Did your mother ever insist you write hand-written thank you notes for gifts?

There’s a reason she didn’t encourage you to enter all of your closest friends and relatives into Salesforce and generate a template response with quick instant personalization.

By taking the time to put a pen on paper and craft a note, you demonstrated to the recipient that they had your full attention. It showed them that you cared.

A valuable resource

Getting someone’s full attention is an increasingly rare thing these days. Everyone is busy and under the influence of an increasing number of channels of information. Part of the selling points of social media is the ability to make things more personal. We fawn over the ability for an organization to send an @reply on Twitter, or to respond individually to a blog comment. We act as if technology somehow invented the personal touch.

A technology company that gets it

I found it ironically awesome that I got a handwritten note in the mail today from of all places, an email marketing company. Blue Sky Factory understands how to build a community.

By stepping outside of the obvious social channels of “mass personalization” (which they also do very well), they distinguished themselves from the crowd.

Consider the impact. Your audience is being inundated with digital “social” requests. Follow us here! Subscribe to us there! Be our friend! Like us! How can you stand out as being genuine?

Remember how your mom taught you to send personal cards to your family? This kind of personal touch will build the same bonds between you and your customers.

Social media is a great way to personalize your customer relationships, but it’s not the only way.

How else can businesses be more personal in their interactions with you as a customer?

Imagine a world completely devoid of new ideas. Draw a line in the sand, dig your heels in and get comfortable, because this is as good as it’s ever going to get. It paints a pretty bleak picture, doesn’t it?

It’s safe to say that we, as a society, are reliant on new ideas. We need new concepts, new colours, and new ways of doing things in order to keep the world around us productive and interesting.

Look back upon what got us from where we used to be to where we are now, and ask yourself what was required. The basics certainly jump to mind; food, oxygen, water and sunlight. But these staples only guarantee survival; homeostasis. They ensure that things will exist in the same sameness that they always have.

It is ideas that move things forward.

Do you live your life accordingly?

How many times in an average day does an idea cross your mind that strikes you as interesting?

Maybe it’s a process that could be improved upon. Maybe it’s a combination of food that could make the perfect dish, a business idea that finds you in the middle of the night, or a tune that you can’t stop humming in the shower.

I’m willing to bet these events happen more often than you’ve ever realized. We are blessed with minds that solve problems, unravel things and put them back together; resulting in an incredible capacity for new, original thought.

Where do your ideas land?

How many of those ideas ever make it out of your head?

Case in point: this blog post. Every once in awhile, I sit down to capture this concept in writing. And yet every time, it somehow never makes it past the censors; the imaginary (yet very real) assassin of ideas that lives between our imagination and our willingness to express.

Try this statement on for size:
“Some of my greatest ideas have never made it out of my head, never been spoken aloud or documented on paper. I’ve written poetry and melodies. I’ve built empires in my mind. I’ve solved problems and built bridges. And yet, I’m left with nothing but this statement.
Some of my greatest ideas are now distant memories, forgotten by everyone, including myself.”

Does it fit? I raise my hand.

Give your imagination a fighting chance

This is a work in progress for me, as it is for all of us. But here are some thoughts that I am trying in order to get ideas (big and small, important and meaningless) past the censors that wield such power in our cognitive process.

Stop relying on others

Understand that ideas are democratic and available to everyone. Telling yourself that others are smarter, funnier, or more artistic is a crutch. It’s an excuse to make yourself feel okay about your habit of crushing your own dreams. If ideas represent the progressive force of our species, it is your responsibility to contribute.

Find your place

When I run, my mind chases thoughts faster than my feet can carry me. The barriers are broken, and the torrents of creativity are unleashed. Miles and marathons can pass unnoticed as one idea dovetails to the next daydream. No problem seems too small, and no concept too farfetched. Anything is possible, my lungs and legs representing my only limitations in the world.

Do you have a place where ideas find you, before you even think to look for them? It could be an actual place, or it could be a time, a behaviour or hobby…

Find it, because that’s where your ideas are safe.

Find your assassin

When I return from a run, as soon as my heartbeat slows the assassin begins to creep in. As I climb the stairs to my apartment, he begins to spread doubt and conflict. The ideas are now suspect. They’ve been done before, they’re not feasible, not possible. And they’re probably not interesting to anyone, anyways.. By the time I step inside, untie my shoes and step back into my world, my ideas are gone; homeostasis and sameness are safe for another night.

Do you have a behaviour that kills your ideas before they’ve ever even had a chance? A recurring thought, fear or anxiety that turns shiny promise into a dusty afterthought?

Find those too, because they’re what you’re going to battle against.

Capture your inspiration

If you’ve found your place where your mind is free from the burden of creative anxiety, your mission is to capture your these thoughts before they leave you. Don’t carry your ideas unprotected and undocumented – the temptation to forget all about them will be too great. You will let yourself down.

• Carry a notebook dedicated only to new ideas – Resist the temptation to write down phone numbers or meeting minutes in these pages. This is like capturing fireflies in a jar; don’t pollute it with things that don’t glow.
• Record voice memos – See that mobile phone in your pocket? I bet it has the capability to record voice memos. Paul Durham from Black Lab showed me the power of leaving yourself voicemails when inspiration strikes. Not only do you have a record of the concept, but you document the excitement of the moment, something that can be invaluable as you later reflect upon your inspiration.

Make an investment

Ever noticed how a sports game is more interesting when you have a friendly wager on the line?
Put something of yourself into your idea as soon as possible. This could be as easy as buying a domain name or sending an email to propose a brainstorming meeting. Lean into it and lower your shoulder; making ideas happen is a contact sport.

Make a commitment

Give yourself a deadline. I told myself I wouldn’t sleep tonight until this blog post was complete.

Set a calendar reminder for whenever you feel you should have taken an action. To go a step further, on a regular basis, revisit your idea book or your voice memos. Use your own history to learn what makes you successful and where you stumble.

As I press the final punctuation, this represents one thought that I took from concept to completion. There will be another addition to the site soon that represents something I should have acted on a long time ago.

Where do you go to find inspiration? How successful are you at battling the temptation to censor? How do you summon the courage to share with the world?

Image credit:qisur

What if your reputation was all you had? Strip away everything else about your organization or yourself. Ignore your brochures, your slogans and trademarks. Ignore your resume, your degrees and certifications.

If someone set out to discover not just who you are, but what you believe, and why you’re so special…. what would they find?

People hate complexity. When things get complicated its harder to make decisions, and easier to get frustrated. As an interface designer, your mantra should always be: simplify.

But don’t make it too simple

Have a look at the screenshot above. This is the new Facebook interface for creating events, which has been streamlined from previous versions. They’ve turned the date selection tool into a neat little jquery calendar pop-up, which is a huge improvement.

They’ve also changed the way that users select the time for their event. Simpler to look at than it used to be? Definitely.

Does it help me create and event that starts at 12:15pm? Definitely not.

How to be simple and smart at the same time

Obviously, Facebook has created a problem for me as a user. This is a particularly sticky problem, since events are often created to be used as part of advertising campaigns (using the Event Ad Unit), meaning they have potentially put a barrier between themselves and people willing to give them money… always a bad thing.

Some considerations to keep in mind, to ensure that your interface is simple, but not dumb:

• Test in advance – As Facebook often does, roll out your new interface to a sample audience in order to get a sense for how it will work in the real world with real data. Segment out 10% of your traffic, show them the new toys. Watch and learn. Consider differences between new users and returning longtime users of social sites.
• Get Feedback – When you launch a new feature, make a clear “feedback” element on the page – allowing people to let you know where they find spots that might need a bit of tweaking. You’ll often catch the little bugs this way.
• Use previous data – Maybe this was taken into account, its hard to say. But if you have past records of how the element was used (databases of registrations etc), have a look to see what types of information people are putting in. I’ve created hundreds of events beginning on the quarter hour – and I’m willing to bet others have too.
• Consider context – Think about events and what goes into creating them. People need to be invited, schedules need to be coordinated, venues need to be booked. The more branches there are in the problem, the more flexible the interface should be for fine tuning. Think you can convince a venue to adopt “Facebook time zones”? Think again.
• Provide a work-around – Make the most obvious navigation as simple as possible, but if there is potential for wiggle room around it, give more options. A simple option to “customize time” within or next to the select menu would give us the best of both worlds.

It seems that every time I look at my iPhone or iPad, I see notifications about new updates available for applications. More and more, I find myself upgrading apps that I haven’t used in months, and don’t even remember installing.

More apps aren’t always better

When the app store was born, we couldn’t get enough of these. From Currency converters, tip calculators, games, and social tools… our home screens quickly filled up to the point that we now require folders to hold all of our apps.

Have you ever spent time flipping from one screen to the next, just trying to find a calculator? Clutter adds complexity to what should be a simple task.

Declare Bankruptcy. Simplify

Every now and then, I declare app bankruptcy. (hat tip to Christopher Penn, who preached about Podcast Bankruptcy once upon a time.)

The concept is simple. Delete all of your apps and start over.

Yes, this includes apps that you have paid for. Deleting an application you don’t have any use for is not a waste of money. Your money was wasted the second you bought it. Why keep paying for it with your time and attention?

Here are the rules:

• Don’t keep apps that you once thought you needed
• Don’t keep apps that you needed once upon a time
• Don’t keep apps that you think you would like to find useful
• Keep the apps that you actually need

The app store will forgive you

This is the beautiful part of this system. Unlike the iTunes Music Store, if you attempt to download an application after you’ve deleted it – you won’t be charged again.

If you find yourself needing a utility or craving a particular game, that’s okay – add it back.

Chances are, however, that you won’t even remember half of the apps that you deleted. You’ll be too busy using the useful ones, and enjoying your newfound freedom from digital clutter.

What are the handful of apps that you actually use? How does that compare to the number of apps you have installed?

So much of marketing and sales is about creating and maintaining momentum. Think of how many times you’ve had the idea to make a purchase, had items in your shopping cart, been just about ready to check out – and yet somehow failed to seal the deal.

There could be any number of reasons why you failed to make that purchase. Maybe you got distracted by an old friend, forced into small talk. Maybe you saw two competing products and couldn’t make a decision between the two. Maybe you couldn’t find what you wanted and became so frustrated that you just gave up. In any case, momentum was somehow interrupted, and the beautiful chain of marketing>sales>purchase was broken.

Friction slows us down

By its very definition, friction is the enemy of momentum (remember high school physics?). It slows things down, makes us lose energy, and generally gets in the way of where you want to go.

Isaac Newton; marketing guru

Remember Newton’s three laws of motion? Let’s visit the first law, because in case you didn’t realize, its all about marketing.

• An object that is at rest will stay at rest unless an unbalanced force acts upon it.

  This is the customer (it could be you). If you don’t know about the existence of product or service, you’re not very inclined to take an action or make a purchase. The smart marketer knows about you, can see you at rest, and do their best to put forces in place to break your resting state.

  These forces represent anything that move you forwards: great advertising, great targeting, relevant messaging, positive recommendation, pretty pictures, big promises. You get the idea.

  These forces give you velocity.

• An object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless an unbalanced force acts upon it.

  The story doesn’t end with velocity, of course. Here’s where friction comes in; representing anything that slows you down or stops your forward progress: Bad in-store experience, misperceptions or misinformation in the market, fear and uncertainty, physical limitations etc. Again – you get the idea. You’ve been there.

Isaac newton; ice cream salesman

I recently visited a craft and antique market, set up by the side of the road. It was set up in front of a house, under a tent on their lawn. Across the street was a dairy, which, among other things, sold ice cream to its customers.

The antique market had one sign affixed to their gate, serving as their marketing vehicle. It said “We are ice cream friendly”.

The owners of the antique market recognized that many of their potential customers were standing at their gate as they enjoyed their purchase from across the street. What they needed wasn’t more velocity… they needed to destroy friction. They succeeded.

Making yourself ice cream friendly

My company is currently working on redesigning a website for a client who sells and repairs bikes. We’re paying careful attention to friction, in efforts to make his business ice cream friendly too.

We discovered that many potential repair customers are hesitant to bring their bikes in for repair, as they purchased them elsewhere.

Focusing on increasing their velocity (“Great prices on bike repair!”) won’t push them to do something they feel isn’t possible.

Focusing on reducing their friction (“We’ll fix any bike, regardless of where you purchased it”), will get them through the door (and hopefully back on the road).

So much time, effort and money are spent on building up energy and increasing customer velocity. How much are you spending on minimizing friction?

]]> http://neilbearse.com/2010/08/22/eliminating-friction/feed/ 1 http://neilbearse.com/2010/08/19/deadlines-dont-mean-death/ http://neilbearse.com/2010/08/19/deadlines-dont-mean-death/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:32:18 +0000 Neil Bearse http://neilbearse.com/?p=176





We live surrounded by deadlines. Everything has to be done by a certain date and time; packaged up and shipped out the door.

What’s your next action? Cross it off the list and move onto the next thing?

Shipping is important

Seth Godin has hammered the point home in Linchpin. Great artists ship. No matter what your product is, if you don’t get it out the door – no one can use it. It might as well not exist.

Some people get hung up here. Procrastination visits early, indecision settles in midway through, and doubt creeps in towards the end. Deadlines can slide as new features are added and the hopeless quest for perfection turns a great idea into a rusty anchor around your neck.

Perfection is important

If you’re building rocket ships or nuclear power plants. If your job involves crash test dummies, by all means, take your time. We’ll all wait.

If you’re in marketing… lives are not at risk. Give yourself the license to play and be creative. Challenge yourself to always do better.

Deadline doesn’t equal death

Software companies get this. Version one is never the final release. In fact, we’ve become accustomed to a nomenclature that infers progressive improvement. Version 1.0 -> 1.1 -> 1.2 … The dot means “to be continued”.

Think about how many of your deadlines are dictated by antiquated technologies, processes or ideas. How can you think more like a software company… how can your ideas “be continued”.

Your website is in beta

This is the most obvious example. That shiny new website you just rolled out? Slap an imaginary construction-worker graphic (circa 1997) on your pages, because you should always be under construction. Pay attention to analytics, pay attention to user feedback, pay attention to new ideas and test them. Websites are made to iterate.

Avoid last pages and final scenes

In the world of traditional media, there was little opportunity to make changes. Your brochures went to print. Your spot ran during the Super Bowl. Shipped. Over.

Why should a brochure ever end? Are you letting a printing schedule hold you back from telling great stories? Can you really say it all in one 30 second spot?

Think of ways to complement “traditional” media – the kind with hard deadlines and difficult revisions – with your new “to be continued” mentality.

• Revise digital brochure PDFs even after version 1.0 has gone to print. As long as specs and details are accurate, people are most likely not going to compare and complain about content differences.
• Add regular email campaigns to continue the storylines you created in your product brochures.
• Create a channel of videos to either replace or support major video marketing initiatives (think Old Spice)
• Use applications (iPhone/iPad/Android/Kindle etc) to push the most relevant, new, important, interesting content directly to your consumer, avoiding the deadline death of printing processes altogether

When you infuse iterative culture into the process, deadlines stop signifying the death of a project – they simply become markers from which you can benchmark and measure your evolution.

A nice byproduct of the process is that deadlines might stop threatening to be the death of you as well; unrealistic expectations of perfection are lifted, replaced with the liberating feeling of creativity and endless possibility.

]]> http://neilbearse.com/2010/08/19/deadlines-dont-mean-death/feed/ 0 http://neilbearse.com/2010/08/17/consider-the-vehicle/ http://neilbearse.com/2010/08/17/consider-the-vehicle/#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:39:32 +0000 Neil Bearse http://neilbearse.com/?p=174




Have you seen the new Nissan Leaf? It’s a neat little zero-emissions electric car. I like it, because it’s the first “new” style car that doesn’t look like it belongs on the Jetsons. I like it, because it’s trying to leapfrog hybrid technology and Tesla elitism to create a truly green car for the masses. I like it because it’s new, and I’m a serial early adopter.

Here’s an ad that you might have seen during the Tour De France:

Nissan forgot about my vehicle

Think about the ways people access the web. Let’s call these vehicles. Most consumers are now using several of the following, each with its own unique characteristics, capabilities and behaviours.

• A desktop at work
• A laptop at the coffee shop
• A mobile phone on the go
• An iPad in between

My vehicle of choice to further the Nissan Leaf conversation was my iPad. It’s with me on the couch as I watch TV, including expensive 30 second spots.

A quick Google search brought me to their doorstep and I was ready to find out more. You’d think there would be a synergy here – a car aimed at the earliest of early adopters with the tablet that Steve brought down from the mountain.

Apparently, Nissan failed to make this connection. Their website experience is so reliant on fancy javascript eye-candy (points for not being Flash), that I was unable to read the most basic FAQs about the car.

In their efforts to tell me about their vehicle, Nissan forgot all about mine.

Are you considering the vehicle?

When developing your marketing efforts, are you paying close attention to the different ways in which your visitors might be approaching your content? This goes beyond having a “mobile version” that simply loads correctly and fits on the screen.

Start with the intent of the user

For example, if you’re running a 30 second spot on television, chances are higher that someone on an iPad is visiting your website while sitting on the couch. Why not build a web experience for them that immediately connects to the commercial – in hopes of continuing the engagement.

Conversely, if you’re a restaurant – and you have visitors using mobile phones (probably in traffic or with friends en route to find food) – why not build a mobile experience for them that quickly and easily lets you dial your phone number, make a reservation or view a menu built for their screen-size?

Then think about capabilities

Each vehicle comes with its own set of capabilities, that can either lead marketers wildly off-base or seal the deal for brand engagement. When you pair visitor intent with device capabilities, you’re well on your way to making killer web experience.

What if Nissan noted my iPad as it hit their servers, and presented me with the opportunity to not just interact with a website, but download an application. Show the early adopter with spare cash (obviously their key demographic) a flashy TV commercial, and within minutes have them customizing, building and finally steering their new Leaf through simulated city streets.

Too big a budget? What about letting me download some iPad sized wallpapers – instantly turning my tablet into a billboard for their cute car. Think that might remind me to tell some friends about it? Its not about spending the most cash, or having the most flash… its about taking a moment to think about how to best minimize friction and maintain the momentum required to keep the message moving forward.

]]> http://neilbearse.com/2010/08/17/consider-the-vehicle/feed/ 1 http://neilbearse.com/2010/06/25/how-to-be-human-in-spite-of-the-web/ http://neilbearse.com/2010/06/25/how-to-be-human-in-spite-of-the-web/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 01:07:56 +0000 Neil Bearse http://neilbearse.com/?p=170






We’re all very good at discussing how social media is making us better. Better relationships, better communication, better chances at serendipity, better access to information. Its more rare to hear about ways that social media and its associated tools are making us worse. What follows is a case study of one.

Today, I realized that social media is making me worse.

… I looked at the clock and realized I was going to be late. The bank closes at 5:00, I told myself. Of course, they do, I responded… Banks always close at the most inconvenient times… I picked up the pace, imagining arriving as the last employees ducked out early, locking the door and leaving me stranded without money to pay my rent. “What a tweet that will be…”.

I arrived and realized that all of my worry had been for naught. The sign on the door proudly indicated extended hours – 9am – 7pm. All of my rushing had been unnecessary, but it had afforded me the luxury of time; I now had two full hours to spare.

As I stood in line, I realized that I was feeling time tick by, precious seconds lost. I’m not that person. I don’t have a quick temper or a tendency to tap toes in anticipation and cross arms in frustration. And yet, tainted by daily exposure to a real-time web, persistent buy now buttons, and an iPhone-induced-ADD, I was awash with impatience.

We all talk about how the web is making us “more human”. Today, I’m questioning that. Here are some ideas about how to remain human in spite of the web:

Give people a chance … and then give them more chances

For all of the talk about social tools revitalizing our appreciation for “humanity”, we seem to write people off faster than ever. I fell for this as I stood in line, wondering what was taking so long. We wanted things to be faster and more perfect, so we invented robots. But with robots, we got automation, call centres and endless touchtone phone menus. Relationships turned grey and cold. Now we want to bring the humans back. But, if we want to deal with humans, we have to remember that part of being human is taking time, and sometimes making mistakes. My new mantra, from this moment onwards is: “Would I rather be dealing with a robot?”. No? Then practice patience.

Twitter is not a weapon. And neither is your blog.

Being understanding and showing empathy will get you farther than a veiled threat of posting your experience to the web ever will. If you have constructive feedback, and you actually want a business to improve, tell another human being. Google’s bots reading about your issues aren’t going to fix anything. We’ve always had a voice. Our newfound ability to publish to the web has simply given our voices a new volume. A whisper in the ear of the right person is often more effective than shouting in a crowd.

Check your check-ins

Yes, geolocation tools like Foursquare and Gowalla present some interesting opportunities and are certainly an entertaining game to play – but don’t risk relationships for mayorships. Fumbling with your phone every 20 meters is not a way to impress your friends (pro-tip: never on a first date. ever). Saving your check-ins for interesting and important places will not only be more respectful to your real-life company, but will also increase the value to your Foursquare followers (who really don’t need to know what your favourite gas station is). Often, the most important people are actually following you. Keeping your phone in your pocket will ensure that you’re not checking out of conversation.

Spread love

When I speak to companies, I’m always disappointed that their first assumption is that people use social media exclusively to discuss negative brand experiences. Everyone is worried about the bad. Let’s change this. Instead of promoting negative experiences, celebrate the good ones. Who gave you great customer service? Who made you smile? Who went the extra mile? Who has a great product or service? Ultimately, positive recommendation is more useful anyways. Hearing a hundred horror stories about companies to avoid simply gives me a warning. Telling me something I *should* do gives me an action I can take.

Treasure the moment

Several weeks ago, I took the best photo I have ever seen. An oriole sat on the rim of a rusted basketball hoop, its orange colouring blazing against a lifeless and weathered, grey backboard, in front of a crystal blue sky. As I lifted my camera to press the shutter, the bird flew away. I noticed that I was disappointed when I should have been amazed. I had missed a photo, but captured a moment. It wasn’t gone, it just wasn’t digital. I don’t have the picture, but I just showed you the scene… funny how that works.

Search engines don’t matter. Just optimize your life.

Life comes in more colours than any photo on Flickr. And those people walking around in front of you represent more characters than you could ever shove into a tweet. In our hurry to categorize, classify and broadcast, its easy to forget that our lives already come with metadata. We call them memories.

The stories you’ll tell on a perfectly still evening, as a warm breeze rustles the leaves of the trees around you and fireflies chase the sunset over the horizon, will serve more value than any blog post or status update you could ever write.

How’s that for return on investment?

Photo credit: Jurvetson

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