engaging experience

The New Corporate Website

Even second generation corporate websites are looking pretty stale these days. The broadcast model, where the website was roughly a hyperlinked brochure, lasted about a decade. But now social media has permanently changed the way we communicate with our customers, and changed our customers' expectations of us. Customers expect dialogue. As I've written before, communications can no longer be one-way or even two-way; they have to be multi-way.

It seems we are finally fully awake to the notion that companies are cultures, and since cultures are people, companies are, essentially, communities or ecosystems of people. More enlightened companies realize that this interconnectedness means they must be transparent in their communications, and that it's no longer possible, in a multi-connected landscape, to speak to one constituency one way and to another constituency another way, or to hide conversations behind thick velvet curtains. This suggests that a corporate website should reflect community, too, a community in which each constituency—customers, shareholders, executives, managers, staffers—has a presence and a voice and is able to talk to, and with, each other.

Some might consider this multi-way conversation to be chaos. But it's only as chaotic as any real community is. Healthy communities have policies, rules of engagement, and norms to cope with chaos. In a corporation, there's usually a clear, if collective, agenda that everyone's working toward: better products, better customer satisfaction, better market share, better profitability, better experience. These goals don't need to be in opposition—and when they are, it can be useful to have a structure in place to work it out.

So maybe the corporate website of today should stop being a fancy brochure, and convert into something more like a social network, one that supports varying roles and myriad conversations. Sure, a customer could still download a Features and Benefits sheet if he wanted, or a pricing table. But the real meat of the matter, the real communication, would happen between constituents as a constantly evolving conversation. Meaning is made in the interstices, and the outcome could be a more organic, and more genuine, experience for everyone.

Magazine Archives: Easier is Better

It must happen a thousand times a day, all across North America. Someone picks up a copy of The New Yorker, maybe in the hair salon, maybe while waiting to tell their psychotherapist about the latest development in their extramarital affair. She, or he, gets through three quarters of an article before her dye job's ready to be rinsed out, or his analyst's previous client exits discreetly through the side door.

So later, maybe much later, she, or he, goes online to the New Yorker website to try to find the article and finish it. Now, who was that author? Was it Atwan or Menand? And what issue was it in? Maybe the Fiction Issue—which was, maybe, a two-week issue. But which two weeks was it? I think it was in... June?

This happened to me, recently (I was the one at the hair salon). The article was in fact by Menand, and it appeared in the June 8th and 15th Fiction Issue. But I didn't remember all that when I began.

There is an "Archive" section of the New Yorker site, and I started there. But the archive doesn't present a list of issue dates, with articles contained therein. Instead, users are invited to search for contents. But search, of course, requires you to know something of what you're searching. My hair appointment was a week ago. I didn't remember all the particulars, so I had to poke away at it to coax the final answer.

Search is nice, but for my use case, a simple taxonomy of the last hundred or so issues, in reverse chronological order, would have gotten me there sooner.

Social Media and Social Media Marketing: Revised Definitions

Recently I posted my working definitions of social media and social media marketing and got good reader feedback both on- and offline. I modified the definitions and used them to kick off a social marketing strategy document for review with my VP. This document was one part disquisition, one part tactical plan, and eleven pages overall, so I decided the definitions could be fairly terse.

Here's where I landed. What do you think? 

Social media
A category of communications that let people create, share, and discuss materials online. Social media includes internet-only services like social networks, video sharing sites, and blogging services, but also simpler tools like commenting and polls that can be embedded on regular sites. Social media users share their photos, videos, stories, comments, and perspectives with each other, leading to multi-way online conversations. This engagement builds shared meaning and relationships among participants.

Social media marketing
A category of Internet marketing that leverages the power of social media to connect companies to customers and customers to each other. Social media marketing seeks to build awareness and shared understanding of a company’s brand through multi-way conversation. It relies on word-of-mouth tactics that let constituents create, distribute, and discuss content about a company’s offerings—stories that become available in real-time and remain findable via search engines later. Social media marketing is an indirect method of acquiring leads and customers. It’s not a direct-response approach, but rather one that helps build brand awareness, affinity, and traffic. As a reward for its engagement with social media, a company can enjoy increased exposure; inexpensive, ad-hoc customer feedback; real-time targeted market research; and enhanced customer affinity and trust.

Social Media and Social Media Marketing: Definitions

I'm currently drafting a social media strategy for my company, laying out the business case and identifying how these tools support our objectives. Since my report audience is executives with limited exposure to social media, I've drafted working definitions to guide discussion. As usual, writing encourages mental discipline, so I've had to think hard about what "social media" and its kin, "social media marketing," really mean: It's not a technology, it's a strategy. It's not two-way conversation, it's multi-way. And it's not purely customer-centric, because the company's in the conversation, too.

Here are my current working definitions. Please tell me what you think:

Social media
A category of communications that let people create, share, and discuss materials online. Social media integrates technology with social interaction to let people construct meaning through shared stories and perspectives. Social media offerings range from internet pure-plays—social networks, photo and video sharing sites, or social bookmarking sites—to simple tools embedded on a traditional site allowing users to engage more deeply with its content. Fundamentally, social media is about multi-way conversation, not one-way broadcast.

Social media marketing
A category of internet marketing that leverages the power of social media to connect companies and customers. Social media marketing seeks to build awareness and shared understanding of a company’s brand and products through multi-way conversation between a company and its core audience. Social media marketing relies on viral, word-of-mouth strategies that let constituents create, distribute, and discuss content about a company’s offerings. In exchange, the company enjoys the benefits of increased exposure, real-time targeted market research, and enhanced customer affinity.

Update, June 24, 2009: See my revised definitions based on your feedback.

whitehouse.gov

At noon on January 20, 2009, as Barack Obama sat on a dais listening to Yo Yo Ma and Itzak Perlman play Air and Simple Gifts, a White House IT staffer flipped a breaker on the web server, and the redesigned whitehouse.gov went live.

The people cheered, and not just for our new president. The new site put Obama's "by the people" communications style front and center. Here's a shot of the old site (hat tip: Rex Sorgatz's flickr photostream):

It's cool, sterile, formal, center-framed, and high power distance (to quote Geert Hofstede).  Here's the new site:

It's warm, direct, engaging, and cool in a different way. It has personality, like our president. It even has a blog. Partly what’s good about it is that it’s so much better than the old site. But more than that, it changes our perceptions of a government website, thereby changing our perceptions of government itself.

I was moved to express my admiration, using the "Contact Us" link in the upper right. I'd forgotten about writing that note. The gesture vaporized into the post-inaugural fizz. Today, though, this arrived in my inbox:

Dear Meg Maker:

    Thank you for your recent note, and for sharing your thoughts
with me. Your kind words echo the messages of millions of
Americans who have welcomed me and my family to the White
House with an outpouring of goodwill.

    On January 20th, Americans spoke with one voice, choosing
hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. Our
Nation faces serious challenges, but we will overcome them if
our imagination is joined to common purpose. 

    Now is our time to work together, reaffirm our enduring
spirit, and choose our better history. With your help, we will
renew our Nation's promise to carry forth the great gift of
freedom to future generations, as our forebears have delivered it
to us.


Sincerely,

Barack Obama

To be a part of our agenda for change, join us at www.WhiteHouse.gov

Recent note? I had to grope through the haze to figure out what triggered this email. Well, if you consider the last quarter "recent," then it must have been the web comment. I love my new president, but this communication doesn't win awards for timeliness or personalization.

Still, arriving as it did on tax day, I have to believe that someone out there is paying attention, and appreciates my participation on this most participatory of days.

Simple Energy = Good Experience

When was the last time you had a service call that was a good experience?

Last week our oil company, Simple Energy of West Lebanon, New Hampshire, sent two technicians to look at a problem we'd been having with our boiler. One man was quite experienced, and had worked on the system when we'd rebuilt the manifold. The other was, perhaps, a trainee.

The men ran some tests and made an adjustment, and took time to explain the problem they'd found and what they'd done to correct it. They were at the house a total of about fifteen minutes. We were relieved our problem was so simply solved, and gratified the men seemed to take the problem, and their work, seriously.

Today we got the bill. I was expecting something like sixty or seventy dollars, because they'd sent two men fifteen miles, and then delivered the value they'd promised. Plus, the bill doesn't cover just technician time and mileage; it has to pay for the scheduler, dispatcher, and, yes, even the person who mails the invoice. I would have paid it, cheerfully, because we got good service.

Total fee? Zero dollars. That's right, zilch. "Technician adjusted air intake on burner. No charge for the call. Thank you for your business."

Wow. Not only was the service call itself a good experience—the men were on time, friendly, and knowledgeable—but the company delivered yet another good experience by waiving the fee for this short trip. A gesture like this says the relationship itself is important to the balance sheet. They didn't nickel and dime.

Simple Energy bills itself as your "friendly hometown heating oil." This week they lived up to their billing.

Modify Your Posts Based on Search Engine Referrals

Last August I posted to my food journal, Maker's Table, tips for making really good turkey burgers. I provided two recipes, but introduced them with a long article about my personal experiences learning to cook meat. This exposition included information on safe cooking temperatures for both solid and ground meat, tackling red meat before moving to the somewhat trickier subject of poultry.

It was one of my longer posts, but it also become one of the most viewed. In the weeks after publication, I noted significant daily traffic to this page arriving from search engine queries about safe cooking temperatures for turkey burgers. In just the last 24 hours, for example, this page has been viewed by people searching for "turkey burgers still pink," "hot [sic] to cook turkey burgers," and "turkey burger internal temperature." 

The problem? I'd buried the lead. In order to learn the right internal temperature for turkey burgers, a reader would have to wade through 500 words of my personal narrative.

The solution? Put the most critical, most sought-after, information at the top. I edited the post, highlighting the key information in a "quick take-away" header with a link to the FDA guidelines. I made sure to include the words "internal temperature" in this introduction, since that seemed to be the keyword phrase most often used in searches.

The result? A clearer and more definitive summary statement in Google results lists (see above). And, hopefully, a better user experience.

VPR Gets It

I haven't been a member of Vermont Public Radio for years. I live in New Hampshire now, and listen almost exclusively to New Hampshire Public Radio, even though I get both signals. I donate annually to NHPR, and I feel good about that. But I always feel a little guilty switching to VPR at 8:35 a.m. so I can hear the Writer's Almanac.

Two weeks ago, both stations simultaneously started their fall membership drives. I ended up switching back and forth a lot during my morning commute, looking for real news in the interstices between the breathless pitches for support. But yes, I'm enough of a public radio nerd that I also occasionally leave the breathless announcers on air, just to hear how things are going with the drive.

I have to hand it to VPR: they got to me. It took about a week, but during a new-member challenge I pulled over and called them up. I'm a renewing member, I said, but it's been a while, so maybe I'm can count as New toward the challenge? The volunteer agreed, pleasantly took my details, thanked me profusely for my modest gift, and we hung up. I drove on, satisfied that I could now listen to Garrison Keillor's poems with a clear conscience.

That was five days ago, and I'd mostly forgotten about it. But tonight I returned home to a personal voicemail message from none other than Jane Lindholm, the host of VPR's midday program, which I'd heard a few times, in pieces. "Hi, Meg! This is Jane Lindholm, host of Vermont Edition on VPR. I'm just calling to say thank you so much for becoming a new member. Your gift really means a lot, and we're just so happy to have you!"

Typing it out in quotes like that makes it seem scripted, but it wasn't. It was ad lib, it was genuine, it was real. It really was her, not a recording. She took the time.

It was worth it. I felt valued, even for my small gift. Thank you, VPR.

Meaningful Titles and Clear Descriptors Drive Traffic

Last Friday I noticed a spike in traffic on my food journal, Maker's Table. A number of visitors had arrived from search engine results for Flaio, an Italian red wine I'd blogged about in March 2008. I'd assumed the wine had recently gotten some press.

That evening, opening our copy of the Wall Street Journal, I got my answer. Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher had focused their Friday "Tastings" column on Primitivo, the Italian twin of Zinfandel. One of the few wines they really liked was Flaio, and at $10.99, it was also the cheapest. The sidebar showed a photo of the bottle and listed it as "Flaio 2006 (Salento)."

Returning to my site stats, I found at least three search engine referrals for keyword searches of precisely that string. I ran a few of these to recreate the users' search experience—to see what they had seen. My post was on the first page of Google search results for that query, and both the title and search summary gave a good indication the page was a review:

 

I've witnessed similar outcomes when recreating my visitors' searches for turkey burgers, three ingredient meals, and Stella's restaurant in Lyme—three other popular posts whose titles reflect the main point of the story. This underscores that clear titles, good first lines, and detailed particulars in the post body help searchers find your pages.

John Hancock Website: Business Hours Only

A friend logged onto his John Hancock account and requested his transaction history. Unfortunately, the website couldn't comply, because it was Sunday evening:

Search Suggestions Work

Yesterday on the commute home I heard Alan Cheuse's review on NPR of the new book by Paul Auster. When I got to my computer a few hours later, I couldn't recall the book's title, but remembered something about a man in the dark, alone in his room, ruminating. Firing up Amazon, I typed a few likely words into the search box, "man in..." Instantly, down popped a list of suggestions:

I arrowed down to "man in the dark," since that rang a bell, hit return, and got a list that displayed Auster's book at the top:

I hadn't previously noticed this search suggestion feature at Amazon. It might be new to them, but it's not new to mainstream search engines. Ever since Ajax made it possible to send the user a list of possible query completions, search engines have been offering it to help users find their way. Here's Ask.com's search suggestion UI:

And here's Google's, from the browser toolbar:

If search suggestions make the user's work easy, it's only because the taxonomists behind the scenes have done their jobs well. Note that Amazon primarily suggests book or film titles, while Ask.com and Google suggest terms from the broader web. This points to a key element of search suggestion design: it's critical to tune the suggested results to the domain, using real searches done by real people. Avi Rappoport, an expert on enterprise search, offers her set of guidelines for search suggestions.

It worked for me. I was able, knowing only approximately what I was looking for, to find my book in a few short strokes. And I bought it, encouraged and propelled by a good experience.

Crate and Barrel Gets It

I've shopped online at Crate and Barrel a few times, so got added to their email list. My appetite for household stuff is actually pretty small, so when the most recent sale notice arrived, I clicked to unsubscribe. I landed on a web page that let me opt-out in a single click: easy.

A minute or so later, this arrived in my inbox:

It might seem risky for a company to email to a customer after that customer has explicitly removed herself from their list, even if it's just to confirm the opt-out. But I thought Crate and Barrel got a few things really right:

• They confirmed my request. They restated my choices and gave me a link to their privacy policy. This gave me confidence they'd registered my preferences and will act on them.

• They thanked me for my business. In fact, that's the lead, the main story. They acknowledged my business is meaningful to them. My cabinet full of snow white dinnerware was not cheap, thank you very much, so this is gratifying.

• They asked for the next sale. Just because I've opted out of receiving emails doesn't mean I'm no longer their customer. It just means I don't want to receive their emails, at that particular email address. Where other companies might have lead with a "Sorry to see you go," Crate and Barrel assumes I'm not actually gone.

Crate and Barrel understands it's the last experience that sticks in the customer's mind, and is the one they'll judge you by. With this email, they've demonstrated good faith, so my final impression was positive: I'd shop there again. Just not today.

What's So "Social" About LinkedIn?

I recently discovered Beth Kanter's blog on using social media for nonprofit strategy. Since the topic's right up my alley, I clicked through to her LinkedIn profile to check out her professional offerings. Her profile indicates she's open to being contacted for consulting opportunities or expertise requests. Since I'm a LinkedIn member, too, I decided to invite her to join my network, and clicked "Add Beth to your network" on her profile page.

This launched LinkedIn's Add Connections screen, below. Since I'm not sure whether Beth and I know anyone in common or are in any of the same groups, I decided to check the option "I don't know Beth" and type a friendly, personalized message in the note box:

Once I'd finished my note, I pressed Send Invitation. But LinkedIn threw this at me:

Clicking the only option in this lightbox returned me to Beth's LinkedIn profile, discarding the note I'd just composed.

LinkedIn violated a couple key UI rules, here:

• They offered the user an option that's not available. If there was no way that clicking "I don't know Beth" was going to get my message sent, LinkedIn shouldn't have showed me that option. I supposed it's possible this option is sometimes available to some users. In that case, it could be grayed and disabled for all other users, but only if there is a possibility of somehow meeting the criteria. For example, if upgrading my account would permit me to contact people I don't know, the option could be grayed-out but with a small note next to it asking for the sale.

• They threw the user's work away. LinkedIn didn't offer me the option of returning to the screen to edit my selections, or even to copy the note I'd so carefully crafted. What if I really knew Beth, but had checked the wrong radio button?

My uncharitable impression is that the rationale behind these UI choices is simply to reinforce LinkedIn's rules: "Don't contact people you don't know. They don't like it, and neither to we." Isn't there a nicer way to teach users "the rules" without scolding them?

As a social media site, LinkedIn needs to get a little more sociable.

Would you like to Next, or Submit?

Okay, buttons should be verbs. I think we can all agree. But Next and Previous, or even the ugly but more parallel Prev, are well established actions, or implied actions, so they're used a lot. But still, what verb?

At my husband's company, a vendor is developing a UI to collect clinical data about a medical procedure. First draft: a tabbed interface that requires the user to enter data on the first form, move to the next, and so on. Sound okay so far?

Each tabbed form is so long you have to scroll. Uh oh. Scrolling on tabbed interface = bad. We're not off to a strong start.

Then, here are the three buttons at the bottom of the first tab screen:

Previous  |  Next  |  Submit

Please take ten seconds and think about what each of these would do to the data you just entered into this (long, scrolling) form.

Ready?

Previous: Please recall that this is the first form. So why is previous even enabled? It does absolutely nothing.

Next: This takes you to the next tab of info to enter. But it doesn't save your data.

Submit: This runs a validation check on your data. If it passes, your data is saved. If it doesn't pass, your data is discarded. And in any case, it throws you out of the tabbed UI altogether.

Where to begin? This vendor obviously doesn't know thing one about UI design. In ten seconds I bet you came up with better ideas.

Discounting Charitable Gifts

"A survey last fall by American Express Publishing and Harrison Group found that 99% of wealthy consumers shop online, expecting goods to be discounted at least 30% from store prices." — Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2008

Twice in the last year my employer (and alma mater) has run a marketing campaign in which an anonymous donor promises $100,000 for each 1,000 gifts made during the challenge period. The goal is to drive participation by making each new gift, regardless of its value, worth an extra $100. The additional challenge money goes to financial aid, partly because it's an area of need, but also because it's broadly appealing to our constituency; an easy sell.

Challenges are a well-worn tactic of nonprofit fundraising: think public radio. They work because they lift gift value, but also because they create urgency. For us, the strategy works reasonably well. We usually see a few thousand donors fulfilling their pledges during these periods, many giving as little as $1, knowing their gift will amount to much more—up to 100 times more—when the challenge money comes in. But it's also not unusual for major annual fund donors, those who usually give in excess of $2,500, to fulfill their pledges during these campaigns, too. This is probably because we hit all non-donors hard with direct postal and email over a few weeks, and if you market, they will give. But we've always assumed the "extra $100" selling point probably doesn't carry much weight with these major donors.

But the above stat in the Wall Street Journal made me realize even the major donor might view such challenges as essentially a "discount" or "sale" on their charitable gift, because even a $2,500 gift yields a 4% premium if given during the challenge period. The donor doesn't realize a tax advantage of that additional money, but knowing it exists may make the donor feel like the "system" is giving them a better deal for the money.

This makes me wonder whether we could even more consciously leverage other mass-market phenomena like discounting, promotions, time-limited offers, and outlet sales without cheapening the enterprise. We're selling the undergraduate experience, essentially, but that's a pretty broad, generic product, even for an institution that has a strong reputation for excellence. What more specific products would connect with donors? And how can our product/marketing mix get more specific and targeted?

Obama (Mostly) Gets It

This week I donated a modest sum to Obama's candidacy. Earlier this month I started receiving email announcements from his campaign, a consequence of having joined his web community. I had already decided to contribute, so when I received a direct email solicitation, it was natural simply to click through and give.

The hook of this solicitation was the promise of a dollar-for-dollar match by another Obama supporter somewhere in the country, to whom I could subsequently send a personalized note. I entered my gift amount and card details, and learned on the confirmation screen that my matcher was "Norman." Using the form on the screen, I dropped Norman a line of thanks, declining to provide my email address because I wasn't keen to start a conversation with a stranger to whom my only connection was action politics. Once I'd submitted my note to Norman, I landed on another screen asking me to start recruiting other friends into the cause, using the site to reach out for additional support and donations. I decided to skip that step, too. I got an email confirmation of my gift a few minutes later, and left the site believing I'd done some tiny good in the world, and made a tiny connection to boot.

I also left believing the Obama camp gets it. They demonstrated by this experience that they know there's power in the emotional connection between the constituent and the candidate, but also among constituents themselves. They know that technology can facilitate that connection, and permit the constituent to make the connection as personal as she finds comfortable. They know that in marketing, there's always a next ask, and they know that on the web, there's always a next action.

But there's still some room for growth. I don't know, for example, whether my donation was tax-deductible, because neither the UI nor the email mentioned this. I don't know whether I'm going to receive a printed acknowledgment of my gift by postal mail, and whether this would be the official tax document. The net effect of this experience was more emotional than intellectual or programmatic, which is okay only to a point.

What's more, a few days after donating, I got another solicitation asking me to donate $15 or more to receive a groovy Obama car magnet. I'm not sure why I was asked again so soon; whether it was because the campaign has hasn't yet processed my gift, or because there's a policy of continual re-solicitation. (A less charitable donor might wonder whether they're disorganized or greedy.) And as a very recent donor of more than $15, shouldn't I get a car magnet, too? (Again, less charitably: shouldn't I have held my gift until I could get better swag?)

Since in my day job I design online fundraising websites, this experience has taught me a few things about designing a good fundraising web experience:

1. Ask for the sale, and always ask for the next action, but don't ask for the sale again too soon, or you'll risk alienating your loyal customers;
2. Support the donor's pragmatic requirements. Make it easy to find out the tax and financial consequences of their donation. Tell them whether to expect anything further in the mail;
3. If you offer a premium to new donors, send the premium to any new donor who's given in the last month, especially if the new premium is widely marketed;
4. If you offer a premium to new donors, offer one to repeat donors, too, and maybe even a better premium. Fundraisers know that repeat donors are more valuable than gold.

The Smiling Whale

I get the Twitter "over capacity" error screen at least once a day:

Why does this whale look so self-satisfied? And why aren't the birds straining on the ropes?

I would be embarrassed to run a web service that was so under-resourced, even if it were free to users, and I would be scrambling to enable additional capacity. Maybe the tweeting peeps at Twitter are scrambling; I don't know. This error screen sure doesn't tell me so. Maybe it should.

How Are You Feeling Right Now?

I use Basecamp from 37signals for project management. Yesterday, after getting tripped up for the second time on one feature of the app, I decided to submit a support request. Here's the support screen:

Note the last selector. Here it is, opened up:

Note that 37signals did not make the customer classify the error itself (as a bug, feature request, error message, question, etc.). Instead, they asked the customer to classify the impact of the error, which is an easier task for the customer and more meaningful for 37signals.

The Power of Story

I'm pleased to be attending and speaking now at a CASE conference in Boston, (Re)Defining Women's Philanthropy: Rich Conversations. The meeting has brought together 150 or so fundraisers, mostly from the higher ed sector, to swap stories, share data, and define new strategies for reaching women donors.

The field of women's philanthropy is young. Many institutions, even formerly all-female institutions, do not have advancement programs specifically targeting women. Many institutions have no record keeping mechanism to recognize a woman as an entity distinct from her husband, even if she's the alum. And many institutions, shockingly, lose track of their surviving widows even though the couple had been faithful and consistent donors.

Of the institutions that have developed women's philanthropy programs, many place great emphasis on education, offering programs that teach alumnae about financial management, planned giving, and ensuring their family's financial security. And many find themselves stressing how important it is for women philanthropists to go public with their gift, to get over their traditional reticence about publicity in order to serve as models for other women.

Jill Kerr Conway, author, former Smith College president, and active philanthropist, gave the keynote yesterday. Conway spoke about the "guardian mentality" shared by many wealthy women who don't perceive themselves as investors as much as guardians of their family's funds. If a woman's wealth was accumulated by her ancestors or her husband, she likely views her role as one in which her wishes are secondary to those of the "greater good" of the family system. That's changing, though. Since the 1980s, alumnae have assumed they would earn their own money, and concomitantly assume the responsibility for managing it, directing its flow, and choosing the causes it should support.

So that's good news. But how can we get older women to transition from "guardian" to "investor?" Conway's advice: "Take them through their life. My major approach to any donor is to have them tell me their life story. If I do that, it will become very clear what their values and beliefs are." Through telling their own story, the donor will reveal her most challenging, most rewarding, and most life-changing experiences. These story moments are the cruxes of her life. Through story, it becomes evident what she believes to be true, what she values, what she knows.

Those values form the basis of the charitable act. Because you have to believe first, before you can give.

Effective, Not Evil

"It’s no secret that designers have to appreciate things most people either take for granted or are not consciously aware of. In fact, unconscious awareness is one of the primary realms we seek to manipulate through design. In order to exploit natural human tendencies and manipulate perceptions, though, we must first understand them... If you’ve used contrast to craft a visual information hierarchy, you can compel viewers to look where you want them to. If you’ve done a really good job, with intelligent contrast, calls-to-action, etc., you can even compel them to follow a specific path through the layout."

—Andy Rutledge, Contrast and Meaning, A List Apart