Enterprise Content Management and Federal Enterprise Architecture (from the archive)

While doing a little housekeeping on my site I rediscovered this presentation I did a couple years ago on Enterprise Content Management and Federal Enterprise Architecture. It was for the Gilbane conference on content management technologies in government. My notes from the conference are also available. Continue reading »

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Is there no plural form of ‘Maybach’?

Yesterday, while at the local California Tortilla, we spied a Maybach parked illegally in front of our local Starbucks. For those who have never heard of the Mayback, they are seriously rare and seriously expensive. It is a huge Mercedes-built luxury sedan for the uber-rich (background: the Maybach was Daimler’s response to BMW purchasing Rolls-Royce). While we ate, we watched out the window to see if the owner would appear, thinking it must be a Marriott (they’re local), a basketball player or a movie-star we would recognize. We never did figure out who owned it, but while we were watching a second Maybach drove by. Yes, there were TWO Maybachs. Unbelievable! It’s like the Queen of England and the Pope decided to meet in Potomac for a spot of tea.

What is particularly funny is that the second one, which I couldn’t get a picture of, was hideous. It was British racing green with cream side panels. And it was just awful looking. I searched Google images to try to find a picture of one with this color scheme but it was tough to find one. Apparently Maybachs are custom-built for each owner, so that color scheme was carefully selected by someone. Money does not buy taste, apparently.

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Adaptive Path MX East Day 2 (Part 2) - impressions and notes

This is a continuation of my notes from Day 2 of MX East.

Brendon Shauer of Adaptive Path gave a talk on the Long Wow, planning and staging a great sustained experience. (It sounds like a sexual self-help talk, but wasn’t). His major points were clear and resonated well. However, saying these things and doing them are two different issues.

• Manage the platform for delivery
• Create and evolve a repeatable process
• Tackle a wide area of customer needs, especially in areas with metrics, like UX
• Organize and plan the pipeline of improvements/changes

Brendan also gave some general UX advice…

• Stop trying to do everything
• Connect with something distinct
• Consciously plan and manage strategy

The closing keynote speaker was Scott Berkun on the Myths of Innovation. I really enjoyed his talk, but I didn’t take any notes. The only thing I wrote was “buy the book”. I guess I should do that.

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Adaptive Path MX East Day 2 - impressions and notes

Day 2 was just as satisfying as day 1. As with the post I did about MX East Day 1, this is a stream of consciousness ramble rather than a deep reflection on the proceedings.

Mark Jones of IDEO started the day with a loosely joined series of experience design insights. He described the ‘new customer,’ who’s expectations are set by the best experiences they have from any industry. The new customer is not loyal to companies that provide lousy experiences, in fact they actively evade old-school lock-in techniques. Then Jones gave three techniques to design experiences for the new customer.

• Look wide: look at the customer’s whole lives; the service ecology that they inhabit; find appropriate, targeted and strategic roles for your services
• Prototype early: prototype services during the brainstorming phase; role play; use front line people and executives together; scenario, story board and video narrative
• Communicate: rally around a single vision; involve stakeholders in the design, then use them to help with communications; visualize the goal - be compelling; prototype branding and marketing to visualize how an offering fits in the market/strategy

Next was Chris Conley from Gravity Tank, speaking about building a creative culture. My favorite insight was that companies are organized to efficient execute their present strategy; innovation is pretty much impossible in a normal corporate environment because they are purpose-built to prevent it. He presented an extended examination of Pixar’s culture of innovation. It’s all from the Incredibles DVD, so you can watch it yourself.

Then came Sara Ulius-Sable of Whirlpool, who gave one of my favorite talks. She is the metrics manager for Whirlpool, which sits atop 22 famous brands, like Kitchen-Aid and Maytag. She spoke about how tactical metrics can have a major impact on strategy. Her team at Whirlpool works with business units, engineering and UX to target dimensions of experience that represent ‘healthy’ for each brand. She listed her four attributes of a good metric.

• Predictive: correlated to business measures and outcomes
• Sensitive: differences are detectable
• Actionable: able to provide clear direction
• Relevant: to brand strategy and product domain

Irene Au from Google gave us 9 ways to succeed as a UX manager. My favorites were #6 “let skeptics fail”; and #7 “deliver excellence on a few projects.” She recommended selecting projects carefully using explicit internal priorities. Be transparent about the UX team’s level of commitment. Avoid coming in late to rescue doomed projects. Avoid projects that aren’t committed to an open collaboration with the UX team. And so forth.

To be continued…

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Adaptive Path MX East Day 1 - impressions and notes

Let me start by saying that MX East was the best conference I have ever attended. It was fairly expensive compared to other conferences I regularly attend, but overall the value I got from the experience was well worth it. It included room and board, which were both quite pleasant. And it included a number of interesting perks, like a wine tasting with Joshua Wesson, the CEO of Best Cellars. If you have a chance to go next year, I highly recommend doing so.

This post is a stream of consciousness ramble rather than a deep reflection on the proceedings. There are a number of pictures up on Flickr. I will cover Day 2 later.

Jesse James Garrett started things with an interesting survey of well designed experiences and failed experiences. Most of the material was lifted from his previous talks elsewhere, but as an intro it was effective. He differentiated between outward projected Brand vs customer felt Experience. He talked about product value, progressing from the raw techology to features to experience. And he introduced a few organizations that got experience from the start, particularly Eastman’s Kodak and Apple’s iPod. Continue reading »

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