Jen Modarelli at Cre8Con: An Event Review (Part 6 of 8)

Jen Modarelli

White Horse

What makes great interactive design? What’s really behind the curtain?

I come from an operation and strategy background. So I set up some goals for the presentation. We all know that the interactive medium is very young and very distinct. So what is the way to win? Who is the key team members? And what is the process of creating excellent interactive design?

Here’s what I know: when we need to come with the best creative team, you need to have a creative environment that feeds creative juices. For example, we’re located on Hollywood (the district) conveniently across a liquor store [laughs.]

The second thing is about having the right team. I want to share you the formula that have worked for me in the past:

Workflow of an interactive agency

Where the magic really happens (or the area that I would call “the missing link”) is on the User Experience Architects. They’re taking the discipline of usability and connecting mental models together. They also bridge the gap between the designers and engineers.

But what is effective interactive design? It is like a baby elephant.

[Video of a baby elephant on CNN.]

A baby elephant gestate for an extremely long time. When this one was born, her mother almost refused to recognize her before, eventually, she was okay with it.

Sometimes client comes in and ask you to design a site. When it came out after so long of a development period, all the designers went “we were all compromising!” and then, as months go, they grew to love it, too.

So it’s really about your team. And it’s about the process.

Everything that you need to know about building a creative agency you can get from in The Wizard Of Oz.

• Dorothy is your account executive. You’re going to see him leading/guiding the team.
• The Tin Man, with the heart, is your creative.
• The Scarecrow is your information architect. He’s going down the journey, stitching people together with the ideas, concepts and solutions even when he didn’t know it.
• The project manager pushes people around.
• Your engineer is the machine that Oz used to create the entire city.
• The wicked witch (or Glinda) is your client.

The scene with the winged monkeys? I call that a change order. In any really good design process, it’s inevitable that a huge team of people will join the team in the middle and decide to sign off on everything.

Above all, if you can run out of a time and budget, you’ll end up with the top level of work.