Perry

Hewitt

Tag: strategy

Charge up data reach with smart UX

Last week I participated in a data and gov tech roundtable hosted by Nick Sinai at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School. Nick brought together an all-star panel with Lynn Overmann, Todd Park, Aneesh Chopra, and newly-named U.S. Chief Data Scientist D.J. Patil. Entrepreneurs, academics, and officials exchanged ideas on the challenges of collecting, structuring, and delivering meaningful open data.

Patil led off with his (Day 5!) understanding of his new role, which — I was heartened to hear — included a mention of the importance of user experience. Back in the late 1990s, websites were created on the premise of “Build it and they will come.” Early release of data sets suffers from a similar problem — it’s hard to attract a wide range of users with only machine readable formats. Government officials invested in sharing data are realizing that a better approach to user experience is needed to get the data in the hands of more users. Ideally, an infrastructure will be created to meet this need, and it’s not yet clear how much public-private partnerships will (or should) play that role.

As more government data is released (new datasets were announced today from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency), there is greater potential value for researchers and journalists. While improved data literacy is coming, the challenge of user experience remains critical to solve to reach wider audiences.

March 2, 2015
Friday 5 — 2.20.2015
1. Consumer feedback is crucial in building a successful product. Understanding how and when to solicit it can make all the difference. Read and learn from these 5 mistakes we all make with product feedback.
2. Marketing is now in the experience business. In a digital era, marketers need to invest in user experience as a critical competency, and embrace agile methodologies to compete. This interview explains why “Lean Product Design Is The New Marketing.”
3. How has the role of design evolved over time? Design agencies today have the opportunity to change not only customer behaviors, but the behaviors of the client companies. Read how one design firm develops a culture of collaboration that drives results.
4. Should scientists take an active role in public policy debates about issues related to science and technology? 87% of 3,748 scientists surveyed think so. New research from Pew reveals how this translates into increasingly social behavior.
5. Everyone is going mobile — The New York Times is changing its editorial processes to optimize for more than 50% mobile visitors, and others are even ditching their websites altogether. However, Flipboard is swimming against the tide by launching a full-featured website to better tie its web and mobile experiences.
Weekend fun: Gimmicky or apt? This week Modern Family chose to reflect the reality of contemporary familial communications with an episode called ‘Connection Lost.’ Related video: A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
February 20, 2015
What Google knows to show you

Google has come a long way from the user experience of “ten blue links.” Today, Google pulls in a vast amount of the information it searches, has a keener understanding of what you are looking for — and serves it up to you directly.

Google’s organization of the world’s data, called ‘The Knowledge Graph,’ affects about 25% of all search queries. Google serves more and more rich data to minimize the need for users to click a second time. Search for the term “weather” or the title of a movie, and Google will serve up relevant, local data above any linked results.

When I recently searched for the correct spelling of the name of a director at Harvard, Google surprised me with a Wikipedia entry above a link to the site.

What does this mean for web content publishers?

This scraping and delivery of content is convenient for users eager to save a click. It also has practical ramifications for the originating content publishers. Today, a search engine optimization (SEO) must go far beyond meta tags and content keywords. Publishers need to closely watch and respond to web traffic analytics (for example, understanding dark social and developing a robust Wikipedia strategy) as well as technical features offered by search engines (for example, rich snippets and structured data).

February 9, 2015
Check your normative defaults

Your software has opinions — here’s how to spot them

In July of this year, Facebook made a small design change that reflected a large shift in perspective. On both the desktop and the mobile app the globe icon in the blue bar became dynamic rather than static, reflecting your position on the planet. If you were logging on to Facebook from Jakarta, North America was no longer the default view.

Why should such a small change matter? Mapmakers have known for centuries that whoever draws the map, defines the perspective. …

Read the rest of Check Your Normative Defaults over at Medium.

December 7, 2014
Friday 5 — 12.5.2014
Seen at HarvardX
1. We’re all producing more video, but who’s watching? Unlike written content, where a strong open may draw a reader in, there is a divide between those who press play on a video, and those who don’t. This post suggests that video consumption may not be evenly distributed across your audience — and you may have a very specific segment that forms your core video-watching audience .
2. Anyone still wondering how much people would actually buy via mobile should read these reports [click the + signs at the bottom to see earlier reports]. On Cyber Monday, mobile shopping accounted for 42.1% of traffic, and 22% of sales. Within mobile, purchasers still prefer tablet over smartphone, a preference that may change as more adopt phablet devices.
3. Benedict Evans poses thought-provoking new questions in mobile. Now that Apple and Google have won the platform war, what are the new issues around interaction models and wearables? And how will the industry change as mobile scales to 4B smartphones worldwide.
4. How do Chinese mobile app user interfaces differ from those created for Western consumers? WeChat product manager Dan Grover wrote a fascinating post with everything from the rise of chat as universal UI to the the use of cutesy mascots.
5. What does the way you move your mouse reveal about you? Google announced that it has found a way to use that movement to surmise if you are human. Now you can click a checkbox confirming “I am not a robot” instead of deciphering squiggly text. Those annoyed by Captcha will rejoice, but others may raise concerns about privacy.
Weekend fun: Be sure not to miss the parodies of the new Star Wars trailer. I’ll be watching these trailers with a few boxes of Girl Scouts’ Thin Mints, obtained via the magic of the internet.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
December 5, 2014
Friday 5 — 11.28.2014
1. Technology surrounds us, but what do most internet users understand about it? A Pew survey on web and digital technology found that only 23% of adult users are aware that “the Internet” and “the World Wide Web” are not the same thing. And while 83% of those surveyed could correctly identify Bill Gates, fewer than half knew that Facebook started at Harvard. Take the quiz for yourself before you read the report.
2. I enjoyed this post reframing strategy as less of a blueprint, which was better suited to a predictable analog world, but more of an algorithm (rule) that helps you manage for exceptions. As digital marketers operate in an ever-changing mix of channels, tools, and audiences, it’s essential to rely less on a plan and more on an agile approach that enables flexible, distributed decision-making.
3. Twitter is launching a new feature called “app graph,” which tracks all of the apps a user has installed on their mobile device. The goal is to serve users more applicable suggestions for accounts to follow, and add relevant content (including better-targeted ads) to their feeds. Here’s how to disable it.
4. Alex Breuer gave a thoughtful interview on responsive design at the Guardian. The interview provides insights on ways mobile can influence editorial, the evolution of prototyping, and why speed is considered an integral component of design.
5. WhatsApp is emerging in some contexts as a major traffic driver for news sites — and the rise of messaging apps in the West ensures this trend will continue to grow. Site owners should start gathering data on messaging referrals, and evaluate when it’s time to add a button for WhatsApp sharing.
Weekend fun: Here are Richard Scarry’s Busy Town inhabitants cleverly re-imagined with modern-day professions, like “content aggregator” and “tech start up executive.” Beware the pathos casting of Lowly Worm.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
November 28, 2014
Friday 5 — 11.14.2014
1. Beyond audience analytics and editorial review, what are some other ways to suss out how well your website content is performing? Here are seven website graders you can try today.
2. We’re all hoping for a silver bullet for email management, but Google Inbox isn’t it. While the Material Design approach makes the app look slick, the default bundling of conversations and multiple message management options are confusing.
3. With 14 newsletters, and merely one on the topic of cats, Buzzfeed has increased its website traffic from email by 700% year over year. Read how Buzzfeed overhauled its email strategy to become among the top traffic drivers to their site.
4. Quartz reports that while 80% of the web remains dominated by just 10 languages, another 6,990 are out there. Read how web platforms are gearing up for a truly multilingual web.
5. The early web was all about community — and then swiftly yielded to a mountain of Flash animations and brochureware. Now community management is emerging as a discipline and, increasingly, a job title.
Weekend fun: The Thanksgiving season is upon us, and Facebook has made it easier to say thanks by auto-generating videos to construct a narrative of your friendships. Creepy or clever? You be the judge.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
November 14, 2014
Friday 5 — 10.17.2014
1. Twitter has enabled streaming audio to a limited number of partners via Audio Cards using Soundcloud. Now users can listen, like and share audio content on SoundCloud without leaving Twitter. This feature will be big for music, and useful for finding new audiences for public radio programming. Audio excerpts might also serve up interesting teasers for online learning content.
2. With stickers in comments and the ability to draw on photos in Messenger, Facebook got a lot more visual and fun this week.
3. Facebook is for the olds, while Spotify, Quora, and Instagram topped this list of digital products teens use and love. Product Hunt this week featured products made by teens.
4. Data security has everyone spooked, and rightfully so. Do your part by reading this handy guide to not being that idiot who got the company hacked. TL;DR: two-factor authentication for everything.
5. How do organizations that adopt and advance by new technology effectively drive digital transformation? According to this HBR post, it’s not an impossible task or arcane art — the main requirements are time, tenacity, and leadership.
Weekend fun: Remember that McSweeney’s piece and subsequent video mocking 1990s feel-good font Comic Sans? Now someone’s made a typewriter called the Sincerity Machine that produces nothing but.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
October 17, 2014
How to lead a responsive web design

Web thought leaders and authors Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte now publish a popular responsive web design podcast. Each episode features an interview with the people who make responsive redesigns happen, and covers the various complexities from change management and organizational readiness to design optimization and monetizing mobile.

You can see my interview here, which talks about the current content strategy shift toward mobile, and a recent responsive redesign at Harvard.

October 14, 2014
Future M and Inbound

Last week, well over 10,000 digital marketers and technologists arrived in Boston for MITX’s Future M, and Hubspot’s Inbound.

For Future M, I was fortunate to participate in a fireside chat led by industry pro Sarah Fay on how to cultivate a digital team. Smart question from the audience: who are the three members I would bring to a desert island digital team? My answer: developer (always be building), storyteller (it’s vital to have a narrative, be it words and pictures), and strategist (define why are we doing what we’re doing — and what we’re NOT doing).

At Inbound, I presented the deck below on the Rise of the Chief Digital Officer. Not clear what the future is for that curious title, but the need for a digital competency that favors integration over education will certainly endure.

Thanks to all who attended and followed up later with great ideas and insights.

What do L’Oreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and McDonalds have in common? Like Harvard University, they all have CDOs. But what on earth does a CDO do in a world where almost everything is digital? A CDO is a means to catalyze change and to empower one person to accelerate digital capabilities across the enterprise. This session will focus on practical ways that CDOs, CMOs, and other enterprise leaders can create and innovate through digital strategy.

September 28, 2014