Tip to brand team: prototype, iterate, tweak
Over at the Adobe Design Center website, Khoi Vinh has an interesting interview with Jason Fried of 37signals on lightweight but effective methods to create successful software collaboration products.
Since brands are code, and also collaborations in context, the methods 37signals employs may serve as a model for brand teams racing to develop and deploy agile brand programs. This would be especially true for collaboration-driven brands with high levels of customer interaction.
Generalists instead of specialists
37signals has been turning out highly innovative products using a very small staff. Jason explains how they do it using generalists instead of legions of specialists. In place of grandiose planning and processes, they usually jump in and start prototyping, maximizing feedback, tweaking and iterating as they go. They feel this frees up creative output and produces better results sooner.
Jason Fried:
. . . we used to go through lengthy processes, draw lots of abstract diagrams, spend lots of time on documentation. But what we realized was that that made the “process” better but it rarely made the product better. So we decided that we’d be better off staying as close to real for as long as possible during a project than approaching real towards the end. You never know what’s real until you see real, and often times it’s too late.
For the coming age of agile brands, this seems like sound advice.