Midwest UX 2012: a love letter

I attended Midwest UX 2012 last week, and it seems like a dream. Day 5 back on the job, and the whole team is poring over four latest Rosenfeld Media additions to my library. I already facilitated one "sandbox" meeting on health challenges, inspired by Haig Armen's workshop on "Designing Mobile Apps for Behaviour Change". When someone mentioned user touchpoints the other day, I had a much firmer grasp of how to ground our thinking thanks to Chris Risdon's "Mapping the Experience". I still need to go over my notes on talks by the many other enlightening speakers.

On my return, my husband, a question mark on his face, remarked that he hasn't seen me this "up" in a little while.

What's it all about?

I'm not going to summarize all that I learned about practical and visionary aspects of UX. For that, please check out the presentations on Slideshare and Lanyrd and the #mwux12 blog recap links on Twitter. What I want to share are my observations of what made this conference unusual.

WELCOMING

At professional conferences, some people pigeon-hole each other faster than you can say "speed date." Their eyes dart around as they get the lay of the networking terrain in the shortest time possible so as to extract maximum schmooz value. Can't help them advance their careers? "Next!"

At MWUX12, the people I met were way more interested in me and what I do than my job title or how much reach and influence I have. Besides, I've got one of those 50-person-company jobs that merges a few disciplines. I'm not sure my job title does it justice, but who cares? And the people I met were generous in sharing about themselves and their knowledge and challenges. 

I never felt lonely at MWUX12. I felt at home.

DIVERSE

MWUX12 welcomed front-end and back-end developers, UI engineers, UX designers, content strategists, IAs, and everyone in between, underneath, and above. They hailed from agencies and corporations of all sizes, government agencies, academia, and probably some non-profits, too. Not once did I witness anyone drawing lines in the sand around IA, UX, UI, IxD, etc. 

Don't let the name fool you: not everyone was from the midwestern US. There were a few fellow Canucks, plus Yanks and Southerners, East Coasters, and probably some West Coasters. Men and lots of women. Young, recently-degreed, youngish, middle-aged, and some with more than a few grey hairs. I met the sage, the seasoned, and the bright-eyed and wonderstruck.

LOW-KEY

Have you ever been to a conference where the organizers act like game show hosts? Where the whole thing feels like a giant prop for their performances?

Here, the focus was on the sessions, the speakers, and the attendees. The MWUX12 team all the while quietly and efficiently moved things along. When not introducing speakers, they were...well, I don't know what they were doing exactly, but whatever it was, it worked. Brilliantly. That probably had something to do with the staff at the venue, COSI, but mostly with the MWUX12 team.

WELL-BESPECTACLED

Speakers and attendees alike displayed a keen design sensibility, particularly in their choices of eyewear. Their tastes tended toward monochromatic simplicity and  good structure, a bit like the folks who hang out at content strategy conferences, though the latter typically opt for more colour.

HUMBLE + CARING

A humble attitude was pervasive. Even the luminaries had an I'm-just-beginning-to-scratch-the-surface reverence for their work. Their passion was infectious. Humility pairs well with caring, and in his visionary keynote closing the conference, Richard Buchanan summarized this idea aptly. Design has a place beyond interfaces and devices and extends to the realm of organizations and public policy. In fact, the point of design, he said, is to support human dignity.

It had been building up from the moment the workshops began, and that final keynote made it official: I'm in love.

Unsucking the mobile strategy lexicon

When thinking about the mobile part of product strategy, I sometimes get lost in all the buzzwords and slogans defining what is and is not mobile. With so many voicing "expert" opinions on the way to approach mobile, I can't hear myself think.

Some of those buzzwords could do with a visit to unsuck-it.com. Take "channels" and "touchpoints". Often, these terms are what I'd call major suckage. Sometimes, I admit, I wield these terms in ways that only add to the suckage.

I'd also heard a lot of talk about "multi-channel" experiences, but that didn't seem to quite capture it. By "it", I mean, how to approach the contexts of users of the product in question. My mind kept coming back to the Precious presentation on "Patterns for Multi-Screen Strategies", to which I've referred my colleagues on more than one occasion. The folks at Precious highlight mobile not as a device or channel but as part of an "ecosystem of screens". Patterns for Multiscreen Strategies

View more presentations from precious

Further light was shed for me on mobile, channels, and touchpoints, back in February 2012, when I came across a series of helpful articles by Colleen Jones on whether mobile is a channel and what is mobile. While I thought her quite right on many levels, including pointing out that mobile is not only a channel in the traditional senses of "channel", I wasn't quite ready to agree that "ecosystem of touchpoints" is a huge improvement.

Let's start with what is meant by "ecosystem". It's another term ripe for unsucking, and here's my take on it. "Ecosystem" is shorthand for "a cohesive set of elements that work together." Applied to user experience, an ecosystem is a cohesive set of elements that work together to form a user experience.

Now, let's move on to what we mean by "touchpoints". Looking at the diagram in What is Mobile, it seems like the touchpoints mentioned (e.g., SMS, niche phone apps) have merely moved us from the general "mobile channel" to the more specific "mobile channels".

I was getting a bit closer but still feeling bleeding uncomfortable when I heard people around me saying "channels" and "touchpoints" and not having a clear way to lead us forward.

Then, at MidwestUX 2012, I found blessed relief in the form of Chris Risdon's presentation on "Mapping The Experience".

IA Summit 2012: Mapping the Experience

View more presentations from Chris Risdon

It was a muddle-busting presentation if ever there were one. Chris defines channels and touchpoints and lays out the possible relationships betweend them. His definitions are:

CHANNEL = a medium of interaction with customers or users

TOUCHPOINT = a point of interaction involving a specific human need in a specific time and place

Now it all makes sense to me. (Thanks, Chris.) Of course a series of touchpoints can exist within a single channel. A single touchpoint can exist across multiple channels. This makes sense from the user's point of view.

So there you have it: "ecosystem", "touchpoint", and "channel" all unsucked, plus a framework and an experience mapping process for moving forward a product strategy that doesn't artificially separate "mobile" from everything else.

PodCamp Toronto 2012: my highlights

I've been knee-deep in content strategy and digital product development for my employer since my last blog post too long ago. That's probably no excuse for not executing a proper editorial plan for my blog, but it's true what they say about the cobbler's kids.

It took an event even more inspiring than Confab2011 to get me going again: PodCamp Toronto 2012. The #PCTO2012 event was ace. It covered enough territory to satisfy people with interests as varied as mine, with sessions on everything from Pinterest (by far the topic with the most airtime) to Facebook's Open Graph to mobile startups.

GAMIFICATION

I delivered a presentation introducing gamification. Now that I spend my days developing desktop and mobile applications to promote healthy lifestyles, I'm exploring promising ways to support, inspire, and motivate people to be healthier.

Gamification From Hype to Hope v1

People asked great questions. Jonathan Laba, who rocked his presentation on the Facebook Open Graph and his concept of a semantic wallet, put this on the table: How do you take an application that's a non-game context and find the game(s) inherent or latent in the application?

Bingo.

In Seductive Interaction Design, Stephen Anderson proposes one approach to exposing opportunities for gameful design: the 5 Whys.  I'm a strong believer in the power of asking "why" in product design conversations, or almost any conversation, for that matter. Throwing the trappings of a game at a poorly designed application ain't gonna cut it in user experience.

Listening + tweeting @ my gamification session, PodCamp Toronto 2012.

As Brian Cugelman (one of the most popular presenters on Saturday, and rightfully so) told me at the after-party, preparing a presentation makes you dig even deeper into a topic. Even after a steady diet of gamification study and practical application over the past several months, I'm aware that I've barely scratched the surface.

MOBILE STARTUPS

I was surprised gamification didn't come up more often at PCTO2012. When I was kicking around my presentation idea, PCTO co-organizer Connie Crosby told me that although gamification is a hot topic, it was absent from the schedule. The only people I heard talking about gamification were developers, including Bijan Vaez on the Mobile Startups in Toronto panel, moderated by Milan Gokhale. Having just returned from HIMSS 2012 the night before, I was interested in EventMobi, a B2B mobile app for event marketing that was deployed at HIMSS in Vegas this year.  Bijan also touched on the B2B mobile app business model, particularly the requirement for superior customer support.

PITCHING TO REPORTERS

Pal Julia Hidy, whom I first met at PCTO2011, presented her "Pitch Fiesta" to an interested crowd of both PR pros and novices. Julia is known for pitches that succeed because she's sensitive to the needs of reporters and speaks their language. Check. Her. Out.

COOL NEW CONNECTIONS

After Julia's session, my ears pricked up when one of her audience members mentioned responsive web design. I made a beeline in that direction and met Aidan Foster of fosterinteractive, a boutique web shop in Toronto. Aidan also runs responsivedesign.ca. Small world: I saw him on Monday at the DrupalTO meeting, thanks to the encouragement of Erin Marchak in her "Hello Drupal!" session. For me, one of the gems of PCTO2012 was my new local find, Ladies Learning Code. As someone who works with developers a lot, I say people like me need to dip our toes into code at some point and get a better understanding of how our digital collaborators see the world.

SOCIAL MEDIA MADNESS

PodCamp Toronto 2012 was largely focused on social media. As "new media" has come of age, I suppose that's natural. There were a few presenters on podcasting, but PodCamp doesn't seem to be so closely tied to its roots now.

I missed a bunch of sessions that sounded interesting. I was especially sorry to have missed sessions by Dave Fleet and Rob Clark, but the schedule was packed, with 9 choices per session block on Day 1, which was especially hard on ADD types.

One of the most popular tweets of the #pcto2012 Twitter feed says, "Podcamp Toronto. Just like Social Media Week, except shorter. Just like mesh, but cheaper. Just like Third Tuesday, but longer." (by @DoctorJones). Yes, and I'm grateful to everyone involved in PodCamp Toronto.

Confab 2011: Breaking the Spell of Bad Content

Until Confab 2011, I'd never attended an industry conference with an opening keynote speaker choked up with sheer joy and and amazement. Looking out into the audience and seeing how far the field of content strategy has come, Kristina Halvorson confessed, “Some people dream of being a princess...” Others have important work ahead of them– bravely advancing the field of content strategy and banishing the Bad Content dragons forever.*

Perhaps it was a mix of humility and triumph that moved her. I don't know. I do know that it felt good to be there, even later, after over-indulging in the ubiquitous cakes and bourbon-laced Lorem Sipsum, the official Confab 2011 cocktail.

Over the two days of the conference, I was completely torn up by decisions: which of the four sessions should I attend in a given hour? I created the following line-up: 

• A Web Designed for Readers, by Mandy Brown

• How to Create a Data-Driven Content Strategy, by Elizabeth McGuane and Randall Snare

• Content is a Business Asset, by Valeria Maltoni

• Latino Link: Customizing Your Content for Hispanic Communities Online, by Joe Kutchera

• Stealth Content Strategy, by Michael Fienen

• The Soul of Your Brand, by Ann Handley

• Data-Informed Content Strategy, by Clare O'Brien

• Learning to Love Your CMS, by Jeff Cram

• newyorker.com: Beyond the Weekly, by Blake Eskin

• Make Your Content Nimble, by Rachel Lovinger

• Confab Wrap-up: What Just Happened?, with Kristina Halvorson, Ann Rockley, Joe Pulizzi, Jonathan Kahn, and Colleen Jones.

All this content about content strategy was enlightening in one way or another. Rachel Lovinger's presentation will have me researching and learning for weeks, months, or longer. Joe Kutchera's talk got me thinking about francophone audiences in Canada. I'll be poring over my notes and gleaning insights from my SmartPen recordings all summer.

What was most remarkable to me is the recurrence of fundamental questions. For example, if content strategy is so meaningful and essential to organizations–if content truly is a business asset–then why is it that content strategy is often such a hard sell?

For one thing, we don't have the right tools to make content strategy an easier sell. A key take-away from Confab 2011 is the need for case studies that illustrate the measurable impact and ROI of content strategy. As someone that regularly fields questions like, “What is content?”, I aim to create and read new case studies over the next twelve months. We desperately need case studies that are light on content strategy buzzwords and heavy on business concepts. Then we can break the spell that has kept too much content in deep slumber.

* Variation on a Confab 2011 cake theme.

Is Content Strategy a Mashup?

It's part of human nature to try to define things that are neither stable nor easily defined.

Things like content strategy, for example.

It's natural for content strategists to delimit content strategy so we can have a common understanding and explain it well to others. As I offer both content marketing and content strategy services, I have to clarify these terms with clients because, in their minds, content strategy = content marketing strategy. Still, with plenty of work experience outside of content strategy and an array of experience I would classify as inside content strategy, I find attempts to fix the definition of content strategy once and for all a bit futile.

In one of his books, philosopher Nelson Goodman cites Lewis Thomas on the nature of science:

"...a mobile unsteady structure...with all the bits always moving about, fitting together in different ways, adding new bits to themselves...The endeavor is not, as is sometimes thought, a way of building a solid, indestructable body of immutable truth, fact laid precisely upon fact...Science is not like this at all."*

In some ways, content strategy is a mobile unsteady structure that shifts, too.

Margot Bloomstein speaks to content marketers about content strategy as a great big welcoming umbrella that helps one be prepared. And so it is. I don't think she intends, and neither do I, to imply that it's one of those umbrellas fixed to a big patio table weighted with sand. It's a little more dynamic than that because as content types proliferate, new disciplines spring up around them.

Many seemingly unrelated disciplines have something to offer content strategists. My experience in product management and new product development, for example, gives me insight and methodology that I can apply in content strategy.

No single person can master all disciplines relevant to content strategy -- that would require a content strategy team, and a rather exceptional one at that. Any content strategist has to add a few qualifiers to her title to indicate specialization. There are innumerable variations on the theme of "content strategist".

The ever-entertaining Paul Ardoin wrote an honest and funny post on the mashup that is marketing and PR. Is content strategy a mashup, too? If so, maybe we shouldn't rush to delimit. Maybe saying, "Well, look here - that's not content strategy", is alienating. What if being a mashup makes it easier for others to relate to it and get involved? What if that blurring makes content strategy more attractive, practical, and essential?

Those are questions I'd love for you to answer.

*That's Nelson Goodman quoting Lewis Thomas in Of Mind and Other Matters.