I often think back to December 10^th, 2012, when Think Brownstone hosted its annual Open House and celebrated its five-year anniversary. Following a touching champagne toast and words of deep gratitude from our founders Carl and Brian, each team member opened an elegantly wrapped and autographed “culture book,” a five year retrospective full of classic memories and funny sketches from our founding to the present day.  It also included photos documenting key milestones, such as the renovations of what is now known as our Think Space and fun occasions like Bring Your Dog to Work Day.

That little 5’ x 5’, 35 page book brought smiles to all of our faces but it also served as a conscious reminder about why we all come to work every day. The book is, in essence, a reflection of our core values and common beliefs, that: 1) we should be good to each other, 2) we should be excellent, 3) we should look forward to coming to work every day, 4) there is enough work out there for all of us, 5) we should grow, and 6) good design can make the world a better place.

Think Brownstone has a down to earth culture, run by amazing leadership. Yes, we have amazing benefits, a flexible PTO policy, and additional perks like free yoga classes once a week and a biweekly soup day. We also happen to have a beautiful office in Conshohocken that feels like a New York loft, complete with 12’ tall windows and ceilings, reclaimed wood floors, and an open floor plan. But think Brownstone lacks more than just cubicles; at our office there’s a true lack of ego.

Think Brownstone has a genuine, family atmosphere that enables employees to feel at home and empowered to write on the walls, envision solutions, and dream out loud. We enjoy opening our doors and extending this environment to our friends and clients who share our passion for collaboration and great user experience. It’s no accident that along the way we’ve also managed to channel our expertise to design the ultimate employee experience.

According to Cisco, global mobile data traffic for the year 2012 rose 70 percent, and per month we used an average of 885 petabytes. Mobile, according to a recent report from InMobi, now ranks first in media consumption with 1.8 hours of the 7 hours spent consuming media, outpacing PCs (1.6 hours), TV (1.5 hours), and any other channel. It’s also been said that many news organizations will soon cross the 50 percent threshold of users accessing their content via phones and tablets versus desktop computers and laptops. But that’s only half the story…

At BarCamp, the Washington Post’s Mobile Design Director Joey Marburger surfaced this data, along with another recent study from Equation Research which claims that nearly half of consumers are unlikely to return to a mobile site if it didn’t work properly during their last visit. When you add people (like me) who are unlikely to return to a mobile site that works but lacks a good user experience, that number might be considerably higher. When public media sites fall into this category we all lose.

With public media’s credibility, non-profit mission, and lack of pressure to accept traditional (and intrusive) advertising, these organizations are able to focus on producing the thoughtful, accurate reporting we need. But if these statistics are true, they should also be putting considerable thought and resources toward designing, testing, and building innovative mobile experiences that are truly responsive to the needs of their communities. These experiences could, in turn, further engage and empower their members to be contributors, and not just with their wallets but with ideas, information, and feedback.

Public media’s attention to detail and to the issues facing their cities are two of their greatest assets, but they now must figure out how to carry this over into the digital age by taking complicated subject matter and promising us something simpler and adaptive based on user behavior and local environments. Public media should be leading this charge, letting their users drive design decisions of the future, similar to how members drive editorial decisions today. If they can do that they should be able to attract new audiences, and perhaps even lure back some of the ones who got away.

That’s the vibe we have been fostering for over five years. When smart people get along with each other and love what they do, then they do great things. Everybody here does great work.

In addition to our other current openings for Full-Stack UI Developers, User Experience Designer (Visual) and Project Managers, we also need highly experienced Senior Experience Designers to lead the research, strategy and up-front UX work for some pretty cool projects. In short, to do great things.

Do you think you can get along with these folks?

Here’s what a Senior User Experience Designer does:

If you think you have what it takes to be a Brownstoner submit your resume today (no recruiters please).

We look forward to meeting you.

In addition to our other current openings for Full-Stack UI Developers, and User Experience Designer (Visual) we also need experienced Project Managers with awesome communication skills who are passionate about delivering on time, on budget, with top quality.

Some of the crew. And you?

Here are the juicy details:

Responsibilities:

• Independent management of projects including managing project scope, time, budget, while being flexible enough to achieve aggressive project delivery goals and objectives
• Track and clearly communicate project status to both internal teams and clients in both written an oral form
• Achieve on-budget and on-time delivery of projects
• Create and maintain detailed project schedules and resource plans
• Work collaboratively as part of a creative team that includes both clients and internal colleagues
• Build and maintain positive relationships with clients
• Support the financial tracking across projects, including reviewing hours and tracking costs
• Schedule projects to meet resource availability and coordinate resources to meet project requirements
• Provide administrative support as needed

Requirements:

• Bachelors degree or equivalent
• Minimum of 3 years of proven project management experience delivering interactive products and solutions
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Excellent organizational skills and extreme attention to detail and efficiency, including your personal time management and organizational skills as well as to your ability to extend such practices across a team
• Advanced skill in MS Office including MS Project (or similiar program)

Bonus Points:

• Enthusiasm for the internet and mobile applications
• Experience in User Experience or Visual Design

Perks:

• Excellent insurance plans, Simple IRA match, flexible paid time off, employee training budgets
• Awesome creative workspace in downtown Conshohocken: walking distance to great local restaurants, easy access to Philadelphia via regional rail
• Fun team events such as kickball, yoga, and beer!

Apply:

Take a look around the rest of our blog and you’ll learn that we’re a diverse group of thinkers who love our jobs and have a pretty good time here at work. If you’re a talented, experienced Project Manager looking to work in an environment filled with talented, creative people, let’s talk.

If you think you have what it takes to be a Brownstoner submit your resume today.

We look forward to meeting you.

Here’s what I learned from three leaders in our industry, and a little bit about them (taken right from the LeanUX NYC website):

From Bill Beard (@writebeard):

Bill Beard is a copywriter with more than 14 years of experience in building brands and harnessing their power to create enjoyable, memorable user experiences. He believes every moment is a branding moment.

• Use natural language—the “user” is a person. Talk to them like one.
• Be a context genius. Like Diana Ross said, “Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things [we’re] showing you? What are you hoping for? Do you know?”
• Remember the person interviewing you is not your office neighbor. They probably won’t understand your terminology, jargon and acronyms. So don’t use them.

From Tomer Sharon (@tsharon)

Tomer Sharon is a user experience researcher at Google Search in New York City and author of the book It’s Our Research (2012). He is the co-founder and organizer of leanUXmachine, a weekend of UX learning, collaboration, and mentorship for Israeli startups.

• There is a [high] negative relationship between what people say and what people do.
• Never ask what they need; watch people and what they do.
• Eye trackers don’t work. Notice-ability tests work!
• Use a rainbow spreadsheet to collect data and show results simply, quickly, and effectively.

From Adrian Howard (@adrianH)

Adrian Howard is passionate about creating great products. He co-founded Quietstars to do just that using Lean, Agile and User Experience techniques. You’ll find Adrian working with startup and product development teams doing everything from coaching and teaching to hands-on user experience and development work.

• “The opposite of talking isn’t listening.  The opposite of talking is waiting.” – LeBowitz
• Just pause and listen; silence is powerful because the person talking will want to fill the gap.
• Paraphrase: repeat what you heard back to the person talking to show you understand. Then ask for clarification.
• “Get out of the building.” – Steve Blank
• “Stalk before you talk. Talk before you sell.”
• Use Ethn.io to recruit folks for testing.
• Use open questions that can’t be answered with Yes or No.
• Capture observations on pink stickies and insights on yellow stickies for categorizing when you’re done.

I already signed up for LeanUX NYC 2014. Register now for a killer early bird discount!

And by the way, want to learn more about LeanUX?  Come to Think Brownstone (Conshohocken, PA) on Wednesday, May 1 for the next round of UX Book Club! We will be discussing Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf, who will be joining us over Skype for discussion and Q&A. Doors open at 6:00 and we’ll kick off with Jeff at 7pm!

In last week’s “Seven Rules for Managing Creative People” on the Harvard Business Review blog, Tomas Chamorro legitimately upset a lot of people in the design industry. I have been thinking about the post for over a week and finally was able to approach it with what I hope are constructive thoughts.

Chamorro’s provocative and potentially incendiary language perpetuates the myth that the design community is made up of temperamental, childlike artists who demand special treatment. Sadly, this approach obscures some insights into leading a design organization.

Editorial Note: Throughout this post, I use the term “designers” rather than the outdated and loaded term “creatives.” I assume Chamorro was talking about the design community, and (NSFW) I’m not the only one.

I believe the stereotypical “temperamental designer” is a myth. In my experience, under good leadership most designers don’t need any special treatment or considerations beyond the managerially mundane: e.g., faster computers if they do processor-intensive work. My advice to leaders of designers is to think about whether your staff is doing production work or design work and act accordingly. More on that below.

I am not questioning Chamorro’s credentials or his research, only his approach. In fact I applaud him for referencing academic studies.

So, without any further ado, behold Chamorro’s rules, Charron-style:

Provide Room To Experiment

This replaces Chamorro’s “Spoil them and let them fail.” There’s plenty of anecdotal and quantitative research out there that shows the most innovative groups succeed through experimentation. This isn’t a new concept, and it’s something each new worker brings to the table in their own way. I don’t get Chamorro’s advice to “spoil them.” I don’t see anything in his evidence that supports the idea that spoiling one group of employees over another, regardless of their role, will get you any advantage. As employees’ achievements pile up, they deserve more trust and—dare I say it—more privileges.

Design is a different job than other jobs. Folks in a production role should avoid failure like the plague. Folks in a design role should understand how experimentation works and not be punished when a reasonable, well planned experiment fails—as long as they learn from it.

Strive For Diverse Teams

Instead of Chamorro’s “Surround them by semi-boring people,” focus on how you pick your teams. Diverse teams find better solutions to problems. We’re not talking solely about traditional EEO diversity; diversity of thought, background and skill sets are all-important to team dynamics.

“Boring” is too subjective to be constructive. Start talking to me about hockey and my eyes will glaze over, but ask me about the electoral college and I’ll ramble on for hours. Others will have the opposite reaction. That doesn’t make either of us boring.

So, strive for intellectual diversity on your teams and encourage them to use divergent and convergent thinking methods. Also, make sure teams know their input is welcome, but each team member has a domain over which they make decisions and execute. For instance, the best project managers I’ve worked with get involved in design, but they are ultimately responsible for keeping the entire team up-to-date on the schedule, budget and milestones. These are not, as Chamorro puts it, “mundane executional processes” or “dirty work.” They’re important and designers may struggle without someone in that role. Trust me, I struggle without a good PM. When I find one, I want to work with them indefinitely.

Eliminate Meaningless Work

Chamorro’s recommendation, “Only involve them in meaningful work” implies there’s meaningless work in your organization. Ask any business leader, “Where does the meaningful work get done?” and their response should be, “Everywhere. If anyone is focusing on anything meaningless, I’d fire them.”

Everyone wants to know that the work they do counts for something, not just designers. Now, there are mundane, trivial tasks that we do every day, but they should have a purpose. When tasks get in the way of people focusing on the value they provide to the organization, find ways to minimize or eliminate those tasks. For instance, if your traveling consultants take four hours each week filling out expense reports and booking travel, hire an admin for your consulting department to deal with that stuff. It’s not that the admin will be doing meaningless work, he’s freeing up your consultants so they can bill more hours. It’s just good business.

Get Out Of Their Hair

This is not too different than Chamorro’s “Don’t pressure them” because I largely agree with what Chamorro is saying. I like that an academic is using Mad Men as an example for how to manage people. I’ve used it myself. It’s not a true case study, but it’s clear from that show that the writers have a grip on some of the realities of the design industry.

Chamorro’s point centers around the notion that you should not force unnecessary processes or structures on design teams. I completely agree and this—again—comes down to good project management.

As Ferran Adrià says, ”There is a difference between creativity and production.” If you’re forcing your people into a process-for-process’s sake, they’re not designing anything. They’re executing a process. In the end, stay out of their hair and let them do their job. They’re better at some things than you are, that’s why you hired them. If you’re a manager or a business owner and you don’t know this, you are probably struggling more than you care to admit.

Pay Them A Competitive Salary

Nothing attracted more ire from the design community than the terrible advice to “Pay them poorly.” In his twitter feed and in the comments section on the post, Chamorro tried to justify this as a “metaphor” for “Don’t overpay them.” I think he was trying to be provocative, but it backfired, and rightfully so.

We have known for years that money alone is a poor motivator for good work. This doesn’t mean you should be cheap with your design staff—quite the contrary. Good design talent is worth the money and good designers know it. Pay them what’s competitive in your market, make sure they have rewarding and challenging work and they are likely to stay. If you consciously underpay them and they don’t leave, I’d question how valuable they are to begin with. Fair Pay + Rewarding Work = Higher Retention. Take away one of the variables and you throw off the balance. When you think it’s time to throw money at the issue, it’s usually too late.

Provide A Continuous Stream Of Challenging, Rewarding Work

The title of Chamorro’s rule, “Surprise them,” isn’t the issue. Everything in the description generalizes designers with behaviors I have never witnessed. Chamorro says creatives “take a different route to work every day, even if it gets them lost, and never repeat an order at a restaurant, even if they really liked it.” He has never been to lunch or carpooled with anyone at Think Brownstone. His examples seem more literary tools than facts.

I may take the same route to work every day, but that is production work. For design work, I prefer to be challenged. Earlier in my career, I could lay down code, write scripts, or document requirements for days-on-end. Once it became routine, I got bored and found other work that I enjoyed. I was lucky enough to work where successful employees could find new challenges. I carried that practice on to my staff when I started managing people.

It takes time to get to that point in a career, but once you get there, you want others to follow. If anyone is in a rut and pigeonholed in your organization with no way out, they’ll leave.

Recognize Good Work Immediately And Often

Chamorro’s “Make them feel important” rings of the type of condescension that people smell from a mile away. Guess what—they are important. So is everyone who provides a service within your organization.

If you are not focused on recognizing good work, you’re probably way busier dealing with turnover. It doesn’t matter if you’re managing McDonald’s or Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. If every member of your organization is not important and doesn’t feel like they’re contributing something important, you’re wasting your money. You’re doing it wrong.

If You See Any Signs Of Clinical Psychopathy, Get Them Help

Chamorro’s connection between corporate innovators and psychopaths is academic to the point of being misleading and—again—intended more to provoke a reaction from the community than to provide any managerial guidance. It also undermines the importance of helping those who have legitimate problems.

1. We Grew Up Think Brownstone’s brand expression has naturally evolved and solidified over time—providing us with a clearer sense of “who” the brand is as a sum of its parts.  Though we always come from a place of “hate the design, not the designer,” we realized that it’s not really in our collective character to so overtly and publicly be negative. While it’s extremely important in our line of work to collect strong and weak examples, it’s also important to be mindful about how and when you share them (and how pointed one gets when naming names).

2. We Got The “Wrong” Kind Of Attention In any given time period, and with rare exception, our most popular blog post is about how tea emporium Teavana “Doesn’t Get It” (or at least they didn’t back when we posted the piece in September of 2010). I wrote that piece, I stand by what I wrote, and I don’t think much has changed since. But that’s fodder for my personal channels, not the company’s. More importantly, the type of responses the post generates does nothing to further our business goals. Worse, it falsely inflates our blog analytics and generates noise in our email inboxes.

We’re constantly cleaning up and tweaking our digital presence to stay aligned with our marketing and business goals, and to take advantage of new, validated trends and technologies. As part of that process, our first thought was to delete all of the “Doesn’t Get It” posts—revisionist history, I know, but all’s fair in bits and bytes. We subsequently discussed the honesty of removing it. We like to talk about how we have a new generation of thinking and have continued to add more smart people to our team, but some have noticed the post and asked, “what does this say about Think Brownstone?”

Ultimately we agreed that our blog is a record of our thinking and our evolution, and the answer to “what to do about it?” was an obvious one: we blog about it. I know, we’re SO self-conscious, right? Right. Like any good company!

Have you been faced with a similar dilemma? What was your course of action, and why? Looking forward to the conversation.

P.S. Starbucks/Teavana, your first Think Session is on us!

Some of the crew. And you?

Here are the juicy details:

Responsibilities:

• Create beautiful user interface and visual designs for web, mobile, and touchscreen applications
• Come up with solutions to clients’ problems via design and usability recommendations
• Work collaboratively as part of a creative team that includes both clients and internal colleagues
• Build and maintain positive relationships with clients
• Facilitate creative brainstorming sessions with clients and internal project teams
• Stay up-to-date on the current and best UI and visual design practices and trends; stay up-to-date on current web technologies and innovations

Requirements:

• Bachelors degree or equivalent
• Minimum of 5 years of proven experience creating beautiful user interfaces from scratch
• Extreme attention to detail with focus on efficiency
• Proven ability to drive visual design direction of projects with little to no oversight
• Proven ability to clearly communicate design ideas to team members and clients in live presentations
• Practical experience in responsive web design
• Advanced skill in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator or equivalents
• Solid understanding of how front-end code (HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, etc) is employed to translate visual designs into interactive digital interfaces

Bonus Points:

• Experience hand-coding standards-compliant HTML & CSS
• Experience designing interfaces for iOS applications (iPhone, iPad)
• Project management experience or willingness to take on some project management responsibilities

Perks:

• Excellent insurance plans, Simple IRA match, flexible paid time off, employee training budgets
• Awesome creative workspace in downtown Conshohocken: walking distance to great local restaurants, easy access to Philadelphia via regional rail

Apply:

Take a look around the rest of our blog and you’ll learn that we’re a diverse group of designers who love our jobs and have a pretty good time here at work. If you’re a talented, experienced Experience Designer with a focus on the visual/aesthetic and a stunning portfolio that highlights your interactive experience, let’s talk.

If you think you have what it takes to be a Brownstoner submit your resume today. Please also include a cover letter and a link to your online portfolio that includes work samples of websites or business applications where you served in a lead visual design role.

We look forward to meeting you.

Jen Couchoud: Mombot. Who’s not cool?

If something is too “uncool” to use, can it still be considered an example of great user design (related see: bluetooth headsets)?

On the other side of that argument - look at Basecamp. Basecamp is a great looking web application, and often one of the first things someone will mention when you ask him/her to recommend project management software. But, in my opinion, it’s missing a lot of functionality and workflow that would make it a more useful application for project management. Its street cred and sleek design seem to help it overcome what, in reality, it lacks in functionality and practicality.

Have you come across other examples where coolness overcomes shortcomings in functional design? Or conversely, where lack of “coolness” renders an awesome user experience moot?

Some Of The Crew. And You?

UI Developer Responsibilities:

• Develop front-end code to accurately translate flat design comps for desktop, tablet, and mobile phone experiences
• Integrate code with content management systems and back-ends for large-scale websites and web applications
• Work collaboratively as part of a team that includes visual/UX designers, business analysts and technical developers (clients and internal colleagues)
• Build and maintain positive relationships with clients
• Stay up-to-date on the new web development technologies and UI design trends/innovations

Requirements:

• Bachelors degree or equivalent work experience
• 3+ years professional experience hand-coding HTML, CSS, JavaScript (not just jQuery), and XML
• Familiarity with user experience (UX) design processes (conceptual design, wireframes, usability testing)
• Experience using visual design applications (Photoshop, Fireworks, etc) to create assets for web
• Experience with coding for comprehensive cross-browser and platform compatibility, as well as testing and validation
• Experience with ASP.NET, PHP, JSP or other server-side integration languages
• Experience with Sitecore, Vignette, WordPress, Drupal, Expression Engine, or other content management systems
• Experience with git, svn, or similar version control systems

Bonus Points:

• Experience with MySQL, Postgres, or other database systems
• Experience with the Microsoft .NET platform (both WebForms and MVC) and tools
• Comfortable working on the command line on Windows, Mac, and/or Linux
• Experience with the Agile/Scrum workflow methodology
• Obsessive attention to detail

Apply: Take a look around the rest of our blog and you’ll learn that we’re a diverse group of thinkers who love our jobs and have a pretty darn good time here at work. If you’re a talented UI Developer, let’s talk.

If you think you have what it takes to be a Brownstoner submit your resume today. Please also include a cover letter and three URLs featuring your code (or a link to your github account with at least three projects).

We look forward to meeting you.