One reason for this is that there is a general sense of fear that if something is visible on the homepage, that users will not find it. Another is the use of analytics and tools that measure how far users scroll down a page which perpetuates this fear. The flaw I find in this data is that it typically includes all visitors to the site. Anyone who had ever looked at website analytics knows that a site gets a lot of very unqualified traffic from search engines. The behavior of this unqualified traffic can overwhelm and mask the behavior of users who actually intended to be on your site and have a task to accomplish. These users behave very differently and will be more likely to go a few pages deep into the site to complete their task. Target is an example of a site with a ton of content, yet they keep the content on the homepage focused to a primary goal. This makes the experience for the user much less intimidating and invites the user to explore further.

What these qualified users need is a simple experience that gives them clear information that is focused on the primary goals of the site and doesn’t try to do everything at once. One of the reasons that mobile apps are so popular is their simplicity. They are typically focused on a simple set of functions and they rarely require much of a learning curve. People are easily overwhelmed by a plethora of options, so give them the simplicity that they seek. Think about the objectives of your site and distill them down to just a few. Give those objectives the attention that they deserve and you will greatly increase your chances of accomplishing them. The secondary objectives can be pushed lover on the page or deeper in the site. A motived user will find them, especially if they are intrigued by the site and weren’t scared off by an overly complex page. This site for Billings is a great example of reducing choices for the user, and focusing on the primary goals of the page.

Users make decisions about your company within a few seconds of landing on the page. Do you want to have that impression to be one of confusion or would you rather communicate a clear and simple message that will intrigue a user and draw them into the site? So when planning a site, think about the objectives of the site, and then prioritize those objectives. If the site could do only one thing, what would that be?

What Apple lost without Steve was his intense attention to detail and perfectionism. Steve was willing to make the hard choices and delay or even cancel products in development if they weren’t up to his standards. Whereas other companies commonly ship substandard and flawed products to meet schedules and revenue goals, Steve understands that doing so only serves to damage the brand.

My worry about Apple in a post Steve era is will they be willing to make those hard decisions? Who at the company will be as focused on the details and have a clear vision of where Apple is going and how the product fits into that vision. Has Steve been able to build a culture at Apple that has all employees look at the products they create with as intense a critical eye and with little regard for what the public, stockholders, and fellow employees think?

It is my sincere hope that Steve has been able to build his values into the Apple culture enough to maintain their current level of success. I also hope that Steve is able to regain his health and live a long life doing what he loves with Apple or in some new endeavor. I hope that Apple will continue to give us one more thing.

For the most part, I start every creative project with words. To me, in the end, you are trying to put certain words and concepts into the mind of the person viewing a particular design solution. This could be a corporate identity, website, poster, email, etc. Unless I know up front what these words are, I’m not sure how I would reach a solution that meets the goals.

After listing out the primary words based on discussions with the client, I begin to work on alternative words by using the Thesaurus. I will list out words and then search on new words that I think are interesting. The result of this is a list of lots of words that spark ideas of other words or related words or short phrases. These become the genesis for everything that follows whether it be a layout, a tagline, an illustration, a photo, a color combination, etc. All of these potential ideas lead back to the language that defines the design problem or the brand as the case may be.

As I get more visual that usually involves a bunch of thumbnails with rough ideas and lots of notes, arrows and asterisks. I hope that I can actually read these notes later and that the things that the arrows are pointing at can be discerned from a blob of ink. The asterisks mean that I think an idea might be pretty good. I might not feel that way the next day, but at that moment it seemed pretty good.

When it comes to writing headlines or ad copy that flow out of the process I tend to work from two directions. I may write some copy and then look for visuals to support them, and what usually happens is that I find some great images that speak to what I am trying to communicate but don’t work with what I have written, so I end up writing copy that works with the image. It’s like designing a living room. If you paint the room and pick out everything in the room and then go shopping for a couch that is going to match, you will never find it. If you start with the couch, you have a lot more flexibility in what you choose for the rest of the room. Not that choosing imagery is like buying a couch. Buying a couch is much more difficult. For that I have to gain the approval of the creative director, my wife.

Once I have a number of ideas in their early stages I take those ideas and try to flesh them out and see how they work in the format of the design. Some ideas that look great in a thumbnail tend to fall flat at full size or simply don’t work as well as they did when I envisioned them in my head. Hopefully some of the ideas do work as planned and even better, they are actually more successful when fully realized.

The final step is to articulate and explain the idea as it relates to the original design problem. Why is this a great solution? If you can’t explain it, you will have a hard time selling it. I’m sure I’ve left some things out and there are always ideas that come out of left field while I am on a run, trying to fall asleep, reading, or watching TV. And while some may call these ideas random and outside of a process, it is usually the process that has my mind ready to accept ideas that may come from outside influences and the process that gets my subconscious working on the problem.

I find learning about people’s creative processes fascinating, so if you have anything to share please feel free to comment on your unique process.

After I moved on and began to work as a freelance designer I was energized by the process of learning about my client’s businesses. I have learned about the inner workings and challenges of countless businesses over the years and I am still excited every time I have the opportunity to learn more. From high-speed data recorders for science and military use, to cryogenic pumps used in semiconductor production, to the design of custom microchips and circuit boards, I have an understanding of so many businesses and innovative products and solutions that I would have never been exposed to were it not for my profession as a designer.

A recent project kick-off was for an extremely innovative company in Boston called Kiva Systems. Kiva has revolutionized the way product retailers manage their warehouses and fulfill orders. While only at the beginning of the project, I have already learned so much more than I would have ever known about how a product gets to my door when I click “Checkout” on a retailer’s website. In a demonstration I was able to witness how an order could be fulfilled in a manner of minutes after the order was submitted on the website. Unlike traditional warehouse systems where workers who receive an order have to go out and search through the warehouse to find all the products that I ordered, the Kiva System brings the products to the person who then put’s the order in a box for shipping. Through a complex system of software and robots, the shelves that contain the products that I ordered are brought to the person to put in the box. Watching the robots move the shelves around the warehouse is like watching a dance performance. You can check out videos on their site to see this amazing system in action.

Once again I am learning about a business that I had no previous knowledge of and certainly never would have known anything about were it not for my profession. You would think this would help me in Trivial Pursuit, but unfortunately you would be wrong. What it does help me with is being a better designer and maintaining my passion for what I do.

For this year’s conference I chose to attend sessions by Tony Mikes, Sam Harrison, and John January & Tug McTighe. Tony Mike’s session was titled, “Is Your Agency Interesting.” As an agency owner I was drawn to this session as we are always trying to better differentiate ourselves. I came to the conclusion that I think Imulus is interesting, but that we could probably communicate that more effectively than we are currently and we could also be doing a lot more interesting things. Tony was a very compelling speaker and I will definitely be checking out his Second Wind company.

Next came Sam Harrison’s session on “How to Sell Your Ideas to Bosses, Clients and Other Decision Makers.” An author of several books, I found Sam to be a very polished and interesting speaker. His ideas were well organized and I learned a lot that I can apply to how we present ideas at Imulus. The idea that he left us with, that it was “All About Energy,” really summed it up for me. If you put all your energy into preparing and presenting your idea your chances of success are much higher. If you aren’t excited about your own idea, how can you expect the person on the other side of the table to be excited.

By far the most unusual session was “Everything I Needed to Know About Advertising I Learned from Star Wars.” John and Tug were very entertaining in their cleverly constructed presentation. Utilizing lessons drawn from all the Star Wars films, they were able to show parallels where those lessons apply to the life of a creative. And while the lessons were good, the heart of the presentation was the humor and clever concept. I will always remember that there is a Death Star out there ready to kill my next great idea.

The resource center had some interesting booths and lots of quality shwag. Adobe was showing off CS5 and bunches of paper companies were hoping that designers will continue to design printed pieces for a bit longer. Threadless was nice enough to give out free drinks at the happy hour at the end of the day. Thanks for the beer!

There are a number of advantages to card sorts:

• They are simple and easy to do
• Cheap
• Provide a lot of data

There are also some disadvantages:

• Results can vary widely
• It can be difficult to make the data useful in complex sites
• They don’t take user tasks into account
• They put users in an unnatural scenario

While card sorts are an industry standard and very well accepted I question their usefulness for the same reason that all focus group testing should be questioned. It puts users in an unnatural situation. You aren’t learning what a real user would do, or if a real user would find what they are looking for, you are learning how a person who is given a pile of cards would organize them. These are two very different things and certainly calls into question the usefulness of the data.

I remember a talk I once attended where a former Sapient team member that had worked on the United Airlines Web site back during the dot-com boom had spent a ton of time and a ton of United’s money doing lots of focus group tests to assure that users could find and book flights as easily as possible. The result was a design that lasted only a few months before they had to redesign it based on real user data.

While I believe in some circumstances cards sorts and focus groups can be useful, they are not a silver bullet to perfect usability. There is much more to be gained from careful analysis of real world user data and making adjustments in IA based on this data. While card sorts can provide a starting point, it has to be seen as just that, not the final.

Under this new model the company works with the client to define the project and then posts the project on sites such as crowdSPRING. Designers, or anyone for that matter, can then read the project requirements and submit a design. The agency and the client then choose the design they like best and pay that person the specified fee. So potentially thousands of designers spend their time on the project and one gets paid for their work. In the case of a CP+B project that was $1000.

Sounds like a great model for the agency and the client. Get thousands of hours of work for $1000. In the case of Victors & Spoils they come right out and say that the new model will lower their overhead and lower costs for clients. Heck it’s a win for everyone right? The clients pay a lot less for creative, the agency lowers it’s costs by hiring less full-time employees and not having to pay benefits, and creatives all over the world get a shot at doing work for big name clients.

A perfect model for the death of an industry. For the industry to survive it requires a continual infusion of new talent from a strong system of schools that educate the next generation. If the future career path for a design school graduate involves spending hour upon hour working away on projects that I have little to no chance of getting paid for, how long can a designer sustain this? If I am choosing a major and a career path I would find this a very scary choice. What career counselor would advise anyone to pursue this career?

Let’s do the math. Say I’m a hotshot designer and I can knock out a great logo or homepage design in 20 hours. I can work on two of these spec projects a week, 8 in a month. Say the prize is $1000 and I manage to actually win 25% of the projects I do. I just cleared a cool $2000 for the month. I’m guessing most people could probably work less hours and make more money waiting tables. And this assumes I get paid for 25% of the projects I do. WIth thousands of people competing for these projects the reality for even the best designers is probably much worse. And does this really even reward the best solutions? Every designer knows that the client doesn’t always pick the most innovative design you show them, so even being the best designer competing for a fee doesn’t guarantee you will get paid.

There will always be those who think only of themselves and how they can make the most money with little regard for the future. What legacy will they leave? Will there be any creatives left to care? Maybe they should go read the Lorax.

This sounds like a very forward thinking program and hopefully it will produce a lot of local talent with a much better understanding of the digital realm than most schools offer today. Courses include Interaction Design, Experience Design, Digital Branding, Social Networks, and Software Development.

I hope this program is successful and that it will help to continue the growth of Boulder as a hub for innovation.