SpoolCast: Web 2.0 Strategy and Design with Steve Mulder and Riccardo LaRosa Podcast transcript. Full audio and blog post available: Brian Steve Mulder and Riccardo La Rosa interviewed by Jared Spool, Christiansen: December 2008. [music] Brian: Welcome, I am Brian Christiansen, producer of UIE podcasts. In this week's episode Jared speaks with Steve Mulder and Riccardo La Rosa from Molecular Isobar. They have worked together to create advanced web projects for clients like Reebok, Humana One and Bank of America. Steve and Riccardo will be presenting their talk on Web 2.0 strategy and design at our Web App Summit which will take place April 19th through 22nd, 2009, Newport Beach, California. You won't want to miss it. And now, here's Jared. [music] Jared Spool: Welcome everyone to another SpoolCast. I am talking today with Riccardo La Rosa and Steve Mulder. They are going to be presenting at the UIE Web App Summit in Newport Beach in April of 2009. They are going to be talking about Web 2.0 strategies and design. I am very happy to have them here today. Hello, guys. Riccardo La Rosa: Hello. Steve Mulder: Hello, hello. Jared: Hi. So, now you guys are doing a fabulous seminar that I saw parts of, at least, at the UPenn Conference that happened last summer. In this thing you talk about Web 2.0, in particular, what large organizations can be using that typically when we think of Web 2.0 it's relegated to crazy little startup companies that are run out of the Valley. But, you guys are doing some stuff with some big corporations. Why don't you tell me about some of the things that you've been doing with that? Steve: It's very exciting, actually, as we work with mainstream clients, seeing them embrace not only all the components of social media that are increasingly out there but also the value and in terms of brand in the business, in terms of rich Internet application, so making rich interfaces that are actually intuitive and interesting and fun to engage with. We find that whereas we used to be the ones going to clients saying, "You should make this interface rich because of this, this and this". Increasingly, it's clients coming to us and assisting on it right from the start which is fantastic for us because it's work we love to do. Jared: I think it's neat that there's enough awareness out there that people are doing it. Are they coming to you with a solid idea, or do they just have some sort of crazy thing like, you know, that's got some element of flying cars and jet packs in it? Steve: We love the jet packs, especially when they are powered by Ajax. Those are the best kind of jet packs. It's true that there are organizations out there that simply want Ajax. Give us Ajax but more and more companies are getting savvy and coming with particular business goals in mind and particular user challenges that require a rich interface solution. For example, we worked a while ago with Humana One. Now, Humana One is a provider of health care insurance, but they are a little different because they sell health insurance directly to the consumer. So, there's no middle person there. What we did for them essentially was tackle head-on the often complicated path to finding the right health plan for you and create an Ajax based rich Internet application that helps consumers. It takes them very gently, if you will, through this process of finding the right plan based on your particular goals, your particular preferences but not in just a typical question and answer format. It feels like more of a conversation when you're actually doing it, and you're actually seeing the effects of the answers that you make immediately in the interface as the animations and the plans present themselves and come forward to you based on what's right for your needs. Riccardo: And I think the results of the concept of there is no wrong answer which kind of empowers the user to make adjustments and refinements to what could be their initial answer and allow them to actually see the differences in the results they are getting. It's definitely designed with inter-activity in mind. So far, the overall feedback was extremely positive. Jared: So, what are some examples of organizations that have done this? Riccardo: Well, in our example of a big brand that we have worked with is Reebok. They actually came up with a campaign a little while ago called "Run Easy". They actually wanted to position themselves as the brand that talks about running but not as something that is hard and something that is difficult to do as some of their major competitors do. But trying to actually involve the social aspect of running and make it simple so that the users can all participate in this movement. We actually ended up creating for them what we call here an "uber matchup". It's actually an application that we built using Ajax technology that includes Google Maps. This campaign was run all over the world, so actually users can go in, create their own profile and then create multiple runs where they typically live. So, it's usually in their neighborhood, and they can actually see what the people that live in their same neighborhood have created as well. They can go in, and there is a typical rate and review and comment. They can actually upload pictures as well. They can actually create their own play list because there is an integration with iTunes, and there is also a social place to actually have a conversation. So there is a forum like type of functionality. The interesting thing is actually that a lot of people that are actually using this application also when they go on business trips around the country or around the world and want to see if there is a recommended route to run in San Francisco if they are from Boston or vice versa. They can actually look it up. I have it tied so if it's close to their hotel, so if it meets their needs in length and see what other attractions may be in the area. People uploaded pictures, so it's been interesting to actually build something like this that is very social. Jared: How did you get to the point - when I think of the social aspects of running, to me that means connecting with the guy who's chasing me. [laughter] Jared: So, I'm not really sure what that means, what the social aspect of running, actually, is. How did you get from concept to delivery? Did they come to you with a complete idea here, or was this something that you guys sort of iterated over quite a bit? Riccardo: No, no. They definitely came to us with a concept of what they wanted the campaign to express and what they wanted the campaign to really feel like for the end users. What we did is we created this concept of actually leveraging existing applications. The concept was really to leverage existing applications the users are already familiar with, so Google Maps integration with Flicker, integration with iTunes and tried to make them feel like they have a common place where they can feel comfortable using tools and applications that they use everyday and really share all of that information among runners. The idea was to actually think about running as... it's not time based. So you don't have run a six-minute a mile or four-minute mile. You can walk for that matter, but you can walk with your friends or you can work with your dog. If you want to take pictures along the way and upload it along the way, feel free to do it. That was the whole... it was really targeting the majority of us, which are not professional runners and are, I'll speak for myself. I am a really casual runner. Maybe once a week or maybe once every two weeks, I go and I run for a little bit and that's OK. It's making me feel inclusive that there is a lot of people like me out there. They are all over the places. The fact that people are comfortable using Google Maps and they can actually draw their runs on Google Maps and actually can see what our neighbors or what our friends have done. It really started to emerge this common theme that there is a lot of people actually go running around the same places. They can actually start conversations with each other. Jared: As this thing has been launched, has there been anything that sort of surprised you and how people used it that was a little different than what you guys expected? Riccardo: Yes. Well, the... Steve: ... were allowed to say, right. [laughs] Jared: I'm sorry. [laughs] Steve: No, no. Riccardo: I think one of the aspect was we really didn't know if people were mostly from the cities or from the suburbs or from isolated places around the country really looking at this application. We really didn't know right away who would be the users of this application, because it was supposed to be fairly open to anybody. A lot of interesting things have happened along the way that, especially around some of these college towns that are in the middle of the country kind of isolated from cities, there were a lot of runs that were created in those areas that we actually didn't expect. Of course, if you go in cities like New York City, you see a lot of people running Central Park, a gazillion of runs in Central Park, and that's normal. That's the way you expect. But then there was this whole other part of the country that some of us are not as familiar with that is not in major metropolitan areas that had a lot of people that actually participated in this conversation. And then one not so positive thing is that actually iTunes integration is really hard, and it's very, very limited. Actually, that was one other thing that people were the least interested in really sharing their playlist and sharing their music in this type of environment. I think it's also just because there is so little functionality that the iTunes' API really provide. Steve: The beauty of the Web, of course, has always been that you can put stuff out there and you see what sticks, you see what works and you refine as you go. I think that's even gotten more important in the land of social media, rich Internet apps, because there is so much potentially that we can do from innovation point of view. There is so many ways potentially for an audience to contribute now that it can be difficult to know which of all these things we are launching are really going to stick, are really going to engage users in a way that's going to make something happen that was bigger than we thought it was going to be. Some things will stick and some things won't. Part of what we do constantly is respond to that. You know, this is a cliche, right. We are no longer throwing projects over the wall. We are living with them on an ongoing basis and evolving as they're used, and not just as we think they are going to be used upfront in some process. Jared: This brings up an interesting point to me, which is something that we have been talking about a lot here lately, is this idea of do you come to one of these projects with this sort of full blown 150 function points and we are going to get these all working integrated and built it altogether? Or do you try and build something small and try just a couple of functions, something very simple and then see how that works and see what sticks and move forward? I can see a lot of advantages just doing small, but particularly when you are working with an agency. It's much more expensive to do the small iterative approach than what it seems at first that's going to be much more expensive to do the small iterative approach. Steve: Yeah. I think my take on that is that the best projects start very small and focused. You got one core idea. There is something that is the core of what you are trying to do, based on a certain set of business goals, understanding user needs and unmet needs and current behaviors. Then broaden it out. Because we really believe that, even though you got a core idea, it's important to think as broadly as possible and get sheer quantity of ideas out there, everything that might support this core idea. Sometimes for us that take us in a new direction. We are working on developing an iPhone application right now and it was born out of having another idea and then the more we thought about that original idea. The more it led us into a new direction entirely that we'd never have gotten into if we hadn't been willing to open up to just things we hadn't considered before. Typically, what a third step in our process is winnowing that down again so that what we initially released is minimal in feature set, is really focused on the core and really helps us test how that core works before moving and adding on to that. I am big believer that doing fewer things very well is typically a better way to get to where you need to get. Riccardo: Although not everyday we have the luxury or not every project we have the luxury to do that. There are some projects where we have to launch big campaign or a big event or whatever it is. It's a big idea. It has to be fully baked. We tried to do as much prompt as we can, and eventually we define later. Sometimes you just have to play the card to your belt and make the best out of the situation. Steve: One thing we are seeing is traditionally a lot of larger organizations are experimenting with social media and rich Internet application and all those Web 2.0 stuff through campaigns. They are not necessarily folding it into their existing online experience so much as a temporary campaign add-on. It was kind of how Run Easy started really for Reebok. But what's happening is the marketing campaigns are serving as a test bed for these various technologies and tools and interaction styles. And as marketer warm up to them as real component to the experience. At Nikon, for example, warmed up to the idea of putting an image... the images on photographs at the center of the user experience in campaigns. They started transforming and we helped them transform their dot com to do the same thing. They got a certain level of comfort with, and I am going back to what we were talking about, a certain level of comfort with the core idea that they began with and then sort of implementing that core idea throughout their dot com experience as well. Now, when you go to nikonusa.com you actually see a rich experience that put the images at the center of the experience that is focused on what users, what consumers, care about which is how do I take great photographs. Start with the photographs and then try to tell me the camera. Don't just throw a sea of silver cameras in front of me and leave it to me to try to figure what in the world camera is going to be best. As soon as they experiment with that core concept, they were willing to let us try in bigger and bigger ways and that's something that wedged on the door is something that we are trying to use with a lot of organizations. How do we try something small that maybe is a little bit out of the way either an intranet or a partner site or a small product line or a marketing campaign? How do we start something and experiment with it to get them comfortable enough that we can really do something smart and big, in terms of social media or RIAs, on their main experience, 'cause that's where we believe it really makes a difference? Riccardo: And that was a great example, like Steve said earlier, is actually we did Humana 1. It was a concept that we had developed internally, and then we prototyped that - it would flash in really a few weeks - very quickly put it in front of them, and got a lot of attention to it. And then it became a real project and really then there was a whole commitment, the commitment of the whole organization to tie it to their back-end rules and make it a real offering, which is unique for their industry. And, when you think about a healthcare company, you don't think about them as a traditional Web 2.0 player; but they loved the concept, and they were willing to understand the value and support it. Jared: This sounds really in line with the thinking that we've had. All along, we've been seeing that those organizations that take an experimental approach - that try something, see how it works, try something else, see how it works - do much better, and that organizations that make huge changes suddenly, or huge new designs suddenly, don't see as good results. And, in some cases, I think, when you get social networking involved, it makes it even harder, because things become discussed in that environment and public very fast. When Facebook does a sudden change in their design, it makes "The New York Times". Steve: Yeah. And it makes a lot of customers really upset, a lot of their users really upset. It's the old classic story of eBay as well: flip the switch and change the background color, and the audience revolts; but, when you change just a little bit of color every day for a month, until you get to the same point, then actually people are fine with it. Jared: Yeah. So, this iterative approach seems to be a really key piece of it. And, since I don't get to talk to very many agency folks so often, this is a good chance for me. If someone is thinking about engaging an agency, they typically, from what I've seen, like to put together RFPs that basically talk in terms of an entire project. Is there a better way to be thinking about that initial engagement, if you want to do something that's more experimental and iterative? Steve: Yeah. I really feel bad for people who are required to write RFPs. I think it's a thankless, horrible job. It requires somebody to pretend like they know the answer to what they want before they know how to ask the question. Yeah. The more success that we find in working with companies, it's typically when we go in and there isn't necessarily a project to find. This is idealistic, but sometimes we're lucky enough that it does happen, where they have a challenge, or they have a particular objective. And those are the cases where we can go in and really try to blue-sky explore what the options might be and how to iterate and phase out what we're trying to do. So we're not launching their site and doing a full redesign: it's more iterative and gradual. It's somewhat an ideal scenario, because it doesn't happen to us as much as we would hope it would. But it's something that, when it does happen, everyone is much freer to find the right solution and the right pacing for offering the solution, and not just pretend like it's one big project with one big launch date. Riccardo: I think, if we have to make a recommendation to people that are writing this RFP, it's "Put the pen down for a second and put 20 or 25 percent of your budget, which you already have, to use towards engage some of these agencies and really coming up with some of the concepts and some of the ideas that you want", because, after you spend that time and that effort to really come up with the idea that you want, then you can go in and really assess how long it's going to take to build the whole functionality that you think is going to work. But trying to come up with an RFP off the bat is just really hard. And you know it's not going to be successful; at the end of the day, it's going to take you 12 months to 18 months, if you're lucky, and you don't know what you're going to get at the end anyway. Jared: Right. So, now, at the Web App summit, you guys are actually going to spend all day, a full day, talking about this idea of putting Web 2.0 thinking into the applications that these larger organizations and brands are doing. Can you say a little bit about what you're going to be covering in that? Steve: Yeah. So think of our workshop as a hands-on guide to figuring out when Web 2.0, all these components, make sense for your organization and how to design them. What are the right paths to follow for designing and implementing these things? It's going to be a heavy focus on the design side. It's going to be a nice dose of technology as well. And we're really going to dive into a ton of examples across the Web, of the latest and greatest. A lot of the components of social media, for example, like ratings and reviews, they have been around forever. But the fact is there's a lot of innovation happening, even within an element like ratings and reviews. So we're going to look at some of those - we're going to see what's happening across a wide variety of industries - as brain food, if you will, brain food for helping us all figure out what are the right components are for us, how we get creative about implementing them, and what common obstacles to overcome are. So a big part of the afternoon of that day will be focused on what we call a "parade of failures". It's essentially lessons learned by us, in the trenches, building these Internet apps. So, when we looked at Humana One, when we were building Reebok, when we were building Nikon, what are some of the really hard lessons that we went through? We have a lot of great horror stories: if we had only known at the time how to design for discoverability, or how timing in an interface made such a huge difference for basic user understanding and comprehension and usage - if we knew these lessons, it would've saved us weeks and weeks, I think, on some of these projects. So we're going to share some of those lessons learned as well. Jared: Cool. Yeah, there's no sense in repeating mistakes other people have made. You should make whole new ones. Steve: Exactly! There's an infinite number of mistakes out there to eat. Jared: Super! Well, this has been a lot of fun. I'm very excited about the workshop; I'm thinking that it's going to be really awesome; I'm going to try to get in, myself, to see as much of it as I can. But I know that people are going to really love it; it's going to be one of the highlights of the conference. Steve: We are looking forward to it! Riccardo: Absolutely! Jared: Super! Well, I want to thank you guys for taking this time to talk to me today. Riccardo: Thank you, Jared. Steve: Absolutely. Glad we could talk. Jared: And I want to thank our audience for listening to all this and encouraging our behavior. And we'll talk to you again next time. [music] Brian: Don't forget: if you'd like to hear more of Steve and Riccardo, be sure to catch them at our Web App summit, April 19 through 22, 2009, in sunny Newport Beach, California. Learn more at WebAppSummit.com. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Good- bye. [music]