Quick Hits

• Would Just Do It Get You To Nike+?
• Death By PowerPoint (and How To Fight It)
• The Future of Advertising Is Design
• The Next Creative Revolution
• It’s All About Experience
• Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?
• Tips For Building Next Generation Web 2.0 Applications
• Relationships, Stories and Context

Sites of the Week

• Subway Crush
• Tivo
• Got Milk’s White Gold
• Cars.com Waiting Room
• The Spiderwick Chronicles

I was inspired to write this post after a chat between Jeremy, an information architecture intern on my team, Dave Robertson, our VP of Insight & Planning at Critical Mass and myself. Jeremy is graduating from Capilano College’s Interactive Design program next week (I’ll be there to cheer you on, buddy… can’t wait to hear your “overheard at CM” one-liners) and the three of us had a chat about the job search process and how to get your foot in the agency door.

Intern, Intern, Intern
I started off as an intern. A lot of folks I know started off as interns. Some of the best people I’ve worked with started off as interns. Internship is more than Starbucks runs and making photo copies. As an intern, you:

• Acquire industry knowledge that you wouldn’t get anywhere else
• Gain valuable work experience that you can put on your resume
• Make essential professional connections
• Possibly get a full-time job out of the deal!

Companies use internships as a technique for evaluating prospective employees. Jump on that internship train today.

Informational Interviews
I remember the first time that a prospective employee contacted me about doing a informational interview. It struck me as a unique and appropriate method for getting on a prospective employer’s radar. I don’t mind getting resumes via e-mail or receiving the odd cold-call, but those interactions usually assume that there is an opening to be filled and can occasionally put a prospective employer on the defensive when there isn’t.

Instead, dip your toe in the water. Let a prospective employer know that you’re interested in learning more about the company, the work they do and the kinds of opportunities available there. In a way, make it less about you. I’ve witnessed several folks get their foot in the door that way and eventually land a job.

Informational interviews are great because:

• You get first-hand information about what it’s like to work at that company
• Learn about the various career paths within the company
• Helps you get clarity around what your own personal and professional goals are

Want an informational interview at Critical Mass? Email me at scottw at criticalmass dot com. If you’re in Calgary, come by and we’ll grab a cup of coffee in our bistro.

Informational interviews even work for industry veterans. I had an informational interview with Critical Mass three years before I landed a job here. So many times its one of those deals where the interest from both parties is there but your availability and opportunities at the prospective employer need to align first. Over those three years, I built a relationship with Kelly Shaw, a Creative Group Manager here, and eventually the opportunity and timing was right for both parities. Which brings me to my next point around networking.

Network
Networking is essential. Building your network of industry contacts gives you the opportunity to find out about job opportunities before others, gives you an inside track on a job you’ve got your eye on and puts contacts to use as your own personal sales force when you let them know your on the hunt.

Every job I’ve had has come through my network.

Tools for networking:

• LinkedIn (my profile… add me!)
• Start your own blog
• Industry associations (e.g., IAI for those interested in information architecture)
• Local groups (UXIrregulars in Toronto)

What are you tips for you getting foot in the agency door?

Photo c/o troy -a life-.

Kaleem Kahn is doing a fantastic and thorough job of covering the ‘08 IA Summit in Miami via Twitter for those who, like me, can’t be there this week. Follow him here.

Some tasty tweets from Kaleem:

• deep customer insights + empathetic design = wow. eg. Oxo measuring cup with gradations marked inside the cup
• How do you create customer loyalty? Randy Susan Wagner CMO of Orbitz “Want loyalty? Get a dog.”
• How to get started: Start sketching - do 5 sketches before you start. Schedule some workshops - get other people involved in a fun light way
• Decorate your space - put your half-baked ideas up onthe walls. Gives others the opportunity to provide feedback & can help your thinking

Keep it up, Kaleem!

Quick Hits

• Website smackdown: R/GA vs Modernista!
• Not Everyone Likes Twitter
• Absolut Unintended Consequences
• Neutron and Stanford’s Survey of Wicked Problems
• James Dyson Award Winner and Nominees
• IDEO’s Transformation Practice
• Toward a Model of Innovation
• Design for the Next Billion Customers
• How to Customer Service Via Twitter
• Want Engagement? Get Desirability

Sites of the Week

• Volkswagen Snake (Netherlands)
• Gieco Dancing Caveman
• My Kleenex Tissue
• Volkswagen (UK)

Inside Facebook, a blog that tracks Facebook and the Facebook Platform, just posted an entry about Facebook’s new Chat functionality.  It’s only been launched across a few networks so far.  I just checked my profile and appears as though it isn’t live in Calgary yet.  You can read all about the functionality via the link above, but what I thought was interesting is that Facebook Chat is great an example this is of the network effect, defined as:

“In the narrow usage, a network effect is a characteristic that causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer which depends on the number of other customers who own the good or are users of the service. In other words, the number of prior adopters is a term in the value available to the next adopter.”

If you agree with that definition of value, I can imagine that Facebook Chat will be an exponentially more valuable Chat application than MSN or AOL Chat to many Facebook users.  I have 250-ish contacts on MSN.  I have 650-ish contacts on Facebook.  Now, while I admit I talk to the same 10 people 80% of the time on MSN (the same 10 people I who would likely talk to 80% of the time if I were using Facebook Chat as my chat app) the ability to potentially have access to additional 400 people in my network is appealing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook built a desktop app to make accessing your network easier.  It would really bring the pillar of “communication” to live for Facebook outside the website.

What do you think?  Would Facebook Chat be more valuable to you than your current chat app?

PS - Borrowed graphic from Grant.

PPS - Yes.  I know.  It’s been a long time!

Check out my latest blog post at Experience Matters called, 4 Essential Tips for Developing Excellent Client Relationships. I’d spent some time thinking about this topic recently and settled on four very simple yet often overlooked ideas that, more than anything else, are plain common sense. Here they are:

1. Get out of your office (and into theirs)
2. Make yourself available
3. Go deep, go really deep
4. Entertain them

Sounds simple, but head on over to Experience Matters and get more detail on each tip.

Inspired by a chat with Michael Dila from Torch Partnership. Check out their blog (update it more often, guys!).

I’m interested to know why it’s a good idea to force users to register in order to view an agency portfolio.

I had the fortune of attending the first Finovate financial services conference in New York City this past Monday. Jim Bruene from the Online Banking Report and NetBanker did a fantastic job in organizing this event. Twenty of the most innovative companies in the space gathered to give us a look into the future of mobile banking, personal financial management tools and social finances.

Key highlights for me came from Billeo, mFoundry and Mint. From my perspective, best-of-show absolutely goes to Mint. More on that below.

Continue reading this entry over at Experience Matters by Critical Mass.

Jim Bruene of Online Banking Report and Netbanker fame has organized an exciting one day conference featuring the financial service world’s most promising “banking 2.0″ start-ups.  Look for some follow-up posts next week.

Learn more about Finovate 2007 here.

Have you checked out the new Critical Mass blog, Experience Matters?  We’ve had it up and running for a couple weeks.  There’s a bunch of us, including David Armano, who are contributing to the blog.  Our goal is to turn some of CM inside-out to reveal how we think about planning and designing for compelling experiences, in addition to general commentary on relevant topics.

My first post is up.  It’s about collaborative design.  Here’s an excerpt:

Those of us in the business of planning and building compelling experiences have all been there. You know what I’m talking about - that point where, in a project that’s been going great, you feel like you’re slowly losing sight of the original vision and the process has become a steady flow of revisions with no real end in site.

At Critical Mass, we employ a couple of collaborative design methods that help our teams escape what I call the vicious cycle of review and revisions.

Interested in reading the rest?  Head on over to Experience Matters and discover how I learned to stop worrying and escape the vicious cycle of review and revisions! 

For the folks following at home, I arrived in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  I’m just about half-way on my journey to Toronto.  I was a little behind schedule on Thursday, but ended up hitting the road later in the day.  I drove to Medicine Hat, Alberta.  On Friday morning I left Medicine Hat in the morning and made it to Winnipeg in about 10 hours to stay with some family.  Today I drove to Thunder Bay - that took about 7 hours.

I have tons a family in Thunder Bay (as you can see from the photo above).  Many thanks to my AuntKathy (back row, left) for luring my aunts, uncles and cousins to their place with the promise (delivered) of BBQ.

Here are some more pics from the road:

I’m hitting the road this Thursday to return to my hometown, Toronto. It’s been a great run in Calgary and I’ll be returning here often as I’ll continue working with Critical Mass and my colleagues here as a Planner.

The decision to return to Toronto is a personal one and while leaving Calgary is bittersweet, I’m happy about heading home.

While planning the trip, I thought it might be novel to build an All-Canadian playlist for my iPod, so I reached out to my connections on Facebook for some ideas. The response was incredible. Suggestions covered artists from the 60’s right through to last week and while I’ve always appreciated the diversity of recording and performing artists in Canada, I was really impressed by the diversity suggested by my friends.

Here’s just a sampling of the artists I’ll be filling my iPod with:

• Guess Who
• Sloan
• Tom Cochrane
• The Band (80% Canadian, in case you didn’t know)
• Neil Young
• Arcade Fire
• Broken Social Scene
• Stars
• Sarah Harmer
• Shout Out Out
• The Tragically Hip
• Bachman Turner Overdrive
• Bare Naked Ladies
• Wolf Parade
• Metric
• Mobile
• 54-40
• Blue Rodeo
• Gob
• Our Lady Peace
• Alexisonfire
• Spirit of the West
• Great Big Sea

That covers the entire country across 50 years from coast to coast. Some specific suggestions for Calgary-based artists included:

• The Dudes
• Woodpigeon
• Leslie Feist (Pretty much in love with her… Leslie, if you’re reading this, email me - I’ll be at your concerts in Toronto and Hamilton this fall)
• Tegan and Sara

I’ve got it covered where tunes are concerned. What I need help with now is discovering some of your favorite pit stops along the Trans Canada highway between Calgary and Toronto. I’ll be taking my time to the make the trip, so I should have time to make frequent stops and take in bits of Canadiana. My basic itinerary will see me in this cities/towns at the end of the following days:

1. Day One - Regina, Saskatchewan
2. Day Two - Winnipeg, Manitoba
3. Day Three - Thunder Bay, Ontario
4. Day Four - Sault Ste Marie, Ontario
5. Day Five - Mississauga, Ontario (Home)

So let me know what your suggestions are. I’ll have my Sony Alpha DSLR in tote. I’ll do my best to document and keep folks up-to-date on my voyage here.

Thanks!

A co-worker passed this video along earlier today. I thought it was a really entertaining and delightful way to get Gmail users involved and showcase the global reach of email. Gmail asked users to flims clips of themselves passing the Gmail icon along from one side of the screen to the next.  The gmail folks edited it together into the video showcased here.