This may get a little technical, but to put this into perspective a 1Mbps connection being used 100% for 1 day is roughly 10GB (really 10.8GB). So 1Mbps connection for a month is roughly 300GB (technically 324GB). Now if you used a 25Mbps connection for an entire month it would utilize approximately 7,500GB. Yea, that is a whole lot of data to be transferred. The issue is that Bell’s limit of 75GB is almost exactly 1% of the capacity of the connection. So in essence Bell is saying that you can use your 25Mbps connection at full speed for 7.2 hours.

This just doesn’t make any sense. With the sheer volume of TV watched on a monthly basis (~153h/month) and a growing shift of these viewers looking to the internet to watch their favorite shows 7 hours is just not going to cut it!

Some people might say “25Mbps is more than people need”. Well here are the bitrates for video (without compression)

• DVD – 5Mbps
• HDTV – 8 to 15Mbps
• Blue-Ray – 40Mbps

We are on the cusp of the needs of video for consumers. Keep in mind this only takes into account the current state of technology. These numbers are only for 2D video. What happens when we have streaming 3D video (remember Avatar the largest grossing movie of all time?). I’m sure that 3D video will require even more data to be transferred.

The reason this really bothers me is that Canadian ISPs are setting up a culture that stifles innovation. I can remember (albeit a long time ago) when Internet providers loved to see what their bleeding edge customers were doing to push the barriers of their technology. Complicated caching and compression technologies were invented, modems were bonded together (to get you 128Kbps!), communities would even bond together to deploy ad-hoc networks- all of these things helped push the technology further. My worry is that new entrepreneurs or hobbyist trying to create the next generation of consumer video services will not even get started (in Canada) if they see that they can only deliver service to customers for 7 hours.

Strangling Innovation

The argument that ‘most’ people fall under these limits infuriates me. This is like saying ‘We have invented this new car. Its best feature is that it can go 180kph. But most people don’t drive over 90kph so if you buy this car it can only drive 180kph once a month’.

I do think that there should be some realistic limits in place for internet usage. I just don’t agree that 1% is that limit. The ideal business model for telcos would be to either charge for the amount of data you transfer (Gigabytes) OR by pipe size (Mbps). Charging for both is double dipping. If the business was based on Gigabytes (which is more in line with the old per minute long distance model) then it would be in their best interest to provide you with the largest possible pipe at all times so that you can download more data.

Mobile Location Based Services: You’re tired and cranky after another distressingly long subway ride to an unfamiliar part of town. Your mobile senses this and recommends you take a break at a nearby coffee shop. The device points the way, checks the complex menu and suggests three items best suited to helping you relax and restore your physical-emotional balance.

Fashion/Apparel: You’ve purchased the latest Under Armour Sport Tactical Vest for the players on your team and linked them to the coaching staff’s integrated performance optimization system. The system monitors individual and collective bio-emotional and physiological stats while sending just-in-time haptic ‘coaching cues’ to players during practice.

Navigation & Browsing: You become eligible for a cable or Internet service upgrade and decide to have your provider install the latest integrated multi-touch bio-emotive program guide. You ‘surf’ like never before as the system recognizes and establishes a personal, empathetic connection between you and your preferred content.

Health & Gaming: You join a specialized yoga class called Meditation for Longevity and Gaming where you learn not only to identify and control your thoughts and emotions for personal health reasons but also to improve your mastery over new, multi-modal gaming consoles that demand the integrated use of body, spirit, and mind.

Tele-Intimacy: Your spouse moves abroad for several months on contract work and the separation puts a great deal of emotional stress on your relationship. You decide to purchase a tele-intimacy kit made by Philips that includes home-based applications designed to help the two of you connect and feel each other’s presence in…more ways than one.

To take advantage of this sense-rich paradigm early enough to prototype the kind of disruptive products and services that offer competitive advantage, brands and businesses need to understand the intersections between future technology and evolving humanity. That first requires a more robust, competitive R&D process. The research, design and development of multi-modal feelback systems and their successful incorporation in products and services will rely on multi-disciplinary teams drawing on very specific and specialized areas of knowledge, experience and expertise in and around the affective domain of ‘feel’.

Because the layering, combination, and re-combination of a wider spectrum of input/output modalities will create a host of new usability problems- one or more critical collaborative R&D areas will need to cultivate the space between Human Factors, Anthropology and Industrial Design. Standardization issues surrounding multi-touch input languages – where the function and meaning of finger gestures varies greatly from one device or platform to another or, equally important, from one group of users to another, will be solved only through research on product prototypes and users in action and in context. Otherwise, the social, cultural, cognitive, physical and performative are all potential glitches waiting to trip up organizations that fail to recognize, appreciate and design for human diversity. Like the pictures Wolf pulled yesterday on the big screen, those organizations will quickly become old news.

It requires that we put ourselves on the same streets of the people we would like to offer new services or products to.  We cannot simply sit behind a desk and target potential consumers with ideas which are created in a vacuum.

Corporations are more comfortable when they are able to absorb information that is presented in un-ambiguous volumes of information such as with infographics, data plots, matrix charts and/or clear examples that illustrate the archetypical consumers mated to a given technology.  See Ford’s Antonella, a Computer Generated personas used in development.

However here is where the problem arises, because most companies are too focused on their day-to-day production to really see any greater potential for other adjacent services, similar markets or entirely new opportunities thus limiting their capability to even begin thinking about taking a ‘calculated risk’.  Identifying and developing an entirely new product, experience or service requires a Re-Think, Re-imagining and Reset of business as usual.

Most companies already know who they want to target and what they are willing to spend, but what they don’t know and don’t have, are all the cultural points of reference, the interviews, the video-diaries,  the deep insights that come from knowing and understanding their ‘target market’ intimately.  Companies can literally get stuck when it comes to identifying new social classes that are yet to exist 10 years (even 15 years +) from now into the future.  Experimenting with branding techniques and products that aren’t really connected or based with anything that is current quickly loses relevance, authenticity and meaning.   Internal Design studies and Innovation work really start to break-down because no one actually knows who these future consumers really are.  Again, this is not an Engineering issue, it is an Anthropology study, also a Futurist’ scenario and a Qualitative research issue.

This is why a consultancy such as Idea Couture make sense for companies who wish to understand, utilize and implement foresight strategy that take responsibility for identifying, examining and creating innovative solutions for future target markets.

This issue is often referred to as a ‘wicked problem’, which is to say that the solutions are not obvious, nor are they transparent or easily recognizable upon initial inspection. The real answers are not known only until after someone has solved it.

Furthermore, if any attempt is made to solve a particular issue as an individual part of a wicked-problem, then it could potentially do more harm than good.  To ignore the over-lapping of adjoining issues for products and services is like to going into a field of land mines blind-folded.  You need innovation that that allow you to navigate the most effective  way through using the right tools and taking the right steps.

The opportunities to solve these issues cohesively, requires groups of different and complimentary minds (that do not have a conflict of interest in developing solutions) to work together as a team to create points of cultural reference, identify weak signals, map out scenarios and if need be engage even more raw ideas from un-biased participants.  This synergy-approach eludes most corporations primarily because each node of expertise comes from completely different and diverse set of backgrounds, which is normally not associated with human resources that are  available within an established organization.  What ultimately facilitates desired outcomes for Idea Couture clients is essentially our diversity and key competencies within our respective areas of expertise.

However, striking this balance in the modern world, and more importantly the emerging world must take on a different meaning.  As the old notions of luxury are challenged, they must make way for a new set of user dynamics and offer solutions to the people who live in the growing Megacities (cities with populations over 10 million).

In 2000, there were 18 megacities – conurbations such as Mumbai, Tokyo, New York City, and Mexico City had populations in excess of 10 million inhabitants. Greater Tokyo already has 35 million, which is greater than the entire population of Canada.  (source: Wikipedia)  2015 and beyond will also  see cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, added to this list to name a few.

Transportation on the whole is beginning to splinter into many different value streams such as delivery-on-demand, hub-to-hub services and deliveries, international condo cruisers, executive coaches, virtual garages, post-materialistic neighborhood eco-cars, shared-public vehicles, super-budget-sub $3000, and also new derivatives of personal mobility leading to even more avenues.

As Mega-cities become the norm, consumer attitudes will shift further away from the traditional aspiration of commuter vehicle ownership.  The costs associated with owning, insuring, driving, navigating, re-fueling, re-charging and parking will begin to unravel the notion of investing in one single mode of transport.  In its place, we will see more services based types of transportation.  All it will take are a few entrepreneurs who can splice together on-demand services with real-time users who consumers who are looking for more than just a taxi.

We must search out new ways of mobility, in terms of prestige, convenience, adaptability, affordability, dependability, the “raison d’etre” …… and we must find them quickly.  For consumers, they must be offered some form of tangible incentive, be it joy from the sheer act of being mobile, entertainment, price or convenience.

In terms of Engineering and Design, there are studies currently taking place around the use of robotics in the transportation industry; GM EN-V is one example of a technology demonstrator, and is now on display now at the Shanghai World Expo. The EN-V operates on technology borrowed from Segway, and the entire vehicle is half the size of a Smart car, fully electronic, has a top speed of 25 mph, and is capable of making turns 360 degrees in-place.Another example is the T.25 concept from Gordon Murray (Designer of the famous supercar; McLaren F1), which demonstrates foresight for government regulations, and fuel economy mandates, which are expected by the year 2020.

Transportation technologies have the ability to facilitate change, but ultimately adoption of this will rely completely on the behavior of how humans move about.  Metropolitan cities are more fashion conscious, and urban dwellers are more interested spending money on others things rather than to automobiles.  These people have other desires for items; shoes, purses, headphones, jackets etc…  But human behavior is not an engineering subject and neither is fashion. Therefore, the future scenarios of personal mobility will be less about pure Engineering, more about Ethnography and Designing towards consumer tastes and their unique interests.

Soon, consumers will not care so much about who manufactured their product, but instead they will be more interested in what Designer, Stylist, Co-creator or Theme Artist customized their mobility.  As this scenario evolves it will begin to see an over-lapping of transport services that combines with fashion design, product design, and experience design.

Coconuts- Eat The Meat, Use The Shell

Coconuts are a superfood when its comes to physical activity- coconut water for example, has all the essential electrolytes your body needs to keep nerves firing and muscles moving. One cup of cocunut water has more potassium than a banana, 15 times more electrolytes than most sports drinks, and also prevents cramping, promote recovery, and re-hydrates the body. Coconut shells are usually discarded, but they are now being used in exercise clothing. Recycled coconut shells are roasted, turning them into activated carbon and they are then combined with polyester fibers to enhance their performance properties. The result: a greener, softer, quick-drying apparel that provides both UV and odour protection.

Drink Your Coffee, Wear Your Coffee

A cup of coffee before my workout definitely gives me the energy boost I need- in fact a new study suggest that caffeine also kills some of the pain of athletic exertion. Now coffee has another use- the usually wasted ground coffee beans are being infused into the thread of fabrics.  The Coffee grounds are perfect for sports apparel because they control moisture, absorb odour, and are most often concentrated in sports bra’s cups.

Wearable Corn- Grill It, Wear It

Freshly picked corn-on-the-cob is often synonymous with summer- loaded with many essential nutrients including dietary fibre and vitamin C, corn is a summertime BBQ staple. Corn however, is not only great on the grill- it is now being used in exercise clothing. Using corn in fabric is not only environmentally friendly but the fibres wick away sweat and increase sun protection. Also, as your body temperature rises, the fibres let in cool air and post work-out they retain heat.

These active ingrediants are good for you and the environment too.

Organizations are increasingly turning to open innovation platforms as their source of innovation.

Open innovation platforms (or crowdsourcing platforms) are a way to involve consumers in the process of innovation. Here at IC, we have built examples pretty amazing open innovation platforms – the Aviva Community fund and the MIT Ideas Challenge that are helping prove the case. You can also check out Open Innovators for dozens of other examples of programs that work. As our fearless leader Idris Mootee recently wrote in his article What you don’t know about Crowdsourcing and why they often fail, it’s not a silver bullet for innovation. But when used in a defined way as part of the research and development process, they can be quite successful.

Solving the worlds problems one 2×2 at a time

A lot of organizations struggle to wrap their heads around open innovation platforms because they toil with their purpose in the innovation cycle – what is the role of the platform within the innovation pipeline. With that in mind, I’ve spent a bit of time sketching an organizational principal for open innovation platforms. Obviously an organization can choose to involve external parties at any point in the innovation process – but the emphasis of this thinking is focused on what would be classically viewed as research through development (as opposed to the commercialization).

Do you have a problem? X AXIS
The first decision criteria is “Is there a defined problem”.

On one side of the equation, many organizations are submitting or asking explicit questions to the audience for solving – they have a defined problem to be solved. For example, Innovation Exchange solicits “Challenges” (specific problems to solve) from major corporations. I call this “innovation inspired by the business” – the key driver of creativity is based off of a fundamental business-side need or problem.

On the other side, some organizations just want good ideas that align with their brands – they have undefined problems and look to the crowd to both explicitly state challenges and opportunities. In short, they hope the crowd both provides both self identifies the problem and articulates a solution to the problem. An example of this would be the over-mentioned “my Starbucks ideas”. I call this “inspired by invention”, as it often manifests itself through the creative ingenuity of the crowd. It could just as easily be called “Innovation inspired by needs”.

When can the crowd play? Y AXIS
The second decision criteria is “When do you involve the crowd”?

On one side of the equation, organizations involve external participants early in the innovation process. Involving customers early results in raw, often messy ideas that may or not reflect any possible reality. I think of this as a platform for actively soliciting feedback for “opportunity collection” because there tend to be a lot of undefined directions that can be pursued or that can inspire lateral thinking.

On the other side, organizations can involve participants late in the innovation process. At this point, organizations are often looking for full concepts, designs, or solutions that represent a full solution to a problem. Examples of this would be Google’s Lunar Prize, where the criteria for winning is to “successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending a defined data package, called a “Mooncast”, back to Earth.”. This is an example of “solution collection” – getting many external participants to come up with multiple, well articulated solutions.

The quadrants of organization-led open innovation platforms

Based on this model for understanding open innovation platforms, there are four primary opportunities for organizations to use open innovation platforms to drive the innovation process internally.

Defined Problem + Early Involvement = Crowdstorming. Articulating a specific problem to consumers and asking for many raw responses. This is pretty much like a massive brainstorm, and works as a way to stock the innovation pipeline early. Output: Lots of raw solutions to a specific problem with varying quality. Example: Fiat Mio

Undefined Problem + Early Involvement = Researching. Ask consumers to come up with solutions to undefined problems. The real value here is the articulation of previously unknown or unmet needs, collected through the initial articulation of customer problems used as a rationale for the solution. Output: Explanation or justification of previously unarticulated consumer challenges or needs with a small number of solutions of varying quality. Example: Dell Idea Storm

Defined Problem + Late Involvement = Prototyping. When you involve the consumer at this point, you’re really asking for a specific designed solution to a problem. Depending on how late in the innovation process they are involved, the output can be anything from concept sketches to fully-functioning prototypes. Output: Depending on how late the challenge is put to the crowd, and how defined the solution must be, expect a small number of solutions. Example: Supdaroo or one of my favorite sites, threadless.

Undefined Problem + Late Involvement = Adopting. Some organizations choose to build idea orphanages, allowing external participants to submit fully thought-out and conceptualized product concepts that may or may not align with their interests. Would-be inventors can submit their concepts with the hope of the organization moving on their idea. Output: Well thought out ideas that may or may not be relevant to the organization. Example: Lego Design By Me

Yes, no maybe so?

Obviously open innovation platforms differ in terms of where they play in an organization’s innovation cycle. In practice, each of the quadrants of the open innovation platform classification isn’t mutually exclusive. But in terms of understanding where their value lies, I think it’s a good starting point.

So what do you think? Agree with the classification? Have any recommendations on how to make it better? Have any great examples of crowdsourcing applications that I’ve missed? Join the comment thread and let me know. Also, if you’re interested in Open Innovation and the Virtuous Cycle, be sure to read Henry Chesbrough’s epic book Open Innovation.

Touch opens a wider variety of interface and application options not constrained by old degrees of interaction physicality. It has improved on the accessibility and experience of websites, video and gaming. It has created sentimental consumer demand for a new retro paradigm by transferring analogue artifacts (e.g. rotary phone interfaces, compasses) into the digital realm and it offers a relatively low cost and efficient way to try, fail .and improve upon even more new ideas.

What do we lose by replacing our buttons with pixels and graphics though?

For many of us, sensuality. Touch eliminates the familiar tactile feedback associated with the push, click, and resistance of a button. Like somatosensory wastelands, flat screen touch devices lack the stimulating vibro-electro-mechanical feedback of past interfaces. This has sparked criticism from both consumers and proponents of universal design principles. For fewer than most of us, but equally if not more important in considering the “unmet and unarticulated consumer needs” that many of us say should drive design thinking- touch threatens accessibility. Designers of touch have yet to seriously consider how, for example, a person with visual disabilities will interact with current and future products.

Steps towards feeling

Ongoing, innovative work is being done to re-capture, improve upon, and amplify the tactile and multi-sensorial qualities of future interfaces. Much of this work points to emerging transitions in the first wave of feel and feelback systems. For example, a recent project entitled “Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons on a Visual Display,” conducted by Chris Harrison and Scott Hudson at Carnegie Mellon University exemplifies an incremental push towards more tactile forms of touch-based interaction. In a more radical fashion, “Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display,” is a new holographic display system developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo that enables users to experience tactile feedback through focused ultrasound waves that produce vibrations felt on the skin. Other new interface and interaction modalities serve as starting points for further thought and discussion about the ongoing shift from touch to feel.

Haptic Technology has evolved way beyond the Rumble Pack video game controller and the iPhone’s turn to view or shake to shuffle interactions towards more sophisticated forms of input/output. Novint’s newly released Falcon gaming controller is an excellent example of a design evolution enabling entirely new gaming experiences. Phillips’ Forced Feedback Jacket and similar projects by the United States Department of Defense aim at increasing a grunt’s situational awareness and ability to feel their way around the battlefield.

Tele-presence and Tele-intimacy are pushing the boundaries in more personal and intimate ways. Consider tele-dildonics, Internet connected and mobile sex toys that enable direct feelback stimulation between partners. Alternatively, Mustugoto, a project developed at Distance Lab, uses computer vision and a projection system to “allow users to draw on each other’s bodies – enabling a different kind of synchronous communication that leverages the emotional quality of physical gesture.”

In the realm of Gestural Interface, Nokia has been exploring how pointing, waving and flipping a phone over to silence it can enhance mobile experiences. These natural gestures and spur-of-the-moment emotional responses to a disruptive in-coming call create the illusion that the device can see, sense and feel its user. Microsoft’s Natal project for Xbox 360 pushes this apparent feelback even further by mixing computer vision with an avatar (read: an intelligent agent) that can recognize a user’s facial features and, to some degree, displayed emotions to deliver a more ‘natural’ interaction and compelling experience.

Also known as brain machine interfaces (BMIs), Neural Interfaces employ non-invasive fMRI and EEG signal scanning techniques to enable mind-to-machine interaction. Applications include the control of robotic limbs, gaming, therapeutic exercises for treating ADHD, communication and art. One example comes from biosensor company NeuroSky which has developed a ‘mindset’ application where users visualize brainwaves as they listen to music – described on their company website as the ability to “translate feelings into actions.”

Bio-emotional Interfaces harness emotions, cognitive states and physiological states as input/output modalities. According to Philips, SKIN, one of their many inspirational design explorations, signifies a shift from ‘intelligent’ to ‘sensitive’ products and technologies by integrating new materials into the area of emotional sensing. Although we still haven’t experienced widespread intelligent products yet, the promise of sensitive ones is certainly alluring.

Affective Computing suggests markets emerging around new experiences with sensitive products and services based on the softer side of input – mood, feeling and emotion. MIT’s Affective Computing group is conducting a wide range of research and design that focuses on, among other things, the development of new affective sensing techniques, machine learning algorithms, technologies to help people become more aware of emotional states and communicating them, and the ethics of Affective Computing. Applications in this domain vary from serving people with Autism to gathering customer experience data to mobile health applications like outpatient monitoring.

Research being conducted on Artificial Intelligence and Assistants could well lead to the emergence of working relationships between people and their intelligent assistants, A.I. entities that understand and help us satisfy our needs. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funded projects like Pal (Personal Assistant that Learns) and SRI International’s CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) are pushing the boundaries of what these intelligent agents might do to help us maximize our individual and collective potential. Some applications include managing tasks, social networks and interactions as well as gathering, organizing and preparing information. Note: these are not the friendly paper clips or wizards we’ve grown accustomed to on Windows machines.

These are all steps towards the shift from touch to feel, a transition that might eventually combine potentials and characteristics to enable entirely new, sense-based forms of interaction, communication and exchange. This transition from disparate forms of single modality interaction towards multi-modal interaction will be slow, but when (and if) it occurs the illusion of predictive modeling and suggestion will be shattered by a new reality where our products, objects and devices will, over time and through new forms of usage intimacy, get to know us, feel us and learn how to better meet our needs.

How will this shift change the way products are defined, shaped, and made? Will it make products or services easier, better, more enjoyable, more intuitive or more meaningful to use?  Stay Tuned for part 3

The Clever Little Bag by Puma

Recently Puma announced the Clever Little Bag that will reduce their environmental footprint. As a shoelover, a shoebox is not only an environment problem but a space saving issue that involves all shoelovers who live in small condos. The Clever Little Bag not only solves the bigger problem at hand such as sustainability and carbon emission but it also reduces cluster in everyone’s home.

The R3 Green experiment by Petz Scholtus and Sergio Carratala

I stumbled upon this article on ReadyMade magazine and its about a Spanish couple in Barcelona who turned their own home into a green experiment. The couple used as many recycled materials as they could to create a carbon neutral home that follows the 3R principles: Reduce, Recycle, Respect. One of the coolest things in their apartment is the Wine Crate cabinets in the kitchen. You can follow the instruction and make one yourself with this check list.

Obsessive Consumption by Kate Bingaman-Burt
Obsessive Consumption started out as an art project by Kate Bingaman and it’s a project that I have been following for a few years. Kate, the artist, started out by creating a personal record of what she buys everyday and she draws out credit card statements for every single item she buys. The collection of drawings is getting bigger and bigger and she has finally started a blog to document this project. Why is this project green you ask? The drawings of what we consume serve as a reminder for all of us to think twice about how much we consume on this planet and by looking at the colourful drawings of these consumptions you are able to reflect on your own. When everyone is doing it- that’s a good starting point for reducing waste.

Happy Earth Day!

I’m sure you’ve been put in the situation before. An RFP or a project arrives on your desk that just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it doesn’t take into account fundamental human behaviours. Maybe it ignores market realities. Or maybe it’s just trying to solve a tactical problem rather than dealing with what really needs to be solved. Either way, it creates an uncomfortable situation – are you a going to tell the client they’re wrong, or are you going to do what’s asked.

The NAA Interactive Briefing

In the interactive division of the National Advertising Awards, entrants were asked to submit an innovative creative solution to the the following business problem for Sympatico.ca:

“Drive adoption of Sympatico.ca’s various assets by convincing our target audience to make Sympatico.ca or one of its sister sites, like Best Health or Auto, their homepage. The site is currently competing with U.S. and international sites like MSN and Yahoo.” (for more details, download the full briefing here)

Of the teams that responded to the challenge, half developed creative advertising campaigns consisting of a mix of traditional and social media forms. Some came up with clever campaign concepts that successfully focused on strong calls to action that supported the stated business objectives.

And the other half of the entrants told us the portal model is dead.

Dear Client, You are Wrong.

Now I don’t want this to turn into a debate around whether portal models like Sympatico.ca are dead. What I do want to ask is, if you’re put into a situation where you don’t believe that a brief is responding to the right thing for a client’s business, do you follow it?

In the past, I’ve been on both sides of the coin before. Perhaps it comes down to the difference between taking client work to get paid and taking client work to make a difference. Here’s a quick summary of your likely outcomes:

Partners Vs. Working for Approvals

A lot of agencies don’t break the brief. The hope is that once the ability to execute is proven, there will be the opportunity to show strategic worth on something else. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach to design. This is working for approvals instead of working to achieve a result.

The benefits of not working at an agency is you’re not boxed into agency scenarios. As a strategic innovation and experience design firm, clients come to us with a recognition (and expectation) that in order to strategically differentiate, you may need to go outside your comfort zone. Questioning long-standing assumptions is part of our value proposition, and as such, every brief gets broken to some extent. If your job is to solve problems, then articulating the right problem is step number one. It’s the difference between a partnership and a paycheck.

Now obviously not everybody has the opportunity to work like we do. So what do you do when the brief is wrong?

From April 7th – April 10th, I’ll be attending and speaking at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization conference in Toronto. These are my thoughts, feelings, and (hopefully) epiphanies from interacting with the world’s best and brightest in the world of digital measurement.

WEDNESDAY – APRIL 7TH – 9:35 PM

eMetrics day one. First off, the conference director Andrea Hadley did an awesome job putting things together. As with any conference, the true direction of thought leadership happens over dinner (not on stage), and sadly my inbox had to take priority this evening. So at this point, all I can offer is a quick rundown and a few opinions from the first sessions of the day.

Kickoff

After Andrea gave a quick intro, Alex Langshur, President of the Web Analytics Association, talked a bit about the WAA. A good summary highlighting the emphasis on community beyond Web Analytics Wednesday, legislation of privacy information, and education. I’m a big supporter of the WAA’s agenda, so it was a great way to start.

NHL.COM

Theresa Locklear, the director of Web Analytics & Customer Insight talked extensively about the reporting practices of the NHL. I was impressed by their degree of transparency – sharing numbers, talking about real case studies (albeit, mostly wins), and highlighting a few examples of real life optimization success. She also showcased an analyst team bigger than many (five to be exact). Clearly the NHL sees value in data driven decision making.

But at the same time, something kept popping into my head. There were quite a few examples of web optimization in the presentation, and when I asked about testing, they said they did none. In my mind, that means the decisions are largely left up to heuristics. Can’t black box that.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative panel

I’ll be honest – I caught what I could of the panel. But I’m trying to buy a house right now in Toronto, and in this market when the phone rings, you answer. But I did see enough to have a few observations.

A. I’m not sure I fully understand the logic behind having five people with (or formerly with) “Analyst” or “Consultant” in their title debating the merits or uses of qualitative data. I think we lost an important perspective by having no pure qualitative researchers representing their field. Back in my old web days, I used to think anyone could do qualitative research. When you work with PHD’s in the subject, people trained in observing and interpreting human behaviour, you recognize that there’s a difference. A few discussions at the WAA Mixer after the session reinforced my thinking.

B. When did “Quantitative” and “Business” become interchangeable? As the discussion progressed, it felt like a bit of a B-School / D-School discussion – not in terms of one versus the other, but in terms of purpose. Research is used for a lot of reasons, and yes, in some situations one is preferred over the other. Tonight felt rigid, like every situation was an either/or but not a both. Marko Hurst was the exception who I thought represented both disciplines well.

So tonight was largely a technology, mathematics, and alienation free evening. A positive in my eMetrics journey. Looking forward to a big day tomorrow.

WEDNESDAY – APRIL 7TH – 7:54 AM.

Today is my start of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization conference in Toronto, an event I am simultaneously looking forward to and dreading. On the “looking forward to” side, there are many, many awesome speakers presenting. From Avinash Kaushik to Jim Novo (a hero in the space) to my always entertaining former co-conspirator Christopher Berry, it’s an all star lineup.  I’ll also be presenting the numbers behind the Aviva Community Fund, a marquee project for Idea Couture in the social innovation and cause marketing space.

On the “dread” side, I can’t help but feel this conference is going to be the end of my formal association with the digital measurement community.I’ve been a practicing Web Analytics analyst for about 6 years now – an old guy in digital terms. But even in that space, I always felt a bit like an outsider as a user experience strategist (researcher) first and an analytics practitioner second – a divide that is becoming an argument of validation versus prediction.

Meanwhile, many of the dominant conversations are distant and foreign. As Web Analysts, we focus our efforts on what will derivate the largest impact. Usually that means optimizing the user experience around the highest revenue-generating opportunities. Rather than focus our efforts on any one individual, we analyze patterns because it’s a better use of our time. But it seems as though we’ve lost our own way – now focusing in on technologies and methods designed to derive actionable results around strategies that most clients can’t afford to build in the first place.

Over the past six years, I’ve seen an industry migrate technologies, define definitions, formalize education, and find its way onto the book shelves of many of my friends (a big win when you feel you’re in a niche space). Our current direction has me concerned that everything’s about to get effed up.

For the rich few, yes, these new methods and technologies can (and will) create a competitive advantage. But for the poor greater, this only further creates barriers to entry – introducing alienating languages, foreign skills, and high costs. I’ve heard many people in this industry talk about how wonderful Web analytics is because it’s accessible to marketers and (with a little help), it can be understood all the way to the top. Because of this, there is power in our recommendations.

While I can’t be certain yet, I get the sense that digital measurement is going the way of the great black box – a fifedome for a chosen few to understand. It’s also focusing on things most clients simply can’t resource against. While, yes, the decision support may push us towards greater accuracy, we can’t forget the politics behind all of this. I’ve been in enough Marketing Business Intelligence briefings to know (whether right or wrong) who makes the final decisions. In the world of mixed quantitative and qualitative data, whoever tells the best story usually gets the most attention. Black boxes don’t make for good stories.

If you ever visit MIT, you’ll see that their floors look antiquated and cracked. It’s because, in many cases, the hallways of MIT were  where the building materials and construction methods were first developed, and they want every student to now, and remember the origins.

Evolution and revolution are both needed, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore where we came from. I’m hoping as the conference moves forward I see a little humanization in the midst of our attempts to automate human behaviour.