Rarely are design problems just about design–and it’s a challenge getting clients to understand that.  At the 2007 User Experience Week after party, Doug LeMoine  and I had a long discussion about how clients don’t see the functional/engineering/technical components involved in making something “attractive.”  While my company is solving design problems on a much smaller scale than his (Doug’s the Director of Design Communication at Cooper), it’s clear to me that this is a systemic misunderstanding throughout the business community.

For just over a year I’ve been lucky enough to have an incredible graphic designer working with me, and that’s led our company to be solicited as much for design as for development and training.  Quite frequently we’re asked to “give a facelift” to some Excel report, PowerPoint template, or Word proposal.  But while aesthetics may be what they’d like at the end of the day, there are a number of steps to getting there.  Giving the client what they want in a design requires helping them to understand what they really need.

Let’s take an Excel project we’ve recently completed.  The client sought to illustrate to their prospects the advantages and disadvantages of various employee benefits packages.  Their existing report creation process was as follows:

1. Take data from a number of places and paste it into various cells and formulas throughout an existing Excel workbook
2. Edit a few formulas to address some of the variations in this new set of data
3. Edit the source range of the Excel charts and graphs to the newly pasted data so as to fit it within an appropriate range
4. Reposition the graphs as Excel often moved them around in the process of updating
5. Print or email the reports to clients

The existing process required deep knowledge of what the input data meant, of how Excel formulas worked, of how the final design should look, and of how a mistake in the reports might appear (manual processes like these rarely work on the first try).  In short, it required a lot of expertise and a few hours worth of time.

Could we improve the attractiveness of their reports?  Sure.  Would that design hold up as their data shifted?  Not so fast… (more…)

Filed under: Business, Design
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Since I’ve actually been on top of things lately when it comes to work, I’ve thought a lot about what’s the best use of my time.  I have no trouble finding “things to do,” but when I don’t have a critical deadline looming there are many options…and paying bills or processing digital camera pictures isn’t the answer.  Heck, I’ve already cleared my inbox.  So what next?

My list is likely to be very different than yours, as it comes from the perspective of the technology company businessowner.  Still, as I put out later in this article, you ought to know at least what your #1 is.  Here’s my list:

1. Get billable work for employees to do
2. Make a tangible step toward your product ideas
3. Do something billable
4. Build reputation or strategize to help with 1,2, or 3
5. If you’re not doing 1-4, find someone or a technology to perform this task in the future

The point of this list is that my business needs to make money, but I shouldn’t be one of the primary revenue-producers.  Rainmaker?  For now.  Worker-bee?  No, thank you (more…)

Filed under: 4-Hour Workweek, Business, Productivity
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Yesterday was DC’s first BarCamp, and I hope it can set the tone for what’s to come in the DC technology community. Unlike the more business-oriented groups like NVTC, GBTC, DC Tech, and MD Hi-Tech, this was by tech people and for tech people. There were noticeable lacks of business topics, VC & legal attendees, and explanations of acronyms. It was beautiful.

The conference was organized by a team of volunteers and paid for by numerous sponsors. Fleishman-Hillard Inc. was kind of enough to donate their office space. There were no set topics, but the 110 attendees presented on 27 hot issues (with varying degrees of preparation). The topics ranged from user experience to Second Life to Getting Things Done. But more important than the details of the content was the energy of the attendees.

Not since the heyday of Netpreneur have there been so many people in one DC room so excited about what’s happening online. This was evidenced by the high level of conversation, the community-willingness to share, and the pure geekery of the attendees (everywhere I turned were MacBooks, iPhones, live bloggers, and people uploading photos to Flickr).

I can’t thank the organizers (Justin Thorp, Jason Garber, M. Jackson Wilkinson, Rodney Degracia, Martin Ringlein, Peter Corbett, Nick O’Neill, and Justin Stockton) enough for the time they so graciously volunteered. Without question this and the upcoming DC Startup Weekend will lead to more technology businesses, higher quality applications being developed, and many new friendships.

You can read some other good conversation about BarCamp at Russell Heimlich’s blog, the Viget Blog, and many other sites. And you can find hundreds of pictures on flickr. See you all next year!

tag: BarCampDC

Filed under: Business, DC Tech Community, Technology
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When I started SET, everyone was a prospect and most people were intimidating.  But to truly succeed, you have to accept that few are good prospects and you can’t allow good prospects to intimidate.  That’s okay, the way you perceive yourself and money change a LOT after being in business for a few years.  Taking that to heart is what will help you to convert good prospects into great business.

When I got started at my business, I’d never sat at a bar, let alone “networked.”  All these suits seemed to know what they were talking about–they were leagues above me.  Over the next few years two things changed–I developed a formidable business and gained the confidence to see myself as an equal.  Truthfully though, one really only needs the latter.  Confidence and being personable are more important than “actual success” when you’re clinking beers.  And I’m not trying to be sly, it’s just that there isn’t and never can be a real measure for success–while being a politician or exec at Verizon may place you in control of money and influence, they’re positions to which I neither envy nor aspire.  Success is what you want to make of it.

Which brings me to the second part: money.  I came to business soon after college, at a time when I respected money in a very different way than most businesspeople: everything was too expensive for me and the value of the dollar was quite high.  However, I learned quickly that $50/hour was not exorbitant when you were only billing two hours per week.   I remember the first time I had a “4-digit project”–who would’ve thought I’d be fighting for 6-digit projects just a few years later?

Which brings me to the point of this article: there’s nothing to stop you from winning a dream project. (more…)

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