Atlassian Design Week 2017: A marketer’s perspective

Editor’s Note: Atlassian Design Week is where designers, writers, and developers from all over the world meet in Sydney to learn and create as a team. I was fortunate enough to get invited for 2 days of sessions and learnings. I wrote this post for Atlassian’s marketing team.

This post is written for the marketing team who weren’t present at Design Week 2017. This is not a summary of the talks but rather focused on key takeaways and learnings for marketing in general.

I was very excited about DW17. I actually raised my hand even before the process of non-design invitations started. I remember talking to Liam Greig last year after reading a flurry of DW16 posts — how can I get an invitation? Design is an important component of your brand’s visual identity. Dropbox is “simple” or Heroku is “cool” — where do you think that comes from? The perception of a brand is mostly created by its design styles or illustrations. Dissecting data is easy; designing and branding, the “soft” part, is hard.

The art of decision making

Dr. Amantha Imber gave the first talk on the art of decision making. Would you say “activity” or “analysis” leads to better decision making? Activity matters 6x more than analysis. Analysis needs a fair hearing and most of the times — analysis is biased. So how do we make better decisions?

• Widen your options — Decisions shouldn’t be limited to just “yes” and “no”. Think about alternatives — is there a third option? Create a DACI with all possible options. It’s that easy.
• Remove emotions — This is the hardest part, be a critic of yourself. Will you make the same decision 10 days or 10 months or 10 years (called the 10–10–10 rule) from now?
• Use your gut, properly — This is kind of non-intuitive but sometimes our unconscious brain can make a better decision than our conscious brain. It’s ok to use that gut, at times.
• Seek out dissent — When Andreessen Horowitz is doing a deal, one partner always plays the role of a dissenter. Make sure you have a dissenter in the room before you make an important decision in a meeting.
• Time of day matters — You make better decisions in the morning when you’re rested vs. later in the day when you’re tired. Move your important, contentious meetings to the morning.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the art of observing people in their natural world. P&G embeds marketers with customers in their natural surroundings in emerging markets like India and Brazil. Amber Lindholm used a specific example of a phone company that discovered their customers were emotionally attached to their phone’s data. The switching barrier wasn’t in fancy features but in the simple migration of customer data. We can uncover deep emotional needs and question all assumptions using the practice of ethnography. Think beyond the web page or laptop screen. Start with NIHITO today.

Testing is not binary

This is obvious, right? Anyone in growth will tell you that. It is important to understand that A/B testing is just part of the story. A string of incremental wins over time is as important as a step change. We should celebrate small wins even if it appears insignificant now. Testing is not binary — try, try, try till you get it right and it all adds up!

Briefs, banners, ‘n billboards

Megha Narayan and Leah Pincsak delved into the importance of research in the creative process to yield a better, more relevant output. I have seen the creative team in close quarters during the process of Bitbucket TOFU (a top of funnel marketing campaign for Bitbucket) and can’t say enough good things about how systematically and methodically they built out the messaging, the visuals and the copy for the campaign. So if you are thinking about a marketing campaign — start with the creative brief, brief early and brief often, educate them about your products, and provide actionable feedback when needed.

Marketing with delight

“Designing with delight” was the next talk by team Trello. Trello inserted delight into their product using subtle features like a small button on a list or dragging and dropping your cards. Small pleasures like these led to greater customer experience. Can we do something similar on WAC (www.atlassian.com)? Can we market with delight? Isn’t “practical, with a wink” one of our brand attributes? Sometimes, we forget the wink. We need more of that…

Some quick tips for personal growth

From “Deep work” by Keith Robinson to an actual meditation session by Marie-Claire Dean, I was impressed by the lightning talks:

• RSS feeds on EAC — Are you overwhelmed by EAC? Always feels like drinking from the firehouse? Create RSS feeds using the “Feed Builder” from the help menu on Confluence. (EAC — Atlassian’s internal Confluence instance)
• Follow on EAC — Use this feature to get a pulse of the organization. Keep track of the important issues. Follow your team, your peers, and the leadership team on Confluence.
• Deep Work: Do you feel constantly distracted by HipChat or open office spaces? Keith recommended blocking some time for deep, real work. Bitbucket has a “GSD day” with no meetings or HC distractions. Start deep work with meditation and finish it off with some light reading. I started following a similar regimen by blocking Tuesday and Thursday mornings for “make time”.
• Pick your battles: Be smart about when to rage a battle and when to let go. You win or lose as a team but letting go isn’t quitting. Use our values as your decision rudder.
• Beginner’s mind: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” — Beginner’s mind, Shunryu Suzuki. Always tackle problems with a beginner’s mind. Open your eyes to endless possibilities. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
• Mindful Leadership — Be mindful and present all the time. Being present means being at your best. Show empathy, courage, and equanimity. Practice meditation everyday for 15 minutes and transfer your wellness to your team.

Marketing with a growth mindset

How many of you believe that you need talent to be successful in your profession? On the flip side, how many of you believe that hard work and persistence will get you there? Keith Robinson convinced us that the later is true. Don’t let limiting thoughts discourage you from your destination: I am not good enough, I am going to fail, or I have no more to learn. All you need is 3 ingredients: a beginner’s mind, deliberate practice, and the ability to adapt and iterate. Start marketing today with a growth mindset.

ADG3: Hug the designers

We are always quick to judge. Our feedback is instantaneous. But our design friends have put hours of work into the right illustration, the appropriate font or the perfect color. Pause for a moment — seek first to understand. Ask the right questions. Don’t assume that the decisions have been made on a whim.

Sara VanSlyke and Trace Byrd shared the history and research behind ADG3. The amount of work that went behind ADG3 was darn impressive. I was mind blown! On a separate note, Rose Yount is a keynote wizard.

[Note: ADG3 is Atlassian Design Guidelines V3]

Sid Tapia: Progress >> Perfection

More tips for personal growth

How to read a room: How can you be better at reading a room?

• Be present — get out of your screens, pull yourself back if you drift, stay calm
• Be observant — read body language, focus beyond the speaker, make mental notes
• Be cognizant — consider context, look for inconsistencies, don’t be fooled
• Practice, practice, and practice.

Giving efficient feedback: How can you give efficient feedback to the creative team?

• Stay specific to creative brief — avoid ambiguity, fine tune the message, remember the brief
• Be positive — we are a team, tone matters, start with what you like
• Remain objective — remember the audience, Atlassian brand matters

Dealing with imposter syndrome — Much literature has been written about imposter syndrome on EAC. How do you deal with it?

• Try to own the fact that you may fail and fail fast
• Have empathy for yourself
• Focus on your strengths
• Try to find a mentor with whom you can have a free and open conversation
• Be better, together

Sam Roberts gave a talk on leadership principles from the navy seals. It requires special mention as it was extremely illuminating for me. The 5 leadership principles are:

1. Extreme ownership — leaders don’t blame their team, they own everything
2. Believe — have a shared understanding, set the standard
3. Cover and move — think beyond your immediate team, team is always greater than individual
4. Simple — complexity leads to chaos, try to keep it simple
5. Prioritize and execute — execute one thing at a time, always keep your focus on the target

Passionate users = influencers

Chase Jones talked about passionate users. Passionate users fall under three categories: critics, storytellers, and explorers. Passionate users need comfort, consistency, and depth. Ritz Carlton creates passionate customers by remembering the needs of their frequent visitors. Managers at Disney park bend down to see the park from the vantage point of their important, little customers. Passionate users are the influencers that will feed our flywheel business model.

Weigh your words

As marketers, we write a lot [of copy]. Claire Mahoney and Caitlin Cecic showed us how each word [on a copy] needs to be carefully considered. Claire used a [very] simple example of “Create new issue” and went into an in-depth analysis of all permutations and combinations [of word choice for a single action button]. Caitlin used the example of “please” and “confirm” in the Bitbucket UI to showcase [useless,] weighty words. [So] Next time you’re writing a [blog] post or a [detailed] email response, use your words wisely, “brevity is the soul of wit”.

Working with remote teams

Atlassian is a globally distributed company with offices across four time zones. Working across continents provides a constant challenge. Here are some best practices on how to work with remote teams:

• Preplanning is key. Book rooms for both offices when scheduling a meeting between two offices. Make invites editable so attendees can add rooms or make necessary adjustments. Pick one — HipChat or BlueJeans as your conferencing option. I prefer Google Hangouts.
• Install the Blue Jeans Chrome Extension to quickly add a BJ to your meeting.
• Timezone is your enemy. Plan strategic handoffs during the weekend so you don’t get HC pings on a Sunday evening.
• Never respond on HipChat when you are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Memorize HALT.

How to STFU and GSD

Karen Cross asked us to categorize ourselves into two buckets: “talk to think” and “think to talk”. The former category of people talks because they think they are subject matter experts in a certain area. The later category of people are thinkers who talk only when they think they will add value to a conversation. If you are a talker — count to ten before you respond. If you are a thinker — ask your meeting attendees to pause for a minute. Karen also shared some frameworks to GSD in meetings. For example, if you are remote and you’re being ignored, try to use hand signals — use a nod for “i agree”, get your right hand up for “i want to speak”, or use the referee “stop” signal for STFU.

P.S. I walked away from design week feeling giddy and excited. The quality of work and the diversity of design talent is awe-inspiring. Jurgen Spangl has put together an amazing team of athletes. I want to sincerely thank the design team for extending an invitation to me. Next year, someone else from my team will attend. I want to end this post with a quote from Keith Robinson: “Don’t forget to be awesome”.

P.P.S. This post is an output of “deep work”.