2. Describe the most exciting thing you think is going on today in our industry (service, trend, idea, etc).
Web apps, iPhone, Twitter, social media.

3. Who is your favorite designer, and why?
I don’t usually favor anything. It’s just a thing I have, but I do have a few designers that I admire. They are all great designers with passion, ambition, and dedication for the love of their work. Ellen Lupton, Stefan Sagmeister, , Paul Rand, Hillman Curtis, Milton Glaser. That’s my short list.

4. If you could change one thing about people’s attitude towards the online world what would it be?
I would ask them to dump their IE 6 browser and move on to a modern browser. Life at that point would be so much easier for designers and developers.

5. What’s the number one design mistake you see made now days?
I would say bad typographic choices. Also, a redesign of some brand logos that look worse than what they already were.

6. If you were forced to carry a medieval weapon with you at all times what would it be?
A dagger.

7. If you were allowed to only use one computer program the rest of your life what would it be?
For the rest of my life…I feel violated! I think it would be a browser. Definitely not IE. I would prefer Safari / Firefox. With a browser I can do anything and I am not completely restricted. I can e-mail, design, develop, and communicate.

8. Regarding fruit. What is your favorite kind?
Strawberry and Figs

9. What song or artist have you been listening to the most recently?
James Blunt and Letu Stuke <--bosnian group

10. Where do you look in your life to get design inspiration?
Everything around me is design. To be a great designer it’s important to observe the outside world, away from my desk and a computer. When I am aware of my surroundings and observations that’s when I get the inspiration. On the other hand, I also get inspired with the talented team of people at Imulus, turning pages of annuals, reading essays on graphic design, collecting ideas from compelling work.

11. If Imulus were a person, what kind of personality would (s)he have?
If Imulus were a person…The type of personality that Imulus would have–well see answer to question 14.

12. You have to choose between being blinded or losing both arms, what would you choose?
Ouch! Hopefully this loss of my abilities would not include torture. I wouldn’t want to lose either, but I would rather choose to lose both of my arms rather than being blind. Since my profession is heavily based on visual, I guess I can learn my way around things. Type & move the mouse around with my feet and toes.

13. What’s your most used keyboard shortcut when working?
Command+Z to undo. Command+S to save.

14. Thanks for your time, to finish can you give me one word to describe each of your Imulus co-workers?
Scott – understanding
George – determined
John – passionate
Steph – wonderful
Mario – intriguing
Kat – amusing
Bruce – ambitious
Taylor – kind
Corey – entertaining

As I wrote these words down, one word is not enough, but rather all these words and many more could describe each one of us and that’s what really makes us great. We are one great team, but above all we are a family.

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.

You are a co-founder of Imulus. Since Imulus has been around for awhile and is doing great, what advice would you give to would-be entrepreneurs out there?
I really think you need to create a business out of doing what you love to do. If you are just in it to make money you’re going to be unhappy and burn out quickly. Starting a business takes a lot of dedication and time, so if you aren’t spending all those hours doing something you enjoy, it’s not worth it.

What one/few things would you boil down Imulus’ success to?
I think the three owners skills are a great fit for the work that we do and our personalities mix very well. While we have different strengths and weaknesses we all share a desire to constantly improve and are always asking, “How can we do that better?”

What do you like most about your job?
I love solving problems and I get to do that on a daily basis. I also really enjoy everyone I work with. Well . . . almost everyone ; )

Least?
Lack of time is always a challenge. There are so many cool ideas that would be great to pursue, but we can only do so much.

What is your dream car?
Do I have to pick just one? I think my current favorite car has to be the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione It is such an incredible mix of classic sports car lines with modern details. It is truly a piece of automotive art.

What do you think is your most valuable skill?
When you are designing you really need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the target audience. I feel like I do a good job of looking at the design through their eyes and not getting to emotionally attached to anything if it doesn’t seem to work from the target users point of view.

You are quiet a lot. Tell us what is going on in Scott’s head when he is quiet.
You know, it’s the quiet ones you have to worry about. Actually I have always been one to think things through before I form or state an opinion. I believe that words are very powerful and that they should be carefully chosen if you care about their outcome.

If someone offered to buy Imulus tomorrow for 59.2 billion dollars tomorrow and you decided to sell, what would you do for the rest of your life?
See question 6. After buying that and a few other cars I think I would play for a few years. Travel the world, race cars, run, learn to scuba dive, play tennis etc. Once I got that out of my system I would figure out what kind of business I would like to start.

Who is the most influential person on your work and why?
I don’t know if I can pick a single person, but I would say that the Bauhaus movement and the Swiss Style have had the most influence on my as a designer. I have always felt that the simplest solutions are always the best and that the best designs get out of the users way and let them what they want.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

You used to be anti-twitter, and then you hopped on the bandwagon. Thoughts on tweeting after being through both phases?
I was very hesitant to get involved with Twitter because I am not what you would call a “self promoter.” I figure no one cares what I am doing on a daily basis. I think Twitter has an amazing ability to allow someone to broadcast to a worldwide audience very easily. For business it offers a great way for a company to broadcast directly to their customers and also for customers to interact with a brand. For me, I get a lot of inspiration from seeing what Lance Armstrong and Bernard Legat did for their workout today. I will sometimes post my workouts as well. Maybe someone will get inspiration from me, who knows.

Have any good designer jokes?
1st Designer: “Wow, you always have so many fonts, where do you get them from?”

2nd Designer: “Oh they come from Monaco, Geneva, Chicago, New York… I get them delivered at various Times throughout the day…”

1st Designer: “By who?”

2nd Designer: “A Courier!”

Your favorite piece of art
I don’t have a particular favorite, but I would love to have a Rothko on my wall.

If someone told you that you had to author a book and really be into it or the world would blow up, what would you write about?
I would write a book about the best running trails and the best driving roads around the world. It would obviously take a lot of research ; )

If you could choose to be in a movie, which movie would it be and who character would you be?
James bond in Dr. No

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.

After a bit of research I found Microsoft’s Web Deployment Tool, also sometimes referred to as MSDeploy.  Of course it only applies to Windows Servers with IIS, so if you are looking for another OS/web server solution this article is not for you.

I was somewhat skeptical at first because, well, I’m skeptical of everything.  They even call me the skeptic here at work.  It also seemed a lot of people that were writing about it were fanboys and it was a very new product (I started testing when this product was still a release candidate).  After reading about it thought I should give it a shot since it sounded very powerful.  Here is a short version of what we were looking for:

• Able to take all manual steps out of recovery
• Backup all files and code that made up the website
• Include all settings, SSL Certificates, Bindings etc.

After playing with it and doing some tests I was very impressed.  The tool does deployment/backups per site, so if you host multiple sites on a server and want to customize depending on site you are able to do that.  You can view code dependencies, backup databases – do almost anything you want.  You can choose to use the GUI from IIS Manager or go command line.  You can choose to export the package to another server immediately or create a folder with an archive of all necessary files for restoration later.

If you are interested in using it for deploying, go get it,  check out this overview page or visit their forums.

If you are interested in seeing how we created a fully automated solution, read on.

Since we wanted something that had little or no human interaction, and therefore not error prone with a high degree of reliability, I came up with a solution that took all human involvement out of the backup and recovery process.  The solution we came up with is broken into 3 parts.

1) Backups of all sites in IIS needs to occur in case of a server failure.

2) Replicate backups to other available live servers as well as offsite automatically.

3) The ability to recover our site(s) needs to be easily and quickly available with fewest manual steps as possible.

To address all these I wrote a small, simple program to help the Web Deployment Tool with this process.  The program has two purposes and can easily be scheduled through the task manager in order to create a repetitive and up-to-date solution.  The program writes two files.  The first .bat file should be run nightly, or however often you want, and contains commands for msdeploy that create an archive backup for each site in IIS.  The second bat file contains all commands for msdeploy to install/restore each website that has been archived.  This second file should only be run if a server goes down and you need to restore sites on your standby server.

To take care of our first step we must schedule an execution of our custom application to generate our archival and restore bat files.  We must also schedule an execution of the archival .bat file our program generates to be run afterwards.  The bat file execution results in the creation of an archive for each site.

Now that all sites are backed up with step #1, we need to take care of step #2.  To do this, just use your favorite sync tool to copy all necessary files to other server(s) and offsite.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, check out Super Flexible File Synchronizer or Microsoft’s Sync Toy.  Using a program to move files on an automatic basis allows us to be ready to execute step three if we ever need to.

Step #3 is the only manual step in this whole process and is quite easy.  First, bind the new server you are recovering to with all necessary IPs, or do whatever network voodoo you need to.  Secondly, run the recovery .bat file.  The file will install your site(s), application pool, certs and restore all settings.  One click recovery?  Yes please!

If you think this code could be used in your environment you may grab a generic version here – I hope it helps.  Obviously, I make no warranty about any of this process or code.  If you do use the code, please read the readme as well as the code comments.  The code is a Visual Studio 2008 C# solution licensed under GPL.  Use your heads and do your testing people!

If you come up with anything different feel free to comment and let us know how you have improved upon the process.  If you modify the code please send me what you have done.  Enjoy!

Simply Audiobooks is a service designed for people who enjoy books differently than your typical bookworm. They send books-on-CD to your mailbox, and once you’re done listening to your selected tale, you send it back in the same package free of shipping charges. This was particularly appealing to me because I have a long commute to work (45 minutes one way on a GOOD day, yuck) and I love me a good story. I’ve been using the Simply Audiobooks “Rental Program” for over a year now, and I don’t plan on stopping.

Overall grade: B

Price: A
I didn’t research a ton before selecting Simply Audiobooks, but for their services, I believe Simply Audiobooks is the best price.

Usability: B
Pros: Overall, Simply Audiobooks is pretty usable. It’s set up similar to Netflix you search for an audiobook and you add it to your “queue” which will be sent out when it’s available (see Cons). Their queue functions similarly to Netflix where you can either drag and drop order or type in a number. Furthermore, the design is very clean and extremely well laid out.

Cons: A few nitpicky things I find from time to time is the reason usability receives a “B”. The first issue I have is unlike Netflix, you’re not guaranteed to receive the book at the top of your queue. This, however, I can let slide. Audiobooks aren’t as popular as movies by FAR and are much more expensive.

My second nit is there is an extremely short log-in period. I understand the need for security, but it’s slightly ridiculous how short it is. On top of that, when you don’t realize you’re logged off and you’re prompted for your log-in info, you’re kicked off page you were on (forcing you to search for the book all over again).

Lastly, this is for us nerdy readers who like series. It’s very unclear which book out of the series it is in or if it is in a series at all. I feel this could be remedied easily with more consistent titles for these instances. Sometimes books DO have an indication it is in a series (i.e. The The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (Book 1)), but not always.

Customer Service: A+
I have nothing bad to say about their customer service. I would give them an A++ if I didn’t think that was tacky. Questions are answered promptly on either the site or their twitter account (@SimplyAudiobook). Not only that but they will bend backwards to make you happy. They’re always wonderfully nice, and I don’t hesitate to say they’ve given me the best customer service I’ve ever had.

Shipping: C-
My only real problem with this service. If not for this, I would give them an “A” for an overall grade. I don’t know if it’s because I am in Denver and it has to ship all the way down to Vegas, but from the day I send out my book till I receive a new one is 10-11 days. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by Netflix, and like I said, audiobooks are way less in demand than movies. However, for my first 15 days (which was free). I didn’t receive any audiobooks. So much for my free trial.

I hate to end this review on a bad note, so I’ll reiterate what I said before: I have used this service for a year and I don’t intend on stopping. Despite their pitfalls, Simply Audiobooks makes my horrible commute much more bearable.

However, after a few hours of use I remembered what kept from making it my main jukebox player in the beginning. The answer is simple, it’s hard to use while working in other applications. For someone like me who spends hours at a time locked in a text editor, switching to my browser and tracking down a play/pause button 20+ times a day can be frustrating. My first idea was to move Pandora to a standalone browser instance using Fluid. However, after a quick search and a bit of help from a co-worker I found an even better solution — PandoraBoy. It’s a small free Google code application that works similar to a standalone browser instance but also adds global hotkey controls.

You can set global shortcuts for actions such as: play/pause, next song, next station, previous station, vote up, vote down, player volume, and mute.

Once mapped you can use Pandora as your primary media player without ever having to view it in browser. Props to the makers of this app, it’s exactly what I was looking for. If you’re keen to try it you can download it now.

If you find, like me, that you can’t stand the dock icon you can use the quick one I whipped up. Download my PandoraBoy alternative icon.

Ok, so Google loses on the matrix of features but let’s go into this a bit deeper.

Bot Traffic: Advantage WebTrends. If you absolutely need to know what bots are hitting your site then go with WebTrends because Google just can’t report that data.

Real-Time Analytics: Big Advantage to WebTrends. Real-time reporting requires investing an a substantial amount of server power. Sure Google has that power but they haven’t put it behind Analytics yet. My guess is you’ll see this in the future but right now the win goes to WebTrends. In my opinion, it’s the sales team that needs to know about real-time visitor activity and there are plenty of tools out there that can do a better job then WebTrends at reporting real-time activity.

Hits: For real? Who still uses this as a metrics and why? Slight Advantage to WebTrends.

Tracking Advertising: This can be accomplished in Google but it’s a bit of a hack to get it working. WebTrends is more eligant in it’s approach towards tracking advertising.

Animated Graphs: Advantage Google. I’m a data visualization junkie and I can easily lose hours working in the visualization tool; however for the majority of marketers this is overkill.

So, how does that data compare?

Total New & Returning Visitors

This data is comparing a 1 year time frame by monthly totals.

Referral Traffic Counts

Six months of data from Jan 1st, 2009 and June 30th, 2009

Page Views

Six months of data from Jan 1st, 2009 and June 30th, 2009

Verdict

To each their own. I personally can’t justify WebTrends to our clients. Google’s feature set is 95% of what is available in WebTrends and the few features that stand out don’t justify the hefty price tag. I’d love to chat with someone who feels WebTrends is superior to Google, I just haven’t found that person yet.

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.

Absolute Unique Visitors
This number is by far the most used metric of site success but it needs to be framed in the context of goals & objectives. Look at the weekly trend below. It’s a capture of our traffic pattern on supportdetails.com. Support Details is a one-page site that captures browser specs and sends them to a targeted contact via email.

Simply showing this graphic and looking at an absolute number doesn’t tell the story of what the users are doing on this site. When this graphic is supported by referral sites, repeat visitor trends and normalized for spikes then the numbers begin to talk.

The numbers are telling me the spikes in traffic have helped to create product awareness, overtime this increased awareness has led to increase usage of Support Details on a regular basis. By utilizing the visualization tools that Google Analytics has to offer the trend becomes pretty apparent.

Pageviews
More pages clicked is counter-intuitive to the rational of a good site
information architecture. So why is it valued as a positive metric? If someone is clicking on more pages it can either mean they aren’t able to find content, or it could mean they are deeply interested in the content. I usually suspect it’s the former.

Bounce Rate
Measured by a visitor coming to one-page of the site, then leaving. This isn’t necessarily an indicator of a problem. It could be a measure of excellent content. If a visitor is searching for information and they find it without clicking around, then wouldn’t this be considered success? When this metric is used in the context of goals, then it becomes important. As a standalone number, it’s a useless metric.

Time on Site
What does this really mean? Does increase time mean the site is difficult to navigate. Is it hard for me to find what I’m looking for, or am I engaged in reading the content. In-depth analysis would compare the objectives of the site, with the type of content, then the average stay on a particular page.

I could continue offering alternative views for just about any of the major metrics, but my point is it’s time to look at the bigger picture. We need to be asking questions rather then looking for shortcuts that make for pretty charts and reports. Dig deep, give real analysis into what’s perceived in reading the numbers; that is were the art & skill of analytics pays off.

I’d like to hear more stories of useless analytics that you’ve encountered. Please share the info.