welterweightUX

Last week, the Milwaukee Twitter community learned that three Fullhouse team members splintered off to form their own company, Translator.

I was quick on the draw in getting in touch with one of Translator’s partners, Cindi Thomas, to discuss what the new firm is all about. Specifically, I wanted to know how a former Director of Experience Design planned to weave user experience into the fabric of her new gig.

How did Translator go from seed to conception to new born digital agency baby?
Well, there was this one night in a bar with wine. One thing led to anoth… oops… no. Wrong story… heh.

Actually, it grew out of our experience in the field. Seeing what works, what doesn’t. Having a really strong belief in what is important - not only around the work that is done, but how it should be accomplished.

It grew out of a vision of how we wanted to work and what we had to offer. And magically finding partners who mind melded around all of that. It started as conversations around our beliefs in the space really… we all have them. And the more we talked, the more excited we got about living what we believed. We didn’t actually set out discussing starting a venture. It just naturally evolved as the means to do what we want to accomplish, and work in the space we love.

So, what we really believe in, and the crux of what we do is translate messaging into meaningful experiences for the digital world. There is an art to translation. It is not merely replication. The essence of a brand needs specific meaning in the digital world. Whether that is online, mobile, email, you name it. We believe that meaning is ultimately best expressed through an experience. How do we do that? We insist that digital experiences combine user-centric intuitiveness, uncompromising aesthetics and memorable storytelling.

The vision is to involve as many in our process as possible. We don’t know it all. So we are planning on running the agency out of a coffee shop. Open to the community, the public at large, Translator will cultivate an atmosphere of sharing. If you come for coffee, you most likely will be asked your opinion on something, or to be part of a brainstorm session, or to test our latest creation… all over your coffee. The treats for sale will be crowdsourced as well. Make a killer brownie? You can sell it at the cafe. We love brownies. Trust me. We are still working a lot of the details out. But one thing is for sure. We are ridiculously excited.

Who’s all involved in the company and what are their backgrounds?
There are are three partner Translators.

Mark Fairbanks comes from the traditional agency world as a rock star creative. Having worked at a handful of ad agencies, and ultimately owning his own, Octane, Mark’s background in traditional and his evolution into digital brings a great perspective to the work we do. He most recently was at Fullhouse where he helped me in developing the Experience Design concept and bringing it to life. Mark is smart. Plain and simple. And his uncompromising aesthetic is uncanny.

Andrew Wright comes to Translator most recently from Fullhouse as well, where he led the Project Management group. Andy’s background is in geek. I mean that in the most amazingly, complimentary way. Andy is our left-brain. He knows tech and SEO and structure and process. On top of that, he thinks strategically and lives and breathes everything digital.

And then there’s me… Cindi Thomas. @deziner is probably more accurate. (Yes I have actually been known to introduce myself by my Twitter handle.) My background is simple… I grew up in digital. I have a creative background, but have only ever worked on the web. I’ve done it all, design, coding, you name it. I’ve been lucky enough to introduce strategy and ultimately UX to three different agencies, and now own one on which it is built. We’ve come a long way baby.

Broadly, why do you think your clients should care about UX?
Well, because they want results. What ever that looks like, or sounds like or smells like is going to be different from client to client. But the core of the solution is going to be people. Whether your goal is selling, or influencing, or helping - on the other side is a person. And that’s what UX is all about. It’s a concentrated focus on people and what moves them. I’m not sure how a client could not care about that.

How integral is user experience to your business model?
Translator is an experience based digital agency. Without UX there is no way we could deliver solutions for our clients. It’s one of the core philosophies we are building on. Experience design inherently requires visual, UX, and Storytelling working in concert, and all on equal footing to produce anything. So yes, UX is a must.

What do you see as gaps in how UX put into action in Milwaukee?
The biggest gap I see has simply been the lack of collaboration and sharing and evangelizing in the community. We are out there. And largely to date we’ve been islands and lone voices in our respective roles. We’ve been talking and learning and teaching UX, but largely making it up as we go. I often wonder how much replication and duplication of effort has gone on in the UX community here, when we could have been leaning on each other.

Even outside of just getting better at what we do, trading tips and tricks and cool new learnings around the work we do, having access to each other allows a community like ours to talk about bigger picture things, like how do you explain UX to an account executive. (No offense to any AEs out there!) Those evangelical war stories help just as much as swapping Visio stencil libraries.

I believe as well that UX is evolving and expanding. It’s moving beyond the tactical tasks of a project… IA, wireframes, interaction design, etc. It has the opportunity to truly drive the creative process and be the catalyst for having everyone play nice in the sandbox.

We know what makes people tick… it’s our job to do that. We should turn that skill on ourselves and our teams and apply it to how we work and more importantly, approach solutions.

What about UX in Milwaukee is exciting to you?
I feel it has legs now, especially in the digital community. I hear designers and developers talk about “what would the users do?” It’s slowly but surely migrated out of the “that’s just extra steps we don’t need” conversations to the “maybe we should test this with users” comments.

Is it where it needs to be? There still work to be done. But my goodness has it come a long way. And back to my earlier point… we’ve all kind of helped that individually. I think it’s up to us together to push it even further. But with the community behind it, it won’t have to be just us anymore.

I know Translator will become a loud voice and hopefully a facilitator of the cause. And I will just continue to be a loud voice. :)

Anything else you want to add?
Thank you for the opportunity to stand on the soap box. Anyone who knows me knows the passion I have for UX and XD and digital in general, and I get geeked just being able to talk and share ideas about it with others.

Let me know how I can help. And stop by Translator some time… we can sit and discuss lots of fun stuff like this over coffee and a whiteboard. :)