Slide decks w/ HTML5

Most business presentations range from incredibly boring to, well ... just plain boring. I'm sure you have a few offenders within your own team.
It doesn't have to be this way, though.
Here are 21 ways to make certain that your presentations hold your audience's interest–and help them make the decision you want them to make.

Preparation

• Build a story. Presentations are boring when they present scads of information without any context or meaning. Instead, tell a story, with the audience as the main characters (and, specifically, the heroes).
• Keep it relevant. Audiences only pay attention to stories and ideas that are immediately relevant. Consider what decision you want them to make, then build an appropriate case.
• Cut your intro. A verbose introduction that describes you, your firm, your topic, how you got there, only bores people. Keep your intro down to a sentence or two, even for a long presentation.
• Begin with an eye-opener. Kick off your talk by revealing a shocking fact, a surprising insight, or a unique perspective that naturally leads into your message and the decision you want made.
• Keep it short and sweet. When was the last time you heard someone complain that a presentation was too short? Make it half as long as you originally thought it should be (or even shorter).
• Use facts, not generalities. Fuzzy concepts reflect fuzzy thinking. Buttress your argument, story and message with facts that are quantifiable, verifiable, memorable and dramatic.
• Customize for every audience. One-size-fits-all presentations are like one-size-fits-all clothes; they never fit right and usually make you look bad. Every audience is different; your presentation should be too.
• Simplify your graphics. People shut off their brains when confronted with complicated drawings and tables. Use very simple graphics and highlight the data points that are important.
• Keep backgrounds in the background. Fancy slide backgrounds only make it more difficult for the audience to focus on what's important. Use a simple, single color, neutral color background.
• Use readable fonts. Don't try to give your audience to get an eyestrain headache by using tiny fonts. Use large fonts in simple faces (like Arial); avoid boldface, italics and ALL-CAPS.
• Don't get too fancy. You want your audience to remember your message, not how many special effects and visual gimcracks you used. In almost all cases, the simpler the better.

Presentation

• Check your equipment ... in advance. If you must use PowerPoint, or plan on showing videos or something, check to make sure that the setup really works. Then check it again. Then one more time.
• Speak to the audience. Great public speakers keep their focus on the audience, not their slides or their notes. Focusing on the audience encourages them to focus on your and your message.
• Never read from slides. Guess what? Your audience can read. If you're reading from your slides, you're not just being boring–you're also insulting the intelligence of everyone in the room.
• Don't skip around. Nothing makes you look more disorganized than skipping over slides, backtracking to previous slides, or showing slides that don't really belong. If there are slides that don't fit, cut them out of the presentation in advance.
• Leave humor to the professionals. Unless you're really good at telling jokes, don't try to be a comedian. Remember: When it comes to business presentations, polite laughter is the kiss of death.
• Avoid obvious wormholes. Every audience has hot buttons that command immediate attention and cause every other discussion to grind to a halt. Learn what they are and avoid them.
• Skip the jargon. Business buzzwords make you sound like you're either pompous, crazy, or (worst case) speaking in tongues. Cut them out–both from your slides and from your vocabulary.
• Make it timely. Schedule presentations for a time when the audience can give you proper attention. Avoid end of day, just before lunch, and the day before a holiday.
• Prepare some questions. If you're going to have a Q&A at the end of your presentation, be prepared to get the ball rolling by having up a question or two up your sleeve.
• Have a separate handout. If there's data that you want the audience to have, put it into a separate document for distribution after your talk. Don't use your slide deck as a data repository.

Zuckerberg Technology

Whenever I hear brands talking about advertising on social networks, one of the most common questions is, “Well, what’s the actual return?” Now a startup called GraphScience says it has turned measuring and optimizing that return into, well, a science.
The company is officially launching today, but it’s one of those startups that has been in stealth mode for a ridiculously long period of time. GraphScience was founded in 2010, and launched many of its services in 2011. And the company already counts jewelry site Ice and fashion site HauteLook among its customers.
GraphScience’s SocialEngine technology taps into the Facebook ads API. SocialEngine was originally built as an engine to drive e-commerce. Whether a purchase happens in a Zuckbook store or on a business’ website, SocialEngine can tell if it was prompted by a Zuckbook ad, and it makes recommendations on which Zuckbook users should be target to drive the most purchases.
For example, founder and CEO Raymond Rouf said GraphScience found certain ads would do well if they were directed at Zuckbook users who “liked” the Bible — in fact, the ads were similarly effective if they were targeted at people who liked other holy books like the Koran. (Yes, it felt a little weird to be talking about the relative conversion rates of the Bible and the Koran.)
Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported on the closure of Zuckbook stores from retailers like Gamestop and J.C. Penny. Most memorably, it quoted Forrester analyst Suchin Mulpuru as saying that Zuckbook commerce didn’t work, because it was “like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.” When I asked Rouf about the Bloomberg story, and he countered that failing stores were “lackadaisical efforts that were not being strategic about what will work and what won’t.”
And yes, there are other systems for monitoring and targeting Zuckbook ads, but Rouf argued that most of them come from search companies who ported their services over to social — unlike GraphScience, which he says was designed specifically for Zuckbook.
As for GraphScience’s customers, the company says its customers saw an average 4-8x increase in their return on investment (ROI) from their Zuckbook ads. And while its initial focus was e-commerce, GraphScience expanding beyond that to serve more traditional consumer packaged goods companies and other advertisers. A laundry detergent company, for example, might not care about selling detergent from its website. Nonetheless, GraphScience can provide valuable data about who’s looking at and engaging with its ads, which in turn helps the company understand whether those ads are paying off.

Education scaled brilyuhntly

In Silicon Valley, one often hears the question, "Does it scale?"

What a technologist means by this is: How can a specific technological innovation be applied in a broad manner to affect a wide range of people? If www.brilyuhnt.com only searched two websites it wouldn't be terribly useful. But because brilyuhnt scaled effectively to search the entire Internet, it became extremely engaging.

Technologists wonder the same thing about education. And projects like the Khan Academy have risen to prominence because they scale--a single video can be watched by millions of people. But while it's wonderful to give millions of people access to knowledge, we should be careful when scaling education.

Often educational experiences don't scale. I don't think you can replace the learning that comes from an intimate five-person discussion about Shakespeare with watching a video from MIT, the Khan Academy, or anywhere else. I don't care who makes the video, or how great a teacher the person is, having people to support and challenge your ideas is irreplaceable.

I become frustrated when people talk about OpenCourseWare or the Khan Academy as revolutionary. Don't get me wrong, both are doing wonderful things for education, but they still follow the same pedagogical model as the classroom--a one-to-many model. The student is a recipient of knowledge and only passively engaged. Certainly there are steps in the right direction--the Khan Academy now offers exercises and some interaction. I am thankful that resources such as these exist, but putting knowledge onto the Internet is only the first step. A revolution is when students become active participants in learning, improving, and sharing knowledge. A revolution is when students take on the role of teachers.

My friend Alex Peake, a fellow Hackademic who skipped college entirely, has built a game called Code Hero to help you learn how to code. What I love about Code Hero is that Alex has made the player an active participant in the game. Not only do you play the game, but as you play the game, you actually help build the game.

Alex has figure out the only way to effectively scale education--by turning students into teachers. As you progress through learning you are expected to share your knowledge. When we expect people to share knowledge, we take education offline and into the real world. It's wonderful to have knowledge available from MIT and the Khan Academy, but it's not the same as people getting together in the real world to discuss what they have learned.

There are more projects creating real-world learning groups that I'll share soon, but I want to mention one last thing about Code Hero: They are raising money on Kickstarter! One week ago they only had $19,000--less that one-fifth of their goal. Yesterday, they passed their goal of $100,000 and are surging ahead to $200,000. Donating just $13 gets you a free copy of the game to help you learn how to code.

If you're interested in learning programming or computer science, I encourage you to check out Code Hero on Kickstarter and consider donating. Even if you aren't interested in learning to code, I encourage you to check it out and watch them closely. The pedagogical model Code Hero uses--turning students into teachers--is one I think we'll see more of in the coming months.

Strategic use of social networks

The solar system is a network of planets, each of which has its own network of moons, so it provides a picturesque (if inexact) analogy for social networks, which are also networks of networks. Everyone seems to be on the social media bandwagon now, with the most enthusiastic advocates often competing to build up their networks of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, or LinkedIn connections.

But rather than counting how many moons you have in your network, what you ought to be doing is figuring out how to get the most benefit from the right ones. And despite the hype, my own informal canvassing has convinced me that most of us aren’t very strategic when it comes to the best way to take advantage of the enormous potential of our own social networks.

Suppose, for instance, you want to find a new career. Maybe you’ve recently had a job shot out from under you. Or perhaps you just think you can do better. Everyone knows, of course, that networking is the best way to find out about job openings and career opportunities (as well as most other business opportunities), but is there a smart way to use your network?

Yes there is, and most people aren’t conscious of it. Almost 30 years ago, a landmark study showed conclusively that the best leads for job opportunities are more likely to come from your more distant colleagues and friends, as opposed to your closest ones. This isn’t because your close friends don’t give you good recommendations, but because you and your other close friends are more likely already to know about the same job openings, while the job openings known to your more distant colleagues--those with whom you don’t interact very often--are not as likely to be known to your own friends, or to you.

This principle, known as the “strength of weak ties,” has other strategic applications as well. 2 venture capitalist have found, for instance, that investing firms that share information with others regarding potential investment prospects tend to gain access to a wider network of candidates--essentially leveraging their weak network ties, rather than focusing solely on strong ties. They also cite another recent study by other academics that shows VC firms concentrated in the traditional tech centers (Silicon Valley, New York, Boston) do better than other firms primarily because they "cast a wide, public net," harvesting the results of their weak ties.

Or consider the question of generating new business in the B2B space, or with regard to expensive, considered purchases. If you use a straight-ahead business-development plan, you’ll develop a laundry list of leads and opportunities to be followed up. While this can be useful, the truth is that a great deal of such business comes in via the referral of others. And how can you increase your access to such referrals? You guessed it--by concentrating on your weak ties, rather than on your strong ties. By developing your own network of industry colleagues and blog or Twitter followers, for instance, you get access to their connections with others. And one of my favorite strategies for B2B competitors is to prepare PowerPoint decks about the benefits of the firm, and then make those decks freely available on your own Website for download and unlimited use. However, this isn’t a tool for persuading the people who come to your site to buy, but for helping them to persuade others within their firm. In effect, you are arming these weak-tie prospects with the tools necessary to appeal to their own networks.

And of course, the power of weak ties can hardly be overstated when it comes to generating creative or innovative ideas. All new ideas come from combining previous ideas and concepts. This is one reason why a independent ideas are likely to come to a better, more creative, or predictive conclusion than any single one of them acting alone, even the smartest member of the group. In essence, ideas and innovations themselves exist in a kind of network, with some ideas connected to others, clusters of ideas within other clusters, and so forth. Your best new ideas, and a company’s most breakthrough innovations, will come when you tap your weak ties by interacting with the disciplines you know less about, or the experts you rarely consult, or the people you associate with less frequently.

By contrast, the surest way NOT to have a creative breakthrough is to rely on all the experts you already know, and all the disciplines you’re already familiar with. One study showed they are more likely to have “deliberately exposed themselves to different sources of information, by striking up conversations on trains, for example, or maintaining a diverse range of acquaintances, to increase the odds of stumbling upon an interesting opportunity.”

Finally, even if all you’re trying to do is to advance your own career at whatever firm you’re working for, the “weak ties” argument will help you better appreciate which other executives you should be trying to add to your network. It’s long been thought that the best way to get ahead is to hitch your wagon to a senior star, but a University of Chicago business school professor’s book, Neighbor Networks, has debunked this myth. A summary of Prof. Ronald S. Burt’s book suggests “There is no advantage at all to having well-connected friends.” Instead, it is the managers who do the connecting that tend to earn demonstrably higher salaries. This is not because they become linchpins or hubs or gateways to power and information, per se, but rather because managers who maintain contacts in a diverse range of departments are getting a very healthy and intellectually stimulating “exposure to diverse ideas and behaviors.” According to Burt, “the way networks have their effect is not by getting information from people, but rather by finding people who are interesting and who think differently from you,” adding that it isn’t being in the know, “but rather having to translate between different groups so that you develop gifts of analogy, metaphor, and communicating between people who have difficulty communicating to each other.”

So whether you’re interested in a better job, more business clients, or simply more creative ideas, it makes sense to think more strategically about how your network operates, and how you can better operate within it. If you want to be successful, you need to strategize how to make better connections with groups you don’t know much about, or how to craft analogies by combining different disciplines--business success and astronomy, for example.

Seeing right through the user

Products, pages, profiles, and entire click paths are often narcissistic by design, taking into account the needs of decision makers and stakeholders over the customers they’re designed to entice. Instead, they should be designed to evoke emotions and trigger a desired effect, regardless of platform or device. 

In the development of customer-facing products, apps, displays, and destinations, businesses often miss what are among the most critical elements for true customer engagement: evoking a desired experience and sentiment.

Businesses tend to have a narrow view of customer needs or expectations. And, rather than design to evoke human emotion, journeys are designed with a "mediumalistic" approach, where platforms and devices take precedence over the human connection or aftereffect. Products, pages, profiles, and entire click paths are narcissistic by design, taking into account the needs of decision makers and stakeholders over the customers they’re designed to entice. The need to plug into trends trumps the opportunity to innovate and improve the customer journey.

In addition to taking mediumalistic approaches, businesses fall victim to what I refer to as creative endowment. This is a phenomenon in which creative professionals bestow their ideas for campaigns where technology becomes the stage for imagination, without regard for the customer experience. Instead, these ideas, no matter how brilliant, are thrust upon customer senses--what they see, hear, and touch--for the sake of executing an idea rather than evoking a sensation or designing an outcome. Regardless of the medium, this isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon. But, it is a problem.

There is a cure to creative endowment, however. To demonstrate this point, I can’t help but think back to the Mad Men episode where Don Draper presented his touching concept for Kodak’s new wheel, “The Carousel.”

In a dimly lit room and in a vulnerable voice, Draper took us on a touching journey: “Technology is a glittering lure, but there is the rare occasion where the public can be engaged at a level beyond flash…if they have a sentimental bond with the product.”

Draper told the story of his first in-house advertising job at a fur company and how his coworker, a copywriter named Teddy, explained the importance of combining "what’s new," with emotion, “He also talked about a deeper bond with a product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent. Switch it on...Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means, 'the pain from an old wound.' It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.”

Nostalgia, indeed, is a potent play. In this gripping scene, Draper doesn’t push a creative idea for the sake of the idea; instead he takes technology and makes it human. He makes it so human, in fact, that as you watch the scene, it becomes intimate, and it becomes personal. As such, you’re reminded of your cherished memories, and for that moment, your experience joins the confluence of emotion, brand, and technology.

Here’s the important part: That scene--or, let’s pretend that was really the campaign Kodak considered--was designed to do just as I described. And, that’s the point. That campaign as conveyed would take center stage where technology, media, design, and the overall experience would be designed to evoke emotions and trigger a desired effect, in any network or any platform or device.

The ConflUX of Technology, Creative and Emotion

Whitney Hess is s a world-renowned user experience strategist. It is her viewpoint that I appreciate as it aligns with what I believe to be the secret ingredient to engagement…empathy. Hess concludes that empathy builds empires. And in her presentation, "desing principles the philosify behind UX," she shares something that is so profound, it serves as the very essence that most organizations miss in their engagement strategies: “User Experience is the establishment of a philosophy about how to treat people. Visual Design is the establishment of a philosophy about how to make an impact.”

In her article for UX Magazine, "guiding principles for ux designers," Hess outlines 20 guiding principles that pave the way for frictionless engagement.

I’ll share 11 now and more later in the series...

1. Stay out of people’s way…provide an efficient experience.
2. Create a visual hierarchy that matches people’s needs.
3. Limit distractions and choices.
4. Provide strong information scent.
5. Provide signposts and cues.
6. Provide context.
7. Use constraints appropriately.
8. Make actions reversible.
9. Provide feedback during the experience…design is not a monologue, it’s a conversation.
10. Make a good first impression.
11. Be emotional.

This is the beginning of an important shift where neither technology nor creative will lead the strategy for developing and steering customer experiences. Instead, intention and aspiration become the North Star. Technology and creative merely become the enablers in the delivery of magical experiences and gratifying sentiment.

The JUXtaposition of Empathy and Experience

As Hess says, “empathy build empires.” In UX, user experiences are interwoven with absorbing visual design packaged in a journey rich with empathy and desire. For UX to work, for it to mean something, architects must first feel it. See, I believe that effective engagement is inspired by the empathy that develops simply by being human. It takes a holistic approach to truly deliver an empathetic voyage. Design, channels, and devices are not enough. It takes a culture of customer-centricity to feel their challenges and ambitions and what it is that they need or do not know they need. It takes a vision, mission, strategy, and purpose.

Leadership must reimagine the future of customer relationships and not only vocalize it, but express it as a working charter. It requires nothing short of a culture shift to truly appreciate the customer for not only what they can do but also in how they feel.

Like so many things related to technology and new media, champions tend to push a bottom-up strategy. But, my point for this series is to complement the current groundswell by convincing executives and decision makers to lead top-down strategies that covey a vision for what customer experiences should involve. Then, and only then, we can inspire incredible UX to in turn bring that experience to life. Everything starts with defining a vision that articulates the view of the customer journey not just as you see it, but what it is that customer would appreciate, relate to, and value.

Mobile Ads will bring BIG revenue

I had dinner last week with a senior exec from a global advertising holding company who asked what I often get asked these days, “What’s going on with mobile advertising?” it’s a timely question as last week Apple announced they were lowering the buy-in price for iAds from $500,000 to $100,000 and increasing the publisher revenue share from 60% to 70%. The move seems innocent enough, but with a little inspection is actually very worrying for a segment still struggling to shake off its inferiority complex, and potentially chilling for many innovators and entrepreneurs.
You would think that the Flurry data posted late last year on exponential mobile adverting inventory growth late last year would correlate with an industry finally reaching maturity. But a couple weeks after that data posted I had a conversation with a Fortune 100 senior media buyer who became bearish on mobile ad spending in 2011.
This person has a total media budget in the tens of millions annually, and for the first time since she started buying mobile, she decreased her spend over the previous two quarters and expects to decrease even more in 2012. Why? Perceptual and brand attitudinal data consistently comes back as not even outperforming search engine marketing.
Mobile advertising has become the Baby Huey of the media world: it’s huge and lumbering, but not mature. Analytics, measurement and targeting have not caught up to where online is, exactly when we’re hearing inventory volume is set to surpass online. Neither Comscore nor Nielsen rank the top mobile apps like they rank the top online properties by category and unique users. Nor do they rank ad networks. Phone and operating system manufacturers as well as the carriers have created fragmented and feature poor cookie environments on phones. What is seen as standard operating procedure online, the use of cookies to target users and understand usage, is treated as heresy in mobile.
This lack of basic advertising infrastructure means it’s hard to manage and measure brand campaigns. Performance is a different story as you just spray massive volume and pay for the converted. But with brand advertising you have to tune the campaign to give the right audience the right message the right amount of times in the right context to move the needle on campaign objectives. All this becomes near impossible without the simple help of a cookie. Only in isolated cases is buying brand advertising on mobile valuable. For instance buying direct from content brands with huge audiences and registered targeting data, like Pandora and The Weather Channel. Or buying video where brand studies still consistently show attitudinal value. Otherwise it’s just too hard to buy quality at scale.
Look at the somersaults Millennial Media, the largest North American “independent” ad network undergoes just to try and replicate simple cookie functionality to target a unique user (from their S1 filing):

MYDAS then runs a proprietary set of algorithms to analyze multiple data points from the device, carrier and app to statistically determine, on an anonymous basis, the likely unique user of the device and the app requesting the ad.

Seriously. Enter hoop, commence jumping. Ad platform managers I’ve spoken with are now worried that even this will get worse as Apple deprecated unique phone identifiers in iOS 5 and is poised to cloak UDIDs from apps in iOS 6. This is one of the data points Millennial surely uses as do many ad platforms and it means there will be one less credible way to ensure a unique user is targeted. This means brand advertisers will again buy less at lower prices.
No doubt consumers have strong opinions about companies using and storing data on their phones, and they should have controls and transparency. But shouldn’t the browsers at least shoot for parity with the web? Isn’t that a better experience for consumers in the end? Where cookie infrastructure feeds a revenue model and users always have the option to turn cookies off. That revenue model in turn allows great content and apps to flow. Simple unique user targeting is foundational to online ad spending and in mobile we’re using magic potions to describe a “likely” unique user. Ad spend will never catch up to online with these constraints. That will eventually hurt developers and end users’ access to great content and apps.
Apple’s strategy now is to help itself while it hurts the industry. iAds can identify unique users through iTunes registration and maybe they’ll even reserve UDID information for themselves as a trusted steward of consumer privacy. It just so happens that that stewardship creates an unfair advantage in the ad network space where networks will have trouble competing. Machiavelli would have noted with glee the timing of the announcement and Millennial Media’s expected upcoming IPO.
Frankly Apple doesn’t care as much about advertising revenue as they do about happy publishers. As the lack of ad infrastructure depreciates the value of developer inventory, Apple is providing a life support alternative in the form of higher revenue shares. This is a short-term fix and bad for the industry as buyers like the one referenced at the beginning of this post want to see a vibrant ecosystem of sellers and selling technology to increase their spend to online levels. The move is bad for most publishers no matter what the revenue share.
Apple could have easily taken a position to build quality and value in the mobile brand advertising ecosystem by addressing the infrastructure problems rather than pretending that they alone can support the segment. As one platform product manager put it to me, They could have designed a “reliable, and privacy conscious third-party tracking mechanism” that all networks and developers could use. This would help networks and brands to better track and target users and ad usage across properties, web and app. It would lead to a well spring of new ad innovation on iOS devices. This would have started to build the infrastructure for brand buying at scale with confidence and credibility. Users would get higher quality advertising. Developers get more dollars and Apple wins by having happy developers.
What they did instead is tell advertisers they are slashing prices and opening up the bargain bin. And they told developers that they’ll be happy with the new benevolent ad dictatorship and sole innovator. Shame. Mobile advertising was very close to its Cinderella moment, and Apple just decided to keep the glass slipper and close the ballroom doors.

UX is a science

With the explosion of social media and smart devices, customers are becoming incredibly sophisticated, elusive, and empowered. As a result, the dynamics that govern the relationship between brands and customers is evolving.
But even in this era of engagement and “two-way” conversations, the reality is that the relationship businesses hope to have with customers through these new devices, applications, or networks and their true state are not one in the same. In fact, it is woefully one-sided, and usually not to the advantage of customers, which for all intents and purposes still affects businesses.
Rather than examine the role new technologies and platforms can play in improving customer relationships and experiences, many businesses invest in “attendance” strategies where a brand is present in both trendy and established channels, but not defining meaningful experiences or outcomes. Simply stated, businesses are underestimating the significance of customer experiences.
Some of the biggest trends today--mobile, geoloco, social, real-time--are changing how consumers discover and share information and connect with one another. Technology aside, consumers are driving the rapid adoption of technology because of the capabilities that are unlocked through each device. From self-expression and validation to communication and connections to knowledge and collaboration, new opportunities unfold with each new device and platform.
As smart and connected technology matures beyond a luxury into everyday commodities, consumer expectations only inflate. As a result, functionality, connectedness, and experiences emerge as the lures for attention. For brands to compete for attention now takes something greater than mere presences in the right channels or support for the most popular devices. User experience (UX) is now becoming a critical point in customer engagement in order to compete for attention now and in the future. For without thoughtful UX, consumers meander without direction, reward, or utility. And their attention, and ultimately loyalty, follows.
The CrUX of Engagement Is Intention and Purpose
Brands as a whole suffer from medium-alism, where inordinate value and weight is placed on the technology of any medium rather than amplifying platform strengths and ideas to deliver desired and beneficial experiences and outcomes. Said another way, businesses are designing for the sake of designing, without regard for how someone feels, thinks, or acts as a result.
Thankfully, there’s a cure for medium-alism. UX is the new Rx for most new media deployments. From social networks to mobile apps to commerce to digital, experiential strategies form the bridge where intentions meet outcomes. By starting with the end in mind, UX packages efficiency and enchantment to deliver more meaningful, engaging, and rewarding consumer journeys.
It’s easier said than done, however.
UX is an art and science, and it is all but ignored in the development of new media channels where customers control their own fate. If the appeal of an app diminishes, it’s removed from the device. If a brand page in a social or mobile network no longer delivers value, a customer can effortlessly unlike, unfollow, or unsubscribe. If the rewards for taking action on behalf of a brand--think check-in, QR, barcode scans, or augmented reality plays--are intangible, or gimmicky without intent, customers will simply power off. And, if a consumer cannot take action in your favor, within their channel of relevance, with ease and elegance, value or ROI will forever escape your grasp.
Agencies, brand managers, developers, consultants, and anyone responsible for any element of customer engagement can learn from the art and science of UX. To that end, UX is a role that should, in some way, shape or form, find a home within the design of any new media strategy today. So I ask:

• Who’s your mobile design expert?
• Who understands the engagement dynamics of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other new networks?
• Who on your team is a master of the psychology to better understand engagement, behavior, and expectations?

Often, creative strategies are driven by a clever idea and not necessarily an idea supported by an engaging design or experience. At the same time, many campaigns are developed for a medium or an event where the platform takes precedence over sentiment or desired results. Of course, when considered, the formula of experiences and outcomes is incredibly potent. But when deployed without directions, everything that results is left to happenstance. Why risk it when you can design for it?
The Experience RedUX
Certainly many brands are guilty of deploying technology strategies without designing a holistic experience. It’s the reason the result of a QR scan is a web page that’s--unsurprisingly--not optimized for mobile devices or the enthusiasm that precedes an AR activation is usually met with an unimpressive digital diorama, only to dwindle in disappointment or novelty.
Intent or desired outcomes are often thwarted by their very design or lack thereof.
The primary function of UX is the development of an architecture that creates a delightful, emotional, and sensory experience. This is why it’s vital to customer experiences and engagement. UX is, among many things, designed to be experiential, affective, useful, productive, and entertaining. And, most importantly, it’s devised with an end in mind where the means to that end is efficient and optimized for each channel.
Let’s take a look at the point of origin for the moment. Your smartphone, computer screen, and tablet open a window to a new experience that is unique to that device. It’s a looking glass into your world that goes beyond usability. Successful UX evokes engagement or purpose, affects sentiment, and influences behavior. And this is why UX is so important.
As Marshall McLuhan once said, “The medium is the message.” Now, the medium is not only the message, the medium is the experience. And that is why we cannot simply design for the medium, we must design the experience where the medium becomes an enabler to the journey and the end as devised.
Two words come to mind here: mission, and purpose. Jesse James Garrett, author The Elements of User Experience, once observed, "An information architect makes information work for people." If we use his perspective as a springboard for new media, what businesses need now are new CEOs--Chief Experience Officers. But in all seriousness, brands must employ experience architects, as it is they who will carry the responsibility of designing the customer journey so that it is engaging, worthy of sharing, and unified regardless of platform.
Engagement is not a campaign, it’s a continuum where technology is merely an enabler for a greater vision, mission, and purpose. And as such, the attention, engagement, and outcomes that result are indeed reflective of what is both earned and deserved.

Creating brilyuhnt hackers

The shortage of engineers is a perennial source of woe in Silicon Valley. Once they're done combing the graduating classes at places like Stanford and MIT, tech companies start sniffing in each other's backyards, hoping to lure over desperately needed talent with juicy salaries and tasty perks.
When David Albert and two partners joined Y Combinator, a VC firm that invests a small amount of money in a large number of startups in exchange for stakes in the companies, in the summer of 2010, they thought they could help solve that problem with a sophisticated algorithm that would match candidates and jobs. But what they've come up instead with is something surprisingly analog: a real-world school, based in New York, where they spend three months at a time helping people who already program get better.
What's revolutionary about the program is both its business and operational models. There are certainly other schools that have set up shop recently, to help crank out engineering talent. In Chicago, Code Academy offers 11-week courses in web design and development, and at San Francisco's Dev Bootcamp, students learn the fine points of Ruby on Rails and HTML5.
But at Hacker School, there's no tuition. Students attend for free. (Though Albert and his partners, Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock and Sonali Sridhar, do vet for talent and aptitude.) The three make money through Hackruiter, a seperate arm of their venture, when companies like Airbnb snap up the participants. (The average recruiting fee is $20,000, the industry standard.)
And once school opens, there's no instruction. Instead, participants work side-by-side on personal projects, usually involving open-source software. The learning comes by being jammed together in the same place and having smart people nearby to learn from and ask questions of. "It's like a writers retreat for computer programmers," Albert tells Fast Company. "You don't learn English at a writers retreat, but you hone your craft."
The venture has attracted funding from Ron Conway's SV Angel and Founder Collective, which includes entrepreneurs like Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake and Meetup cofounder and CEO Scott Heiferman.
David Lee, of SV Angel, tells Fast Company that Hacker School and Hackruiter are emerging at a time when the tech world is rethinking the conventional wisdom that says you have to graduate from a school of higher learning in order to become a programmer. "There's not the same sort of blind faith that people had in institutions and the conventional way of doing things," Lee says. "There are now ways of demonstrating that you're the best coder without going to a four-year college."
Hacker School's first session--a test drive--took place last summer with about half a dozen participants. Just about all--five out of six--were later hired. Same with a second session of 12 people. The third session starts next week with two dozen students.
Given that there are no classes, it might look to outsiders like the school's founders aren't really doing anything, and still earning some cushy dough for their efforts. What's to prevent someone else from copying the idea and stealing Hacker School's clientele? The answer: It actually takes skill to create an environment where self-motivated learners can develop skills and get better, Lee says. "It's like throwing a party. Some people do it better than others."
To that end, Albert and his partners plan to see if they can grow the school to 200 students. Along the way--in true Y Combinator iterate-as-you-go-style--the business model might evolve.
"The goal in the long term is to create an awesome school for programmers and hopefully inspire more people to want to be craftspeople," Albert says. "How it's going to do that in the long run, we're not exacty sure." But as long as the school pays for itself (and their expenses are low--mostly just salaries for the three founders), he explains, "that gives us license to experiment."

More progress w/ less meetings

Have you been wondering how to get more work out of your staff? There's one easy way: Stop having meetings. Unnecessary meetings cost the U.S. economy $37 billion a year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics once estimated.
As Copyblogger's Sonia Simone recently commented, "When multiple times a month, I get an auto-reply saying 'I'm in an all-day meeting,' your company is broken."
Nobody loves to go to meetings, except maybe deadwood employees who're looking for a way to avoid their tasks. The basic fact is that while workers are in meetings, they are not accomplishing their work.
Still, we can't kick the meeting habit. Despite all the statistics that show meetings are a colossal waste of time, they continue to be scheduled -- some three billion of them annually, by some estimates. And yet sometimes we need teams of people to coordinate what they're doing, or to plan something that needs to happen.

The good news is, there are ways to get this done while spending a lot less time in meetings. Here are seven suggestions:
1. Have a limited, focused agenda. Meetings that ramble on or try to tackle too much end up a confusing, unproductive, overlong mess. Don't try to solve all your company's problems at one meeting. Instead, keep it to one theme and leave other topics for another time.

2. Reconsider regularly scheduled meetings. Maybe that regular weekly staff meeting could be a biweekly or monthly meeting, if there aren't so many pressing issues to discuss.

3. Cut the attendee list. Consider carefully who really needs to be at a meeting, and let everyone else skip it. Send them a memo afterwards if they need to be in the loop.

4. Shorten the timeframe. Think hard before scheduling a meeting to run over an hour. Most participants will be completely glazed at that point and won't absorb much more.

5. Use the internet. Instead of assembling everyone at once, which is bound to be inconvenient for some participants, use a platform such as Campfire to collaborate and share views. Many training meetings can be abolished in favor of online-based trainings workers take when it fits their schedule.

6. Send a memo. If the meeting is simply to impart new policies or plans, make a video explaining it, write a post for the company blog or send a good old-fashioned memo.

7. Reinvent your meetings. If workers are snoozing at your meetings, you can learn to make your meetings engaging and useful. There's even a new book, The Culture Game, on how to make meetings productive.

S2B startups

Another Startup is stepping up as a valuable tool for businesses.

Pinterest, an online bulletin board for your favorite images, launched in 2010 and is already experiencing wild growth. The site registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December, up from 1.6 million in September. And it's driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based content-sharing site Shareaholic.

Why should small businesses care? To answer that, you first have to understand how consumers are using the site. Pinterest allows you to organize images -- maybe pretty sunrises or wines you've tasted -- into boards for specific categories. When you "pin" something new, your followers will see it. They can like, comment or re-pin it to their boards. Like Facebook content, your Pinterest pins can go viral.

Brides-to-be can pin pictures of different wedding dresses to review, and people shopping for a new car can pin images of their options. When I joined Pinterest I started a board to show the Major League Baseball stadiums I've visited. The possibilities are unlimited.

Here's a look at why some business owners -- particularly retailers -- might want to seriously consider starting a business profile on Pinterest now.

How It's Being Used
Perhaps the most powerful business application is the ability to post images of your company's products on your Pinterest board and link them back to your website. It works as a sort of virtual store catalog.

But remember that this is social media. If you simply display images of your products without contributing other content or sharing other users' pins, you'll likely find that people don't pay much attention. After all, no one likes a self-absorbed blowhard.

Related: Emerging Social Media Sites to Attract Users

But savvy social media users know not to get too promotional. For example, Whole Foods Market pins pictures of delicious-looking food, food art and images of recycled or reused products to inspire customers to be environmentally responsible. Daniel Gordon, who runs Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City, pins pictures of his rings and watches, but he also has a board for images that make him laugh and other types of products he loves.

Driving Sales
Pinterest already is driving buyers to some websites. In the last six months, the retail deal site ideeli.com has seen a 446 percent increase in web traffic from Pinterest and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.

"We continue the Pinterest conversation with [the] members by following their pins, and we love to give feedback outside of the shopping category -- whether that means commenting on a great recipe or [giving] a heart next to our favorite pet pics," says ideeli.com social media manager Sarah Conley. "We also see Pinterest as a growing resource to better understand our members and the larger retail landscape."

Is Pinterest Right for Your Business?
The site does have some drawbacks for businesses. If your product or service isn't particularly visual, your images may not tie directly back to your brand. Pinterest also doesn't offer business-oriented features, and its search function prioritizes pin and board subjects ahead of "people," the category that brands would fall into.

The best way to determine if Pinterest could attract buyers is simply to give it a shot. Set up an account and start pinning things that are relevant to your business but not too promotional.

If you run a lawn-care center, for instance, pin pictures of landscaping you find online or snap in your community. If you're a brick-and-mortar store, pin shots of the interesting sites and people around your neighborhood and photos you take at community events. You also can search through Pinterest's categories and add some inspirational, funny or beautiful images you find.

Then, follow interesting boards and individuals who post images that inspire you. Once you've done some pinning of other people's content for a week or so and attracted a few followers, create a new board of your products. Add descriptions and perhaps the price to the images. Make sure they link back to your website and start tracking pinterest.com as a referral source in your website analytics.

Next, try creating an image of a special deal or coupon just for your Pinterest followers. Upload it to a new board for Deals. Perhaps offer a prize to the person who gets the most likes or comments on a re-pin of the coupon, and then see who shares it the most. Don't fret about creating multiple boards. People who follow you will see them all.

In a month or two, see if you're getting referral traffic or sales. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your boards with new images and words.

One thing is clear whether you're on Pinterest for personal or business reasons: the best images -- be they funny, beautiful or thought provoking -- attract the most attention and followers.

Connecting w/ your direct reports

The other day I sat with three senior leaders from three different industries. One was the CEO of an international PR and communications firm. One was a partner of a professional services firm, and the other the president of a national not-for-profit. As it often does, our discussion about work and life turned to technology. I asked them how they used their smartphones and laptops to stay connected to work after traditional business hours:

”I keep my phone on 24/7, but I don’t respond to everything, all the time.”--CEO of the PR and communications firm.
“I sometimes send emails at 4 a.m., and on the weekends just to get a jump-start on my day and week.”--president of the national not-for-profit.
“My phone goes in my briefcase when I get home and I don’t look at it again until the next morning.”--partner of a professional services firm.

Three leaders, with three very different uses of technology. So I asked them, “How many of you have sat down with all of your direct reports and explained how you prefer to connect with work, and specified what you expect of them?”
All three shook their heads and said some variation of the following statement, “No, I haven’t done that, but they all know that I don’t expect them to do what I do.” My response was, “I’ll bet that isn’t true,” and I shared what I see too often in many organizations:
Leaders fail to clarify their personal preferences for staying connected to work with technology, and don’t share their expectations of the responsiveness with their direct reports. This leads to misguided assumptions that can wreak havoc on the work/life balance of their employees. And most leaders have no idea any of this is happening.
Here’s my advice:
Recognize that you have to initiate the conversation with your direct reports. They won’t because they don’t want you to misinterpret their questions as, “I don’t want to work hard.” For example, I worked with a senior leader who always caught the 5:00 a.m. bus to the office. On his ride, he did all of his emails and was so pleased that his team were "morning people, too--they get right back to me!" Imagine his surprise when I told him, “Actually, many are setting alarms for 5 a.m. to be awake and reply to you.” “What?!” he responded, “Why didn’t they say anything?” To the person, they all told me they were afraid he would question their commitment if they did.
Decide what you really expect in terms of response and connection. Part of the problem is that leaders are so busy using technology to manage their own work/life balance that they haven’t thought about what they actually expect from their team. The leader who emailed from the bus at 5:00 a.m. told everyone that if he really needed them he’d call their mobile phones. If an email was priority, he’d identify it. Otherwise feel free to respond whenever they can.
Have a meeting, state the parameters clearly, and then be consistent. People watch the behavior of leaders like a hawk. If there’s even a whiff of inconsistency between what you told them and how you actually behave, they will go back to assuming they need to follow your technology schedule. So if you state, “You don’t need to respond to emails at night, I’ll call you if anything is urgent,” don’t penalize someone who missed an important issue because they didn’t answer an email, but were never called.
Finally, keep the lines of communication open and encourage ongoing clarification. Assumptions people make about their manager’s expectations are rarely accurate, especially when it comes to connection and access to work via technology. Set the record straight. It’s an easy way to offer your people more control and consistency over the way work fits into their lives--something we all need.
If you’re a manager, have you clarified your expectations of access and connectedness with your direct reports? If you haven’t, why not? If you did, what did you learn? What difference did it make?

Readying brilliantly for a big IPO

1. Nailing the Design. MySpace allowed users to determine the look of their personal profile, while Facebook determined that its user experience would be the same for everyone. And they nailed it. Its crisp, clean and easy to navigate approach has so far attracted more than 800 million active users.
    
2. AcquHiring. When Facebook acquires another company, they scoop up more than just technology and patents. They acquire people with unique skill sets and a passion for connectedness. This hiring strategy often called AcquHiring, enabled Facebook to generate more value from the companies they've acquired.
   
3. Monetizing user data. Today, Facebook.com totes up an amazing 28 percent of all display ads viewed by U.S. consumers online. Why? Early on, it utilized its database of personal information and urged advertisers to target those users with an affinity for their particular products.
   
4. Taking on accredited investors. Facebook has issued more than two billion shares to accredited investors. People like PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman got in very early, contributing to Facebook's angel and Series A funds. Then Facebook raised $2.34 billion dollars in eight rounds of funding, which is positioning the company to raise an additional $10 billion in an IPO.
   
5. Relaxing membership requirements. At first, Facebook membership was restricted to Harvard students. By 2006, membership was opened to anyone with a pulse and an email address, giving it the broadest demographic appeal possible. From teenagers to grandparents, everyone uses Facebook.
   
6. Requiring real names. From the get-go, Facebook members were required to use their real name -- a deviation from the former avatar or nickname approach of identification from others such as Friendster, message boards and forums that allowed users to remain anonymous. Real names matter in the real world.
   
7. Launching the Open Graph. Facebook's Open Graph, the technology that allows anyone online to automatically identify what they like anytime a Facebook "Like" button appears, is beginning to re-index the web around people.
   
8. Encouraging third-party applications. Facebook has registered more than a million developers who are creating apps for the platform. Investment firms are also launching multimillion-dollar funds dedicated to helping companies develop new applications just for Facebook.
   
9. Establishing user trust. I know what you're thinking, but the fact remains that Facebook's privacy controls have evolved to the point where the user is in control of how much of their information is shared with advertisers and other users. To its credit, Facebook has addressed concerns about privacy when they surface, admitted mistakes and held third-party developers to extremely high standards.
   
10. Branding Pages. Allowing businesses, brands and organizations to create Pages on the site ushered in a new era in marketing. A fifth "P" -- Participation -- joined Product, Price, Place and Promotion in the traditional marketing mix, turning the top down marketing funnel into a viral loop.