User-friendliness is the inevitable result of a smart design approach, not the starting point. Here are three criteria to help you develop a useful design brief that will ultimately yield a great product.

There they were again. In the “tactics” section of the strategic brief for my client's new project were two headings I'd seen many times before. User-friendly and intuitive. They're common enough goals. No one could blame the company for pursuing these noble ambitions as a way to help the product become successful. But what the team didn't know was that it would never achieve them. It couldn't. Not with guidelines like these.

One of the most critical mistakes a company can make at the onset of a project is to use its strategic brief as a home for generic "user experience" fodder that describes what the company would like to achieve rather than guidelines on how to achieve it. These single-word principles are the Play-Doh of design strategy: You can morph them into anything you want. Because they could be applied to almost any project, they do nothing to help designers decide which paths to take on this one. They create debate rather than settle it. Worse, they make the executives smile just enough that everyone forgets to ask how the effects of the design will be measured.

User-friendliness is a result, not a tactic. Intuitiveness is a quality, not an approach. Neither term is tangible enough as a design objective to inspire a great product. No matter how strong your jaw, you can't sink your teeth into vapor and expect it to taste like Apple. You'll only hurt yourself trying.

To achieve the result of user-friendliness, the design criteria you spill out onto the proverbial page need to meet a three criteria of their own.

Compelling design comes from crafting moments that tell customers who a company is.

Specific

First, effective design criteria describe with precision what type of experience the user should have so a project team can make decisions that work toward it. Obvious, perhaps, but like an alcohol-induced startup idea, it's the execution that matters. Practically any team of designers can think up at least a dozen solutions to a given problem. There's nothing hard about solutions. But while there may be a myriad of ways to solve a problem, each one of them has a different effect and is perceived differently by the user.

One of the keys to creating a successful, smart design is knowing which effect and perception you want to achieve.

Here are three examples from a recent app-design project aimed at helping athletes improve at a particular sport:

*Help users improve without coaching them (i.e., roll technique recommendations into a game).

* Provide constant, immediate feedback.

* Help athletes compete (for example, through games and stats comparisons).

Each of these statements is crafted to portray a specific kind of design. It's not "user-friendly." It's instructive, and responsive, and challenging. Don't design to solve problems, design to produce outcomes.

Actionable

Next, design guidelines should make it easy for designers to see which roadrunners to chase and which to give up. They should hint at a direction. A road. A few more examples:

* Support deep dives into parts of the company story.

* Convert through storytelling (example: reveal what makes the company trustworthy through cases studies).

* Show beliefs through actions (example: a mobile-friendly website reflects an embrace of designing for mobile technology).

These guidelines point almost directly to actions that should be taken to achieve them. As a result, designers can weed out as many design ideas as they can know which ones to consider.

Measurable

Finally, design guidelines should support the success metrics for a project. In a project geared toward increasing the conversion rate of a website, for example, the design guidelines should focus on aspects of the conversion process. Here are two from another recent project:
** Build confidence about the decision (examples: money-back guarantee, testimonials, stats on satisfied customers).

*Set expectations (e.g., make it clear that order confirmation takes up to 24 hours).

There's nothing about user-friendliness here. These statements are focused on a measurable result.

Forget about user-friendliness

The notion that a product should be usable by its customers is a given. It's product design 101. It's not even worth saying. A customer's perception of a product is the result of something far beyond basic "user-friendliness"; it's the result of a slew of moments that tell him or her who this company is, what this product stands for, and what you want it to mean.

These moments happen while opening the box and making sense of the contents, landing on an unfamiliar website and trying to discern its purpose, figuring out where the power button is and how it works. Each of these moments can and should be crafted through design criteria that are specific, actionable, and measurable. Rather than declare your intention to create a usable product, spend your time on statements that describe the specific notes you hope to hit. Aiming for user-friendliness alone results in a usable product, not a compelling one. Compelling design comes from crafting the moments.

[Top image by Sacks08]

Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Robert Hoekman, Jr, is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (1st and 2nd editions), Designing the Moment, and Web Anatomy (coauthored by Jared Spool), ... Read more

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For a creative professional, a creative block isn't just frustrating -- it's potentially career-damaging. When you rely on your creativity to pay the bills and build your reputation, you can't afford to be short of ideas or the energy to put them into action.But all creative blocks are not created equal. Different types of block require different solutions -- something that's easily forgotten when you're feeling stuck. Here are seven of the most common types, and how to unblock them.

1. The mental block.
This is where you get trapped by your own thinking. You're so locked into a familiar way of looking at the world that you fail to see other options. You make assumptions and approach a problem from a limiting premise. Or maybe your Inner Critic rears its head and stops you thinking straight.

Solution: You need to change your mind. Question your assumptions, ask yourself "What if...?", and adopt different perspectives. Go somewhere new, or read/watch/listen to something new. Talk to people you can rely on to disagree with you, or offer an alternative point of view.

You may find creative thinking cards useful, such as Roger von Oech's Whack Pack, Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies or IDEO's Method Cards.

2. The emotional barrier.
Creativity can be intense. It's not a comfortable pursuit. Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you'll discover or reveal about yourself. Maybe your subject matter is painful, embarrassing or plain weird. Whatever - all of these fears and qualms are just different forms of Resistance, leading to procrastination.

Solution: You need to face the worst and come through the other side. There are plenty of things that can help -- such as routine, commitment, and meditation. But ultimately you are going to have to endure the fear, pain, or other unpleasant emotions.

It's like getting into a cold swimming pool -- you can dive in head first, or inch your way in. Either way, it's going to be bone-chillingly cold. But once you've got over the initial shock, done a few lengths, and got into the flow of it, you may be surprised to discover how invigorated you feel.

Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you'll discover or reveal about yourself.

3. Work habits that don't work.
Maybe there's no great drama -- you're just trying to work in a way that isn't compatible with your creative process. You work too early, too late, too long, or not long enough. You try to hard or not hard enough. You don't have enough downtime or enough stimulation. Or maybe you haven't set up systems to deal with mundane tasks - email, admin, accounting, etc - so they keep interfering with your real work.

Solution: Step back and take a good look at how you're working, and where the pain points are. If it's email, learn a new system for dealing with email. If you don't have enough energy, are you working at the right time of day? If you feel paralyzed by freedom, introduce more structure and order into your day. If you feel constrained by routine, find room for improvisation.

There are no hard-and-fast rules -- the only standard is whether your work habits work for you. Look for the right balance of routines, systems, and spontaneity for your creativity to thrive.

4. Personal problems.
Creativity demands focus -- and it's hard to concentrate if you're getting divorced/ dealing with toddlers/battling an addiction/falling out with your best friend/grieving someone special/moving house/locked in a dispute with a neighbor. If you're lucky, you'll only have to deal with this kind of thing one at a time -- but troubles often come in twos or threes.

Solution: There are basically two ways to approach a personal problem that is interfering with your creative work -- either solve the problem or find ways of coping until it passes.

For the first option you may need some specialist help, or support from friends or family. And it may be worth taking a short-term break from work in order to resolve the issue and free yourself up for the future.

In both cases, it helps if you can treat your work as a refuge -- an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Use your creative rituals to set your problems aside and focus for an hour, or a few, each day. When your work is done, you may even find you see your personal situation with a fresh eye.

It helps if you can treat your work as a refuge - an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff.

5. Poverty.
I'm not just talking about money, although a lack of cash is a perennial problem for creatives. You could also be time-poor, knowledge-poor, have a threadbare network, or be short of equipment or other things you need to get the job done.

Solution: Like the last type of block, this one has two possible solutions: either save up the time/money/or other resources you need; or make a virtue of necessity and set yourself the creative challenge of achieving as much as possible within the constraints you have. If you're doubtful about the latter option, consider the first and second Star Wars trilogies, and ask yourself whether more resources always equal more creativity!

6. Overwhelm.
Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little. You've taken on too many commitments, you have too many great ideas, or you're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming demands and information. You feel paralyzed by options and obligations, or simply knackered from working too hard for too long.

Solution: It's time to cut down. If you take on too many commitments, start saying 'no'. If you have too many ideas, execute a few and put the rest in a folder labeled 'backburner'. If you suffer from information overload, start blocking off downtime or focused worktime in your schedule (here are some tools that may help). Answer email at set times. Switch your phone off, or even leave it behind. The world won't end. I promise.

Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little.

7. Communication breakdown.
Creative blocks can happen between people as well as between the ears. If you work in a team, tensions are inevitable, and can make it hard to do your best work -- especially if you have one of those proverbial 'difficult people' in your working life.

Sometimes you get blocked by phantoms -- merely imagining your work being booed by audiences and mauled by the critics. And sometimes this happens for real and you have to deal with it.

It could just be a marketing problem -- after years of plugging away at your art with a miniscule audience, you wonder why you bother. Or maybe you just don't have a hotline to the people who matter in your field, so you struggle to land the right opportunities.

Solution: This is where creativity blends into communication skills. You need to be adept at understanding and influencing the right people, however difficult or mystifying they may be. Which means beefing up your influencing, marketing, or networking skills. I don't care if you're shy (I was) or introverted (I am). If you want to succeed, you need to do this.

And sometimes it's about accepting that you can't please all the people all of the time, and growing a thicker skin for rejection and criticism. Show me a creative who's never suffered a setback or a bad review, and you won't be pointing at a superstar.

For a creative professional, a creative block isn't just frustrating -- it's potentially career-damaging. When you rely on your creativity to pay the bills and build your reputation, you can't afford to be short of ideas or the energy to put them into action.But all creative blocks are not created equal. Different types of block require different solutions -- something that's easily forgotten when you're feeling stuck. Here are seven of the most common types, and how to unblock them.

1. The mental block.
This is where you get trapped by your own thinking. You're so locked into a familiar way of looking at the world that you fail to see other options. You make assumptions and approach a problem from a limiting premise. Or maybe your Inner Critic rears its head and stops you thinking straight.

Solution: You need to change your mind. Question your assumptions, ask yourself "What if...?", and adopt different perspectives. Go somewhere new, or read/watch/listen to something new. Talk to people you can rely on to disagree with you, or offer an alternative point of view.

You may find creative thinking cards useful, such as Roger von Oech's Whack Pack, Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies or IDEO's Method Cards.

2. The emotional barrier.
Creativity can be intense. It's not a comfortable pursuit. Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you'll discover or reveal about yourself. Maybe your subject matter is painful, embarrassing or plain weird. Whatever - all of these fears and qualms are just different forms of Resistance, leading to procrastination.

Solution: You need to face the worst and come through the other side. There are plenty of things that can help -- such as routine, commitment, and meditation. But ultimately you are going to have to endure the fear, pain, or other unpleasant emotions.

It's like getting into a cold swimming pool -- you can dive in head first, or inch your way in. Either way, it's going to be bone-chillingly cold. But once you've got over the initial shock, done a few lengths, and got into the flow of it, you may be surprised to discover how invigorated you feel.

Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you'll discover or reveal about yourself.

3. Work habits that don't work.
Maybe there's no great drama -- you're just trying to work in a way that isn't compatible with your creative process. You work too early, too late, too long, or not long enough. You try to hard or not hard enough. You don't have enough downtime or enough stimulation. Or maybe you haven't set up systems to deal with mundane tasks - email, admin, accounting, etc - so they keep interfering with your real work.

Solution: Step back and take a good look at how you're working, and where the pain points are. If it's email, learn a new system for dealing with email. If you don't have enough energy, are you working at the right time of day? If you feel paralyzed by freedom, introduce more structure and order into your day. If you feel constrained by routine, find room for improvisation.

There are no hard-and-fast rules -- the only standard is whether your work habits work for you. Look for the right balance of routines, systems, and spontaneity for your creativity to thrive.

4. Personal problems.
Creativity demands focus -- and it's hard to concentrate if you're getting divorced/ dealing with toddlers/battling an addiction/falling out with your best friend/grieving someone special/moving house/locked in a dispute with a neighbor. If you're lucky, you'll only have to deal with this kind of thing one at a time -- but troubles often come in twos or threes.

Solution: There are basically two ways to approach a personal problem that is interfering with your creative work -- either solve the problem or find ways of coping until it passes.

For the first option you may need some specialist help, or support from friends or family. And it may be worth taking a short-term break from work in order to resolve the issue and free yourself up for the future.

In both cases, it helps if you can treat your work as a refuge -- an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Use your creative rituals to set your problems aside and focus for an hour, or a few, each day. When your work is done, you may even find you see your personal situation with a fresh eye.

It helps if you can treat your work as a refuge - an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff.

5. Poverty.
I'm not just talking about money, although a lack of cash is a perennial problem for creatives. You could also be time-poor, knowledge-poor, have a threadbare network, or be short of equipment or other things you need to get the job done.

Solution: Like the last type of block, this one has two possible solutions: either save up the time/money/or other resources you need; or make a virtue of necessity and set yourself the creative challenge of achieving as much as possible within the constraints you have. If you're doubtful about the latter option, consider the first and second Star Wars trilogies, and ask yourself whether more resources always equal more creativity!

6. Overwhelm.
Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little. You've taken on too many commitments, you have too many great ideas, or you're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming demands and information. You feel paralyzed by options and obligations, or simply knackered from working too hard for too long.

Solution: It's time to cut down. If you take on too many commitments, start saying 'no'. If you have too many ideas, execute a few and put the rest in a folder labeled 'backburner'. If you suffer from information overload, start blocking off downtime or focused worktime in your schedule (here are some tools that may help). Answer email at set times. Switch your phone off, or even leave it behind. The world won't end. I promise.

Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little.

7. Communication breakdown.
Creative blocks can happen between people as well as between the ears. If you work in a team, tensions are inevitable, and can make it hard to do your best work -- especially if you have one of those proverbial 'difficult people' in your working life.

Sometimes you get blocked by phantoms -- merely imagining your work being booed by audiences and mauled by the critics. And sometimes this happens for real and you have to deal with it.

It could just be a marketing problem -- after years of plugging away at your art with a miniscule audience, you wonder why you bother. Or maybe you just don't have a hotline to the people who matter in your field, so you struggle to land the right opportunities.

Solution: This is where creativity blends into communication skills. You need to be adept at understanding and influencing the right people, however difficult or mystifying they may be. Which means beefing up your influencing, marketing, or networking skills. I don't care if you're shy (I was) or introverted (I am). If you want to succeed, you need to do this.

And sometimes it's about accepting that you can't please all the people all of the time, and growing a thicker skin for rejection and criticism. Show me a creative who's never suffered a setback or a bad review, and you won't be pointing at a superstar.

--

How Do You Deal with Creative Blocks?

Which type of block do you struggle with most often?

What solutions have worked for you?

--
Mark McGuinness is a creative coach with over 15 years experience of helping clients get past creative blocks. For in-depth advice on dealing with a range of creative blocks, download Mark's FREE e-book 20 Creative Blocks (and How to Break Through Them).

Concentration is the art of staying focused and turning a blind eye to life’s inevitable roll-call of distractions. It’s fair to say that most people have the skill nailed down to the level of blind aggravated badgers. That is, they’re pretty bloody useless at it.

But that’s okay, concentration is an acquired skill. We’re going to look at several methods of improving your focus to the point where you can process the day’s challenges like Ivan Drago on a cocaine kick. Ready?

First things first, I think it’s important to address the sick twisted cousin of concentration. His name is Procrastination and he is a highly destructive force of nature. As my favourite saying goes, “Procrastination is masturbation, you’re only ever screwing yourself.”

Damn right, you are.

Like all good talents worth having, the first step is to acknowledge that you’re sick of life without it. Ask yourself, “How much more would I be able to achieve if I could just focus my energies and get done what needed to be done?” The answer is enough to spur some fighting talk, but realising the New Filthy Rich You isn’t going to happen without some seriously hard yards.

Here are some concentration must-haves that will help you through the struggle.

Binaural Beats and White Noise

In a utopian world lead by yours truly, office workplaces around the globe would have their radios ripped out and replaced by white noise generators.

If you’re not familiar with white noise, let me bring you up to speed.

One of the easiest ways to lose concentration is to be distracted by noise. It could be the neighbour’s dog, the traffic outside or even your partner mashing up dishes in the kitchen.

If two people are talking simultaneously, you will probably struggle to focus on one of them.

If 500 people are talking, the combined frequencies will create a blanket of sound – similar to white noise – where additional noises will go undetected by your conscious mind. For example, if somebody drops a plate in that crowd of 500 voices, you aren’t likely to distinguish the distraction from the existing blanket of noise.

For an excellent white noise generator, check out Simply Noise. Loop the noise while focusing on your important tasks and you will find it much easier to concentrate for sustained periods.

Binaural beats go one step further. They involve two tones being played at different frequencies to create what is known as the entrainment of brainwaves. Binaural beats, as seen on The Unexplainable, can have radical effects on your state of mind and there is an entire industry upon itself of enthusiasts – myself included – who find them excellent for concentration purposes.

Daily Meditation

In Thailand, there was nothing I found more cleansing than a twenty minute session in the sauna. It’s amazing how meditating for a short period each day can do wonders for your ability to focus. It’s like recharging the batteries and resetting your mind to focus on tasks that are relevant in the present.

While not everybody is lucky enough to have a sauna strapped on to their apartment, you should easily be able to find twenty minutes in your day where meditation is possible. Use binaural beats to send your mind and body in to a sleepy trance, and let your anxieties melt away.

When the time comes for being focused and energetic, you should find yourself feeling much less irritable.

Achieve Optimal Health

A healthy body is a healthy mind. I hate to sound like I’m judging your personal right to eat shit, or to refuse any exercise that extends beyond rolling out of bed. But if you can’t look after your body, take on the right nutrition and crucially – commit to enough physical activity – then you’re going to have a hell of a time capitalising on the vast reserves of brain power at your disposal.

Before dismissing the following advice out of hand, set yourself a target even if just for one time only. See if it makes a difference…

Eat something nutritious for breakfast, and then exercise before you start work.

When the body has been physically awakened, lethargy is much less likely to affect your concentration levels. Science has proven so time and time again, but you know what? Screw science. Get off your arse and try it yourself.

Thoughts are Optional

I’m a big believer in our ability to choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to be influenced by. If you’re not fully concentrating on the task at hand, it’s all too easy to become bogged down by distracting thoughts.

Anything from “What am I going to salvage from the fridge for dinner?“, to “I really hope I get this done before X Factor comes on” to “Oh look, some cute kittens on YouTube”

Most people play the victim to these thoughts. But how am I supposed to control what I’m thinking?

The solution is to become self-aware to the point where you can acknowledge exactly when your mind is starting to wander. As soon as you feel your concentration waning, refer to an authority voice in the back of your head. Ask where the thoughts are coming from. What desire is allowing them to materialise?

An excellent way to combat these distractions is to treat them as intruders from a mind other than your own. You’ll be much less inclined to waste your time on YouTube if you interpret the thought as an act of sabotage from your most bitter enemy. Does that sound slightly extreme? Try it! Treat the bad traits as remnants of a separate vicious entity.

90% of resisting a distraction is your ability to find a neutral voice that acknowledges and sees the distraction for what it actually is. The other 10% is how fast you act to remove it.

7 Ways to Make a Mini-Marketing Campaign

Go big or go home? Forget that. These strategies for increasing your brand influence take hardly any time, and very little money.

By Tim Donnelly |  @timdonnelly   | Sep 22, 2011

Let's say you've got some down time between major marketing campaigns. Does that mean your marketing efforts have to go into hibernation? Of course not. You can fill in the downtime in your bigger advertising strategy with some mini-marketing campaigns that are often quick, uncomplicated and cheap—or even free. Experts from top marketing firms share some ideas on things you can do to run a smart—and influential—mini-marketing campaign that might even change the way you reach your customers in the future.

1. Experiment with new audiences.
"Throughout the year, large campaigns rarely stray from their core target audiences. But there are opportunities within secondary audiences. To draw on these opportunities, we usually turn to social first. We monitor social campaigns throughout the year and identify key questions and conversations we want to explore further. Then, when we have time, we survey these audiences, conduct small, targeted promotions, or post engaging messages to see what they have to say. More often than not, we learn something new that we weren’t considering for an upcoming launch or get added validation for a new idea or direction."
—Todd Miller, managing partner, The Archer Group

2. Go big with pop-up events.
"Find a venue where many people who are your customers or prospects show up. Better yet, buy a booth or offer your services for speaking or host a party for customers and encourage them to bring friends. This gives you the chance to speak with current customers to learn what they like/dislike, but mostly it gives you the chance to prospect. Just don't make the mistake too many business people make after the event: failing to follow up on every lead. If you gathered hundreds of business cards or email addresses then send a thank you and invitation to stay in touch. Offer something of value in this email—a discount, a free newsletter, added features, etc.—then the people most interested will "hand raise" and identify themselves to you for further follow-up and marketing efforts."
—Linda Worrell, managing director, Red F

3. Sponsor conversations.
"People today love to talk and express their opinions. Blogs, chat rooms, comment sections are filled with loads of people expressing themselves. This, if you play your cards right, can be a great opportunity for your product or brand. Why not offer up topics for people to discuss? And make them topics that relate to your marketing efforts. Use Facebook or blog comments to start a relevant conversation where, at some point, your product can play a role. Be careful, however, not to appear to be 'selling.' Generate a conversation that is authentic to the topic, and that your brand can become a part of as opposed to a conversation that is about your product. People will happily talk about things that are interesting to them, and brands are not interesting. So make your brand a byproduct of the conversation, not the topic itself."
—Kevin Roddy, chief creative officer, Publicis & Hal Riney

4. Attach yourself to large events.
"Sponsoring big events can be an effective but expensive way of connecting with industry leaders. Instead of going the sponsorship route, think of interesting ways to associate your product or service with the event to create organic buzz. For example, a cocktail hour at a nearby venue or a social-media driven game that incorporates panels and parties might be more cost-effective ways to leverage an event. Your campaign idea should provide value to event-goers; the reason Foursquare was a hit at SXSW was because it made it easier for friends to find each other. Keep in mind that early adopters can be your biggest cheerleaders, so connect with anyone going to the event who is an admitted fan of your product and reward them for sharing positive stories. People trust the advice of their friends and peers, so keep in mind that one good experience with your product can have a waterfall effect that goes viral."
—Maneesh K. Goyal, CEO of MKG, an experiential marketing agency

5. Emphasize earned media.
"Emphasize 'earned' media programs during these 'dark' periods in-between your big campaigns. Earned media, in the form of, for example, traditional public relations efforts and social media programs can be a cost-effective way to stay in market even when you don’t have ad budgets. We have found that emphasizing social media outreach and programs just as paid advertising campaigns wind down can be a highly effective way to keep an organizations message in market even after paid ads go away."
—Jose Villa, founder and president Sensis advertising agency

6. Try a new format.
"One of the things you have to look at when you attempt short-burst marketing is how much share of somebody's attention you can capture for the most reasonable share of money. What I would consider looking at social as an environment to capture market share. There's not much advertising in social apps. Usually, you get a large percentage or 100 percent share of voice within the application. Within that you're also getting a very engaged audience. Some offer the opportunity to buy in the stream of social activities people are performing across web and mobile. It's the most effective way you can spend your money for a short burst of time. The key is buying 'in activity:' as you send a gift, perform a mission, check in or set a status, that is when we perform our advertising. You're reaching an engaged consumer at the right time. As somebody performs a social activity, and you reach that consumer, that's when they're likely to share, that's when they're likely to 'like.'"
—Robert Victor, CMO of Appssavvy

7. Revisit old leads.
"One thing to do would be to recontact people that you've spoken to that have for whatever reason, in a friendly way, turned you down in the past. Revisit those people. If people have called you to inquire about your product or service but have not bought from you, it's always good to call those people back and re-pitch them. They've already expressed interest in you, they may or may not have been in research mode when they called. It’s a fruitful, no-cost list. You don't have to spend money to get that list. You know they're interested in your product."
—Dan Feldstein, cofounder and chief marketing officer, Red Ventures