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Recently, Microsoft has started to dabble with a new tagline, “Be What’s Next”.  Intended as an inspirational call-to-action for consumers and developers alike, this resonates with us at Filter.

We know you have to build and deliver what’s next, whether you are a company or a team member supporting the efforts to deliver a product, service or the next big idea.  The very essence of our business is to support you in this mandate and help you get it done.

Companies today are innovating, innovating fast, and looking for ways to get the job done with excellence, expertise and with speed.  Gone are the days of assembling a team over a long period of time as your competition may get to market before your team is assembled.  Markets leaders are extending the enterprise by using outside resources and integrating their supply chains.    This capability is critical if companies are to avoid capacity issues (workload stacking up) and expertise issues (lacking the needed skill for the job).

How do you extend the enterprise to avoid capacity and expertise issues and ultimately gain a speed advantage?  The model for this has changed significantly in the past few years. Some may use a design and development agency when they have a need, another may use contracted staff or consulting services to balance their teams, and others may outsource production services to handle high-volume tasks.  The most sophisticated companies use a strategic mix of all of the above.

Filter has pioneered a hybrid model that enables companies to access these offerings in any combination, using a flexible system.   Ultimately, it takes talented individuals to create What’s Next, and companies need to be free to access that talent on a flexible basis using the vendor model best suited to the need at hand.  Filter’s strategy is to offer the best platform for connecting the companies with a need to the talent with the expertise and capacity.

We have been on the forefront of the creative and technology industries and have participated in the boom of demand for user experience design, prototyping, mobile, cross platform application development,  Our service offering includes staffing of onsite resource, staff augmentation service for onsite or offsite consulting, and digital services for projects and production services.  In essence, these are all talent delivery services, each using a different structure and pricing model.  If our clients want to hire an agency that already has the expertise assembled, we can provide that solution, or if they need to augment their team with staffing solutions onsite at their location, Filter can supply that talent.  Each solution is fashioned to fit the needs and requirements of our customer.

It’s a new world of work today, and with thousands of creative and innovative minds under one virtual roof, we help our customers get it done.  We exist to help you “Be What’s Next” so that you don’t “Be What’s Late to Market”.

If you’re ever uncertain about how much uncertainty impacts business, just talk to someone who creates content for a living.  In the last decade, no sector of the economy has been disrupted more. And the reason the recorded music and print publication businesses have virtually collapsed is well documented – they failed to adapt to sweeping technological change. 

The creative services business, by contrast, has a long history of adapting well to change.  Media as a delivery mechanism has been in flux for the better part of a century.  This has forced purveyors of creative services to innovate and develop new methods, techniques and procedures to deliver creative products for new media.  Their success may be because the nature of the creative endeavor requires a certain skill – the ability to assimilate inherent conflict, uncertainty and ambiguity.

Creativity and Ambiguity

If you’re a creative professional, you’ve likely been confronted by ambiguity often.  Sometimes your goal has been to extinguish this ambiguity.  But more and more, ambiguity is an unavoidable part of design. Things just move too quickly, and are too complex, for full certainty in the practice of design. 

Ambiguity may be a condition that persists during the design process, or it may be manifest in design itself. Let’s talk about the former first. 

Ambiguity in the design process can take many, many forms.  It can arise from a deficit of requirements, a lack of clarity in defining requirements or lack of consensus on what requirements ought to be.  It can arise from flawed communication between the customer and the designer, or among different functional groups within a design team.  It can arise from project realities, such as lack of time or access to critical information about the project.  It can arise from a lack of preparation or research.  It can arise from technical complexity.  It can arise from choices and tradeoffs designers must make where there’s no clear or obvious solution.  It can even arise from process itself, for instance when design iteration introduces ambiguity about requirements that were previously thought to be clear.

Ambiguity in this context is almost always considered a risk that threatens success.  But it’s also common and nearly impossible to avoid. 

Teams that confront ambiguity must ask themselves how best to manage it, how the negative effects of ambiguity should be mitigated, and if it’s possible to use it to their advantage.  Without inevitable ambiguities, if every project were managed as a rigid march to inalienable requirements, the discovery that’s inherent in design wouldn’t have an opportunity to flourish.  Innovation can be uncomfortable, but if the end result is a better product, users of the product will benefit.

Now let’s talk about ambiguity that’s manifest in the design itself.  This kind of ambiguity actually has much more potential to be positive. 

Almost no digital product is created entirely to serve machines.  There’s almost always a human end user, even when there are layers of machine interactions between the provider and consumer of a product.  And humans are notoriously imprecise.  Ambiguity, both of thought and of purpose, is a fundamental facet of the human condition. 

Designers of digital products and services increasingly must confront this reality by accommodating human ambiguity in the design itself.  This is not just a question of acknowledging the impossibility of predicting all possible use cases.  Designing for ambiguity means creating dynamic systems that adapt.

An Example of Designing for Ambiguity

There’s an instructive recent example of designing for ambiguity that could have a profound impact on a common behavior that has become an integral part of most people’s lives – Internet search.

Google recently introduced a product they call Instant.  Before Instant, every Internet search engine featured a common basic interface – enter text into a form field and click a button.  But what if you didn’t know what you wanted?  What if you thought you knew but weren’t sure?  In other words, what if your goal was ambiguous?

With a seemingly minor interface tweak – results now populate with each character typed - Google has made the search interaction model profoundly more dynamic. If you goal is ambiguous, no problem, just start typing, and the predictive search engine will start guessing what you want.

This design accommodates ambiguity much more efficiently and holistically than the standard but aging design it replaced.  Users can explore the meaning space around what they are seeking instead of having to guess what will produce the correct result.  You might find something you didn’t know you were looking for.  You might find many things closely related to your original thought that deepen your understanding of it. 

Strategies for Accommodating Ambiguity

As a design professional, or an organization that practices design, it pays to embrace ambiguity, or at least confront it head-on.   Here are some tips:

• Focus on goals.  As a precision discipline, task analysis is comfortingly scientific.  But goal-directed design is a better way to accommodate and provide for ambiguities in execution and implementation.
• Iterate a lot.  Iterative design surfaces both ambiguities and the design solutions that can accommodate them.
• Launch and layer. As Google Instant shows, there’s always room for innovation – even with the most successful and mature products and services.  Incorporate that philosophy into the launch process by getting the product in front of users early so they can show you how to refine it.  Expect that the design will not be perfect at launch, provide for continuous improvement.
• Build adaptable systems that don’t force users down a single path.
• What happens offline is just as important as what happens online.  When designing, think about the entirety of the interaction, not just the part that the system or application facilitates.
• Design for ecosystems that are composed of many different applications and subsystems.  Users don’t always perceive themselves interacting with a specific system as much as they perceive themselves as agents within an ecosystem.

Ambiguity is inevitable and it’s not going away.  In fact, it will very likely increase as technology evolves.  Innovations like Google Instant will introduce their own new ambiguities that will require adjustment and adaptation.  So the cycle continues; innovations will spawn myriad new design challenges, each of which represents an opportunity for a designer comfortable with ambiguity.

How does your organization address ambiguity?  We’d love to compare notes, hear feedback or exchange tips in the comments, or on twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

It’s become a cliché in today’s marketing landscape that the only constant is change.  It’s also widely recognized that since the Internet became a fixture in business environments during the mid and late 1990’s, the rate of change has shifted into a higher gear.  In the decade just completed, a further wave of innovation led by widespread consumer adoption of social media has permanently altered the landscape in the direction of openness and transparency. 

The era when businesses could tightly control their relationships with their constituents is quite simply over, and it’s not coming back.

What’s less obvious, but just as profound, is how businesses and professionals must adapt to these new realities by changing the way they work together.  We’re in the midst of an inexorable shift in the dominant workflow paradigm away from from large, centralized, tightly controlled initiatives, to smaller, more ad-hoc and distributed teams that can be more nimble, innovative and productive. Today’s more fluid, less centralized environment demands a more collaborative, less hierarchical approach to digital property development.

Collaboration vs. Control - A Long Running Debate

In digital production, the tension between collaboration and control has a history that dates back to the dawn of computing.  In his pioneering essay, The Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks describes the challenges he faced managing a software development project all the way back in the early 1960’s.  Many of Brooks’ observations (the oft-repeated production aphorism “9 women can’t make a baby in a month” originated here) are eerily prescient and just as true today as they were half a century ago.

Later, at about the dawn of the Web, Eric Raymond’s landmark essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar described a nascent open-source software movement that upended traditional assumptions about what distributed, decentralized teams of like-minded developers could accomplish when they collaborated over the Internet.  Raymond argued that tight control over development teams and source code actually undermined innovation and efficiency.  Now entering its third decade, the collaboration style popularized during the open source software revolution is a central component of Google’s success, and arguably has even influenced traditionally tightly controlled businesses like Apple and Microsoft.

This shift has reached perhaps its most extreme expression in businesses that are explicitly contrarian in their approach to product development.  37 Signals, for example, advocates principles that seem counterintuitive, such as “meetings are toxic,” “separate your team members from each other,” or “don’t ever let more than 5 people work on anything.”  Founder Jason Fried paints this in the starkest terms: “Collaboration and control are like oil and water.  They don’t mix.”

Parallel Trends

It’s still true that projects should be carefully managed, but there are new and evolving methods that can free teams from rigidly defined roles and responsibilities resulting in increased productivity and innovation.  There are a variety of trends that parallel the shift from control to collaboration.  Agile development, user-centered design, telecommuting, the transformation of office applications to cloud-hosted multi-user collaboration tools (for example Windows Live Office and Google Docs) are all manifestations of this shift. 

There is also a strong generational component to this shift.  Called “digital natives” by some authors, the first generation that grew up with the Internet is just starting to hit the workforce in numbers significant enough to influence it’s makeup.  As a group, digital natives seem to be less motivated by traditional rewards and measures of success.  They operate with an attitude of abundance because the commoditization of intellectual property has made barriers to innovation lower and access to powerful technology more widespread.  With their high-degree of participation in social media, collaboration comes naturally to them.

Businesses looking for a road map for how to succeed in this new environment would do well to recognize the new reality and move away from control and toward collaboration.  There are a variety of things to consider when making this shift, but the key is not to be afraid of relaxing control. Collaboration doesn’t mean lack of discipline - often truly collaborative teams are highly disciplined and structured, but a collaborative, iterative process is at the center of this structure - agile development methodologies are an instructive example.

  •      Hire people with varied skill sets.  Information workers with multiple skills (who are beginning to be called “multi-disciplinarians,”) thrive in collaborative environments.  Because many of them are self-taught and have learned on the job, they have the ability to sense where their contributions are complementary, when to lead and when to let others lead, and how to fit in just right to make a team well-balanced and high-functioning.   

•      Collaboration works better with small, narrowly focused teams.  Smaller teams, by default, require less communication, less policy, and less procedure.  They tend to manage themselves.  This lack of encumbrance allows them to move more quickly and respond to change more rapidly.  This is not to say that control works better with larger teams, or that tightly controlled teams can’t produce great things.  But breaking up large projects into smaller chunks run by smaller teams can reduce risk.  

•      Collaboration works better with a more iterative process. By now, many have heard about the perils of the “waterfall” process, where decisions or mistakes early in a process can be difficult to undo down the road.  An iterative approach can not only reduce this risk, but can also promote collaboration.  Instead of involving different team members at different stages, mini-cycles involving the whole team get everyone in synch quickly and reduce the potential for disastrous disagreements and misunderstandings.  Roles and a team collaboration culture take shape, and problems get ironed out during early cycles, so they don’t persist.  And there’s just something about meeting a series of smaller deadlines instead of one big one that promotes the collaborative spirit. 

•      Collaboration is a better solution for multi-stakeholder projects where communication and process overhead can be a drag on productivity.  When there are multiple stakeholders both within and outside of an organizations, complexities can proliferate. In such situations, misaligned goals and competing, or even conflicting agendas can make tight, hierarchical control unfeasible.  But it also increases risk, because the more elaborate a system of control is, the harder it is to fix when it breaks down.   

•      Companies should consider their customers collaborators. Social media tools have made listening to customers easier.  But its quickly becoming a necessity.  Moving forward, to truly differentiate, businesses will need to engage in real collaboration with customers, integrating them into the product and service development process as much as possible. In the realm of digital products, user-centered design methods such as ethnographic research and live prototype testing are proven ways to bake customer input directly into development. 

Finally, thriving in collaborative environments requires suppressing the ego.  Good ideas can come from anywhere.  When all constituents can see evidence that their input matters, they take their contributions more seriously.  And the days of the “big idea” are over.  Most great products don’t come from a big idea rammed through by a big ego - they come from teams that have trained themselves to come up with small, but innovative ideas constantly, because they’ve mastered the art of collaboration.

As marketing is increasingly dominated by digital delivery channels – and as the separation between marketing, product management, customer communication and content continues to blur – businesses are skill-challenged.  Most initiatives now have a strong digital component.  Yet top digital talent is truly difficult to find.

“Hire an expert” is the clarion call of some enterprises, which are typically dominated by boomer-generation managers who came into this world before television was invented.  Try as they might, many of these leaders do not have the digital DNA to adapt quickly to developing technologies and digital opportunities.  When Twitter broke onto the scene in 2007, there were no Twitter experts to hire!  When Microsoft developed and launched the now-defunct Kin mobile phone, presumably they hired nothing but mobile experts.  Yet they still failed to bring a successful product to market.

Hiring an expert is not a solution to the digital conundrum.  Instead, organizations must focus on their process and the efficacy of their talent and their teams.

Digital is Difficult! 

As if the pace of change in technology and resultant marketing channels is not enough of a challenge, the world of work is changing too.  How, when and where work is done has changed dramatically in the last ten years.  We have four generations working together who bring a vastly different and wide range of values and expectations. Millennials have grown up digital, with productivity tools, social and mobile communication a central part of their lives nearly from birth. Their expectations about work and the way they blend work, life, personal interests, and learning are unprecedented.

The brains of these so-called Digital Natives are well-adapted to these technological and social changes.  But the organizational structures of the companies they work for are not so well adapted. Herein lies the challenge and the opportunity.

Being Digital: Critical Success Factors

Hard work, brains, maturity and luck still play major roles in the successful digital professional as they have through the ages.  But, in my experience, there are certain key skills that top digital talent has, and these skills enable them to thrive and be successful almost regardless of the team they are playing on or the product they are supporting.  Hire more of these talented dynamos, and you will magnify your success – overlook them because they lack “expertise” and you may doom yourself to a series of failures.

These skills include multidisciplinarianism, true collaboration skills, and the willingness to fail.  Let’s focus on Multidisciplinarianism for the remainder of this article, and we’ll cover other key skills in future editions. 

Dubbed the Digital M.D., this person has a variety of skills and interests.  They have a well-balanced perspective on problems (and solutions). They are grounded in a strong customer-centric sensibility, and have strong enough people skills that they are able to articulate goals and ideas in a common sense, practical fashion.  The Digital M.D. probably also has a variety of interesting outside interests, perhaps in the arts or volunteer groups, since they are constantly learning.

In fact, the single, strongest asset of the Digital M.D. is that they constantly seek to learn new things and are really, really, good at learning.  Thus armed, they are prepared to meet the technological challenge of each changing day without stress, fear or trepidation.  In fact, they look forward to change because it presents the opportunity to learn new things!

The Multidisciplinarian probably has been a designer at some point.  They are visually oriented – they pay attention to the visual presentation of things and are familiar with the tools used in the design trade.  But the Digital M.D. has also probably done some light programming or scripting and is familiar with development methodologies and tools.  Many of them have lots of experience bringing new software products through development and to market, so they’ve been exposed to marketing principles, channels and tactics.  Because of this, they’ve also learned the basics about SEO/SEM, especially as it informs site architecture and information design.  If you are lucky, the Digital M.D. might also be a subject matter expert in one or more content areas or industry verticals, just for good measure.

Put this Designer-Developer (“Devigner”) on a team for one of your key initiatives, and you will likely find that they are able to help streamline the development process and avoid a lot of landmines.  Without a Digital M.D, on the team, you may find the UX designer can’t communicate with the Developer, and neither of them can communicate effectively with the end-user customer to quickly identify the need and a successful solution.

In short, having a team of strong contributors in each discipline is still a fine way to go, but they will be even more effective if they have strong inter-disciplinary skills or, ideally, are led by a true Digital M.D.

Five years ago, what was then known as a “graphic designer” could succeed by building even one set of skills in one industry, for example doing newsletter design in the financial services industry.  Today, even the term “graphic designer” connotes an unduly limited skill set, even without that singular industry focus.  Today, even that newsletter designer (who is now doing electronic newsletters rather than print), must know a little bit about user experience principles, opt-in/opt-out methodologies and the federal spam laws, SEO/SEM and analytics, development challenges in getting newsletters to render properly in various email clients and browsers, mobile design for users viewing the newsletter on their mobile phone, the list goes on.

The designer having solely these newsletter skills would not qualify as a Digital M.D.  They would qualify as a good digital designer in the newsletter space.  The Digital M.D. would have these skills plus experience and skills to address all the other marketing channels of which the newsletter campaign is but one part.

Learning to Learn

This skill shift is about more than just “broadening your skills”.  It’s about learning to learn.  Technology changes constantly.  That changes our jobs.  The ability to learn, and to embrace the change that comes with learning, is core for the digital professional.

Millennials have this skill natively, so they have an inside track toward success.  If they can combine this advantage with professional dedication and proficiency, they have the potential to become Multidisciplinarians.  But the outcome is not a given.

In the marketing and design space, there has always been a role for “creativity”.  Thinking outside of the box, coming up with the killer idea ...  This need still exists and there is still a shortage of true creativity.  But it’s not enough to have a killer idea.  In digital, it’s about rapid, clever and successful execution.  Money can’t buy success.  People – the talent within the enterprise – bring about success.

In the Digital Renaissance, the Digital M.D. is king.  They can go anywhere, add value and gain job security because of their wide-ranging skills.    

What is a Multidisciplinarian (or what we like to call a Digital MD)? A Digital MD knows something about design and development, about SEO/SEM and marketing, about user experience and usability testing, about the logistics of product launch.  True Digital MDs are the utility player on a baseball team.  They can play any position on the field.

Alright class, time for a pop quiz: What do the following three scenarios all have in common?

1. You’re reading the morning news on your e-reader when a coupon pops up for a new doughnut shop down the street from you.
2. You “check in” on Foursquare when you arrive at the airport and discover a friend you haven’t seen for years is checking in at the same terminal.
3. You update Twitter while at a cafe and a map shows precisely where you were the moment you sent the tweet.
   

Answer: All relate to geolocation (or geo marketing).

Some are saying that geolocation services and networks will be the defining trend of 2010, much like microblogging dominated past years. Twitter announced its geolocation services right before the annual South by Southwest conference (SXSW), and rival geolocation mobile apps Foursquare and Gowalla both had their boxing gloves on, vying for attention at SXSW too.

The list of geolocation players goes on. Social media behemoth Facebook plans to unveil a new location-based feature in late April at f8, the company’s yearly developer conference, as The New York Times reported (SEE *UPDATE BELOW).  Then there’s Google Latitude, which hit the scene in 2009 with the pitch, “See where your friends are right now.” Yahoo has OneConnect, which will feature “proximity alerts” when friends using the service come within a certain distance of one another. And of course there are hoards of other geo-based start-ups ready to pounce ( including MyTown, Whrrl, Loopt, PlacePop, BlockChalk, Bump, FoodSpotting and Graffiti).

The Challenges and Potential of the Geolocation Giant

Geolocation represents a movement for consumers and marketers alike. As Dave Curry reported in the article How to Survive Geolocation’s Looming Apocalypse on Adage.com:

“Research firm Borrel forecasts that location-based mobile spending will hit $4 billion in 2015, an increase of nearly 12,000% from the $34 million spent in 2009. With highly anticipated location-centric announcements looming from both Facebook and Apple, the buzz over geolocation is not expected to diminish any time soon.” 

    
On a similar note, Caroline McCarthy reported on cnet.com that location-aware services are not only primed to be the next “game-changer,” they are also poised to “serve up advertisements that give ‘hyperlocal’ a whole new meaning.”

Despite the fireworks though, there are some hitches. McCarthy points out a number of concerns that are likely to stymie the geolocation movement, including technology barriers (not everyone has a Smartphone you know. . .) as well as privacy concerns. In his AdAge article, Curry also recognizes the possibility of a “geolocation apocalypse,” citing “swarms of geolocation services,” “armies of aimless apps,” and a “deluge of data” as potential downfalls. . . if geo-based services and marketing is not pursued tactfully.

Curry offers several suggestions to keep geolocation technology moving in the right direction, including embracing open APIs that enable marketers and app developers to build on top of existing services.

Opening the Floodgates

There’s no question that geolocation services and technology will continue to advance. Will that mean more meaningful ways for people to connect with their friends and virtual network? Or is it an invitation for marketers to make advertising even more ubiquitous than it already is? The potential for both is there, though the answer remains to be seen.

*UPDATE: Facebook did not announce any location-based services at the f8 developer conference. Fast Company reports, “Zuckerberg declined to speak in much detail about future location plans, except to confirm that it is being worked on.” Read about other highlights from the f8 developer conference here: Crib Sheet: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook f8 Keynote.

So, now geolocation gives you one MORE thing to think about when it comes to marketing and promoting your brand. And you know the inevitable question: Is there an app for that?! Let us help. . . Filter has an array of talented app developers who are always up for a challenge. Let’s chat!

As innovation in technology, design and media accelerates rapidly, it’s increasingly tough to make your message stand apart from the crowd. An antidote to mundane communications, the website Brilliant Useful Things shows creative examples of engaging ways to present users, consumers or the general population with content.

The examples range from pragmatic (a 3D New York subway map on the iPhone) to indulgent (using social media to alert consumers to freshly baked cookies); philanthropic (Good Deed Cards) to purely artistic (crosswalk artwork and Lullaby Moon).

While we may sometimes feel inundated by the information constantly hurled at us, Brilliant Useful Things demonstrates that advertising, social media, design and technology are still ripe with possibility when it comes to creative (and relevant) communications.

From Git ‘er Done to Never Done, or The Social Web and Foreverism

Whether in the context of marketing, consumerism, brand development, the social sphere, or just business in general, absolutism is fading away. With the constant influx of new technology, information bombards us from every direction. Everyone has a say—and a platform.

The result? Constant change and evolution. A chorus of different voices. Not “git ‘er done,” but “never done.”

Trendwatching—whose global network provides insights into consumer trends—dubs the phenomenon “Foreverism,” which it defines as “the many ways that consumers and businesses are embracing conversations, relationships, and products that are never done. Driving its popularity is technology that allows them to find, follow, interact and collaborate forever with anyone and anything.”

Similarly, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research emphasizes the prevalence (and importance) of the social web, which he sees unfolding in five eras. Of course, an inherent part of the social web is the idea of constant change and a continual dialogue.

As we embrace what Owyang and Forrester refer to as the “era of social colonization” and draw nearer to the “era of social commerce,” the ability to have a conversation—not just dictate information—becomes increasingly crucial.

As Trendwatching puts it in their June report, “Think operating in a humble, transparent, unpolished, almost human-like FOREVER BETA mode, not just for one product, but for an entire organization.”

Owyang also mentions transparency as a key element for brands and companies, as well as connecting with advocates; letting the power shift to the community is one way of embracing the forever beta trend.

And how else might businesses and brands adapt to the co-creation, collaboration, and forever beta mode?

We’d prefer to ask you. . .

The title says it all: Design Needs Marketing, But Does Marketing NEED Design? In a recent post on the MarketingProfs blog, Matthew Grant prepares to make design walk the plank. In its place? User-generated content. Social media channels. The heralding of the brand consumer and their collective cry.

Arguing that “the name of the game is no longer web ‘site,’ but web ‘presence’” and that monitoring “brand activity” has replaced web design in its traditional sense, Grant goes on to claim the following:

              “What I am willing to suggest is that, from the standpoint of marketing, graphic design (print design, web design, logo design, package design, etc.) is rapidly losing, and to a large   extent has already lost, it's relevance and value. In its place, we have the 3 Ps: Platform, Personality, and Presence. The ability to appear almost anywhere at anytime and engage people in a memorable and practical way steadily increases as the ability to project a visual identity into or onto the world dramatically recedes.”

Now that sounds like a rather bleak outlook to me. 

Though I’m aware of the value of a  viral marketing play and the importance of establishing a presence in the places where your consumers already spend their time, I’m hesitant to say that I’m compelled by those experiences when there isn’t a solid structure—an articulate, evocative story told in images and words—upholding them. Design is like the musical score that quietly but assertively defines the scene as the actors rush about the stage (or some social media phenomena dramatically unfolds). 

While the nature of design (specifically in the context of marketing) does continue to shift, this hardly renders design unnecessary or obsolete. Sure, when reading headlines in a RSS feed, design is superfluous. But is the importance of projecting a visual identity really receding? Are people less inclined to seek out a level of connection that transcends the two-minute attention span of the social sphere? And are “Platform, Personality, and Presence” really enough?

Although the outlets, tools, audience, and mediums continue to shift, design is still an integral—and necessary—component of marketing. So contrary to Matthew Grant’s suggestion, I don’t see design as a sinking ship at all. I think of design more like the ocean itself—ebbing, flowing, and subtly changing the landscape that surrounds it, even in terms of marketing.  

Ever play that game Balderdash where you get to make up absurd definitions for unheard of words? The Addictionary from Marketing Profs is a bit like Balderdash. People throw their fabricated marketing buzzwords—or conversely a concept that deserves its own lingo—on the site (which operates somewhat like a wiki) and the community puts their best linguistic foot forward, even pitting multiple terms against each other to determine the champ.

Here’s a sampling of the verbal gymnastics:

Twitterpated (adjective): So distracted by twitter you forgot what you were supposed to be working on.

Connectile Disfunction (noun): What do you call a sudden loss of internet access?

Giverattie (plural noun): People (or the verisimilitude thereof) who join Twitter with the sole purpose of "giving" you a "free laptop" or some other amazing product, even though we all know there's a huge catch hiding somewhere.

Mistweet (noun): A mistaken tweet, posted the way it was not intended to be.

Digicrat (noun): A member of that lucrative market segment who is an early adopter of new technology. (The guy with the latest and coolest phone, laptop, and wireless headset, you know?)

Wannapreneur (noun): Someone who claims to be an entrepreneur but doesn't actually own any businesses.

So maybe you won’t use twitsophrenic or intwitnito in your next white paper or presentation, but it’s at least good for a laugh (and for brushing up on your Greek and Latin, too). Got anything to add to Addictionary?