How to Write a Terms of Service Agreement (That Doesn’t Suck)

First, know why you might want or need one.

Unlike a privacy policy (which is required by law if you collect any user data), a terms of service (TOS) page, for many companies is likely not a requirement. So, why muddy your site with a boring and perhaps unnecessary TOS? Well, first of all, because, like eating your vegetables, it’s good, healthy business practice. And, we believe, an opportunity to create a differentiating and positive user experience.Your published terms of service are the publicly stated contractual terms between you and the user. On the chance that a user or customer takes you to court over their experience on your site, a well-designed TOS could potentially limit your liability. So, assuming you feel the need, how can you create a TOS that is as experientially enjoyable as it is protective? Read on.

Be upfront, transparent and honest.

This shouldn’t require its own paragraph, but if you’ve ever read other TOS pages, you’ll already know it’s been regarded as optional by a large group of corporate attorneys. In fact, there is an entire web site (https://tosdr.org/) dedicated to decoding the legalese. So, why would impenetrable TOS’s exist at all?

First: fear. Some companies are afraid that if users really understood how their data might be used/leveraged/monetized they’d be frightened away. However, when you poll most Millennials and Gen Z’ers, they are actually less afraid of monetization schemes (they expect them) than they are about intentionally misleading terms of service (sadly, also expected).

Second: a lot of lawyers are just terrible writers. There are also lawyers who are terrible writers who think they are great writers. The latter we’re not sure anyone can help with.

Be as specific as necessary. No more, no less.

It seems, in most TOS, the default for dealing with future ambiguity is to obfuscate or add verbiage to account for every eventuality. Either way, it’s a tactic increasingly seen by your users as deceptive. So, while you may believe you’re protecting your business options, legally, you may be harming your long-term business relationships with customers. The photo sharing site 500px provides the “belt and suspenders” approach to this issue by providing their TOS in a two column format. The first column is the, “legalese,” and the second is what they title, “basically.” The opening paragraph:

Write it for a really hip six-year-old.

A recurring bit of advice on this blog is that we should all acknowledge Einstein’s most famous law—no not relativity—the one that posits if you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t truly understand it yourself. Your TOS is the perfect place to prove you too understand what you’re asking of your users. Tumblr famously proves they do, translating some of the more dense legalese into easily digestible and entertaining chunks, like:“You have to be the Minimum Age to use Tumblr. We're serious: it's a hard rule. “But I’m, like, almost old enough!” you plead. Nope, sorry. If you're not old enough, don't use Tumblr. Ask your parents for a Playstation 4—or try books.”

Just remember, your corporate counsel isn’t wrong.

As much as users don’t like reading or agreeing to a TOS, it’s unlikely they will go away anytime soon. Too much of what transacts on the web these days involves some transfer of rights. And while your corporate attorney is right when he or she pushes back on what your TOS needs to cover, it’s also true that there are great examples of how what could be an off-putting, intimidating, or flat out disregarded user experience could actually enhance users’ affinity for your site or brand.

The Narrative Lessons of MoviePass

Some stories just can’t end well.

At one point on the Brilliant podcast, we touched on the story of MoviePass, the app-based subscription service that, at least originally, let moviegoers see one movie a day at the theater for one low monthly fee. To say the service has been experiencing growing pains, of late, would be a generous characterization. If you didn’t listen to the podcast, spoiler alert, I don’t believe they’re going to pull out of their very public tailspin. And it’s not because of their numerous, recent, also very public, customer service missteps.

When you start evaluating the MoviePass through the lens of Narrative-Based Innovation, it becomes clear that had MoviePass taken the time to develop a detailed narrative—walking through the consumer buying process and exploring the purchase setting as well as the emotions and motivations of the process—the story just doesn't hold water.

The customer as protagonist

In our full process, we would create detailed narratives, naming our protagonist(s), examining their environments, broader day-to-day experiences, nuanced decision-making processes, et al. But for the purposes of this post, I’ll simply outline the basic and obvious inputs and outputs that would go into the story. In the case of MoviePass, it really should suffice.

Whether we choose a casual moviegoer or a diehard theater patron as our protagonist, once we examine consumer habits, it becomes difficult to draft a narrative where MoviePass makes much sense for most consumers.MoviePass has undergone a number of pricing/service incarnations since its founding in 2011, each apparently losing money.

However, the most notoriety came in August of 2017, when MoviePass introduced a plan priced at $9.99 a month, where users could see up to one movie a day. Which, if you don’t stop to examine the real-world use cases, seems like quite a deal. But as we begin to write out the narrative of average users, the economics seem less appealing.

Americans attend, on average, a little over five movies a year at the theater. Unless you assume our protagonist’s consumption rate would double, it’s difficult to craft a successful customer journey narrative that doesn’t require massive leaps in logic. Even at double the average rate, MoviePass is still ultimately a money-losing proposition for most consumers. Not surprisingly, it also proved a money-losing proposition for MoviePass. Why? Allow me to speculate a bit.

In general, I believe markets are rational. Meaning that casual moviegoers did the math on the $9.99 plan and realized it would cost more than simply buying tickets whenever they wanted to see a movie. So, who signed up? Heavy users who are, also good at math, and, in fact, getting more than they pay for in comparison to simply purchasing movie tickets ad hoc, movie by movie, theater by theater.

The downside for MoviePass was that they were paying the theater full price for every ticket, which was as high as $15 in major metro areas, regardless of what the user paid.So, the only purchase stories that made sense to consumers seemed not to offer any possibility of a happy ending for MoviePass. The truth of which we will see laid out below.

Sidebar:

Source: https://www.marketingcharts.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Harris-Americans-Movie-Going-Trends-Jan2014.png

MoviePass — a script that should have never made it out of development

Over the course of the company’s history, it’s fair to say, MoviePass could never get its story straight. It struggled to sign up 20,000 members at its original $30-per-month movie-a-day offering. But the membership quickly ballooned to over a million after MoviePass lowered the fee to just $9.99 per month in December of 2017.

The story MoviePass was spinning amongst the press was that while they were losing money on every ticket, they would eventually make up in selling user data.But again, that story requires a massive leap in logic. By comparison, at the end of 2017, Facebook was generating roughly $6 per quarter on every user. That would imply that if MoviePass were ever to become cash flow positive, its members would need to be at 8 times as valuable to advertisers as Facebook users.

Projected Facebook revenue per user per year = ~$6.18 (per quarter) x 4= $24.56

Hypothetical MoviePass cost per user = $8.90 (average US ticket price, 2017) x 3 (movies per month) x 12 (months) = $320

MoviePass revenue per user @ $9.99 (per month) x 12 = $119.88

---

Net income per user                                                   -$ 200.12

Which, should explain why MoviePass is burning through nearly $73 million a month.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

In an August 15th, 2018 letter to MoviePass members, Mitch Lowe, CEO, tried to quiet members’ fears or anger at the company, saying:“The truth is, disruption and innovation require staying flexible and having an open mind.“

The response that popped into my mind was, yes, keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out. The company portrays itself as the hero in an epic, when it is, from the outside, looking more like a tragedy. 

Designing a User-Centered Design Department

It comes down to three things: people, process and projects.

As an experience design and strategy firm, Magnani spends all day every day developing ideas, concepts and solutions that help our clients solve problems. It’s enriching, yet consuming work, so like any other business, from time to time, it’s smart to pick our heads up, examine our own product, and make ensure we’re delivering the best possible work for our clients with the best possible results for our business. We’ve been spending a lot of time on refining the Magnani product over the past year, but we’ve also spent a lot of time retooling the structure of the design department. To that end, here are some quick tips for designing a successful design department.

People

This seems like an obvious place to start, but any design department is only as good as the people who work there. So picking the right people is a critical skill.

Pick the right people

Keep in mind three key attributes when evaluating talent in the context of your business: scale, culture, growth.

1. Scale: How large is your organization? Larger companies can afford to employ a greater number of specialists. More compact organizations usually require generalists with deep specialization in specific areas.

2. Culture: Does this team member compliment or contrast your company culture? Either side can be valuable depending on the purposes of the hire, but keep in mind that it only takes one individual to poison an otherwise positive atmosphere.

3. Growth: Where is your organization going? Do the people on your team have the skills necessary for the future? Will they grow with the business?

Always be learning

The world of design and technology moves fast, so to be competitive, make sure your team is always enhancing their talents with new skills that complement their core disciplines. Cultivate creative pursuits in and out of the office, because an inspired creative professional will apply that energy to much of the work they do.

Say, “thank you”

Design pursuits require a high degree of mental and emotional energy to produce quality results. Heartfelt gratitude expressed in front of the rest of the team for their efforts goes a long way to creating a culture where people feel safe to explore and push their creative boundaries. So if you’re managing a team, make sure you say (and mean) those two magic words: thank you.

Process

Oh, process. How I love, thee. How I loathe, thee. There are few concepts more divisive in any organization than process. How much is too much? How much is not enough? What needs a process? What doesn’t? But I’m sorry… your design department needs a repeatable process. Let’s talk it out.

Design just enough process… and no more.

I’ll say it again: you must have process. The waste of time and resources to relearn the execution of a deliverable anew each time makes no sense. However… a quality, repeatable design process has some flexibility baked in. That flexibility allows the design team to indulge the exploration of a concept or an idea that manifested as an offshoot of the creative process. Take the time to cultivate those kernels of insight that pop up along, but get right back on track if they don’t go anywhere.

Apply the same process across the organization

Process can be daunting because  it often feels like the organization is constantly relearning how to work. But a quality process should be repeatable across the organization. At Magnani, we’re a big adherent of the design-thinking methodology: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test. We use this macro-level process as much as we can across the organization, which helps in two ways. First, it means that your team doesn’t need to relearn steps, they just have to re-contextualize the process. Second, that constant repetition reinforces a cultural touchpoint of Magnani… we are a design-thinking based organization.

Projects

Finally a design department is only as good as the work it produces. When designing the department, hopefully you have a team that suits your business objectives and a process that maximizes their creative output. But there are a couple points related to projects that I wanted to bring up.

Be choosy if you can

As the head of a design organization, you may have some amount of say about the type and volume of project work you take in. Be cognizant of choosing the right projects that suit your team strengths, align with your business objectives, and enhance your portfolio of experiences.

Be creative if you can’t

If you don’t get a say in what projects come your way, be creative in your approach to new projects. Always look for an opportunity to reframe a project outside of its stated parameters to inject some excitement or interest into a repetitive or stale project. And keep it on budget, of course.There’s no secret sauce to designing a great design department. But approaching it as a design problem, with attributes and conditions you can control and tweak, can set your creative team up to do rewarding work that solves problems and moves your organization forward.

Narrative-Based Innovation, Part 4: Three Compelling Uses for Narrative Based Innovation

The more unfamiliar the destination, the more a strong narrative adds value.

In the previous post in this series, we talked about the value of narrative storytelling in the innovation process. In this post, we’ll cover what types of projects benefit most from this approach and why.

Evaluating when and why this approach makes sense is actually fairly simple. The greater the unknowns, the greater the value of a story. A design thinking exercise around refining an existing product category will benefit from storytelling, to be sure, but not as much as design thinking around creating an entirely new category altogether.

The narrative is the first prototype.

A great innovation narrative immerses the reader into its world and allows for the detailed exposition of the desired interactions, features and benefits using no more technology than the written word. In this, the last installment of our four-part series on Narrative Based Innovation, we cover the three most compelling uses and explain how we use storytelling to accelerate and mitigate risks within the innovation process.

One: Innovating new products and services

Innovating new products and services is the classic innovation application. And storytelling, in some sense, has always been a part of this process, usually establishing context or framing need. But in Narrative Based Innovation, storytelling takes on a more substantive role.In Narrative Based Innovation, the story is far more detailed, documenting a journey through the user experience, documenting the functional and emotional requirements of an innovation long before any design or technology resources need be applied.  For example, with additional depth and clarity a detailed narrative brings to a concept, an engineer can better envision the full experience and purpose of a new product or service as they focus and prioritize efforts. Management can more quickly and clearly articulate across departments or to the board, not only what the new product or service is, but how it will be experienced by customers. And sales teams can familiarize themselves with real-world use cases before they actually occur.

Two: Expanding into new markets

The main view of Microsoft: BOB

So, you’re considering promoting innovative new uses for your product or service. After you’ve performed all necessary quantitative evaluations of a potential market expansion (e.g.: market size, price elasticity, cost of customer acquisition, just to name a few), incorporating those details into detailed customer journey narratives, complete with exploration of intent, desire, and need can give you a better sense whether those numbers are a conservative estimate or wishful thinking. Can you draft an obviously believable story? Or, does the exposition of the user journey require dubious leaps of logic?

For example, in 1995 Microsoft was looking to expand the audience for personal computers by creating a more friendly, limited-option interface called, “BOB.” On the surface, it makes sense. There was a large segment of the population who were casually interested in computers, but were intimidated, confused or uninspired by the existing Windows desktop interface. But had Microsoft taken the time to develop a detailed narrative, walking through the consumer buying process and exploring the purchase setting as well as the emotions and motivations of the process, I have to believe they would have not launched.

For context, in 1995, presenting the animated BOB interface actually required more computing and graphics horsepower than presenting the standard Windows interface. Further, BOB was sold shrink-wrapped in a box at a cost of $99. In effect, the company was betting that a casual user, heretofore unable to mentally justify the purchase price of a low-end standard computer would actually pay a premium for a more powerful machine, plus the additional price of the BOB software for an end result that offered a more limited computing experience. The leaps of logic necessary to make that journey believable are, at best, heroic.

Three: Exploring viability of entirely new behaviors

Unlike the previous use case that involves innovating new uses for existing resources, this is about exploring the viability or feasibility of new behaviors altogether. Let’s take, for example, the recent explorations in the ride-sharing space where ordinary folks, through a mobile app, offer their personal vehicle up for rental to, or rent from, total strangers.

Using Narrative Based Innovation as the innovation framework, long before prototyping an app interface or building out a business proforma, you would craft a series of detailed narratives that explore the motivations, risks, opportunities and threats involved. The act of detailing the behaviors can continue to refine and accelerate the modeling and iterating of the user experience, as well as help accelerate the building of a consensus vision for the future among stakeholders.

It’s always about perspective

If we have learned anything from science fiction and fantasy writers through the ages, it is that when we create a compelling enough vision, technology finds a way. And Narrative Based Innovation is about taking time to explore, iterate, test and refine that vision as much as possible, at the most human-centered experiential level, so when the final narrative presents a truly compelling vision, the path from concept to offering appears straight and obvious.

Narrative-Based Innovation, Part 3: Elements of a compelling innovation story

All great stories follow a similar arc

H. Porter Abbott, a professor emeritus in the English department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, calls the preference for linear storytelling “a fundamental operating procedure of the mind.” (1) At around three years old, our brains begin to compartmentalize sensory information from the world around us into the components of an ongoing narrative, with each of us at the center. He says, “We view our lives as a series of actions, causes, and effects that together form an ongoing story.”In his seminal work, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, Joseph Campbell lays out the basic structure most (if not all) great stories follow.

The hero’s journey, as Campbell calls it, follows a predictable story arc that (I’ll summarize) presents our humble protagonist as an ordinary citizen, reveals a great secret, introduces them to a mentor that calls our hero to fulfill a destiny, then follows that hero on the journey of discovery, challenge and conquest, and ultimately home to a world, and the hero, now forever changed.

In the third in this series of posts, we’ll cover some of the ways we use Campbell’s framework as the jumping off point for the narrative innovation process.The framework of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey helps to create a more compelling narrative foundation for ideating and innovating new products and services.

Innovation stories place the user as hero

In any innovation story, the most important element is your customer or user—a.k.a. the hero. Where did they come from, who are they, and why are they the way they are? What human needs and desires are as yet unmet in their world. Or, better yet, in what aspects does their ordinary world cry out for an extraordinary experience?

To truly empathize with our hero, we rely on myriad quantitative and qualitative research methodologies: focus groups, ethnographic research, interviews, reading everything and anything about their sources of joy and misery, studying their aspirations across other categories, and how they talk about those challenges.

Ultimately, you want to create a fully dimensional character sketch with as much physical detail and emotional motivation as possible. The more your innovators feel they know and understand the hero, the more likely they solution you create will have personal and emotional value to the user in the end.

Imagine your business or brand as the mentor

In Campbell’s framework, the hero always encounters and befriends a mentor, e.g.: Gandalf, Obi Wan, Dumbledore, Willy Wonka, etc. This mentor has the responsibility of not only revealing the true nature of the world to the hero, but also helping the hero to understand how, with the mentor’s guidance, they can accomplish something extraordinary. A great innovation story positions the brand as a force in service to the user. It’s not unlike Clayton Christensen’s “Jobs to be done” perspective on branding.

Define the quest

It’s easy, and all too common, for companies to define their customers’ challenges in terms of the products they sell to them. But a great innovation story defines the challenge in human terms. Improving self-esteem. Heightening satisfaction. Reducing anxiety. Empowering growth. Improving social or emotional interpersonal connections.

An emotional foundation to the definition of the challenge allows for greater creativity and freedom of exploration in the ideation stage. In the end, it should also lead to innovations with greater emotional resonance for the hero.

Build the world revealed to them

Crafting a world detailed enough to inform the innovation process, you’ll need to understand what new products and services are on the horizon, and how analogous products have changed your target segment in the past.

We often leverage the collective intelligence of futurists, trend experts, industry experts, internal and external strategists and key internal stakeholders from within our clients’ organizations to begin to build a working model of the world, “at launch.” How far out that world is, chronologically speaking, depends on the time horizon of the strategic vision as well as the traditional development cycle of the business.

In crafting the model of that world, project how key factors (economic, cultural, generational, social, technological etc.) that influence our hero’s journey in relation to the problem you are trying to solve, may change. Document what new opportunities will result from the progression of those trends. Then, incorporate the most relevant aspects of those features into your innovation story.

Explain the magic your next product or service will create

In every hero’s journey, the mentor reveals some hidden and powerful magic to the hero. In your story, detail the ways in which the hero’s life will be enhanced by meaningful encounters with your business or brand. The point here is to define the emotional requirements of the solution in terms of benefits, not features, and their relevance to the hero’s journey.

You don’t need to spell out the specific tools, products or services, that comes later. Obi Wan helped Luke trust The Force. Willy Wonka helped Charlie rise above the seven deadly sins. Dumbledore helped Harry understand the value in self-sacrifice. It’s these big-picture issues, once understood, that make evaluations of the value various ideas generated much less subjective.

Write your innovation story

Once you have all of the elements defined, it’s time to develop the actual narrative—the story of the hero, facing challenges in the world you created. We’ve seen that the more realized and dimensional you can make that world, the more numerous, compelling and innovative the resulting ideas will be. And that, makes all the difference in the world. 

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/linear-storytelling-psychology/431529/ 

Narrative-Based Innovation, Part 2: Why storytelling matters

Sometimes, words are worth a thousand wireframes

Before we ideate. Before we prototype. We write stories. These stories are detailed narratives that walk through the user journey, step by step, annotated with context, motivation and expectation. Why take the time with this step? Because it helps us to more efficiently and effectively create truly unique and delightful user experiences.

In this, the second in a series of posts about narrative-based innovation, I’ll cover why I believe stories should serve as the foundation for exploring new concepts and ideas at every step.

Story is the best way to generate, evaluate and communicate complex experiences

Stories are the basis for how we learn. Previous generations have always passed down important information to the next generation through stories. You can apply these same storytelling principles to create a deeper understanding and empathy with customers, to solve their problems, and help organizations rally around that vision.

Stories convey vision without a limiting design

During the initial ideation and brainstorming phase of development, a well-crafted story can convey all required or desired points of interaction without unduly limiting a designer's imagination.

Stories document emotional expectations

If a technical spec conveys how an experience should be physically coded and deployed and a functional spec conveys the interactions that code should facilitate, a story can be thought of as the emotional requirements documentation. What points in the user journey should elicit joy or delight? What points require thoughtful decision-making? Which offer relief?

Stories can present future innovations unconstrained by current limitations

The process of storytelling gives us the freedom to envision a radically disruptive user experience that may seem to be beyond currently available tools or resources. I believe that if you can create a compelling vision, technology eventually finds a way.

Storytelling forces prioritization

A story is a roadmap for the visual hierarchy to come in the final experience design. Those interface items or experiences that are critical to forwarding the narrative should, in theory, be featured more prominently in the final UX design. Those elements that are unnecessary to the story should be minimized or considered for removal entirely.

Storytelling exposes the holes

The simple act of clearly describing a user’s journey through an online experience forces the author to resolve abstractions in the requirements.

If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old…

Simply put, the act of creating and communicating a story that anyone understands and follow forces clarification of thought. In the design process, a compelling story inspires exploration of new ideas, untethered by perceived organizational or technical constraints.

Ultimately, if the story you craft cannot engage, inspire and motivate your customers and employees, the end product probably won’t either. 

Narrative-Based Innovation, Part 1: What is narrative-based innovation?

A narrative-driven approach to design thinking

Stories are the fundamental way we learn and connect emotionally, as people. The narrative-based innovation process applies detailed storytelling to traditional design-thinking in order to create a deeper understanding and empathy with customers, create and communicate a more compelling vision of how to solve their challenges, and deliver more engaging user experiences.

In this first in a series of posts about this approach, I’ll cover how and why to take an already powerful concept—design thinking—and integrate it more deeply with storytelling.

The specific steps in the process are fairly standard

But the process and deliverables are designed to quite literally tell a more compelling story

 Empathize

Embracing our customers as heroes

This immersive, curiosity-fueled step allows us to understand and document the first chapter in the story. We introduce our heroes with detailed, dimensional personas.Brought to life with stories that reveal who they are, we unveil what rational and emotional motivations affect their behaviors. We weigh the resources and constraints that affect their decisions. And we pore over the joys, frustrations and hardships they experience as they travel on their daily journeys through the world. 

Define

Expressing our heroes’ needs

We define the challenge we will solve for our heroes, not by listing technical or functional requirements, per se, but by declaring as our goal the emotional requirements—the way we wish our heroes to feel about themselves and their world after engaging with our solution.

In this narrative framework, that means presenting that challenge in our heroes’ voices. That could be a call for help, an emotional need, a want or need of a desired outcome, or all of the above.

 Ideate

Imagining a new world

To generate the greatest number of viable solutions to the challenges our heroes face today and into the future, we leverage the collective intelligence of futurists, trend experts, industry experts, internal and external strategists, and key stakeholders to brainstorm solutions at scale.Through a guided process, we move from the unhindered expression of hundreds of concepts to the prioritization and deep development of the most viable solutions in a very short time.

The best solutions are demonstrated and tested through, and documented within, idealized stories of our heroes’ encounters and engagements with our solutions, and the resulting outcomes. 

Prototype

Forging the solution

We prototype and iterate, early and often. This is trial by fire. We bring the best ideas to life through low-, medium-, and high-fidelity prototypes and test them in the hands of people.  It is the only way to truly craft and refine real-world solutions that evoke emotional connections and outcomes equal to those documented in our idealized narratives. 

Test

Measuring success

Finally, we bring innovations and prototypes to life, launching the story throughout the organization and experiences to our real-world heroes—customers. Every concept, every experience, active and measurable.Whether we’re launching an internal vision communications piece, a live market beta test, or a communications campaign, we know the story is successful when stakeholders and customers become not simply participants, but evangelists.

It’s never a technology problem

Real innovation doesn’t incrementally improve an existing behavior, it presents new opportunities entirely. If we can first envision and map out a more satisfying emotional experience, ultimately technology finds a way. And our narrative-driven approach to design thinking ensures that emotion is addressed and prioritized at every step.

3 Counterintuitive Tips for a Successful Digital Transformation

3 counterintuitive tips for a successful digital transformation.

Digital transformation seems to be the catchphrase of the year. More and more, we receive requests from potential new clients asking for assistance with just that. But as it was with SEO in 2010, or apps in 2012, many of those requesters treat the idea of a digital transformation as something of a one-off effort. A box to be checked. Mostly a digital property purchased or redesigned. The truth, however, is that when done in a truly transformational way, the process of getting to real transformation is anything but box checking. If you’re tasked with leading your company’s digital transformation, following these three seemingly counterintuitive tips could dramatically improve your chances of success.

Stop using the word digital.

The phrase “digital transformation” implies something separate from the normal business of the company. It’s the kind of mental compartmentalization that we find leads to that check-box mentality. Try to substitute more meaningful words in place of “digital”—like, “business,” or “customer journey”, understanding, of course any truly transformative change will likely require a digital solution.A simple reframing like this increases lateral thinking and prompts more substantive conversations. In other words, you stop focusing on how you can improve systems within the business and start asking how you can improve the business itself.

Try writing the first draft of your plan without mentioning specific technology.

Technology is, in and of itself, a means to an end, not the end itself. And transformation, in and of itself, holds no inherent value for the business. Writing your plan—objectives, strategies, goals, KPIs, timing, expected returns, customer experience benefits, et al—without listing specific technology implementations forces you to examine and evaluate the business implications on their own merits.

At Magnani, this is part of our narrative-drive design thinking methodology. We explore and document the expected qualitative and quantitative outcomes of a successful transformation. We create a story about motivations and expectations, not hardware or software. We have found that once you build consensus around what that experience should feel like and deliver, the story can serve, throughout the process, as a touchstone for evaluating and prioritizing proposed technology implementations. Will this technology deliver the experience we outlined in our story as optimal for the business and its customers? How might it compromise that vision. Is any potential tradeoff worth it?

Try to disrupt your own business.

A few posts back, we outlined three proven paths to disruptive innovation. The point of that post applies here. Disruption is imminent. Technology is lowering barriers to entry in every industry. Emerging generations have little tolerance for adapting to cumbersome experiences. They expect and demand better.

If you can envision the most desirable customer experience, technology always finds a way.

If you’re charged with plotting your business’ path through the digital transformation process, you’d be well served to look beyond the traditional limits of an IT or Marketing department project. Start by creating a vision for an unsurpassed customer experience, then back your way into the technology. And ultimately you should presume succeeding in the challenge might boil down to two main choices: disrupt, or be disrupted. We advocate, unreservedly, for the former.

A Better Model for GDPR

The right idea with unintended implications

The European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect recently. Even if you don't directly do business in Europe, undoubtedly, many of the services you rely upon to do work and communicate with potential customers do, and as such, it will certainly impact how any marketer manages opt-ins and permissions domestically. Though more interesting to me than the impact on marketing practices, per se, is how the law, while giving users control of their data, failed to provide mechanisms for wielding that power efficiently. It is, however, seemingly designed for efficient wielding of power by the government. Let’s investigate.

A trojan horse for increasing taxes?

When the EU designed the GDPR, they clearly outlined the cost to companies for violating the regulation: €10mm or 2% of your worldwide turnover (revenue), whichever is greater. The scale of this fine seems to telegraph the EU’s targets are the likes and scales of Facebook, Amazon and Google. Imposing a fine of this size against 90% of smaller businesses for casual email list violations (which will likely be common for quite some time) would be catastrophic—for businesses and the public opinion of the EU. Therefore, I simply can’t imagine the EU is intending to impose those fines and put whole swaths of companies out of business.

It was quite telling when on the first day the regulation went into effect, reports were coming out of the EU press that Facebook and Google were already potentially liable for more than $9 billion in fines without a mention of the undoubtedly hundreds of smaller companies that were likely in violation. It really feels more like a means of taxing the mostly foreign “big data” companies without unduly increasing taxes on more traditional domestic business sectors.

A weak incentive for compliance

The EU created no proactive enforcement body aligned with the GDPR. Effectively, it relies on companies self-reporting major violations. As far as I could find, should a company simply lie and deny violations occurred, there is no ready mechanism for challenges other than one-off state-sponsored lawsuits.

Further, if you are running Facebook and/or Google, it is highly possible that a 2% revenue loss on a GDPR violating business practice is still better than any potential organic decline in revenue should their ad targeting models effectively break under the new constraints.

A terrible consumer experience

If the purpose of this legislation was truly to give consumers more control over their data, there should be some centralized mechanism for them to manage and syndicate their rights. As it is now, the consumer would have to know which companies had or was using their data, contact those companies independently and either review what data points that company is using and request certain points be redacted, á la carte, or that the entire record be “forgotten.” The chances that most people will take the time, on a company-by-company basis to review or even request deletion of their data from most databases seem slim.

A modest proposal: a central exchange model

It is a fair argument to say, as the GDPR implies, that ad tech has crossed the line into illegal or at least unethical surveillance. I think it is also a fair argument that regulating the collection and use of consumer’s data, regardless of the cost and inconvenience of implementation, will be a net positive. But I think that if the legislation was approached from a more human-centered design-thinking perspective instead of a financial levy perspective, the solution would have looked very different.

My proposed solution, the consumer data exchange—a centralized repository or exchange model that makes it easier for consumers to catalog, grant, sell or revoke licenses to access and use their personal data; and a verifiable and economical means for companies to remain in compliance, and request or purchase licenses for all or part of a consumer’s multifaceted online persona.

The technologies exist already to make this feasible. Every facet of consumer data could be associated with distributable, verifiable or revocable, encrypted digital certificates. Online exchanges are commonplace—simply replace financial instruments with digital data “products.”

Ultimately, the consumer only has control over their data when they control its value

It feels as if the EU had approached this problem from a solutions perspective rather than a punitive one, we could have all benefited.

Ad Agency Models Are Breaking

Make Way for Magnani, an Experience Design and Strategy Firm

Chicago, IL – May 24, 2018 – Magnani, an experience design and strategy firm, is driving business results by elevating brand experiences and writing user stories that help clients move innovation from a concept to a plan.

Corporate marketing professionals find themselves with a dilemma. Most creative agencies don’t focus on their business goals. Most UX firms don’t understand the brand. Most consulting firms can’t offer great creative. Most digital agencies lack of understanding of the full customer journey (online and offline). And no one is helping them create a compelling story of their future. Make way for the experience design and strategy firm.The 35-person firm developed a future-focused, narrative-based design thinking framework for elevating experiences and driving innovation. Today, Magnani’s unique offering brings together customer and market insights, product and service ideation, prototyping and development, customer experience design and more.

The new structure has appealed to the market. Magnani has brought on a number of new global clients such as Navistar, Fresenius Kabi and CableLabs. Magnani has also been recognized for these efforts numerous times in 2018, including Inc.’s Top Workplaces and Clutch.co’s Top UX/UI Designers (list below). And the firm was featured at events such as Design Thinking 2018 and R&D Innovation Summit 2018.Bryan Sorensen, Digital Marketing Director, at Navistar says, “Most digital agencies that we have worked with haven’t connected the customer journey, with beautiful-forward thinking UX and flawless branding—all in a measurable way. Magnani does just that, far exceeding any expectation of partnership.”

When looking into the future, Magnani doesn’t have a Magic 8-Ball, but it does have a framework called Narrative Based Innovation that allows companies to plan for emerging market shifts and anticipate disruptive competitors to their markets, from the near-term to five to ten years out.For clients like CableLabs, Magnani has used the framework to envision new network, security and entertainment business opportunities made possible by emerging technologies and impending generationally-driven psychographic and demographic shifts. In fact, Magnani’s market insights helped CableLabs uncover a potential $1 billion near-term market opportunity for its members.“

CableLabs is in the business of innovation, and through our work with Magnani we have defined and assessed the market potential for future end-user experiences that fundamentally drive our development process. From power users to untapped customer segments, we have been able to identify new and compelling offerings through a unique combination of end user analysis, strategic thinking and experience design.” says Anju Ahuja, who leads market development and product management for innovation and R&D at CableLabs.Inc. Best Workplaces 2018Top 15 UX Companies in the USA by UpCityTop UX/UI Designers by Clutch.coTop Marketing Consultants in the USA by UpCity#2 by Agency Spotter 

About Magnani

Magnani is an experience design and strategy firm in Chicago that helps companies create innovative customer experiences that deliver long-term competitive market advantages. For more information, visit https://www.magnani.com/blog/Contact:Alayna Van Hall, Magnanialayna@magnani.com312.957.0770

The Summer Media List for Innovators and Design Thinkers

There’s no shortage of great ideas.

I read an article a few months back that made the bold assertion that we are in a new golden age of television. Of course, the word television was being used in its more modern sense, including programming created and distributed by over-the-top providers like Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Netfllix and Youtube. Ultimately, the argument posited recognized that attaining a high degree of success in a fractured media landscape requires content that is both high quality and original.The good news is that a cursory review of the entertainment landscape seems to support that argument. The better news is that the same holds true when it comes to media created about innovation and design. There’s an amazing amount of inspiring content being developed and distributed on the topics of innovation and design—much of it available free of charge! Let’s take a look at the tip of this great educational iceberg.

Listen: The Data Skeptic (Kyle Polich)

To paraphrase something Albert Einstein once said, “If you cannot explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it well enough yourself.” Data Skeptic is a podcast about data science, machine learning and AI, et al, that makes this complex, highly technical subject matter highly accessible. The show is hosted by Kyle Polich and Linh Da Tran and succeeds in clearly explaining high level concepts in data science in an entertaining way. You can find the episodes at their website and on iTunes.

Read: Change by Design (Tim Brown)

Change by Design is a design thinking classic. Brown’s exposition on the value of the design thinking process developed at Ideo moves beyond its use in product and service creation and offers insights into how the approach can have a positive impact on businesses as a whole. The book is rich with detailed examples and anecdotes (some which have held up less well under the ravages of time).

Listen: a16z (Andresen Horowitz)

You can accuse internet pioneer Marc Andresen of many things, however, not having an opinion is not one of them. The a16z podcast tackles (as described on iTunes) tech and culture trends, news, and the future—especially as ‘software eats the world’. From industry experts to business leaders, every episode will teach you something and make you think differently, for better or worse.

Watch: Exit through the gift shop. (Banksy)

This documentary film, created by notorious/infamous street artist Banksy is pure genius. It’s both a treatise on the democratization of culture as well as a manual on the subversion of institutions, not to mention an amazing case study on the power of positioning and messaging. There are innumerable peelable layers in this presentation of the story of “Mr. Brainwash,” ostensibly a video-camera-obsessed owner of a second-hand clothing store in Los Angeles and his accidental journey to darling of the art community. It’s available on all major streaming video services.

Listen: 99% invisible (Roman Mars)

The title of this podcast is a reference to “all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about.” Topics range from the history and design of Barcelona’s La Saragda Familia cathedral to the near irrational affinity some patrons had for the unique patterned carpets at the Portland airport. It’s one of those media experiences that surpass any expectations the summary descriptions might offer. If you are among the 1% who tends to think about and notice design, you’ll love (and learn a lot from) this podcast.

Bonus listen: Song Exploder (Hrishikesh Hirway)

If most people don’t think about how the objects around them come into being through design, even fewer probably think about how the music we hear on the radio, streaming or in movie and television soundtracks moves from inspiration to completed recording. Song Exploder, as it’s described on the website, is a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. And, admittedly, I find it a fascinating glimpse into a design process most never get to see.

Sit back, relax, and you just might learn something.

This is indeed the golden age of media, when anyone can learn just about anything from any number of experts. Hopefully, we’ve helped sift through a bit of the noise so you can learn something valuable, about topics you care about, from the next in the business. So, now, load up the mobile device and plan your next road trip!

2018—Disruption Goes Mainstream

I think everyone can agree that innovation and disruption are already two of the top buzzwords in 2018. Companies are increasingly focusing on innovation to hopefully avoid being disrupted by a new technology, market entrant or an existing competitor. It seems if you’re not innovating, disruption is inevitable—forcing innovation in positive or negative ways. Long story short, disruption is the new normal. Constantly driving or increasing value through innovation is table stakes. So, when the RND2018 Innovation Summit hit Chicago, I decided attendance was mandatory.While attending, I witnessed some of the brightest industry leaders coming together to share best practices and new ways to drive value through innovation within enterprise or mid-sized companies. Presenters included VP of Innovation at Johnson and Johnson, Shawn Johnson; VP of Global R&D IT at Monsanto, Qi Wang; Editor in Chief, IEEE Computer Society, Dr. L. Miguel Encarnacao; Director of Innovation Culture and Habits at Maddock Douglas, Diane Kander; CableLabs VP of Market Development and Project Management, Anju Ahuja (co-presenting with Magnani’s own VP of Strategy and Planning, Christy Hutchinson); VP of Innovation at Leo Burnett, Jeff Ponders; and many more.The most significant take-away from RND2018 was that at the core of all innovation is the creation of value, which doesn’t happen overnight (and it certainly isn’t magic). It takes a methodical approach, with key success and failure metrics helping to guide the path. Below are the four themes I saw at the RND2018 Summit.

1.     Put the customer at the center.

Put the customer, who is first and foremost a human, at the center of any innovation strategy or vision. Seems like a no-brainer. Yet, many companies are just now reorganizing their internal structure to accommodate this mentality. As innovators and value creators, we have to understand that everyone, whether you’re B2B, B2C, B2B2C, is a human first. And we need to understand and address the emotional drivers of their decisions.What are those emotional drivers? You can certainly look at the data you’ve been gathering and make a few assumptions, but it’s never that black and white. Humans respond when there’s a need and it’s your job to find out what this problem is. One way to solve for this is through “Narrative-Based Innovation”, which was presented by Anju Ahuja, CableLabs and Christy Hutchinson, Magnani.Narrative based innovation is driven by story, and it’s especially powerful because stories are ingrained in how we collectively understand and transfer complex ideas. Think of the stories passed down through your family, your religion, your favorite movie, your favorite childhood book, etc. Now apply that mentality to your user journey. What is their story? A story works because it connects with people on a deeper level, and it can also be told over and over without memorizing data sets. It can be told internally to secure funding, to your IT/R&D team to understand the ask without handing them the technical answer, your marketing team to frame communications internally/externally, and, ultimately, to the end user to understand the benefits.As Shawn Johnson, VP of Innovation at Johnson and Johnson said in relation to the connection of health and wellbeing, “Your mind doesn’t know if it is imagined or not, it is a subjective experience.”And, I would argue, every innovation project begins with a subjective experience. So, why not convey it in a story, told through the voice of the consumer, about the consumer, to drive a deeper connection and inform your business case?

2.      Always put the R before the D.

Speed is currency at any organization. And as tempting as it is to run full force without doing the proper research, it rarely works. There was use case after use case at the Summit that pointed to failures, with the common learning of always put research before development (not  to say that failure is bad...I’ll get to that in the last section).Why? According to a number of presenters, when you’re leading a project with your team, and everyone on that team has been at your company longer than six weeks, your collective frame of mind is likely tainted by groupthink. You need to bring in outside resources to share new perspectives and engage with your target audience to ensure that your North Star is actually the North Star—not just the brightest star of the night. Diane Kander, Director of Innovation Culture and Habits at Maddock Douglas, made the great point that everyone needs a “Provocateur” to ask all of the questions that you didn’t know you needed to ask.Once you ask the questions and frame the problem, doing the proper qualitative and quantitative research to inform your direction is paramount. But once you have this research and looked at the data, you’re in the clear—right? Try again.Another important perspective presented on this topic came from  Dr. L. Miguel Encarnacao. Even within companies that have big data, data sets that are so voluminous and complex that traditional data-processing application software are inadequate to deal with them, there is often an overall lack of data literacy. If someone presents the same set of data three different ways (for example a spreadsheet, bar graph and pie chart) there are likely going to be three different opinions. It’s of great importance that data literacy be the foundation for any research, data and analytics project. Having more colors and pie charts doesn’t equal successful innovation.

3.      Focus on the value over the innovation.

At the end of the day, innovation is about value for your consumers. Hence, every innovation initiative should be focused on the value provided to the end-customer, but also your company. If you create an amazing product and the end user loves it, but it doesn’t make sense to your company’s bottom line, scratch it.So how do you determine if it’s of shared value? Simple. The value should be tangible for both your end user and your company—it should solve a problem and drive growth. Here are the three things that matter:

• Cost
• Return
• Speed of return

Qi Wang, VP of Global R&D IT at Monsanto, gave great examples of being intentional about driving value and understanding when to invest in driving value to inform the R&D pipeline. For Wang, it’s not how they do science, it’s how they talk about science.

4.      Fail quickly. “Mastery is a journey, not destination.”

Name someone who woke up overnight with a brilliant idea and flawless execution that didn’t fail 1,000+ times before getting there? Any luck? Companies all tend to like to have processes in place that minimize chaos and predict outcomes as much as possible. If you attempt to do this with your innovation team, they won’t be around long.Smart, controlled failure is critical to any successful innovation initiative. Jeff Ponders, VP of Innovation at Leo Burnett, illustrated that mastery is a journey, not a destination. In order to be successful, you and your team need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and need to realize that understanding how to fail and succeed are one in the same.Another great suggestion by Diane Kander was to put pivot indicators in place. Understand the value created (map on Y-axis) and the effort required (map on X-axis) and assess if the two are in-line or heavily skewed one way or another to determine if you should move forward.Once you have decided to move forward, put failure metrics in place.One of the greatest talents of innovators is knowing when to pivot or change directions altogether, learning when to say no, and understand that “good enough” is not a standard.And the main take-a-way: R&D is to bring the energy and focus, because real innovation is iterative and messy.

Who Owns Your Company’s Website—Marketing or IT?

Most web governance structures place marketing and IT at odds.

In many organizations we work with, IT has full control of the website—everything from the user experience, tech stack specification and implementation, and digital road map to the data that feeds it all. And Marketing is relegated to the role of being allowed to “paint” what IT provides. In these organizations, we often hear complaints that IT, “doesn’t understand,” and that Marketing is always saying, “no.”And just as often, Marketing owns the website. Driven by wanting to launch timely promotions or content or engage their audience segments in new and interesting ways, Marketing can sometimes, even with the best of intentions, leave IT in the unfortunate position of trying to build a user experience that either the available data or tech stack doesn’t support. In these organizations, we often hear complaints that Marketing, “doesn’t understand,” and that IT is always saying, “no.”

Neither of these scenarios is ideal and each leaves frustration on all sides.

As an experience design and strategy firm with expertise on both sides of the issue, we have more often than not found ourselves being the bridge or conduit between IT and Marketing. We become the great arbitrator—helping marketing understand what experiences are possible within limitations of the company’s current tech infrastructure, and helping IT understand the competitive value of pushing technology to deliver exceptional user experiences. While we’re happy to fill this role—and have made a great number of clients happy by doing so— we believe there is a better way.

Start by asking the right questions.

Stop asking who owns your company’s website and start asking what impact can improving your company’s digital presence have on the business. Imagine building and presenting a business case around what impact your company’s digital presence can have on the bottom line. And really, it’s the business that owns the website, not IT or Marketing. It’s time to push beyond a traditional IT vs. Marketing mentality in order to thrive in this ever-evolving digital environment.

It’s time for a dedicated innovation team to “own” the digital experience.

Whether it’s beginning to sound like a cliché or not, digital disruption is radically impacting every industry. This disruption is being fueled by digital transformation. It just might change the goal from getting it done, to making it better.Often innovation/R&D teams own the future-facing product or service development, but it’s not a stretch to have this group, or a similar group structure, own the future-facing customer experience. We believe this would not only solve the “age-old question” of ownership, but also better position your company to be prepared for the future.

So how do you make this switch?

It starts with building a business case and showing examples of how digital disruption can better position the company and provide a tangible ROI. The ultimate “ask” should be for a business charter—and funding—to lead a dedicated multi-disciplined team with success measures around deepening the relationship between your company and your customers and driving business metrics.   Finally, here’s one stat to help you get started: according to Harvard Business School1, leading digital companies generate better gross margins (55%), better earnings and better net income than organizations in the bottom quarter of digital adopters (37% gross margins). How’s that for ROI?1 https://www.cio.com/article/3149977/digital-transformation/8-top-digital-transformation-stories-of-2016.html

Ethics in Design

With the renewed focus on the dark side of social media (Exhibit 1, Rihanna v Snapchat; Exhibit 2, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook), it's a good time to talk about ethics in design.In our position as an experience design and strategy firm, Magnani is in the business of designing strategies and applications that help our clients transform their businesses. These solutions often manifest as digital experiences that serve as a conduit of interaction between our clients and their customers. As such, we sit in a unique position to be both an advocate and influencer for best practices as it relates to ethics in design.Why is this important? At the end of the day, all products, programs and strategies eventually impact real people and their lives. This seems obvious, but in the heat of a project, it’s easy to forget that when the spreadsheets and timelines have been archived, when our products have moved from prototype to production, there are actual, real, living human beings interacting with our work product.This thought was renewed in my mind by the news of the day, but also by a great article written by Trine Falbe at Smashing Magazine. In it, Ms. Falbe provides a thorough list of ethical and unethical behavior in web design as well as a solid list of resources to explore the ideas and concepts behind human-centered design.But can we take this idea a step further? It’s not enough to identify the behaviors, we must create a corporate culture in each of our businesses that values and understands the human realities our behaviors impact. As strategists, designers and developers we must ensure that the work we produce follows five key guides.

Empathy

Know and understand your end-users. What are their motivations? What are their restraints? Have you considered people that don’t look like you? People without your resources? That don’t share your senses?

Honesty

Is your design forthright? Is there any critical information hidden? Are you exploiting a bias in human behavior that may be unethical? Are you sending people down the paths they expect? Do your customers trust you?

Necessity

Should you be releasing this project into the world? Does it improve a business? Does it smooth a path? Why should your project exist?

Security

Are you collecting someone’s data? Why? Do you need to? And if you are, are you storing that data as safely as you would store your own?

Imagination

You’ve thought about all the best case scenarios, but have you entertained the worst? How might a system you’re developing be used for nefarious purposes? Can it be designed in a way to negate those behaviors.Ethics in design are a large, unruly, and emotional topic. But by taking some time to consider people throughout our process, we can do our part to make plans, products and services that are more inclusive, more essential and more secure.

Three articles to reference:

The Verge - Rihanna condemns Snapchat for ad making light of domestic violenceVia Smashing Magazine - Ethical Design: The Practical Getting Started GuideVia Slate - Facebook Was Letting Users Down Years Before Cambridge Analytica

The Robots Are Here

The AI revolution is upon us. In this episode, we discuss AI, deep learning, and the impacts these technologies are beginning to have on business and innovation.