It’s the little things. Well, and the really big things.

Most UX problems aren’t the middle stuff. Most folks can reasonably string together a few screens, hook up the basics of an app, and design the basic parts of a product. This is the middle – not the big strategic, hairy issues, but a bit bigger than the itty bitty details. These things, typically, aren’t tough.

Where most products separate themselves is on either end. In UX, the middle is scooped out – the big, hairy strategic issues on one side, the small, seemingly insignificant issues on the other.

The big issues are the major ones: huge strategic product problems, like how someone adopts the product, how it provides value over time, how that value changes and adapts over time, how it fits into other aspects of the user’s life, and so on. BIG, nasty, issues. The big stuff isn’t as concerned with screens – it’s about the intangibles that make up the overall experience for the user. This is hard stuff, and worth fretting over.

The small stuff is just about as important, but often overshadowed by the large and middle issues. Small things are really small. For instance, tonight, my wife was looking at hotels on a travel site. As is standard, she entered a check-in date in one date field, and then proceeded to the next field to enter the check-out date. As she clicked on that, she recoiled in disgust, saying “Oh, this stupid thing put the date back to this month! That sucks”. Obviously, she expected it would stay in the month she’d put in the check-in field – 8 months past the current date. Instead, it acted dumb, starting at the current month, instead of intelligently understanding what the user was trying to do.

Simple. Small. So important.

The small things are just about as difficult as the big, not because they’re hard strategic problems, but because there are zillions of them, and recognizing them takes interface literacy – learning, fluently, the language of those small things that make a difference.

For the big issues, you need to either have top gun UX or product strategy chops on your team, or you need to hire it in. It’s important enough. For the small issues, you need to spend time training your team in this interface literacy – getting them to recognize these small moments and build them in by default. These issues go from the calendar defaults, to error messaging and to form labeling. They’re everywhere.

So, don’t be fooled by the middle. The meat of UX is at either end – the big, hairy, strategic experience stuff, and the itty bitty details that make the experience tick. Take care of those, and you’ll be golden.

[Postscript: It just occurred to me that the "scoops out the middle" phrase may not be familiar to all readers. This refers to audio engineering, where "scooping out the middle" means using EQ to pull out all the mid range frequencies, only leaving the high and low frequencies. -JD]

Over the years of work that I’ve done in design and technology, I’ve come to a sad, but clear, realization: most agencies suck. Advertising agencies, design agencies, web/interactive agencies, whatever. Most suck.

Now, don’t get me wrong – many of them are very successful. They employ a bunch of folks, and those people are talented and genuinely great at their jobs. No doubt about it. However, the agency model doesn’t usually produce world-changing work. Yes, occasionally it happens, but usually not.

So, why? If we have buildings of talented folks, working on tons of projects for high-profile clients, why aren’t most making remarkable things?

Agencies suffer from at least two faults that prevent them from cranking out awesome work, and in my experience in working with an untold number of them, these two issues are remarkably consistent across most agencies.

Problem 1: They Can’t Say No

Most people know that saying no is a critical component of living a balanced and successful personal or professional life. The problem is, most agencies don’t know this. This creates big problems: the client drives the project, from engagement to solution, with the agency merely acting as a production house, instead of as a professional partner.

As an agency, your job is to be a partner with your client, lending expertise about what they should and shouldn’t do, and as a professional, your job is to control the process. Your client can’t do what they’ve hired you to do – you’re the expert, act like one. If they request bizarre functionality, say no. If they request unreasonable deadlines or deliverables, say no.

The point is not to be unreasonable or uncompromising – far from it. As the expert, you should take your side seriously, and giving in to functionality you don’t think belongs or a process you think will deliver subpar results harms both of you. Saying no, respectfully, retains your professional integrity, and ensures the client gets a solution that is the absolute best.

Bonus point: sometimes, this means a client goes somewhere else. That’s OK. You haven’t gotten to where you are because of a sales problem – you’ll have another walk into the office next week, and with that new client may come the opportunity to do truly exceptional work. Let the bad ones go!

Problem 2: Trying to Outrun the Negative Cash Flow

Agencies are service companies, and with true service companies often comes a business model problem: negative cash flow. Negative cash flow simply means you’re spending more than you’re taking in during a particular time period. In most agencies, this is caused by a typical billing structure: 50% deposit, 50% on completion (or some variant, but most follow a similar model).

Negative cash flow is a powerful motivating force. Watching the accounts receivables dribble in during a month causes anxiety, and that anxiety causes management to get antsy for the final deliverable. After all, the final deliverable means the second part of the project fee, which smooths out the earlier dip in cash flow caused by the period of working at a deficit. (Yes, I know the accounting of agencies is quite complex, and there are lots of ways to smooth out this cash flow. However, the fact is – most agencies work on a fundamentally negative cash business model based on commonly accepted billing practices, and that causes these problems).

Where this becomes an issue is with bandwidth, culture and quality. When the negative cash flow squeeze is on (and it’s always on to some extent), it accelerates projects. No longer does an agency have the luxury to say no to a ridiculous deadline or increased scope (see above point), they need to keep things moving to close the cash flow loop – and too often, it results in crappy work. Things get rushed, employees get burned out, and quality suffers – all because of the pressure from the business model, and the unwillingness to say no to the client. And it starts all over again next month.

I wish it was different, but years and years of experience have showed me it isn’t.

So, what’s the answer? First – agencies need to develop more backbone and respect themselves as professionals. Set the terms of your deals, establish a process and stick to it, and say no to unreasonable clients. Secondly, solve the business model problems: productize offerings, work on retainers, change billing structures to be more cash flow positive in nature, or develop other methods for releasing the pressure of the final check.

For me, the most unfortunate part of this situation is the talent and good work going to waste. There are seriously talented people working in agencies, working with seriously important and public brands. These people should be creating some of the best work in the world, and unfortunately, it doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should, too often due to a lack of professional discipline on the part of the agency.

Let’s find better ways to work. Let’s find more beneficial arrangements that establish clients and agencies as peers, working collaboratively (not as mere vendors) to create awesome work.

As you work through the requirements for your product, you’re going to run into a classic problem: what should it, and what shouldn’t it, do? How much flexibility do we offer users?

The temptation, when standing at this recurring fork in the road, is to opt for flexibility. Potential customers flash though your head as you imagine the myriad of scenarios your product will need to support: “But, what if someone needs to make it turn upside down and inside out? We need to be able to support that!” And, while you’re undoubtedly well-meaning, you’re also probably being irresponsible. Read this whole entry

Good design is as much about knowing what not to include, as it is knowing what you should put into your product. Understanding why not to include some feature or element is critical to creating stellar product experiences, and it’s this type of thinking that can prevent a lot of headache for your customers down the road.

On a recent project involving a major insurance company, we were designing a tool for advisors to manage their clients’ portfolios. In the initial spec and designs, we had a simple feature: a lightweight inbox for managing communication with clients through the application, so that these advisors had a centralized location to manage these relationships.

As we started designing, something didn’t feel right. On its face, the feature seemed to make sense, and inside the context of the application, it was a natural extension of the functionality. The problem was, this feature didn’t consider what was happening in the entire experience ecosystem. In the end, we decided having this inbox functionality was going to create some big problems down the road, and we removed this large chunk of otherwise helpful functionality.

So – what happened? Why did we decide to remove a feature that seemed, on its face, to be a great addition to the product experience? Read this whole entry

Madera Labs continues to grow, and as a result, we need some help. We’re hiring a junior user experience designer to help us craft great interactive experiences for our clients.

Check out the job description below, and if this sounds like you, get your stuff to us today!

Position: Junior User Experience Designer

We have a problem.

We are getting more and more cool clients – with cool work – and we need helping handling it all. To help us out, we’re looking for a user experience designer with a passion for designing innovative technology products and a passion for understanding the people who use those products.

What You’ll Be Doing

You’ll be part of every step of the design process (depending on the project, of course), including:

• User research and observation
• Persona development
• Content auditing for information architecture development
• Information architecture design
• Sketching and ideation of flow and interface for interactive products
• Wireframing and prototyping
• Documentation and deliverable creation

This is a full-time position, on site in our offices in downtown Tampa, FL.

What You Should Be Great At

We’re looking for someone with a delicate and slightly obsessive sensitivity to designing interactive products so that they deliver great experiences to the end user. We want someone who is able to carefully balance sexy design with real usability, and back up their design with research and thought. In short – we’re not looking for an artist, we’re looking for a designer.

As for tools, you’ll need to be familiar with Axure, the Adobe Suite and general prototyping concepts.

What the Ideal Person Looks Like

This position is not a graphic design position. While you may be talented at graphic design (and that’s certainly a plus), we’re looking for a user experience designer. Chances are, if you know the difference (and the challenge of explaining the difference) we’re talking about, you’re the right kind of person.

While we don’t expect you to have read every page of information about user experience design, we’re looking for someone who is steeped in the base of knowledge out there, and can talk UX shop with us. Whether or not you’re a fan of Nielsen or Spool, you should at least know who they are.

You should enjoy (even prefer) collaborative, team-based work environments.

Not only should you have the chops, but you should have passion. You should constantly be looking at ways to make interactive products deliver a better experience with an inescapable desire to innovate. You should be able to demonstrate experience of working to define the experience of an interactive product, and clearly articulate how an understanding of people has contributed to your past work.

Guess What? You’re Employee #1.

We’re not going to lie. You’re going to be the first full-time hire for Madera Labs. With that comes some exciting opportunities and different expectations. We’re not looking for someone who just wants to show up, design, and go home. We’re looking for someone who has a passion and honest interest in building a new design company. So, while you’ll be working on client work with us, you’ll also be working on our company with us. You have the chance to help shape what Madera Labs becomes.

In return, we’ll give you a fun, relaxing and exciting environment to flex your design muscle in and amazing growth opportunities. You’ll be challenged to innovate and given wide latitude to take risks in your design work.

Madera Labs is a small shop with big aspirations. We’re looking to become the world-class leader in interactive product design and innovation where technology meets humanity in an exceptional and exciting way. Want to join our crusade? Get in touch now.

Send résumés, examples of work and anything that clearly demonstrates your passion for and approach to design to:

Madera Labs
401 S. Florida Ave
Suite #203
Tampa, FL 33602

Or, email to:

careers@maderalabs.com (also, any questions? Hit us up here)