One of the things I’ve been quietly working on over the past months has been a book that details some significant new features available in Microsoft’s Expression Blend tool called SketchFlow.
Let us know what you think. You can learn more about the new features and the book at www.dynamic-prototyping.com
This post is adapted from a paper that appears in the Journal of Business Strategy entitled Cultural Innovation in Software Design: The New Impact of Innovation Planning Methods.
In the world or celebrity fame often seems to come overnight—sometimes it does. With entrepreneurs and startups success often seems to happen overnight as well. In truth, many great ideas and, and stars, are made and shaped over time. This is double true in the enterprise, where size and inertia can sabotage the best of intentions. Many of the successes we see in the market place today—or that are imminent, really got there start long ago.
the fall of 2007 Steven Ballmer addressed Microsoft employees during its internal annual meeting and outlined the strategic imperatives that the company would focus on for 2007 and 2008. In addition to talking about Microsoft’s core pillars of business and technology, he focused on a new one, User Experience. Mr. Ballmer spent a considerable amount of time talking about how user experience would become the third pillar on which Microsoft would stage its success in software. This was welcome news to the 574 designers that worked at Microsoft in the fall of 2007, comprising just a fraction of the 79,000 total employees that worked at Microsoft at the time. However, the news came at a particularly troubling time. Microsoft was recently experiencing a exodus of senior design talent. This presented a troubling dilemma if Microsoft was to focus fully on this new imperative and an internal study indicated why. Despite an executive commitment to design, such as the recent hiring of design researcher Bill Buxton and the success of designers such as Steve Kaneko with the Xbox and Zune, many designers simply didn’t feel that the company had a cultural grasp of the value of design.
“21 out of 23 designers interviewed expressed that executive staff ‘does not understand design’ and they do not believe design is ‘part of the Microsoft culture’.”[1]
The UX leadership teams were faced with both a dilemma and a wonderful set of circumstances in which to solve it. One of the first things UX leaders did in Microsoft was take a hard look at some of the challenges of being a designer in Microsoft and developed a special leadership program for UX designers that was launched in January of 2008. The program focused on four key areas which were: strategic thinking, user experience vision, communication, and organizational agility.
We’ll cover the first one in today’s post and then dive into the remainder three in future posts.
Strategic thinking programs were focused on helping traditional designers and user experience practitioners in developing skills to align decision-making cycles with business strategies to drive innovation. In turn, these skills and their benefits were also readily explained to product managers across Microsoft—the role that ultimately guides and provides leadership for the vision of a product or service within Microsoft.
Two major influences in this area had impact. One was the work of Roger Martin and his thesis around how organizations need to seek validity versus reliability.[2] Martin’s work resonated specifically around Microsoft’s need to balance incremental innovation through refinement of existing knowledge with the need to enable breakthrough innovations.
Microsoft, as typical of many enterprises, focused on developing evidence for future products needs based on past outcomes. It used a limited number of objective variables to removed judgment and bias from decisions to support innovation. Martin characterized this type of substantiation as reliability (looking into the past to make an informed judgment about the future). Designers focused on substantiation based on future events. They used a broad number of diverse variables. Using processes that integrated judgment and acknowledged the reality of bias or looking for a production of outcomes that meets objectives for product. Martin characterized the skill sets and their propensity via the predilection gap[3] and although working from different directions and using different vocabularies many in Microsoft recognized that the concept of reliability versus validity needed to be better integrated into our product development lifecycles.
Image Copyright © 2008 by Roger L. Martin
This type of thinking was starting to be applied to Microsoft’s product planning thinking. For example, the following chart refers to existing product development models that possess a strong focus on reliability.
Figure 1. Traditional program management
Recent trends and thinking around the reliability versus viability dynamic have altered this model to be more representative of the following.
Figure 2. Current trends: Value proposition and combined engineering teams
[1] (Petschnigg, 2007)
[2] (Martin, The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2005, 2005)
[3] (Martin, Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage, 2008)
Now what’s interesting is to pay attention to how some of these changes that were put in place a few years ago are impacting Microsoft today. One of the first places this thinking was applied was with Office 2007, one of the second was the development of Windows 7. Increasingly we’ll continue to see the benefits of this thinking with products and services that will be announced in 2009.
My last post looked to the past to explain how productivity was a key to Microsoft’s initial success but that new business models and the ascent of the internet has changed that equation.
One simple way to illustrate this is to look at software development. Historically software development has had it’s roots in what is good for the IT organization. Is it cheaper, easier, manageable for technologists to do what they need to accomplish? This was pretty evident in the systems design and command and control structure of technology as it evolved in the 50s through the 80s.
The advent of the PC opened up a new opportunity. It made technology more accessible to folks outside the traditional groups that controlled technology. In effect, non-technology oriented folks in consumer and enterprise markets had a new say in how things could be done and if they didn’t like what the IT organization was saying or doing they could often take things into their own hands. This basically let to the birth of modern operating systems and productivity software as we know it.
But this phase held on to some of the patterns from the command and control days, de-facto standards were held by a few an interoperability was something people thought about begrudgingly or not at all. In fact the business models of all the competitors of the day were based on this thinking, in short the models worked—for a time.
But the internet caused a disruption to this way of thinking. In the enterprise folks had grown frustrated with established hegemony and the Web opened up a new way of thinking. One, it made it easier to write applications that anyone could use. Two, it simplified distribution. But compromises were made around ease of use and productivity often took a back seat to the utility that the internet provided.
In addition, as the utility of the internet spread to consumer focused applications created by a whole new general of developers abandoned the traditional practices of application development—in fact many were never exposed to classic development projects in the first place.
There were benefits to this for all of us. As consumers we could things online or get access to data that previously might have been very difficult, it might be difficult to use these new tools but difficult was better than impossible
This new models made life easier for developers too, they were a step down the path of ‘write-once, run everywhere.’
In the late 90’s however cracks began to appear in this revolution. The concept of being easier for developers did not necessarily mean cheaper. It wasn’t uncommon for early commerce sites for large scale efforts to cost anywhere from 15 million to 100 million US dollars—amounts that almost defy description today. Much of this was because IT in the late 90s was similar to automotive industry in the early parts of the 20th century where there were hundreds of car manufactures competing for consumer’s business, there was no standardization and no interoperability, this made things really hard.
Worse still is what happened when these cobbled together systems actually started generating revenue. It became increasingly difficult to modify or make changes to applications that were mission critical but that were so complex that every feature rollout was the IT equivalent to performing brain surgery where a single mistake could cost millions in lost revenue.
Two things happened that pulled this revolution back from the brink and both of them really boil down to productivity.
One is that developers and software makers started focusing on standards—regardless if the solutions they created were ‘free’ or ‘open’. Web developers demanded it and used technology that was exclusively standards-based and enterprises that required more than standards could provide at least wanted the flexibility to interoperate with these standards and other technology. It’s hard to find any standards-based or proprietary technology today that doesn’t think about interoperability.
The second is that the level of frustration with the usability of technology came to the forefront. It wasn’t just about did an application actually work but could a person actually figure out how to use it.
Both of these drivers have been a key part of the Web 2.0 phenomena with the popularity of AJAX and rich media experiences enabled with things like Flash, Silverlight, etc. It even extends to the power of client software, such as iTunes, WPF applications, AIR applications and other solutions that take advantage of client hardware versus a browser.
I think the next wave of productivity is starting now and it’s focused on productivity in application development and life cycle management and in total cost of investment and return on investment.
When we think about productivity in application development and life cycle management we are really talking about the concept of the ‘Inverted-T’. Which can be defined at the repeatable best practices that we can apply to every project versus re-inventing the wheel. For example why build a content management system when you can buy one or save money implementing an open source option? Why spend money designing a architectural work pattern for a manufacturing facility if you can license one? Why build an authentication system if you can leverage one as a service? This type of thinking represents the horizontal part of the ‘T’. This way of thinking allows us to go deep and focus the majority of our attentions on the parts of our business that allow for differentiation and innovation.
We can also think about life-cycle management. For example does our workflow allow asynchronous round tripping through of projects and assets from designers to developers. Very few workflows do this today, one does (I’ll be polite and not mention them by name). I suspect this type of workflow will become standard in many environments and that in some agile Web processes traditional design tools will be eclipsed by tools that work in the target delivery medium (Vectors versus bitmaps for example or HTML and CSS that don’t need to be factored from static visual designs).
The final dimension in the next wave of productivity is probably services. We already have a myriad of services available to us around commerce, community, identity, location, search but the next wave of services, commonly called ‘cloud’ services are going to go far beyond that. In the future Knowledge Management or email systems might make more sense for many companies if they exist outside of an enterprise’s data center and in a cloud—much like we host many of our Web sites today if we’re a small to mid-size business. These type of moves will start letting developers in the enterprise and smaller entities focus on the core strategies that allow their business to innovate.
We’re starting to see signs of this already in the market. For example look at the ability of a service-based site like Mint.com. Their ability to innovate and role out new features is far more capable that some of their more traditional peers.
Lesser known examples might be click-ones applications that can silently and quickly introduce new features without proactive user activity.
The next post in this topic will dive into services and show how once we’ve taken advantage of the productivity gains that can come in software development and services that we’re ready to set the table for real breakthrough innovation.
It’s been some time since I’ve used Design Thinking Digest as much of a forum, for commentary or curation. Some of this is because I’ve found tools such as Linked In, Facebook and Twitter have replaced much of what I used Design Thinking Digest for—but some of it is probably also due to what I’d characterize as ‘social media fatigue’. After SxSW and MIX I wasn’t certain I was contributing much that was unique or that warranted a blog post.
Over the past three months a big part of my daily activities I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about how the economic slowdown is impacting the digital marketing and digital agency ecosystem that I frequently work with.
Like any other segment of our economy it’s been hit hard by current events. But, perhaps not surprisingly to many readers, parts of these eco-system are also thriving as they never have before.
As I put a toe back in the blogosphere I see three trends that will impact designers greatly over the next 12 to 24 months.
Our new economic environment is not a downturn as much a reset. The realities that we deal with today are marketing dynamics that we’re gong to have to deal with going forward. In fact this is a theme that Steve Ballmer has been touching on for some time in many public speeches. In Chicago recently he framed it this way at a luncheon at the Chicago Executive Club.
I want to talk a little bit about the economy, but really only to set up the thing that to me is probably more important to talk about, which is productivity and innovation. We are going through an unprecedented kind of economic (crisis) – I like to call it reset. I don't think we're in a recession; I think we are resetting. I think this is the new normal, and yesterday was the exception. And I think we got ourselves there in a lot of ways, but economic growth in general is fueled, GDP growth is fueled by productivity and innovation and debt, and over the last 10, 15, 20 years we've seen debt for businesses and consumers rise to almost 300 percent of GDP. It was 150 percent, by the way, before the Great Depression. And we were kind of borrowing our way to prosperity, and I'm afraid post-reset we're going to have to innovate and improve productivity to drive GDP growth.
It's clear debt will not be the economic growth driver of the next 10 years. After every major deleveraging of the world's economy in the last 200 years, people were slow to bring back debt.
Although I may have ‘fatigue’ from social media it’s perhaps more important now than it ever was. Social media is the glue of just about every advertising, marketing, communications or public relations scenario that you can think of. But most CTOs or CMOs misunderstand or are flat out terrified of the implications. There has never been a better opportunity for professionals and services that can enable the architecture of social media scenarios. But it’s still a nascent space requiring a hybrid of skills that is not the exclusive domain of social media pioneers that build great individual brands nor digital marketers focused more on digital, but traditional, push or destination marketing in the digital realm.
We we talk about an economic reset one pillar that companies use to fuel growth, debt, is effectively off the table for many folks. For fueling growth we need to turn to the other two pillars of innovation and productivity.
If you compare the capital costs of starting a business in 1999 to 2009 it’s a different world. The infrastructure to get phone service, office space, internet and office productivity tools is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago. A committed entrepreneur can have a digital shingle on a door in a matter of a few hours today because of the advent of services that we just not available and competitive in the world of Web 1.0.
But if you look at the way we build and implement business-both physically and digitally you might find that little has changed in many economic segments.
If you look at how companies measure or ‘sense’ what their actual business performance is many companies are lousy at it.
The successful companies of tomorrow will use technology and new business processes and workflows to increase productivity in areas they’ve yet been able to, or had incentive to address.
Productivity alone is now enough however, it’s a tide that raises all boats if we continue with metaphors. What does provide a competitive advantage is innovation. Innovation isn’t borne completely of technology, but is also a result of the application business strategy and the innovation planning process that a company can bring to bear. This where concepts like a thorough understanding of customer experience and platforms can allow a company to shine. It’s why the iPhone and the Application Store are such a success, it’s why Windows, with a global platform of one billion users and vast developer ecosystem is still incredibly powerful and valuable despite recent predictions about it’s demise.
Over the summer I’ll be focusing a bit on the things we can control as designers in our own profession practice and with our customers—namely how can we be more productive and how can we, as designers, be a key driver of innovation.
Our PhizzPop Design Challenge Finale in Austin is rooted in a real world scenario. Namely, how Howard Tullman made FlashPoint Academy the first LEED certified educational institution in Chicago.
Video courtesy of FlashPoint. Yes, you’ll need Silverlight to see it.
See more about FlashPoint Academy at their site or on YouTube.
Okay, so if you don’t know who Bill is, he’s the guy that wrote this:
It’s more or less a bible for what user experience needs to be in the enterprise and was called the best innovation book of the year by the guys over at strategy-business.com
Bill is also a guy that has a strong design influence throughout Microsoft. He’s far from the only guy providing leadership and vision but if you think folks like Scott Guthrie are gurus of grace and technology (and he is of course) but wonder, “Where is the ‘designer’ Scott Guthrie in Microsoft Bill Buxton is THAT guy. It’s fantastic having him at MIX and I promise that you’ll have tangible facts and see visible efforts that his work is having an impact at Microsoft.
How are ‘we’ talking about Bill at MIX?
Read more about his fascinating work and life on his web site: http://www.billbuxton.com.
Bill’s resume is only a part of why we’re so thrilled that he accepted our offer to keynote at MIX09. The other part is his philosophy on designing software, and for that matter, designing anything. To quote Bill’s personal mantra:
Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the ‘things’ that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name. –Bill Buxton
It goes without saying that most of us are doing a bit less traveling today. Those of us that get to go to conferences probably have to do a lot more dancing with the corporate bean counters than ever before and, truly, the value proposition of conferences are changing.
I’ve had to make some hard choices myself this year. Such as not going to Interactions 09—but please stop by the Cafe and say hi to Manifest Digital as I’ll be living vicariously through them (If you say something nice about me they might even give you a treat).
But there are two conferences that are pretty important to me personally this year. One is SxSW. I’m a relative virgin to SxSW and this will only be my third year attending, but this is the conference that energized me and restores my spirit. I’m excited that Microsoft has been able to play a part in it for the past few years and I’m excited that the PhizzPop finale will occur here.
SxSW is a great place to have a beer, reconnect with old friends and be stimulated by the diversity of discourse and get some of that special energy and mojo that I only seem to get when I’m in Austin.
But MIX is different. It’s certainly a more serious event—and there’s far more depth to the content that is delivered there. Like SxSW, it’s also a conference with serious, sometimes exhausting, fun.
But what makes MIX special is that it’s about things that are new and things that MIicrosoft has never talked about publically before. This year, if your passions fall to design, or you’re on the fence, or even past the tipping point, on stuff like Expression Studio and Silverlight, you’re going to want to be there. Not just for the content (which, let’s be honest, you can see online later) but because you get a chance to meet, talk, argue and a give feedback to the people that invent and build this stuff at Microsoft.
You also get the opportunity for outstanding networking with your peers, and let’s face it, your competitors—sort of like when James Bond has to partner up with the Russians to foil Spectre, stuff you just can’t do when watching a keynote from a Web Browser or even when you’re at the local pub eyeing your competitors suspiciously. In this economy it’s probably safe to assume that we’ve all got lots to talk about—and what better place to that than Las Vegas.
But in truth, the most important reason to GO to MIX is that your going to learn important exciting things about Silverlight and Expression Studio that are going to impact greatly the way we all work and the expectations that folks have around the classic iron triangle and what’s possible and expected within the constraints of time, money and quality.
You’re also going to see folks that you probably won’t see speaking at other events in 2009. This includes a keynote by Microsoft’s very own Bill Buxton and design standbys like Molly, Luke W., Dan Roam, Lou Carbone and Bill Scott.
See a smattering of the speakers here.
If you’re still reading I’m gonna suspect your interesting so in the spirit of the Sham Wow guy I’m also going to offer up a special that we’re running at MIX. Register by February 13 and you can save over $400 bucks on registration.
Are you still here?
One more thing, if you can’t get to any PhizzPop events and you won’t be at SxSW you can still see videos of PhizzPop events at MIX and actually meet and interact with many of the PhizzPop teams in our PhizzPop booth. We’ll have teams and solutions from our 08 and 09 events.
So this is the ‘official’ press release from the event. But be sure to check out what Zeus Jones and Sierra Bravo had to say about the event as well...
Almost 300 attendees packed Solera in downtown Minneapolis to see the latest in interactive innovations
MICROSOFT (Minneapolis) – January 19, 2009 – On the coldest day of the year, Zeus Jones and Sierra Bravo teamed up to heat things up by stealing the show at the PhizzPop Design Challenge event in Minneapolis, the third stop on the nationwide tour to find the best digital talent in the country.
Teams from Colle+McVoy, Hanson, MOOV Worldwide, space150 and Zeus Jones/Sierra Bravo competed against each other to win the grand prize, roundtrip airfare to Austin, Texas, hotel accommodations and interactive passes to attend SXSW for a chance to compete against other regional winners on March 16, 2009.
The Minneapolis PhizzPop Design Challenge focused on developing strategies for a fictional retailer that would help product managers extend their brands and experiences and develop more meaningful and impactful relationships with consumers through the application of great ideas, social media and technology.
“The challenges for online and physical retailers have never been more vexing than they are today” said Chris Bernard, Microsoft User Experience Evangelist. “Zeus Jones and Sierra Bravo’s solution turned our design challenge on its ear by suggesting that our fictional and nascent brand serve as a scalable platform for the existing brands their customers already use, and strengthened that relationship by combining the strong affinity that consumers have for brands with the authentic connections and dialog allowed by social media.”
How did Zeus Jones and Sierra Bravo accomplish a vision for this in five days? By using the building blocks of Microsoft’s UX and services platform, which allowed the team to focus a majority of their effort on the experience versus building from scratch all of the necessary infrastructure required for today’s leading edge consumer experiences.
Mark Hines, Vice President, Strategic Services, Ratchet and one of the Minneapolis judges had this to say about the winning team, “Zeus Jones and Sierra Bravo won because they distilled a complicated problem down to its essence, developed an effective, results driven strategy to solve it and then executed it extremely well with the right functionality and amazing design.”
Additional members of the judging panel were comprised of industry experts including David Reynolds-Gooch, Group Manager, Marketing Development Services, 3M; Craig Yolitz, Vice President, Customer Operations, Findlaw, a Thomson Reuters business; Jen Klise, Innovation and Strategy, Target; Andrew Banas, Director of User Experience, Allianz Life; Mike Gibbs, Group Creative Director, Fallon Minneapolis and Kathy Swanson, VP Marketing, Piper Jaffray.
The remaining tour stops include Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami, and the finalist competition in Austin, Texas. In addition to Minneapolis, stops have already occurred in New York and Chicago.
About PhizzPop Design Challenge
Each year, the PhizzPop Design Challenge tours the country to discover the best design talent from top agencies. PhizzPop was created by Microsoft to bring together designers and developers in a collaborative environment focused on creating solutions to today’s marketing challenges.
During each PhizzPop Design Challenge event, creative teams from local agencies go head-to-head in a competition of design, development, and creativity to solve a unique design challenge during a three-day event held in a major city. Visit www.PhizzPop.com for more details and to request tickets.
A serious cold means this is a bit of a belated post about PhizzPop Minneapolis. If you’re not in the reading mood check the video above or look at deep dive videos with a number of players from the event.
PhizzPop Minneapolis occurred on one of the coldest days of the year in Minneapolis. Despite the minus 20 degree temperatures (and this is before we even start with that wind-chill crap) close to 300 folks came out to watch five digital agencies compete for a chance to go to SxSW.
The teams:
MOOV Worldwide (formerly Gestalt www.gestalt.tv/)
Hanson (www.hansoninc.com/)
Zeus Jones (http://www.zeusjones.com/)
space150 (http://www.space150.com/)
Colle+McVoy (www.collemcvoy.com/)
The Minneapolis design challenge was to develop a proof of concept for a new retail concept entering the U.S. in two test markets. The assignment is to demonstrate how technology can be used both in a store environment, in physical branding and promotions both in the store and out of the store, and via experiences on the store’s web site and third-party online web properties.
Zues Jones, paired up with Sierra Bravo won the event, sweeping both the popular audience vote and by wowing our panels of judges, which included:
David Reynolds-Gooch, Group Manager, 3M
Craig Yolitz, Vice President, Findlaw
Mark Hines, VP Strategic Services, Ratchet
Jen Klise, Innovation & Strategy, Target
Andrew Banas, Director of UXE, Alliance Life
Mike Gibbs, Group Creative Director, Fallon
Kathy Swanson, VP Marketing, Piper Jaffrey
So, what’s next for Zeus Jones and Sierra Bravo? They get the privilege of doing it all over again at SxSW with the winners of the other regional PhizzPop Design Challenge events.
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