Creative InspirationsIntroduction| 00:05 | Katrina Alcorn: Within the Web world
of design, we do pretty much every
| | 00:09 | flavor of project.
| | 00:13 | Henrik Olsen: Well, we are just not in
charge of doing the beautiful part of it.
| | 00:16 | That is part of what we do, is
make it visually pleasing and a good
| | 00:19 | looking site.
| | 00:20 | Renee Anderson: And we take great
pride in talking, thinking about the user
| | 00:24 | holistically from all these
different aspects and different directions.
| | 00:31 | Maria Giudice: Whatever it takes to make
sure that whatever we are designing is
| | 00:34 | actually going to be used and loved later on.
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| Welcome to Hot Studio| 00:07 | Maria Giudice: Welcome to Hot Studio.
We are at 585 Howard Street in downtown
| | 00:11 | San Francisco. We have the ground floor,
we have the neon sign, we have 11,000
| | 00:15 | square feet, let's go.
| | 00:16 | Well, Hot Studio, I think,
is a fun place to work.
| | 00:19 | At least, I know I am having fun
when I come to work everyday.
| | 00:22 | Michael Polivka: We have got a lot of
professionals that have been in the industry
| | 00:25 | for a long time. We have got a really
broad spectrum of different types of
| | 00:30 | people and personalities and a really strong
leadership group, holding it all together.
| | 00:34 | Maria Giudice: A lot of people who
work here are artists and they do other
| | 00:37 | things besides graphic design. So we
have art from people who work here and
| | 00:41 | then we have some visiting artists as well.
| | 00:44 | We call this sort of the running track.
| | 00:45 | Actually kids really love this
route because we have-- you'll see in
| | 00:51 | the space that there are these giant balls,
so they become an automatic bocce ball
| | 00:55 | runway for kids.
| | 00:57 | Rajan Dev: We work with Fortune
1000 firms, we work with community
| | 01:02 | organizations and we work with
startups and help launch businesses.
| | 01:07 | Henrik Olsen: Our tag line is
making the complex beautifully clear.
| | 01:10 | Renee Anderson: We take great pride
when talking, thinking about the user
| | 01:14 | holistically from all these different
aspects and different directions and
| | 01:19 | creating this incredible product
from all those different components.
| | 01:23 | Maria Giudice: These are some
collaboration rooms where we lock our employees in,
| | 01:27 | when they really need to focus.
This space is open and we believe in an
| | 01:31 | open environment. It's very important
that people can actually go into these
| | 01:35 | rooms either concentrate or
bring others into these rooms.
| | 01:39 | Katrina Alcorn: There are companies
that are thinkers and they come up with big
| | 01:42 | ideas and then that's where they drop
off and then there are companies that are
| | 01:45 | doers and you tell them what to do
and they run with it and we do both.
| | 01:49 | So we come up with the big
ideas and we execute on them.
| | 01:53 | Maria Giudice: There are so many
things that inspire us. So this is a really
| | 01:57 | great opportunity to kind of leave
all the other spaces, come here and just
| | 02:01 | focus or sketch or think in
a very different environment.
| | 02:04 | Michael Polivka: We at Hot Studio are
clearly known for our user-centered designs
| | 02:10 | and giving folks who use our
web sites really amazing experiences.
| | 02:15 | Maria Giudice: This is where I sit for
a majority of the time, although you will rarely
| | 02:19 | see me sitting here. We are situated
smack in the center of Hot Studio.
| | 02:24 | It allows people to come and talk to us
at any time. We are incredibly accessible.
| | 02:30 | We see in here everything. If there is
something going on in a collaboration room
| | 02:34 | that we want to know about,
we can just walk up and participate.
| | 02:38 | It is an environment that I believe is
really friendly. People come here with great
| | 02:47 | attitudes and when they come they
work hard, but we also have a lot of fun
| | 02:53 | together as well.
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| Creative collaboration| 00:07 | Maria Giudice: I am really big on
collaboration. It's one of the things that
| | 00:13 | has been part of my core culture,
my core values early on in life.
| | 00:18 | I love to work with people and I really
believe that collective wisdom is much more
| | 00:25 | powerful than the rock star in the corner.
| | 00:28 | Katrina Alcorn: You have the
information architects or the user experience
| | 00:31 | designers who are thinking about the
problem at a business level and then
| | 00:37 | thinking about users and tasks and some
of it can be quite abstract. And then
| | 00:42 | they are thinking about details around
logic and interactions and then you have
| | 00:45 | got visual designers who are thinking
much more tactically about what things
| | 00:51 | should look like and you can't really
separate the two things out, especially
| | 00:55 | now that the web has become so dynamic.
So what something looks like and how it
| | 01:02 | functions is like this. And so that
means that the visual designer and the user
| | 01:07 | experience designer often need to be
like this in coming up with the solution.
| | 01:11 | When you look at these conference
rooms, you will walk by and you will see
| | 01:14 | visual designers and interaction
designers, you know, at the whiteboard
| | 01:19 | sketching things together and looking
at documents and cutting things out and
| | 01:22 | adding and we are really trying to
bring our brains together to think more like
| | 01:27 | one brain, which is exciting.
| | 01:29 | Henrik Olsen: At Hot Studio our goal
is to really be very collaborative with
| | 01:33 | our clients. They're out co-conspirators.
For example, our work with Dwell for
| | 01:39 | the visual design. What we did there
is we had a visual design workshop where
| | 01:44 | we got together with about ten people
that are on their Web team, from editors to
| | 01:51 | coders to designers all the way up to
the president and the owner and the chief
| | 01:58 | editor from the magazine and we all got
together and we did this workshop where
| | 02:03 | we looked at color combinations,
photography, we looked at their
| | 02:06 | existing magazine, talked about the
future vision for what Dwell is to become.
| | 02:12 | Maria Giudice: I would say we can
take a good idea from anybody. It doesn't
| | 02:16 | matter what discipline, it doesn't
matter if it's coming from the bar next door,
| | 02:21 | it doesn't matter if it's coming
from the client. If somebody has a good idea,
| | 02:24 | let's explore that. So we really
foster collaboration here and we don't
| | 02:30 | have cubicles for that purpose.
We have rooms throughout the office, so that
| | 02:36 | people can come together. But we also
do a number of things inside our project
| | 02:41 | work to foster collaboration. So we
really find ways in which we can sketch
| | 02:46 | together, get people off their feet, ideating
and that really gets the creative juices flowing.
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| Hot Studio portfolio| 00:07 | Maria Giudice: You know one of the
things about designing a website that
| | 00:10 | I think came as a surprise to us, but
especially a surprise to our clients is
| | 00:16 | that the brand now is online. It used
to be the old days was where you design
| | 00:21 | the logo and then you design the book
and then you design a website.
| | 00:25 | But now days you start with the website
because usually it's the first point in contact
| | 00:30 | with your customers. And the website
really is sort of a centralized meeting point
| | 00:35 | where all kind of brand communications
exist because there is usually
| | 00:40 | multiple stakeholders are
communicating via the website for their company.
| | 00:46 | So the website oftentimes becomes a
transformation for the brand itself.
| | 00:52 | With start-ups we get to define that
experience from the beginning and look at
| | 00:57 | things more holistically, because we
get to do all the touch points. So one
| | 01:01 | project we are particularly proud of
is the Open Architecture Network and
| | 01:05 | the logo for the Open Architecture Network
is based on the golden mean, which is the
| | 01:10 | law of perfect proportion, which is
why it looks like a flag, but it's
| | 01:14 | actually perfect in its form.
| | 01:17 | Another logo that we did that's a
lot of fun is for one of our start-up
| | 01:22 | companies called Viscape and this is
the brain child of two individuals who
| | 01:28 | wanted to put the fun back into finding
vacations. And so we created this really
| | 01:34 | cool brand identity that has these
little characters, so the website could
| | 01:40 | reload and you could have a new
character on the website and it's just a lot of
| | 01:43 | really fun things that you can do
with these characters. And again in the
| | 01:47 | spirit of fun, we created these
background images that can change as well.
| | 01:52 | So this is the winter theme but there
is one that's waves, there is another one
| | 01:57 | that's purple and the colors are
really bright too, bright and vibrant
| | 02:02 | deliberately to really instill that
feeling of what it feels like to be on vacation.
| | 02:07 | So recently we have been really lucky
to get to do work for cultural institutions.
| | 02:12 | What was really interesting
about SFMOMA was what is modern art
| | 02:17 | in today's world? Is it on the contemporary
end or is it when modern art was born?
| | 02:23 | And that's a fundamental
question that is still in the museum.
| | 02:27 | So we really had to work very closely to
try to find that line what modern art meant
| | 02:33 | to SFMOMA inside the museum and
to its visitors. So we created a really
| | 02:42 | extensible website that really
showcased the artwork with bright bold colors,
| | 02:48 | interesting Flash animations and
giving SFMOMA a very distinct personality.
| | 02:55 | And a site we are currently involved
in is a site that we are designing for
| | 03:01 | Dave Eggers and 826 Valencia.
Dave Eggers is a local writer here in
| | 03:09 | the Bay area but he is internationally
known. And he won the TED Prize,
| | 03:15 | the prestigious TED prize, which is this
conference that happens every year called
| | 03:19 | Technology Entertainment Design, and
every year they give a prize to three
| | 03:24 | extraordinary individuals. They give
them $100,000 and they give him--
| | 03:28 | and they also give him the ability to ask
for a wish, to put a wish out into the
| | 03:34 | world and hope that somebody or some team
of people can help make that wish come true.
| | 03:40 | So we are working with TED and Dave
Eggers to design this site called
| | 03:44 | Once Upon a School, which allows people
to go there, find opportunities, volunteer
| | 03:50 | opportunities in their area and go in
and volunteer in the public schools and
| | 03:55 | then come back and tell their stories
so that they can inspire others.
| | 03:58 | And we're currently iterating this site
to make it much more fun and inspirational.
| | 04:03 | It's really fun, it's engaging and I am
really excited to see this site go live.
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| Creative process| 00:07 | Henrik Olsen: Our overall creative
process involves the discovery, strategy,
| | 00:13 | then design, then build and then
transfer and those are sort of
| | 00:18 | the five big phases that we go through.
| | 00:20 | Renee Anderson: Research, which we
also discovery, is the first step in the process.
| | 00:25 | That's where we gather all of
the information that we need in order to
| | 00:28 | understand the problem that we're facing.
We need to understand the space that we're in.
| | 00:33 | We can't just go design something
pretty, without understanding
| | 00:39 | the problem that we are trying to solve.
| | 00:40 | Maria Giudice: And then you get all
of this stuff and you ask the question,
| | 00:45 | well, what do I do with all this stuff?
How does it all fit together?
| | 00:48 | And you come up with a strategic concept
and that could be sketches or drawings
| | 00:53 | or you know if you are sketching a
layout for magazine or you are sketching a
| | 00:58 | web page, so you are putting all of
these things that you have learned and
| | 01:02 | putting it into some sort of holistic
framework and that's called strategy.
| | 01:07 | Katrina Alcorn: And then design is
really about, the way we define design,
| | 01:10 | it's about fleshing out the strategy ideas.
So it's all the detailed that comes out
| | 01:15 | of that, it's what's on a page. What
follows with the structure of the site.
| | 01:19 | Henrik Olsen: And at that point the
user experience folks are generally far
| | 01:23 | enough along with their key schematics,
so we can take those and we can start
| | 01:28 | to bring on, layer on the visual design
into those and so that all of a sudden
| | 01:34 | they really come to life.
| | 01:36 | Michael Polivka: And then it goes into
the build phase and making it happen,
| | 01:39 | having the right partner lined up,
having the team stay on the project and
| | 01:44 | build is also really important. Those
designers who came up with the comps,
| | 01:55 | process and build.
| | 01:56 | Renee Anderson: The very last phase is
called transfer, where once the site has
| | 01:59 | who have been with the client all along
will be critical for the quality assurance
| | 02:00 | been built, we make sure that it's
actually done correctly and that all of the assets
| | 02:04 | that we have created over the
course of the project are then transferred
| | 02:08 | into the hands of the client
and they own it from that point.
| | 02:10 | Michael Polivka: Put all that
together and kind of shake it up a little
| | 02:13 | differently in each project and it kind
of comes out the same. Great design work
| | 02:17 | that sees its way through
to being a final product.
| | 02:19 | Marie Giudice: You can have a process,
but the client will always be different.
| | 02:22 | So you have to be really responsive to what
they need and how they want to work with you.
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| Creative process: Discovery| 00:07 | Henrik Olsen: During the discovery
phases, there will be a lot of work going
| | 00:11 | on with research and coming up with
the overall user experience designs.
| | 00:16 | Katrina Alcorn: It's about
understanding the business needs, the user needs,
| | 00:19 | any technology constraints,
which we may or may not know.
| | 00:22 | Maria Giudice: Learn about the people
that you are designing for. Learn about
| | 00:26 | the businesses that you are solving the
problems for and learning the landscape
| | 00:32 | to which you are designing against, and
just collect all this stuff, we call it
| | 00:36 | the sponge phase.
| | 00:37 | Renee Anderson: The user experience
group actually does all of the research.
| | 00:40 | So we interview the stakeholder, the
clients, interview their target audiences.
| | 00:47 | Look at best practices and make sure
that we understand the space that they're in.
| | 00:52 | Henrik Olsen: But at the same time, the
visual design practice what we are doing
| | 00:55 | is we're getting to really understand
the brands in terms of color palette
| | 01:00 | and typography and images, are the
things that we need to understand about them.
| | 01:04 | We will also be doing competitive
audits. So we will understand what's
| | 01:10 | going on in their industry. What's
happening. We may even look in industries
| | 01:15 | that are influencing that particular
industry or web trends for best practices.
| | 01:21 | So doing a lot of the visual design
research during the discovery phase.
| | 01:32 | Renee Anderson: The discovery process
at Hot is a collaborative effort
| | 01:38 | among all of the disciplines, user
experience, visual design, design
| | 01:41 | engineering and project management,
but it's really kind of owned by the user
| | 01:45 | experience group and the reason is
because the user experience group actually
| | 01:51 | does all of the research. So we
interview the stakeholder, the clients,
| | 01:55 | interview their target audiences.
Look at best practices. Make sure that
| | 02:02 | we understand the space that they are in.
The visual design group will also do
| | 02:06 | discovery in the brand look and feel
and the design engineering group will
| | 02:11 | start understanding the technical
landscape that we are going to be working in,
| | 02:16 | and of course the producer, bless them,
they are pretty much are the glue during
| | 02:21 | the whole process but the user
experience group does the bulk of the work.
| | 02:24 | SFMOMA is a great example of really
deep discovery. They knew who was coming
| | 02:30 | into the physical building. They had
surveys that they would ask people to fill out.
| | 02:35 | But they had no idea who was
coming to their website and so they didn't
| | 02:39 | know how to address the needs of
the people walking through the door.
| | 02:42 | Whether or not they were the same people,
that they need to speak the same kind of
| | 02:46 | language on the website as they did
within the walls of the museum. We actually
| | 02:50 | did what we call remote recruiting.
We had little invitation up on their website
| | 02:55 | and we basically said hey! You want to
talk to us for an hour? You know, fill out
| | 03:00 | this little questionnaire and we
will contact you. It's a really great
| | 03:04 | opportunity to kind of broaden your
reach into accessing different kinds of
| | 03:10 | people who, you know, they are visiting
the website because that's how you got
| | 03:13 | their information. So that was good.
| | 03:15 | Our main contact over at SFMOMA, she
gathered all of these peers together from
| | 03:22 | different web teams at different
museums and we actually got to interview them
| | 03:27 | as a team, as a group and learn about
the kinds of things that they had tried at
| | 03:33 | their own museums, on their own websites,
and what worked and what didn't work
| | 03:36 | and not to copy the same mistakes and
so it was actually really enlightening
| | 03:41 | because we never worked
on a museum project before.
| | 03:44 | We would look at other modern art
museums, what were they doing that
| | 03:47 | we thought were good or bad. There
were some ideas they had about things they
| | 03:51 | wanted to do on their websites that
other museums weren't doing and that's
| | 03:54 | quite often the case. We go outside of
the industry to look for best practices.
| | 03:58 | So community, social networking for
example. Most museums aren't really doing
| | 04:03 | that very well, so let's go to Facebook.
Let's look at some other sites that
| | 04:08 | are doing these particular features
really well and expose our clients to those ideas.
| | 04:15 | They often live in their own
world and we want to make sure that they
| | 04:17 | broaden out beyond their own walls.
| | 04:20 | We actually at Hot do not divide up
research and interaction design into two
| | 04:28 | different roles. The same person will
do both of those tasks and we find that
| | 04:32 | incredibly valuable because the
continuum of knowledge between accessing all of
| | 04:38 | this information and absorbing all of
this information, we're constantly thinking
| | 04:43 | of design solutions in that process.
So by not dividing up those two things
| | 04:49 | we actually have a much clearer picture
of how things can evolve over time.
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| Creative process: Strategy| 00:07 | Katrina Alcorn: Strategy is where we
have to make sense of all the information
| | 00:11 | we're hearing and actually put ideas forward.
| | 00:14 | Henrik Olsen: The user experience
group is putting together the initial
| | 00:18 | schematics and high level
site maps or application maps.
| | 00:23 | Renee Anderson: Often in strategy, we
are thinking really big and we often have
| | 00:27 | to kind of tone it down a little bit but
we want to make sure that we're on the right track.
| | 00:32 | Michael Polivka: In terms of the
engineering efforts where we put in place
| | 00:36 | recommendations for the type of work
that we are going to do. Why is Drupal
| | 00:40 | the right solution over others that could
be pretty close, or others that are quite far apart?
| | 00:46 | Henrik Olsen: We will have a visual
design workshop where we get together with
| | 00:50 | the client and that's the time where
they can be heard and get their opinions out.
| | 00:54 | Renee Anderson: Does it support the
business goals, does it support the user needs?
| | 00:59 | Can it be done from a technical
perspective and can you maintain it
| | 01:03 | over time? So those are some big questions
that we are trying to answer at that phase.
| | 01:15 | Katrina Alcorn: What are we doing
in strategy? That's always the phase
| | 01:17 | that's hardest to describe because
sometimes people talk about it as that's where
| | 01:22 | the magic happens. So what do we do?
We come up with the big brilliant idea and
| | 01:28 | then we get everyone to buy into it,
but what that looks like on a day-to-day basis
| | 01:34 | can be different on different projects.
| | 01:37 | So on some projects, sometimes we will
use a technique called Personas where
| | 01:44 | we will take what we understand about
the user groups that we are designing for
| | 01:49 | and then research that we have and
then we will actually create a set of
| | 01:54 | fictional characters that represent
those groups and then we use those as straw men
| | 01:58 | when we are designing. We will say,
oh does Betsy need this or does Harry
| | 02:01 | need this and it helps us
communicate as a design team.
| | 02:04 | We often will do card sorting exercises,
if we are working on a site that has
| | 02:10 | a lot of challenges around
organization. The ultimate goal is to just talk
| | 02:15 | through different scenarios about how
things can be grouped with our clients.
| | 02:19 | We spend a lot of time looking through
notes and talking and sometimes we'll do
| | 02:23 | some sketching in groups but the end
result of that is that at the end of
| | 02:28 | strategy, we want as designers,
we want to have a strong point of view about
| | 02:33 | what are the big five things that we can
impact through this redesign or design project.
| | 02:39 | So Cal Academy is an organization that
we have been working with for at least
| | 02:44 | the last year-and-a-half and the
first project we did with them was a big
| | 02:47 | redesign of their new site. The big
ideas that came out of strategy were really
| | 02:53 | around how to help the organization
to tell the story of science and the
| | 02:59 | environment through compelling
storytelling and also how to bring the whimsy
| | 03:04 | and the sense of fun that you experience
when you are at the museum onto the website.
| | 03:09 | And so when you look at the website
that's up now, the one we designed,
| | 03:12 | there is the whole new section
of content called Science Heroes.
| | 03:17 | First, there is a bunch of videos and I
think the first video is a scientist who,
| | 03:22 | when you just see his image, he has
this giant slug on his face and whenever
| | 03:26 | I show that to people, they are always
like, Ah! What's going on? So you can't
| | 03:29 | help to click on it and find out
what's on his face and why is he doing this
| | 03:33 | and turns out he is an ant scientist
and he talks about how he got involved in
| | 03:36 | his work. But this is very compelling
and personal way to get into this topic.
| | 03:42 | And then there is some just fun animated stuff.
| | 03:45 | So, the homepage has this very subtle
animation where you are looking at the
| | 03:49 | new building, a bird's eye view of the
building and then as you stay, if you
| | 03:54 | stay on the page for a while you
start to see these little tiny microscopic
| | 03:57 | people coming out of the building
and that's one of those things where
| | 04:00 | it doesn't have to be there but it just
sort of helps evoke the sense of like
| | 04:04 | there is something going on here,
things are changing. There are little
| | 04:08 | animations where a penguin might walk
across the screen, or a school of fish.
| | 04:13 | The idea is just bringing in that sense
of spontaneity that you experience when
| | 04:17 | you are there. So we really need to
start and this is ideal to start with a
| | 04:22 | vision that everyone shares, that says
this is what we are doing, and this is
| | 04:26 | what it's about and this is the
feeling it's going to evoke or this is the
| | 04:29 | experience that we want to inspire. And
then the details of what's on a page or
| | 04:35 | what new content gets added or
what functionality gets taken away,
| | 04:38 | all of that has to
mesh with that big idea.
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| Creative process: Design| 00:07 | Henrik Olsen: So once we have brought
together sort of this strategy about
| | 00:14 | where they want to go and a common
understanding and sort of got their visual
| | 00:18 | biases and then we feel like we have
the creative brief that we need to design against.
| | 00:23 | Renee Anderson: We really get into
the details of how the site is going to
| | 00:28 | look, act, behave, what the content is,
how somebody might move through it.
| | 00:34 | Maria Giudice: Either you can come up
with beautiful comps and build them or
| | 00:37 | you can be designing and
building at the same time.
| | 00:40 | Henrik Olsen: You really begin with
two to three key pages of the design that's
| | 00:45 | sort of their exemplar of what the
visual vocabulary should be and then you
| | 00:50 | extend it out to say, the other up to
twenty different screen types or something.
| | 00:57 | Michael Polivka: We want design to start
big, we want people to have big, great ideas
| | 01:00 | and then slowly working together
to bring it in back to alignment with
| | 01:05 | the client's budget and schedule.
| | 01:14 | Katrina Alcorn: Interactive design is
everything we do, really. I mean when we
| | 01:18 | are doing research, we are doing it
in service of designing a website or an
| | 01:22 | application. When we are working on a
big strategy presentation, it's about
| | 01:28 | coming up with the big concept, the big
idea for our interactive design ideas.
| | 01:34 | When we are working on details,
schematics and site maps, it's all in service of
| | 01:38 | creating a good user experience.
It's figuring out what people need to do,
| | 01:44 | what they need to know, what the companies
that have hired us need people to do,
| | 01:50 | figuring out where that sweet spot is.
| | 01:53 | And then sometimes we talk about it as
designing an experience and then all these
| | 01:58 | people in interactive designs say, "you
can't design experiences, everyone has
| | 02:02 | their own experience," but basically
we are trying to create an environment
| | 02:07 | online for people to have the right
experience, the experience they need to have.
| | 02:11 | Henrik Olsen: When we're in the early
part of design, we do a lot of things,
| | 02:15 | just pencil and paper and on sketchbooks,
coming up with ideas, thinking very,
| | 02:21 | very quickly. You always want to
have your drawing skills be really good
| | 02:25 | because you can think so much faster
with just a pencil and paper and coming up
| | 02:31 | with ideas and so, then bring in color
paper and so forth and get the big ideas
| | 02:36 | down on paper just for your own memory.
You never have to show them to anybody.
| | 02:40 | And then we get together as a group and
we will share our brainstorming and
| | 02:45 | we will sort of riff off each other,
just drawing on the whiteboards in our
| | 02:50 | individual conference rooms, where we
will sketch together, storyboard things out.
| | 02:55 | Some designers are better illustrators
than others and it's okay. We just
| | 03:01 | go very loose with just hand drawing,
bringing in magazine clippings or
| | 03:08 | artworks that we found inspiring or
just anything that you found kind of neat,
| | 03:11 | any kind of object.
| | 03:13 | For example, our work with Dwell.
We are in the process right now of
| | 03:18 | designing a whole variety of
directions and typically, we will show our best
| | 03:24 | three or four to the client, but in
order to get to our best three or four,
| | 03:28 | we look at a lot of different options.
So we are in that phase right now where
| | 03:32 | we are seeing ten different design
directions that are being done and some of them
| | 03:38 | are really just exploratory. Just if
we have an idea we want to pursue it.
| | 03:43 | We go to our little corners and we work
and then we get together, we share ideas
| | 03:48 | and critic each other, then we go back
to our corners and re-rev. So we do that a lot.
| | 03:52 | We meet almost probably daily
to look at what each other is doing and
| | 03:57 | inspire each other for other ideas.
| | 03:59 | Working in visual design is just a
really exciting thing because it's a
| | 04:03 | chance to bring in both the left-brain
and the right brain thinking. There is a
| | 04:07 | lot of logic and rational thought
that gets brought in to creating an
| | 04:11 | interface, but then there is the
artistic side of it and there is just that
| | 04:15 | expression of working with color and
form and imagery and bringing it all
| | 04:20 | together and creating this experience
that other people are going to engage with
| | 04:24 | and with all these Web 2.0
functionalities and the web becoming this more
| | 04:30 | and more of a two-way conversation
and immersive experience, it's a really
| | 04:35 | exciting time just to be able to
create and be part of that in creating that
| | 04:39 | whole experience.
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| Creative process: Build & Transfer| 00:07 | Michael Polivka: The build phase here
is probably one of the biggest wild cards
| | 00:11 | in the company because of the broad
service offering that we have provide for
| | 00:15 | our clients.
| | 00:16 | Katrina Alcorn: We often just handcode
a template to our client's technical
| | 00:20 | teams and then they will actually
implement the whole site, so the build might just
| | 00:24 | be a set of coded templates.
| | 00:25 | Henrik Olsen: All the way up to where
there is enterprise resource planning,
| | 00:30 | really complex industrial software on that side.
| | 00:34 | Maria Giudice: We are iterating,
we're responding to people's needs.
| | 00:37 | We are testing,
we are testing with real users.
| | 00:40 | Katrina Alcorn: And then transfer is
all that handholding and exchange of
| | 00:45 | documentation and all the conversation
that happens between our team,
| | 00:50 | as the consulting firm and our client's teams.
| | 00:53 | Renee Anderson: And that all the assets
that we have created over the course of
| | 00:56 | the project are then transferred into
the hands of the client and they own it
| | 00:59 | from that point.
| | 01:08 | Michael Polivka: You could deconstruct
the build phase in maybe two main things;
| | 01:11 | one is really the development,
which would happen upfront, sort of a
| | 01:17 | team of developers getting something to
a beta state and just kind of cranking
| | 01:21 | and getting it moving along
and then once it's in a solid enough spot,
| | 01:26 | bringing the visual designers and the
user experience architect back into the
| | 01:30 | picture there to do really detailed QA
work again. Here is our comp, here is
| | 01:36 | the actual build and when we hold
those left to right, those two things
| | 01:40 | should be looking 99.9% accurate,
with maybe some mild variations for the
| | 01:45 | different browsers we are looking at.
| | 01:46 | It can be something like providing
more of a consultation for a platform that
| | 01:55 | a client has currently in house but they
need some more expertise. That happened
| | 02:00 | recently with Bank of the West, where
we really helped them with Vignette
| | 02:04 | on the back-end. They have Vignette
developers but this project really called
| | 02:09 | for a really tight integration between
the existing solution and the designs
| | 02:14 | that we were going to have. It wasn't
just like a free-for-all, go design and
| | 02:16 | we will make it happen. So it really
required us to get in there and be really
| | 02:20 | vigilant. So we got some great
partners involved with that, had a great
| | 02:24 | unified team and provided them the
guidance and some templates that they could
| | 02:28 | then incorporate into their own back-end system.
| | 02:30 | A third type of thing that we might
do in the build phase is provide a full
| | 02:37 | beginning-to-end content management
system based website. That happened most
| | 02:42 | recently with UCSF. We worked with
their Memory and Aging Group to do a website for
| | 02:50 | it's called CJD, the Creutzfeldt-
Jakob disease, and we really helped
| | 02:56 | provide a full solution system for
them. We went in and did an audit of the
| | 03:03 | different type of content management
systems they might need. We helped
| | 03:06 | recommend one. We locked in a partner
to be with us from beginning to end
| | 03:10 | that specialized in Drupal.
| | 03:12 | We did design and development efforts
very closely and we are really heavily
| | 03:17 | involved with the QA to make sure that
again, what we are showing as the comp,
| | 03:23 | really at the comp level, is what this
website is looking like when it goes live.
| | 03:27 | On the second side of that then
is working with the client, because
| | 03:30 | they can have a little change of heart
on some things, even though it's really
| | 03:34 | clearly documented in the business
requirements doc, the comps have been
| | 03:38 | approved, the schematics are approved,
everybody is locked and loaded and built,
| | 03:42 | but during that phase, we have got to
be sensitive to the clients. Some things
| | 03:47 | may change when they are live based on
what the client's mental model for it
| | 03:51 | might have been and just making
sure that we are adjusting for that.
| | 03:54 | Each project is different, each project is
unique, each project will use a different
| | 03:59 | or have the potential to use a different
development partner or the client's
| | 04:02 | doing it in house on their own.
| | 04:04 | So we really have to be dynamic in
how we are participating in Quality
| | 04:10 | Assurance. So it's like, how do we QA
and test and build and review and push
| | 04:14 | live all within a very short timeline?
| | 04:17 | Timeline, budget, amount of effort,
that can all drastically alter all the
| | 04:23 | plans that are go into Quality Assurance.
| | 04:25 | Maria Giudice: And then, at the end as
you're wrapping up, so what have we learned?
| | 04:28 | We call that transfer, where
we are transferring all the things that
| | 04:31 | we learned, we're wrapping it all up and
passing that knowledge on to whoever is
| | 04:36 | going to be maintaining the site or
redesigning the book later or you are just
| | 04:41 | transferring knowledge. So whatever it
takes to make sure that whatever we are
| | 04:44 | designing is actually going
to be used and loved later on.
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| Interactive designers| 00:06 | Katrina Alcorn: One of the biggest
challenges for those of us who work in
| | 00:11 | interactive design as interactive
designers is trying to always be broadening
| | 00:17 | our skills and keeping up with
technology and this gets more and more
| | 00:22 | complicated because the web used to
be a set of very simple interactions.
| | 00:29 | It was basically hyperlinked text and
there was only so much you could do and now
| | 00:34 | we have Ajax technologies and we have
this whole metaphor of what is a page on
| | 00:40 | a website, has completely been blown
out of the water. Now you may do a hundred
| | 00:46 | things on a page and you may see a
hundred different permutations of that page.
| | 00:50 | It's not really a page anymore.
| | 00:52 | So it's figuring out what information
is on a website, what interactions are
| | 00:57 | supported on a website, how those
interactions unfold as someone steps through
| | 01:02 | a path and there could be myriad paths.
So it can be simple or it can be quite
| | 01:07 | complicated.
| | 01:09 | There is about a dozen of us and we
fill up this mezzanine and our job is
| | 01:15 | everything from the high level research
that we do about users, so we will dig
| | 01:21 | into a company, really understand
their business problem, interview
| | 01:24 | stakeholders and then do all kinds
of different research techniques to
| | 01:29 | understand their
customers or their constituents.
| | 01:31 | So we take it from research through
strategy, which is coming up with the big idea
| | 01:36 | and the big concepts and then
all the way through detailed interaction
| | 01:40 | design and information architecture and
that's really different from the way
| | 01:46 | a lot of design companies work, because
a lot of design companies silo these
| | 01:51 | different tasks, so they will have
their strategists doing strategy and
| | 01:54 | they have their researchers doing
research and then they have the IAs doing
| | 01:57 | information architecture. And I think
what one of the things that attracts
| | 02:02 | people to working here is that we get
to do all of it. So it really stretches
| | 02:06 | our brains.
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| Design engineers| 00:07 | Maria Giudice: We have a small group of
design engineers here and their primary
| | 00:11 | role is to be the technical liaison to
what we are designing and what could be built.
| | 00:16 | We often work with contractors
and development partners outside the office
| | 00:23 | because we like to be technology
agnostic, because technology is not as
| | 00:27 | simple as it used to be back in the
old days. There are so many different
| | 00:30 | flavors of technology that projects require.
| | 00:35 | So for us, it's better for us to
understand the technical landscape to a
| | 00:39 | certain extent and then bring on
specialists who know these technologies better
| | 00:46 | than we could ever know in house
and work collaboratively with them.
| | 00:51 | Renee Anderson: Since I've been working
at Hot, off and on for ten odd years,
| | 00:54 | I have-- one of the things that I find
incredibly valuable now that we didn't
| | 00:59 | have in the past is our designer
engineering group. They are a group of people
| | 01:04 | who have been engineers and
developers in their past lives and now they are
| | 01:08 | working here and what they do for the
user experience group is really help us
| | 01:13 | come up and problem solve.
| | 01:16 | So when we are going through a design
and when we are doing our wireframes and
| | 01:19 | our site maps and our interactive
modeling and our user flows, we can actually
| | 01:24 | share this with our design engineers,
who can look at these and say, "that can
| | 01:29 | be built, no problem" or "that might be
a little bit tricky but I have this other
| | 01:35 | way of thinking about it." We never had
that before and sometimes we would just be
| | 01:38 | designing blindly without understanding
what our opportunities are and what our
| | 01:42 | constraints are from a technology point of view.
| | 01:45 | Michael Polivka: Even before a project
starts, we could be doing some amount of
| | 01:49 | quality assurance by defining the
requirements and making sure that everybody
| | 01:53 | understands those throughout the
entire project and that's a big part of the
| | 01:56 | design engineers here is to make sure
those requirements are understood,
| | 02:00 | that those timelines and budgets are
understood for development and production and
| | 02:03 | working with both the user experience
and the user experience architects and
| | 02:07 | visual designers here to
make sure that we all get it.
| | 02:11 | It's a product that we are
delivering in those cases. It's not just some
| | 02:15 | Photoshop pages that magically turn
into a site. We are on the hook as a
| | 02:19 | company for everything.
| | 02:20 | Maria Giudice: They are called design
engineers because really all four teams
| | 02:24 | are designers. They just have different
ways of looking at the design problem.
| | 02:28 | Renee Anderson: Just makes me feel so
much more comfortable and thoughtful
| | 02:32 | about what I am doing and knowing
that the end deliverable, what we are
| | 02:36 | actually designing, can be built, will
be built very well and can be supported
| | 02:42 | by the technology that the client has
chosen to use. So I just think they're awesome.
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| Tools| 00:07 | Katrina Atcorn: When it comes to
really creative work, software often gets in
| | 00:11 | the way. So when we are in the strategy
phase, the tools that we use are often
| | 00:19 | a whiteboard and a marker or
conversation, or sketches on the notebook.
| | 00:25 | One thing that's nice about card sorting
is it's tactile and you can move stuff
| | 00:29 | around and it's just names of content
written on a index card, so it doesn't
| | 00:34 | feel too permanent so it's easy to
kind of get in there and mess it up.
| | 00:38 | Those kinds of things I find really help
people think creatively and free their minds
| | 00:44 | a little bit. And then once we have a
sense of where we are going, that's when
| | 00:48 | the ideas get drawn up in InDesign,
or in OmniGraphal or in Visio or
| | 00:52 | whatever tool we need to be using.
| | 00:54 | Renee Anderson: In discovery, it's
mostly about having conversations.
| | 00:58 | So the tools that we use in discovery are
ourselves and it's just mostly about having
| | 01:05 | a good conversation with people to
draw out the information that we need to
| | 01:10 | answer the questions.
| | 01:11 | Michael Polivka: The main thing
that we are trying to really have
| | 01:14 | consistency on is the visual design
review. We give a lot of consistent tool for
| | 01:18 | the visual designers to do their QA.
On the other side of working with the
| | 01:23 | developers, some of them have built
their own QA tools, some have worked a lot
| | 01:28 | in some things that are off-the-shelf
and others may be a little more loose,
| | 01:33 | like they're little scrappier,
and we've got a week.
| | 01:35 | Henrik Olsen: We primarily as visual
designers, we will work on Macintosh,
| | 01:40 | using a lot of Adobe's products.
Using Photoshop is a big one. A lot of our
| | 01:46 | work happens in Photoshop and then
some of the work to compliment that is in
| | 01:51 | Illustrator as well and so designers
are working with those two applications a lot.
| | 01:56 | We also do a bit of Flash work here in
terms of getting the behaviors worked
| | 02:03 | out for how we want. If there is an
interaction that's going to be going on,
| | 02:08 | we may mock it up in Flash just to see
how something will animate on and on roll over,
| | 02:15 | what's the behavior, what's the--
if there is a sort of a gravity to it
| | 02:20 | or not, we will mock that up. Some
people are using the Wacom tablet because they
| | 02:27 | like to use that way and some people
are working with mouse and so forth.
| | 02:31 | But you know, other than that I think
it's just kind of the standard set of tools
| | 02:37 | that a Web designer should know.
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| Branding| 00:07 | Rajan Dev: One the things that I have
really been enjoying the most over these
| | 00:10 | last couple of years it's been our
focus on start-up businesses, where we work
| | 00:14 | with just sometimes as few as one
founder of a company and sometimes maybe a
| | 00:20 | whole management team and really help
them envision what their business is
| | 00:24 | going to be and then create the things,
the brand elements that speak for
| | 00:29 | the business as well as all of the brand
attributes and positioning and tone and voice.
| | 00:35 | Henrik Olsen: In our brand identity
design work that we do here, there is a
| | 00:40 | span of projects that we do. On the
one hand, there is the somewhat more
| | 00:45 | traditional brand projects where we go
through a brand strategy phase and figure out
| | 00:51 | what's the core messages of a
company and what's their mission statement,
| | 00:55 | their core attributes and get those
sort of strategic elements worked out and
| | 01:00 | out of that, as is tradition,
is you come up with the logo.
| | 01:05 | Rajan Dev: You really start with an
idea and you turn that idea in very close
| | 01:10 | collaboration into a business and so I
think that type of work uses all of our
| | 01:17 | skills, everything from identity
development through user experience design,
| | 01:23 | through content creation, through
visual design and then technology platform
| | 01:29 | implementation and then one of the
areas where we are doing more and more is
| | 01:32 | audience development, which is all right,
so you have created this environment,
| | 01:37 | how do you bring the right people
here to use it, who are going to be
| | 01:40 | interested and served by it?
| | 01:41 | Henrik Olsen: Brand identity is
probably about I'd say 15% to 20% of the
| | 01:46 | volume of work that we do here, which has
been growing. Over the last couple of years
| | 01:51 | we started doing more and more
identities. We did some work for an internal
| | 01:57 | project at Schwab called Client
Central and then we have worked for campaigns.
| | 02:02 | So little by little I think that we
build out our credentials doing identity.
| | 02:08 | Rajan Dev: Everything that we do is
experiential and that's why that focus on
| | 02:12 | the long-term meeting of needs for
customers and stakeholders I think is
| | 02:16 | really paying off and is really the
core of our business and also something
| | 02:21 | that seems to really have some legs.
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| Blogging at Hot Studio| 00:07 | Katrina Alcorn: So at the very basic
level, blogging is just a technology that
| | 00:12 | allows people to publish whatever they
want on the Web very easily and because
| | 00:16 | it's an easy publishing platform what
you find is that when people blog,
| | 00:22 | what they write about lends itself to
be more familiar, more colloquial then you
| | 00:27 | would be if you were writing for a
newspaper or writing for some publication
| | 00:30 | where you had to go through many
steps to get something published.
| | 00:34 | Renee Anderson: Blogs are really about
a personal voice, a personal tone and
| | 00:38 | everybody has their own style of writing.
So this is a way to really break down
| | 00:42 | that kind of 'we are a company and we
have this brand' and 'we are an agency'
| | 00:47 | and it's like but we are also about people.
We are about the people who work here
| | 00:51 | and each person has a unique story.
| | 00:53 | Henrik Olsen: We launched out blog
probably about a year ago and the thing
| | 00:57 | that's really fun about ours is that
everybody in that company contributes to it,
| | 01:03 | so we are all authors and it's not
just the principles of the company writing
| | 01:08 | up there but it's anybody who has
some sort of thought on a design aspect.
| | 01:14 | Katrina Alcorn: It's been an
interesting organic process seeing how people are
| | 01:18 | slowly making a blog a part of what they
do in their workday or outside of their
| | 01:23 | workday and figuring out what's okay to
write about when you are representing the
| | 01:27 | company versus what you would
write about on your personal blog.
| | 01:31 | Renee Anderson: We are still working
through exactly what we want it to be,
| | 01:38 | how far do we want it to go. I think we
have drawn the line at posting pictures of
| | 01:42 | our puppies. But we don't necessarily
want to keep it so constrained to
| | 01:48 | 'we're a design firm, let's talk about design
all the time.' I think that there are a lot
| | 01:52 | of really interesting aspects of
being a user-centered design firm that can
| | 01:57 | translate out to daily
activities, life activities.
| | 02:00 | Henrik Olsen: I like it in that it
doesn't have the pressure of writing for a
| | 02:05 | magazine, per say, that has to be coming
out every other month or something like that.
| | 02:12 | I mean you can really come up
with some ideas and try them out.
| | 02:18 | People will then respond to your article
with comments on it. So you get that almost
| | 02:23 | instant feedback about what people think,
what are you working on. So it's sort
| | 02:28 | of a great testing ground and you can
float ideas out there, stir them around,
| | 02:33 | see how people respond. So that's
the thing that I like about it,
| | 02:39 | is the somewhat informality about it.
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| Sources of inspiration| 00:07 | Rajan Dev: I stay inspired and in fact
not only do I stay inspired, I become
| | 00:10 | progressively more
inspired every day I work here.
| | 00:13 | Michael Polivka: I will start with
what inspires me here in the office and
| | 00:17 | it really is the relationships
that I have with the people here.
| | 00:20 | Henrik Olsen: My colleagues here at
Hot Studio, there is -- it's a constant
| | 00:23 | conversation going on all day up there.
| | 00:26 | Renee Anderson: The things that
inspire me are making sure that I can grow in
| | 00:32 | that supporting role.
| | 00:34 | Katrina Alcorn: I think working in a
company with really smart people, I just
| | 00:37 | love that. There is always great
discussions going on and over lunch or just
| | 00:44 | people yelling across each
others' desks, hey, come look at this.
| | 00:47 | Henrik Olsen: Have you seen this new
site, have you seen what's going on there,
| | 00:50 | look what this new technology can do.
And we're constantly feeding off of each other.
| | 00:56 | Michael Polivka: I can be myself,
people around me can be themselves and we can
| | 00:59 | all do the things that we really like
to do and be candid about the things that
| | 01:04 | are upsetting us or
bothering us or demotivating to us.
| | 01:07 | Henrik Olsen: Spending an afternoon at
SFMOMA, going in there and seeing their
| | 01:10 | different kinds of images and colors
and compositions and seeing how things
| | 01:15 | come together, that gets inspiring.
| | 01:17 | Katrina Alcorn: When we have a new
client that's in an industry that we are not
| | 01:21 | familiar with, we like to really
immerse ourselves in that, in their world.
| | 01:25 | Rajan Dev: The mix of clients, the
mix of challenges and the overall
| | 01:30 | environment that we have created here,
which is really a learning environment.
| | 01:35 | I have never worked in a better place
and just get more inspired everyday.
| | 01:40 | I love it here.
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| Working with Maria| 00:07 | Renee Anderson: Maria?
Let me tell you about Maria.
| | 00:10 | Katrina Alcorn: Maria is the best boss
I have ever had. She is quirky and she
| | 00:15 | is not afraid to be herself and I think
her way of sort of being her authentic Maria,
| | 00:23 | you know the character that she
is really puts a lot of people at ease
| | 00:26 | and makes them feel like
they can be themselves.
| | 00:28 | Maria Giudice: I think that people
here really like it when I'm involved in
| | 00:32 | their project but they also have a
little bit of trepidation because they know
| | 00:36 | I'm constantly going to push them to
think further. So I'm encouraging and
| | 00:42 | inspiring, hopefully. But I also am
pretty demanding in terms of, you know,
| | 00:50 | try to do something that hasn't been
done before or are you sure that's
| | 00:53 | the best way or hmm, I'm thinking you're
starting to repeat yourself. I think you
| | 00:58 | are going to have to throw that idea
out and start over. But I say it with a
| | 01:02 | smile on my face and I think ultimately
they see the value in it because they can
| | 01:07 | look back and say, god, I did
push it further than I could go.
| | 01:10 | Henrik Olsen: Her enthusiasm is
infectious because she is so excited about
| | 01:15 | what's going on with web sites that
that energy kind of inspires me too and
| | 01:21 | what she is really good at
doing of course is pushing. So when I am
| | 01:25 | showing her some designs that the team
has put together, she will always push it
| | 01:29 | a little bit harder.
| | 01:31 | Renee Anderson: I just can't imagine
having somebody else for a boss. I mean
| | 01:37 | she is just fabulous and I think that
as well her commitment to the health of
| | 01:44 | her employees. I think sometimes more
than the health of her company because I
| | 01:49 | don't think she sees those as two
separate things. To make sure that her
| | 01:53 | employees are happy and healthy and
not overworked and not stressed out,
| | 01:58 | recognizing the level of effort
that they put in to doing amazing work.
| | 02:03 | Michael Polivka: She is fantastic. She
is real genuine person. She has got a
| | 02:07 | great heart. She cares about people in
a way that I think is a bit unique in
| | 02:13 | her situation. There's a compassionate
enthusiasm that she carries through.
| | 02:19 | It's a real concern. It's a genuine
concern that, are the things that we are
| | 02:23 | doing as a company great and are the
people that we have here getting what they
| | 02:28 | need and are we all sort of fueling each
other and bring the best out of each other.
| | 02:33 | And I think that core of genuine
concern is really... that authenticity
| | 02:39 | again is really, really key.
| | 02:41 | Rajan Dev: When we think about the firm
and what we both bring to the table is
| | 02:45 | that if I was to use a body analogy,
the two of us are sort of like a left and
| | 02:49 | right brain and she is really thinking
about creation and inspiration and I am
| | 02:55 | really thinking about methods and
process and outcomes and then also kind of
| | 03:02 | taking that body analogy further, she
is like the heart of Hot Studio. She sets
| | 03:07 | the culture, she sets the tone, it's
always inspirational, it's always open.
| | 03:11 | Katrina Alcorn: I think it helps set a
tone in the office to be-- I think it
| | 03:18 | helps us be the kind of creative
company we are, just the attitude she has.
| | 03:22 | Renee Anderson: It's not very
common that you encounter people running
| | 03:25 | companies who would have that approach
to interacting with their employees and
| | 03:31 | I think we are all very lucky to have her here.
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| Interview with Lynda| 00:07 | Lynda Weinman: Hi! I'm Lynda Weinman,
your host of Creative Inspirations and
| | 00:10 | today we are with Maria Giudice here
at Hot Studios in San Francisco.
| | 00:15 | Maria, it's so great to be with you. Thank
you for agreeing to be a part of our series.
| | 00:19 | Maria Giudice: Lynda, I
always love to be with you.
| | 00:21 | Lynda Weinman: Oh! I always love to
be with you too. And speaking of that,
| | 00:24 | we do have a little bit of a history.
How do you remember our first encounter?
| | 00:29 | Maria Giudice: The first time I heard
of you was through the web-safe color palette.
| | 00:32 | That was sort of the underground.
Everybody was searching for the
| | 00:35 | web-safe color palette online.
Was it just through email?
| | 00:39 | It might have been through
Apple Link, I don't know.
| | 00:41 | But you know, Lynda, you always had
the keys to all the secrets when it came
| | 00:46 | to web design early on. You seemed to
be the only one who knew anything.
| | 00:50 | And then you started designing books and
I remember I was really taken how you
| | 00:55 | used your kids in the book. This
woman is really cool. And then we started
| | 01:00 | designing a book on web design called
Elements of Web Design, which was to
| | 01:04 | teach print designers how
to move to the new medium.
| | 01:07 | So we were, I think, kind of pioneers
early on in educating people about how
| | 01:13 | to design for the web.
| | 01:14 | Lynda Weinman: Absolutely, and I remember
being in awe of your book because of the
| | 01:17 | information design of the book and I
have just really never seen anything like it;
| | 01:21 | it was so clever the way that you
broke out the information and it was very
| | 01:26 | clear to me at that point that there
was going to come a day where if I could
| | 01:28 | ever hire you, I would love to work
with you. And that ended up happening when
| | 01:32 | you designed our Hands-On Training book series.
| | 01:35 | Maria Giudice: Yeah, that's right.
| | 01:36 | Lynda Weinman: It's a
beautiful, beautiful design.
| | 01:37 | Maria Giudice: Thank you very much.
Now that was also a very interesting time
| | 01:41 | because Darcy DiNucci wrote the book,
and my partner at the time, Lynne Stiles,
| | 01:46 | and I designed it and we all got author
credit because we felt like the success
| | 01:51 | of the book was really not just what
the words said but how the information was
| | 01:55 | displayed. We were authors but we
were designers and I thought that was
| | 01:59 | an interesting position to take.
| | 02:03 | Lynda Weinman: I think so and I mean
the visual design was so exceptional and
| | 02:08 | it really truly did participate in
conveying the information as much as the words.
| | 02:12 | So I think that's appropriate.
| | 02:14 | Maria Giudice: Thanks.
| | 02:14 | Lynda Weinman: Now had you already
started Hot Studio at that point?
| | 02:16 | Maria Giudice: Back then I was a
partner in a company called YO with Lynne
| | 02:23 | Stiles who I used to work with at The
Understanding Business when I was working,
| | 02:26 | back when I was working for Richard
Wurman. And we had a business from '92-'97
| | 02:31 | and we parted ways in '97 and then I
continued on and founded Hot Studio.
| | 02:39 | I like to tell the story that it was
called YO and then our partnership dissolved
| | 02:45 | and she took the Y and I took the O.
| | 02:49 | Lynda Weinman: That's great.
Maria Giudice: Yeah.
| | 02:50 | Lynda Weinman: Something else that we both
have in common is that we are both moms.
| | 02:53 | And my daughter is a lot older than
your children but you are still right at
| | 02:58 | the point where your kids are young and
you are running a pretty large company.
| | 03:02 | Can you talk a little
bit about what that's like?
| | 03:04 | Maria Giudice: Yeah, we have lot of
moms and dads who work at Hot Studio
| | 03:07 | because they really appreciate the live-
work balance because I know that I need
| | 03:12 | that in order to be happy and
successful. So our culture at Hot, too, is very
| | 03:18 | much welcoming for kids. When I started,
I had my first child in the year 2000
| | 03:25 | right in the middle of boom. So, Max
was born in May of 2000 and our company
| | 03:33 | went from 6 to 20 and I had
my baby right in the middle.
| | 03:36 | I would bring the baby, I would put
the baby on a bouncer, I pushed, I moved
| | 03:40 | the baby from desk to desk. People
started taking care of the baby or if I had a
| | 03:44 | client meeting, I would ask Cathy, can
you just roll the baby around the block
| | 03:50 | until I am finished with this meeting?
So I really figured out how to balance
| | 03:56 | trying to be a mother and being the
best mom you can, especially in those early years,
| | 03:59 | with running a business. And
that being a mother is natural and
| | 04:05 | you shouldn't ignore the fact
that you are a working mother.
| | 04:09 | So my goal is to set sort of a model
for anybody else here and say, you know,
| | 04:14 | you can do this too. If you want to
bring your baby to work and the baby is not
| | 04:18 | disruptive and bothering other people,
bring the baby to work. We will figure it out.
| | 04:22 | You spend so much time at work,
but it should not be at the expense of
| | 04:29 | your life and as a working mother,
as all working mothers know, you have
| | 04:34 | to cram everything in, in a short
period of time. So your life and your work
| | 04:39 | blend together and you
have to make that work well.
| | 04:42 | Lynda Weinman: Well, speaking of the
working and your staff, how do you go
| | 04:47 | about recruiting for new employees and
what do you look for in a staff member?
| | 04:52 | Maria Giudice: I think now that
Hot Studio is all about 12 years old,
| | 04:57 | we have kind of earned the respect of the
industry, but early on, it was very hard.
| | 05:02 | You had to kind of earn that good brand
equity that we have now. So for my part,
| | 05:09 | it's really important to create an
environment where people are going to do
| | 05:13 | their best work that we have a clientele
that people we want to work for and
| | 05:19 | that we treat employees well and
appreciate the lives that they have outside of
| | 05:26 | Hot Studio.
| | 05:27 | So for my part, it's my responsibility
to kind of uphold all those promises,
| | 05:33 | brand promises. If you do all those
things well, then people will be attracted
| | 05:39 | to you. So that's been our strategy,
was to create this environment and create
| | 05:45 | this place where people want to come
and work for us. And then in part, I need
| | 05:49 | to make sure that
my promises are kept to them.
| | 05:53 | So it hasn't been that hard to recruit
good talent but we are looking for the
| | 05:58 | cream of the crop. So you're only as good
as your worst employee. So everybody here
| | 06:03 | has to be excellent at what they do.
| | 06:05 | Lynda Weinman: You have done quite a
bit of charitable work. Can you talk a
| | 06:11 | little bit about why that is and
if that's part of your philosophy?
| | 06:14 | Maria Giudice: You know it's funny
because I think I am most proud about having
| | 06:18 | the opportunity to do the charitable
work because when you are just starting
| | 06:21 | out with a company, you are scratching
and digging and just trying to pay the
| | 06:26 | bills and you don't have any money
left to give. We are at a certain place
| | 06:32 | where we can donate part of our time
to do things that are important to us.
| | 06:39 | And having a business now is really not
about the bottom line. It's really about
| | 06:46 | making the most out of your life while
you are here on this planet and to be in
| | 06:50 | an environment that to be at a place
where you love what you do and make just
| | 06:54 | enough money where you don't have to worry.
| | 06:57 | So that's kind of the philosophy at Hot
Studios, is like we make money, we have a
| | 07:00 | lot of great clients and they range
from big corporate clients down to
| | 07:06 | non-profits and startups but it's
really rewarding that you can actually use
| | 07:12 | your talent and skill to give back.
So it's not just having to donate money.
| | 07:16 | You can donate time and energy and the big
reward is that you know you can make a
| | 07:21 | difference in this world and that's
addictive. When you get to that place and
| | 07:25 | you say, I have helped somebody and I
can see that, you just want to keep doing it.
| | 07:30 | Yeah, and it makes you a better
person and it makes you really want to help
| | 07:35 | others. So I feel I am a little
addictive to the non-profit work and the
| | 07:40 | charitable work and I keep saying, well
what I can do to make my kids donate?
| | 07:46 | I really want to -- especially now, we
are so connected to the globe that I feel
| | 07:51 | as individuals we have a responsibility
to figure out how we can connect to
| | 07:56 | other people and make their lives
better and that's what I think the
| | 07:58 | responsibility of the designer is.
I mean, for me, I feel like we design things
| | 08:03 | that are meaningful to people and that
are useful and usable and beautiful and
| | 08:09 | meaningful. If we can make somebody's
life better, even if it's just to improve
| | 08:15 | their day workflow, that's why we are
doing the work. It's not an aesthetic exercise.
| | 08:22 | Lynda Weinman: At Hot Studio, you
practiced what's called user-centered design.
| | 08:25 | Can you talk a little bit
about what it means to you?
| | 08:27 | Maria Giudice: Yeah, we went from
user-- you know that word user is like
| | 08:31 | really bad. So we went from user to
human and really we say people-centered
| | 08:38 | design, because it's really centered on
people. And that's the philosophy that
| | 08:42 | I've had my entire professional life.
Early on I got this people-centered
| | 08:47 | design philosophy from Richard Saul
Wurman. I met Richard in college.
| | 08:52 | I was a senior at Cooper Union and I
started my career as a painter. I went into
| | 08:58 | Cooper as a fine artist and I
came out as a graphic designer.
| | 09:02 | But in my senior year of Cooper, I was
really conflicted because I knew what
| | 09:07 | good typography was, I knew how to
compose a page, but I really didn't see much
| | 09:13 | meaning in graphic design. I
thought it was more about-- it was pretty
| | 09:16 | formulaic. Get a beautiful typeface,
you make the picture of this size,
| | 09:20 | you add a lot of white space,
you call it a day, it's beautiful.
| | 09:23 | And I was really conflicted.
| | 09:28 | But in my senior year, Richard came
into my class, my design class, and he sat
| | 09:33 | there, he walked in and he is a guy
unlike any other designer from the 80s in
| | 09:40 | New York. He sat down and he started
talking about the responsibility of a designer.
| | 09:46 | That it's not about the aesthetics;
it's really about serving people's needs.
| | 09:51 | It's to design things that people
love to use. And he said, you need to
| | 09:56 | focus on people and try
to make their lives better.
| | 10:00 | And that moment changed-- that was a
life changing moment for me because I got it.
| | 10:06 | So right after school I went to
work for him in New York in designing
| | 10:10 | guidebooks. He said, 'you are Italian,
you can do Rome Access.' Can I go to Rome to do it?
| | 10:15 | 'No, but here is all the material.'
And so I designed Rome. I started
| | 10:21 | designing books but always with this
sensibility that I am designing it to
| | 10:26 | serve somebody, to make their lives better,
to make the information clear and accessible.
| | 10:31 | So I worked for him out of school.
I had that philosophy and this is in
| | 10:35 | publishing. And then as I started
my own business, again, I was
| | 10:41 | designing books that people love to use,
looking at it in a very different way.
| | 10:44 | Then for the web, which is what you
have to do, you have to understand what
| | 10:50 | people's meanings, wants, and
desires are and you need to come up with
| | 10:57 | something that's going to serve
their needs. So you do through that
| | 11:01 | understanding, interviews, really
gaining insights from talking, observing
| | 11:06 | people in their natural environment
and then you create an experience around that.
| | 11:10 | So that's really our philosophy.
We don't come from-- we are creative and
| | 11:16 | creative is a very board term but we
are always grounded in creating things
| | 11:23 | that are meaningful and that's what
people-centered design is about.
| | 11:26 | It's really starting from really asking
those questions. Is this something that
| | 11:31 | somebody is going to use? Is it going
to make their life better? So everything
| | 11:37 | we touch has that
philosophy sort of baked into it.
| | 11:42 | Lynda Weinman: Well, it really shines
through. You have done an excellent job.
| | 11:46 | Maria Giudice: Thank you, thank you.
| | 11:48 | Lynda Weinman: And thank you so much
for being part of this. We have really
| | 11:50 | been honored to have you join us and
share your insights and perspectives.
| | 11:54 | Maria Giudice: Thanks so much, Lynda.
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