“Oh, what a void there is in things.” – Aulus Persius Flaccus

I get a lot of email and take a lot of coffee these days with eager young people looking to break into the work that I do. They tend to fall into two categories:

• Should I go to graduate school?
• Why isn’t my job more like graduate school?

To be honest I feel a bit unqualified to answer since I did not in fact attend graduate school. There I said it on the Internet folks. Gasp.

That said, I do think I have something to add in the ways of advice here. So here is the common advice that I do give to each of these email authors and coffee date makers.

Project into the void.

The connection between what you know, and what you do is what you make it. Not what is handed to you.

I hear from people all the time that are just waiting for that right moment, that white whale. The right job. The right client. That moment where their boss is going to finally trust them with the keys to the Cadillac. Until then, they will describe the void that the Cadillac would have filled.

I find myself giving people permission to make things up, improvise, and trust their guts way more than I feel I should have to. Put simply: no one is ever going to ask you to apply what you learned in that ethnography class to that CPG assignment BUT that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be an excellent parallel to draw.

“Get over your ivory tower anxiety, walk into that dark room and be the one to turn on the light for everyone else. It feels really good, I promise.”

Create teachable moments.

Hard as it is to swallow — a lot of project plans aren’t very carefully crafted and really are just “when can we see wireframes” plans. And that’s ok. Really, we are getting there. They want wireframes! There was a time when they fought about not needing those! I swear.

So, for now if you find yourself in these less than ideal scenarios — find a way to get the things you need to feel like the wireframes are as good as they can be. And as you go, talk about what would have made the process better. Get people to understand how you would have done it if you had more time or resources.

“I swear to you, people will over time change their mindset. I have heard account people all of a sudden tell me how they told the client to plan for usability next year.”

If you can’t do experience based work, try improving the experience of work.

I always tell those looking to break into this kind of work that the best litmus is to experiment with improving real world user experiences close to them.

Move the trashcan in your office to be more convenient. Reorganize the copy room to be more efficient. Improve the process by which office supplies are ordered and requested. Find something that matters and change it for the better.

You can use exercises like this to apply a basic user centered process. Observe user patterns around you, identify something to improve, create a potential solution, test it and iterate until you are happy with the result. Make flows and maps to try your hand at those skills along the way, communicate your ideas visually and create consensus with others.

“It may not be graduate school, but if you cant find enjoyment and comfort in applying this process to something small, controllable and within your context then I would truly rethink attempting an entire career in this space.”

Have more coffee.

This one is for the seniors actually. If you are reading this, hi!

In my coffee chats and emails I hear a lot about you not being very available for the young-uns. I spend a few hours a week talking to juniors, outsiders and n00bs. I really feel that we all owe that to our industry. Something tells me we were all there once. Remember that? So if you aren’t teaching, you better be accepting a ton of coffee dates.

IMHO talking about what you do keeps your mind sharp and your heart bursty.

Thanks for reading.

“Are you running away from something or towards something?”

Leading a user experience practice in a large agency hasn’t been an easy feat; but as intense as it has gotten at times, it also has never felt like something I have wanted to run away from. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

The pride I feel in the accomplishments we have made at Draftfcb during my time here makes the next sentence extremely hard to type.

Dear dream job, I quit.

That’s right. You heard it here first. I am running towards something. And for once it isn’t for a new job; it’s for a new life.

So, I am hanging up my freshly donned director pants, packing up my Mad Men collectables and archiving my ever-growing sketch collection of branded experiences to move to the Big Apple in pursuit of life.

I promise details on where I am planning on spending my time in the very near future. Exciting thing to share – not yet ready for sharing.

For now — I think reflection is important, so I want to take this moment to reflect on my time at Draftfcb and a look at their future in agency UX.

The assignment I was given:

1. Answer the Golden Question “What makes a user experience planner successful at Draftfcb?”
2. Allocate appropriate to workload and expectations.
3. Lead a team of UX practitioners inspired to work together to make not just splashes, but waves.
4. Inspire the next generation; the agency worker of the future wears many hats.

The result:

A year ago, the above 4 goals felt more like epic quests. How could we effect such a large organization, so set in their ad man ways? But, in reflecting on these goals now, I can say with pride that we have checked these boxes and are ready for new and bigger ones.

• User Experience is now a core tenet of all the work that we provide to our clients.
• Our co-workers know what we do and know how to talk about us in broader contexts like budget planning.
• Our UX planners are happy campers who go home on time and see their loved ones.
• The agency, led by the strategic planning department, is cross-training and focusing on end-to-end digital knowledge growth for all employees, not just planners and “digital people”

To be honest, as much as I have helped to achieve the above — I had little to do with priming these things to get done. Some very smart people decided 2 things before my time:

1. Rather than create a new slice of the wheel, we instead would strategically center around UX and make it tangible to all who work on our clients’ business’, cross channel.
2. Rather than creating a new department or placing UX in more of a production-focused reporting structure, UX was placed within the Strategic Planning department, easing the idea of having us at the table early and often.

And the plan is working. I have seen a major shift in my colleagues, in the goals of project work and in the culture of this agency as a result. The fact is that you can’t attend a meeting where important things are being discussed that quality user experience is not a core tenet. And that is not to say they are always talking about involvement from someone on the UX team. Quality user experience has become a requirement and something we are all ultimately responsible for delivering.

And the use of UX planning has up-ticked as a result. We have gone from servicing 9 core clients in 2009 to 17 in 2010 and now are looking at touching almost every brand in our book in 2011.

Our headcount has grown as well, with a senior and junior planner being added since the summer — allowing me to go home on time and see my loved ones.

Why would I leave all that?

IMHO Tolstoy said it best:

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

I am young, eager and not tethered to anything but my iPhone. New York City is an epic quest and an amazing playground for someone like me.

What’s Next for Draftfcb?

The work here is not done. Not even nearly. There are things that are being left half-baked and in need of love.

With my departure there is an open seat at the UX helm primed and perfect for someone with passion, leadership, and vision. I look forward to interviewing my replacement and working with the management team at Draftfcb to achieve a transition plan that leaves my departure as a footnote, not a headline.

Think you have what it takes?

Read my job description and get more information on how to apply.

“Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.” – Abraham Lincoln

There is an epidemic in the advertising industry today: the constant progression of mega-phone like display advertisement methods online. All of a sudden we have ads that pop-up, pop-under, follow us down the page, shake, blink, expand, auto-play and launch on a delay. We encounter hidden close buttons, questions that must be answered to close ads and a general lack respect for why we likely visited the page in which said ad is encountered.

Why have online display ads gotten so aggressive?

For years, banner blindness has been discussed ad nauseum. Advertisers constantly worry that they are paying for eyeballs that don’t even register their brand impression, so over time new tactics have been developed to combat this ailment. The sad news is that the approach being taken is the opposite of what one might expect from identification of the problem.

Unfortunately, the belief seems to be that if people are building immunity against looking at banners, we need to force the ads closer to their eyeballs. Meaning that the tactics developed to combat banner blindness are even less sensitive to the needs and wants of consumers than their passive historical partners. So what fuels the production of tactics that are openly discussed as annoying and obtrusive?

I believe it is because we are still not clear about what an online ad impression means and how it fits into overall brand health. More so, as advertisers, we are less than willing to ask ourselves the most important questions of all:

#1: Is a forced eyeball on my ad a happy eyeball?

Forcing a brand impression may actually make consumers like you less, not more. This has been proved in studies and anecdotes from the wild, yet the numbers don’t play nicely in arguing this point. Typically the click-through rates of intrusive display ads are 2 to 3 times that of more passive display ad tactics. But why?

#2: Is every click-through an intended click-through?

Have you ever accidently clicked through on a hover ad trying to close it? Have you ever been tricked into clicking through because of the funky click target of the close button? Have you ever encountered a question-based close mechanism like “I love Cupcakes!” vs. “I hate Cupcakes!” I mean, c’mon — who would ever click a button that says “I hate Cupcakes!”?

I believe that these less-measurable factors are the reasons why these ads “perform so well” when compared to the polite banner ads sitting quietly in the sidebars of content pages.

And when you look at the ways ads are produced, managed, distributed and measured – you quickly see that the key performance indicators vary wildly from party to party, leaving a very segmented measurement of success.

• The Consumer: Wants information, or to complete a task as quickly and efficiently as possible.
• The Brand: Wants results from their investments, and often needs the other parties involved to define what that result is and how to best attain it.
• The Agency: Wants people to interact with the brand. And they want to convert impressions to action.
• The Media Buyer: Want eyeballs, lots and lots of eyeballs.

IMHO without a common goal and without knowledge of true consumer behavior — aggressive tactics like those discussed above will continue to be produced and touted as successful.

#3: How can we do better?
Look for more targeted, contextual ways to place more passive ads. The likelihood of clicking on an ad does increase with relevance, and the technology is out there to really make for relevancy based advertising decisions.

Focus intrusive ads in situations with high entertainment return or where speed to information isn’t the goal. Playing a hover ad as pre-roll for a free broadcast quality show for example is much less aggressive and more expected than playing that same ad when looking to quickly get the local weather.

Put yourself in their shoes. Stop reviewing your ads in flat comps, storyboards and animatics. Think about the experience of encountering that ad. How easy is it to dismiss? How intrusive might it be to encounter in public? Is there anything about your execution that could be described as “sneaky”, “annoying” or “intrusive”?

Look deeper into your metrics. Don’t allow the media buyer to deliver a click-through rate that is immediately dismissed when paired with a spike in bounce rate. Make sure that the traffic being driven is quality lead traffic, not just users on the tail end of an “Oh crap, I didn’t mean to click that” moment.

Stop Tricking People. Think carefully about the affect your KPI for this campaign has on your overall brand health. While getting people to click may be the goal today, remember that one moment of making someone feel foolish is seldom undone by any amount of good marketing after the fact.

Thanks for reading.

This post is the 6th of a series, starting with a list of 10 nuggets of UX wisdom for the Ad world.

Next up: We are all users.

“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s” – William Blake

I spend a lot of time analyzing where brands are with “digital.”  Not surprisingly, I hear a lot of the same complaints.

Our current website is:
A) Embarrassingly out of date and I don’t want to drive traffic there.
B) Not flexible enough to support my current campaign
C) Not able to be affected quickly because of politics and the bureaucracy of our IT organization
D) All of the Above (Eeeeekk)

To me, these are simply symptoms of a large problem affecting a lot of large brands:  Lack of system based thinking.  But let’s be clear, this isn’t a surprising reality given how new to digital most brands are.

What is System-based thinking?

Systems-based thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another.  Then drawing on that knowledge to create efficiencies of process, infrastructure and communication.

You start by identifying the types of digital activities your brand works on in a year. Then, working with all players involved you can create partnerships, invest in IT infrastructure, document repeatable process and provide transferable understanding between your team, your IT organization and your external partners.

By thinking this way, as opposed to shining the object of the moment, brands can become more nimble as they execute on tactics that have high value to consumers.

Renting vs. Owning

Consider the return on investment equation when evaluating partnerships that involve use of someone else’s technical infrastructure.  “Build vs. Buy?” is a legitimate question, especially if the functionality offered is closely tied to your brand and therefore likely to be used again.

Often, partnership is legitimately the way to go. That said, be aware that often the user experience is then dictated not by your brand, but by your technical partner – whose strength is often NOT in marketing communication or usability.  I have seen many a vendor sales pitch ultimately end in sad brand managers when they see the lack of flexibility their campaign inherited as a result of partnership.

Content Management is a must

A Content Management System (CMS) is the implementation of technology that supports the collection, management and publishing of assets that feeds into owned digital properties.

I don’t see many projects where recommending a content management system doesn’t make sense.  It just kills me to see clients pay for developers to make grammatical tweaks to copy or swap out coupon images.  But unfortunately the CMS conversation often happens too late in the game, and although all players agree it is ideal to have – is often cut from scope.  So, how much are you paying for content tweaks you could have your interns do if things were setup properly?

Improve the User Experience of working on your brand

Is getting anything done in your marketing organization feel like pulling teeth?  Are your employees tearing their hair out in frustration of not being able to quickly and effectively implement their bright ideas?

Put your foot down.  Document how you work, look for improvements and operational efficiencies wherever you can.  Make it easier to work on your brand, and your staff can go back to moving that needle, not bitching about IT.

In short, you must: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

• Reduce the complexity of executing on models created to support your brands marketing initiatives
• Reuse technological investment across campaigns, building an arsenal of owned solutions over time
• Recycle your “stuff”.  Don’t just leave promotional content out there to fade out and get lost in the tumbleweeds.  Think about how it will be gracefully retired or reformulated.  Always think about the lifecycle of the “stuff” your systems are producing.

Thanks for reading.

This post is the 5th of a series, starting with a list of 10 nuggets of UX wisdom for the Ad world.

Next up: Aim to be listened to, not just heard.

“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

An important part of my role as a user experience planner at an agency is as a scope synthesizer.  The team piles on the goals, the concepts, the wanted and needed features and functions, the core messages, the consumer insights, the budget, the timing, the skill level of the development team, the bent of the creative team, the concerns of the client team – and voila!  I create a set of documents making the unclear, clear.

But for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on looking at this same principle as it applies outwardly to how marketers affect how consumers perceive branded interactions.

Here are some collected principles to assure branded experiences are trim and navigable:

Archive is a dirty word in marketing.

Each of the brands I work for will generate a heap of new web bits/bobs/apps in the next 12 months, so what we do with what we had in the last 12 months?  Do consumers care to go back and see what your brand was doing in 2009?  What about 2006?

These are great questions, ones that don’t get asked often enough.  So I want to talk about the concept of having an archive on a marketing site – since this is a default solution I see used all to often.  I want to start to push us to move past this model, because in my humble opinion:

• Decisions about content aren’t made if there is just a holding tank to catch it after 6 months of being up, next thing you know you have something akin to a digital grave yard of where your brand has been.  Not sexy, and not on brand.
• Archive means nothing to a consumer other than “Not relevant, and old” – so if the content is worth keeping up, it belongs in its own location, placed relative to like content and features.

Ultimately we want to avoid the clutter from past years’ campaigns getting in the way of clarity of this years.’  But we also want to create content that is so awesome that people may want to actually access it again.  The word “archive” gets in the way of both those goals.

Don’t show off your corporate underpants.

I see this all the time, and it comes in two distinct flavors:

1)   Content and/or functionality that obviously has nothing to do with the consumer viewpoint, but instead was just placed there to appease some stakeholder, or some team somewhere.

2)   Navigation that is dictated by the organization chart of the business teams working on the brand instead of by the logic by which a consumer would navigate the information.

Both of these will cloud the decision paths of consumers, adding to the paradox of choice, getting them nowhere, and subsequently getting you no further.  A clear cut lose, lose situation.

Aim to increase expected value as the user approaches action.

The idea of expected value is that when faced with a number of paths to follow, user’s will identify all possible paths to take; determine the value of each as well as the probability that each will take them closer to their goal.  In order to increase the expected value of your content and functionality:

• Don’t get cute with links and actions: be clear and concise.  Leave the adorable and witty for headlines, body copy and captions.  Making cute copy clickable is like painting a door to look like a brick wall.
• Don’t be afraid of the big red button: Users are looking for clear paths.  The bolder you make the entrance, the more likely it is they will consider it before other paths.  There is no shame in dedicating more visual attention to the action you want people to take.
• When everything is loud, nothing is loud: There is nothing more terrifying than arriving at a page where absolutely everything is at the same level of prominence.  Make sure you give priority levels to every piece of content and function on every page.  I see this done well on home pages generally but it can tend to fall off as you deepen into the sitemap, where often everything goes flat from a priority standpoint.

Read your copy. And like it.

Stop treating your copy like a field of blah blah blah that sits between the headlines.  It should be argued over!  It should be fought for!  And it should be well written, god dammit!

Contrary to popular belief that users don’t read: if your users are truly engaged with the idea of your content, they are reading it – and likely making fun of it in some cases.

• Make sure your copy reads like your brand feels: Don’t be stodgy if you are supposed to be irreverent.  Don’t be trendy if you are supposed to be authentic.  Your users will smell it if you are pretending to be something you aren’t.
• Pay attention to grade level: Most brands have demographics that deserve not going above about 9^th grade reading level.  In short, use short sentences and avoid SAT words.
• Don’t let copy go stale: If a promotion has closed and you are still talking about it as not having happened yet, then you are doing it wrong.  Pay attention to the tense of your copy and think about how it will read in 6 months.
• Don’t ignore actions, links and errors: While we want actions and links to be clear and concise, we don’t want them to be totally devoid of brand personality.  Another common pit fall I see is having overly technical, developer written error messages, which really can break the flow of an experience.  Keep in mind that errors are generally returned at points where users are the most engaged, so paying special attention to them in copy development is crucial.

Cross sell, and not just your products.

The nature of branded interactions tends to fall closer to the entertainment/time-wasting realm.  Because of that, users are often looking for that next step to keep them engaged. Make sure you are always enticing that next click.

In order to do that successfully, I find that cross selling is a common technique in marketing that can be applied easily to how we entice further engagement.

Here are a few scenarios I see again and again as opportunities to cross sell features, and content.

• Make their life easier with action: Trigger marketing of features if users are taking an action that would be simplified by another action.  For example:  If you signup for the mailing list, you can get this article delivered right now to your mobile phone.
• End-cap a prior action: Provide next steps if users are completing an action. Confirmation pages are excellent places to entice further engagement. For example: Now that you have registered for the Gallery, how about uploading your first image.
• Whet their appetite: Preview functionality that would be available should they complete a given action.  For example:  show them a preview of the area that they would have access to should they decide to complete the registration.

Thanks for reading.

This post is the 4th of a series, starting with a list of 10 nuggets of UX wisdom for the Ad world.

Next up: Design Systems, Not Stuff.

As such, I went into the creation of my latest User Experience portfolio with the following lenses:

1. It has to be clear, short and not boring.
2. It has to be readable by NON User Experience People
3. It has to be representative of my experience but not exhaustive

I hope you enjoy what I came up with.  Eager to get some feedback.

Reflecting on this past year, I think the most important thing to note is that UX planning has significantly affected the culture of a 1400 person agency to include User Experience principles as part of their core values. It has been an experience of a lifetime to have an opportunity to watch, learn, grow, think and mold this new agency role. And when going through a process like this, it is best to do it surrounded by people cheering you on.

At Draftfcb, every day is like a marathon – complete with the people screaming your name and throwing yellow Gatorade in your face. In a good way, I swear.

The outlook for UX planning at Draftfcb for 2010 has me literally pacing with excitement. Lots more work actually getting produced, more transparency into our process and of course (many) new additions to the team — the first of whom I am dying to introduce you to.

Till then, Happy Holid-IAs – Here’s to a productive and Happy 2011.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. – Henry Ford

There is a research meme floating about that I am growing particular fondness for.

Social Co-Creation: The use social media to involve consumers directly in the product creation or innovation process.

Don’t get me wrong; the idea of introducing consumers to concepts early and often isn’t new. Nor is the idea of consumers picking up the proverbial pencil and proposing a solution. But – the idea that advertisers would and could listen to them so easily – now that’s new (at least to us.)

Clients are excited to get closer to consumers via social media. They want to explore this new channel and the good news is that they aren’t afraid of the lawyers anymore. In organizations where the battles of social media have been fought, there is already an excellent stage set for such research efforts.

Getting Started in Social Co-Creation

When was the last time you asked a question to your social media followers about what they thought about your content? Features? Product offerings?

How about recruiting people from your followers to review or comment on your current site(s)?

These are simple ideas, but powerful in return on ideas.

Yet – according to a Forrester panel survey of consumer product strategy professionals conducted in Q2 2010, just 38% of companies use social co-creation today (that is, 46% of the 83% of companies who engage with consumers using social media at all)

Luckily, I work with some of that 38%. Below I want to share what we are doing in social co creation, what we are learning and where we are taking it next.

Getting Ready to Co-Create:

Before engaging in co creation, it is essential that you attempt to know what your consumers know about your brand today. We need to always remember the difference between our knowledge of the product and theirs.

Don’t be surprised when consumers talk about TV spots that aren’t yours and product benefits you didn’t know you had. These are important notes for you to probe on in order to clarify messaging in future efforts.

The following are quick on-boarding exercises for preparing to co-create.

• Use Your Product: This is so obvious that it is also sadly often overlooked. Get into the head of those consumers and think about how to engage them in a more than surface level conversation in the best way possible – become one of them.
• Google Your Product: OMG you would not believe the reactions I get when I tell people what is on the first page of results for Google of their product name or nickname. This is easy to search, but admittedly harder to stomach — just remember that knowing is half the battle and whatever damage is done is also fixable with time and knowledge.
• Be creepy at point of sale: Ok not too creepy, but watch the process people go through in selecting your product at point of sale. Do they spend time reviewing the decision? Do they even touch the packaging or just grab and go? Do they hesitate? Is there something fighting for their attention?

Recruitment of Co-Creators:

Surveys are a great first step to growing a base of co-creators. Once you have their demographic basics, you can cut the same consumer pool differently for a variety of objectives overtime.

You may consider co-creating with the people who are your biggest fans. Then again, why not consider talking to the nay-sayers who are still interacting with your brand socially. Everyone has something to say, and as always the answer is in the similarities in their differences.

Preparation for Co-Creation:

Nothing much changes in terms of running your research activities. A usability test doesn’t change because of the recruit from social networks, however in my experience there are a few things to pay closer attention to when recruiting this way.

• In preparation of your activities and tasks, you have to pay special attention to the immediate bias your participants have due to their “fan” status. In my experience this can make conducting competitive reviews especially difficult – due to strong brand affinity. This is IMHO something easily combatable if the moderator is aware and the script is appropriate to that target.
• Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) are incredibly important in co-creation. The last thing you need is for your participant to live tweet your co-creation session. Make sure the NDA is specially designed for social co-creation efforts in order to assure the lawyers know exactly what is at stake. Also make sure it is consumer-consumable. If the language isn’t understandable, it will be harder for them to understand and therefore be overall less effective as a set of rules for their interactions with your brand.

Hosting Co-Creation:

• Create relationships with your participants. Aim to bring them on board long term in your efforts. Even if this is the only approved event (for now) always include a future opt-in as part of your script.
• Don’t discourage participants from becoming friends. I witnessed this behavior in a situation around healthcare co-creation and it was really nice to see participants find like minds through our efforts. Make sure your moderators and staff members are ok with this as some discouraged this by default.
• Explore self-ethnography assignments: Have your participants bring something to the session or send something in after. It allows them personal reflection time and often gives much more area to explore with them in the future. Drawings, video and or traditional journals, activity booklets – all are excellent ways to synthesize their feelings on the brand, and also on the process of co-creation
• Always ask for feedback on making co-creation activities better in the future, and don’t be afraid of the reactions.

Taking “with, not for” to the water cooler:

I love the simplicity in the idea of collaborating with consumers in the creation of brand experiences. But that’s not the only application of this principle that I want to talk about.

While the following lessons should also apply in co-creation situations with consumers, today I want to talk about them today in connection with designing with, not for your clients and coworkers.

In my experience these principles can yield an immense return when applied to the team environment: An integrated belief in a unified design vision. These principles also have incredible application in the role of a moderator in any consumer co-creation session

…play devil’s advocate not naysayer: The strength in the devil’s advocate position is that your support for the defendant is already built in. When you are clear that this is the role being played: the act of poking holes can go from devious to collaborative.

…have no toes on which to step: The act of doing wireframes and flow diagrams is not evil when done by non-UX people. Purveying this idea is not getting us anywhere. Make it clear to everyone that you are there to shepherd the right solution, not land grab for billable hours and piles of paper.

…make things bigger and then smaller: Often the big ideas come out too late when everyone is afraid of the price tag. Try to play the “how big can we make this” game early in the process. This provides the team with an idea of creative energy behind the concept – and it tells me, the UX planner what to expect from the conversations later on. Remember that if you don’t manage the scope as a team, it is the shiny objects that stick. So, instead get everything on the table and prioritize as a group. Make it bigger and then decide what smaller pieces to tackle first, next, last etc.

…admit when you have no skin in the game: This one is hardest for me. I always want to think about the product of the team end-to-end, but there are special moments when argument on a point is not needed because it is not your decision to be making or informing. IMHO this is the hardest lesson to learn in UX – since we reach both so broadly and deeply into the processes in which we inform. Keeping these lines clear is a funny business.

Thanks for reading.

This post is the 3rd of a series, starting with a list of 10 nuggets of UX wisdom for the Ad world.

Next up: Make the unclear, clear — or it won’t matter.