Garrett Winder - Good Work

Nailing the basics

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0500

The magic bullet to a successful digital project is readable content, usable forms and intelligent website structure. Nail these basics and you’ve nailed your digital project, whatever it is.

People won't be able to put their finger on what they love about the site or app, but they’ll love it. They’ll love it because they can quickly consume content, find what they’re looking for and do what they came to do.

Every two years or so I dust off my copy of REWORK and spend an afternoon blazing through it. For those of you who aren’t familiar with REWORK, it’s a book that goes against what every other business book says about businessing. Some of it is a bit extreme, but for the most part it’s a good refresher to bring you back to Cool Town™.

There’s one chapter in the book called “Starting at the epicenter” that I think about all the time when starting a new digital project.

There’s the stuff you could do, the stuff you want to do, and the stuff you have to do. The stuff you have to do is where you should begin.
REWORK

And not only "where you should begin", but more importantly, the part you absolutely must get right. People use websites and web applications to consume content and fill out forms. That’s a website’s epicenter.

Sweat over the details of typography, headings and vertical rhythm so people can consume content quicker and more naturally. Spend time really thinking through complex forms and how they should be laid out so people can fill them out without having to think. Build a website structure that makes sense for the long run so it doesn’t break the first time you have to change something.

Once you get this stuff right you can pat yourself on the back. You’re now in the top 5% of the website building industry.

One year of Good Work

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0600

One year ago today I sat down at my home office in Houston, Texas for day one of Good Work. The few months before were spent hunting down digital projects outside of a full-time job, with the first to start on March 3rd, the first Monday of March in 2014.

It’s been a wild ride, to say the least. 18 new project launches, 10 others improved, a move to Dallas, a new office and we even brought the Erskine Design brand into the family.

I took yesterday afternoon to sit back and document a quick summary of the first 12 months.

For the first 4 or so months, the focus was to have no focus. I wanted the specialization to naturally happen based on what projects were the most enjoyable and that we did the best work on. Taking on anything and everything as long as there was a reasonable budget for digital services. This isn’t a very traditional route, but I do recommend it. It’s an easy way to quickly figure out what projects you are and are not suited for, while still bringing home the bacon.

It’s worth noting that at this point, aside from a few ideas in the form of WhatsApp messages between Phil and me, the company was still nameless. It wasn’t until somewhere around month four that we got a name and a website!.

About halfway through the year, the work started to naturally fall pretty evenly into two primary buckets: custom software projects like registration systems and intranets, and production work like content management system integrations and front-end development. At any given time one side of the business could be working on a custom internal communications hub for an enterprise client while the other is doing front-end development for a few marketing websites where we were handed over design files.

This is where we’ve been for the last 6 months or so, and it’s obvious that there’s a future in modern software design and development for Good Work, so we’re gonna stick to it. This year I’d like to get serious about the software side of the business, both for clients as well as creating products of our own. On the production side, I’ll be a lot pickier about the projects we take on, but I’d like to keep it around – it’s a nice change of pace from the stresses that come with building business-critical software.

So, that’s where we are.

There’s a sales pipeline, there are projects on the table, most clients pay on time and there have been more green months than red. I can’t complain.

Happy Anniversary, Good Work. Here’s to another year of keeping this ship afloat.

It’s time for enterprise software to catch up

Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0500

We live in a world where digital has completely changed the way we interact with just about every major industry. From booking our travel, airfare and hotels online to calling a cab and ordering pizza from an app on our phone.

And design and usability are at the heart of it.

We could go on for days on how digital has transformed consumer facing products and services, but what's more interesting is what can be done with the less shiny, behind the scenes business platforms that seem to be mostly ignored by the design driven world mentality.

Last month we published an article on the value of design in custom enterprise software. The moral of the story was that well designed, easy-to-use internal software leads to a better employee experience, which in turn leads to a better culture, higher employee retention rates and a happier workplace. That's a lot of positives.

Why is enterprise software so bad?

So why is it that I can still peek over at my local cashier's computer screen only to see what looks to be an early prototype of Pong?

Good question. Here are a few possible answers:

1. It’s enterprise, it’s supposed to be difficult.

The first and hopefully most likely answer is that companies have no idea this is an issue. Enterprise software has never been known for its ease-of-use, and until we educate otherwise businesses and organizations won't know any better. Luckily for us, modern technology has made the design and development of custom business platforms much more feasible and cost-effective than it was ten years ago.

2. We didn’t realize the potential of well designed internal software.

The second possible answer is that companies don't realize they should spend an equal amount of effort on internal digital products and services as external ones. It's really obvious that spending money on well designed and easy to use outward-facing websites is a positive for any business. It's not as obvious that spending money on internal business platforms will create a better workplace experience and save time and money in the long run.

3. We understand, but we don’t care!

Lastly, some businesses might completely understand the value in good internal software, but don't care enough about the people doing the work to act on it. I like to think this isn't ever the answer, but it is. The problem with these companies is that the time and money saved by cutting corners on internal software is lost 10x in productivity and morale over the long-term.

To summarize

What all three of these possible answers have in common is that the businesses and organizations behind them are missing out on a great investment for their workforce. We should take some of the time and effort we're putting towards marketing websites and email campaigns, and put it towards our less shiny, internal software as well.

Low-risk onboarding consultancy projects

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Before jumping into a long-term relationship with a new client, I like to start with a small week or two long onboarding consultancy to test the waters. It's a low-risk way to introduce our potential client to user-centered design and really see the value in working with us.

It's also a great way for both parties to ensure the relationship is a good fit.

A quick lesson on user-centered design

At Good Work we practice a design methodology called user-centered design, which is really just a fancy way of saying that all decisions we make during the project process are on behalf of the project's target audience -- which doesn't always turn out to be the same as our client's initial requirements. That's a good thing though, as it ensures we're making the right thing, not just a thing. And it ensures we're building something of value for our target audience!

Taking a user-centered design approach means we typically have a chunk of research, early prototyping and validation to do at the start of every project. Yes, our potential client probably already came to us with a specific set of wants and needs, but we have to validate them for ourselves before we can move forward.

While it is common practice in the creative professions to prescribe solutions without fully and accurately diagnosing the problem, in almost every other profession such a sequence would render the professional liable for malpractice.
Blair Enns, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto

The onboarding consultancy process

This whole process of up-front research, validation and using our expertise to figure out the right way forward works as a great, low-risk onboarding project with our potential clients.

Our onboarding consultancy process is a one week project to advise, validate and scope the needs and goals of the potential engagement. We focus on the humans that the project is for – figure out who they are, their experience levels and what they potentially expect to get out of the finished product. We brainstorm and prototype ideas, and come up with a solid plan to make the right thing, a road map to move forward and a prototype to reference for the future of the project, whether that's with Good Work or another digital agency.

To summarize

Taking a user-centered approach to our work ensures we're creating the right digital product or service for our clients. The work involved in our onboarding consultancy needs to be done regardless in order to create a successful digital project, whether during its own project or as the first phase of a larger one, but by unbundling it from our potential primary engagement we can make the purchasing process a lot less daunting for potential clients, and ensure our relationship is a good fit.

The value of user experience in business web applications

Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0500

It’s no secret that investing in your workplace proves just as valuable, if not more valuable, than investing in outward-facing marketing projects. Take enterprise software, for instance.

Aside from websites and email campaigns, another really valuable use of digital is in its ability to transform long-winded business processes into easy to use workflows that we can carry around in our pockets.

In the book A Brandful Workforce, Julia Gometz talks about how being a brandful company doesn’t just mean investing in your consumer-facing brand, but more importantly, your workforce.

Where the value of our primary marketing website might be to increase brand awareness and save capacity on business development and sales, the obvious value of enterprise software is in its ability to decrease training time, human error and time spent on every day operational tasks at the office like project management. Simply put, digitalizing our business processes can open up wasted capacity to work on the outward-facing things that really matter, like the quality of our products and services. This is huge in itself but doesn't take into account the not so obvious by-products of well-designed enterprise software with good user experience.

Designed well, digitalizing our operational workflows into custom software does more than just save time and money, it leads to a better employee experience, too.

The quality of experience employees have with their employer’s operations is key to their ability to feel trust and comfort at work, and in turn, the desire to stick around.
Good HR Tech Always Makes For A Happy Employee

Good operations are the foundation of a good company culture, and investing in a high-quality custom enterprise application for that foundation is a great place to start. People don't want to sit around all day working inside of legacy software or in a windowless room filing paperwork in an actual filing cabinet. That’s not a job people want to do and it's definitely not a job they’ll naturally advertise to the world.

With today’s technology we can modernize our businesses in ways that focus on the employee experience and make us more productive.

An introduction to Good Work

Sun, 18 May 2014 00:00:00 -0500

In 2007 I started a small web design company with my college roommate. We got an office downtown a few days after graduating and went door to door looking for business. I was the website guy, he was the business guy. We weren't quite sure what we were doing but we were having fun and we went all in.

We ran the company for about four years, and learned a ton along the way, but started to feel like jumping straight into our own business was the wrong route for us. We felt like we needed more experience to really do things right, so a few months later we went and got ourselves some bosses.

I went to Erskine Design in Nottingham, UK for a little over three years. Working with companies like the BBC and Endsleigh I learned how big, complex digital projects work. I learned what a team of really smart, quality focused people are capable of. How to work better with clients, money, operations, etc. I learned how to run an international small business.

So, in early 2014, I started Good Work. A no-nonsense, highly experienced digital client services agency. Over the years I've gained a unique perspective on how different tasks and situations in an agency environment are handled internationally v.s. here in the states, and I'm excited to create a hybrid between the two. I want to design a place that people want to be a part of; both clients and employees.

Since starting the company a few months ago, we've worked on some cool, challenging projects, and have even more in the works. I want to work on the projects that matter -- whether that be client projects or our own. Less temporary campaign websites and more digital products and services that people rely on every day. The ones that make or break the trustworthiness and usefulness of an organization.

I believe if you do good, quality work, communicate well and invest in an environment that people want to be a part of, all the rest will fall into place. That's the goal anyway.