While creating art can be a solitary pursuit, thankfully many organizations have emerged to support creators. What if these organizations could find new opportunities to enhance audiences’ experience with art? What if we could improve how organizations tasked with promoting, producing and/or distributing art engage with audiences in our connected age?

“Digital transformation is about becoming more effective in the connected age.”

It’s possible, and proven successful. Arts or cultural organizations can have a stronger impact by adopting the principles of digital transformation, such as human-centered design. The team at MaRS, who are usually focused on technology-oriented startups and “Medical and Related Sciences,” (where the acronym comes from) kindly offered their expertise to this world.

Over three years ago, Executive Director of Opera.ca Christina Loewen observed the powerful result of merging art and innovation: propelling her arts and cultural organization to a new level.

“We came up with a hypothesis that the Lean Start Up program could help arts organizations develop skills for managing high levels of change and uncertainty, while also seizing opportunities for innovation.” ~Christina Loewen

In early discussions, Christina and her team devised a prototype introduction to the Lean Start Up model with the guidance of Nathan Monk of MARS. Monk introduced Lean Start Up techniques to opera company members at one of Opera.ca’s AGMs in Toronto. Mainly, delegates worked with a common tool: the business model canvas. Finding it useful, the delegates focused on this approach, without having the time in a three-hour workshop to explore the full range of “Lean techniques.”

This experiment was the jumping off point for the “Lean Arts” movement.

Lean Arts has now evolved into a five-week experimental pilot, which is designed to support promising performing arts initiatives in Toronto. It introduces local arts initiatives to the tools and methodologies that are often used by technology startups.

The program accepted 10 performing arts teams that had expressed interest after an introduction from Opera.ca. Classes took place at The Working Group (TWG) offices in Toronto. TWG also provided mentors and instructors for the program.

We recently caught up with these teams to discover how Lean Arts transformed their organization.

The Impact of Lean Arts: What We Discovered

Sonia Gemmiti is a set designer in film, television, and the performing arts. Before going on maternity leave, she was co-founder and designer lead for the Rev Rocket Circus, an arts organization known for mounting theatre performances in a circus.

Attending Lean Arts made Sonia aware of the importance of knowing her organization’s audience and how this relates to the location they chose to display their artwork.

Sonia realized that relocating to a location in a targeted neighbourhood would help her organization become more community-based, just as they had hoped. But this led to questions about traffic and engagement for the business.

“That building looks perfect (aesthetics-wise) but will I get enough traffic?” ~Sonia Gemmiti

Sonia confirmed that her team wouldn’t have uncovered such a critical opportunity for change had she not attended Lean Arts.

The Tale of a Town

Charles Ketchabaw is founder of The Tale of a Town, an online theatre and media project developed in collaboration with The National Arts Centre of Canada. The Tale of a Town aims to capture “the collective community memory of Canada’s main streets, one story at a time, while preserving local heritage.”

Prior to Lean Arts, Charles had worked in Toronto agencies. His team had already applied some methodologies that are similar to the Lean Arts curriculum, so discussing business models was familiar to him.

Lean Arts confirmed that the Tale of a Town team was on the right track to problem solving.

“Lean Arts reinforced the fact that we knew what we were doing and our approach was sound from a creative point of view. From a business development point of view, it forced me to go back and streamline the pitch. ” ~Charles Ketchabaw

Ton Beau String Quartet

Alex McLeod, violist and founding member of the Ton Beau String Quartet, realized that what he thought audiences wanted out of a performance was drastically different from reality. In the workshop, he was nudged to reframe his perspective to that of a customer, and leave behind some of his biases as an artist and musician.

Alex admitted that it was difficult balancing his creative desires as an artist with the profitability and scalability needs of his organization.

“Our product is a live performance, it’s not comparable to a CD or a book!” ~Alex McLeod

But after weeks of training, Alex discovered that Lean Arts was a pivotal step. It gave Ton Beau clarity in its marketing and sales endeavours.

“We had this idea that we were a scrappy independent group that would connect with people uniquely and specially. Lean Arts helped us realize that we aren’t marketers and salespeople that could attract people at scale.” ~Alex McLeod

Now their team is doubling down its marketing efforts and fine-tuning audiences’ experiences. “Thinking smaller” is part of their plans, meaning the team will develop and refine create more intimate and interactive experiences with their attendees.

Pocket Concerts

In the Lean Arts program, Pocket Concerts’ pianist Emily Rho was faced with the concept of scalability. Her colleagues realized that scaling their offering would impact the quality of the experience they wanted to provide to their audience.

“To a certain extent, scalability is necessary because you want to grow, but for the product we offer, because each and every concert is so personal.” ~Emily Rho

Emily discovered that her organization could enhance their concert experience by implementing creative storytelling elements, which would be effective regardless of audience size.

“Interactivity in storytelling opens up whole new avenues where the work doesn’t have to be defined in the classic sense by the viewer.” ~Emily Rho

Her partner from Pocket Concerts, violist Rory McLeod, enjoyed learning about the ‘lean canvas.’ The lean canvas focuses on the holistic view, the organization’s income and expenses, and how to make the overall business model more effective and sustainable. Pocket Concerts currently uses a business model canvas to apply this new knowledge to creating a reproducible experience in a practical way.

“We can do four concerts in a month and have that balance: time and effort.” ~Rory McLeod

Music in the Barns

For Carol Gimbel, founder and artistic director of Music in the Barns, Lean Arts improved her understanding of how to serve her customers, who are attendees at her barn shows. Now she can quantify time and value in terms of the Music in the Barns experience. This has translated quite positively to all their partners.

“I conserve my energy to work on projects that can break even and pay everyone involved.”
~Carol Gimbel

Taking time to better understand a project’s financial impact and its responsibilities puts leaders into the mindset of defining a project’s value. This perspective encourages organizations to better measure the return on investment for resources – monetary, reputational or otherwise.

While the creative process itself is far removed from the business of mounting a show; the Lean Arts training is a reminder that the business aspect should be a consideration for sustainable organizations.

“There’s a real value with creative thinking in the business world.” ~Carol Gimbel

A different perspective on art and technology

We caught up with Filament Design Director Matt Hryhorsky at FITC’s Spotlight UX/UI event at the University of Toronto last May. His spoke about how digital organizations can extend their physical experiences, and impressed us with a fresh perspective on design. As a digitalist who turns to art organizations for inspiration, he highlights the value of their work for his team:

“When we’re doing our art solutions, there are artistic inspirations that we take or draw from to create things that really going to resonate with people.” ~Matt Hryhorsky

Matt’s team frequently takes field trips. They’ve explored museums, art galleries, and client spaces to better understand what’s out there aside from digital art. For example, a sculpture cab inspire a new data model or website pattern.

Although Matt believes human-centered design and design thinking frameworks are important problem-solving tools, Matt believes designers must take more risks and ask more questions.

“Designers have a tendency to rely on things that have worked in the past. They need to ask more questions, like, ‘what do people really want?’”

Engage your audience creatively and experientially

If you think about an art exhibition, much of the focus is on the work and its environment (e.g. performance hall, gallery, public gardens). The effort of engaging an audience is often hyper-focused on the on-site moment of attendance, which neglects many other chances to build affinity and interest before, after, and outside the designated space.

When considering the experience of ‘attending’ art as an ecosystem, and not just the act of curating or displaying creative, many more opportunities arise to build interest and community. This includes longer term ‘legacies,’ and multiple ‘real life’ and digital channels. When you include the audience in your work, this concept extends further. However, the ecosystem isn’t just about your audience, but the required resources to discover your audience.

Ultimately, artists, curators, and all types of creators must challenge themselves to go expand their creative, connect with audiences directly, and experiment with technology.

Experience design as a foundational skill

If you’re looking to bring fundamental experience design methodologies and execution to your team, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

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So you’ve purchased your new website domain and you’re ready to build your site. Or are you? “Just” having a website and domain are not enough to drive visits, leads, or sales. There are other components in the digital lifecycle that must be considered.

The internet has made starting a business possible for everyone. And every day new entrepreneurs decide to take the leap and go into business, publishing a website that acts as their virtual headquarters. But before an entrepreneur invests any capital into designing a website, there must first be a clear understanding of what a website is and what purpose that website serves.

Understanding Website Fundamentals

Not everyone who starts a business online understands what the purpose of their website is. However, every successful business owner or marketing professional can answer that fundamental question— what purpose does my website serve?
Let’s start with the basics to understand why this is so important. At its most basic, a website is an internet-browsable digital property or digital asset that hosts one or more pages of content. It is crucial to understand the website as a collection of content because this content helps search engines and, most importantly, people, first find the website, and then take action.

Fundamentally, content is the lifeblood of any site looking to drive consumer engagement as content both shapes a user’s perception and experience, and encourages them to click. As a result, before designing a web site, the business first needs a clear vision of what content will be required to drive engagement and action.

In order to form a sound content strategy, the business first needs to ask itself the following:

1. Who is the business targeting?

By understanding who your target audience is, you can better determine how to deliver value to them, how you can best engage them with language and visuals, and what you need to offer to drive engagement and clicks.

You do this by providing an:

Offer: Understand what you have to offer your target (be able to clearly state what your product or service does).

Promise: Promise your target something of value to them (“more this” “better that”).

2. What does the business need to achieve?

Understanding your business goals allows you to focus your content on driving users towards these goals.

Here are some examples:

Awareness: Does the company want to build awareness? This is perhaps the first crucial step for a new online business. If the product or service is new to an industry it needs to make people aware it exists. The business needs to demonstrate that it offers value to its prospective customers.

Retention: Once a business is established, does the business want to retain its clients to grow loyalty and promote advocacy?

Profit: Is the goal to increase revenue or decrease cost? A website can have a fundamental impact on the bottom line through the alignment of sales efforts and marketing initiatives, along with the optimization of conversion funnels and other calls to action (CTAs), all of which shape the content of your website.

3. How does my website fit into my existing business model?

The content and function of the site will rely heavily on what other channels the business operates in. For example, there will be differences based on whether the business operates primarily online or at physical locations. Perhaps the business is selling a product or service, perhaps it’s an information or news source, and perhaps it drives people to download an app or visit a real-world location. Each of these criteria leads to different business goals, different content, and different calls to action.

By answering these questions, a business will gain insight into how they need to tailor the content of the site, ultimately leading to a relevant and engaging user experience for visitors who reach a specific website landing page.

Starting the machine and getting momentum

With the strategic foundation set by answering the questions above, you’re now ready to start shaping the content of your website. The first priority now is to consider the homepage and any other landing pages which may act as a user’s first click into your site. How will you capture those users on each landing page? Given this entry point and the channel that brought the user to that page, what information and CTA needs to be on each landing page to drive engagement?

You’ll find a framework for answering just these questions (along with a number of homepage and landing page examples) in our free Effective Landing Pages book.

Now that you’re ready to take the first steps with your website, download Effective Landing Pages and ensure you have the foundation to continually attract and grow your customer base.

Product strategy as a foundational skill

If you’re looking to bring fundamental product strategy methodologies and execution to your team, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

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I’ve received a lot of great feedback and enjoyed some followup conversations after my latest MVP strategies article, The Experience Makes the Product, Not The Features, which was published in UX Magazine.

Segueing from this article, I’ve got two upcoming talks I’d encouraging you to come out to.

Feb 17—Agile Experience Design Toronto: Why starting with features will kill your MVP.

The first talk is Feb 17 at a local Agile UX meetup. There I’ll be talking about aligning UX with Agile, focusing on some of the difficulties of bringing design into a predominantly engineering focused workplace.

This Tuesday evening event is free to attend.

RSVP on Meetup

March 7—FITC’s Spotlight UX/UI: It’s the Experience That Makes the Product, Not the Features

At this talk, I’ll expand on the heart of the article to look at what it means to bring a focused, valuable Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to market. I’ll highlight MVP strategies that can help you learn how to better serve your users, and the business that’s footing the bill.

Early bird pricing for this full day event is available until February 22, with pricing starting at $49 for students, and up to $129.

Hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Lee.

The post It’s the experience that makes the product, not the features. MVP product strategy speaking engagements in Feb and March. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

“Once (creatives) get a taste of real problems and caring for the end user, it’ll be impossible to go back to doing marketing fluff.”

That’s Murat Mutlu from his wonderful article, Why Talented Creatives Are Leaving Your Shitty Agency.

On the ad agency life:

When one of the designers told me “I want to look after users, not brands”, I had no reply, he was right. That’s all that you ever really do in a place like that.

And that’s why Say Yeah loves working on great products that serve users and not all-too-brief campaigns that ultimately just serve the marketing machine.

Read Murat’s Full Post On Medium

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At Say Yeah HQ we’ll be hosting a group chat Tuesday evening, Nov 4, from 5:00p to 7:00p for those Interested in mobile, apps, and user-centered design.

Please RSVP and share the word that you’ll be participating in @10kCoffees week.

The post Join us for a Ten Thousand Coffees Week group chat tomorrow night. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

I sat in on this talk just a few months before we founded Say Yeah. For me this was a transitional time period, when I was making the change from “guy who designs websites” to “guy who cares about users”. Beginning with those first few projects at Say Yeah in the fall of 2008, our user-centerd design philosophy has been the foundation for our work over the past 6 years.

While keeping in mind that this talk was given two months prior to the initial iPhone launch, these points stick out to me as what would eventually become mobile first design process and the MVP movement.

• Remove features that aren’t being used when the benefit of simplicity is more than the benefit of the feature.
• Remove items to create visual simplicity.
• Figure out what you need to launch, the core features and watch how people use it.
• Get the site out there. Optimize later, when the site scales.

It’s impressive how adaptable this talk is to today’s emphasis on agile and lean product management. The talk is certainly as relevant now as it ever has been.

If you’re interested the event slides can be found on SlideShare, but read on now for my detailed notes.

MeshU – Notes from Presentations – 20/05/08

Iteration & You – Designing Adaptable Websites

Daniel Burka, Digg, Pownce

High Road Architecture

• Lots of planning, years to build and iterations take as much planning
• In websites, highly designed sites–flash, etc.

Low Road Architecture

• Quick, easy to build, change, adapt.
• In websites, built on frameworks, other peoples code/standards

Establish a Visual Language

• Design elements as a ‘visual vocabulary’ similar unified style for the entire site.

Desire Paths

• Builders pave walkways, people use the grass, they build their own pathways.
• Watch what people do, how they use the site, or app, and then help adapt.
• Figure out what you need to launch, the core features and watch how people use it

Adapt to Scale

• Get the site out there. Optimize later, when the site scales.

Subtraction is Iteration

• Remove features that aren’t being used when the benefit of simplicity is more than the benefit of the feature
• Remove items to create visual simplicity

Realign, Don’t Redesign

• Don’t take out the wrecking ball and restart – it’s very tempting, too much work.
• Make adjustments over time, instead of huge increment versions.
• Major redesigns can remove the pathways that users have developed over time – break user patterns.
• Use innovations of others, not your own, people understand how the things they’ve seen work. – Ie tabs, pagination, are intuitive and people know how to use them.
• Innovate only when needed, not for the sake of it.

Make Time for Iteration

• Build in time to change things to your past work.
• Research how users use the site.
• Improve on what you have, instead of just making new things.

Don’t Panic

• You’ll get feedback, wait and see before reacting.
• Take a breather then come back in a week, or month, and see what all users are thinking.
• Once you implement a feature, you have to maintain it.

Adapt to Survive

• Convince of why iteration is important, usually based on the bottom line. Set goals, try to reach them.
• Usability tests – simple as friends and a pizza – ie. These people, this background, have this problem.

Key Points

• Low road design is much easier to adapt.
• Realign, don’t redesign.
• Create a visual language and iterate it.
• You can’t predict all eventualities.
• Remove as much as you add.
• Don’t be over reactive.
• Make time for iteration.

Product strategy as a foundational skill

If you’re looking to bring fundamental product strategy methodologies and execution to your team, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

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