The Digital Marketing Tube Map

A interesting breakdown of the digital marketing space in the form of a tube map has been put out by the folks at Hallam Internet.  Tube maps are likely the first successful infographics and to many folks in the UX space they represent an important user experience that effectively abstracts a complex reality.

Digital marketing is indeed a complex reality in need of better user experiences.  Take one please.

Read more in the original post at Hallam Internet.

Constant Social Disruption

I was interviewed by Ryan Joe from Direct Marketing News for a 2013 social marketing tech trends post that was posted originally on January 17, 2013.

In the post I talk about three areas of particular interest to marketers that will influence the way in which brands invest in and use social media tools: using analytics to better understand social consumers and ROI, geo-location, and greater use of paid social media like Twitter's Promoted Tweets or Facebook's Sponsored Stories.

Excerpts:

On ROI: “Marketers are still looking at likes and followers as those are the foundations of the social environments,” Watson says. These metrics are an easy way to measure how many people are using social to communicate with a brand. “But now we've expanded it to look at traffic sources and actual interactions we're having with customers across platforms.” 

This speaks to a maturity in the analytics that enable this sort of insight, as well as marketing departments hiring more tech- and socially-savvy marketers familiar with tools that allow brands to see customer journeys more holistically—many of which begin and end on a social platform. Consider a public complaint about a lobster roll tweeted to @AuBonPain, an emailed apology and voucher, and the customer's thankful comment on the Au Bon Pain Facebook page. 

For brands, the ultimate benefit to having this 360-degree customer view is that they'll be able to understand customer lifetime value. “Being able to look at the difference of revenue per user from a social customer versus customers on more traditional channels,” Watson explains. “And what impact do clicks really have on the bottom line.”

On geo-targeting: Geo-targeting is becoming so common in social media, it's practically table stakes at this point. Global brands have local presence and can optimize campaigns for specific geographies. “I don't think [this capability] is just coming from Foursquare,” Watson says, “but from mobile ad providers, LinkedIn, Twitter, and it's an expectation at the ad-network level and publishing-provider level.”  

It's this latter area where geo-targeting has yet to catch on, Watson explains. The way ad networks geo-locate—by a device's IP address—makes it difficult to implement the capability, especially because there aren't any industry-wide standards. By contrast, social networks typically geo-locate based on where a user says he or she is, and publishers do the same based on an in-house database that describes where their users are. Both, of course, might have accuracy issues—but at least it avoids the complication of a single user owning three different connected devices and thus, three different IP addresses. 

“Geo-targeting should be table stakes,” Watson says. “But until it's fully integrated into the ad networks, and multiple ad purchases [under] one set of geo-targeting rules can be deployed across multiple publishers, it's still a work in progress.”

We also had a good chat about paid social augmenting content marketing and more traditional demand gen efforts.  Read the full article here: http://www.dmnews.com/the-constant-social-disruption/article/276559/

9 social stats for marketers

HubSpot has been banging the pots loudly at Inbound (where a lot of my marketing team from HootSuite is there as the Presenting Sponsor, speakers, dressed in a giant owl costume, etc)

The HubSpot team have been peppering the awesome content on the interwebz at the same time and I loved their collection of great stats that point to the state of the nation for marketers across all the areas of tech that they provide.  The following nine social marketing stats really do paint a great story of where we are today and what the current opportunity is for us all to move the needle.

1) Failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% increase in churn rate for existing customers. (Source: Gartner) 

2) 37% of brands would like to use social media engagement to create customer-tailored marketing campaigns. (Source: Forrester) 

3) 75% of B2B companies do not measure or quantify social media engagement. (Source: Satmetrix)

4) 51% of the top 20% of B2B marketers generating leads through social media use social sharing tools, compared to the industry average of 39%. (Source: Aberdeen) 

5) 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form. (Source: Aberdeen) 

6) Marketers spend an average of 4-6 hours a week on social media. (Source: Social Media Examiner) 

7) Currently, marketers allocate 7.6% of their budgets to social media. CMOs expect that number to reach 18.8% in the next five years. (Source: CMO Survey) 

8) 60.2% of marketers are looking for analysis options, as well as other analytics options, in their social media management tools. (Source: SEOmoz) 

9) Regardless, marketers still continue to struggle with integrating social media into the company’s overall strategy. On a scale of 1-7, only 6.8% of respondents believe that social media is “very integrated” into their strategy (the highest rank for the question), while 16.7% believe that it's not integrated at all (the lowest rank for the question). (Source: CMO Survey) 

Check out the full article and stats here: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33529/33-Stats-That-Paint-a-Picture-of-the-Future-of-Marketing.aspx#ixzz24xqDSF7o

Exploring Social Business Patterns

Over the past several years I have been part of a shift in marketing, design, development and enterprise software that has undergone fundamental shifts due to changes in the patterns of management and the patterns of product development and marketing.  This shift, in its current iteration at the edges of my bubble, is the emergence of the social business or social enterprise as it is sometimes referred to.  For now, I will use these interchangeably.

In the early days at Microsoft, community and social ecosystems and the evangelist role itself emerged as answers to the need for broad, engaged conversations around complex shifts in application architecture, development and design.  We leveraged forums, community advocates, content rankings and feedback and constant customer input as both an innovation and a market driver.  At Adobe I was one of the first bloggers (IMHO was my first Adobe blog), built the first evangelism team and worked with developer relations and marketing to leverage social ecosystem development across enterprise, agency and academia as a core GTM approach.

Now at HootSuite, as my focus shifts to expanding market readiness, and hopefully market share, for our enterprise, agency and professional offerings, I have the unique perspective of flipping the mirror around and determining which of the social business patterns are going to emerge as core market drivers and to help our customers and partners understand how this has a specific and positive impact on their bottom line, market share, HR, customer satisfaction and cost of doing business.

We now stand at the brink of another fundamental shift in the way we work - shifting more and more of our activity (not enough yet IMHO) to social platforms, better exploiting our need to communicate effectively and ultimately changing the way in which we model, design, strategize, plan, implement, deliver and measure business activity.

And, while many companies claim turf in this space and large and small agencies and consultancies alike move towards the space I feel like we are lacking some of the fundamentals for comprehension of a common shift in thinking and executing. I fall back on to my days in developer tools and developer relations, our work on architectural standards at both Adobe and Microsoft, and am turning up my quest for patterns.

Following are a potential grouping of how we might categorize some of the social business patterns (based on several examples already available):

• - Business patterns of repeatable behaviour and consistent use of methodology or tools
• - Technical patterns of business enablement through provision of platforms
• - Integration patterns that exploit rampant connectivity, API and SDK model
• - Agile patterns that embrace iteration and enable constant innovation
• - Customer experience and UX patterns that redefine business models purely from the perspective of the customer/user
• - Ecosystem patterns that both map and enable the complex systems of business without borders
• 
  

This will be an exercise of research, accumulation, assimilation, creation and curation.

Well understood micro patterns such as update status, share ‘object’ with connections, notifications, and direct response, in turn see increasing value through understanding and documenting the macro-patterns that form when used in conjunction with each other and specifically change an aspect of how we do business, such as how we develop, market, sell, measure or report.

Seeking patterns of a revolution in communication that signal the growth of the social business.

bitpakkit top tracks on ReverbNation for 2011

Throughout most of the year I have been in the top forty, often in the top ten, on ReverbNation for electronica in my region. If you are on an iDevice you can get the same versions of these tracks at soundcloud.com/bitpakkit or in the Soundcloud app.

Posted via email from bitpakkit

The Social Consumer (Infographic)

The social consumer, all data'd up in the infographic below from M Booth and Beyond, lays out the differences between different types of sharers and purchasers. This unintentional category is getting a lot of focus lately. By unintentional, I postulate that consumers who also participate in social networks would likely never self identify as such.

The Social Consumer (Infographic)

The social consumer, all data'd up in the infographic below from M Booth and Beyond, lays out the differences between different types of sharers and purchasers. This unintentional category is getting a lot of focus lately. By unintentional, I mean that consumers who participate in social networks would likely never self identify as such.

The World of Social Media in 2011

VideoInfographs shares The World of Social Media in a video infographic that snapshots much of the critical topline data we amassed in 2011.

The smartphone goes to college, every day, every class...always on.

I bite my tongue and press Publish Post.


Created by: HackCollege

Modeling the Mobile User Experience

Working on a story around mobile UX and I was reminded of this brilliant and thoughtful presentation from fellow Canadian, Bryan Rieger.

Modeling the Mobile User Experience

View more presentations from Bryan Rieger

The way he breaks down the challenge of the definition of design in mobile, and reconstructs a more appropriate lexicon for us is unmatched. Worth a breeze through for the lawn chair example alone...are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?

I also like to write music...

I am fortunate to have had some extra time lately between road trips and press interviews while we do some calibration and I have been using that to work on my music. I thought I would share that with you, since most folks don't know I also do this.

I would really appreciate any and all feedback and you taking any time at all to listen!




You can find even more of my music at:
http://soundcloud.com/bitpakkit
http://reverbnation.com/bitpakkit

Anna Karenina and the Consumerization Challenge

A lot of micro trends driving the move to more focus on customer experience have evolved around the theme of the consumerization of IT.  According to Wikipedia, "Consumerization is a stable neologism that describes the trend for new information technology to emerge first in the consumer market and then spread into business organizations, resulting in the convergence of the IT and consumer electronics industries, and a shift in IT innovation from large businesses to the home. For example, many people now find that their home based IT equipment and services are both more capable and less expensive than what is provided in their workplace. The term, consumerization, was first popularized by Douglas Neal and John Taylor of CSC's Leading Edge Forum in 2001 and is one of the key drivers of the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 movements."


This classic view of Commercialization likely needs an update. (Source: Wikipedia)
This definition definitely leans on and drives towards the consumer electronics industry and is often reflective of the advanced capabilities and better user experience that we get on home devices. In part this trend is responsible for the rebound of Apple, as business users, developers and others started to choose Apple hardware based on the idea that it was easier to use.
But there is a trend hidden within this phenomenon that makes consumerization too simplistic by definition. Do you remember the Anna Karenina principle, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way"?  Tolstoy meant that in order for a marriage to succeed many factors had to be in place, but failure in a single aspect could spell doom even when many of the ingredients were there. In his book Guns, Germs and Steel - The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond uses this to to make the point that we tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, success actually requires avoiding many separate causes of failure.
Ultimately the business models of consumer electronics and services do not lend themselves directly to supporting enterprise business models. In a recent discussion with an (unnamed) enterprise security firm from Canada we were talking about the issues with securing iPad devices in a way that enterprise find suitable for storing data. What I found most interesting was that this same consumerization trend was driving adoption for cloud-based applications that would absolutely remain secure even if a device was stolen, as long as the device could merely be wiped and not accessed. Because business buyers are essentially a niche market for many consumer manufacturers there is often only a minimal bar set with essential services and often these simply extend capabilities that are already needed for consumers.  Yes, others will move in the market to make things more enterprise-ready but this is a bolt-on strategy that mystifies accountability and often introduces additional points of failure.
In parallel to this increased awareness and concern around consumer electronics in the enterprise there are a plethora of service types that are essentially enterprise versions of broadly adopted consumer applications. Micro-blogging platforms in the enterprise provide all the familiarity and connection benefits that their consumer counterparts offer but prevent access to the purely consumer aspects such as social games or 'interacting' with celebrities.
Consumerization is by definition a process. Private infrastructure is built out to first support early adopters inclusive of distribution, support, related services and accessories. In much the same way, businesses also build out private infrastructure that is to be owned and used by the business, not individuals. When the service types overlap or collide we have no choice but to compare and contrast from both a business and personal perspective and this ultimately fosters a unique form of competitive tension. What is unique is that as end users we compare and ultimately voice frustration when things are perceived to be more cumbersome or difficult to use more than ever. The shortest route to a solution for IT is then to either define a happy medium or simply embrace the consumerized approach and work to make it enterprise-ready. Various people have observed already that users don't really make mistakes any more - instead systems and applications were not built to support their needs and that's why they fail.
There are countless examples of where this has succeeded and been adopted at mass scale and now we even have examples of those wins fading in favour of new consumer-driven approaches. For example, instant messaging as a platform faces competitive pressure as people switch to more social applications that combine personal and shared messaging services. Many of the applications we use to collaborate or work together support instant messaging as well so more more frequently we see the patterns move into context of other tasks.
Photo: Adobe's new Vibe micro-blogging platform, for internal use only from the Adobe@Adobe team.
Everything About Everyone Everywhere
Right now many high-tech marketers and avid social media users both inside and outside the firewall are faced with a net new challenge. For example, we have invested heavily in Twitter and in some cases had some wins on Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, a corporate blog and other platforms to help us work better and smarter across these arenas. In the last few short weeks I have already 'circled' more than 100 Adobe employees making their move to Google+. Similar to many other organizations we immediately begin to think how we could use this platform for our brand, events and products - with the obvious choice being to do something similar to what we have done on Facebook with perhaps a little more 'blog' thrown in.
It was a welcome relief to get the invite to sign up for the Google+ for Business alpha, which will launch later this year for a couple reasons. First, simply repeating what we already do somewhere else did not seem too exciting but more importantly, knowing that Google was going to focus on building a set of services that were unique and meant for businesses means that we can take advantage of that effort and thinking and not try to fit a square peg in a circle. One could argue that the consumerization essentially needs to be more complete in order for businesses to succeed on the platform anyway. And Google+ really is for people, not avatars or brands or businesses or products, but for people to share, converse and communicate in new ways. You can do this on behalf of your business obviously and many are already, but we are doing this as ourselves, as individuals.  Will we always be working to consumerize IT?
It was this overall line of thinking that got me on to the last question there. We had effectively consumerized IT, but were we essentially bound to have to do this over and over again? To take products and services that were meant for consumers and adapt our infrastructures, policies, habits and goals such that we could tolerate its idiosyncrasies and still be effective as employees and teams and grow our businesses accordingly. Or...
Are we moving into an era where we can expect others to do the work needed to commercialize and industrialize consumer patterns and practices? Are we better to take the best practices, methodologies, technologies and platforms and make them enterprise-ready such that we don't face the compromises and downsides that come with all that awesome-ness, ease-of-use and ready to adopt paradigms? Clearly the platform-as-a-service ideology has major differences when it comes to consumer and business best practices. For example:

• The notion of my personal groups of friends and family does not really translate to teams and organizations. The latter are much more implicit and ultimately need be automated. I wouldn't expect Facebook to know when my cousin has a baby, but I would expect an enterprise platform to know when a customer subscription expires or a team member changes roles.
• My personal data is mine and while I seek to protect it in one way when I am sharing things in a personal network I have a whole different level of expectations about how my employer will ultimately protect and keep my data safe.

We essentially need to have two identities but we are learning to blend them through brute force. PHOTO - Peretz Partensky
I don't know anyone who thinks that the blending of work and family or personal life is perfect on social networks and this creates this sort of safe version of ourselves. We can't ultimately share everything about our personal lives with our co-workers nor can we share things with family and friends that needs to be kept internal to a company. So what we do is tame both ends of that spectrum and ultimately, from what I see, this creates an incomplete identity. But, currently its the best we have so we go with it and we select those co-workers who we feel more comfortable around to share some of the more personal things we are doing. But we rarely do this with our customers or partners for obvious reasons and here is where it breaks down. The fundamental need to engage with our customers and partners in order to realize the full value of social is handicapped before we even get out the door by a necessary and logical gate we put in place.
Social as an ingredient technology has already made considerable inroads in the enterprise and is often the key to success for steering relevant conversations back into our domain. Here at Adobe we have supported this movement with technologies such as Adobe Connect and Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Service, but we see the need to go way beyond this in terms of providing a whole solution (and we are).
To me, the point of these intersections and challenges seems to be that we have arrived at a tipping point, a sort of crossroads in what is appropriate and safe and doable and we are now faced with a new challenge. We have consumerized IT but we have not (often enough) commercialized or industrialized the patterns that support this to the extent that they need to be in order to realized their full potential. Imagine that you had invested millions of dollars in a physical mail and logistics system to support shipments and communications and a new platform came along to support electronic mail and simply based on user preference you suddenly had to invest in dual infrastructure and support new security topology in order to…um, never mind.
The platforms we have are already widely adopted for social brand engagement and corporate communications and even employee communications and the conversation has started. I think we have yet to see the full commercialization of consumer platforms and I think there is a lot of untapped opportunity still locked up in our inability to effectively connect these two worlds. I expect that the platforms will continue to evolve to meet this and that the focus on great user experiences based on existing patterns, cloud-ready services, easy integration points and passion for collaboration will combine with the need for security, privacy, versioning, multi-channel delivery and more to build a path for consumer technologies and services to ultimately plateau in the enterprise.
More than ever with the multiple points of connection between all of us at work, at conferences, on social media and through shared information consumption, we have learned to do this collaboratively as an ecosystem.  We need to continue sharing ideas, developing standards and hardening the patterns that are going to succeed and not be subject so easily to the next whim of user preference being a force for wholesale change.  Adapt to adopt - or learn from the patterns we see people migrating towards and build them into our lives and work in a way that ultimately suits all aspects of our proposed lifelong marriage to technology.

Contextography

Reposted from IMHO.

In today's brief customer journeys, customer experience professionals are both artists and scientists collaborating on behalf of our most important benefactor.   As artists we want to visualize and experiment with these benefactor touch points but there is this wall of complexity around how we intelligently scribe and simulate a million points of light from a hundred thousand journeys.  As scientists we seek to simulate and experiment with our learnings and shape them into thesis or ultimately repeatable models.

If you follow Gartner's thinking around context-aware technologies, it is clear that C- level executives need to seriously consider the disruption that context-aware technologies will have on purchasing and loyalty behavior.  Gartner identifies context-aware technologies as the ones that influence consumer purchase decisions by using information about the consumer's context (e.g., location and interests) to offer more-relevant promotions, content and recommendations.  Smartphones and tablets armed with context-aware apps will influence consumer spending as much in nonelectronic channels (e.g., physical stores) as in e-commerce and the technology will primarily be used to shift consumer spending from one competitor to another. It does point out that is less likely that it will increase consumer spending overall.  The customer journey, when taken into consideration at a touch point, must be considered in context.

What is the taxonomy of this union of art and science, this cartography of a journey and ethnography of a participant, perhaps individual or en masse as an audience?  What are the unifying factors and measurable, logical groups of data that we can ultimately action?  We have more than enough market data to understand that context in its totality has all the facets of data needed to optimize a behavior.  But context is the thing itself, what then would we call the process of understanding and leveraging the learning of context?  I propose:

Contextography - n. - the collection, study, analysis, measurement and resulting use of context. e.g.  For the purpose of this article, the user speaks in italics to help you empathize with data gained through contextography.**

I'm on a horse. You knew that. right?

First let's meet a user and their context.  In the same way that Old Spice imagined how women might like to see the men in their lives in order to have men in turn see themselves through that lens, we are constantly anticipating an audience and their needs, desires and motivations. I am hoping that I have anticipated your need to better understand how context is made actionable even if I am really only able start another conversation at this inflection.

While we have gotten better at allowing users to manage their account, their profile, and even how they share their activity with other customers or users of a product or service, we also have had to learn over time to consume that data intelligently and understand patterns that emerge and perhaps express these as context.  The parameters that are relevant for the context can be broken down in different dimensions.  For the purpose of this short journey we will give our user, which could be me, some context.

Me, the user, of course: Sometimes you and sometimes me, but always everything that characterizes the customer, perhaps demo-, psycho- and ethno- graphic.

My situation: That which describes the circumstances in which the user interaction takes place and the process and result of interaction. Relevant parameters for this include the channel of the interaction, the device made use of, the location, and the network that is used to connect and the facilities that enable this.

My history of interactions: That which we know and are able to share about the relationship between the user and your enterprise. Relevant information include buying history, contracts, support cases, and any other information that characterizes the business relationship.

I'm at a touchpoint. It's pretty. It doesn't work the way I expected.

A user’s experience is always dependent on a defined relationship between a business activity and that user’s goals. While the experience may take many forms, there are commonalities in the approach to arrive at a final experience, and this process is the practice of user experience (UX). The disciplines essentially map to the outputs of this process and typically include:

• Interface design - the graphics and branding.
• Interaction design - the method by which users interact, e.g. touch and voice.
• Information architecture - the visible organizing principle for content and applications.
• Graphic design - the brand treatment, color palette and treatment of text and media

Technologists, behaving like scientists, strive to have applications widely adopted are essentially questing for patterns; patterns to users means that there are functions in those applications that are repeatably useful, usable, easy to find, credible, and ultimately successful at solving an identified problem or achieving a known goal. As the increase in focus on great customer experience matures, so in turn does the practice and rigor associated with defining the patterns of engagement. It's fair to think of increased investments in great user experience as a discovery of true patterns - the right investments presented in the context required for the right happy customers and happy employees to use your apps.

I know what awesome is.  You and I are on the same page.

Essentially, most investments in user experience within the enterprise today amount to superficial and cosmetic changes applied as afterthoughts in an attempt to solve apparent and predictable problems with the surface of the application. Often, people focus on type size, color, and other basic design, and believe that they have created a great customer experience. The reality is that this approach only goes so far in addressing problems and is ultimately going to fail since the user-focused work was started much too late in the process.  Business users often make the mistake of masking the lack of user input with cool technology, and while this world of wonder can fascinate to the point of going viral, it often lacks the deep engagement intended.

I don't make mistakes, you do. I recently redefined the customer is always right.  I did this for you.

The later in a project you invest in change, the more it costs.  There are a number of methodologies in use today across the industry that are purported to facilitate user input into the design and development process - beware the linear, embrace the cyclical, and mandate the agile.   In this way we appropriately recognize that users don't really blame themselves for things going wrong the way that they used to.  That was convenient because it presented an opportunity to teach someone how to use a system in the way it was intended.  Now the table is turned and the system must work in the way that is expected.

I'm on a journey.  I have a map.  Embrace my journey.

Many of the guidelines from analysts and industry experts have identified a key tool in this process to be a map of all the customer touchpoints across an enterprise. This map can be used in several strategic ways:

• Identify and plot persona against specific actions or opportunities.
• Understand and modify business processes in order to overcome obstacles or bottlenecks.
• Inform design and technology choices and prioritize resources against those choices
• Measure success by defining Key Performance Indicators (KPI) based on customer activities.
• Refine opportunities for increased productivity by aggregating logical groups of actions.

I'm in your systems.  I'm doing this fast.

Finally, we need to reflect the outcomes of design in our application architecture. In a functional architecture we can surface this experience layer to bridge the “last mile” gap between user and business application. This layer essentially represents the presentation layer of applications (e.g., interaction models such as touch) with knowledge of domain, integration, and the associated infrastructure. True multichannel delivery is thus enabled through an abstraction of presentation that intentionally separates the channel, controls, and interaction from the fundamental underlay of business logic and application code.

This abstraction serves a unique purpose in planning and development. By creating handshakes between the UX professionals who own the experience and developers who own the implementation of the application, we in turn empower handshakes between customers and the business.

For example, wireframes that represent the experience layer and interaction model can be made interactive in such a way as to represent the potential interaction, and elsewhere in the team those interactions can be wired to the application and business logic. These can be tested with actual customers or users in order to further refine logic, interaction models, and general usability themes such as accessibility, both prior to implementation and over time.

Suck less.  Be awesome more.  Please.

A user’s experience is impacted by many things beyond our control as designers, such as network issues, device or operating system issues, IT policies, or even physical distractions. What is within our control is exhibiting a shared understanding of goals and interaction capabilities and providing this in a consistent way to support the brands we represent.

One could choose platforms and tools that effectively reduce the time it takes for you to develop the final experience with a component model based on UX best practices. For example, here at Adobe, we are working hard to maintain a domain model that is essentially pre-integrated with relevant technology services and infrastructure, and abstract this from the presentation layer such that you can reuse or strip away and replace at whim.  Not your whim, but that of your customer's oft-fickle hearts and minds.  In this way you can adapt to changes in contextual trends at the edges of your business, and put your new passion for contextography to work helping to sustain and grow your business.

I'm done. Listen for my feedback.

** Re: Contextography.  I honestly had no idea that someone else had made the word up before I did but Google was helpful in setting me straight on that.  Recognizing the definition potentially already in place actually helps me build on that to an expanded definition that is first of all both representative and inclusive of the user POV, and more importantly one that embraces all aspects of a digital environment, not only images of a fictitious one.  I should point out that more recently I have been made aware of a definition of this term that is similar to a bibliography for a paper or thesis - essentially tracking the context of sources.  I love that definition and my only regret was that I was not personally encouraged to add contextographies to my papers when I was a student many (many, many) years ago.

I have registered the domain Contextography.com to build a body of research and work in the areas of definition, research and analysis of both the art and science of context.  In parallel to that we will also be tracking the context conversation here - @contextography (sorry to any fans of @uxpectations, that chapter is now complete for me) and I will bring the first few months of this together for a talk on this subject at the upcoming Adobe Digital Enterprise Summit in October.  Register for VIP invite here.

Special thanks to Hank Barnes, Craig Randall and Jamie Anderson for additional insights and thoughts, and to the extended community for the inspiration and motivation to get this idea off the napkin.

Posted via email from bitpakkit

Data is the interface

Increasing user and experience designer focus on data visualization as a means to explore and represent large amounts of data has given us increasingly sophisticated understanding of this emerging interface.



Both compelling and beautiful, awkward and interesting, the consumption of large tomes of data is increasingly made both accessible and actionable - and artists and scientists come together to continually evolve how we might increase the use and value of this medium.

Amplify’d from konigi.com

"Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data -- and at times vast numbers of people -- and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-sourced drawings to the "Wilderness Downtown" video that customizes for the user, his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human."

Beautiful, incredibly creative use of user contributed hands for data-driven art. Read more at konigi.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a13yt9

The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century

The headline says it all...can't wait for my copy to arrive.

Amplify’d from adage.com

At first, one wonders how Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz ever managed to write "The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century," when the man himself was a cipher during his own lifetime and is largely unknown today.

But then you wonder how to write a review of this admirable and well-written biography without discussing the man himself?

So let's start by recapping the highlights: He discovered two of the most important creatives of all time (John E. Kennedy and Claude C. Hopkins), and revolutionized the advertising industry by the time he was 30. He was deeply involved in the Leo Frank case, was majority owner of the Chicago Cubs, helped reorganize baseball after the Black Sox scandal, helped get a president elected, ran the United States Shipping Board, and was a key player in the invention of the soap opera, in the launch of Kotex and Kleenex and Sunkist, and in the transformation of political campaigns. And, when he dissolved his agency, Lord & Thomas, in 1946, he created the iconic Foote Cone & Belding (the "FCB" of "DraftFCB") and then spent the last decade of his life donating the substantial sums of money (and marketing expertise) he'd accrued to galvanize such causes as birth control (inventing the name "Planned Parenthood") and cancer (renaming "The American Society for the Control of Cancer" the "American Cancer Society"), finally establishing the Lasker Award -- often called the "American Nobel prize."

And what have you done lately? Read more at adage.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a138ev

Top 10 Things That Are Not Killing Us

With recent news around all of the unavoidable and avoidable activities that are killing us, I thought it prudent to ponder a list of the Top 10 Things that are not killing us. Here they go, in no particular order, with absolutely no scientific backup (also a trend on a lot of health-related posts).


1) Being happy.
Several prominent authors who seem quite happy share their beliefs that being happy is actually very good for us. Choose the physiological or spiritual POV on this activity. Just smiling may be good enough.

2) Meditation or prayer. Being in touch with your spiritual self is critical to basic skills like self-awareness, confidence, empowerment and a healthy attitude (especially this last part). As long as you are not dropping on your knees in a war zone or meditating when you should be medicating this should be a sustainable priority.

3) Helping others. 
It's the little things that count. Do something for someone today, no matter how small.

4) Contributing to charity.
 No studies whatsoever indicate any harmful side effects of sponsoring charities or charitable events.

5) Eating healthy. 
Choose green, choose local, choose balanced.

6) Standing up. 
I would have said sitting up straight but apparently that still kills you.  It follows that if sitting is shortening our lives, then standing up within tolerable levels should not be any risk.

7) Great sex. 
Actually, any sex perhaps. Assuming you are of an appropriate age, have no pre-conditions that will harm you from exertion, and like this kind of thing you should proceed at will, as available and where consent allows (of course).

8) Updating your status. 
As long as you are not provoking war, political dissent or exposing your infidelity, social media has actually been proven by someone, somewhere, to be good for you.

9) Paying your taxes. 
I know from experience that not paying them on time can cause stress. Since death and taxes are both absolutes, you should choose this one annually in favor of the other.  If you need the money to cure a life-threatening disease, leverage your own ability to prioritize.

10) Celebrating success. 
While certain forms of celebration, or activities undertaken during celebration, may have adverse health risks, the simple act of acknowledging exceptional behavior or important milestones is an important part of creating positive memories about your life. You can only partake in this activity directly while you are living, so you should think up a reason now.

Unofficial #11 - Creating a top ten list that fits somewhere in the stack of useless internet journalism that is amusing for short periods of time.

Disclaimer: I have no definitive proof of anything nor do I actually believe anything I have ever read in a Top 10 list.

The hidden empire.

72 slides on how Amazon controls e-commerce. From faberNovel.

Amazon.com: the Hidden Empire

View more presentations from faberNovel

View more presentations from faberNovel 

ROX

Amplify’d from www.adobe.com

ROX: Return on Experience Thursday, May 5 at 11am Pacific

User experience (UX) plays a significant role in why IT projects fail. UX has a direct impact on the ROI of new IT projects and often unlocks value hidden in existing IT investments. This webinar will help you:

Understand how successful CIOs build a case for UX and its role/investment in your project

Evaluate the skillsets and knowledge required to leverage UX successfully

Prepare to optimize projects over time based on understanding and acting on UX issues

Deliver great experiences that map to both business needs and consumer demands

Support your internal customers with better tools and platforms for consistent multi-channel delivery

Speakers: Patricia Seybold, CEO of Patricia Seybold Group Ronni Marshak, EVP of Patricia Seybold Group Ben Watson, Principal, Customer Experience at Adobe

Register for this webinar and you’ll receive The Seybold Group whitepaper: “Developing Apps for Improved Customer Experience”. Read more at www.adobe.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/b10pll

Adobe helps found new Customer Experience Professionals Association

Responding to a greatly increased need for a centralized and interactive community that brings together the growing field of all those who develop, manage, optimize and envision how organizations interact with their customers, the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) launched today with a number of leading companies signed as Founding Corporate Members and Gold, Silver and Bronze Sponsors.

The mission of this new organization is essentially directly in line with where Adobe is going as a company, both in terms of their own customer experience and more importantly, in our enterprise platform mission to deliver outstanding customer experiences for the customers and employees of our customers. Here is the mission of the CXPA:

The Customer Experience Professionals Association is a global, non-profit organization that supports the professional development of its members by enhancing networking, providing research and education, establishing standards, promoting the industry, and creating a better understanding of the discipline of customer experience.

Original post at Adobe helps found new Customer Experience Professionals Association

Disclosure: I was part of putting this in place for Adobe where I work.

Web video powers global innovation

From Chris Anderson's talk at TEDGlobal 2010.

Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation on Prezi