Article Prospect Experience Design You, the Other Kind of Business Leader by Christopher Butler on October 20, 2013 This past Saturday I had the honor of closing out this year's Entrepreneur Mindshare at my alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design. It was a true pleasure to be a part of this event, which included brilliant minds, lots of ideas, and some beautiful enthusiasm. To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive of my involvement, because I've never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur. But as I've explored the idea, I have come to realize that entrepreneurship isn't just about ownership — of ideas, of companies, or anything else, for that matter — but about enacting change. When it comes down to it, entrepreneurs want to enact change and have an impact, which is something that can be done by starting something completely new, or by revitalizing something that already exists. My experience has certainly been in the latter. Here are my thoughts on that... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Clean Up on Aisle 7 published on October 15, 2013 With iOS 7, Apple introduced a lot of usability missteps in favor of visual design. They cleaned the interface up, rather than organized it carefully. Don't fall into that trap! Here's how to focus on the usability issues that get forgotten during the design process. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Don’t Make Me Search by Christopher Butler on October 11, 2013 We've misunderstood search for a long time. That's what Chris Butler thinks is holding us back right now. In this month's article, he makes a compelling argument for designing systems that support better outbound marketing programs, rather than ones that are solely reliant upon inbound strategies… Read Now About
Article Content Strategy We Don’t Build Websites Anymore by Christopher Butler on September 10, 2013 It's time we reframed our entire concept of web development, and this month, Mark and Chris have teamed up to do just that. First, in terms of widening the scope of what websites do today — which Mark believes is best expressed by locating them within a broader lead development ecosystem — and second, in terms of understanding what web development as a discipline is becoming — which Chris explains by drawing a distinction between platforms and programs. Sophisticated web development is no longer about creating discreet applications, but doing what he calls information logistics... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Time/Timing by Christopher Butler on August 26, 2013 Timing is something I've been thinking about since I read Doug Rushkoff's book, Present Shock, which is about — among other things — the disorienting power of technology, particularly on our perception of time and timing. Doug has been all over the airwaves talking about this latest book, but a particular interview he did for an episode of To The Best of Our Knowledge really caught my attention... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Scripts by Christopher Butler on July 23, 2013 I was sitting in the terminal, waiting to board my flight to Seattle. Technically, I'd only been on vacation for about 30 minutes; I was trying not to think about work. But then, a voice came over the loudspeaker... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design HOW Design Fits Into the Process (My Talk at HOW Design Live) by Christopher Butler on June 24, 2013 Today I gave a design-centric talk at HOW Design Live in San Francisco on the web design and development process. I'm posting a full writeup of the talk here with all the key slides (as well as a link to the full deck over at Speakerdeck for all you completists out there)... Read Now About
Article Content Strategy Responsive Design on the Ground by Christopher Butler on June 21, 2013 Last month I spoke at the UCDA Design Summit — called The Empowered Designer — in Asheville, NC. I did two sessions, both on responsive design. Below is the second part, in which I focused on some of the nitty gritty, implementation-oriented issues with responsive design. In part 1, I covered responsive from a more strategic, high-level perspective... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design How Websites Should Be Built by Christopher Butler on June 17, 2013 The interactive feature in the July, 2013 issue of HOW Magazine is an article I wrote about the web development process. It's called How Websites Should Be Built... Also, cool illustrations and charts by Luke Bott... Read Now About
Article Content Strategy Rethinking the Case Study by Christopher Butler on June 12, 2013 Over the past year, we've been carefully studying the stages of the buying cycle, getting better acquainted with our audience, and thinking deeply about how they inform our content strategy. As a result, we've emerged at the other side with the strong opinion that the case study is uniquely suited to speak powerfully to the most discerning prospects' concerns, and should be among the most important content we create. And yet, it's often the most ignored. Chris Butler thinks it's time we changed that, and in this article, offers a plan you can put in place today to write great, sales-focused case studies... Read Now About