When the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore Maryland approached Fastspot to help solve one of its core challenges, allowing online visitors to browse its collection of works, we jumped at the opportunity. Here is a recap of some of the hurdles, surprises, successes, and failures that we encountered during the course of the project, with insights from Curt Kotula, Art & Technology Director and the lead designer on this project, and Ben Plum, Interactive Designer & Producer and the lead developer on this project.

UX Challenges
The Walters Art Museum has a huge online collection containing thousands of images. Just like the artwork featured in the images, you can’t count on a consistent image aspect ratio. Images range from the absurdly wide to the ridiculously tall, creating a huge layout challenge for us. You also can’t just crop a work of art—it’s impossible to set a standard size, and one solution will not work for all situations.

We attacked this problem on two fronts. First, when browsing, the artwork thumbnails are organized into columns instead of rows, allowing the variety of image sizes to cascade down the page without wasting space. Second, the artwork detail page is organized in such a way that the supporting content flexes and shifts to fit the aspect ratio of the image; wide images span the width of the page with content below, while tall images fill the left side with content to the right. Our goal was to let these beautiful images be the focus no matter what shape the artwork happens to be.

Browse Simple, Make it Stick
The best part about visiting a museum is stumbling upon a piece of art that sticks with you long after you leave. We felt that browsing the Walters’ online collection should also provide that experience. When the project started, there were over 7,000 items in the collection (currently there are over 11,000!). Increasing users’ access to this impressive body of work and overall “browsability” are two of the main objectives for the project.

We engineered several distinct browsing experiences to promote discovery and surprise. Users can browse by category, material, date range, location in the museum, creator, place of origin, tags, and popularity in the community. We engineered browsing options for a variety of audiences, and these options are presented in a simple and direct tabbed interface.

How Many Clicks Does it Take?
Have we mentioned how big the Walters online collection is? Paged results are a necessity when dealing with thumbnail images. Too many images would cripple older computers or take too long to load over a slow Internet connection. Too many pages make larger result sets a bear to navigate.

We asked ourselves: How do you navigate seventy pages of image based results with the same ease and control that you navigate three? How do you conveniently navigate a thousand individual works of art? We decided to throw out the traditional design pattern of numbered pagination (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 … 450), instead opting for a custom solution based on the ease of drag-and-drop. We engineered the pagination system to give the user fine-grain control; the user can step through smaller result sets with the “next” and “previous” buttons, while large result sets can be quickly navigated by simply dragging the handle to an exact page or piece of art. Every result in a particular set is now easily accessible—no more skipping 10 pages at a time just to get to the center of the set.

Community Organizers
Another challenge was that the previous version of the Website offered user curation tools—they are popular with teachers and museum staff but were not well-utilized outside of those audiences. The ability to organize and curate art isn’t just an important tool for educators; it also helps art novices and children alike begin to analyze and appreciate art by making their own connections.

We needed the barrier of entry to be low and the result to be useful and fun. We decided to use Facebook connect rather than managing our own user system, allowing anyone with an active Facebook account to get started quickly and easily. Finally, we branded the curator feature “Community Collections” and brought recent collections to the homepage to promote the feature and encourage sharing.

Programming Challenges
Modern museums have internal database systems for cataloging and archiving collections. The most popular choice for large institutions seems to be the Museum System by Gallery Systems. We don’t doubt that TMS is a fantastic offline collection management system, but simply put, the Web extensions offered are lacking and don’t seem to be a primary focus of the company. Customization options are limited and the default layout is a generic, confusing mess. The result is a hard-to-navigate online collection that isn’t particularly attractive and tends to look a lot like competitors.

Fresh From The Oven
We decided early on to throw out the generic box mix provided by Gallery Systems and work with the Walters database team to create our solution from scratch. We knew right away that we didn’t want to expose the entire TMS database to the Internet nor did we need the massive amount of information it stored. What we did need was a second database that only contained the information necessary for the new online experience. We used our own content management platform, BigTree CMS, as the core technology that drives the site and engineered a scheduled synching process that eliminates double work.

The Fruits of our Labor
Many at Fastspot would argue that this project was one of our most challenging—and most inspiring. We were lucky to have a fantastic team at the Walters to work with, and they gave us a lot of room to flex our UX muscles and explore possibilities. We insisted on keeping things as simple as possible, even as we tried to integrate more complex functionality, so as to always let the artworks remain front and center. More importantly, we re-envisioned what was possible for a museum to offer its online visitors. Through a diligent process of refinement, a willingness to throw away things that weren’t working, and a constant focus on the visitor’s browsing experience, a wonderful new interface and interactive experience emerged.

So far the new Works of Art site has received glowing feedback, and users have jumped right in and started doing what the Walters Art Museum and all of us at Fastspot hoped they would do: delighting in the experience of exploring art.

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It is with a heavy heart I write this post, and I’m sure with a heavy heart that you read it. I was overcome by sadness when I learned of Steve Jobs’ passing last night, and it made me stop and think about why my emotions were so strong for a person I’d never met.

I remember first paying attention to Macintosh computers as I started to hear the grumblings of photography students back in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1993. You see, the photography department at the Cleveland Institute of Art (from which I had just graduated, just missing the influx of the digital age into higher education) had just invested in its first Mac, along with software called Photoshop and an instructor named Stan. Stan told the aspiring photographers and lovers of film and chemicals that the Mac would render film irrelevant, and one day in the not too distant future, all photography would be digital. Of course, this royally pissed off all the photo purists, but I waved my hands around and implored them to back up and tell me more about this amazing machine and the software it could run. When I imagined the possibilities of a creative tool set running on something as powerful and versatile as a computer, combined with the exposure the Internet offered, my mind instantly saw the new possibilities open to all artists. Suddenly I no longer was trapped in a world of physicality, slide sheets, printed resumes, mailed out portfolio packets, imperfectly exposed images, incorrectly sized prints, and the ability to only show my work to those who stopped by my studio or visited a show in a gallery (if I was lucky enough to get one).

I was an instant addict. I scrounged up as much money as I could and begged my parents for the rest so I could go get a Mac. A Performa 550, I believe. And a scanner. And some software. I didn’t know how to use it, but I knew I had to learn. I remember someone saying offhandedly way back then that I could get a PC for less, or it would be more expandable, blah blah blah, but I’d heard that Macs were for artists, designers and creative people. To me (a freshly graduated art school kid aspiring to be a fine artist), that warranted the decision. The revolution of desktop publishing was ushered in by Macs, and to me, that was the platform I should be on.

Over the years I purchased more Macs, more software, more peripherals, as they became available and I could afford them. I admired the evolving operating system, the elegant solutions, the celebration of the creative spirit. I turned a blind eye to the shortcomings, because for me, the cons were far outweighed by the pros. I became a Mac fan, and never wavered. On my wall in my office hangs 1 share of Apple stock, printed on parchment paper donning the old rainbow apple logo, purchased for $12 as a first year wedding anniversary gift by my partner (the first year is the “paper” year). It is now worth almost $1000. And yes, it’s sad it wasn’t 1000 shares, but we were poor struggling artists.

As my love affair with Macs continued, I was often questioned by others – why do you spend the extra money for a Mac? Nobody else is using them in business; why do you insist on using one? Isn’t it so much harder to find programs that will run on it? And on and on. It always seemed like mindless questioning. I could do what I wanted to do on a Mac and not on a PC; therefore the money was well worth it. I was creating for myself, not for other business people, so who cared what the business norm was? I had the tools I needed, and they worked really well, so who cares that I couldn’t buy a million crappy games or software apps to run on it? My Macs did exactly what I wanted them to do, and they encouraged me to keep making things that were creative, well-designed, and pleasant for others to experience.

I didn’t expect to end up spending my days working on computers, let alone run a company where our end product couldn’t exist without computers. And in fact I don’t think of it that way even now as I’ve been doing just that for the past 12 years or so – I just don’t see it as “work.” This is because I love the space I work in, the space in my Mac. It is more than a tool; it is the environment I create in, it is the window to the world through which I communicate, it offers the possible solutions to all my problems, it is my studio. From the moment I turn on my Mac (and this could be my desktop setup at the office, my laptop I use while traveling, my iPad I use at home, or my iPhone that I use all the time), I am no longer “working,” I am collaborating. I am conducting elaborate and complex dances with a series of programs, apps, technologies, interfaces, and experiences. I am being given the ultimate set of tools to help me be creative, and to be my best.

I was always struck by the articles or interviews I read about Steve Jobs. He was clearly obsessed with the user experience, and in making that experience the best it could be. I can’t say that about many people, businesses or organizations, but I can say it about Steve and Apple. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” - Steve Jobs. When we are reviewing designs or new Website prototypes around the Fastspot offices, or just talking about ideas or checking out other things, it’s a constant effort to hold everything up to a high standard. It’s not easy or fun to constantly scrutinize every tiny detail, to look for (and find) problems, shortcomings, things we just don’t like. And it’s not easy on the ego either, when we are critiquing our own work. It’s so much easier to let that “good enough” mentality take over. It’s exhausting to constantly push for perfection. But it’s the only way you get great results.

Steve, Apple, and the products and experiences they have created over the past 17 years I have been using them have become a constant source of inspiration and aspiration. It is this pursuit to build a great company, create amazing things, and work with extremely talented people that inspired us to start Fastspot back in 2001. I seriously did write down “Karma” on a napkin and half-seriously declare it our business plan (yes, while at a bar). But it stuck – because you do indeed get back what you put out into the universe.  And this is why we have the extra revision rounds, blow through some project hours we didn’t have, stay late while we try to find a solution, or tell a client “no.” If we weren’t striving for perfection, and trying to put out the best of what we have to give, we would just be making unexceptional stuff, and who really wants to be doing that?

I worry that with the passing of such an inspirational creative mind, we have become a slightly darker world, with a slightly darker future ahead of us. I want more people to try to be like Steve; I want more companies to try to be like Apple. I dislike mediocrity, because it doesn’t contribute anything. I hate apathy, because it doesn’t promote change. I abhor literal thinking, because it kills off any chance of a creative spark of brilliance. I am a champion of individuality because without it, we are simply conductors of a larger, more generalized norm. I resist focus group testing for the same reasons Steve didn’t test so many Apple prototypes. “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs. I am grateful that I get to work in the design business, because design is what Steve, and Apple, and my first Mac helped me fall in love with, or helped me realize I was already in love with, or enabled me to realize my love’s true potential.

To all the other designers, seekers of excellence, creative minds and addicts of technology and the user experience who are out there, it is up to us all to continue pushing the things we do as far as we can, to hold them up to the light of our own critical scrutiny and ask, can it be better? I hope the rest of our country follows suit, because from my vantage point, it’s the only way out of the mess we are in. A world of easy, mediocre, acceptable, semi-functional, short-term creations is not the world Steve was creating, and it’s not the world I want to live in. Let’s make sure it doesn’t go that way. Let’s make a world of exquisite, magical, inspiring, fun, powerful, genuine, and beautiful experiences.

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” – Steve Jobs.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs, and thanks for everything.

Xoxo

Tracey

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Your website’s main navigation, the primary navigation presented to users who first arrive on your website, should do several things, and do them well.

The main nav should be simple. The language, the organization, the placement, the size of the font—everything—should be simple. This is the most useful element of your site, and much like a doorknob or the power switch on an object, it should not be overly complex.

The main nav should tell a story. If you are a college or university, you don’t want to start your nav with “Giving.” You need to tell your story first. Many schools show just how desperate they are by making “Admissions” or “Apply Now” the first link in their main nav. This is bad. Just like a first date, you want to convey confidence and let your user get to know you before you move in for the big smooch.

The main nav should be mature. Nothing screams institutional conflict more than a main nav that is all over the place. A classic example is a nav that is one part general, one part categorical, and one part specific. Main navigation should be consistent in how it groups information; this is to aide users who are learning to use the system as they begin to navigate the site. Placing inappropriate links into your main nav is a quick way to lose user trust and degrade the user experience.

The main nav should start with the largest parts of the funnel. For example, you don’t want your main nav to be all about the specifics. Users will naturally click into sections as they seek more specific information. If they are looking for filet, they will click into the meat tab. If they are seeking lettuce, they will look under vegetables. Give them time and space to find what they are seeking in the natural order of the information.

Your main nav should be short. If you give users too many options, they will have option overload. A main nav that has more than 7 tabs or links is bordering on too big and should set off alarm bells about the overall hierarchy of the information. Remember, your main nav needs to tell a story—so if you overload your visitors with specifics right off the bat, you aren’t letting them read the big picture story.

Your main nav should be useful. It is easy to assume that all things important must go into the main nav. This is a knee-jerk reaction born out of misguided thinking by uneducated information architects or nervous clients. This is simply not the case. The main nav should be the foundation, and it should not have to change down the road. You should not have constantly changing content in your main navigation. There should be other, more visually impactful areas for including these somewhat temporary initiatives within the overall page or site design.

While we may come to think of the main nav as the thing that users see first, this is not true. Users see the features and other more brightly and boldly presented content first. They only move to the main nav when they have shifted from a browsing to a searching mode. The features and other more visual callouts you design for your users are for them to explore and interact with; they let users know what you are saying is important, what is hot, new, happening. They are your breaking news, your highlights, your top stories, your VIPs, your special differentiators. Your main navigation is a set of tools in a toolbox that you want your visitor to understand implicitly and feel confident using to effectively drill down to the specific data they are seeking.

Let’s break down the main navigation in a few sites to explore these positions in more depth.

Example: MailChimp

MailChimp.com Homepage

If you look at MailChimp’s home page and pay attention to where your eye goes, you can see that the most important messages being conveyed are not the main nav, but rather that you can sign up for free, that you can manage email and newsletters easily, and that there are some cool new things happening. Only after scanning these elements do you seek out the main nav, and now your mindset has changed. You are no longer scanning to get a sense of what MailChimp is; you are now going to follow a logical set of pathways to seek out information that is of more specific interest to you. That may be pricing, features, or places to learn more about the community, such as the blog or the support section. But these main nav items are not trying to sell you on the best parts of MailChimp—that is the main page’s job, and the brand, and the marketing messages, and everything else. No, the nav is there to get you where you want to go, now that you know MailChimp is something that interests you.

Example: Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines Homepage

In the case of Southwest, there are a ton of things going on, yet the main nav is quite simple—Air, Hotel, Car, Vacations. To the sides, sitting back sightly, we have Special Offers, Travel Guide, and Rapid Rewards. A nifty drop-down menu gives you immediate drill-down options to skip an unnecessary page reload and to quickly let you see what information and functionality resides within each section. Yet, similar to MailChimp, the main nav is doing its thing, and the rest of the site is presenting the hierarchy, directing your attention, making sure you see the special deals and have quick access to certain portals, etc. They don’t try to do it all in the main nav. With such a complex set of user experiences, they have actually presented you with a myriad of navigational “types”—which allow you to “learn” the way to best use Southwest’s site and not be left at the mercy of internal groups playing a turf war over the website’s nav.

Example: Mint

Mint's Homepage

Surely you’ve heard of Mint.com for managing your finances, right? No? Oh—well, if you check out their site you’ll see they suspect you might be a newbie as well, and they will help you get a quick glimpse of what they are about before offering up a helpful main nav geared toward a pleasant introduction process. Here’s what happens when you land on mint.com: You see right away that Mint is the best free way to manage your money, you can get started for free, it’s safe and secure, has bill reminders, gets lots of good press, and works on various devices. Great, you’re in! Now you head to the main nav to learn more. They opt for a two-option main nav: What is Mint? and How it Works. Pretty simple. Of course there are all sorts of other navigational options sprinkled in that you start to see if you haven’t already found what you are looking for, and typically these supplemental navigational elements cater to specific user groups—in Mint’s case, Canadian users, people seeking information about the company, or existing users who want to log in. Most importantly, they assume you don’t know them yet, and they present their offerings in ways that make sense and have a sense of pacing.

Example: Lego

Lego's Homepage

Lego has a fantastic landing page—it invites you right into its online game experience “Lego Universe” while also promoting other featured aspects of the Lego brand, like the Lego Club, My Lego Network, Featured Products, and quick links to highlighted product lines like the Star Wars line, the “Games” line, and the MBA series of toys. Once you are past the initial experience, you are ready to dive into the specifics—and here you have the main nav stepping up and ready to play its role. You have Products, Games, Create & Share, and Shop. Four links. Simple. And a story is being told; you understand that Lego is a brand that is about playing, creating, and sharing as much as it is about selling you small interconnecting plastic blocks. They don’t put LEGO Universe into the main nav, even though one could argue that it seems this is a big push for the company right now. Rather, they feature it in appropriate places. This is also a critical act of restraint because in one or two years, the LEGO Universe may not be the main feature, and it would be wasteful to need to redo the main nav every time a point of emphasis needed to change for an organization.

We try to impart these lessons to our clients at the beginning of every engagement, because much like a house, if the foundation of your main nav is not strong, you risk putting your entire site’s structure and integrity in a compromising position that may need to be readdressed in the near future. And when all else fails, remember that you can rely on your analytics data to truly tell you if your website visitors are going where you want them to go and finding what they want to find. That’s the beauty of the Web—we have data to base our decisions on! Now, this doesn’t mean that the entire process of how we expect to use websites won’t be shifting in the near future, as main navigation gets replaced with interactive elements that involve finger swipes more than the click of a mouse. But visual design, composition, and the inherent ways a person’s eye moves and the way the brain processes information is and has been pretty much the same for the past few thousand years, so don’t mess with evolution and human nature unless you have a pretty convincing argument to do so.

Now go forth and navigate!

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Every now and then we get so busy, we need a blog post to help us all reconnect on the important things in life – like what we think is funny, or what app we are using to improve our quality of life, or what we are listening to behind the walls of our headphone workstations. Take a look at ours, and feel free to share some of your current obsessions as well, we are always curious!

Yianni Mathioudakis:
Crotchless Martini from Vino Rosino http://vinorosina.com/ – If you love dirty martini’s you have to try this- 6 types of imported olives, pepperoncini, smoked ham hocks & bacon
Lupe Fiasco’s new album “Lasers” http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/lasers/id418674062
Nikon D7000 DSLR. It’s been out for a little bit now, but still on my wish list! http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/Digital-SLR-Cameras/25468/D7000.html
Shameless – Awesome show! www.sho.com/site/shameless
Call of Duty Black Ops – http://www.callofduty.com/blackops
- If you’re trying to get beat hit me up on xbox ‘yianni5k’

Stacy Spakowsky:
Most recent movie I saw:
Cedar Rapids with Ed Helms of The Office and John C. Reilly
Mildred Pierce (HBO miniseries with Kate Winslet)
Music I’m Addicted to:
A Day to Remember – “What Separates Me From You” (which I have listened to over and over since I bought it)
Bayside – “Killing Time”
Apps I’m Addicted to:
Words With Friends
Tiny Wings
Restaurants I Want to Try:
Alchemy in Hampden
The Corner in Hampden (new BYOB place)
Chameleon Cafe in Hamilton
Favorite Beers:
Troegs Hop Back
Heavy Seas Great Pumpkin
Heavy Seas Aaarsh
Last Awesome Things I’ve Eaten:
Salt – Bacon & Eggs: Black pepper and maple glazed pork belly confit, poached duck egg, soldiers
Salt – Amish Chicken Breast: Apple and Vermont cheddar polenta, roasted root vegetables, pan gravy
The Point – Grilled Cheese and Heirloom Tomato: Fresh basil, spinach pesto, balsamic reduction
Woodberry Kitchen – Braised Beef Shank with Polenta
I Know I’m Going to Go Back to:
Johnny Rads
Books:
I will probably end up re-reading one of my Sarah Vowell or Kurt Vonnegut books on my honeymoon.
Favorite Book of All Time:
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

April Osmanof:
Favorite place to get rowdy – Salt
Favorite new work pet – Mousey
Favorite book this year – Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Favorite place to eat – Grano and Samos, both are BYOW (wine)
Favorite new album – Justin Bieber / My World 2.0, although it is heartfelt, it is also intertwined with a bit of irony

Curt Kotula:
My ‘Right Now’ is perhaps the nerdiest I have ever been.
TV: I am re-watching two wildly different old TV series right now, My So Called Life and Farscape. I recently watched the first season of a newer series called Downton Abbey, it was fantastic and I can’t wait for season 2. Justified season 2 is also very good, hillbilly pot dealers and Mountain Top coal mining… awesome.
Books: I’m reading two kids books right now, the original Winnie the Pooh and a Wrinkle in Time. My next adult reading will be to catch up on The Fall, when it’s released in paperback.
Movies: I’m really interested in finishing Howards End it’s really good so far but it should probably be called Howards Ambien. My third attempt will be this weekend.
Music: R.E.M. the best of the IRS Years 82-87, Peter Gabriel’s So, Yo La Tengo Painful, and Okkervil River The Stage Names
Apps & Games: I’ve been doing the NYTimes crossword every day with their iPad app. I eagerly await purchasing Portal 2 in 4 days when it’s available. Starcraft 2 is still my go to tune-out-life for 20 minutes game.
Beer: Anything from Still Water Ales, or The Bruery
Restaurants: nothing new, but I am discovering which restaurants I enjoy eating at that are truly ‘kid friendly’. So far Golden West, Rocket to Venus (surprisingly enough) and Clementine are the only zero-baby-guilt places I’ve found. I think the key is a generally high level of background noise.
Misc: I am cooking a lot lately, and have been experimenting with only using cast iron. During my baby imposed hiatus from rock climbing I have taken up an interest in barefoot running.
Baby: An absurd amount of time has been going towards teaching my son to do cool stuff like talk gibberish, grab things and sit up.

Tim Buckingham
I am currently enjoying:
Restaurants: Checkers, Chipotle, and Burger King.
TV: I plan to watch Jericho again starting tonight.

Amy Goldberg
Shoes with wooden soles
Striped shirts
The color gray
Apps – Tripit, Groupon, Instagram, The Daily!
Albums – Uh Huh her EP Black and Blue
Local Places – I love the new Bo Brooks Liquor Store
I still love my iphone!!!

Marianne Amoss
Books: I’m in the middle of A Thousand Splendid Suns, by the author of The Kite Runner. It’s really good, but violent, so it’s been a bit hard to get through.
Music: Excited about the new Fleet Foxes album, coming out next month. When warm weather hits I like to get the classic rock going — Neil Young, Allman Bros, Led Zeppelin.
My favorite bar these days is Windup Space on North Ave. The space is beautiful, and the owner, Russell, is great. I’ve been drinking Session Black there recently, which is yummy!
I’m also sharing a community garden plot with two others. A few weeks ago we planted a bunch of stuff — kale, red cabbage, beets, and more. There’s one little strawberry plant that I have high hopes for
I’m on the board of D Center, and am also working on a design competition called the Open City Competition that is a collaboration between D Center, MICA, Urbanite, the MTA, and the Dept. of Transportation. (urbaniteproject.com)
And I’m hoping to start biking to work next week!

Calea Kelvin
Fashion
-floral dresses with thick leather belts
-sandals with thick ankle straps
Apps
-words with friends!
-piano man (teaches you piano, guitar hero style)
-etsy addict
Music
-Anything by the Knife (especially “Heartbeats”)
-BIEBER!!!!
Local Places
-Idle Hour – “Pickle Back” shot (a shot of whiskey chased by a shot of pickle juice). So good!
-Bistro Rx – on the other side of patterson park, great atmosphere even better food!
-One Eyed Mikes – off the beaten path in fells, definitely one of my favorites

Ben Plum
Music: Chiddy Bang, The Octopus Project, Girl Talk, the Mick Boogie mixtapes, the Doobie Brothers version of “Jesus Is Just Alright” (not for religious reasons, that song just gets me pumped – blast it in your car and just try not to sing along)
TV: Parks and Rec, Archer, Party Down (suggested by Curt), and Pawn Stars (our guilty pleasure)
Beer: Gnomegang Collaboration, anything by Southern Tier Brewing, Rolling Rock (recently rediscovered)
Apps: Beka is addicted to Words With Friends
Restaurants: Our favorite out here in the country has to be El Salto
Misc: My Hackintosh and Yoyoing (I just ordered a special edition Genesis from Yoyo Factory, it’s gonna be siiiick!)

Tracey Halvorsen
Books: Just finished reading The Passage and LOVED it, but it did give me nightmares.
Music: The Black Angels, Broken Bells, Arcade Fire, Neko Case, New Order, Ryan Adams, The Pixies (they are on tour!), The Boxer Rebellion, Sun Kil Moon / Mark Kozelek, Uh Huh Her, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lykke Li, Heartless Bastards, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch.
TV: Walking Dead, The Good Wife, Friday Night Lights, The Killing (AMAZING!), Survivor, Chelsea Lately, Real Housewives of NYC (I know – but it’s my guilty pleasure now that Jersey Shore is unavailable).
Movies: Waiting for Superman, Black Swan, I Like Killing Flies, Animal Kingdom, Catfish, Moon, Jennifer’s Body, Zombieland
Apps / Games: Words with Friends and Flipbook on my iPad, Tiny Wings on my iPhone, Black Ops on the Xbox
Random: Anything to do with zombies, viral outbreaks or life after the apocalypse.
Free Time: Stella the bulldog, and Rufus the lab/pit mix. And wondering what Bonanza (previously named Mousey) is up to in his mega home.

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There is a fatal flaw in many of the content management systems (CMS) out on the market today. I refer to it as the 10/90 failure. The CMS has naturally evolved to provide complex functionalities that are desirable to about 10% of its eventual users, often created in response to the request of developers and more experienced computer users. In an effort to continue to offer more advanced functionalities (or often simply a case of over-engineering from the outset) you end up with an interface and set of tools which alienates and confuses the needs of the remaining 90% of the users. So you cater to 10%, in spite of the needs of the 90%.

The balance between usability and complex computing and data management is the stuff of legends. It can make or break a product, a company and to some degree the client who is making the purchasing decision. One must never underestimate a system’s inherent “like-ability”, just as hiring a wildly unpopular or disruptive staff member can upset the entire balance of a team. Let’s not forget the ongoing demise of MySpace in favor of Facebook, which is often credited to the overly complex customization options available to MySpace users (which resulted in a noisy and often disjointed virtual space). People who use systems like order, they like processes that make sense, and they like visually appealing interfaces.

When considering CMS options, it is critical to evaluate the needs of your 90%, ensuring the CMS meets those needs, before you focus on the needs of the 10%. Otherwise you end up catering to such a small set of your resources that you will never leverage your total potential. It is assumed that the 90% will get on board, go to training meetings, read the manuals, suddenly develop a love for complex interfaces and terminologies like “null”, and become nimble CMS users. This is a dream seldom realized.

Now I’m not advocating you forgo the needs of your most computer savvy and technically minded subset, simply that you ensure those tools and interfaces are not “required reading” for the 90%. A good CMS should separate the tasks of the masses and the tasks of the experts – they should not share the same user space. Your developer tools should be clearly indicated as “for geeks only”, and the things that are user friendly for the rest of us should be front and center. Trust me, your IT developers won’t care if they have to click through a few nicely designed screens to get to the parts they want, they probably won’t even notice. But if the reverse is asked, you can assume much of your 90% will be intimidated, get confused or become overwhelmed, choosing to opt out of whatever task they had tried to undertake.

I think about the things I enjoy doing everyday. The ones that have succeeded and become part of my daily routine are those things that offer the lowest barrier to success, and even provide a little encouragement and fun along the way. We’ve all seen the success of the iPhone over most other smart phones, and now the iPad over the straggling competitors in the tablet market. Apple has excelled in providing the best user experience for the majority of its users. Sure there are a small fraction who will prefer an Android device or a tablet that allows them to hack into it and do very specific things, but this is not the needs of the majority. The majority usually need to perform more generalized tasks, such as updating content, or adding a new publication to a bio, or perhaps starting a FAQ or setting up some other online resource. Many simply want an easy way to work with words, pictures, video and documents. Simple needs, which should not require tasks akin to launching missiles to achieve.

In a society dominated by personal voices and the social networks fueling constant self-publishing, it is an absolute imperative that every team member is empowered to publish, moderate, discuss, interact and share the things that are important to them, in a way that encourages frequency and consistency. If these aspiring publishers are part of your team, are you giving them the best tools possible? I recommend frequent brainstorm meetings where team members (representing the 90%) are asked to write down the top 10 things they want to be able to do online everyday. Then make sure your CMS is allowing them to do those things.

Have a good tip for determining what makes for a good CMS? Have a CMS you love and want to world to know about? Have a CMS wish list item you’d care to share? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!

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There is an ongoing and never ending argument about the validity of using greek or “lorem ipsum” in design comps, along with photos deemed FPO (For Placement Only). Today on Twitter, Jason Fried of 37Signals argues that placeholder copy should never be used, stating “You can’t evaluate a design properly when you’re looking at fake data.” and defending placeholder imagery since FPO images may actually make it to the live site (“No because default photos may stay there if there isn’t a custom photo. “Lorem ipsum dolor” isn’t in the launched site.”)

Mark Maloney (a consultant working in the UX / Design field) argued against Fried tweeting, “Aren’t default photos essentially the Lorem ipsum of photos? They’re used as placeholders. No?” and included this image from 37Signals web based software Basecamp.

While I think neither should be in place to truly show a great comp and convince a client of what you are trying to get across, as designers or web developers we are often hired to create comps and not do the leg work ahead of that process to determine things like marketing goals, tone, headline focus, publication strategies, etc. More and more these days, we are pitching our prospective clients on the importance of this up front work (often called research, or discovery, or even a website audit) because without this work, we don’t know what to say on their behalf – not effectively anyhow. And for placeholder images – eventually the client needs to take the reign on much of the imagery in their site, so even if you are using placeholder images – they should set a tone and visual guideline which is clear, well-branded, and can be followed and maintained in the future.

Unfortunately many clients don’t budget for the work required to ensure the copy and images placed in a comp, or in a live site, actually have meaning, and connect effectively with their audiences. And many web agencies’ processes don’t even include time to focus on these more “marketing oriented” deliverables, or don’t have the team in place to facilitate these things (like in-house writers and photographers). These positions are typically held at larger traditional marketing and advertising agencies, but many argue these traditional agencys are ineffective on many other fronts, thus rendering them useless when pursuing the new marketing model. And let’s face it, many client’s simply don’t see the importance in their content (be it the words or the pictures), because this stuff is the most critical and difficult stuff to create, maintain and leverage.

This glaring gap between website design and development, marketing research, copy writing and photography / video generation, combined with lack of integration between the digital and print realms (thus creating a lack of consistency in the overall branding) was one of the primary reasons we created Door No. 2, a partnership between Fastspot and the good folks at Neustadt Creative Marketing. We come together to bridge these gaps for a specific niche client, although I believe our process and approach would work quite well for a number of other industries.

Let’s all raise an imaginary glass to a 2011 filled with clients who want a team to come in and figure out not only how the website should be organized, look and work, but to also help that client figure out what they are actually saying to the world – in words, in pictures, in tone and across all media.

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When it comes down to it great storytelling wins. Every time. A great story will trump great effects, great technique, great design, great production, anything else. Really good storytelling gets the viewer or reader emotionally invested, and once you have someone emotionally invested, you have them hooked.

Great storytelling should be the goal with everything we create for our clients, to tell their story in a compelling way that allows room for the audience to get invested. A huge component of storytelling is the content, the language being used, the titles of sections, the way phrases are organized, the pacing of the writing. I think this element is often overlooked in the interactive design industry, as we all focus on code and composition and usability and mobile and the list goes on. When do you ever stop and say, let’s discuss the story?

It’s the story that will leave a lasting impression of the brand or the company or the application, not the pieces and parts that house that story. It’s like we focus on the stage set, the costumes, the music the orchestra is playing, the lighting and the effects, the change from scene to scene and the props the actors are using, but no one ever provides a script. We expect our clients to give us this. The script I refer to is copy (and often photography too). This makes little sense. Every project should have a specific process carved out to address the story, or script, or copy. Maybe if we think of it more like a story and less like pages with words on them for Google to index, we will start creating more compelling experiences.

Here are a few examples of companies who tell a great story – and they tell the same great story across all their storytelling vehicles. If you know of some other examples, please leave them in the comments.

Zappos

MailChimp

Jet Blue

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If you go see a medical specialist, you don’t tell her what to prescribe (ok well some of you might try), or what kind of physical therapy you want. You tell her what is wrong, what feels bad and you answer her questions. You give her the information and let her use her expertise to tell you how she is going to fix you.

Similarly, if you go to a well known restaurant, you don’t tell the chef what to prepare for you. You review the menu, listen to the specials, ask the waiter about some of the house specialties, what’s fresh, etc. Or you might explain the kind of meal you are in the mood for and let your waiter make some suggestions.

You do this because you aren’t the expert. You behave this way because this is how you get the good stuff. If you could remedy your own illness, or cook yourself the most amazing meal ever, you’d stay home. You venture outside your own skill set in order to take advantage of things others do more skillfully, things for which they have garnered a reputation for doing very very well.

So, next time you talk to your designer, your webmaster, your interactive agency, your marketing department, your VP of communications or (insert title of person or company you’ve hired to do something for you because you are not the expert and can’t do it yourself) do me a favor. Make their day and don’t tell them how to do what you need, just tell them why you need it. Trust me, you’ll be amazed at how much better it turns out.

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If you watch Derek Siver’s TED talk entitled “How to start a movement”, it becomes clear that the catalyst for a movement is the first fan.

This same theory applies to your clients. Your first clients take a big risk by being your first clients. They are willing to stick their neck out there and trust “x” with you, when nobody else has. I hope you thank them profusely, and celebrate them often. I also hope you do the same for others. When you see a small start up, or a girl or guy with a great idea, or a local movement that someone is trying to get started, be the first fan…or client.

Note: There may come a time when you have to leave your first clients behind, and they may not realize it’s you, not them. You’ve grown too large, changed services or focus, or are simply too busy to help them with their needs. The best way to let a good first client go, is to hand them off to another smaller freelancer or company who you know they can trust to give them the same quality of service that you did.

Remember, pay it forward and do unto others what your first clients did for you.

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Is the abundance of information available to us thanks to the internet a valuable addition to our lives or is it making us lazy? Are we entering an era where laziness and “buzz worthy” data rules the day, versus critical thinking and scholarly debate? For example, I can sit at my desk, and rather than relying on my own creativity or problem solving skills, a quick search will show me thousands of options of how other people dealt with “x”. I need to know some fact, tidbit, or find an image that conveys my thoughts? A quick trip to Google will offer up a limitless bounty of options to sort through. Why stare at a blank canvas when I can sort through all these existing creations? Surely even if I need to come up with my own idea, one of these options will give me some direction, inspiration or launching pad! (Note – even this blog post was inspired by this very insightful post by Owen Shifflett titled “Consumption: How Inspiration Killed, Then Ate, Creativity.”

I no longer remember any phone numbers, they are all stored in my iPhone. In fact, I don’t need to remember any important bits of information because they are all recorded in my password protected iPhone app so I am never without them. Now that my mind is free of worrying about recalling that information, I also don’t need to worry about spelling. My software auto corrects for me as I type. Brilliant – now I can focus on only my ideas! Even with my ideas, I don’t really have to worry about thinking them out, outlining them, organizing them, finding references, rewriting anything – because it’s all going out at 140 characters or less on my Twitter feed, or being jotted down as notes for short blog posts in Evernote. Half the time it’s a Re-Tweet or Copy / Paste of someone else’s idea.

All this free time for my brain has resulted in a somewhat incessant need to feed it small bits of satisfying yet inconsequential data. I check my Facebook app first thing in the morning and last thing before bed. During television shows (which often have feeds of secondary information rolling across the bottom of the screen) I surf on my iPad, checking Twitter, email and occasionally clicking on a Zappos ad custom served up for me based on my searching tendencies. I’ve downloaded about 50 samples of ebooks, but can’t find the time to read them so I can find out if I want to buy the book.

I find an article interesting and as soon as I begin reading it, a link takes me off to another related article, or I think I need to Tweet this or email it to someone, or I decide I need music to really enjoy this article so I launch Pandora and then need to figure out which station to listen to. Then my email alerts me to a new potential client email (something I definitely should give my uninterrupted attention to). This email is for a website redesign so I instantly launch the current site, and do a search in Twitter for the client name to see if there’s any buzz. As I start to read through the email or the RFP, while scanning the website and the Twitter results, I think about another site I saw recently that was similar to the prospective client’s site so I pull that up in another tab. As I do this I get an instant message from a co-worker about lunch. LUNCH! I’m hungry! I pull up the restaurant’s website to pick something out, and figure this is a good time to check up on funny videos on YouTube.

I’ve noticed recently that I will find myself scanning my application icons (on my computer, iPhone or iPad) searching for another app, site, or feed to serve me something new. News? Check. Friends and family? Check. Weather? Check. Horoscope? Nah I’ll save that for later. Blogs? Sure – but which ones? Email? Check – every five minutes. I feel like a junkie for meaningless information. It’s a never ending stream and as I keep dipping into it to satisfy this craving, I feel my brain getting fat and lazy.

Perhaps my thyroid is out of whack? I should Google that. Ooooh – those symptoms do sound like me. Maybe I have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder? Let me read some recent studies. Wow I didn’t know Madonna had it too. And I didn’t know Madonna was doing another tour – maybe I should get tickets, I wonder how much they are? Darn – they aren’t available yet. Back to me. Maybe I had too much sugar for breakfast? Perhaps I need a vacation? A drink? A new car? Some new music? An evening out for a movie? Ooooh – I have the best app to see what’s playing nearby. And there I go again. You get the point. It reminds me of how I felt when I quit smoking. I would have these little “pings” that would go off, when my body wanted its next dose of nicotine. I suspect I have now become addicted to small doses of somewhat inconsequential or trivial information. These bits of data often make me feel good, like seeing pictures of my family and friends, or laughing at a funny blooper, but they really don’t serve much more than a momentary dose of entertainment or amusement.

So how do we correct this cultural transformation that is affecting so many of us, turning us into a society with limited attention spans and a constant craving for high impact, easily digestible, worthless bits of information? Have we become a society of not only fast food consumers but fast information consumers as well? What happens when we need to sit down and focus? Solve problems never dealt with before? Communicate about challenging issues that require more than 140 characters? What if Lindsay Lohan getting out of jail was not breaking news on CNN?

I don’t have the answers, but I do see the problems, and I see and feel them clearly in myself. I will admit I’m trying to force myself to only focus on one thing at a time, for more than just a few minutes, but it is challenging. I even find having long involved conversations with people less likely than they once were. I am more than concerned about what is happening to me, and to others. And what about children growing up surrounded by it? I remember a time when critical thinking, problem solving, writing skills, debate – it was a very important part of my education process. But what about today’s 15 year old? Do they even know what they are missing?

Now don’t get me wrong, I think the Internet has provided a lot of benefits, heck it’s provided me with a job, and I agree with much of what Clay Shirky sets out to prove in his recent book Cognitive Surplus, that all this time on our hands can be collected and used for good, a worthy example being wikipedia.
But honestly, how long will the integrity of things like wikipedia hold up if we continue to degrade the academic basis and focus of our society with this constant bombardment of distraction and junk?

I fear we will all end up like the fat human blobs portrayed in Wall-E or the people depicted in Idiocracy. How quickly do we forget about disasters like Katrina or corporate crimes like the recent BP spill? Why do we get so bored listening to educated people discuss relevant topics and switch instead to biased one-sided newscasters intent on doing nothing but creating animosity? How easily we have rolled over and accepted a war in Iraq completely based on WMDs and yet, no WMD existed? Were those things so easily to forget about or overlook because it felt so much better and easier to look at this lady falling out of a grape crushing barrel or these people talking about leprechauns? I suppose it’s more fun to laugh than to debate, research or worry.

However, with all these streams turned on full blast with all these opinions, shows, videos, blogs, reports, footage, tweets, commentaries, etc. where does it stop and where does valuable discourse occur? It’s up to us to fight against this barrage of junkformation and keep our minds fit, healthy and happy. I’m starting by trying to read more books vs. blog posts, read scholars vs. pop-academics, have healthy debate with my friends and family and make a concerted effort to “tune out” and “turn off” the junk streams that feed my habit. I am hoping in their absence some original and interesting thoughts, ideas or creations of my own just might emerge – we will see.

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