UnbridledBlog

Unbridled Brain Launches Affinity Circles Redesign

Another gap in the blog, another site successfully launched :)

Excuses, excuses.

During our absence from the blogosphere Unbridled Brain launched the Affinity Circles site on June 29 to wide acclaim and great client happiness. Affinity Circles came to us looking for a new way to talk about their evolving business model. Their old site didn't speak to what they had become - both the leading provider of exclusive social networks for established membership associations seeking to promote exclusive networking opportunities among their members and a revolutionary way to recruit qualified candidates.

This meant creating an intuitive way to speak to multiple audiences (associations, members and prospective employers) within the same site structure. We conducted interviews with key stakeholders from each constituency to ensure that we were meeting each of their needs and "speaking their language."

The result was a simple architecture with clear call-outs for each audience right from the home page. Additionally, we designed and built a flash piece that speaks to the connections and networks that are the core of the Affinity Circles brand.

On top of this new infrastructure we laid a great new design - one that works with their existing branding but extends it and adds fresher colors and new network-inspired design elements. Developed by the Creative Director for this project, Jakub Skyba, these new colors and elements were first featured in print pieces designed prior to the new site roll-out and then extended for the web.

The site was built out using Adobe Contribute-based templates so the Affinity Circles team will be able to maintain the site and keep the content fresh. As a result the new site will remain the effective, productive platform for the Affinity Circles marketing message that it was at launch.

The last piece of the puzzle was Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We took the opportunity in this ground up redesign to ensure that everything about the site maximized the site's SEO potential. From the folder structure and file naming conventions to the keywords used in the H1 & H2 tags, the Unbridled Brain team made sure that this site was state of the art for SEO. As we move forward, we will be working with the Affinity Circles team to monitor and maximize this critical traffic driving tool.

The entire process was completed on-time and on-budget and as we talked about above, with a very satisfied client:

“I am extremely pleased with the project.  The turnaround was unbelievably fast, the quality was outstanding, and the creativity of the design and content was very impressive.  Unbridled Brain did a fantastic job, and if this is a sign of things to come on our website, then we are clearly going to kick some butt!!!   

I can see why you got such consistently positive reviews from your references. I really appreciate your attention to detail, your can-do attitude, your ability to quickly grasp the business objectives and priorities, and your overall enthusiasm and passion.

I really appreciate the effort.”
Chuck Taylor, VP Marketing and Development, Affinity Circles

Can't promise we'll get back to regular blogging, but there are some things we'd like to share and we hope to get the time to write them up sometime real soon.

On blogging gaps and excuses and the future

Well, we've been busy. Not an excuse, or even a good reason to stop blogging regularly, but there it is. In the last couple of weeks we have launched sites for two clients:

www.softagon

www.genbook.com

We're working on a new Client's section for the website so look there soon for more details on the great work we did in both those engagements.

On top of that we have brought on several new clients - Affinity Circles and a certain large retailer that shall remain nameless. We've been to Ad-Tech and Web 2.0 and on a number of very interesting client calls. Unbridled Brain is quickly becoming a go-to agency for Web 2.0 (and soon Web 3.0) companies that need their site to reflect their model in an interactive, dynamic, engaging way.

Now, with the weather starting to resemble the paradise that accounts for our unbelievable housing prices (even in this down market), I see blogging getting even less priorty :)

That said, there are a couple topics that I have been writing on in other spaces that I will be aggregating here, plus I want to follow-up on a couple of the earlier posts. All this means that we will be back in the blogging game soon and often.

Welcome back!

Networking the Key to Social Networks

I was curious about how Facebook is doing, especially compared to LinkedIn. I use both but find Facebook cludgy and slow where LinkedIn is faster and more targeted. Honestly, if I'm on Facebook between 8am-6pm I feel like I'm just killing time, but with LinkedIn, I feel like I'm using a tool for work.

In the long term, online Social Networking will be profitable in the same way that the offline version is - the more a network postively affects our work and productivity, the more essential it will be to us and the more profitable it will be for everyone involved.

So, I have a hypothesis, with Web 2.0 tools turning the web into a place for work as much as a place for recreation (Web 2.0 companies proliferate while AOL dies a slow death), the more focused the purpose of the social network the more likely it is to grow and succeed. So, in this hypothesis, Facebook withers to a plateau of faithful, addicted users, while LinkedIn continues its growth path on the back of professionals that need/want a solid, Scrabuolus-free environment to keep track of their network and create opportunities for their careers.

To get a baseline for my hypothesis I pulled up my new favorite site - www.quantcast.com and created the following report:

Quantcast Traffic Comparison for facebook.com + linkedin.com

I'll check back pretty frequently, but this trend seems to support the hypothesis. I hope Mark Zuckerberg takes note of another high-flyer from an earlier bubble and doesn't get too comfortable with his current $15b valuation.

Netflix Rocks!

"The grasp of the obvious is firm in this one, Obi Wan." 

I'm sure that anyone that uses Netflix agrees that they rock.

The effort that Netflix puts into the user experience is inspirational. In a time when the mere act of putting a service online is still considered a major advance, Netflix pours in more effort and brain power than any company in the Valley not named after an impossibly large number.

Their user experience effort has a face in Bill Scott. One of a growing breed of outstanding User Experience gurus that understand the technology well enough to integrate it effectively into the UI. No longer two separate pieces welded together at the end, now technology is being used to advance the experience (the Javascript preview rollovers, for example) allowing a seamless integration of the two where once there was a disconnect.

Engineering staples like code libraries are finding their way into the user experience tool kit in the form of pattern libraries which allow for rapid prototyping and add consistency to even one-off user tasks.

Netflix has a long history (in internet terms anyway) of advances on the distribution side that include the frequent updating of their envelopes to ensure quicker delivery and processing on their end and email polls that track the dates that a movie was received by the consumer and also when they sent it back. Their website now continues that tradition and supports their user experience goals.

 

Who knows whether or not they will continue to be able to beat back the big chains (Walmart, Blockbuster, etc...), but if they don't it won't be for lack of a better product. I realize I have an almost embarrassing enthusiasm for the way these guys do business but I believe this mania for customer satisfaction through innovation should be and will be rewarded in the marketplace.

Gooooo NetFlix!

Freebird

Have you listened to Freebird recently? For those of us of a certain age (High School or College in the 80's) the live version of Freebird (13:40 on the original recording from One More from the Road) was the song you measured time by  - "I can get to school in one Freebird", or "that home work is going to be more Freebirds than last night's."

Anyway, I listened to it again this morning - it rocks, especially the last 6 minutes or so of the live version. So, no metaphors here, no tortured Simpsons-esque transitions to more current, interactive matters,  no additional thoughts from this experience - just really great stuff and an opportunity to revisit it.

Delicious Dive

Can anybody explain the nearly 70% drop in traffic at del.icio.us in the last 3 months? I've never been a big fan, but it had 3.2 million visitors then poof!

Just curious if anyone out there used it and switched to something else - Firefox plug-ins or other sites for example?

Unanswered Prayers or How we sometimes get saved from ourselves

One of my favorite quotes in a long time came from Craig Newmark's talk at Web 2.0 this week. When asked how Craig was able to keep the site so clean and simple, he credited his preferences and also the utility of the simple design.

But the best reason he gave for the current state of the site was limited resources when they were first starting out - "Scarce resources kept us from some serious blunders."

All to often our greatest advances come from not being able to make the mistakes we would like to make. Its nice to see that holds true for a site with 10 billion page views a month the same way that it does for all the rest of us. Like the country song says -  "Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers."

Meeting THE Craig of craigslist

At the WebGuild's Web 2.0 Conference one the two keynote speakers was Craig Newmark - the founder of Craigslist. Now, I imagine by now everyone in the Valley has probably seen Craig at some conference or another, but this was the first time I had seen him speak.

He was "interviewed" by the Guild President Daya Baran. It was really more of a conversation and Craig can do conversation. If you like the iconoclast engineer personality - glib, quick-witted, sharp-tongued, smarter than you - then Craig is your guy. He's like a slightly cranky Wozniak - limited patience for the mundane or illogical, quick with the smackdown, quicker with the excitement on topics that engage him - these days those seem to be centered around positive social change.

Craig talked about starting Craigslist - as an events listing for friends, the reason they don't take ads - he thought they were ugly and slowed down the page, and his current role as Customer Service Rep -not heading up Customer Service or even managing a Customer Service team, but an individual contributor with a boss to report to.

He noted that he has been 'geek rich' for sometime now, i.e. he can buy all the gadgets, games and tools he wants. This allows him to focus on some of his other passions - the Craigslist Foundation and FactCheck.org to name a couple.

At the end of the talk, he popped up, spoke to some of the attendees (including me) in the hallway, then jumped into his car and began taking customer service calls on the way back to the office.

When the history of this time is finally written, Craig will have his space because he took a simple, effective idea and kept it simple despite all the opportunities to complicate it, sell it out or just generally screw it up. Like the site, like the guy!

The Remote Future

A while back we started the conversation about the challenges of delivering projects remotely and/or virtually. The list started back then included:

• understanding the client/project goals
• building comprehensive, agreed upon requirements
• ensuring the requirements are communicated fully and correctly to the team responsible for building the application
• tracking progress against a complete project schedule - including useful, accessible milestones
• scheduling ample time for the extra communications required in a remote project
• creating a budget that allows for everybody on the team to meet their objectives; and then keeping a watchful eye on that budget throughout every stage of the project

Since then, we've come across a number of new challenges:

• finding and incorporating robust, effective, usable Source Control for code and documentation
• project back up
• lack of face-to-face meetings slowing the essential trust building between teams

The basic tenets of the software development life cycle don't change in a remote or virtual situation, they are just intensified by the remoteness. In a co-located situation, hiccups, mistakes, changes to the process can often be dealt with informally. That is more difficult in a remote project.

In place of the informal, over-the-cube-wall discussions that can happen in co-located projects, we have had to set up channels that allow for rapid and comprehensive communication with either the entire team or the appropriate subsets within the project team. This communication must run both ways, allowing for team members to find answers, communicate challenges and work together to push the project forward.

Tools include:

• Regular, planned status meetings. An opportunity for team members to connect and communicate. Scheduled to bring local team members together when possible, but rotated to accommodate varying schedules.
• Status reports designed to bubble up potential problems. Tied to discrete, timely deadlines, these status reports ensure that no issue gets so out of hand that it upsets the project
• IM lists - instant, real-time communication that is the closest thing to an over the shoulder or cube-side meeting
• Project sites - we use Basecamp - where all of the project documentation can be posted. This includes requirements docs, wireframes, comps, email correspondence, project approvals, etc...
• Axure - this tool gives us wireframing, rapid prototyping and requirements documentation from the same file.
• Assembla Spaces - for virtual source control. This central repository keeps our development teams on the same page and gives us bug tracking as well.

We continue to believe that the benefits of working remotely/virtually outweigh the challenges:

• the opportunity to pull in great talent from near and far
• the ability to work with clients not just locally, but from all over
• the chance to work in environments of our own choosing (offices, home offices, Starbucks, pool side)

With remote project teams likely to be more rather than less prevalent in the future, this infrastructure will allow us to stay ahead of the game and keep delivering great projects virtually for our clients.

Required, Requireder, Requiredest

One of my first great professional revelations, was that to manage a project successfully I needed to manage the requirements and do so closely.  This is not always listed as a task or function of traditional project management. Often there are strategists, interactivety designers, information architects and others that are tasked with defining the requirements while the Project Manager takes care of other aspects of the project.

Relatively early in my Project Management career, however, it became clear that the rest of the tasks attributted to project management - budget, scheduling, resources, etc... all came out of the requirements for the project, and to accomplish my job I needed to be an integral part of the requirements gathering and defining phase.

The math was simple once I saw it:
Requirements feed into scope - scope helps determine budget and schedule (or vice versa). However you look at it, the requirements are the base. You could concievably go back one more step, to the question of the business problem to be solved or question to be answered or need to be filled, obviously, these challenges are what drive requirements. But generally as project managers the challenge has been defined and we are tasked with leading the team that will determine how to create a site, application or product to fill that need.

As a project and account manager, then, it has always been a priority for me to understand and drive the requirements gathering and defining processes. Sitting on the sidelines during this phase leaves too much of the budget and schedule at risk. Once a requirement has been defined and accepted it is very difficult to get it removed, even when there are schedule and budget implications. It is far easier to make the tradeoffs in the requirements phase with any schedule and budgets consequences taken into account right then.

As I find time over the next week I'd like to spend some time talking about how our work in Visual Requirements is enabling amazling efficient and productive interactions with our virtual teams and clients.