Mad Dog UX

Here’s a recap of a recent conversation with a store associate during checkout:

Store Associate: Would you like us to email you the receipt?

Perceived benefits in my head: I’ll save paper. I won’t throw the receipt away only to need it later. Less potential clutter.

Me: Sure. Sounds great.

I then provided my email address using the little key pad thingy.

What I found out later is the conversation should have gone like this:

Store Associate: Would you like to give us your email address thinking you’ll receive a single email containing your receipt from today’s transaction while also unknowingly subscribing to our email list to receive at least one email per day for the rest of your life from our brand and probably any affiliated brands about promotions that most likely aren’t relevant to you?

Perceived benefits in my head: [crickets]

Me: Uhhhh, no thanks.

When I accepted the offer to have my receipt emailed to me, the perceived benefits were actualized. So that’s great, right? I saved some paper – probably 2” x 27” based on typical receipt length these days. I avoided the clutter of having a paper receipt partly crumbled on my laundry room counter. And I ended up with an easy-to-find digital record of my transaction in case I needed it later. Not a bad customer experience – a pretty good one actually. I had a positive emotional experience with the brand.

Then, a week later, the onslaught started. The clutter I avoided on my laundry room counter started showing up in my email inbox. One, two, sometimes three emails per day started flooding in from this retailer and its affiliated brands. Of the dozen emails that first week, maybe two of them were relevant to me, and I still deleted them because I had no immediate need for those products.

The brief, warm and fuzzy feeling I had when I left the store two weeks earlier was replaced by a prolonged feeling of annoyance associated with the brand. They were forcing me to burn the extra 0.03 calories required to click or swipe the email into oblivion at least once per day. Finally, at wits’ end,  I decided to burn the extra 0.75 calories required to unsubscribe from their email list.

So why am I sharing this? Consider it a friendly reminder.

Transparency in communication to your customers is the best long-term strategy for building trust and establishing loyalty. So everyone who participates in creating a piece of the customer experience pie for a company, no matter how small the piece, has a responsibility to stand up for the customer by being as transparent as possible. Bottom line: if you do what’s best for your customer, it’s inevitably what’s best for your company. 

In the scenario outlined above, the company put themselves before the customer. They decided that building the size of their email subscriber list trumped the customer experience. They have reports with line graphs illustrating the fact that the more email subscribers they have, the more revenue they generate. So they sat in a room and came up with what they determined was the easiest way to acquire more subscriptions.

If any of us were in that room when the team came up with the idea, it’d be our duty to raise the concern and suggest an alternative approach. Such as the following script:

Store associate: Thanks for your purchase today. If you’d like to subscribe to our email list, I can email you today’s receipt, and you’ll get future receipts by email. You’ll also receive exclusive email offers, coupons and advanced notice of in-store events. Would you like to subscribe today?

Not quite as short and sweet as the real life scenario I recounted above, but transparent and enticing for the customer. And if I were to decide to subscribe under those circumstances, I’d be much more likely to remain subscribed, even if all the emails weren’t directly relevant or timely. And then in a few months, I’d likely be pleasantly surprised by a relevant and timely email that I would then open, click on, and end up making a purchase.

That’s a win for me who has a good experience that I knowingly signed up for. And a win for the company who has built a lasting relationship with me and can throw my money onto their growing pile. Oh yeah, and bacon is delicious!

Yet another way to establish trust and respect between you and your team is by mastering the art of creative feedback. If you can learn to deliver creative feedback effectively, you build stronger relationships with the members of your team by allowing them to maintain ownership of their work. You’ll also keep them focused on meeting objective, customer-centered goals rather than trying to satisfy someone’s subjective needs. Effective delivery of creative feedback also helps keep your team more engaged and motivated in their jobs, whereas poor delivery can be extremely frustrating and demotivating for creatives.

Two keys to delivering creative feedback effectively are knowing how to deliver it and when to deliver it.

HOW

Have the team present the work. Before delivering feedback, it’s important to set the proper stage for delivery. Whenever possible, I recommend asking your team to present the work to you rather than emailing you a document to review. Through the presentation process, the person presenting will inevitably share details about why the team made certain decisions during the creative process. Knowing this information will change your perceptions of the work and allow you to give more pointed feedback. For the same reasons, I think it’s important to present the work to the client as well, whether you do it or someone from your team does it. Simply emailing a document to a client for review can set you up for a painful few days.

Be objective. When providing creative direction, one of your primary goals is to eliminate as much subjectivity from the process as possible. If you’re effective there, the payoff is huge. Provide feedback based only on objective criteria. Does the design meet the intent? Is everything consistent with brand standards? Is the text readable? Will the end user be able to accomplish her goals? Does the copy speak from the brand voice? I don’t like it is not valid feedback.

Speak to positives first. It’s easy to go straight to the details that need work when you’re reviewing a project and providing feedback. However, remember that we all put ourselves into our work and are generally very proud of the work we do. Feedback is never personal, but it sure is nice to hear about what we did well. Your team members will generally listen to the constructive feedback more effectively when they just heard a list of everything they did well.

Be constructive. This can be the most challenging aspect of giving feedback. It helps to make it perfectly clear that you’re providing feedback on the work, not the person. It also helps to be positive first as mentioned above. Most importantly, though, give specific reasons for each bit of constructive feedback, and tie each reason back to one of the objective criteria outlined when providing the initial creative direction on the project. This really helps drive home the fact that your feedback is not personal and it’s not based on opinion; it’s just for the benefit of the final product and the end user / customer.

Be sincere and thankful. It’s important to be sincere in your communications with your team. They’re not dummies, and they’ll see through your attempts to just be positive for the sake of being positive. Make sure they know how much you appreciate all their hard work. As often as possible, say thank you. Trust me; they’ll never tire of it.

WHEN

Build project checkpoints into the creative process. This is a time for you as well as the client(s) to let the team know if they’re on track. It’s much easier to make adjustments early in the project than to wait until all the details are ironed out and polished. On the other hand, it’s extremely painful for the creative team and the client when you discover a project didn’t meet expectations or intent at the very end.

Review with your team first. Build in time for you to review and the team to make necessary adjustments before looping in the client. You’ll be able to predict client feedback and either make necessary adjustments or at least prepare the team to answer client questions.

Whether you communicate directly with your clients or an account manager does, I recommend someone share these principles of delivering feedback with the client. If you can train your clients over time to deliver feedback based on objective criteria, you’ll have a much healthier and productive relationship that leads to more efficient and higher quality output.

And speaking of objective criteria, I have some tips on how to establish that criteria when providing creative direction in the earliest stages of a project. Give them a read and share your thoughts.

The themes that are repeated over and over again in my writing about leadership are trust, respect and empowerment. One of the best ways to prove you trust your team is by mastering the art of creative direction. With clear and specific direction, your team members feel empowered to do their jobs by not micromanaging the details. When you trust and empower your team, they’ll become more engaged and motivated in their jobs, and you’ll earn their trust and respect for you in your job.

Everyone on your creative team should know that direction for every project is built on the same foundation. Work should be done according to the brand standards of the client (or your company if you’re an in-house team). Those standards were developed with the customer in mind and should be followed with few exceptions. If the design and copy standards for the brand don’t exist, you’ve got some work to do. Along with brand standards, there are also industry standards and best practices; you should direct your team to use these as a starting point for everything they do.

Beyond the basic standards that will apply to all projects, individual projects are unique and require clear and specific direction. You’ll consistently position your team for success if you follow these rules when providing direction:

Clearly communicate project deadlines for final deliverables. Also set checkpoint deadlines along the way where you and key clients or stakeholders can give input and feedback.

Set clear expectations.

If there are specific details you want to see in the finished project, share those details with the team before they get started. If you want them to use a specific image, tell them. If you want them to use a specific shade of blue as the primary color, tell them. It’s important, though, to also tell them why you’d like them to deliver these specifics. If they know the reason, the creative team will likely come up with a better way to meet the intent. Giving detailed direction like this should be done sparingly. You (or someone else) hired designers and writers to come up with the specifics - let them do their jobs.

Similarly, if there are examples you’d like the team to reference while doing the work, share those examples before they begin. Examples should only be meant to inspire the team. It’s not okay to say, “they do it this way, and it seems to work for them, so we should do it too.” However, it is okay to say, “check out what these guys are doing over here. I thought it was effective for their needs, and I think it can inspire us to do even better.”

Make sure they know what the project is supposed to communicate. What’s the message it needs to deliver to the audience? Don’t give them the words, just the message.

Define the intent. What’s the point? Why are we doing this? When you help your team understand why they’re doing the work before they get started, the likelihood of them meeting the intent increases exponentially. Is the intent of the project to drive sales at point-of-sale? Raise brand awareness in a new market? Differentiate the brand from the competition?

Of course you should always make yourself available to answer questions at any point during the creative process, but make a point after providing all the information above to set aside time to field questions from the team. People often don’t have a lot of questions until they get into the meat of the work, but they’ll usually have some. Your answers will help them move forward more confidently than if they’re expected to begin work with unanswered questions.

Finally, direction should always be documented, usually in the form of a creative brief. Documentation provides something for the team to refer back to for guidance as they work, and it gives you something to refer back to when providing feedback.

The goal of all this? To remove as much of the subjectivity as possible and create an objective baseline by which to deliver feedback. And speaking of delivering feedback, I just so happen to have some tips on delivering feedback to your team. Happy reading!

While in leadership positions at various companies I've worked for, I've made lots of mistakes.

I've made a bad hire.

I've given direction on a high-dollar project for a gazillion-dollar client that later proved to be pretty terrible direction.

I've made a decision based on emotion rather than waiting until I could approach the problem logically to make a more informed and better decision.

I've confidently delivered flat out wrong information to someone on my team that caused them to look bad in a meeting (confidently, not intentionally).

And I'll make more mistakes. I'm sure of it. Hopefully not the same mistakes, but I'll do something wrong again at some point.

Here's the thing, though. It's how I handled the mistakes mentioned above and how I'll handle future mistakes that allow me to gain and maintain the trust and respect of my direct reports and my leaders. I own up to my mistakes. Each and every one of them. I apologize when appropriate, and I proactively suggest remedies for the mistakes I've made. I also learn from them so I can do better next time.

We're all human; we all make mistakes. Right? It's a cliche at this point. But it's true, and everyone understands. For some folks, though, pride gets in the way, or they fear they'll get in trouble for making a mistake. So to avoid facing the music, they'll often exhibit some pretty silly behaviors when they realize they've made a mistake:

Maybe they won't tell anyone and hope no one notices.

They might try to find a way to blame someone else, either before or after someone realizes the mistake was made. 

They'll figure out a way to explain it away as if it wasn't even a mistake.

Maybe if they're at a higher level, they'll just delegate the communication of the mistake but never speak to it themselves.

People who act this way should not be in leadership roles.

When it comes to making mistakes, good leaders hold themselves accountable and by doing so maintain trust and respect in the process. Good leaders also lead by example, and if I expect the members of my team to hold themselves and each other accountable and own up to their mistakes, I need to own up to mine. Then they'll be much more likely to mimic that behavior.

I’m not talking about your hair, your shoes or your clothes, although keeping up with the trends certainly won't hurt your career. I’m talking about changing your communication and leadership styles.

Anytime someone asks me to define my leadership style (this usually happens in job interviews), I answer, “It depends.” It depends because leaders should never apply the same approach to all members of their team in all situations. Instead, an effective leader knows how individual team members act in specific situations and how to adjust communication and leadership styles accordingly.

Put in the time to get to know the members of your team. Through project-related conversations and more casual what-are-you-up-to-this-weekend-type discussions, you'll learn each individual's basic communication style; most importantly, you'll realize they all communicate differently. With a little more time, you'll learn how each person communicates in different situations, meaning that one team member may communicate differently when under stress as opposed to when things are running smoothly for them.

For example, you may get to know one team member and realize that she generally requires little direction. Once she knows what she’s supposed to do, you stay out of her way, because otherwise, you feel like you’re just interrupting her. And she gets her work done well and on time. You learn, however, that when her plate is extremely full or she's asked to put out a fire, she actually needs more attention from you; she needs you to help her prioritize and provide some coaching.

Another team member might prefer to have a lot of contact with you. He likes you to check in daily and likes to ask questions as he works; he likes the reassurance that he’s on the right track. When he’s stressed out, though, he likes to remove himself from outside stimulation, hunker down and focus. In these situations, he gets in the zone and just cranks out his work. If you continue to stop by frequently and check in like you do under normal circumstances, he gets frustrated.

A smile is one of the most powerful methods of communication we have as humans. A subtle smirk, a beaming, ear-to-ear grin, or any smile in between communicates that something is going right in the world. In a workplace that's stressful due to countless challenges and deadlines, smiles can play a tremendous role in easing the tension. As a leader, a smile more initiative is the easiest initiative you can implement to increase your team's morale and productivity. Added bonus -- smiles are contagious. So when you smile more, your team smiles more, and hopefully before too long, the smiles spread to other teams around you. 

There are some simple, specific ways to get your smile more initiative off the ground.

Do frequent drive-bys. If you find yourself with some time on your hands between meetings, rather than dive into checking your email right away, take a leisurely stroll to visit members of your team at their desks. Say hello with a smile on your face and ask them how their day's going. If their day's going well, they'll likely smile back and share a success they've had that day. If they're having a rough day, you can remind them you appreciate the work they're doing and smile again before you walk away. Try to do this at least once a day.

Share funny anecdotes. If something funny happened to you on your way into work or at lunch, tell your team about it. Share the story while doing a drive-by or send them a quick email about it. It helps break up the day for everyone and sparks a smile that makes their day a little bit better.

Lighten up meetings a bit. I like to start and end team meetings on a light note. I always have an agenda, but before diving into the agenda, I try to say something funny or open the door for someone else on the team to make a joke. When everyone starts a meeting with a smile on their face, the team can effectively transition to serious topics and have collaborative discussions that lead to positive outcomes. It's all about setting the right tone. When the meeting is wrapping up, you can smile and thank the team for their time and participation.

After all, I'm one of the guys trying to make our customers happy and loyal by improving their digital experiences with our company. I'm one of the guys who can help you achieve an "exceeds expectations" rating next to your sales goal on your year-end performance evaluation. I'm one of the guys who knows things about what our customers need and expect when they're shopping on our company's website and how to deliver on those needs and expectations. 

Having worked on UX teams for ecommerce websites, I've had the above thoughts on multiple occasions. I've also had discussions with web merchants or people from marketing that left me red with rage. I've been in positions where I felt forced to make changes to work even when those changes went against everything I thought was right in the universe.

Sound familiar? If so, you too have probably begrudgingly made those changes to your previously perfect work while telling yourself how stupid those bastards are. And you've probably told yourself you need to quit your job and go work for someone who respects the fact that you know everything about what's right for their customers.

Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but everyone nodding in agreement who still thinks like this needs to come to a realization. It's time to step back, look in the mirror and realize you have some growing up to do. It's time to reach a new level of professional maturity.

Here's the thing. You work as part of a larger team, and those web merchants, marketing folks and other stakeholders you despise so much actually know some things you don't. And if you make a conscious decision to change, you'll realize you can learn things from them that will make you better at your job. And you'll realize that most of the fighting stems from you being a cocky, stubborn know-it-all.

It's more easily said than done, but I can tell you from personal experience you'll be much happier in your job when you shift your focus a bit, change your attitude and learn that working together will get you further toward your goal of a happier customer. Isn't that what it's all about? Isn't that what you know so much about after all?

Start by following these suggestions, and you'll realize some benefits pretty quickly.

Rather than give a lot of answers to show off how smart you are, try asking a lot of questions. Asking questions communicates an inherent humbleness that goes a long way toward gaining the respect of stakeholders.

Start a project by re-stating the intent of the project in your own words and ask if your understanding of the intent is correct. Making sure you're on the same page before you move a single pixel will save you severe heartburn later.

Provide stakeholders a window into your creative solutions early in the process and make sure they're on board with where you're heading. Stakeholders often walk away with a very specific solution in mind. If you wait until the deadline before showing them a polished solution that looks nothing like their pre-conceived solution, you're in big trouble. Show them early work and talk them through it to achieve buy-in to your ideas. And if you can't agree at this point, at least you didn't spend too much time on all the details of the polished end solution.

Remind yourself everyday when you walk in the door that your job isn't about you. You job is about the customer, and internal harmony shines through in the solutions you provide your customers, even when the solution isn't 100% aligned with your perception of UX principles.

Internal strife and bitter compromise only leads to disjointed customer experiences, and a disjointed customer experience surely goes against your understanding of basic UX principles. And when 5:00pm comes, you'll walk out the door feeling much better about your job.

You’re probably comfortable with the fact that there are infinitely more truths in the universe that you don’t know than you do know. After all, there’s only so much information your 3-pound brain can store, right? But when you shrink your frame of reference from the whole universe to just your company, or your specific team within your company, it’s more difficult to admit you don’t know everything. After all, you’re the team’s leader. You should possess all the same skills and knowledge as everyone collectively on the team. And if you don’t, it means you’re not really qualified to lead them. Right?

Wrong. In fact, most of the skills and knowledge you need to effectively lead your team are different from those needed by the individuals on your team. But how do you even know where to start? What are the things you really do need to know?

First, you must know what you don’t know. Only then can you effectively fill in the gaps by hiring people who possess the skills and knowledge that you don’t. One of the biggest mistakes new leaders make during the hiring process is passing on candidates who have more experience or knowledge in a particular area than they do. They feel intimidated or threatened by the idea of having a team member more qualified to do their job than they are, but they’re looking at it all wrong. The candidates aren’t more qualified to be the leader of the team; the candidates are just more qualified for the position they’re applying for. In these instances, you should hire people because they know more than you.

Second, admit what you don’t know. Believe it or not, I’ve had leaders who would rather make up an answer to a question in a meeting than admit they don’t know. They’ve been insecure or fearful that people will think they’re not good at their job, so they’ve tried to look like they know everything. However, it’s much better to say “I don’t know. Let me go back to my team, get the answer you need and follow up by the end of the day.” As long as you actually follow up as promised, you’ll come out looking better in the end than if someone realizes you’re making stuff up. You’ll also gain the respect and trust of your team when you admit to them that you don’t know everything and that it’s their skills and knowledge that will make the team successful.

I’ll never forget my first day as a manager. The day before, I was a copywriter. Then all of a sudden I managed four people. Excited? Of course. But I was also rather terrified as I asked myself over my morning coffee: “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” Luckily, my company was willing to invest in me and gave me time to grow into my new role. Even better, my manager hooked me up with her leadership coach, with whom I spent an hour on the phone once a month for a year.

The most important takeaway from my 12 sessions with a leadership coach was that while my new title was manager, it was more important that I become a leader. The difference? Managers manage work. Leaders lead people. My new role required that I do both, and while I had the knowledge and skills required to manage the work, I didn’t have a clue what it meant to lead the people. More than five years later, I've learned a lot about what it takes to be a successful leader.

So without further ado, here's the first of many more leadership tips to come:

Seek respect, not friendship.

Everyone wants to be liked, but if you strive to be liked more than to be respected, you’ll quickly become an ineffective leader, and, even worse, you’ll lose the respect of those you manage.

Rather, if you’re able to make decisions according to what’s right instead of what’s popular, your team will inevitably respect you as long as you communicate along the way and listen to their concerns. Moreover, while people more often like you if they respect you, it’s rare that you maintain friendships with people you don’t respect.

... you've got nothing. But for some reason, content is often treated like the proverbial red-headed stepchild in the family of web creatives. Content strategists are paid less than user experience architects and interaction designers, and while the skills are certainly different and unique, I'd argue those of the content strategist are every bit, if not more, important. Why?

Well, because content is everything. And by everything, I mean that every single thing on the page is content. An image is content. Interactive elements are content. Copy is content. And for whatever reason, so many people's definition of content starts and ends with copy.

For me, the role of a content strategist, a role so many organizations struggle to define, can be summed up quite succinctly. A content strategist provides the strategic insight as to what is communicated to the user and how it's communicated.

Don't get me wrong. It's a collaboration, a discussion. The UX architect, the information architect, the interaction designer, the visual designer - whatever roles exist on the team - each see a project through a unique lens, and it's important for each role to lend its perspective and expertise. The lens of the content strategist focuses on each piece of content to determine if it's communicating the right messages and expectations in the most relevant way to the user.

Communicate. Collaborate. Change the world one pixel at a time, etc. Just walk away knowing that we'll all deliver better solutions for our users when we understand what content is and what content strategists can and should be contributing.