Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Innovation Stories at BIF-6

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

BIF6-logoEarlier this month I attended an interesting conference called BIF-6, hosted by the Business Innovation Factory.  This was the sixth installment of this event, held in beautiful Providence, Rhode Island. The organizer, Saul Kaplan, and his team did an excellent job pulling this event together in a very appropriate matter – comfortable enough, but not overly extravagant.

Each speaker had 15 minutes to tell a story related to innovation. Some speakers used support images, but PowerPoint slides were strictly forbidden. In general, the speakers were excellent. Some of them took certain liberties in extending personal experiences into doubtful generalizations, but most stayed within the limits of recounting their stories or connecting them with established knowledge. (more…)

UX Masterclass Presents Future View of User Experience

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

UX Masterclass MontrealEarlier this week our friends at Yu Centrik and the UXalliance hosted UX Masterclass, a one-day international conference on user experience design, here in Montreal. The two groups did a great job of presenting a more advanced take on usability topics than you typically see in a one-day event. They recruited over 25 expert speakers from across the globe and provided local UX teams with the opportunity to meet with some of the leading minds in the UX space.

What was interesting about the conference was that it looked beyond the traditional content around user experience and provided an opportunity to dig into the processes and approaches for resigning the interactions of the future. Presentations went beyond the “expert instinct” and looked more at focusing on the client’s end-to-end user experience. This involves mapping all of the relevant touch points with a client from the first engagement to the last, not just looking at the experience within a specific application. This moves the UX effort out to the entire company, including marketing, customer support, administration, management, designers and developers. It also involves looking at user experience design that’s multiplatform, supports multiple entry points and accommodates a global audience. (more…)

The Web is Not Dead, but it is Changing

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

changing-face-webTwo weeks ago I posted about the battle of the web browsers and what this meant for businesses. Even with the evolution of the browsers and the added functionalities they deliver, they are becoming irrelevant in the grand scope of the web. Years ago your experience on the web was dictated by the browser you choose. They all had different features and supported different options. Now, the web browser is virtually invisible. Users want access to the information they are seeking and they want the tool they are using to do so to just make this happen, without getting in the way.

The cover of the September issue of Wired boldly states “The Web is Dead”. This is a strong statement and one I don’t necessarily agree with. Yes, the face of the web is different and the ways that people are seeking information are different, but the fundamental concept of the web is still alive and kicking. People are still using the web to access information, but what’s changed is how the information is delivered. The days of funneling users through a web browser to your homepage are numbered, but users are still accessing information online. They’re just coming in through different doors, like web applications (iPad applications, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS feeds and more). (more…)

The Psychology of User Experience: Usability Week 2010

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Usability Week 2010 - TorontoEarlier this month I attended Usability Week 2010 in Toronto. This week-long event was put on by the Nielsen Norman Group and it featured a series of full-day tutorials led by usability experts on a variety of subjects, ranging from information architecture through to user testing.

The tutorial I attended focused on the role the human mind plays in defining the principles of usability. It did a great job of presenting details about how humans process information and the impact that this has in predicting peoples’ reactions and making effective design decisions leading to intuitive interfaces. (more…)

Does Location-Based Social Media Make Sense for Businesses?

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Location-based Social Media

With the launch of Facebook Places this week, it got me thinking about how businesses can really take advantage of this growing trend of users “checking in” at various locations. In the early days of this technology with Foursquare and Gowalla most of the emphasis was placed on the personal social use of the application for meeting up with friends and finding friends nearby. But the value in the application has always been centered on the business angle. For retailers, restaurants, and other consumer-driven businesses it’s always been about collecting customer info and offering rewards to frequent visitors. Businesses looking to attract and award clients to drive loyalty should consider these tools as part of their marketing mix.

In looking deeper into this technology there are some other creative business uses for it. For example, it’s also being used at conferences to encourage attendees to visit exhibitor booths. I’ve stumbled across a few examples of associations using this technique to drive traffic to sponsor and exhibitor booths. I’ve also seen a number of service-based businesses in the B2B sector using Foursquare to drive walk-ins to their offices, promising anything from free beer, to cool t-shirts, to discounts on services.

These check-in tools, particularly Facebook Places, provide interesting opportunities for local businesses to draw in new followers. With Facebook Places, businesses need to log-in and claim their “place” page and set-up a small profile with details like contact info, hours and a profile picture to see who’s checking in.  

Of course, if you’re in Canada or the rest of the world, you’ll have to wait. Facebook Pages is only for US locations for now.

Building Our New Website

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

If you’ve been to our website recently, you’ll notice a big change. We’ve recently completed a full site revamp, including new visuals, new content and a whole new back-end content management system (CMS).

INM.com Website

A screenshot of the new www.INM.com site

(more…)

INM President Part of Canadian Delegation at World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT)

Friday, May 21st, 2010

As we get ready to celebrate the Victoria Day long weekend here in Canada, our president Vahe Kassardjian is packing up to join the delegation representing Canada at the 2010 World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) in Amsterdam. This event gathers business leaders, public officials, and opinion leaders from across the globe to discuss and build a vision of a connected planet with access for all. Vahe is one of 30 selected leaders chosen to join the Canadian delegation, led by the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry.

The next WCIT event in 2012 will be hosted in by Canada and will take place in Montreal, May 21-24, 2012.

I’m sure we will have some interesting insights from Vahe after he returns from this event.

Why We Adopted Agile Development Methodologies

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

When you’re part of a company with over twenty years of experience in developing products and projects, making a change the very core of your company can be a big step, especially when you have a good track record and things are working pretty well. When we started toying with the idea of changing how we developed software a few years ago, we asked ourselves many questions about whether we really needed to make this change and how it would impact us. Now, a few years into it, we’re quite happy with the results. As with any change, there are a few bumps along the way, but would we go back? Definitely not.

For those that aren’t familiar with agile development, in particular the Scrum model of agile development, it’s a fundamental shift from the way the industry used to build projects as the way a project is approached is different. As the agile manifesto states, the focus is around people and their interactions, and not around the tools, technology or processes. The way that the projects are managed is also different. The team works closely, with daily interaction between the business contacts and the developers to ensure that the software stays in-line with potentially changing business requirements. Work is done in short, tightly managed sprints, making it easier to track progress and solicit regular feedback. These sprints produce fully tested and robust deliverables of the highest-value features that can be evaluated by all parties and provide a solid basis to keep building on.

What are the results of this change? We’re able to deliver better quality projects that are more in-line with our clients’ expectations, all of this in less time for less money. Our clients stay closer to the projects and maintain more control over their development and can even adjust their needs along the way. Our commitment to the Scrum methodology and to the other best practices around agile development, have significantly improved our team and our deliverables. And our clients agree, as more and more often we are being asked to approach projects using this methodology.

Introducing…. Our New Product Owners

Monday, March 1st, 2010

For the past couple of years, our blog has mainly been focused on outside issues and the impact they have on our clients’ businesses. While this information is interesting, it hasn’t allowed our readers to get to know the team here at INM and to better understand who we are. Moving forward, we’re going to be injecting a bit more of ourselves and our personalities into Impact. We’ll be sharing more about what we’re working on, and what makes us tick.

We’re going to kick this off by introducing you to our new client-facing team, our Product Owners. This is a role that grew out of our adoption of Scrum development methodologies about a year and a half ago. For years, we followed the industry’s traditional model of sales. This meant that we had a few employees who were solely focused on outbound business development. However, as we all know, this model really doesn’t work for anyone anymore. We decided to change this and offer our clients better service, right from their first interaction with us. This meant putting clients immediately in touch with someone knowledgeable that could guide them down the right path, right away. So instead, the first person a potential client now speaks to is also the person who will work on their project and knows the issues, challenges and best practices for their project inside and out. This led to the creation of our Product Owners role.

Today we have four targeted Product Owners, each with a different specialty, all of whom are veteran INM employees with first-hand knowledge and lots of hands-on project experience. This team is responsible for working with interested clients, proposing relevant solutions and overseeing the product development, deployment and operations.

Over the next several weeks we’ll be doing more detailed profiles of each Product Owner. Until then, I wanted to provide a quick introduction. Each of these individuals will also be more involved in the public face of INM, so you may see them pop up here on Impact from time-to-time.

Our Product Owners team:

  • Jason MacDonald is our ePublishing and eContent expert. Jason can cut through the clutter and he’s a pro at helping clients create the right environment to publish their content, whether it’s through software, digital documents, online/offline projects or an eLibrary.
  • Raluca Ene is our User Experience/User Interface expert. Raluca hasn’t met an application interface she couldn’t improve. She leverages best practices to help ensure every interaction is an efficient one and that every project is perfectly aligned to user requirements and corporate branding.
  • Francois “Frank” Boissonneault is our Engineering Project expert. Frank is a developer at heart and loves to come up with innovative techniques to fix our clients’ business problems through technology. He embraces a good challenge and can always navigate to a creative solution.
  • Nadine Husain is our eBusiness expert. Nadine’s always looking for an audience and her specialty is helping our clients to find and engage theirs. She’s well-versed in eMarketing techniques and is a pro at setting up technology solutions for engagement, and advising on eMarketing.

I’d encourage you to leave them a welcome message or post any questions you have for them in the comments section below.

Pepsi Skips Super Bowl XLIV?

Monday, February 8th, 2010

The talk of the town today is most definitely the buzz around the Saint’s victory in yesterday’s XLIV Super Bowl. But of almost equal discussion amongst those in the marketing community is Pepsi’s absence as an event sponsor.

In the past 20 years, Pepsi has been the single most important advertiser at the Super Bowl, spending over $135M on sponsorship. Last December, Pepsi surprised everyone by announcing that it was pulling its sponsorship and instead will give away $20M to “worthy causes”, including health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighborhoods and education.

To me, this signals two interesting trends:

  1. Mass media is really in trouble. This is far from “news” to anyone, but worth bringing up as a fair number of skeptics are still “waiting for the good times to come back after the economical crisis is over”. I am even more entrenched now in my position that new media will prevail, not necessarily due to the advancements that traditionalists expect us to deliver, but simply because the old way of doing things no longer works.
  2. Pepsi didn’t announce that they were going “2.0″ or putting their ad dollars into “social networking”. There is no doubt in my mind that ad dollars will progressively flow from broadcast style communications to pointcasting (a term used back in the 90s to explain personalized asymmetric communications), but it would be wrong to assume that Twittering and Facebooking are the new ways of approaching the market. They are merely transitions to better and more relevant ways of acquiring and serving new markets.

Pepsi chose a very altruistic approach, which I hope will trigger more thought around the ultimate goals of a corporate citizen in this century.