I will be moving this WordPress site and pointing to my Tumblr site over the weekend. If you happen to be one of the few people who subscribe to my RSS feed, that may be affected by this move. See you on the other side.

Apple has had tremendous success with its stores and with their recent products. But the success came after they had focused on creating a premium brand. Apple is supposed to be in the most upscale retail locations because their brand is on par with other high-end, premium brands. Their stores would have failed in the local Home Depot shopping center. The Mac, iPhone, and iPod are all devices that carry the premium brand and are sold for a premium. The company continues to grow their revenue and report positive earning statements quarter after quarter. Even in this recessed economy Apple managed to post another record-earnings quarter for Q3.

Microsoft, on the other hand, posted their first loss in revenue in 23 years. It would seem that the executives in Redmond have become infatuated with what Apple has done and have decided to beat Apple at their own game. But why? By Microsoft’s own admission in a series of “Laptop Hunter” ads, they are the more affordable platform. Not to say “cheap” necessarily but they are certainly driving home the point that if customers choose to stay with Microsoft, they won’t pay as much. So why would Microsoft be positioning their upcoming stores in premium retail locations? This would be analogous of Lee Jeans opening a store in the swanky SoHo district in New York City. People accustomed to premium brands would find that brand laughable and walk on by. It would seem that a better strategy would be to open approachable stores in malls and shopping centers that cater to people looking for the most bang for their buck. The crowd they are already going after in their advertising.

And why are they getting so bent out of shape over consumer spending anyway? Microsoft’s bread and butter is their enterprise customers. And, apparently, enterprise is just fine with sticking with Windows XP. It’s not just Vista that businesses are shunning, it’s even the well-reviewed Windows 7 that businesses are deciding to pass on. Something I find interesting with both Vista and Windows 7 is that they seem to be trying to achieve a slick, consumer-focused operating system similar to Mac OS X. To me that seems very strange since their enterprise customers aren’t looking for slick, they’re looking for efficient and reliable. Microsoft needs to focus their attention back to the market that helped them create their empire. Microsoft should be focusing on very real competition from Google.

But they aren’t. Instead they seem to be focused on trying to out-Apple Apple even if it means reporting loss after loss. If Microsoft needs to learn one lesson from Apple, it’s that you need to stay true to your company and your brand. Apple got away from being Apple in the 1990s and it nearly cost them everything. Apple almost fell into oblivion until Jobs returned and helped them refocus. Microsoft can stop this skid if they get back to basics and focus on where they belong.

Declaration of Independence

For the past 12 years, what I’ve wanted to do more than anything was work independently. The only thing that kept me from doing before was time and money. Now I had plenty of both. And I thought I had an ace up my sleeve with the economy in shambles. I could market myself as a hired gun and a company could bring me in on a per-project basis without the hassle of paying for my benefits or matching my 401(k). It seemed like a win-win in a shaky economy. However, getting your name into the world and getting people to recognize you as a resource takes time. Time takes money. And as I watched my severance money dwindle I would have moments of extreme fear.

Doing What Works

I read an article on Zen Habits about the number one dream killer: Doing What Works. This is so true it hurts. In February I had turned down a job offer at a company where I knew I’d be miserable. I also hadn’t had any freelance work since mid-January. As time passed I started to freak out and I went with what works. I started really looking for full time work in March.

An exciting opportunity came knocking when Amazon flew me out to Seattle to interview me for a Senior User Experience Designer position. I convinced myself that this was a prestigious position and that I would be crazy not to take it if they offered it to me. Freelancing would have to wait. But what happened is that I kind of sunk myself in the interview. I don’t believe I did it intentionally but somewhere I wanted freelancing to work and I wanted to give it a real chance. So during my grueling 6-hour interview I subtly, but surely, sabotaged myself.

A series of interviews with other companies followed. My resume was strong and garnered a lot of interest. But interview after interview failed. I was growing frustrated that I couldn’t seal the deal. The interviewers could see what I was unable to at the time; I did not want to work for anyone.

Let the Freelancing Begin

In mid-April, some freelance work began to trickle in. And then, in the early part of May, the flood gates opened and I had more work than I could handle. I’m not really sure how it happened and I don’t know if I could ever replicate it but I was getting work on a regular basis. I could barely keep up. My dream was finally coming true, and I hated it.

I didn’t like working nights and through the weekends. In the corporate world I would do that occasionally but it was usually rewarded with a little time off or, at the very least, a pat on the back. I felt like freelancing was consuming me and giving me no time to enjoy my life. I had built up freelancing in my mind as a way to take control of life and enjoy things more. But the truth was that I was consumed by my business and I had to constantly worry about what I was working on and where I’d get the next bit of work.

The other problem was that my career wasn’t advancing the way I’d hoped it would. I love graphic design and I think building sites in CSS is fun but I want to move forward and concentrate more on solving usability issues. It’s moving away from the nuts and bolts and more into theory and analysis. But as a freelancer, I was not catching any interest in these skills. I was being hired for my graphic design and coding experience. It was kind of like taking a step backwards.

Chris All Together

Now that I had my priorities sorted I was ready to find the right opportunity. And as luck would have it, there were 2 such opportunities right here in Denver. Both companies needed someone to come in and address usability concerns with systems they design. This was the kind of work I’ve wanted to do. Fortunately for me, both companies liked my resume and both companies wanted a phone interview. Then they both wanted an in-person interview. And now I have 2 offers.

It was never a matter of whether or not I had the right skills. It was about what I wanted and how I presented myself. Until I gave freelancing a real chance I was never going to be happy working at a company again. In my mind, I had to know that I tried and it wasn’t for me.

I hope that my quality of life is going to be better thanks to this whole experience. I know what I want now. I want to solve usability challenges. I want to leave work at work and spend quality time with my family and friends. I want to have happy-hour beers with my co-workers. I guess I’m more of a corporate drone than I thought I was.

A Twitter Thanks

By far, the most useful networking tool I had during my lay off was Twitter and I’d like to give a Twitter shout-out to @corygrunk, @pdpilot, @ElPocho, @jluciano, @bryanzug, @TheBigKlosowski, @pchuck, @dhinman, @heavywinter, @dradclif, @lednine, @ryanisinallofus, @joshclauss, @tugglmatt, @iVolunteer, and @senator_larson.

Thank you for the advice, referrals, and work. You’re all awesome in my book.

The Requirements

The most important requirement for me was getting my portfolio online. Many of the clients I’ve done work for the past few months have been through word of mouth. That’s probably the best way to get a client because you’re already starting out with a recommendation by the person who told the client about you in the first place. But for all of those freelance and consulting positions I was seeing online I knew I had to have a professional looking site and portfolio before they would even consider talking to me.

I wanted a site that was more dynamic than the sites I’ve had in the past. Not just a blog but other information streaming in as well. I wanted to try and show the whole picture of who I am. If a person reads my blog, sees the kinds of articles I’m reading, and follows me on social sites then they are going to get a much better understanding about the kind of person I am and what really drives me in web design. This overall picture was important to me.

And on the list of “wants” was to use some javascript to give the site some interactive appeal. I’m not trying to make my site “sticky” or anything like that. I just wanted to be able to provide an interesting way to view my information without forcing the user to click through a complex navigation scheme. Javascript would allow me to provide a much more simple user interface.

My Audience

According to Google Analytics, I don’t have an audience. I suppose that’s to be expected when my focus hasn’t been very clear. So I had to put some thought into this. I couldn’t try and create a site for the audience I wanted to have but for the audience I was probably going to have. When I looked at my site from a visitor’s perspective I could see only one of two reasons a person would visit creativefriday.com; 1) they were here to read an article I wrote or 2) they were a potential client here to review my portfolio. Everything else would have to be secondary.

The Complex Simple Solution

I read such a great article by John Gruber titled Ronco Spray-On Usability a few months ago. If you haven’t read it I would highly recommend it, especially if you find it difficult to understand why the world needs usability experts. But the gist of it, the essence of the article, is that simple is difficult to achieve. When you nail simple and you got it right, most people don’t even notice because it’s simple and easy to use and gets out of their way. It’s kind of a thankless task. Get it wrong and people hate you, get it right and no one notices.

When I first started thinking about my requirements and my audience I had come up with a fairly simple navigation scheme; Home, Blog, Portfolio, Social, and About Me. When I looked at that solution it seemed like it would probably work. Especially since that’s a common theme throughout the web. But as I was creating my site map and then the wireframe I started to see that there was a problem. There were just too many clicks for a person that was here to either read a blog post or view my portfolio. Those other tabs would likely fall into the ether never to be heard from again. The answer had to be simpler. But when I set up the very simple navigation Blog and Portfolio, I thought that some of my requirements were going to get lost. And then I looked at jQuery for a client project and while working on their site realized that this could be the answer for my site. Once I got the expandable footer element working with jQuery I knew I had solved the problem.

An Agile Approach, A Work in Progress

This site is meeting all of my needs right now, as it is. But I do have additional elements I would like to add. Without the need to make any changes to the main navigation I am going to add a “Hire Me” page with my schedule and a form. I would also like to create a breadcrumb at the top of each page. Search isn’t here now because there’s barely any content to search for but I would like to add search and a search results page. These things can all be built later using the Agile Software Development approach. The site was structured in a way that would allow me to add the necessary pieces later without altering the look and feel of what you see today.

All in all, I’m very happy with the end result. At least for now anyway.

The Internet is the Ultimate Mind Sharing Tool

What I discovered was that people, not algorithms, provided answers and content that was more useful, entertaining, and enlightening than anything I’d ever discovered before. In the fantastic article “We Travel in Tribes” by Rands, he perfectly describes why Twitter works on such a fundamental level. After reading that article and participating in so many other failed social web sites I started to realize that most people simply don’t understand the power of the internet. Even though many people have been using the internet for over a decade, it hasn’t helped them understand the incredible potential of what they’re using.

Some of the early names for the internet were spot on. The “www” in web site addresses stands for World Wide Web, a name given by the internet creators to help describe what the internet was. Another name, albeit cheesy, was The Information Super Highway. The early users of the internet understood the potential and usefulness of sharing the vast amounts of information around the world. The internet was a web of information that was not defined by your geographic location.

Unfortunately businesses started looking at the internet as an extension of their brick-and-mortar stores which required an extension of their print and television advertising campaigns. To marketers and advertisers it represented an “always-on” connection to their customers that could be marketed and advertised to on a constant basis. According to this view, if you could find a way to drive people to your web domain you could hit them with your marketing message and the customers would buy. This ushered in the rush for online advertising dollars. The internet was the next big medium after radio and television. But this view of the internet was flawed. Unlike radio and television the internet was not there solely for entertainment. The audience wasn’t an audience.

The Internet Deserves it’s Own Category

The internet can’t be lumped in with newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. It can’t be lumped in with encyclopedias, dictionaries, and educational books. It also can’t be lumped in with business-to-customer or business-to-business sales. It’s in a category all by itself because the world has never seen anything like this before. And very few marketers and businesses understand what to do. They continue to use old measuring sticks for success. “Please fill out this form” is the online equivalent to “for more information write to” from television and mailer marketing from years past. Page hits are like counting the number of people who enter your store. Web addresses with special character strings are the online version of 800 numbers with special numbers to indicate if an ad is working or not. This has all been done before in the world before the internet and so few have made any adjustments at all, they just continue to do what they did before.

The biggest misconception is that customers, or anyone for that matter, will come to your website and consume your content in the manner you want it consumed. This can be seen all over the internet at company websites where the content doesn’t change much, there’s no way to subscribe to the content, and no way to easily share what you’ve found. It all boils down to the idea that the customer (or researcher or whatever) has to come to you to get what they want. They have to come to your web site address and your little spot on the web just like they would have to go to a store or a library in the physical world.

Put Your Message in the Hands of the People

Something I keep coming back to in my thoughts is that web sites should think of themselves as a broadcast rather than the pages of a newspaper. Instead of requiring people come to you and absorb your content, broadcast your content to the right places and allow people to tune into you. As the internet matures and younger generations grow up with the technology, they are going to abandon the old model of “you produce content and I come absorb it.” That movement has already begun with the more tech-savvy users.

Over the course of the past few days I’ve been driven to videos, photos, web pages, store sales, and more by the people I follow. Either through Twitter or Digg or my RSS feeds I’m finding content that I never would have found before. The very idea that I’m going to waste my time to come to your web site and comb through your pages of marketing material as I scan for what I’m looking for is absurd. There was a time I used to do that but those days are over. If your content isn’t out there and people can’t find it and share it then that means your content is being overlooked. You are officially missing the boat.

I don’t have the answers to the marketing conundrum presented by the internet. But I know that the old model is the wrong approach. Feeding your information to the right sources is one aspect of a successful online presence but there’s more to it than that. And that’s where I get a little stuck. I know I’m onto something, I just don’t have all of the pieces yet.

So I hope that this plan the Financial Times is reporting isn’t a mandatory thing. I hope they keep pushing for more songs to be in the non-DRM iTunes Plus format for purchase. I don’t ever want my music hijacked by a company because I don’t want to pay the monthly extortion for their subscription anymore.

UPDATED: 3/24/07: According to CNet, sources say it’s Universal who is putting this on the table. I seriously should have know that, after all Doug Morris would love nothing more than to put his hand in every music buyer’s pocket every month for the rest of their lives. Here’s my favorite quote:

“These guys at Universal,” said one music insider, “are so obsessed with this subscription thing…but there are publishing issues involved with bundling and I don’t think they make much money off it.”

Do you use the forward button? How do you use it?

From IHT.com:
“More then 1 in 100 American adults is in prison, report finds”

And that’s the headline. In case they fix it, I’ve included a screen grab.

Part of the reason may be that it’s so tightly integrated with Windows: It takes an effort to download Firefox or another alternative browser, while the little blue “e” icon is omnipresent on the desktop, start menu, quick launch toolbar, and elsewhere in Windows.

Ya think? Maybe if you understood human beings at all, you’d understand that people choose the path of least resistance. When Microsoft decided to embed Explorer into the operating system, they created an anti-competitive environment which is why they’re being watched for another 2 years. And IE is a crappy browser, no one should be using it.

At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

It gives me so much satisfaction to hear that. I’m a 30-something, not a teen, but I haven’t bought a physical CD in years. I own too many DRM’d tracks from iTunes but I haven’t bought a regular iTunes track since they went to iTunes Plus. With iTunes Plus and Amazon MP3, I’m on cloud nine.