’t have to be. I’ve learned that there is always work that will need to be done. The task list is never complete. So, just enjoy it!
    
    
22. It IS lonely at the top. And, yes, the view & the food are both amazing.
    
    
23. Ignore the trolls. They like the power the anonymity of the internet gives them. Don’t pay them any attention.
    
    
24. Be picky when choosing your friends. My friend list (and I don’t mean Facebook) is short. Surround yourself with people who inspire you.
    
    
25. Karma exists in business and in life. The old adage says “what goes around, comes around.” The older I get, the more I see this being true. Think twice before you act.
    
    
26. Being a CEO means being a CVO. CVO stands for Chief Value Officer. Always ask yourself: How can I create value for our clients? Our prospects? Our internal team? The answers will guide you to building a better company.

Shama Kabani is the award winning CEO of The Marketing Zen Group, a full service web marketing firm in Dallas. She is also the author of the best-selling, The Zen of Social Media Marketing; and hosts her own web TV show at Shama.Tv.

 

 

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by Edward Hallowell

Brain Science, Peak Performance, and Finding the Shine

WHAT MAKES A PERSON SHINE?
What separates people who feel fulfilled from those who suffer with regret? Here's a hint: it isn't money in the bank, fame, trophies, or rank, as much as those may matter. Many people don't finish first but nonetheless achieve greatness and long will be remembered, while many who do finish first will never be called great and will soon tumble into oblivion.

lt doesn't much matter what you've got in your personal asset bank. Smart is overrated. Talent is overrated. Breeding, Ivy League education, sophistication, wit, eloquence, and good looks—they matter, but they're all overrated. What really matters is what you do with what you've got. If you hold nothing back, if you take chances and give your all, if you serve the world well, then you will exult in what you've done and you will shine—in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of those who matter to you, and in your own eyes as well.

The more a manager can help the people who work for him or her to shine, the greater that manager will be, and the greater the organization as a whole. Put simply, the best managers bring out the best from their people. This is true of football coaches, orchestra conductors, big-company executives, and small-business owners. They are like alchemists who turn lead into gold. Put more accurately, they find and mine the gold that resides within everyone.

Managing in a way that brings out people's best is a critical task, perhaps second in importance only to parenting in shaping the future of our world. More than any other quality, it takes heart to be such a manager.

(More inspiration in the book!)

 

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Google is the first choice in search for more than 65 percent of the Web, while the shared efforts of Microsoft and Yahoo have earned Bing the market’s only other significant share. But the most successful Web professionals are those who explore all of their options; and for additional choices in search, look no further than the following list.
(Source: Website Magazine)

Blekko  http://blekko.com/

When Blekko launched back in November 2010, there were plenty of doubters who didn’t expect the startup search engine to last more than a year. While that may not be guaranteed just yet, Blekko is making good on its promise of creating a new and exciting alternative in search.

Blekko’s mission, some three years in the making before its actual launch, was to enlist human editors in an effort to eliminate spam and personalize and socialize the search experience. The team of 25 or so employees includes former Google and Yahoo search engineers and the project has received significant backing from some of the best-known investors in the tech world, including Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway.

The magic behind the Blekko vision was to use programmingrelated slashtags or topic tags to create the most relevant search verticals for users. Those very users would be among the editors curating and maintaining the slashtags, and after three months Blekko reported that it had more than 110,000 human-curated tags.

Blekko clearly could not compete with the size and scope of Google’s or Bing’s indexes, but what it could — and does — do is produce more relevant, more accurate, better search results. Before Google made headlines around the globe with its Farmer Update algorithm changes, Blekko had removed the very same content farms (and many more) from its search index as a matter of standard practice — and to much less fanfare.

But what it may lack in publicity Blekko has made up for in terms of a devoted user base. Its January 2011 numbers indicated an average of 1 million queries per day and between 10 to 15 queries per second. And Google and Bing’s own publicity does them as much harm as good — the controversy over Bing’s “stolen” search results and Google’s paid links scandal with J.C. Penney being just two recent examples.

Perhaps that’s why Blekko and the alternative search options below have become favorites for many SEOs and Web professionals of every kind.

DuckDuckGo  http://duckduckgo.com/

Blekko recently forged a partnership with fellow startup search engine DuckDuckGo (DDG), in which the two companies share technologies and information in the name of improving the quality of search results for users. The partnership is sure to evolve over time, say the CEOs of both companies, but right now DDG receives access to Blekko’s auto-fired slashtags in seven categories (health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels) in return for use of DDG’s proprietary feature, zero-click info.

Similar to Google’s Instant Search, zero-click info gives users the most relevant information on websites and search terms without having to click on search results. Local business listings from Yelp, word definitions from The Free Dictionary, Wikipedia entries and content from 13 additional StackExchange sites are some examples of information users can find with zero-click results.

Like Blekko, DuckDuckGo has developed quite a following and averages more than 5 million searches per month.

Greplin  https://www.greplin.com/

Greplin is a user-authorized search engine that can search and index social services and applications such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, Google Docs, Evernote, Basecamp, Salesforce and more, and it’s adding more all the time. The startup recently announced the addition of a Chrome extension to its search presence so that users can now search their social data directly from the browser without having to go to Greplin’s website. The creation of a 19-year-old entrepreneur from Israel, Greplin may be the best known of a growing number of services such as CloudMagic that are designed for searching users’ social graphs for personal data and those hard-tofind items that often get lost in the cloud.

Wajam  http://www.wajam.com/index2.php

Wajam is another socially driven search tool, but unlike Greplin it returns its results as part of your experience with Google or Bing. Where Greplin searches only the applications that have been preauthorized by the user, Wajam searches the entire Web but with an emphasis on returning personalized results from Facebook, Twitter and other social sites a user has bookmarked. It is used as a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, and injects these social results into the search queries submitted to larger engines.

Quora  http://www.quora.com/

Quora is the extremely popular new platform that strives to be the definitive question-and-answer site for just about any topic on the Web. Like Blekko, it is largely human-driven and invites users to ask questions, provide answers and share their knowledge and comments. Questions are organized into different categories that can also be created by users, leading to a wide range and growing index of topical information.

Nobody believes that these solutions will threaten Google’s dominance in the world of search any time soon, least of all the people behind each service. But most of them seem to be much more focused on improving the Web by providing a better way to access information.

Just like Google was when it first launched.

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Mark Zuckerberg's second-in-command provides "adult supervision" at the company, trying to keep growth at an optimum level

On a Tuesday afternoon in late April, 30 managers of Facebook's various business units come together to discuss a matter that preoccupies its famous founder: how to keep their rapidly growing little company from getting too big. The meeting, organized and led by the second-most-famous person at the social network, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, focuses on how to solve the problems of users, advertisers, and partner websites by using automated systems rather than bringing in thousands of new employees.

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek or download PDF below.

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By Laura Vanderkam for bnet.com

It’s not just you — most knowledge workers seem to have a low-level case of ADD these days. You come in ready to work, only to spend hours responding to emails and phone calls, and drifting between meetings where people check their Blackberries to respond to emails from people in other meetings. According to a late 2010 Workplace Options report, 42% of  workers say they come in early or stay late in order to avoid distractions (a practice which makes people think they’re working more hours than they are). After all, you have to do your actual job at some point.

Unfortunately, spending the whole day reacting, and staying late just to catch up with your job description, doesn’t leave much time for pondering the future. What projects would you like to tackle? What challenges will your organization face three years from now? Thinking about these questions is the difference between treading water and zooming ahead. So how do you create the time to focus?

One approach is to emulate Trista Harris, the executive director of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When I interviewed Harris for 168 Hours, she told me that she carved out a few hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for “strategic thinking time.” This is time with the phone and email off, the door closed (or some other physical separation from distractions), spent pondering long-term important questions.

Sound impossible? Don’t be so sure. Here’s how to try it.

1. Figure out what you’d like to think about. On your commute or during a quiet patch at night or on weekends, think through what are the big questions related to your career or organization. Choose one to start with.
2. Gather any material you’ll need in advance. You do not want to search through your email to find a report… and then answer 10 other emails and follow a link to an interesting article your colleague sent and then, hey! Is it noon already?
3. Seize the time. No one is going to say “Hey, here’s an hour where nothing else will happen!” You’re going to have to take the lead on this one. If you can leave your office during the day, go somewhere nearby and quiet. Do a work-from-home day or morning if that’s possible for you. If you have an office, shut the door. If you’re in a cube, reserve an empty conference room. Don’t bring your phone to be “available” if someone needs you. The point is to be unavailable.
4. Start small. The hardest part about strategic thinking time is actually maintaining your focus. So you may need to take baby steps. For your first session, aim for 30 minutes truly focused on the question at hand. Set your watch. If your mind wanders, bring it back.
5. Make it a habit. If you make it through 30 minutes, congratulate yourself. Then try again later in the week. If you manage to do three 30-minute sessions a week for several weeks in a row, aim bigger.

When I interviewed her, Harris was regularly up to 5 or more hours a week of focused time. That may sound like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, spending one-eighth of a workweek thinking about the future isn’t radical.

It’s smart.

 

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by Peter Shankman, Business Insider War Room

I was going to call this article “All 'Social Media Experts' Need To Go Die In A Fire,” but I figured I should be nicer than that.

But my title stands. If you call yourself a social media expert, don’t even bother sending me your resume.

No business in the world should want one on their team. They shouldn’t want a guru, rockstar or savant, either. If you have a social media expert on your payroll, you’re wasting your money.

Being an expert in social media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.

Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social media, by itself, will not help you.

We’re making the same mistakes that we made during the DotCom era, where everyone thought that just adding the term .com to your corporate logo made you instantly credible. It didn’t. If that’s all you did, you emphasized even more strongly how pathetic your company was. You weren’t “building a new paradigm while shifting alternate ways of focusing customers on the clicks and mortar of an organizational exchange.” No -- you were simply an idiot who’d be out of business in six months.

Ready for the ultimate kicker? We still haven’t learned! We got thirsty again, and are drinking the same ten-year-old Kool-Aid without so much as asking for ice. Rather than embracing this new technology and merging it with what we’ve learned already, we’re throwing off our clothes and running naked in the rain, waving our hands in the air, sure that this time it’ll be different, because this time it’s better!

“It’s not about building a website anymore! It’s so much cooler! It’s about Facebook, and fans, and followers, and engagement, and influence, and…”

Will you please shut up before you make me vomit on your shoes?

IT’S ABOUT GENERATING REVENUE THROUGH SOLID MARKETING AND STELLAR CUSTOMER SERVICE, JUST LIKE IT’S BEEN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME.

It’s about transparency. It’s about not lying to your customers, and thinking that a good Twitter apology will suffice when you’re caught. It won’t, and you’ll lose. Customers will run away in droves, because they can. They can go wherever they want now -- it doesn’t matter how loyal they were in the past. Lie to them and get caught, and say goodbye.

It’s about using the tools to market to an audience that wants to help tell your story, because you’ve been awesome at providing them with the service they deserve. United’s reaction to “United Breaks Guitars” WASN’T a stellar example of a good use of social media. It was the exact opposite--it was knee-jerk crisis management that would never have had to happen had United been focused on customer service in their marketing to begin with.

It’s about relevance. It’s not about tweeting every single time your company offers 10 percent off on a thingamabob. It’s about finding out where your customers actually are, and going after them there. If you’re tweeting all your discounts, and none of your customers are on Twitter, then you sir, are an idiot. Marketing involves knowing your audience, and tailoring your promotions in specific bursts to the correct segments.

“Social media experts” don’t know this. They’ll build you a fan page, and when all that work doesn’t convert into new sales, they’ll simply say, “Well, we’ll just post more.”

Don’t be that guy. Real marketers know when to market using traditional methods, social media or even word of mouth. Go ahead. Ask a “social media expert” what a traffic planner does at an agency, then laugh as they quickly ask Google for help finding the answer.

It’s also about brevity. You know what the majority of people calling themselves social media experts can’t do, among other things? THEY CAN’T WRITE. The number of “experts” out there who can’t string a simple sentence together astounds me. Guess what -- if we have about three seconds to get our message across to a new customer, you know what’s going to do it?

Not Twitter followers. Not Facebook fans. Not Foursquare check-ins – NO. What’s going to do it is GOOD WRITING, END OF STORY. Good writing is brevity, and brevity is marketing. Want to lose me as a customer, forever, guaranteed? Have a grammar error on any form of outward communication.

Finally, it’s about knowing your customer, and making sure your customer thinks of you first. When Barry Diller was running Paramount, he’d call ten people in his Rolodex each morning, just to say "hi."  That translated into all of Hollywood knowing this previously unknown executive’s name -- because he took the time to reach out and communicate. It also translated into Paramount making billions in a time where other movie companies were struggling.

Do you know your audience? Have you reached out to them? I’m not talking about “tweeting at them.” I’m talking about actually reaching out. Asking them what you can do better, or asking those who haven’t been around in a while what you can do to get them back. It’s not about 10 percent off coupons or “contests for the next follower.” For God’s sake, be smarter than that.

You’d never give the intern permission to write the corporate press release to accompany an earnings announcement, so why the hell are you listening to the 22-year-old who says, “we’re going to do this social media thing because it’s cool?”

Social media is not “cool.” MAKING MONEY IS COOL. Social media is simply another arrow in the quiver of marketing, and that quiver is designed to GENERATE REVENUE.

If you’re doing anything else with social media, here’s a book of matches, and I expect to never see you again.

 

 

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From: Web 2.0 Expo SF 2011

 

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The following is paraphrased from an inspirational talk I recently encountered:

Our best legacy is not what we leave FOR people, but what we leave IN people.

Learn to believe in people before they are successful. Everyone has seeds of greatness. Look past their faults and what they're doing wrong, and see their potential.

You may have some advice that will save others frustration and pain. Be willing to share with them to help them win. Be willing to make some sacrifices to help others win.

When you have experience and knowledge, be a Dream Releaser, and invest in others. Sometimes you have to give up winning (temporarily) so you can release a dream in someone else.

Remember, there is nothing more rewarding than to lay down at night knowing that you helped someone else become better. You not only fulfilled your purpose for that day, you did your best. It may have just been a two-minute phone call where you encouraged someone; but when you live as a dream releaser, you’ll see your own dreams come alive as well!

We should live with this awareness that, “I am here to add value to people. I am here to help them succeed.” Don’t go around thinking, “I wonder what that person can do for me? I wonder what they have to offer?” No, we should have the attitude, “What can I do for them? How can I help them come up higher? Can I teach them something I know? Can I connect them with someone who can help them?” Don’t make the mistake of going through life ingrown. Instead, be a Dream Releaser. Use your talent, your influence and your experience, not just to accomplish your goals, but to help release a dream in someone else.

 

 

 

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The Storm Before The Launch
by Phil Edelstein 

There are few moments in business more exciting than initiating a site redesign. We see all the aesthetics we could mold, the functionality we could have and the revenue we could generate. Its's a moment when the prosperity we dream of suddenly seems within reach.

This useful article is from Website Magazine.

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Optimizing Meeting Minutes
by PJ Camp Malik, EightShapes.com

Following a meeting, you have to align your project team as quickly as possible. Meeting summaries should highlight important decisions, focus on remaining questions, and inform the project team of their tasks. Optimizing your notes is the key to sharing information successfully, and ensuring meetings aren’t a waste of time.

The following process ensures that your team captures meeting notes consistently and comprehensively.

Step 1:  Define your audience

Anticipate the recipient of your meeting summary, as this will impact your note-taking. To identify the audience, ask yourself whether the readers will be meeting attendees, people who didn’t attend, or a mix of both:

1. Will you be sending the minutes to people who did not attend the session? If so, include context for each item within your document.  For example, provide a top-level meeting summary within your notes to recap the purpose and the goal of the meeting.  Identify roles and responsibilities for speakers and participants.
2. Are these minutes intended for only participants of the meeting? If so, you may not need to list out each person with their responsibilities.  Participants may be primarily interested in a task list of action items.  However, including a high-level recap of the meeting would help to frame the context of the notes for anyone reading them at a future point in time.
3. Will the audience be a combination of the two? If so, ensure that you have context for both groups.  While it may be redundant to identify, your project team will thank you.

Once you’ve established your audience, prepare your plan.

Step 2:  Preparation

Depending upon your audience, decide what format to use for your meeting minutes.  EightShapes uses three different structures, depending on the style and purpose of the meeting:  summary oriented, task lists, and journalistic.

Styles of Meeting Minutes

Step 3: Outline

Using the audience, and your plan, you should be equipped to draft an outline of how you’re going to format your minutes during the session.  For example, you know you’ll need to list:  open questions (answered or not), desired outcome (was it met, or not), action items.

Your outline should include four placeholders:

1. Summary: where you will describe the purpose and outcome in 2-3 sentences, or up to 5 quick bullet-points.  You’ll include information about decisions made, final outcomes, what topics were deferred (if any).
2. Attendees: where you identify who was at your meeting.  You can fill this in tentatively with all the people invited. Optional: include which team or organization the participants represent (e.g. PJ – EightShapes).
3. Action Items: where you will identify actions required as a follow-up to the meeting.  Be sure to save space for information about who is responsible for the action, a detailed description of the desired outcome, and a due date.
4. Minutes: where you will capture topics discussed during the meeting. Pre-populate the outline with potential sub-topics, including open questions (answered or not), desired outcome (was it met, or not).

Formatting Tip: Look for flow and scanability.  Keep action items close to the top of the page, so they’re readily apparent.

Step 4:  Capture notes

Using the outline, you can capture comments and decisions as the meeting progresses. To document the proceedings efficiently:

Include context in your bullet points.  Remember that someone who wasn’t present in the room might read your minutes. For example, during a design review meeting, one of your proposals (Option A) is approved.

In reviewing the design concepts, Dan approved Option A, which will undergo revisions.

Include direct quotes, especially if the meeting is in a more conversational style. I’ve found that it’s often easier to just type what people are saying rather than try to boil it down.

[PJ] “Less than 10% of our original budget remains.”

[Dan] “Let’s communicate that to the client and prioritize our tasks.”

Multi-Tasking Tip: Some meetings require the meeting facilitator to also be the person who is responsible for notes or meeting minutes.  Your outline will serve as a quick reference guide for which topics are in queue for the conversation, which will aide in keeping the meeting on-topic.

Step 5:  Finalize and Send

Immediately following the meeting, re-read your notes for legibility and clarity. Remember, the recipients may not have been in the room for the conversation so ensure that the notes have context.

Areas to clean-up:

1. Check any spelling or grammatical errors that may have arisen
2. Revisit the layout and or organization of information.
3. Inspect your formatting to align with your outline.
4. Analyze your notes to ensure each item has context.
5. Use color sparingly. Bold key phrases, but not whole paragraphs.

Subject Line Tip: Be sure the email’s subject line establishes context, defining the name of the meeting and the date and time it took place.

Sample Meeting Minutes: event planning

What are your best practices?

While there are always opportunities to improve efficiency in seemingly rote tasks, I’ve found the above techniques give me a great foundation.  For me, the practice of organizing and defining my template ahead of time allows me to focus on accurately capturing the presentation without worrying about formatting. 

Visit EightShapes.com

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More, better, faster: UX design for startups

“Twice the designers, huh? Can’t we just get one and do more cycles?” Sure, people do it every day. But one designer doesn’t make more, better. Even a rock-star designer can’t generate enough polarity to come close to the “more, better” brought by two damn good designers who know how to work together as a pair. You buy a pair, you get more design; not twice the volume, but twice the quality. This isn’t that fine-china sense of quality, but the kind of quality defined by pure raw goodness. It’s the quality of solutions that people fall in love with. It’s the ephemeral but very real sense when you first make contact with the product that someone really truly understands you. Not all problems need or deserve this level of attention. There’s many times when one designer may perfectly address the need.But when your startup wants to design more, better, faster, go all the way, invest in it. Expect faster, and demand more, better. Your investors will want it too.

Read More: http://www.cooper.com/journal/2011/03/more_better_faster_ux_design.html

And more on "Pair Design" at Cooper.com

 

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 by Mike Michalowicz

Source: American Express OPEN | Forum: Idea Hub

Everyone looking for their next hire seems to look for the “best” employee, as defined by the applicant's experience. Obviously, someone with 10 years of experience is better than someone with two years, right? Not so quick.

What Counts

Realize this -- the thing that you can give someone is experience. You can provide all the skills and experience that you want to. But there are other things that you cannot give them, which makes those things far more important than just having experience. What are those things?

• Work ethic. A person’s work ethic is going to impact how they feel about their job, which in turn will impact how well they get it done. If they have a strong work ethic, they will be honest, accountable, and responsible. These are all things you want in an employee, or at least should want.

• Attitude. Someone’s attitude is a big issue if you are bringing them in to work with you, or with a team of others. Attitude is how they convey their feelings, or disposition. The last thing you want is someone with a bad attitude who you are afraid to challenge.

• Energy. How upbeat are they when they answer your questions? If it seems to take a lot out of them to respond, it will also take a lot out of them to muster up the energy to get the work done. And when it comes to energy, they can also have an impact on others they work around, for better or for worse. 

• Intelligence. Even if someone has a degree, that doesn’t guarantee that they are intelligent. Having intelligence means having the ability to learn or understand things. It also applies to how well they can adapt to new situations.

• Values. This comes down to how well they promote what you consider important for your company. If you value good customer service and honesty, you want to make sure that your employees do, as well, as they will be the ones carrying out that mission.
  

So, when you are hiring someone, look beyond how much or how little experience someone has. Instead, ask questions that explore what they really bring to the table. Find out what they are like in terms of the important factors listed above.

And if you call to speak to any of their past employers, be sure to inquire about their work ethic, attitude, and energy level.

Latching On

After conducting this type of investigation into the person you are considering hiring, you will know if you have found the right person. Once you do find a match, hire them. Then you can focus on giving them the experience. Experience is something that can easily be gained if they have these other attributes.

After a year on the job, your new employee will not only have the great skills you are looking for in a team member, but will also have experience. That sure beats hiring someone based on experience alone and, a year later, realizing they are still lacking all the other incredibly important traits.

 

 

 

 

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Excerpt from Fortune Magazine:
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/11/4-job-hunting-tips-for-tech-nerds/

4 job hunting tips for tech nerds

People with superb tech skills are not always adept at marketing themselves. How to build a solid job-seeking profile.
By Anne Fisher, contributor

As a rule, tech nerds "tend to focus too much on their individual roles, project successes, and the operational aspects of their last position."

All that stuff counts, of course, and it's unlikely you'd have earned five promotions in 14 years without excelling at it. But you now need to take one step further and "correlate your skills with ideas about the concrete value those skills can add to the organization as a whole," Harris says.

With that in mind, some suggestions:

1. Research prospective employers thoroughly, paying particular attention to news (online and in the trade press) about what their IT people are doing now and the direction they are likely moving in, whether it's cloud computing, VOIP, converging technologies, or some other Next Big Thing. "You need the right context for interviews, so you can explain how you see yourself adding value to the business," Harris says.

2. Be ready to give specifics about how your past accomplishments helped your employer reach quantifiable goals. Prepare for interviews by practicing succinct summaries of your successes, including "the original problem or challenge, your contribution to the solution, and the end result," Harris says.

If you're describing a project to a hiring manager with little or no technical expertise, she adds, keep jargon and acronyms to a minimum. Talk instead about the impact of your work in areas of the company beyond the IT department.

3. Don't forget to polish your image online by making sure your LinkedIn profile is current and complete, casting a critical eye on your Facebook page and deleting any comments or photos that are "unflattering or worse," Harris advises. These days, all job seekers in any field should "assume that, at some point in your job search, companies will check you out online." Try to make sure they like what they find.

4. Supercharge your resume. Use bullet points, which Harris says "make a resume easier to scan quickly for relevant skills and experience. Include a separate bullet point for each project --whether it's enterprise architecture design, a data center move, or a restructuring -- that led to greater efficiencies or new cost savings."

And for dessert:

10 Worst IT Job Hunting Mistakes

 

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Are Cross-Platform Mobile App Frameworks Right for Your Business?

I'm currently in the middle of creating the user experience for a trio of mobile apps that will be deployed via iPhone, iPad and Android. I found the article linked below very timely. The following quote especially rings true with me, and perhaps with you, as well:

"Making the absolute best app experience possible is a labor of love. Whether the app replies on unique features of the OS or not, the best experience will come by utilizing the features and paradigms of the device platform and paying close attention to the little details that make the user experience top notch."

http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/cross-platform-mobile-frameworks/

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