Why Design Will Eat User Documentation

Design Will Eat User Documentation and technical writingAs Marc Andreessen once quipped, software is “eating the world,” embedding itself in all material and digital products. The basis of his remark was that digital interaction was an order of magnitude faster and more efficient than analog.

Design will eat user documentation explains that now a much more profound change is afoot because design is permeating everything that humans make. People are more likely to use things that have been explicitly designed for them because products’ ease of use and relevance are greater.

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Why Africa Is a Nascent Innovation Powerhouse

Africa is a nascent innovation powerhouse

Africa [credit: Mapswire.com]

Africa is a nascent innovation powerhouse, and its leadership will become increasingly obvious during the coming decades, but the seeds are already visible as this post reveals: Africa’s population is exploding, and its young people are adopting tech alternatives to countries’ long-insufficient health, education, and financial infrastructure.

If you’ve been interested in international development for long, you have seen many prognostications about “Africa rising” over the years only to see them fade into oblivion. Predicting profound economic shifts is like predicting earthquakes; you study the driving forces and your algorithms crunch the data.

That isn’t stopping Helga Stegmann. She has led “user experience” agency Mantaray since 2006, and she gave a riveting talk last week in Chicago hosted by partner agency BoldInsight. In my experience, user experience folks rarely have their hands on the pulse of disruptive economic change, but the reason she is an exception reflects that Africa’s economic transformation is happening at the grassroots level (as with most revolutions), and her key orientation is user experience design, so researching users across rapidly evolving interfaces in devices. Follow along with my notes of her remarks […]

How to Boost the Accuracy and Power of your Customer Journey Maps

How to Boost the Power of Customer Journey Maps shows how firms can increase the accuracy and power of their journey maps by using digital social data in practical new ways that almost all customer experience pros overlook. […]

The Free Chicago Seminars of Experiential Social Media for Nonprofits

Introducing the Free Chicago Seminars Experiential Social Media Nonprofits

Free Chicago Seminars Experiential Social Media ?NonprofitsThe Free Chicago Seminars of Experiential Social Media for Nonprofits and social impact firms aims to help nonprofits and social impact firms to unlock the power of experiential to transform their commitments from their donors, volunteers and other supporters. The series will be offered by CSRA in Chicago starting Summer 2018. Experiential is “the nonprofit way” to do social media because its main goal is serving people, not marketing to them. And it usually produces much better business outcomes than social media and marketing.

I designed this three-part public seminar series for nonprofits and social impact companies, and I’m making it available for free to qualified groups. I’ve pioneered the development of experiential social media since 2006, and I want to share a new way to build trust and commitment from donors, volunteers, partners, clients and other stakeholders to nonprofits and social impact firms.

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True Love for Customers [Love in Business Series]

True Love for CustomersTrue love for customers reveals how nonprofit, commercial and government organizations of all sizes can create much stronger relationships and business by transforming how they relate to customers.

Philosophers, clergy and psychologists have long acknowledged love as the most powerful force between humans. Love connects people like nothing else can, I think because love touches and binds together so many parts of the brain simultaneously: Love stimulates the reptilian brain because it’s related to survival. It is central to the limbic brain, which is grounded in emotion and memory. And love throughly engages the neocortex in art, ideals, and many other forms.

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Drive to Trust Trailer: Behind the Scenes

Drive to Trust TrailerThis Drive to Trust trailer offers a quick behind-the-scenes look into why I’m doing it. Drive to Trust is CSRA’s major initiative this year. We’re partnering with firms in all kinds of industries to show that trust-building in digital public achieves marketing goals much, much better than promotion. These daring organizations will learn how to change how they relate to people, and they’ll become much more competitive.

If you’d like to watch this post instead of reading it, just click the thumbnail button.

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Reflections on CSRA's Ten Years in Business

Reflections on CSRA Ten Years in Business Reflections on CSRA Ten Years in Business gives you three glimpses into why I built a firm to pioneer in experiential social media. I’m amazed that we embarked on our 11th year in February 2017! Here I’ll reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going.

If you’d like to watch this post instead, just click the thumbnail button.

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Three Experiential Social Media Lessons Learned

3 Experiential Social Media Lessons LearnedThree Powerful Experiential Social Media Lessons shares three surprising breakthrough insights I’ve learned while practicing experiential social media. This is one of the videos I’ve made to share some of the most useful things I’ve learned since 2006.

If you’d like to watch this post instead of reading it, click the thumbnail button!

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Healing Business [How to Rehumanize]

Healing Business - Experiential Social MediaIn Healing Business, I’ll share why I think business needs healing and how CSRA is doing it with experiential social media. Business is wounded from a human point of view because it’s become very impersonal; large organizations don’t mean to, but they treat employees and customers as numbers because they don’t know or trust them. Experiential is a practical way to change that.

If you’d like to watch this post instead of reading it, click the thumbnail button!

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[Updated] CSRA 11th Year Celebration

11 Celebration: Ten years of Experiential social media & social business hightlights, mission & vision11 Celebration summarizes my reflections on CSRA’s first decade in business, and my vision for our next decade. We’ve been pioneering in experiential social media and social business transformation since I founded the firm in February 2006.

It’s difficult to encapsulate ten years of learnings, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying! This page will reprise some of my favorite posts, and it will feature a series of videos I’ve made in which I explain where we’ve been and where we’re going. This post will change frequently, so please consider it a work in progress.

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