It’s well discussed that service based companies often have a rough go at producing viable products. There is an inherent tension between provisioning resources for products vs addressing immediate billable service work. Pay the bills now, or invest in an uncertain future?

Many who’ve commented on this tension seem to believe it’s either or. Companies that try both often fail at one, or worse yet, they sell both short. At Imulus, we love doing the client work and believe it helps us discover new ideas for products. From day one, we decided client work would always be core to our identity, so the decision to move the company entirely into products just isn’t on the table.

During the last few years we’ve stumbled down the product path. Stacks was rolled out about a year or so behind schedule. Support Details was a quick win, but we’ve been slow to update it with exciting new functionality. In recent months we’ve added several other products to the cooker. This has prompted us to more closely examine the product development relationship with services.

Last month we implemented the idea of a Product Tsar.

The Product Tsar is a temporary 4 month stint with the responsibility to oversee product development. We are currently pulling from our developer team to fill the Tsar role, although that may change in the future. Bruce Clark has been helping to head up Stacks development and has nicely transitioned into this role. The first two weeks are used to gather product ideas, review what’s been accomplished and map out a list of items for development. The co-founders and the Product Tsar get together to prioritize the product development based on a combination of factors including revenue potential, complexity and street cred. We then make a time commitment to the Product Tsar. In this 4 month stint we’ve committed to a minimum of 15 hours of dedicated product work each week.

As the weeks progress, the Tsar reports in weekly, to update our Project Managers and co-founders on the status of products. The weekly status offers the Tsar a chance to gauge how busy the office is and what un-utilized resources could be applied toward product work.

Once the 4 months are over, the co-founders will review the Tsar’s work and the next senior developer on our team will take the reigns.

So far it seems to be working for us, but only time will tell.

Having used computers for almost 30 years, and as a designer of interfaces, I often wonder what’s next. The mouse had been declared dead year ofter year, yet they continue to reign supreme. The recent videos from Microsoft have prompted a lot of discussion and there are often stories about the latest ideas in interface design. Many of these, including the Microsoft vision often champion a Minority Report like interface where the user manipulates an interface in front of them through touch or gestures. The Microsoft videos have tons of this type of interaction. While this is really cool to look at and may actually come to pass for certain applications, I don’t foresee anything like this for the typical desktop user being effective.

The simple reason is laziness. Well, that may be a little harsh. It’s really a matter of muscle fatigue. Touch screen interfaces while very effective on phones and tablets have a serious flaw when it comes to traditional desktop work. Imagine having your arms constantly extended in front of you touching your screen for everything that you now use a mouse for. By the end of an 8 hour day you would be unable to lift your arms. If you put the screen down on the desk to alleviate the stress on your arms than you end up with a strained neck from looking down all day.

The reason keyboards and mice have been around for so long with little change is because they work. They allow the user to rest their arms on the desk and use very little muscular effort to interact with the computer. Any replacement for this arrangement must meet this need. I do see merit and opportunity in touch and gesture interfaces on the desk as an input for an upright screen. This still allows the user to look straight ahead and rest their arms on the desk, yet may allow for a more customized and varied system for input and manipulation. This type of system is explored in the Microsoft video and aspects are seen in ideas like Mouseless and the EXOpc.

The major advantage of this system is that it allows the interface to change according to the needs of the user and the context of the work they are doing. The options available when a user is working in Photoshop could be completely different from what would be available in Microsoft Word. And while touch interfaces are useful, they really won’t reach their potential until they gain a tactile element. A desktop that was adaptable and tactile would offer a much better experience for users and might finally spell the end for the venerable mouse. Until that day comes, mice will continue to inhabit the desks of the world.

A recent How Magazine article dealing with the creative process led me to think about my own process. From what I can remember, I never went about trying to create a creative process for myself. I simply tried various techniques over the years and have come back to the ones that have consistently worked for me.

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.

Since November we’ve had well over 400 users interested in the Stacks beta program. Imulus isn’t exactly a well-known interactive agency, yet we’ve been able to generate a good amount of interest in little time and with little effort. The interest in Stacks is primarily generated from our success with our Support Details product.

Support Detail is a free web-tech support application that we launched in April of 2009. It was a tool that sat on our back-burner for over 6 years, but it took less then 1 week to develop. We launched it to solve a recurring problem that we had with clients not technically familiar enough to give us the browser’s technical specifications. Within weeks of it’s launch, Support Details was featured in LifeHacker, SitePoint, StumbleUpon and MaximumPC. That early success drove visitor count up to 40k per month. With that much traffic coming to the site we decided to advertise our own products using Support Details as the advertising outlet. Our logic, if you like what we’ve done with Support Details, then maybe you’ll like our other products. Hopefully Stacks is equally as exciting as Support Details. We believe it is and we’ll work hard keep it useful without becoming cumbersome.

We’ve snowballed the success of one product into another. This method can be seen all over the web. Most notably by 37Signals. They’ve managed to build BaseCamp, snowball success into Ruby on Rails, then to the SVN Blog, then to the Job Board, etc… Now they have an entire suite of products, most of which are very successful. They are selling by snowballing their success from product to product. This creates a community of supporters and users that grow with you over time.

I don’t think this methodology is difficult to replicate. Focus on solving a problem within your industry. It doesn’t need to be sexy, or feature rich. Stop yourself the next time you get frustrated with an aspect of your daily routine. Think about an easy way to solve that problem then execute on it. Just don’t wait 6 years to pull the trigger.

For years we have always done milestone approvals either by verbal approval or simple email confirmations. When I used to work at Refinery (now G2) we tried doing the legal / contract version of project approvals. I found that method to be cumbersome and difficult to quickly deploy. We’ve decided to try something new and I think it’s worth sharing. We’ve decided to use Wufoo. Using this service we can share pre-developed approval forms which log client acceptance along the development process.

I’ve blogged about Wufoo in the past. I think these guys are one of the most underated Web 2.0 companies out there. Their interfaces a rocking and their shit just works real well. We’ve setup about 14 pre-defined forms, which can be shared with our clients for approvals which take less then 30 seconds to read and submit.

Here is an example.

Here is what we are hoping to achieve with this shift in our process:

Deliberate Action. It’s too easy for a client to just give verbal approval, or reply to an email. Filling out a short form is a deliberate step which requires the user to read before taking action. It falls outside the normal workflow enough to be memorable.

What am I Signing? A short explanation helps the client understand the impact of what they are signing without all the legal mumbo-jumbo of a contract. It’s enough to explain the point and nothing more.

What’s Next? Once signed, what does that actually mean to the client. This is a friendly reminder of the next steps which will be taken on the project along with a statement about what it means to give approval to this task.

Get to Know Us. A quick “Thank you” followed by a “Did you know?” We see this as another opportunity to interact with our clients in a way which helps us better know each other.

I sincerely hope you try using Wufoo to replace the old sign & fax forms of the 80’s. I’d like to hear the results if you do make the switch.