My lightning talk at Euro IA 2013, about the lessons I learned in my career as a designer of interactive systems and design processes. The lessons include: - Break Bread - Don’t over-design a process - Government work is not boring - Be ready to talk about money - Meetings make the team - Legal document =/= briefing - It takes a lot of work to work - Office Managers rule agencies Enjoy!

1. what I learned
in 17 years
at interactive agencies
Peter Boersma
@pboersma
EuroIA 2013
Hi. I am Peter Boersma and I am OLD, AND I am a great believer in giving back to the
community.
In this case that is YOU, the community that helped me during my 17-year long career at
Interactive Agencies.

2. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
I want to walk you through the companies I worked for
and share the good & bad things I encountered
and share ONE lesson per company.

3. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
Let’s start at the beginning...

4. 1995-2000 - General Design
Company profile:
- Dutch startup that grew from 3-30 people
- made interactive sites for small & large brands
My responsibilities:
- in the beginning: everything
- from interface design
- via software programming
- to sales and project management
General Design was a spin-off of a scientific institute and grew fast over the course of 5
years.
I was a generalist at first, and then became a project manager “because I had worked there
for a while”, NOT because I was good at it.

5. These were the early days of the internet: I designed the first website of the ABN Amro bank.
And yes, every screen was 640x480 pixels.

6. General Design
GOOD
BAD
* gave me broad experience
* mix of academic research and practical focus
* time to discover what I like (not project management)
* being project manager & UI designer on 10 projects
* leading to a short, 4-week burnout
Working at General Design was a great first job, allowing me to work on many different
things.
But I had a hard time when I was asked to be designer AND project manager for 10 projects
at the same time

7. and since you cannot do a presentation these days without a Breaking Bad reference...

8. Here’s a lesson called “Breaking Bread”:
share a meal with the people you work with! It helps!

9. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
In 2000, General Design was bought by Satama Interactive.

10. 2000-2002 - Satama
Company profile:
- Finnish web-and-mobile agency going global
- General Design turned into Amsterdam office
My responsibilities:
- Consultant User Understanding
- concept design, IA, IxD, usability tests
- for the first time: process designer
We became the Amsterdam office, and I got my first experience with working internationally.
I also was introduced to the idea of documenting your design process.

11. This was the state-of-the-art back then: the Nokia WAP site for use on mobiles.

12. We designed so many sites for Nokia.com that we needed to develop a styleguide.
This diagram was the core of the styleguide framework.
It laid the basis for...

13. Martijn van Welie’s Interaction Design Pattern Library
(Martijn was a colleague at Satama).

14. Another thing we did was document our way-of-working: it was modelled after the Rational
Unified Process, so we called it the Satama Unified Process. It was extensively documented.
(maybe a bit too much...)

15. Satama Interactive
GOOD
BAD
* mobile experience: designed WAP sites, and created a
mobile portal evaluation tool.
* process focus: I managed a 2-year program to
document the Satama Unified Process.
* I wasn’t considered a good fit for consultant team
* leading to a long, 8-month burnout
So Satama helped me get my first Mobile experience AND my first process design experience.
Unfortunately, I also suffered a burn-out. It took me 8 months before I was back to 100%...

16. Lesson learned:
You can over-design your design process:
SUP wasn’t used, and SUP-Light was created to fix that
A lesson here was that SUP had become SO prescriptive, that people felt it was useless,
(much like the Useless Box).

17. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
In 2002, I was headhunted and moved to EzGov:

18. 2002-2005 - EzGov
Company profile:
- software & consultancy for online transactions
- between governments and citizens/businesses
My responsibilities:
- Information Architect
- Also: usability tester
- And: process designer
EzGov had developed software that enabled online, form-based transactions.
The British tax office (the Inland Revenue) was our biggest client.
I was a senior Information Architect and couldn’t help but suggest to define our process...

19. For one project, I was sent to Jamaica to do User Research at a local tax office...

20. ...which would allow me to design these prototypes for the Inland Revenue Tax Portal.

21. Back in the Amsterdam office, we played a lot of games...

22. EzGov
GOOD
BAD
* good cooperation with development and PM
* developed in-house tools (J-flow)
* spent time defining design process (StUX)
* styleguides made visual design work boring
* org. overhead made our work expensive
...which helped build a great team and foster smooth co-operation with other departments.
Unfortunately, our organization had a lot of overhead so we were quite expensive.

23. Lesson learned
Government work is not always boring:
I performed a usability test at a sea-side cricket club
and did user research on Jamaica.
So, in this bar of the Kingston Hilton, I realized that Government is not always boring.

24. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
Still, in 2005, I quit my job at EzGov and looked for something else.

25. 2005-2006 - User Intelligence
Company profile:
- small usability company that expanded into design
- founder was looking for a business partner
My responsibilities:
- User Experience Consultant and Manager Design
I ended up working for 7 months at User Intelligence, talking to the founder about becoming
a Managing Partner, while helping to grow the company’s Design practice.
The talks didn’t go well, and my biggest lesson was:

26. Lesson learned
don’t postpone talking about money

27. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
So, I left after 7 months and joined Info.nl...

28. 2006-2010 - Info.nl
Company profile:
- very Dutch agency ("normal is crazy enough")
- founded in1994 and still going strong
My responsibilities:
- senior interaction designer
- Also: restructured department & renamed job titles
- Also: attempted to document design process
info.nl!FULL!SERVICE!INTERNET!AGENCY!!
...which was a very Dutch, full-service internet company.
During my job interview I noticed that the titles of departments and roles needed some work.

29. Life
Play
Learn
Buy
The largest project I did for Info.nl was the redesign of the public website of a large Dutch
bank.
This diagram shows the conceptual model...

30. ...that was translated - via sitemaps, screenflows and wireframes - into the final design.

31. I discovered that for this project, I had created all of the deliverables that Dan Brown talks
about in his book “Communicating Design”, so I presented that case at the IA Summit in
Vancouver.

32. Info.nl
GOOD
BAD
* cooperation with developers
* sales reached out to sell UX
* management lacked vision about process
* sales defined projects: teams designed to budget
What worked at Info.nl was the cooperation with developers, some of whom came from our
department.

33. Lesson
if you don't have
meetings, do you
still have a team?
But due to the lack of meeting rooms, teams didn’t really work well together.

34. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
And then, at the end of 2010, I was asked to join Adaptive Path...

35. 2010-2012 - Adaptive Path
Company profile:
- small San Francisco agency came to Amsterdam
- defined User Experience as we know it
- designers run Adaptive Path
My responsibilities:
- Experience Designer
- design, lead projects, sell projects
- teach workshops, host UX Week
A lot of you probably know Adaptive Path.
I was their first Dutch employee, and worked in their 7-person Amsterdam office
for 2 years as an Experience Designer.

36. I got to teach Adaptive Path’s UX Intensive workshops, and improve the materials for its
Information Architecture Day.

37. Adaptive Path
GOOD
BAD
* designers lead projects from sales to delivery
* many internal discussions about the field
* time to teach back to community
* 13 hour workdays due to time zones
* European sales handed over to America
What was fantastic at Adaptive Path was that Designers ran the projects.
When they broke that rule (by allowing Sales to control projects at-a-distance)
we stopped getting clients.

38. Lesson learned
Designers’ proposals were translated by Sales
into a Statement of Work with a lot of legalese.
We had to go back to the original proposal
to kick off projects with the team.
In general, Sales made the Designers’ lives hard
by transforming our project proposals (our so-called “Narratives”) into legal documents
that were not usable for project teams.

39. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
When Adaptive Path retreated from Europe, I decided to try freelancing for a while.

40. 2012-2012 - Freelance
Company profile:
- me :-)
- interaction designer & design process consultant
My responsibilities:
- set up the business, pay tax, do sales & PM
- define processes and design concepts for clients
I decided to turn my hobby of Designing Processes into one of my services,
besides designing interactive systems.
Since it was just me, I had to do all of the meta-stuff too.

41. Amongst other things,
I developed this Conceptual Model for a music-startup’s mobile app,
using Post-It notes (of course)...

42. ...then sketched screens around the content & functionality that the owner and I identified...
(and note that Post-It’s are perfect for sketching mobile screens!)

43. ...and slowly but surely it turned fro sketch to wireframe and into a real application.

44. For a client, the German online marketing agency Deepblue,
I interviewed members of their staff in order to map their existing Design Process
and identify common issues (marked in red).

45. ...here’s an example of responsibility-issues around the creation of wireframes by both
Konzepters (Concept Designers) and Information Architects.

46. Freelance
GOOD
BAD
* freedom in deciding when to work
* freedom in deciding how much to work
* freedom in deciding for whom to work
* office/tax/legal stuff is hard!
* no team = no feedback
* no idea if I was at good at freelancing
The good thing about being a freelancer is all of the freedom,
and the bad thing (at least for me) is that you’re ON YOUR OWN a lot.

47. Lesson learned
Meta-work: it takes A LOT of work to get work done
And the lesson here is: AAAAH! it’s soo much work!

48. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
So, when I was asked to join Blast Radius, I did...

49. 2012-present - Blast Radius
Company profile:
- “agency for the connected world” (= Marketing)
- owned by global digital agency network Wunderman
My responsibilities:
- Interaction Design Director in Amsterdam office
- design concepts and prototypes (with freelancers)
- manage a Business Analyst
- support offices in Hamburg, London and Paris
I am currently the Interaction Design Director at this interactive marketing agency.
With the help of freelancers, I still design concepts and create interactive prototypes,
giving some support to the other European offices.

50. An example of our work is the Michelin Tyre Selector.
We are currently working on the 7th version of it, to be rolled out to 28 European countries.
(although some countries are still running the 4th and 5th versions).

51. Blast Radius
GOOD
BAD
* working for a small number of big accounts
* ? (too early to tell)
* “creatives” run the projects
* ? (too early to tell)
It’s too early to tell exactly what is Good and Bad at Blast,
but I like working for clients for a longer period of time.
And I know I have to work on the position of UX in the organization...

52. Lesson learned
office managers run the agency
But, AS A NEWCOMER to the company, I once again noticed that
agencies are run by their office managers
(and they also have a big effect on the company culture)

53. 17 years at interactive agencies
1995 - 2000 - General Design
2000 - 2002 - Satama Interactive
2002 - 2005 - EzGov
2005 - 2006 - User Intelligence
2006 - 2010 - Info.nl
2010 - 2012 - Adaptive Path
2012 - 2012 - freelance
2012 - present - Blast Radius
And that completes my history with agencies (so far)...

54. Lessons•Break Bread
•Don’t over-design a process
•Government work is not boring
•Be ready to talk about money
•Meetings make the team
•Legal document =/= briefing
•It takes a lot of work to work
•Office Managers rule agencies
Thank you!
@pboersma
...and these are the lessons I wanted to share with you.

55. “good things,
when short,
are twice
as good”
“Lo bueno, si breve,
dos veces bueno”
Baltasar Gracián,
Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647)
(I hope this quote by Baltasar Gracián, applied to this presentation)

56. what I learned
in 17 years
at interactive agencies
Peter Boersma
@pboersma
EuroIA 2013