*provide financing for the kinds of businesses that will create hundreds of jobs at a time.
*highlight role models in the developing world (initially in Latin America but now expanding) that will inspire others to think big: what they call the "Endeavor multiplier effect."
The team went on to do a thorough job of hitting the main points on the project outline.
I found quite a few things troubling, though, about the presentation, which I'll attempt to summarize here.
1) ON LINDA ROTTENBERG: Linda Rottenberg is a big star in this field: one of America's Best Leaders 2008 (US News and World Report), Business Woman of the Year (Veuve Cliquot), etc. Though I certainly don't want her talking at me when I come to the site, I do think the site should leverage her as much as possible. It should also do what it can to humanize her (right now she comes across as a robot). After all, she is Endeavor's best example, a young woman who wasn't afraid to think big, beyond what other, similar organizations, like Ashoka (where Linda used to work), are doing. Maybe there could be a tab just for her: "Meet Linda." And, given that she's young and charismatic, could she also be encouraged to blog, podcast, twitter? (See my comments on IDJH's Brian Concannon, below.)
2) ON THE AUDIENCES: The team mentioned current entrepreneurs, potential donors, and potential mentors. But, having read Endeavor's "high-impact entrepreneurship" statement, I think the organization is looking to cultivate other audiences as well:
*developing country governments that want to draft policies along Endeavor lines,
*universities that might partner w/ Endeavor in creating case studies, and
*individuals who want to spread the word about their unique take on the entrepreneurial process.
With these further groups in mind, my own inclination would be to focus on:
1) entrepreneurs
2) donors/mentors
3) partners/spreaders of the Endeavor method.
Also, when developing the personas and storyboarding the user experience for each of these three groups, the team would do well to take a leaf out of IJDH's book and think about the difference between brand new site visitors and returning visitors. (There's where your "current vs. potential" comes in...)
3) ON THE NAVIGATION: The team did a good job rethinking, as well as reducing, the number of "buckets." And they were right to propose consolidating the information that is now spread across various pages into single pages, thereby limiting the number of clicks. But I was bothered by the inconsistency in their nav bar nomenclature. Whereas "Get involved" is a verb, inviting visitors to take action (appropriate for a group w/ such a dynamic mission), "The Endeavor Process," "Our Impact," "Entrepreneurs," and even "The Hub" are all nouns, hence seem a little clunky. How about playing with verbs for the other items: eg, Learn about us / Explore our philosophy / View our impact / Meet our entrepreneurs / Join community / etc.
4) MORE ON THE NAV: Endeavor, as compared w/ the other three clients, is trying to do something rather more ambitious and complex. Thus it may require a sub-nav. If you take a look at Ashoka's front page, you see that they have a primary nav bar at the top of the image and a secondary nav below. Something to consider?
5) ON THE MESSAGING: There are three points about the messaging that strike me as being very important to the client, but that the team kind of glossed over:
1. Endeavor is about business; thus the issue of metrics--how Endeavor measures its impact and chooses to portray this on the site--is central. The visual on the current site is overwhelming--a case where less would be more. For what it's worth, when Fast Company gave Endeavor an award in 2005 for social capitalism, they cited the following: "The businesses of over 195 Endeavor Entrepreneurs support an average of 125 jobs and have collectively generated revenues of more than $655 million." These are the kinds of stats that are easy to scan and absorb. While the team doesn't have to come up with the final answer as to which metrics to spotlight, I was hoping they would at least take a stab at this--and on how best to portray other than the current (looks like a thermometer!) method.
2. The organization is expanding. It used to be known for its work in Latin America but now it is opening offices in other parts of the world. Would a map visual of some sort convey this best? (Again, Ashoka has a fairly primitive map at the top of its Regions of Work page.)
3. Endeavor is involved with some pretty major players such as Warner Bros. Music CEO Edgar Bronfman and former World Bank prez James Wolfensohn. What's the best way to leverage these big names? Clearly, not the way the site is handling at present, but will sticking them under "Our Team" on the front page work? I'm skeptical--see 6) below.
5) ON MISSION STATEMENT & TAGLINE: I really like the shortened version of the mission statement on the Home page mock-up--an effective example of good Web writing. But I was disappointed that the team didn't take a crack at honing the tagline. As Nancy mentioned, having a tagline really helps with a group like this. But for me, "High-impact entrepreneurs. High-impact change." doesn't quite do it. I have no idea from this that Endeavor is concerned w/ the Global South.
6) ON THE HOME PAGE DESIGN: I agreed with Nancy's comment that the three boxes underneath the big visual--"What's New," "Our Impact," and "Our Team"--aren't really on the same level. As for the big visual of the guy on the boat, I just didn't get it. Is he supposed to be an entrepreneur? If so, am I supposed to think he's now so rich he was able to buy his own yacht? Maybe I missed something, but the combination of that photo and the one of Wolfensohn under "Our Team" made me think of an old boy's club--albeit one that apparently now includes people in the Global South. I for one would have been much more impressed had the Home Page mock-up highlighted stories of entrepreneurs Endeavor has helped who are now doing great things. For instance, I understand from the Fast Company citation that Endeavor helped an entrepreneur in Patagonia who is now on their board. Why not show a pic of this guy with deep cap:
Endeavor helped XXX set up a financial-services company by connecting him to capital, finding a COO, and developing a growth strategy. Later, his firm was bought for $300 million. He donated $200,000 to Endeavor, started a bank for the poor, and now sits on Endeavor's board.Another idea would be to highlight stories of the change Endeavor entrepreneurs have brought about--in the above example, perhaps an interview with a poor person in Patagonia who rec'd a bank loan and is now doing X, Y & Z as result? (Don't be afraid to use dummy text.)
7) ON THE HUB IDEA: I'm not entirely certain that Endeavor should hive off social media into a "site within the site." With so many high-powered people on board and w/ so much money as compared to the other clients' sites, I see no reason why they couldn't consider investing in social media and committing to making it work. (Even Ashoka is touting its Twitter feed on its Home Page.)
*****
By the end of the presentation, I had the feeling of the whole not being greater than the sum of its parts. There were lots of good ideas, but the team's vision for the site never really came together.
That said, I did appreciate their attempts to liven things up by introducing props and the Baron Wuffet persona. (I might have suggested cigars in addition to mustaches...)
Hi All,
ReplyDeleteFirst, I'm going to just post my own observations as briefly as possible, and then respond to one or two things in Mary-Lea's critique.
My overall impression was that while you tried to hit each individual point in our outline, and succeeded in doing so, there wasn't so much of a cohesive vision tying it all together. Of course that is to say that in the presentation there wasn't, and again the important thing is that coming out of this last step, you have the feedback you need to pull it all together for your final proposal.
Now, on to are my comments on the individual facets of your presentation...
I agree with Mary-Lea that the navigation could have been more consistent and better written (ie. "Endeavour Process"; "Our Impact"; "Get Involved" all have different tones and voices).
I also didn't exactly get the connection between the three audiences that you modeled and the IA/Navigation or user narratives. It didn't really feel like the former had informed decisions about the latter.
I thought your presentation spent too much time itemizing the list of pages in the nav, and also that it seemed too reliant on one specific social media platform (Ning), but I'm assuming those are problems that are really specific to the presentation itself.
On the other hand, I thought you did a very good job of articulating and demonstrating the drawbacks of using Flash to create all the navigation and interaction of a site.
And I thought there were a couple of other aspects that were strengths, which actually disagree with Mary-Lea's points above.
One was that I thought you had done a god job of improving on the tag-line. What you had may not have been perfect, but it was an improvement over the jargon that pervades the current site.
I also thought that the home page design struck a pretty good balance between corporate and non-profit world aesthetics. I can see what Mary-Lea means about the "old boys' club" aspect of the photos, but that can (and should) be dealt with through a little more careful photo editing. I agree that the three boxes are not on the same level, and I also think you might want to work on that a little further, but the overall approach, grid, etc. worked for me as a major improvement over what they have now.
That pretty much encompasses what I had in my notes following the presentation, but no that Mary-Lea has posted her own thoughts, I feel I should respond to a couple of the points she has made above.
On audience, I need to point out that it is very important that you and your clients focus on trying to reach a limited set of core audiences, and I agree with Gerry McGovern's assessment that you can probably only effectively do so for three or fewer. What Mary-Lea seems to be suggesting is that more stakeholders can be shoe-horned into the target groups (and actually, universities and governments are not 'audiences', because they don't describe individual people) by broadening their scopes. I think that the audiences need to be tangible, real-world people for the exercise of audience modeling to be useful and it's a tell-tale sign that they may not be when you see slashes ('/') in the labels. So this is a caution to stay grounded in reality and address the needs of real people.
Also, on Mary-Lea's fourth point, I also have to disagree, and I think that Ashoka sets a very bad example. Is the second navigation really a sub-nav, as has been suggested? Or is it overflow from the primary nav? Is it down there because it is hierarchically different or because they were just so undicsciplined about designing a simple, usable navigation that they didn't have room for all those options in just one menu? I think that the problem of too much choice retains its importance regardless of the complexity of your message and functions, and anyway is Endeavour really that complex? Whether the suggestion is to have more menu items, a more complex menu system, or a second separate menu system, all three of those are likely to provide more problems than answers, and none of them would be things that I would recommend. Furthermore, whatever decisions you all make about the menus, they need to follow from your audience modeling, user narratives, and IA work in a rational fashion. That may mean that some 'rules' need to be bent for the sake of other more important principles -- maybe you have one or two more top-line menu items than you wished you could -- but let them be bent because some specific interaction or use demanded it.
Whew, ok, that rounds out my final posting as far as commenting on the presentations goes. Hope you find some of the above helpful and good luck on getting your final proposal together.
Well, I see what you mean, Ravi, about Ashoka's nav. Just to be clear: I wasn't really suggesting it as a site to emulate but as one to bear in mind (and to better) as the team develops its online comms plan, since it is a comparable institution (and I believe was what stimulated Linda to found Endeavor).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I stand by my idea that you need to model some broader audience than the two main stakeholders (ie, entrepreneurs Endeavor is helping and the people who are doing the helping). I'm not sure who that is exactly--maybe it's journalists, as it's they who would spread the word to universities and developing world governments, etc., some of whom might partner w/ Endeavor in future.
Anyway, I think it's healthy to have some disagreement among the instructors. It forces me to clarify some of my statements. Also, as you can see, there's no perfect or easy answers in Web World!
About the tagline: I forgot to say that as far as I recall, the team just kept the tagline that Endeavor already has, which I don't think works all that well on the Web--it's too far out of context. In any event, like Ravi, I applaud your attempts to move away from Endeavor-speak!
ReplyDeleteYeah - this is certainly not down to a science, so-to-speak, so disagreement is natural.
ReplyDeleteTargeting Journalists in particular is a good way to reach a variety of 'other' audiences, so it's pretty common to see the three break donw into two, plus journalists.
That being said, journalists can be a tricky group to reach and engage en masse, and some careful thinking would need to be done about how to cater the content and functionality to their needs.
Also on the navigation: I looked thru my notes again and I see that the Endeavor team was proposing to put such items as "FAQs" and "News & Announcements" in a footer. I definitely don't think such items belong at the bottom of the page, which is why I thought they might consider a secondary nav at the top. (I agree w/ Ravi, though, that Ashoka's execution of the secondary nav is flawed...)
ReplyDeleteMary-Lea and Ravi,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your extensive feedback, which has definitely given us a lot of think about. As Mary-Lea said, it will make us clarify our intentions and strategies.
So, here are some comments and questions in response to a few of your points, done with the intention of strengthening our final report to you and Endeavor.
I appreciate (and we’ll act on) Nancy Scola and your suggestion of differentiating the bottom three boxes on the home page as a way to draw attention to the most important aspects of Endeavor. The tagline could also be fine tuned, as you suggested, to incorporate where Endeavor works, and your suggestions on making the nav bar more consistent are well taken. We’ll also have to refine the IA, keeping in mind our audiences (which I guess are still up in the air).
We do recognize the importance of personalizing Endeavor by spotlighting its entrepreneurs. We did try to highlight Endeavor’s entrepreneurs by dedicating the upper right of the homepage to them. The large photo is supposed to be of an entrepreneur, one who started a seafood export company. (Agreed - the photo of the man was not the best choice. My thinking - I wanted to avoid a head shot and go for a photo that showed an entrepreneur in action – give a little visual context to what it means to be an entrepreneur on the ground.) On the bottom right of that photo was his name, country, company and how much money his company has made, although a quick narrative, like Mary-Lea suggested, might be more powerful. The photo is supposed to rotate among a few other selected entrepreneurs and it also links to the Meet Our Entrepreneurs page. Highlighting the entrepreneurs will certainly be a clear suggestion in the final report.
Audiences – defining our audiences for Endeavor has been challenging, as you guys experienced in writing about it on your blog. We did think about a journalist as a potential profile, but Endeavor explicitly told me that journalists were not a priority audience. How much should we consider adding an audience to which Endeavor might be opposed? What Endeavor did want were very broad audiences, like “thought and policy” leaders. I would like our audience modeling to remain specific, so maybe we could leave the donor and entrepreneur and replace the mentor with government official/employee who advise or shape policy. However, I’m not sure how much of an improvement that really is. This may be a case where we’ll choose the top three, knowing that there are other closely competing groups that are left out. Any further thoughts/suggestions?
Metrics - In differentiating the three boxes at the bottom of the homepage, we can take the opportunity to emphasize “Our Impact” – which was our stab at displaying some metrics on the home page. The metrics chosen, which were taken from the "Results" page on the current site, were slightly more general, like Endeavor has helped generate 86,000 jobs, 2.5 billion dollars in revenue, etc. So to clarify your point on the metrics, was "The businesses of over 195 Endeavor Entrepreneurs support an average of 125 jobs and have collectively generated revenues of more than $655 million” a suggestion of more accessible metrics or that we need to find a more creative way to display metrics than the ones we listed? As a side note, and a shout out to your mention of maps, we’ve been planning incorporating one throughout the site to demonstrate Endeavors reach.
Again, we'll take all comments into consideration for the final report! Thanks.
Rebecca
Hi Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteSorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, but here are some responses to the questions you've asked.
Regarding audiences, if the client has specifically asked you to omit journalists, and then at the same time also asked you to reach 'broader' audiences, that is a bit of a conundrum. I think it would be worthwhile to argue in your proposal for choosing one audience that falls into the general category of 'influentials'. These are people who connect to a shape the opinions of many other groups. Journalists are actually only one kind of influential, another sort of vague one would be 'opinion leaders', which might also be more usefully labelled 'public intellectuals'. Of course the problem with that group is that they don't necessarily share any characteristics or behaviors that would be useful in generating user narratives, etc. Another kind of influential would be something like the policy-maker that you mentioned, but I personally believe that what you have to do in that case is look for where the rubber hits the road, which might be congressional aides, for example. They are the people who determine what the members of the house and senate actually look at a lot of the time, and they are a real, tangible group of people with identifiable problems. The acid test for any audience model is whether you can really picture a member of that group and imagine them using a web site. What did your hypothetical "thought and policy leader" have for lunch before she/he started browsing on the web?
I'll leave it to Mary-Lea to respond to your question about the metrics.
Best
Ravi
Hi, Rebecca. One further thought on the audience question: My own inclination from having studied Endeavor's mission would be to call the third group "partners"--you could justify by pointing to Endeavor's statement on "high-impact entrepreneurship." I think it would be easy enough to come up w/ a persona for this. I'm envisioning a university official (maybe Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School?) who would consider partnering w/ Endeavor by having the faculty create case studies for their students to work on, or some such.
ReplyDeleteI'll answer the metrics question soon.
Ravi, I thought you had more to say on the hub idea?
I just now revisited the Endeavor site and took a look at their "top metrics" page. For me, this is no better than the thermometer on the Home Page. I just think they're making people work too hard to find their most impressive stats--and not just because the site is in Flash (though that certainly doesn't help!).
ReplyDeleteI've only done a superficial study, but I think you might propose pulling out the most scannable items from the "Results" section (not just stats, but some of the country highlights) and having them rotate as "factoids" on the Home Page. You could also give them a few examples of the kinds of factoids you think would work best in this kind of feature...
(Of course there could be other ways of approaching, such as a quiz that reveals the typical results of developing country investments--and explains that the Endeavor approach does better. But that would take a lot more studying...)
This, combined with more detailed and statistics-packed captions for the Home Page feature, should get across the point that not only does Endeavor make good investments (in entrepreneurial people), it *is* a good investment (for donors and partners, the latter of whom give time and expertise, if not money).
I understand that Endeavor seeks to appeal primarily to economists and business types--ie, the sort who can scan a table or chart and pick out what's important. But most economists and business types are busy people--so would appreciate being able to scan and move on. More detailed stats, in the form of graphs, tables, and charts, could be made available elsewhere on the site, for those who want more info. Does Endeavor publish an annual report, and if so, could they consider publishing an online version?
As I recall, you were planning to do an "Our Impact" feature on the Home Page, so it's possible you've already got some of this covered.
My main points are:
1) You need to acknowledge the importance of metrics for a group like this, but
2) You also need to suggest some ideas for how to present their best metrics in a scannable, user-friendly way, for busy (and broader) audiences.
Well, without seeing a lot more about what the 'hub' really consists of, it's difficult to comment, but I will say first of all that the term 'hub' is a little vague, and it's difficult to guess what I will be able to do with it. My understanding is that you intend to put the social networking tools here. Some of my past experience has involved a 'hub' project that really was an attempt to invent a new animal. Regardless of the level of resources that Endeavor might be able to dedicate to this, I would strongly advise against inventing a new animal (forgive me if I'm just attacking a straw dog here). I think the thing to do here is bring Endeavor back into the fold of doing things on the web that are somewhat familiar, so that people can more easily understand how they're supposed to use them.
ReplyDeleteHi Mary-Lea and Ravi,
ReplyDeleteThe backstory with the hub idea is that Endeavor is already committed to putting all the social networking tools in one place. They've actually already gotten a Google grant for this type of page and are in the very early stages of planning it. It seemed like a top priority. So we felt that it would be best to take a harm reduction approach - if they're going to do it anyway, we'll try to give suggestions that might strengthen their work and help them avoid some pitfalls. But, like you said, I think we all realized initially that something like the hub is a tricky idea. As for impact, I think we're relatively on the same page. Thanks for your comments!
For what it's worth, I just now came across the site of OptInNow, a Christian organization that does microlending, similar to Kiva: http://www.optinnow.org/
ReplyDeleteI mention it because 1) as the judges mentioned, Endeavor doesn't want to look like these sites--they are doing something bigger and better and flashier (at the moment, quite literally!); yet 2) in some respects, Endeavor resembles these other groups insofar as it uses the Web to feature entrepreneurs, talk about (and taut) method, and demonstrate impact.
Also, OptInNow has made headway with social media. It's on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace (http://www.optinnow.org/connect/contact). The nonprofit blogosphere gives it a shout-out for these efforts (how I discovered it).
Finally, although I don't like the name "OptInNow" (it makes me think of email marketing), I do like the tagline: "End Global Poverty. Faster."