Impact on Internet Companies:

• Investments without a foreseeable ROI will end
  Sequoia’s recently leaked RIP presentation to their portfolio of companies makes this point very clear for privately funded startups. Companies without a business model will not receive subsequent rounds of funding as there is a fixed amount of money left in the funds which invested in startups today–and it must last longer than previously expected as exits will be more difficult. Public companies are already under substantial pressure to reduce expenses inline with reduced top-line revenue growth (e.g. EBAY) and they’re most like to do that with questionable ROI investments and projects.
• Expense reductions impact on overall wages
  These reductions should cause an overall contraction in the job market which will be reflected on all jobs including “product” and “design” jobs as most company’s approach a reduction in force in an across the board manor. This will also cause downward pressure on wages as more and more people will be looking for work perhaps equalizing what’s been an “employee’s market” in the design field for nearly a decade.
• Backlash against outsourcing
  Reduced wages and a devalued dollar will create incentives for companies to hire locally in America. Furthermore, politicians will gain favor thru protectionist measures and may make it more difficult for companies to outsource jobs abroad. This will likely lead to a contraction in the outsourcing practice at least for US-based companies. Also some companies may focus on fewer, higher performing employees than lots of low costs employees (as Mike Spieser suggests).
• Internet companies will begin to operate like “normal” companies
  This means a renewed focus on operational efficiency, profitability, and paying customers. Many firms may prioritize low-beta profitable investments over high-growth but longer-term investments. For startups focused on a long-term growth strategy it’ll be important to find a way to survive smaller and harder to get rounds of funding.

The role of Product Management and Design

The reality is now more than ever, businesses cannot afford to lose a ton of money on failed launches. When things were booming engineers could build solutions in search for problems–and some would stick and succeed.

In this environment the best way to mitigate risk is to rely on seasoned product folks to identify real customer pain points and then design a product that effectively meets those needs. Thru effective portfolio management you’ll also be able to evaluate your investment at several stages in order to mitigate risk. In that way you’ll be much more likely to succeed with the features and products your company launches.

Recommendations to Read:

• Two helpful posts from Brad Feld: Let’s Get Pratical and
  OK Entrepreneurs, Time to Step Up
• Jason Calacanis on The Startup Depression
• Ali Velshi from CNN explains the Economic Crisis on Oprah in simple terms

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PDF: Leading Innovation Strategy and Process in Firms (1MB)

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I wanted to take this chance to thank my lovely wife Jeanine who supported me thru this whole process. Her dedication, encouragement, and devotion really helped me remained focused on my goal.

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Luke has become the foremost expert on form design in the design industry and has now put together all his thoughts in an easy to use book. He provides the good, the bad, and the ugly of form design with many modern examples. Finally, Luke provides straight forward advice to designers and product managers on how to approach form design with your customers in mind.

This is a must read book for anyone making forms online…

Web Forms: Filling in the Blanks

Luke Wroblewski’s book will provide everything you wanted to know and more about designing effective and engaging Web forms that optimize these key customer interactions. Rosenfeld Media, 2008. Read More >

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At a high level he’s created a number of frameworks for approaching visualizations (e.g. sketches, charts). Here’s one that I find particularly useful in my day-to-day work:

1. Look - Collect and scan your data. Decide what problem you’re trying to solve.
2. See - Find patterns in the data (Who? What? When? How? Why?)
3. Imagine - Describe your data by capturing it your “mind’s eye”.
4. Show - Select the right framework (e.g. Measurement? Time line?)

Dan’s getting a lot of coverage in the press. Here’s some:

• BusinessWeek: Doodling for Profits (Feb 20th)
• Microsoft MIX Conference (Mar5th, Video 75min)
• SXSW Conference (Mar 8th)
• An interview with Kai Rysdall on the “Marketplace” radio program (podcast)
• A feature article in the April issue of FAST COMPANY magazine (article)

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Most major email clients (e.g. Outlook) treat all messages the same and sort by time stamp. Unread messages are typically shown in bold. Here’s an example inbox:

Notice in this example, there are some messages which are more important than others. For example Jill Executive (presumably a big shot at the company) is asking about some super important presentation coming up. And my wife apparently needs me to pickup the baby, also very important :). Yet the emails from David Shah were automatically generated when he created the projects and not critical to read.

Now, I know many of you are thinking… well Preston, why don’t you setup some filters and have some of those messages moved to folders. I’ve experimented with those but I always end up “losing” a message which was not filtered the way I had intended. Also, as with all hierarchical organization schemes, finding the messages later in folders can be challenging. Some of you may also have some other nifty email program which you’ve found to be better–but those of us in Corporate America are stuck with Outlook (at least for the time being).

About a year ago, I stumbled upon a new way to deal with this problem using a little known feature within Outlook which can automatically color messages based upon certain rules you setup. By doing this you can make less important emails appear less noticible and more important emails stand out. Here’s an example:

Notice how an inbox of 8 messages at quick glance looks like just 4 messages. Amazing! In this way the likely most important messages will be most visible in your inbox whereas the less important ones you more likely don’t need to respond to will fade into the background.

Here’s how it works from within Outlook 2003. Click on Tools–>Organize from the menu.

Click on “Using Colors” and then on “Automatic Formatting”. Here are the rules I setup (in this order as they’re run sequentially):

• Condition: Where I am on the CC line
  Font: Grey
• Condition: Where I am the only person on the TO line
  Font: Blue
• Condition: Where I am on the TO line with other people
  Font: Green
• Condition: From: <My Manager’s Name>, <Executives Name> Where I am on the To: line with other people
  Font: Red

Note that this system works best in an environment where people appropriately use the TO and CC lines. You should always put a person on the TO line if they need to respond and the CC line if its simply to inform.

Archiving and Finding Messages

I’ve found the color system to work well with my archiving and search system I’ve setup. I have a daily auto-archive setup on my inbox to archive anything older than 14 days to a file for that quarter. In this way each archive file does not get too big. Then I have all my archive PST files open in Outlook which allows Windows Desktop Search to index all the messages. If you haven’t tried Windows Desktop Search, it’s based on the one in Vista but available to install on Windows XP for free. You can even do complex queries like “date:last week” and “status from:John Doe”.

If you’ve found other interesting ways to organize and triage email, let me know.

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Update 4/4/08:
View jobs on LinkedIn: Interaction Designer, Senior IxD, Lead IxD

Update 6/1/08:
Positions are all filled. Thanks!

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Bill Buxton [video, book] - We must embrace our unique qualities as interaction designers, respect the talents of others (e.g. developers), and together change our organization so that our talents are used. We must “stop whining!” Buxton pointed out that Jonathan Ive was at Apple for 5 years before the Steve Jobs came back–and yet made little difference on the products. Jobs first move was to use the existing design talent at Apple to turn around the company. Finally, Buxton pointed out how Moore’s Law and the Growth of Features run counter to the fact that human capacity is not increasing.

Aza Raskin [video] - Aza is the first second-generation interaction designer I’ve met which I think is pretty cool. His late father, Jef Raskin, of course is responsible for designing the Macintosh and Aza founded his company Humanized to continue his father’s work. Aza is a refreshing speaker and clearly articulates his strong point of view that the best user interface is no user interface. In other words, selection and direct manipulation in the modern GUI has gone too far and we’d be better off with a recall based smart command line (see my previous post on his product Enso). By focusing hard on simplicity and reducing interactions where possible we just may fit under what Buxton’s called God’s Law (see above).

Chris Conley - Chris spoke on how the use of dramatic features in interaction design yields more enjoyable and engaging products. He defined drama as “an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events”. Furthermore he described how it’s only thru drama that you create truly meaningful products. Chris described how Pixar approaches this subject thru the heavy use of storyboarding. They spend years honing the story and using a series of design critiques, until it is just right. Only then does production begin. As interaction designers we must choreograph these dramatic elements in order to delight our customers. One example he shared was how to customize icons on the iPhone home screen. When you move into customization mode all the icons start jiggling and then jump out of the way as you drag icons. Very fun indeed.

Matt Jones [video, deck] - Matt is the designer behind Dopplr and his witty British humour was a joy to listen to. My favorite quote from his talk was a definition for serendipity (something we regularly discuss at eBay):

“Serendipity is looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer’s daughter” - Sir Hans Kornberg

He also built on the notion of delight as a key to product design. For example, one hotel left him a rubber ducky in the tub on the 4th night. On Dopplr they surprise their customers with customized Dopplr logos based on their travel history.

Jon Kolko - While Jon was not an official speaker, as a former professor at Savannah College of Art and Design he played a key role in bringing Interaction08 to SCAD. A designer on my team, Riaz, was a former student of Jon’s and introduced me to him over pizza and beer at VinnieVanGoGo’s the night before the conference. Jon cuts right to the point and is very direct about his POV on design (as well as other things). I found his attitude refreshing and it has motivated me to be less nuanced in my opinions. I’m halfway thru his book which I’d highly recommend.

Quick Tidbits:

• Bill DeRouchey: Conversations w/Every Day Objects [video, deck] - How button’s have evolved and their affordances…
• Gabe White: Ethics of Design [video] - Should we discourage addictive or compulsive behavior (e.g. twitter)?
• Sarah Allen: Cinematic IxD [video, deck] - How to use visual cues in transitions to maintain context…
• Gretchen Anderson: Concept Ideation [video] - If meeting with the CEO, tell a story about your customer and be dramatic…
• UI Design in Agile Environment [video] - How to use a design studio and team offsites to make Agile work…

List of all video available from Interaction08.

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Notably I really enjoyed Aza Raskin’s perspective on the formation of Humanized’s Enso product. As Jon Raskin’s son (original Mac team), he’s the first person I know who is a second generation interaction designer–very cool. As for Enso, I installed it today and found it to be pretty useful. For those that haven’t tried it, Enso layers a smart command-line interface onto your Mac or PC allowing you to access programs, files, windows, or websites in an instant. Perhaps my favorite feature is that they put Caps Lock to good use (instead of randomly causing you to YELL in emails).

Will a smart command-line interface take off? Well in my mind it already has with the proliferation of Google (e.g. many people navigate to their favorite websites by searching for them vs. clicking a bookmark). The big issue Enso will need to overcome is the recall problem, however with a powerful suggestion feature they’re well on their way to solving that too. Now that Mozilla has acquired Humanized, it seems that Mozilla is slowing pulling together all the pieces for a more effective operating system that just happens to run on top of MacOS or Windows. It should be interesting to see what comes next…

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