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		<title>Universal Mind &#45; Mindshare</title>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com</link>
		<description>Thoughts From The Collective Mind</description>
		<dc:language>en</dc:language>
		<dc:rights>Copyright 2012</dc:rights>
		<dc:date>2012-10-22T22:11:57+00:00</dc:date>
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		<item>
		<title>CX: The Danger of Checking the Boxes</title>
		<dc:creator>Dan Bentz</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-the-danger-of-checking-the-boxes</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-the-danger-of-checking-the-boxes</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			CX isn&amp;rsquo;t a project; it&#39;s a cultural shift using executives and employees.

	We&amp;rsquo;ve run across quite a few companies over the past year who have a strong interest in customer experience (CX) and all the glories it can bring to their organization. The reward for doing CX correctly is great: more loyal and delighted customers, increased ROI for the bottom line, a strategic advantage in the marketplace, and even more satisfied employees. However, we&amp;rsquo;ve seen a problem rising up and it&#39;s not an easy one: some of these companies are treating CX like a project and believe that all they have to do is &amp;ldquo;have some executive meetings&amp;rdquo; or &amp;ldquo;check the boxes in the project plan&amp;rdquo; and everything will fall into place.

	No, it won&amp;rsquo;t.

	If you (as an organization) approach CX from a project mindset ONLY (note the &amp;ldquo;only&amp;rdquo; there...), you will get exactly what you plan for: a set of accomplished steps you can check off of a project plan and maybe some new processes and/or teams to go with it.

	But it isn&amp;rsquo;t really a CX focus. That&amp;rsquo;s just a CX project.

	So how do we not make it just a project?

	Well, it&#39;s easy to say, but not so easy to do. When you are talking about creating a CX&#45;focused culture, it actually has to be engrained and embedded into the very fabric of your company. That means that it&#39;s best embraced when it&#39;s not just an executive action or grassroots effort, but both.

	Paul Hagen, Principal Analyst at Forrester focused on helping Customer Experience Professionals, notes that, &amp;ldquo;If firms haven&amp;rsquo;t aligned their cultures to fulfill their promises, employees won&amp;rsquo;t deliver, and customer satisfaction will plummet.&amp;rdquo;1

	I wholeheartedly agree.

	When executives believe,&amp;nbsp;even with the best of intentions,&amp;nbsp;that the CX efforts need to be &amp;ldquo;driven, decided upon, and trumpeted&amp;rdquo; by the executive team, they are missing half the point of customer experience engagement: their employees.

	The employees have to be involved! And most of the time, they want to be involved in driving it too! They are the ones that more than likely have the most contact with the organization&amp;rsquo;s customers&#45; whether through customer service, sales, onsite implementations, or face&#45;to&#45;face engagement in a store. They are more than likely the front lines&#45; the ones making the very real, very deliberate, very memorable impact to the customer experience every day...sometimes even every hour or minute! They are the ones that know what really happens in the trenches, not just projected in a process.

	To not include them as part of the mix is, at best, an oversight and, at worst, a strategic mistake encased in ego.

	By mixing the efforts, abilities, vision, and authority of the executives with the experience, knowledge, and empowered authority of the employees and utilizing an organizational change methodology to bring the two together in real actions, you can get on the path to cultural change. If either begins to be weighed more heavily than the other, the entire effort can get out of balance.

	So tread carefully, you executives. And be vocal, you non&#45;executives. You are both an integral part of shifting your culture and it works best when you plan it together.


	1. Paul Hagen, &amp;ldquo;How to Build a Customer&#45;Centric Culture; by Forrester Research, November 2010.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/customerexperience">customerexperience</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/cx">cx</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-05-16T17:22:14+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Tag! WE&#8217;RE it!</title>
		<dc:creator>Erik Loehfelm</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag-were-it</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag-were-it</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			TEDx Grand Rapids&#39; doors are closed. The lights have been dimmed and the speakers and attendees have moved on to their normal routines. But, the spirit and inspiration of the day, are just beginning to soar! The theme this year was &quot;TAG! You&#39;re it!&quot; and it was a bit fuzzy to me when I first heard it. Having let it sit in over the past few days, I now fully comprehend its impact. It&#39;s our turn. It&#39;s our responsibility to carry on with the ideas uncovered through yesterday&#39;s presentation and discussion.

	TEDx is an inspirational experience. It forces us to pause and think about our situation and the situation of our community. The conversations that occurred yesterday could be the catalyst for change for each of us as individuals, as a community, as an organization, and as a world. It&#39;s now our responsibility to continue those thoughts.

	We, at Universal Mind, are extremely proud to contribute to this conversation in some small way. We thank the speakers, the attendees and especially the organizers and men and women who volunteered their time and skills to this great event! We can&#39;t wait to see what is in store for next year&#39;s event but until then... We&#39;re it!
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/organization">organization</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/speaker">speaker</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/tedx">tedx</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-05-10T17:58:41+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>iPad Table Wins People&#8217;s Voice Webby</title>
		<dc:creator>David Tucker</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/ipad-table-wins-peoples-voice-webby</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/ipad-table-wins-peoples-voice-webby</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			It&#39;s been a whirlwind since we found out that we won the People&#39;s Choice Webby in the Experimental &amp;amp; Innovation category for our iPad Table.

	The iPad Table was the first project of our newly formalized Research and Development practice led by Joe Johnston and myself.&amp;nbsp; In short, several ideas had snowballed into developing an experience where 15 separate iPads could function an one continuous physical space.&amp;nbsp; This concept allowed us to explore one of the topics we are most interested in: device&#45;to&#45;device communication.

	From an innovation perspective, there was a lot to do. We had to design the entire physical table and overcome several challenges including&amp;nbsp; designing a new kind of cable for the iPads that would allow the iPads to be mounted directly next to each other.&amp;nbsp; In addition, there were entire challenges in how to develop an application that runs across 15 iPads simultaneously.&amp;nbsp; We had to build a completely custom solution to simultaneously deploy all of the applications in the development process.&amp;nbsp; In a relatively short timeframe, we were able to overcome these issues and build an initial first phase of the entire system.&amp;nbsp; You can see a video of the completed first phase here.&amp;nbsp;

	We believe this will be the first of many impactful efforts that you will see from the Universal Mind Research and Development practice. R&amp;amp;D has been a priority at Universal Mind for some time, but we&#39;re very excited that we&#39;re received this honor as the first initiative of the newly formalized practice. Our R&amp;amp;D work continues to benefit our clients by increasing their view of what is possible, and it enriches our internal team with opportunities for knowledge and idea sharing which can benefit the entire Universal Mind team.

	We certainly want to thank everyone who took time to vote for us.&amp;nbsp; We&#39;ll see you in New York in just a few short weeks at the 2013 Webby Awards Show!
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/interconnectedexperiences">interconnectedexperiences</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ipad">ipad</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/multidevice">multidevice</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/r&d">r&d</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/webby">webby</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-05-02T17:56:47+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Customer Experience: Observing Where It Seems No One Else Does</title>
		<dc:creator>Dan Bentz</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-observing-where-it-seems-no-one-else-does</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-observing-where-it-seems-no-one-else-does</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Being stuck at an airport overnight brings interesting thoughts.

	Do you know who Mehran Karimi Nasseri is? Maybe you&amp;rsquo;ve never heard the name? He is an Iranian refugee who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 1988 until 2006. From 1988 until 2006! Basically, he got stuck between &amp;ldquo;not having entered France illegally&amp;rdquo; and &amp;ldquo;not being able to enter France because he had no papers.&amp;rdquo; Interesting way to spend 17 years... had his suitcases with him, read a lot, studied economics. Probably ate a lot of airport food.

	I had read a little blurb about him years ago when the Tom Hanks movie came out (&amp;ldquo;The Terminal&amp;rdquo;) and we got to imagine what it would be like to live in an airport. However, I really thought about it when I recently had a flight out of Denver canceled and spent just one night around the gates&amp;mdash;from about 9:00pm until my 6:30am flight the next morning.

	So, I went on a little Customer Experience (CX) observational walk&amp;mdash;pretty cool what one can see in 30 minutes. A number of items stood out that had a direct impact on me as a customer inside this airport:

	Everything closes.
	People miss flights, even end up spending the night sometimes&amp;mdash;and they close all the stores and places to eat... Really? I understand that probably not much business gets driven through, but shouldn&amp;rsquo;t at least one place be open?

	The ticket agents work hard... and typically have a lot of patience.
	Interesting to just listen to the airline personnel at the gates. I listened to about 15 of them at various Delta gates in the terminal and constantly heard a strong effort to be professional and helpful no matter what attitude the customer brought to them. I heard them all: nice, mean, quiet, angry, very angry... the agents did the best they could trying to weave through a complicated system of airlines, connections, and missed flights.

	The seats are dirty.
	I constantly see hardworking cleaning personnel going around, doing their best to pick up, clean up, and put back in order, but with so many people moving and sitting and eating and packing, it&amp;rsquo;s just hard to get everything clean. The airport could do it...&amp;nbsp;if they wanted... by adding more people and prioritizing, but then there are budgetary restraints. However, I also notice that while sitting in the seat I am typing from right now, the nearest trash can is over 100 feet away. Why?

	Outlets? Where?
	If you&amp;rsquo;ve traveled much at all, this is painfully obvious. There are a few terminals that have great access to charging areas and outlet stations, but there aren&amp;rsquo;t many here. In today&amp;rsquo;s device&#45;driven world, where everything seems to need charged, we need power. Big mistake on the airport&amp;rsquo;s part not to get this in place. Additionally, some of the outlet locations are marked and some of them aren&amp;rsquo;t; wouldn&amp;rsquo;t take much to ID where the outlets are, would it?

	Nothing interactive.
	Again, in today&amp;rsquo;s digital world and with people just standing around waiting most of the time, there is nothing digitally interactive here? No games to play while waiting at the gate, no cool contextual items I can interact with by using my phone... nothing. I find it absolutely fascinating that there&amp;rsquo;s a captive audience here&amp;mdash;hundreds and hundreds&amp;mdash;and nothing interactive. Wasted opportunity.

	The lights stay on bright all night.
	Even when no flights are coming in or going out. Even when people are trying to sleep. Bright, searing lights overhead. If you, as a company, had a chance to: 1) make customers happier by doing something; and 2) cost you less when doing it... wouldn&amp;rsquo;t you do it? I&amp;rsquo;m not saying to make it dark; safety is an issue; but at least dim the lights a bit.

	The &amp;ldquo;your bag is too big&amp;rdquo; measure.
	You know the metal boxes that are at every&#45;single gate, the one that tells you your carry on bag can&amp;rsquo;t be larger than the size of the box? I didn&amp;rsquo;t see one used. At all. And, on just one flight alone&amp;mdash;as I was watching specifically for this&amp;mdash;I saw 42 bags that were bigger than the metal box and not once did I see a gate agent say anything. Yeah, I counted. One could assume they were checked down the runway, but none of them had the gate check tag on them. I can guarantee you that customers on that flight had issues with finding room for their bags.

	No tables for people to interact.
	Obviously many chairs, but why no tables? Why not encourage people to interact with each other by having some cool tables... maybe a partnership with Hasbro, Milton&#45;Bradley, or LEGO? Heck, even a deck of cards? On a usability note, there are parents everywhere with young ones who would love to have their kids playing around on the tables rather than crawling around on the floors.

	Well, 30 minutes over.

	Just want to encourage you to take the time to go and observe your organization&amp;rsquo;s experiences; whenever we do this for firms it always uncovers something not seen before. It is a skill that one can develop over time and can really lead to some interesting thoughts and ideas, particularly if you have people of different mindsets and viewpoints tag along. Look for the physical, behavioral, digital, and organizational and see where you can make an impact.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/customer+experience">customer experience</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/cx">cx</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/organizational+behavior">organizational behavior</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/strategy">strategy</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-04-26T15:46:33+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Off&#45;Canvas Design Pattern FTW!</title>
		<dc:creator>Erik Loehfelm</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/off-canvas-design-pattern-ftw</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/off-canvas-design-pattern-ftw</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Design patterns originated as an architectural concept by Christopher Alexander in his book,&amp;nbsp;A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction from 1977. When used in the context of interaction design, patterns document common interaction models. In other words, design patterns are familiar, reusable interface building blocks. Patterns simplify our designs.

	&quot;Each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.&quot; &#45; Peter Alexander

	Design patterns in user experience design have been fairly static with regard to their physical context &#45; desktop web patterns were mainly used on the desktop with a mouse as a pointer. Recently, patterns have crossed the bounds of physical device and have become common on multiple platforms with different inputs. A simple example is the carousel. On the desktop, an image with arrows to the left and right or some visual indication of an image sequence will cause the user to click or drag their mouse to see the next or previous image. On a mobile device, the same visual cue causes a user to swipe left and right to advance images.

	A flexible and powerful design pattern commonly used today is the off&#45;canvas design pattern. This pattern places content outside of the visible area of the screen. When called upon, the main view area is either moved to reveal the content below, or the off&#45;canvas content is moved over the top of the main content. The simplicity of this solution masks a really powerful visual metaphor of content outside the constraints of the viewable area. This understanding from a user perspective opens a ton of opportunity to present content on demand that wouldn&#39;t normally fit in the interface.

	

	Image courtesy:&amp;nbsp;Luke Wroblewski

	Luke Wroblewski&amp;nbsp;speaks to this pattern this way: &quot;there&#39;s always more space off&#45;screen for layout adjustments than there is on&#45;screen&quot;. He describes the use of off&#45;canvas in the context of responsive web design and multi&#45;device layouts. This is a fantastic application for this concept, but not the only one, or the first. Facebook, Path, and the beautiful National Parks by National Geographic iPhone apps, all use off&#45;canvas patterns for their native iOS applications. The fact that Facebook used this pattern &#45; and I believe they were the first to implement it &#45; makes the pattern universally understood! 1.06 billion monthly users&amp;hellip; yeah, everyone&#39;s seen and understands how to use this interface.

	This pattern is also highly flexible. If you have or are considering a responsive web solution, think about using the off&#45;canvas pattern as part of your site structure. Try organizing your off&#45;canvas content on&#45;canvas when viewed on larger screens (desktop and tablet). Then, when you switch form factors to the smaller mobile sizes, allow the supporting content to move off&#45;canvas.

	

	Image courtesy: Luke Wroblewski

	So. The next time you&#39;re challenged with having enough screen real estate to show content, consider designing your content off the screen bounds and implement the off&#45;canvas design pattern!
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/design">design</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/mobile">mobile</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ux">ux</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-04-22T14:50:59+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Contextually Interconnected Experiences</title>
		<dc:creator>Dan Bentz</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/contextually-interconnected-experiences</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/contextually-interconnected-experiences</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Experiences aren&#39;t new. They&#39;ve been around for a very long time. From every part of life, experiences are there. Organizations are now aligning around experiences...they&#39;ve become a major focus. Companies are realizing the impacts these experiences have on their customers and are designing their organizations around them.

	Organizations are working hard to make experiences stand out and mean something across different areas and platforms. People are looking for experiences... at home, work, in the car, etc. What does that mean? Where are they at? What does it mean to the customer? Everyone has expectations of experiences in the new digital ecosystem. As a matter of fact, 85% of users that do something from a mobile standpoint expect an equal to or greater experience than they get on a laptop or desktop computer. That can be intimidating. But why does this connection exist?

	It&#39;s because everything is connected: the physical, behavioral, organizational, and data architectures are connected and always have been. That&#39;s why when you impact one area, other areas are affected. So, plan on it.

	Customers expect digital experiences, and it&#39;s no longer a matter of getting the data to them&#45; but understanding, contextually, what they need before they know they need it. If they&#39;re at a Barnes &amp;amp; Noble and they scan a book to price&#45;compare on Amazon, maybe Barnes &amp;amp; Noble should offer up an in&#45;store coupon right then so they don&#39;t purchase on Amazon.

	How does &quot;anywhere digital&quot; impact you? Its invisible to the user, so they probably can&#39;t tell you. It&#39;s delivering when it&#39;s needed on whatever type of medium is used, not just when you determine to have it shown. And it has to be just right&#45; if you mess it up, you&#39;ll lose business. The bottom line is this: if you don&#39;t know what your user wants, you&#39;re behind. And if you don&#39;t know how they&#39;re using this data, you&#39;re behind. Everything has changed. The user knows what they want and they are seeing from other companies new experiences. That means its not just on one device &#45; it&#39;s interconnected.

	Contextually Interconnected Experiences give you endless possiblities&#45; and they need to be based on the habits of your customers. That means you have to understand your customers and know what they&#39;re asking for even if they don&#39;t know they are asking for it! How is your organization doing this? How should you be doing this?

	At Universal Mind, we dig into experiences. We use customer touch points, user needs studies, atomic models, customer atlases &amp;amp; journey maps, world&#45;class UX, and agile methodologies that truly capture what your end users need. We believe items like these are crucial in discovering, designing, and developing a good experience. If you want to see more of what a digital interconnected experience looks like, check out our iPad Table.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/contextual+design">contextual design</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/experiences">experiences</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/interconnected+experiences">interconnected experiences</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ipad">ipad</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/multidevice">multidevice</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-04-16T14:04:57+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>The Robots are Coming!</title>
		<dc:creator>Matt Kortering</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/the-robots-are-coming</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/the-robots-are-coming</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Considering how drastically technology has advanced in the past few years, it&amp;rsquo;s baffling to think about the retail experience and how it&amp;rsquo;s seemingly stuck in place. And in some cases, maybe even in rewind! I might be going out on a limb here, but I think I&amp;rsquo;ve &#64257;gured it out... I think it&amp;rsquo;s a fear of robots.

	Fear of robots translates to a fear of loosing the personal touch. Take your local running specialty store, for example, there&amp;rsquo;s a giant wall of shoes&#45; unmarked&#45; ranging in size, color, brand, purpose, etc. I, myself, have been a runner for years, and that wall still intimidates me. I can know exactly why I&amp;rsquo;m there, but it will still take a while to &#64257;nd the right shoe. Then ensues the shopping process&#45;&amp;nbsp; track down the salesperson I shooed off while I was browsing, wait to see if my size is in stock, try them on, ask the salesperson a bunch of questions about the shoe, walk back and forth for a while to make sure, and finally, purchase.

	This process hasn&amp;rsquo;t improved since jogging became a cool thing.

	Now, consider I choose instead, to &#64257;nd a new pair of shoes online. Within minutes, I&amp;rsquo;ve found a pair of shoes I like and have ordered my size. They&amp;rsquo;ll be delivered to my door within 24 hours so that I can try them on. And if they don&amp;rsquo;t fit, not to worry, the package will include a return address sticker and they&amp;rsquo;ll ship right back the very next day. No overwhelming wall of shoes. No wondering about my size being available. However, now I&amp;rsquo;m overwhelmed with the task of making the right decision without the help of an expert. I&amp;rsquo;m not an expert and I don&amp;rsquo;t want to be an expert. I just want informed recommendations on which shoes to try from someone I know is real and preferably passionate about running as well.

	There must be a better way.

	Imagine a mystical place where technology and the physical space could meet as one. This, surely, would be utopia. I believe in a world where no user is ignored and everyone has equal voice! I believe that users should be the drivers and decide how they want to shop. I believe in a world where digital and physical spaces live in unity &amp;ndash; without robots.

	That sounded a little too political. Ok, I got carried away. Sorry.

	Back to reality. Consider walking into the same retailer. Your smartphone has an app that works seamlessly with the store. (We&amp;rsquo;ve talked a bit about this in our past posts on contextual design and gesture based content sharing.) Upon entering, you&amp;rsquo;re prompted to tell the store why you&amp;rsquo;re there: new shoes, new jacket, something else entirely, or just browsing. You tap &amp;ldquo;new shoes&amp;rdquo; and the store &#64257;nds your shoe size, purchase history, and mileage from the log within the app. You&amp;rsquo;re asked to meet in a speci&#64257;c area, where the salesperson you worked with last will meet you with a few options (including the new version of your last shoe) based on his or her knowledge. You try them on, test them out, make a decision, and purchase from your phone. No robots.,. just a streamlined experience.

	The hesitation to integrate technology into retail can often be due to the broad (and often incorrect) assumptions people make. In my experience, people are opposed to more technology in physical spaces because they fear being overwhelmed by an unfamiliar environment.

	To create the best user experience for a shopper, stores need to recognize the wide array of shoppers and their individual needs, expectations, and paths. Moving an entire population into a purely digital environment doesn&amp;rsquo;t work. Empathizing with users across the board is the baseline for developing a positive user experience.

	Truly understanding users allows us to create solutions that don&amp;rsquo;t meet the user where they are, but actually where they want to be. The difference between recognizing and developing for where a user is and taking into consideration where the user actually wants to be is the difference between an expected experience and a mind&#45;blowing one.

	Its actually quite simple: get to know your users. Ask questions that don&amp;rsquo;t evaluate what they think about you now, but what they&amp;rsquo;d like to see differently. Customer satisfaction is not a measure of holistic user experience &amp;ndash; it&amp;rsquo;s a rating of one experience within a framework of often, leading questions constructed to capture how they can sell you more stuff in the future. A positive rating may not re&#64258;ect all that the shopper&amp;rsquo;s experience could have been.

	Individuals are given the ability to set up their email home pages and social media platforms uniquely. Shopping sites are no different, and according to John Deighton of the Harvard Business Review, consumers between 24 and 35 years old conduct about 25% of their shopping online, a number he expects to grow. As this age group becomes more in&#64258;uential in local economies, online expectations are going to become vital for physical retailers to meet. What stores need to understand, however, is that this expectation is not holistic and leaders in retail will recognize and empathize with the variety of shoppers, and appreciate not only how they are shopping, but also how they want to shop.

	True digital integration isn&amp;rsquo;t about more robots; it&amp;rsquo;s about knowing when to use them. Bring them on.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/contextualdesign">contextualdesign</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/gestures">gestures</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/retail">retail</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ux">ux</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-04-01T13:08:45+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>UX for Enterprise: Part III</title>
		<dc:creator>John McRee</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/ux-for-enterprise-part-iii</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/ux-for-enterprise-part-iii</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			(Continued from previous blog posts&amp;mdash;UX for Enterprise: Part I &amp;amp; Part II)

	If bringing along business stakeholders for user research is important for persona creation, co&#45;creation exercises are an even more powerful set of tools to gain insight and to build buy&#45;in. Co creation isn&#39;t allowing the end user to design the product. Instead, it&#39;s really a facilitation exercise that allows them to articulate their needs, goals, and desires. Creating a user experience journey map based on user research is a worthwhile effort in itself. But It&#39;s possible to turn the user research into an activity that allows the users to essentially generate the journey map for the researcher through co&#45;creation. Not only does it allow for a lot more to be done in less time/smaller budget, but you end up with a more accurate map in the process.

	I&#39;m not going to go into a detailed description or explanation of how to run one of these exercises. I still run into pitfalls and snares with the process from time to time, and perhaps my next post will get into the tactics of co&#45;creating a journey map. But I find the exercise to be pretty amazing for clarifying business processes. Ever since I witnessed it in action, I have put it into place whenever the project requires it.

	This exercise can be time consuming, though it doesn&#39;t necessarily have to be. Ideally, you will need half of a day with your business stakeholders and SMEs if you are looking at redesigning a more complex process or series of processes that comprise a user experience. I&#39;ve been able to walk a couple of participants through the process with satisfactory results in an hour, but I don&#39;t recommend this approach unless it&#39;s absolutely necessary and definitely not until you have gotten a couple under your belt.

	At the end of the exercise you will have a journeyman that everyone has participated in creating. If you are defining the current state journey, it&#39;s incredible to see how often the resulting map leads to the identification of a step or two in the current business process that can be eliminated almost immediately because it is redundant or otherwise unnecessary. Future state journey maps help everyone communicate what their vision is for the designed experience. Assumptions are made clear and pet projects/notions can begin being dismantled (or supported) immediately.

	Back to the original story&amp;hellip;

	Through the co&#45;creation of journey maps, stakeholders finally saw the screwed up processes they had intuited for so long. All of their assumptions were made visible. Eventually, word spread about the process itself and people within the organization were already imagining other potential uses for the exercise. In a simple visual language they could now point to and show people holding the levers of change exactly where the process could be improved.

	The practical and strategic application of UX as a practice had been shown to provide real ROI. The UX team moved beyond being graphic designers in the eyes of their coworkers. UX itself had moved from a concept like &quot;We should be more UX focused as an organization&quot; via a tangible example that demonstrated what UX actually means. Improvement of processes had even demonstrated how UX tools can be applied to broader CX challenges.

	UX for enterprise is about incremental wins that lead to cultural change. Having a vision for the end goal while being open to a change of direction is necessary to navigate any corporate landscape. The practice of UX can actually facilitate this.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/design">design</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/enterprise">enterprise</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/User+Experience">User Experience</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ux">ux</a>
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		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-03-26T15:41:47+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>A Clean Room</title>
		<dc:creator>Darron Schall</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/a-clean-room</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/a-clean-room</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			As Software Architects, we&amp;rsquo;re sticklers when it comes to code quality and organization. Where does this code belong? How does it communicate with the rest of this system? Can we reduce the algorithm&amp;rsquo;s responsibility and introduce collaborators? Is this the best name for this particular function? Is this piece of code really doing what it claims to be doing?

	We build large and seemingly complex systems by reducing large and seemingly complex problems into a series of smaller, more easily solvable problems. We weave together these simple, well&#45;defined, well&#45;tested individual small problem solutions in just the right way to produce a beautifully functioning, large and seemingly complex piece of working software.

	This does not happen by accident. It requires careful thought, planning, and relentless editing.

	Metaphor time.

	There&amp;rsquo;s no way for me to say this other than just come right out and admit it. I was a messy&#45;haired teenager and my bedroom was even worse than my hair. My organizational system was the time&#45;honored pile system: a pile on the floor for this... a pile on the floor, or the desk, for that other thing...

	My mom would ask me, repeatedly, to clean everything up and put things away where they belonged. My response was always the same. &amp;ldquo;I know where everything is, there is nothing to clean up!&amp;rdquo;

	I think programming is a lot like this.

	The original code author probably has a general idea of where the main functionality resides and how it all fits together. Maybe this general idea is all in their head, or maybe it&amp;rsquo;s written down somewhere in some old Word document that hasn&amp;rsquo;t been updated since 2002...

	What if the code needs to be modified and the original author is no longer available? What if a co&#45;worker needs to add a new feature, or, worse, fix an obscure bug? This is not an unusual situation. Code is often maintained by someone other than the person who originally wrote it.

	We&amp;rsquo;ve drifted from the metaphor, let&amp;rsquo;s get back to it.

	What happened when my mom needed to find something in my room? She&amp;rsquo;d end up spending a lot of time going through every single one of my piles, eventually throwing everything into an uber&#45;pile in the middle of the floor. Maybe she found what she was looking for. Probably not. The room was undoubtedly even messier than before and the only way to fix would be to take everything out and bring it all back in, slowly, one piece at a time.

	This is the importance of software architecture.

	I think, at the heart of it, software architecture can be boiled down to a simple basic concept: clean your room.

	Mom was right.

	As a teenager, it&amp;rsquo;s was one thing for me to personally know what could be found in the piles in my room (and, full disclosure, I only vaguely knew what might be found in only some of those piles... though I claimed otherwise). It&amp;rsquo;s another thing entirely for someone with little experience with my particular room to know where things might be.

	I&amp;rsquo;ve since grown up, and experience has taught me the value that being organized has. Certainly for me, but more importantly, for the people around me.

	I want to be organized. I don&amp;rsquo;t want to leave you with a mess. I want you to see what I&amp;rsquo;ve produced and instinctively know your way around.

	I want you to be so extremely delighted with my work that you want to work with me again.

	It&amp;rsquo;s no coincidence that Universal Mind has a lot of repeat customers.

	We take pride in removing clutter. We put things away. We make sure clothes go in the dresser or the closet. We make ours bed and we keep the corners tight.

	We do this because it helps down the line. We put in a little more effort today because we know it makes for a better tomorrow. It&amp;rsquo;s good for us, but it&amp;rsquo;s great for you.

	Who doesn&amp;rsquo;t love walking into a clean room knowing that things are put away right where they belong?

	We eliminate technical debt. We use world&#45;class tools that help us continually refactor. We&amp;rsquo;re not afraid to try putting something in the closet, and if it doesn&amp;rsquo;t work, we admit our mistake and move it to the dresser. We create, then we edit.

	We strive to continually improve the overall state of our room. We&amp;rsquo;re perfectionists, but we&amp;rsquo;re also realists. We understand that it&amp;rsquo;s not possible to stop dust from collecting...

	&amp;hellip; but that pair of jeans in the middle of the room? That&amp;rsquo;s a code review away from being put in its proper place. I won&amp;rsquo;t stand for a messy room.

	Not anymore.
			<hr />
			
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-03-12T16:41:09+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>We Mostly Work from Home. Mostly.</title>
		<dc:creator>Richard Gunther</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/mostly-work-from-home-mostly</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/mostly-work-from-home-mostly</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Written by: Richard Gunther &amp;amp; Andy Powell

	There has been a lot of talk in the industry these past few weeks about the challenges and benefits of managing resources who work from home. In this decade it&amp;rsquo;s surprising to hear of tech companies requiring co&#45;location by decree as Yahoo! just did. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, via her HR department, recently announced that they are discontinuing their telework policy. The reasoning is that they want to take a page from Google&amp;rsquo;s book in saying that face&#45;to&#45;face interaction spurs better collaboration.

	Despite some hesitancy in the public sector, we&amp;rsquo;ve seen many large organizations evolve remote working options from flexible working hours to hoteling to teleworking to what we often see today: employees&amp;rsquo; primary office space often being at home. With the evolution of economical video and teleconferencing solutions, face&#45;to&#45;face collaboration no longer requires co&#45;location.

	At Universal Mind, we embrace, encourage, and often expect employees to be working from home. Our corporate structure and clients&amp;rsquo; geographic diversity depend on it. When we need to collaborate side&#45;by&#45;side, a primary tenant of Mayer&amp;rsquo;s policy shift, we use tools like Skype, Join.me and Google Talk to collaborate. We find ways to leverage collaboration technologies while not comprising client confidentiality and security.

	Contemporary development methodologies enable remote working. Agile practices put the onus of reporting and demonstrating progress on the contributing team members. This allows delivery managers, who are coordinating activities, to monitor and gauge planned and measured progress by seeing actual work product as it evolves. It&#39;s now about managing the work, not the workers.&amp;nbsp;For remote work to...work, you need to have the confidence and trust in place to know that you can depend on the workers and focus instead on managing the work they&amp;rsquo;re undertaking&amp;mdash;one of our core company values is that we thrive on responsible freedom.

	At the same time, we recognize that not all activities lend themselves well to solitary conditions. We don&amp;rsquo;t all work from home all the time. Universal Mind has offices in locations around the globe, and clearly someone shows up in these offices or we wouldn&amp;rsquo;t maintain them. We believe that in&#45;person collaboration is quite valuable for brainstorming and ideation. It&amp;rsquo;s critical for highly visual and interactive activities like process definition and strategy mapping. In fact, our UX studio may be the most highly&#45;used office space because it fosters creative collaboration and sharing on and between project teams.

	But our success and experience with remote work don&amp;rsquo;t necessarily translate to everyone. From different companies grow different cultures, and it may be that what works for our team doesn&amp;rsquo;t work for others. Working remotely or from home requires a certain level of focus, motivation, and maturity, and honing that can take time and experience. That&amp;rsquo;s not something everyone can bring to the table. But before enforcing a policy of co&#45;location, I&amp;rsquo;d ask these questions: Why do your employees need to be co&#45;located? Is it a performance problem, a technology problem, or a corporate culture problem? And if you answer &amp;ldquo;yes&amp;rdquo; to any of those questions, relocating your employees to a central location may still not be the right solution.

	In&#45;person collaboration is key for certain project activities, but we don&amp;rsquo;t believe it&amp;rsquo;s a necessary ingredient for everyone&amp;rsquo;s success. As you form your team to address this challenge or solve that problem, evaluate your resources&amp;rsquo; abilities and motivations&amp;mdash;then determine whether it&amp;rsquo;s necessary to work face&#45;to&#45;face each day to accomplish your objectives.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/collaboration">collaboration</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/corporate+values">corporate values</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/telecommuting">telecommuting</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/telework">telework</a>
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		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-03-07T18:27:05+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Beautiful Gestures</title>
		<dc:creator>Nate De Jager</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/beautiful-gestures</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/beautiful-gestures</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			The French saying, &#39;beau geste&#39; or beautiful gesture, is used to describe an action that is noble but may result in unintended consequences. This term could aptly describe a few of the user interfaces we encounter day to day. These interfaces may look beautiful, but in action result in a less than perfect experience.

	As technology changes, the ways we interact with it change as well. With the introduction of motion sensing devices, such as Thalmic Lab&#39;s Myo, the Leap Motion, and Microsoft&#39;s Kinect for Windows, our interfaces are no longer tied to flat two&#45;dimensional planes. Instead, we&amp;rsquo;re free to start using natural gestures in three&#45;dimensional space. Granted, most of these gestures are used to interact with 2 dimensional objects, so motions tend to mirror the taps, drags, and pinches we already use on touch&#45;based devices.

	As gesture controls evolve, it&amp;rsquo;s not difficult to imagine gestures eventually becoming more abstract and disconnected from what we see represented onscreen. Much like keyboard combinations that are used to shortcut UI interactions, emblematic gestures will likely be adopted to symbolize a combination of motions.

	This gives us an incredible opportunity to design new types of experiences. However, if we ignore the context in which these gestures are used we can create room for unintended consequences.

	Gesture&#45;based interfaces take advantage of the fact that, as humans, we use gestures naturally. It&amp;rsquo;s interesting that the use of gestures tends to be universal. There isn&amp;rsquo;t a community on earth that doesn&amp;rsquo;t use them in some form or another in order to communicate.

	As the technology improves and becomes ubiquitous, it&amp;rsquo;s natural to assume that new interface conventions will eventually be defined. Well meaning designers and developers may wish to tap into the rich set of gestures we use every day in order to make their interfaces feel familiar and easy to use. While some simple gestures, like smiling, may be universally understood, we need to be careful not to mistakenly think of all gestures as shared.

	Most gestures are tied directly to language. This makes sense when you consider that gestures and speech are both processed by the same areas of the brain (Broca&#39;s and Wernicke&#39;s areas). This is why American Sign Language (ASL), the third most spoken language in the United States, is not spoken globally.

	Culture influences gestures as well. An okay, or thumbs&#45;up, hand signal make indicate all is well to an American, but they may communicate something completely different a person of another culture. Similarly, while most of us may understand a head nod to mean &amp;lsquo;yes&amp;rsquo; someone from Bulgaria may interpret the same nod as meaning &amp;lsquo;no&amp;rsquo;.

	Clearly then, interfaces shouldn&amp;rsquo;t rely heavily on gestures common to a particular language group, or culture. Gestures that feel familiar and natural to one group of users may feel unintuitive or even offensive to another.

	It is possible to bridge the gap between users by relying on the same techniques we currently use in visual interfaces to localize content. Sets of recognized gestures could be defined for supported languages and regions. For example, an interface could expect users in North America to nod their head up and down on the sagittal plane to communicate yes, while it anticipates that users in South Asia may provide the same answer by tilting their heads side to side along the coronal plane.

	A completely different solution might be to codify new auxiliary languages with small, context&#45;driven sets of signals. A good example can be seen in the set of gestures used by air marshallers to visually communicate instructions to pilots sitting on the tarmac. Creating sets of gestures would require a coordinated effort among designers, but would encourage an improved experience for the majority of users.

	New motion&#45;based technology gives us the potential to develop beautiful, rich experiences for our users. However, what we create with this technology shouldn&#39;t carry with it unintended consequences. As interfaces evolve let us strive to create beautiful experiences for all.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/gesture+controls">gesture controls</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/interface+trends">interface trends</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/motion+input">motion input</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ux">ux</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-02-28T19:18:16+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>CX Journey Maps: The Holistic Atlas</title>
		<dc:creator>Dan Bentz</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-journey-maps-the-holistic-atlas</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-journey-maps-the-holistic-atlas</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Creating an Atlas Ecosystem that captures all your Journey Maps

	So, let&amp;rsquo;s say you&amp;rsquo;ve done a number of customer journey maps at this point. Each one documents something you wanted to know about a customer segment and you are taking it to heart, using it effectively in the workplace by sharing the results and having employees rally around them. Then, in the midst of a hallway conversation, some questions arise: &amp;ldquo;What do we do with all these maps? And how many do we have left?&amp;rdquo;

	Good questions.

	The maps aren&amp;rsquo;t really made to stand alone. They work best as part of a larger, holistic ecosystem whose aim should be to capture the experiences your customers and potential customers run into as they engage with the elements within and surrounding your company. When all these maps are put together, we call this an atlas.

	Just as a road atlas contains many maps showing how a person can journey from one location to another, the CX Journey Atlas contains customer journey maps that reflect the total experiences across your company. And, just like a road atlas, things change. Roads are built, cities expand, bridges are created, and forests are grown or cleared; for customers, new channels are built, companies expand, devices are created, and offerings are grown or cleared.

	What an atlas really gives you is vision, the ability to see the totality of all the maps involved in the ecosystem. Some may be known well, some, completely unknown and untraveled. But at least you have an idea of how many there are and how they potentially tie together (like seeing what states sit beside each other).

	Take the time to create an atlas of your entire CX ecosystem. Make plans to create maps for every segment and see how they all tie together. In the short run, the atlas will give you a vision for everyone to rally around; in the long run, the atlas will give you a reality for everyone to execute against.

	(Image via Mjaki)
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/customer+journey+maps">customer journey maps</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/cx">cx</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/journeymaps">journeymaps</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-02-21T15:35:23+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Responsive Web Design for The Enterprise</title>
		<dc:creator>Francisco Inchauste</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/responsive-web-design-for-the-enterprise</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/responsive-web-design-for-the-enterprise</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Unless you&amp;rsquo;ve been chained to a cubicle wall or have been perpetually stuck in endless meetings the last year, you&amp;rsquo;ve probably read about the explosion in Internet&#45;enabled mobile devices. You might have even seen some statistics, like how 85% of people expect the experience on their device/smartphone to be at least as good as, or better than, the experience on their desktop/laptop computer.

	If you work for an enterprise&#45;level company and haven&amp;rsquo;t thought about Responsive Web Design, read on.

	If you&amp;rsquo;ve already started thinking about it, you know the immense challenges ahead &amp;mdash; this is exactly where most large companies find themselves right now.

	What Responsive Web Design Means for Enterprises

	As you begin to look into what it means to make a website responsive, you&amp;rsquo;ll find there&amp;rsquo;s a lot of talk around how to transition your current site and content so it can be more flexible. A lot of times, this discussion goes into the techniques on how to make a site &quot;mobile ready/friendly.&quot;

	Note the terms transition and technique.

	When you think of Responsive Web Design (RWD for short) through those two terms, they make it seem like a trivial ordeal: Just pick a responsive web design technique, redevelop your CMS (or get a new one), and make it live. Transition complete.

	Well, not so fast.

	When it comes to large enterprise websites, instead of technique, we need to think in terms of strategy.

	When we&amp;rsquo;re looking at transition, we need to think in terms of evolution.

	For the enterprise, Responsive Web Design will not be an instant, easy peasy, &quot;now&#45;our&#45;website&#45;works&#45;on&#45;the&#45;6,500&#45;(and&#45;counting)&#45;different&#45;types&#45;of&#45;mobile&#45;devices&quot; kind of ordeal.

	Why is that?

	It&amp;rsquo;s because there are several layers of issues we&amp;rsquo;re looking at:

	
		A massive hierarchy of web content
	
		Deep levels of site navigation
	
		Large amounts of content stored in scary, legacy systems like SharePoint
	
		Corporate&#45;wide content structure/processes that don&amp;rsquo;t fit the multi&#45;device present


	We can&amp;rsquo;t begin to solve all these issues within this article, but we can at least look at a few things you should start considering today.

	Responsive Web Design is a Goal

	Let&amp;rsquo;s be honest here: We&amp;rsquo;re just figuring things out with Responsive Web Design to be able to deem exactly what the rules of engagement are.

	We don&amp;rsquo;t know which devices are here to stay, let alone the ones that are coming out.

	Many of the RWD techniques and approaches are just getting their footing. Sure, new techniques and gadgets matter, but not as much as what real people actually find useful and are making part of their lives. Some of the techniques will eventually become standards &amp;mdash; so let the nerds at places like Universal Mind worry about that.

	Trying to jump right into a Responsive Web Design project is hard, because where do you start?

	You&amp;rsquo;re going to find two things in nearly every article or presentation offering advice about RWD: shocking statistics and dogmatic best practices. Things like &quot;More people in the world have a mobile device than have running water!&quot; help to convince you that mobile is really important. (Even more than the modern day convenience of a hot shower.)

	Yes, we get it&amp;hellip; Mobile is big thing. But if your current site isn&amp;rsquo;t mobile&#45;ready/friendly by tomorrow, the world won&amp;rsquo;t really end, will it?

	Having a mobile&#45;ready/friendly site is important, but make sure you understand your customers and their needs before reacting to generalized statistics and practices that aren&amp;rsquo;t based on your situation. Most of the case studies I&amp;rsquo;ve seen, for example, are for smaller business sites that have the luxury of starting mobile first, or sites that have less than 30 pages of content. These folks can create very elegant solutions and have the flexibility to do so.

	On the opposite end, there aren&amp;rsquo;t many great large business sites that reflect a comprehensive responsive implementation. Many larger sites create a responsive front&#45;end and then within a 2&#45;3 layers of hierarchy, they drop the user into the site&amp;rsquo;s old desktop/laptop&#45;optimized web pages.

	In short, large business sites seem to be approaching mobile&#45;readiness in phases.

	We typically find a reactionary decision from corporations to go for a quick win to meet some made&#45;up initiatives or deadlines. But, remember, it&amp;rsquo;s a strategy and an evolution.

	To reach the responsive goal you&amp;rsquo;ll need to set up a solid foundation. It will take guidelines, new processes, and a shift in thinking in how you build and maintain your website.

	The key is to prepare your most important asset &amp;mdash; your content &amp;mdash; for this multi&#45;device world.

	&quot;Get your content ready to go anywhere because it&amp;rsquo;s going to go everywhere.&quot; &#45; Brad Frost

	Responsive is All About Content, Content, Content

	Content is the lifeblood of your website. (This point could be made into an entire book &amp;mdash; and it has been.)

	A beautiful new site design has no purpose without great content. A user has no reason to visit your site without its content.

	With the desktop&#45;focused website design era, there wasn&amp;rsquo;t much of a need for a content diet. Content was stuffed into sites because we had a big screen to fill and we could download as much content as we wanted. Now we&amp;rsquo;re living with the consequences of our old willy&#45;nilly content creation processes.

	The kneejerk reaction is to show only a partial site/content on a mobile device because the screen is smaller and bandwidth assumed to always be limited.

	That is completely wrong.

	&quot;Mobile is not lite. Mobile is not less.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&#45; Josh Clark

	Don&amp;rsquo;t buy into the myth that users on a device only want part of the information. It&amp;rsquo;s simply not true.

	Users will access your content on both mobile devices and desktops; they won&amp;rsquo;t always be &quot;snacking&quot; on content on&#45;the&#45;go.

	They might be sitting in a waiting room, or even in a restroom (you know you&amp;rsquo;re guilty of this). They will start shopping on a mobile device and end the transaction on a laptop or desktop. So if you&amp;rsquo;re only giving them part of the experience, you&amp;rsquo;ll get zero of the business.

	As a company in this situation, you are already coming at this problem backwards, taking content from large containers and trying to pour it into a thousand smaller ones.

	Try to move your thinking towards what types of content are truly meaningful, and how to make every sentence and image count. Spend time organizing and prioritizing your content. This is where you will make your move to responsive much easier.

	A new website design, or just squishing and stacking current content in a responsive layout, only puts a temporary (and really awful) bandage over the real issue: Your content.

	&quot;If a piece of text or imagery is good enough in a mobile short format, if it communicates strongly and concisely what we need, why do we need more on a desktop?&quot;&amp;nbsp;&#45; Marek Wolski

	Conclusion

	Your company didn&amp;rsquo;t arrive in this current situation overnight. Nor did your competitors.

	Many legacy CMSs and/or ecommerce systems are tapping into even older, legacy systems that companies avoided messing with due to cost when they moved to their current system. And most of these current systems that your content is in is pretty much duct&#45;taped together.

	It&amp;rsquo;s time to break the cycle. Take this as an opportunity to rethink your website development processes. Approach the challenge in bite&#45;sized chunks based on your needs and that of your customers.

	Start focusing on your content right away. It will make things much easier as you form a longer&#45;term strategy and prepare your company for the &quot;internet of things.&quot;

	(This blog post was originally published as an article in Design Instruct on February 8, 2013)
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/responsive">responsive</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/rwd">rwd</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ux">ux</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-02-15T16:24:06+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Designing The Contextual Interface</title>
		<dc:creator>Joe Johnston</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/designing-the-contextual-interface</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/designing-the-contextual-interface</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Until recently, advertisers have&amp;nbsp;understood one thing better than web&amp;nbsp;and app designers: context. Advertisers&amp;nbsp;have had to be context&#45;sensitive to when and how&amp;nbsp;they present ads. They have people that specialise&amp;nbsp;in determining when and where their content&amp;nbsp;should be shown, because without any context, an&amp;nbsp;ad is worthless: showing a commercial for a gas/oil company during a televised documentary on an&amp;nbsp;oil spill, or a bacon ad placed within a story about&amp;nbsp;PETA are examples of advertising dollars wasted.

	Within our real&#45;time connected, internet&amp;nbsp;everywhere, multiscreen world, we are discovering&amp;nbsp;that context matters more than ever. No longer are&amp;nbsp;we tethered to a beige plastic tower on a desk. We&amp;nbsp;tell the internet when and where we want to access&amp;nbsp;it. Surprisingly, the builders of the web are only&amp;nbsp;recently discovering that one&#45;size doesn&amp;rsquo;t fit all. Our&amp;nbsp;first step has been dealing with screen sizes and&amp;nbsp;being able to pour content into the many vessels&amp;nbsp;available. Those approaches come in the form of two&amp;nbsp;things you just might have heard something about:&amp;nbsp;responsive and adaptive web design.

	So, what is contextual design (also known as&amp;nbsp;contextual user interface) when it comes to apps&amp;nbsp;and websites? Think geolocation, time&#45;based,&amp;nbsp;situation&#45;based design. It&amp;rsquo;s delivering the right kind&amp;nbsp;of interface or data, when the user needs it. It&amp;rsquo;s&amp;nbsp;delivering something without forcing the user to&amp;nbsp;ask. At its best, contextual design is invisible to the&amp;nbsp;user because the interface satisfies their needs at the&amp;nbsp;moment, location, and situation that they need it.

	Some practical examples:

	Audio

	We often forget that audio is a huge contextual&amp;nbsp;component we should be taking advantage of. For&amp;nbsp;example, the airline industry uses a wide array of&amp;nbsp;audio cues to notify the crew. You know, those little&amp;nbsp;ding tones that sound like Morse code? If your smartdevices&amp;nbsp;could listen for those sounds, then it could&amp;nbsp;prompt the device to turn off or go into flight mode.&amp;nbsp;It certainly would solve some sticky problems for&amp;nbsp;our celebrity friends.

	In the living room

	The next digital space to be conquered is the living&amp;nbsp;room. Of the companies currently working to capture&amp;nbsp;it, Intel is leading the way. It&amp;rsquo;s testing a prototype&amp;nbsp;remote that identifies who&amp;rsquo;s holding the remote and&amp;nbsp;can offer recommendations for TV shows based on&amp;nbsp;that information. Imagine a kid picking up the device&amp;nbsp;and discovering that they have learning shows or&amp;nbsp;cartoons available, and then their dad picks up the&amp;nbsp;same remote and he sees sports.

	Couple this with the rumoured iTV, and you&amp;nbsp;can just imagine the possibilities that lie ahead.&amp;nbsp;Apps and web content could be prompted on the&amp;nbsp;device by audio watermarking from TV shows,&amp;nbsp;movies, or even commercials.

	Location, location, location

	The Starbucks and Square partnership is one example&amp;nbsp;of businesses moving towards contextual design.&amp;nbsp;The New York Times states that eventually&amp;nbsp;customers will be able to order a grande&amp;nbsp;vanilla latte and charge it to their credit cards&amp;nbsp;just by saying their names: simple yet exciting.&amp;nbsp;Apple&amp;rsquo;s new Passbook app&amp;nbsp;gives third party companies the ability&amp;nbsp;to create tickets and store them in one location on a&amp;nbsp;user&amp;rsquo;s device. The great thing is that it automatically&amp;nbsp;attaches them to context. Take, for example, a movie&amp;nbsp;ticket. You enter the cinema around the start time of&amp;nbsp;the movie and instantly a notification is triggered,&amp;nbsp;upon which you&amp;rsquo;re presented with the ticket. No&amp;nbsp;more digging into the depths of your apps to find&amp;nbsp;something. It all happens in context on the device.

	

	Social

	Another example is the digital Facebook Likes coat&amp;nbsp;rack. C&amp;amp;A has debuted a high&#45;tech hanger that tallies&amp;nbsp;how many Facebook Likes an item of clothing on&amp;nbsp;its racks receives. Powered by the Brazilian retailer&amp;rsquo;s&amp;nbsp;website, the device features a built&#45;in digital display&amp;nbsp;that gauges a garment&amp;rsquo;s popularity &amp;ndash; or lack thereof.

	

	Calendar

	Let&amp;rsquo;s imagine a person has accepted the privacy&amp;nbsp;acknowledgement of the content on their calendar,&amp;nbsp;so you can now leverage it. Their calendar notes that&amp;nbsp;they have a birthday event to attend tomorrow. Upon&amp;nbsp;walking into a store to purchase a gift, the user&amp;rsquo;s&amp;nbsp;mobile device can now serve up a discount or make&amp;nbsp;suggestions based on the understanding of having&amp;nbsp;a birthday event to attend according to the calendar.

	Devices Big and Small

	Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) will enable the&amp;nbsp;internet to support many more devices by greatly&amp;nbsp;increasing the number of possible addresses. In&amp;nbsp;essence, everything will be connected and radiate&amp;nbsp;information. Think not only every digital device, but&amp;nbsp;every single physical object. Imagine a beer glass&amp;nbsp;having the ability to detect the type of beer you&amp;rsquo;re&amp;nbsp;drinking and when it&amp;rsquo;s nearly empty, with a tap on&amp;nbsp;the touch screen, another beer could be delivered.&amp;nbsp;These experiences might sound extreme or distant &amp;ndash;&amp;nbsp;but the reality is that they&amp;rsquo;re not that far off.

	A &amp;lsquo;just right&amp;rsquo; experience

	With contextual design comes the Goldilocks&amp;nbsp;principle: You have to&amp;nbsp;get things just right, or it could have consequences.&amp;nbsp;Removing content from an interface robs the user of&amp;nbsp;that information &amp;ndash; there had better be a great reason&amp;nbsp;for not showing something. If a user is near one of&amp;nbsp;your offices and trying to find directions, pushing&amp;nbsp;the nearest location to the top is a great example of&amp;nbsp;contextual design. Removing all other locations from&amp;nbsp;the list, and only showing the nearest, is just plain&amp;nbsp;bad design, because they might want to actually see&amp;nbsp;the other locations, too.

	There are also common pitfalls that we should&amp;nbsp;avoid buying into when designing these experiences.&amp;nbsp;Just because it is mobile doesn&amp;rsquo;t mean the download&amp;nbsp;speeds are low. Context doesn&amp;rsquo;t always indicate&amp;nbsp;intent. &amp;lsquo;Big Mother&amp;rsquo;&amp;nbsp;doesn&amp;rsquo;t always mean it&amp;rsquo;s Big Brother

	Contextual design works within the nuances of&amp;nbsp;an experience, rather than pushing the interface to&amp;nbsp;extreme changes or rules. It&amp;rsquo;s important to allow for&amp;nbsp;flexibility. In iOS6 Apple has added a &amp;lsquo;do not disturb&amp;rsquo;&amp;nbsp;setting for notifications&amp;nbsp;and phone calls. However, what if someone was&amp;nbsp;calling with an emergency while the setting was&amp;nbsp;on? The developers recognised this possibility, and&amp;nbsp;if someone calls several times in a row the call is&amp;nbsp;allowed through.

	

	Anytime and everywhere

	How we interact with devices is changing and the&amp;nbsp;context is at the forefront of that change. Companies&amp;nbsp;such as Apple have filed numerous patents that look&amp;nbsp;at context. As chips&amp;nbsp;become cheaper and smaller, we&amp;rsquo;ll continue to see&amp;nbsp;a wave of connected devices everywhere that read&amp;nbsp;these inputs and change based on context.

	It&amp;rsquo;s a discipline that approaches product design&amp;nbsp;from a deep, researched understanding of your&amp;nbsp;users. The key to successful contextual design is&amp;nbsp;not to remove content based on context; but to&amp;nbsp;progressively enhance it &amp;ndash; just as RWD does. Take&amp;nbsp;in all the data acquired from researching your users&amp;nbsp;and serve up the best content based on the results.&amp;nbsp;Just as we try to build future&#45;friendly websites and&amp;nbsp;applications that will seamlessly fill the screens of&amp;nbsp;the &amp;lsquo;zombie apocalypse of devices&amp;rsquo;, we will also need to create content&amp;nbsp;that adapts to our users&amp;rsquo; contextual needs.

	(This blog post was originally published as an article in the January issue of .net Magazine)
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/context">context</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/contextual+design">contextual design</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/design">design</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ux">ux</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-02-05T16:39:04+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Who are you to your customers?</title>
		<dc:creator>Lori Kirkland</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/who-are-you-to-your-customers</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/who-are-you-to-your-customers</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			How understanding your customer&amp;rsquo;s goals can increase the chance of hitting your business goals.

	Do you know how your customers see you? How do they talk about you when other colleagues ask about your business? Surprisingly, many companies do not have an accurate understanding of their customer&amp;rsquo;s point of view of their business. In order to create a good customer experience, a business needs to understand what motivates their customers and how the business&amp;rsquo; products or services fit into their customers overall goals.

	When asked about their customers, most companies will respond with answers that describe how their ideal customer would use specific features, functions, or services of the business. Working with a cloud service provider, I ran into this exact situation. Having asked the cloud service provider about the most important goals of their customers, we received answers like: to manage their bandwidth levels, to understand their consumption levels and move them up and down when needed, to see their usage reports easily, etc.

	These responses referenced the specific key features that the cloud company needs to provide for its customers and are included in their software solution.

	After asking the customers directly about their goals, it was clear that their answers had nothing to do with the software itself. Instead, they gave responses like: being able to rely on XX Company that my site will never go down, being able to alert my bosses and teammates as soon as possible if something happens, etc.

	In this example, it is obvious that there is disconnect between the cloud service provider, their customer, and each of their perceptions of provided value. It is important for businesses to spot these differences and to take the initiative to truly understand their customers. By doing so &amp;mdash; via contextual research or one&#45;on&#45;one interviews &amp;mdash; businesses better support the goals of their customers.

	By understanding what value the business brings to its customers, the business can then tailor its messaging and approach to each customer. The business is able to highlight the features and functions they provide, but should do so in context to fulfilling the goals of the users. I am not recommending scrapping your business goals and doing exactly what the customers want, rather, examine the similarities and differences and define goals that serve both parties to accelerate their own goals.

	Sounds simple right? Riggghhht. It&amp;rsquo;s normal for companies to struggle with changing their perspective... and that&#39;s okay. The below example highlights the path a Fortune 500 telecommunications company took to revise their own business goals that would better serve their customers:

	
		The initial goals of the business:
		
			
				Increase sales
			
				Reduce the number of customer calls into call center
			
				Promote and increase the usage of feature X
		
	
	
		After user research, the top goals of customers were recorded:
		
			
				Have a clear path to quickly understand when problems are occurring &amp;mdash; when and where
			
				Have the ability to quickly alert the necessary people quickly of the problem and estimation of fix time
			
				Be able to easily decipher billing information and get questions resolved quickly
		
	
	
		To align with the customer goals, the business should change their business goals to reflect the needs of the customers:
		
			
				Increase sales by improving customer referral numbers. Help customer to quickly resolve issues when they arise. (Research had shown that most customers made their decision on which provider to use based on referrals from other colleagues in the industry.)
			
				Reduce the number of customer service calls by creating ways for administrators to alert multiple people easily of problems and provide estimation times.
			
				Promote and increase usage of Feature X by teaching sales reps and customers how to use it to better understand account billing.
		
	


	Most importantly, remember that both the business and its customers have specific KPI&amp;rsquo;s or goals they are trying to accomplish. By merging those goals into joint goals, both the business and customer are working toward a common goal that will lead to greater success for both.

	Steps to take for aligning business goals with customer&amp;rsquo;s goals:

	
		Change the conversation to the point of view of the customer.
	
		To increase loyalty and connection to your company, your business goals should be directly related to a customer&amp;rsquo;s experience.
	
		Don&amp;rsquo;t be afraid to tie business goals to solve specific customer needs. If your biz goal is to increase revenue by 5%, don&amp;rsquo;t be afraid to tie it specifically to a customer&amp;rsquo;s current complaint. i.e. Increase revenue by 5% by improving the online help section of the website or providing more instructions/training with each implementation, or arming the sales team with iPad apps that let them take orders from the field, or Removing the number of steps it takes a customer to get a realistic quote or decrease the turnaround time of quotes, etc.


	Taking incremental steps to understand the goals of customers and then merging them with business goals can drastically increase the ability of the business to improve the experience and relationship with customers. By defining goals that will improve the experience and talking in those terms to customers, businesses have the opportunity to become true partners with their customers and work toward a common goal. Working together can help insure a much larger ROI for the business.

	(This blog post was originally published as an article in SoDA on January 17, 2013)
			<hr />
			
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-01-24T14:58:25+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Customer Experience Journey Maps: Strings and Thumbtacks</title>
		<dc:creator>Dan Bentz</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-journey-maps-strings-and-thumbtacks</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-journey-maps-strings-and-thumbtacks</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Linking strategic experiences together across journey maps

	In the previous post, we tossed on the table the concept of strategic experiences, which are touchpoints that identify the experiences crucial to the successful execution of your experience ecosystem. These are the experiences that have to happen to build a successful strategy for your customer and are typically identified through multiple journey maps.&amp;nbsp;It can&amp;rsquo;t be understated how vital these experiences are to your customers, thus, important to you. Failing to recognize their importance or just trying to shove them into an organizational structure not designed to act on them, can literally cause a loss of business and employees.

	These strategic experiences are not made to stand alone, however; they work best within the organization when they are tied together with other experiences &#45;&#45; both strategic and normal &#45;&#45; within the CX ecosystem. We call this linking and its one of the driving forces in seeing how one activity can affect another activity giving you a more holistic perspective. The more links that tie to a certain activity, the more strategically critical that experience is in your ecosystem. Tying them together is like one of those old&#45;school bulletin boards you may have seen that have thumbtacks identifying something and string to tie certain tacks together. Pretty basic, but the results can be outstanding.

	Same for this activity.

	When you take the time to link the experiences together and identify the associated action activities, you will then begin to see redundancies, overloads, and major issues present in your organization. You&amp;rsquo;ll also see formal and informal connections that reflect how the real work gets done inside the company, not just the processes that try to dictate it. From this initial journey work, companies have launched Six Sigma projects and Balanced Scorecard initiatives.

	Granted, it takes some work, I&amp;rsquo;ve never seen an organization that was sorry they did this. The results can immediately be used to form the basis of an experience organization and will be a focal point for your customer experience vision.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/customer+experience">customer experience</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/customer+journey+maps">customer journey maps</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/cx">cx</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/strategic+experiences">strategic experiences</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-01-07T14:41:32+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>5 Trends That Will Define Design in 2013</title>
		<dc:creator>Erik Loehfelm</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/5-trends-that-will-define-design-in-2013</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/5-trends-that-will-define-design-in-2013</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			2013 is going to be an exciting year for designers. We&amp;rsquo;ll be involved in the tight personalization of services across a connected web of content and devices. And we&amp;rsquo;ll be challenged to make several new experiences intuitive to users. Above all, the following five trends will have the most impact on what we do in the new year.

	Contextual Design
	Contextual Design will be the next &amp;ldquo;secret sauce&amp;rdquo; in digital marketing.

	For those of you new to the notion of &amp;nbsp;&amp;ldquo;contextual design&amp;rdquo;, imagine this scenario: You&amp;rsquo;re walking into BestBuy to shop for a new camera. You have your iPhone with you and location services are turned on. You&amp;rsquo;re phone &amp;ldquo;knows&amp;rdquo; you&amp;rsquo;re at Best Buy. You find a few cameras that seem like the perfect fit for your needs, but you&amp;rsquo;d like to see some reviews to be sure.

	So you ask Siri on your iPhone for information on the new Nikon you&amp;rsquo;re holding in your hand. She returns data in the form of public reviews, reviews from your trusted friends on Facebook, information served from Best Buy on accessories and product details, and pricing from BestBuy, Amazon, and a local camera shop. You browse the information and confirm that this is the camera for you.

	You could order the camera on Amazon because it&amp;rsquo;s five to ten percent less expensive than in the store, but because you are in Best Buy, and have accessed the data served to you through Siri from Best Buy, Best Buy decides to sweeten the deal buy sending you a &amp;ldquo;live&amp;rdquo; promotion in the form of a 15 percent discount on accessories for the camera if you purchase it from them while in the store today. Sold! You grab the gear, and make your purchase in store using your Best Buy Rewards app to apply the offer and collect your reward points.

	Possible? Absolutely! Everything mentioned in this scenario is absolutely doable with today&amp;rsquo;s technology, but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t been designed or executed yet. The opportunity to supply users with contextually relevant content on the go is huge! What you do for your customers requires you to understand them and cater to them&amp;hellip; which you should already be doing, right?

	The Internet of Things
	When we combine contextual design with the intelligent, web connected, stuff that exists around us, and we&amp;rsquo;ve got an extremely powerful source of data. Enter products like Twine, a simple, Internet&#45;connected sensor that can be easily programmed through the web to collect data and send messages.

	By using Twine to monitor a simple thing like the moisture level in your basement, you could be notified via text or email that your sump pump isn&amp;rsquo;t functioning properly. Combine this with a simple iPhone app and you could have an emergency preparedness system to protect your home while you&amp;rsquo;re away.

	The Nest&amp;nbsp; thermostat is a more developed example of this same concept. Capable of learning users&amp;rsquo; preferences,&amp;nbsp; Nest helps them control the temperature of their homes in a way that&amp;rsquo;s beautiful, simple, and powerful. By using Nest in their homes, consumers are already saving some serious money.

	As we open our lives to these new connected devices, the &amp;ldquo;Internet of things&amp;rdquo; relevant to each of us becomes more diverse. Data in our day&#45;to&#45;day functions as human beings is captured, recorded, and processed. How that data is leveraged and used is up to us as designers and technologists. There are wonderful opportunities for this information to enhance our lives if we aren&amp;rsquo;t intimidated by devices watching and learning about how we live.

	Responsive Web Design
	This is an obvious one, but it still merits mention. Responsive web techniques will move from experimental to mainstream in 2013. A mobile&#45;first approach with responsive web techniques will allow your consumers to access content in a contextually relevant way on their terms. For the enterprise, a responsive approach will allow for a more centralized management of content and help to mitigate desktop only or mobile only approaches to content delivery.

	In your responsive approach it&amp;rsquo;s important to consider a system that is based on content first. It&amp;rsquo;s easy to get caught up in the graphical solution of your designs prior to considering the contextual relevancy of the content you are designing for. Therefore, design your experiences from the inside out. Work out the relevant content only, for a mobile user, a tablet user, and a desktop user. Leverage a consistent grid&#45;system of your choice. Then, layer on the graphical solution. You&amp;rsquo;ll find that by taking this approach, you&amp;rsquo;ll have a flexible system that is serving content contextually important to your audience while still maintaining your brand experience.

	Second Screen Experiences
	Many have tried, but few have found great success with the second screen. The opportunity however, is too great to ignore. In 2013, the secrets of the second screen experience will be unlocked.

	Content distributers and advertisers are constantly looking to differentiate their products. The challenge for a second screen option is in the focus of the viewer. Simply having content that enhances the experience on the big screen is interesting but has proven a challenge.

	When watching a game on TV, I&amp;rsquo;m only interested in statistics during a break in the action. While watching a movie, I&amp;rsquo;m not interested in the depth of the character that I can look up on my iPad &amp;mdash; I&amp;rsquo;m watching the movie! So how do content providers introduce the extraordinary amount of supplemental content to people in a way that doesn&amp;rsquo;t interfere with the primary viewing experience? Universal Mind is working closely with some exceptional content providers on this very thing! Stay tuned this year to see some exciting headway in this space.

	A Return to Simplicity
	The shifts at the executive ranks in Apple this fall may have an interesting effect on the design community in 2013. Skeuomorphism has been the preferred flavor of user interface design for Apple and many others for some time now, but there has always been a disconnect between the simple elegance of the hardware and the stylized UI metaphors of the OS and software.

	With Jony Ive at the design helm on all things Apple (hardware and software), we&amp;rsquo;re likely see some shifts in the user interface appearance of the Mac OS, iOS, and Apple created applications. These shifts will drive a design trend towards Apple&amp;rsquo;s new UI design aesthetic &amp;mdash; just as they&amp;rsquo;ve done in the past.

	Simple, clean, UI design will make a strong presence this year. You can already see the influence of Microsoft&amp;rsquo;s Metro UI on applications both for Windows and other platforms. The focus of &amp;ldquo;content over chrome&amp;rdquo; is an approach that fits very well within the concepts of contextual design, mobile first, and responsive web.

	(This blog post was originally published as an article in VentureBeat on December 28, 2012)
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/contextualdesign">contextualdesign</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/design">design</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/responsivedesign">responsivedesign</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/ux">ux</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2013-01-03T22:03:44+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>5 Key Things to Remember When Submitting to the Apple App Store</title>
		<dc:creator>Joe Johnston</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/5-key-things-when-submitting-to-the-apple-app-store</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/5-key-things-when-submitting-to-the-apple-app-store</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Submitting an app to the App Store can be an exhilarating time. You&amp;rsquo;ve worked for months on your app and now its time for the world to see it. You&amp;rsquo;ve submitted and are waiting for it to go live. So, what are the best tactics to take advantage of your app in the store? Just remember these 5 things when submitting your app...

	1. Super Icon.
	Your icon is the store front for your app. It is the first thing a customer sees, so take the time to make it as creative and descriptive as possible. Try to stay away from photo images and words. Don&amp;rsquo;t use the standard iOS gloss... if you need a little glare, add it yourself and disable the default. Keep the icon simple and consistent with your apps functionality and style.

	2. Screen shots, Screen shots, Screen shots.
	You get five app screen shots; use all of them. It&amp;rsquo;s one of the first things a person will look at following the icon. Make sure these are screen shots of the actual app, not a marketing soup of text and other images. People want to see the app, so show them.

	3. Don&amp;rsquo;t jump the gun.
	Don&amp;rsquo;t make the app live the second it becomes available. The App Store Marketing team needs time to find apps to promote and they look for apps that have been accepted and not yet live to the public. If you give them some time, they might just find yours and you could benefit from a little free promotion. Give it 3&#45;4 weeks before you make it live rather than submitting your app immediately upon acceptance and waiting the 7&#45;10 days for it to show up on the store. You&amp;rsquo;ve worked for months on your app, don&amp;rsquo;t miss the opportunity for even more people to see it. The App Store gets updated every Thursday at 2pm PST so make sure you make your &amp;ldquo;go live&amp;rdquo; date a Thursday.

	4. Its all in the Keywords.
	The vast majority of App Store customers find apps by searching for them. Having a list of effective keywords that describe your app is absolutely key.&amp;nbsp; You&amp;rsquo;re limited to 100 characters, so chose wisely. Do some competitive research and see what will work best. Oh, and you don&amp;rsquo;t need to put your app name in as a keyword.

	5. Let people know about it.
	Discoverability. Plain and simple, let people know about your app and get the word out. Do whatever you can to get the maximum number of eyes on our app. Submit to tech blogs, promote on your own social media channels, etc. The more people you get to use, rate and review your app, the better off you&amp;rsquo;ll be. Potential app customers want to see reviews, so encourage people to write about your app. Lastly, use your free app codes wisely. Give them to high profile people and ask for them to review your app.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/apple">apple</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/apps">apps</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/jimiapp">jimiapp</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/marketing">marketing</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2012-12-28T15:06:09+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Top 5 Technology Trends for 2013</title>
		<dc:creator>Brian O&apos;Connor</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/top-5-technology-trends-for-2013</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/top-5-technology-trends-for-2013</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			As 2013 bears down upon us, assuming the Zombie Apocalypse rumor doesn&amp;rsquo;t hold true, I find myself struggling with my Marvel Comics alter ego, &amp;ldquo;Captain Obvious&amp;rdquo;. Stating that HTML5 will gain momentum in 2013 would be the equivalent of telling you that the sun will rise tomorrow. JavaScript performance will improve across device platforms and HTML5 will push enterprises to consider it as a core technology platform across all channels&amp;mdash;that is, if they haven&amp;rsquo;t already. There will be a larger migration to HTML5 for mobile apps as capabilities improve&#45; especially for cross platform apps; but native apps won&amp;rsquo;t disappear, and will always offer best experience. Now that my Captain Obvious persona has left the building, let&amp;rsquo;s talk about technology trends you will need to consider in 2013.

	#1: Cloud Evolution

	The cloud evolution is truly becoming transformational. When &amp;ldquo;the cloud&amp;rdquo; was first introduced, organizations had access to nearly limitless power, but they had to build their existing systems on top of this new platform.&amp;nbsp; Since then, we&amp;rsquo;ve seen the raw power transform into actual services. This started as PaaS (Platform as a Service) and moved toward IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). In both of these scenarios, there was still a significant amount of development that organizations had to engage to leverage these new offerings.

	In 2012, we saw the emergence of a new type of middleware that runs in the cloud: MBaaS (Mobile&#45;Backend as a Service).&amp;nbsp; In this case, the platform has already been created, and organizations can build compelling cross&#45;platform applications with minimal backend development to support them.&amp;nbsp; Solutions like Parse, StackMob, and even Intel (who is a newcomer to this space) provide a common way to handle identity management, data management, and even native notifications in a cross&#45;platform manner. Contextual Services and SDKs will continue to evolve in this space and augment an already powerful presence.

	What this means is that the cloud is really starting to evolve in such a way that it not only provides nearly infinite scalability, but it is also providing decreased time&#45;to&#45;market especially for mobile applications. Enterprises cannot overlook the advantages of an MBaaS solution.

	Watch for companies like Parse to explode both in usage and feature offerings in 2013.

	For reference: Forrester on MBaaS.

	#2: Big Data

	Big Data is becoming a huge trend. Big Data is one part of what people are calling Web 3.0.

	Big Data + MBaaS + Contextual Services = Web 3.0.

	There have been many examples of how this trend is emerging in the second half of 2012. For example, VMWare and EMC have spun off a new organization that will be solely dedicated to making big data discernable and actionable (Actionable Analytics) for companies through a PaaS (platform as a service) offering. In addition, Amazon recently announced RedShift, a big data offering, at its first annual &amp;ldquo;re:Invent&amp;rdquo; conference.

	The consensus is clear: organizations need a way to store, discern, and act on the large amounts of data they are collecting. Real&#45;time Business Intelligence is the future and the datacenter is evolving to support this need with Big Data.

	#3: Mobile&#45;First Enterprise

	The term &amp;ldquo;mobile first&amp;rdquo; has become a popular buzzword, but unfortunately for most enterprises, that has been as far as it has gone. The evidence is mounting that mobile&#45;first will be adopted by many in the enterprise in 2013.

	Consumerization is driving enterprises into a &amp;ldquo;Bring your own Device&amp;rdquo; mentality where the cloud and mobile are mutually reinforcing trends. In 2013, mobile devices will pass PCs to be most common Web access tools. By 2015, over 80% of handsets in mature markets will be smart phones. The enterprise has been put on notice.

	One example of how we are seeing things change within the enterprise has to do with organizational structure.&amp;nbsp; Many organizations are beginning to react to the change in needs by moving mobile and web initiatives away from a traditional CIO (Chief Information Officer) position and instead under the control of a CDO (Chief Digital Officer). This is giving existing mobile and web projects within an organization a single rallying point to synchronize the customer experience across digital channels.

	We also have seen venture capital spending surge in 2012 on organizations that provide products and services to enable enterprises move to a mobile&#45;first approach.&amp;nbsp; This was predicted by many in 2011, and it has proven to be true.&amp;nbsp; Companies like Double Dutch, etc.

	For reference: Forbes on Technology Trends

	#4: Contextual Experiences

	Contextual Design and Contextual Experiences are the future of mobile. These experiences consider a user&amp;rsquo;s preferences, habits, and situational characteristics (location, time of day, temperature, light exposure, etc...). We fully expect a lot of startups will emerge in 2013 that will tie big data (discussed earlier) with frontline digital experiences. Qualcomm was one pioneer in this space in 2012 that provided an interesting approach to contextual customizations. So&#45;Lo&#45;Mo (Social, Location, Mobility) is already a foundational element in mobile design but look to Contextual Experiences as the next step in this evolution.

	For reference: Forrester &amp;ndash; The Future of Mobile is Context

	#5: Mobile Payments

	During 2012 mobile payments became a major player fueled mainly by the team at Square. The integration of Square Wallet at over 7,000 Starbucks locations (with more on the way) was the watershed moment that changed mobile payments from an interesting innovation to a reality that most of us will integrate with in the near future.

	There is a hardware element to this as well.&amp;nbsp; There are currently two models of online payments that are both expected to surge in 2013:&amp;nbsp; NFC (near&#45;field communication) based models like Google Wallet, and non&#45;hardware solutions like an iOS Passbook. If Apple is able to reach a deal with key retailers and potentially include NFC with the next iPhone, then we could see a rallying point for mobile payments moving forward.&amp;nbsp; For now, the experiences will probably remain somewhat fragmented, but we will still see huge growth with the current trajectory indicating we will reach $1 trillion in mobile payments by 2017 (if not sooner).

	While these will be some of the key technology advancements in 2013, there are many others that should be watched as well. Siri has proved the viability of a voice platform (i.e., Twilio) and you can expect that many new startups will capitalize on this in 2013 to bring this type of experience to more applications.&amp;nbsp; In addition, real&#45;time HTML5 will continue to expand with the adoption of platforms like NodeJS moving beyond small businesses and into the enterprise. Finally, we will see a continued evolution of products and services that focus on creating cross&#45;platform experiences as organizations attempt to get the biggest digital reach for their buck.

	(Image via The Virtual Presenter)
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/Big+Data">Big Data</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/cloud">cloud</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/contextual">contextual</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/MBaaS">MBaaS</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/mobile+payments">mobile payments</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2012-12-20T15:48:16+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
		<item>
		<title>Customer Experience Journey Maps: Finding the Jewels</title>
		<dc:creator>Dan Bentz</dc:creator>
		<link>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-journey-maps-finding-the-jewels</link>
		<guid>http://www.universalmind.com/blog/cx-journey-maps-finding-the-jewels</guid>
		<description>
			<![CDATA[
			Identifying strategic experiences to rally around.

	As we&amp;rsquo;ve said before, the purpose of customer journey maps is to get into the field with the customer and observe what they do, see, hear, and feel as they walk down the journey you are mapping. And make no mistake, you will find items you didn&amp;rsquo;t know about. But what do you do with all that data... all those emotional fluctuations and touchpoints that represent the end user? You definitely use it to develop that empathy for the user and to create that visual illustration of the needs, but are some touchpoints more important than others?

	In a short answer, yes.

	Strategic experiences are touchpoints that identify the experiences crucial to the successful execution of your experience ecosystem. These aren&amp;rsquo;t your regular experiences that present themselves as touchpoints for your end users; these are incredibly vital and important experiences that have to happen otherwise your strategy is at severe risk. They are the jewels you find that sit in the dirt you are digging in. They need to be cleaned up, polished to a bright sparkle, and set out for everyone in your organization to see and gather around.

	As the strategic experiences are identified through multiple journey maps, they can be tied together and form the basis of an experience organization. This type of organizational model is a CX&#45;focused, structural design, that centers your efforts around these strategic experiences, not around siloed functions. It starts with what we can refer to as linking...&amp;nbsp;and it will be the topic of my next blog post.
			<hr />
			posted in <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/customer+experience">customer experience</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/customer+journey+maps">customer journey maps</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/cx">cx</a>, <a href="http://www.universalmind.com/blog/tag/journeymaps">journeymaps</a>
			]]>
		</description>
		<dc:date>2012-12-17T18:58:58+00:00</dc:date>
		</item>
	
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