KeyLimeTie Blog

This year, KeyLimeTie ran the MC 200 relay from Madison, Wisconsin to Lake Michigan in Chicago for the second year in a row. For us, it's been a real team building and an opportunity to bond outside of the office. Plus, the event proceeds go to benefit the Special Olympics of Wisconsin and Illinois.

This is the second year we have participated. This year we focused a lot more on training and getting our times up. And, it paid off! We shaved two hours off our 2009 time of 35:21:13, running the 200 miles this year in 33:26:32.

Check out photos of Team KeyLimeTie on Flickr.

The KeyLimeTie team included:

Yep, we ran all this way.

Anthony Avallone
Brian Pautsch
Brian West
Butch Zemar
Chris Grove
Chris Pautsch
Dan Strabbing
Dean Giorgetti
Geoff Skyles
Joe Giorgetti
Michael Wick
Peter Morano
Sam Dekin

We can't wait to do it again next year!

KeyLimeTie is thrilled to be a sponsor and contributor for the second year in a row to SocialDevCamp Chicago, a weekend conference for people developing software and growing businesses on the social web. The event is being held this Saturday and Sunday August 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, with the pre-launch party on Friday night at the Illinois Technology Association. We hope you'll join us there. Check out the full schedule for more details and be sure to register before tickets sell out.

$2,400 in KeyLimeTie Services to Hackathon Winner

We're most excited to see the developer Hackathon contest that our very own Peter Morano started last year at SocialDevCamp gain so much more momentum this year. Since the grand prize winner will receive a demo table at midVenturesLAUNCH at the end of September ($750 value), KeyLimeTie is throwing in 16 hours of graphic design and innovation consulting services ($2,400 value) to help them prepare their app for the limelight. We can't wait to see what the teams come up with.

We're Contributing as Staff, Speakers and Judges

This year we're more involved than ever. In addition to Director of Marketing Tim Courtney (@timcourtney) as conference co-chair and CIO Peter Morano as Hackathon chair, our COO Brian Pautsch (@bpautsch) is participating as a Hackathon judge, Pete (@petermorano) is talking about the catalytic nature of Hackathons at 1:30 on the panel "Using Hackathons & Code Sprints for Innovation and Social Change," and I'll be a panelist during the 10:00am Saturday session "Killer Social Apps: 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Brand Engagement".

We're excited to have the opportunity to share both our passion and our expertise to the lively, energetic, creative and talented people who make it a priority to attend SocialDevCamp each year.

Please join us at SocialDevCamp, and if you come, please say hello!

KeyLimeTie's hole at the Hope to Give Golf Outing.

KeyLimeTie sponsored a hole at the Hope to Give Golf Outing last week that raised over $6,000 to benefit Childrens Memorial Hospital. The outing was held at Stonewall Orchard Golf Club in Grayslake, IL.

Hope to Give produces fund raising events that raise money for children, families of children and organizations specifically created to help children living with life altering medical conditions. They strive to bring hope, money, and support to those that need it most through various fund raising activities and events.

Check out the video of the outing below, and the list of outing sponsors on the Hope to Give website.

The mobile marketing & advertising ecosystem.

The degree of success you have marketing via mobile is directly related to the degree of seriousness with which you treat it as a channel. Your mobile efforts, whether using the web, apps, or other means of communicating with a person on their phone should never be treated as a standalone medium.

These are just two of the core insights outlined at the Mobile University conference that brought together agency and brand representatives to talk about what works in mobile marketing and where the medium is going. The conference served to both reinforce and enhance the approach KeyLimeTie takes with our clients.

When you isolate your mobile efforts to one-off campaigns, you risk throwing away a lot of work; as if you launched a website only to wind it down weeks later. Instead, think in terms of 12-month cycles for your marketing objectives instead of a "quick-win" 8-week campaign.

Whether you develop your mobile solution in-house or contract to an agency or development team like KeyLimeTie, realize the real value lies when you build a long-term program for engagement, complete with multiple campaigns integrated with your overall marketing strategy for the year. Your mobile marketing efforts should result in a channel through which you communicate on an ongoing basis.

The key is to first understand mobile devices for what they are. What are your consumers already doing on their phones, and how can you enable those behaviors?

People use mobile devices on breaks, pauses, for short bursts and in moments of periodic downtime. They also use it when they need information to make a quick decision. Consumers are a lot smarter than us—the marketers, brand managers and developers directly involved in marketing a product or service—so don't just do something for the sake of doing it, make it make sense with them and their habits.

Mobile Campaign Tips:

• For every $1 you spend developing and executing a mobile marketing campaign, be prepared to spend another $2 promoting it.
• Allow your customer to treat their phone as a "mobile mouse." QR codes let you "click" on things in the real world, taking them from real world experiences to digital ones they see on their phones. This can provide entertainment, information, connection and other kinds of value.
• Know how people use apps. After a user has 5 or more apps installed, there's a significant drop off in app usage on a monthly basis. Build in weekly interactions with your users to stay on their radar. Push Alerts on the iPhone and Android are one way of accomplishing this.

Looking to build your mobile strategy? Talk to KeyLimeTie and we'll walk you through how.

Peter Morano

Are you curious about mobile, but don't know where to start? Our CIO, Peter Morano, will speak Thursday April 22 from 6:00-8:00 P.M. at the Illinois Institute of Technology Knapp Center on Developing a Successful Mobile Strategy.

Come learn how why reaching your customers and your market must be your central goal, and why this doesn't necessarily mean you need to develop an app. Peter will talk about:

• Methods for connecting with a mobile audience
• Engaging your audience effectively
• The differences between various mobile platforms
• How these factors affect market reach

Register today to see Pete speak at the Knapp Center on the 22nd. The event is free to attend, but RSVP is required.

Human interactions with computers are shifting rapidly away from the desktop. Thanks to mobile devices and social media channels, the traditional web site, the cornerstone sales and marketing tool of B2B and B2C companies for the last fifteen years, is diminishing in relative importance as the primary way customers gain information about you. Experts used to predict the convergence of media to a single device, however today we're seeing media (content) delivered to and consumed via many distinct types of devices—the most notable being the mobile phone (and soon the tablet, thanks to the innovation being spurred by the iPad).

In 2009, mobile web usage more than doubled. Today, Google is encouraging local search through initiatives like its Favorite Places program and by beefing up its mobile web interface. Businesses, especially local ones, are looking to both mobile web and mobile apps to connect with customers on their terms. Companies looking to stay connected with their customers must address the fact that more and more people are accessing the web via the mobile phone.

At SXSW Interactive, Adobe Systems' platform evangelist Kevin Hoyt (@parkerhoyt) delivered a thoughtful talk to these developers entitled "Best Practices for Contextual Applications." Hoyt's central point was that people are consuming more content through more screens than ever before, and content creators must deliver that content through a consistent, integrated, and seamless user experience.

Expectations are High, Regardless of Context

The interactive industry refers to the process of developing for these various devices as contexts. As people increase their exposure to web content, the interactions are fragmenting across devices. To the customer, your brand is your brand, no matter through what context they are interacting with you. Your job is to deliver a consistent, high-quality experience across contexts, strengthening your relationship with your customers on their terms and on the device of their choice.

Thinking of your user as "just an iPhone user" or "just a browser user" is limiting. The people who comprise your market will move between contexts. Further, these people will take their data with them from context to context. Whether they are out for a run, at their desktop, or on the go with their phones, they will expect to be able to access their information wherever they are and regardless of the type of data.

People will demand the same quality experience across contexts, but the ways they interact and the information they need will differ based on context.

Contexts in Action

The New York Times adapts their context based on how people are consuming the information. Even their "freemium" pricing model varies from context to context, based on how people use the information they provide within each. As an organization, they are laser-focused on unlocking new revenue potential among the various contexts, providing content on the web, mobile web, natively on the desktop via the Times Reader, and even on devices like the Chumby. They realize that people will use the data differently depending on context, and present and price differently in kind.

You interact with multiple contexts each and every day. These contexts include:

• Desktop/Laptop Computer software applications, e.g. Microsoft Word
• Web Browser, e.g. web sites
• Desktop or Dashboard Widgets
• Mobile Phones, including mobile web and native applications for iPhone or Android devices
• Tablet Computer, e.g. iPad
• Automobile dashboard or heads-up screens
• Nike+ and other input devices
• Video game consoles such as Xbox, Nintendo Wii and PS3
• Home appliances
• Ambient consumer electronics devices such as the Chumby

Requirements for Contextual Applications

To succeed at reaching your audience across contexts, you must address the requirements needed to deliver a consistent, high quality experience.

• Ubiquity - Your content needs to be everywhere your users are consuming information from, regardless of the context. Know the contexts your users use, and prioritize development of interfaces for those contexts in alignment with your sales process and strategic priorities.
• Workflow - Before you design for multiple contexts, build the workflow of how users interact on—and between— each. With a proper workflow you can put together a good experience across devices.
• Cloud Servers - By using a cloud-based server infrastructure like Amazon EC2, Rackspace, or Salesforce.com, you allow your applications to share common databases and to scale seamlessly. If you are serving video to an international user base, consider a content delivery network to handle the heavy lifting of video with minimal lag time no matter where your users are in the world.
• Social Media Services - Gain users and add features by using the APIs on popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace, etc. Also, you can integrate content with more focused social sites like SlideShare for presentations and Delicious for bookmarks.

KeyLimeTie Can Help

Looking to extend beyond your corporate web site and meet users on their phones, on the social web, or on their tablets and iPads? KeyLimeTie has a team of seasoned, versatile cross-platform developers with digital strategy and design capabilities to provide you a full solution. To explore further, give us a call at 630.598.9000.

Small changes in the way people first encounter your web site can make a big difference in the results you get. Careful attention to the initial pages on your site—before and after a user registers—can make the difference between a successful site and an unsuccessful one. So, what works and what doesn't, and how do you measure this? Clearly defining your goals, learning from the experience of successful sites, and being open to make small changes will allow you top maximize the number of people who say "yes" to the value proposition you offer.

Daniel Burka and Rob Goodlatte at SXSW Interactive.

At SXSW, former Digg Creative Director Daniel Burka (@dburka, now of game developer Tiny Speck), and Rob Goodlatte of Facebook gave an excellent presentation on this topic, sharing insights from successfully winning over millions of attention-deficient and critical users who visit some of the most popular web sites online. Here we'll share what we learned about the emergence of game mechanics in design, the "Aha Moment!" and the power of and rewarding users while doing.

Burka began the talk by telling the story of how getting a dog in downtown San Francisco caused him to need to buy a car, outlining the new car buying experience and the exact steps the salesperson used to hook him and his girlfriend on wanting to buy the car they were test driving.

What does this have to do with optimizing a site for user interactions? Designers build in similar "tricks" to attract users to convert or do some desirable action like enter their personal information, sign up for a newsletter or fan page, or even make a purchase. (You can read the entire story in the notes from the talk).

Goodlatte led his remarks by saying that "Often we can't see the problems in our own products, because we're too focused on how we use them every day." As a designer or as a marketer hiring a design team, you can't always revisit your own product with fresh eyes. This is why it is important critical to put yourself in the shoes of someone encountering your product for the first time. As designers, we cannot be be afraid to be proven wrong, especially when designing with new users in mind.

Geni.com Homepage lets you start creating your family tree before creating an account.

In Tiny Speck's upcoming game "Glitch," the site first leads visitors to create a game character and give it a name, then displays the character created alongside its name. Only then will the site ask for personal details, because now the visitor is invested in the character they have created and are more likely to convert. This principle can be applied outside the world of gaming when working toward the goal of driving user signups. An ideal example of this, Burka says, is the geneology site Geni.com, which allows you to start building your family tree before signing up.

The principle goes a little as follows:

1. Allow users to first create something of value and make incremental progress toward what your site offers, building in rewards (such as a game character or a family tree).
2. As quickly as possible, convince the person that whatever comes after sharing their details is worthwhile.
3. After the person is already invested, capture their personal information or ask for the commitment.
4. As the presentation slides say, "Help people make something they'd hate to lose."

Facebook's "Aha! Moment"

Facebook calls the point where the user wants to commit the "Aha! Moment." This is the point in time where the user understands the biggest incentive your product or service has. By focusing user signup tests on this, Facebook saw a 5% topline increase in new user registrations (a significant number when you have 300 million users). They learned that for Facebook, this moment is the instant they see faces and names of their friends already using the site. As a result, one of the most successful web sites in the world is now totally redesigning their account creation process to eliminate every single distraction before new people reach that Aha Moment.

Learn from Games that have Feedback Cycles

An emerging trend in interaction design is to use game theory when designing software and online interactions. Games have long been written to teach players more difficult manuvers as they gain more practice, rewarding them along the way. In the same way, interaction designers can unlock complexity and funcionality as users complete more and more actions within your site. Rewarding the mastery of features and processes keeps the users interested, challenged, and engaged.

Some examples of this in both games and on the web include:

• Spore: New users are given a simple task with simple controls. After successfully performing an action with the game character, the user is rewarded with a character that evolves, along with more sophisticated controls.
• Mint.com has built instant feedback loops into their signup screen for when users enter a valid username, email address, and matching passwords. If you enter incorrect information, a red X displays next to the field alerting the user of their mistake without going through the frustration of loading the error page.

Lead Users, Teach While Doing, and Focus on One Thing

"If you tell your users to 'Go do anything,'" Burka says, "the user will respond in kind with 'What kind of anything should I do?' By creating "quests" as game designers call them, you can lead users down a path toward a goal, teaching them along the way. If you're naming your quest, give it something in context; for example, in a business application, you might refer to a quest as a "to-do list."

Tumblr walks you through creating your first post as you are signing up.

Don't think of educating users as a side part of the experience (such as documentation or help pages), rather, make it a core part of the user experience. For example, the LEGO® Universe multiplayer online game teaches users how to perform moves as they are actually discovering new things while playing. The designers specifically do not interrupt the process of playing to teach. Blog service Tumblr walks new users through the process of creating a blog and a first post within 60 seconds, creating an investment in the service on the part of the user and teaching them core features.

Sometimes competing interests and objectives can confuse users, preventing them from accomplishing your desired outcome. Like a zig-zagging checkout queue, bursting with diversions of candy and must-have impulse buys, well-meaning individuals can cannibalize the goal. What's the answer? "Focus on one specific thing [and do it well]. Ask 'what is important for this step?'" says Goodlatte. "Do a few things less well, because [on the web] you can't do everything at once." Define your end goal, come up with a measurement for success, and design everything on the page to optimize for the desired outcome.

Living the Process

When designing a site, discover your Aha Moment & get to it ASAP. It will communicate more than any marketing material can. To convince management or clients of a needed change, Goodlatte suggests showing a a video of a user frustrated with your system. This evidence says far more than any theory-based argument about a site's usability.

If you are looking to improve user interactions on your site, increase signups, or increase sales, please talk to KeyLimeTie about how the design team here can help you reach your goals.

To see Burka and Goodlatte's presentation slides, visit Designing the First 15 Minutes on Slideshare. For extensive notes of the presentation itself, see the notes on the Facebook design blog.

This weekend, Chris Pautsch and I are attending SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. We're here to promote our abilities, network with notables in the industry, and learn as much as we can while at the conference for interactive software, design, usability, and business strategy.

We'll be posting observations and knowledge that has direct applicability to our customers' businesses, and we'll also be taking what we learn back into the organization to stay cutting edge with the services we provide.

If you want to interact with us directly while at the conference, feel free to talk to us on Twitter. Make sure you follow @KeyLimeTie, but also follow @ChrisPautsch and @TimCourtney directly. Finally, if you want the full volume of my personal live-tweets, I've set up @TimCourtneySXSW so as not to annoy people who follow me and aren't interested in the conference.

Here are some of the things we're focusing on at the event:

• Changing user interfaces. We're actively looking at what people are saying about the iPad, tablet PCs, mobile phones, and even purpose-built devices. As these new devices are becoming more mainstream, new ways of interacting with customers are emerging. We see the iPad as much more than a personal productivity and entertainment tool; it's a platform that will provide better ways to meet customers' needs where they are and when they need service.
• New Technology: Augmented Reality These applications have been talked about for some time and are just now coming into the mainstream. They can be as simple as a heads-up display on a fighter jet or a car to a mobile application that displays a virutal object superimposed over a video of the area directly in front of you. Companies can use augmented reality for advertisements, navigation, complex task support, and in industrial or architectural settings to name a few (source: Wikipedia). For an example, see ReadWriteWeb's writeup on Chevy's Augmented Reality iPhone app at SXSW.
• Making Sense of it All. Because we live on the web every day, we know there's no shortage of information being passed about new technologies, especially regarding hot topics like social media. But what does it all mean? How does it apply to you, whether you're a business unit within a large enterprise or a small-midsize company? Depending on what you do and who your customers are, you can adjust your focus on the tools that will garner the most impact. We'll listen keenly on how some these hot tools are proving useful for different types of people, and for whom they're not useful.

If you're a KeyLimeTie customer reading this, we believe in being a go-to resource on interactive web technology at the same time as being your preferred web and software developer. We're focusing our time at SXSW to equip us to do that even better.

On February 5, Peter Morano, Chris Grove and I attended the launch reception for the KnappLab at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The Knapp Center, headed by Nik Rokop, has built out a mobile development lab to teach students how to develop real-world mobile applications. The lab practices what it preaches; even the Lab's web site is a mobile site.

At the KnappLab, students have access to two Macs and one Windows machine fully equipped with development environments for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. They have the chance to work on student projects or projects entrepreneurs bring to them.

We're excited to see a leading university make such an investment in young mobile app developers. These students certainly have an open door at KeyLimeTie when they're looking for internships or full-time positions doing the work they love.

Here's a video we took giving a quick tour of the KnappLab:

On March 6th, I had the pleasure of organizing the Hackathon Contest for the Day of Mobile conference held at IIT.  Developer hackathons are contests where people compete to code the best application that meets certain criteria and win prizes and regognition for their efforts.

KeyLimeTie was the Hackathon sponsor and I served as Hackathon coordinator. The judging panel included me and an impressive subset of the event’s speakers: Jay Freeman, David Whatley, Mark Murphy and John Haney.

The contest itself featured eleven teams who presented applications they built on the Android, iPhone and Blackberry platforms. Seven teams walked away with cash and prizes that totaled more than $3,500, including $1,500 in cash a Netbook provided by Chicago Micro, a Nokia N900 from Earth Combers, Threadless gift certificates, $500 in books from O’Rielly Publishing and 2 Droid phones from Google.

The winning teams were:

• Best Overall App: Novarra Team
• Best Overall Runner Up: Runner up: Ravi Singh (@code4ever)
• Best Open Source App - Mike Laurence (@mikelaurence)
• Best Student App - Knapp Lab Team (IIT)
• Best iPhone App - Pek Pongpaet (@pekpongpaet) and Chad Paulson (@chadpaulson)
• Best Android App – Android Technical
• Best Blackberry App - Vibhor Goyal (@vbgoz)
• Best Design: Jon Jenkins

Congratulations, everyone!

If you’re interested in competing in the next Hackathon contest, please send me an email or DM me at @petermorano and I’ll keep you informed of the next event.

In November of last year, KeyLimeTie sponsored the second annual SocialDevCamp conference in Chicago, co-produced by our very own Tim Courtney. The event covers both technical and business, strategic and cultural elements of developing social applications on the Internet, a significant part of KeyLimeTie's business.

The conference attracted notable speakers including David Recordon and Luke Shepard of Facebook, Harper Reed, Chris McAvoy, Blagica Bottigliero, Daliah Saper, and John R. Dallas, Jr.

KeyLimeTie CIO Peter Morano also led the developer Hackathon component of SocialDevCamp, a contest offering $2,000 in prizes to developers competing to build the best social applications over the course of the weekend.

Enjoy these video highlights from SocialDevCamp 2009. We're happy to have had the opportunity to partcipate in the event.

KeyLimeTie is sponsoring both the SocialDevCamp TechThursday Mashup Party and the Day of Mobile conference next week. We also recently learned of a second Mobile event for entrepreneurs and developers; MobileX Chicago. If you're in the area and interested in social applications and mobile development, you'll want to add these events to your calendar.

SocialDevCamp TechThursday Mashup Party

Thursday March 4, 6-9pm, OfficePort CHI

Organizers of the annual SocialDevCamp Conference (including KeyLimeTie's Tim Courtney and Peter Morano) are hosting an after-hours party for attendees to mingle, re-connect, see video highlights and hear from Hackathon teams who have continued developing the applications they built at the 2009 conference into something bigger.

KeyLimeTie is sponsoring the party. Food and drinks will be provided, and a $5.00 cover charge will be donated to the YWCA TechGYRLS program, an innovative, after-school programs are designed to broaden girls' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.

RSVP for the SocialDevCamp TechThursday Mashup Party Here.

MobileX Chicago

Friday March 5, 9:00am - 6:00pm, Doubletree Hotel

MobileX Chicago is a one-day conference aimed at entrepreneurs, developers, investors, industry professionals, and mobile enthusiasts. It features four tracks of breakout sessions for the target audiences and topics of “Mobile Developers”, “Entrepreneurs/Investors/Enthusiasts”, and “Mobile Marketing," along with an introductory iPhone development track.

Learn more and register to attend on the MobileX Chicago web site.

Day of Mobile

Saturday March 6, 8:00am - 6:00pm, Illinois Institute of Technology

Day of Mobile will focus on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile development. Jay Freeman, creator of the Cydia Store will keynote, and KeyLimeTie's Chris Grove will present on "Strategies for multi-platform applications." KeyLimeTie's Peter Morano is heading the Developer Hackathon, and the company is sponsoring Day of Mobile.

Learn more and register to attend on the Day of Mobile web site.

We’re excited to play a part in Tech in the Middle’s upcoming Day of Mobile conference, to be held at IIT on Saturday, March 6th. The conference will feature 100 and 300 level talks running concurrently covering four development platforms; Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry, along with hands-on workshops by subject matter experts.

Also, KeyLimeTie’s Chris Grove, CTO and senior mobile application developer, will give a talk entitled “Strategies for Developing Multi-Platform Apps.” He’ll explain how careful planning can overcome differences in frameworks, operating systems, and languages, while sharing proven strategies for cross-platform mobile development that will guide your design process and maximize your ROI.

If you’re looking to accelerate your mobile development knowledge, visit the Day of Mobile site and register for the conference. See you there!

This weekend, KeyLimeTie has the distinct honor of sponsoring SocialDevCamp Chicago, an unconference being held at the Illinois Institute of Technology on November 7 & 8 for developers and marketers passionate about the software that powers social networking technology. Having built web sites for the likes of Illinois gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski, E! News anchor Giuliana Rancic, and even niche social network GimmePleez, we have a definite interest in seeing these technologies play out so we can stay on the forefront of enabling social media on the web.

Our very own Tim Courtney started SocialDevCamp Chicago last year, and is co-chairing the event with Andy Angelos of Get Talked About. It’s been great getting an inside peek at watching the event come together. Peter Morano, our CTO, stepped up and has been coordinating the Hackathon developer contest running at SocialDevCamp as well (There’s even rumor of a KeyLimeTie team entering the competition, so watch out!).

The event has an impressive lineup of speakers. Facebook’s senior open programs manager, David Recordon, is delivering the Saturday morning keynote, and Google is giving a Wave demo on Sunday morning. Area leaders including Harper Reed, Chris McAvoy, Alex Bratton, and John R. Dallas, Jr. are covering both the technical and the business side of social applications in the afternoon sessions, and attendees who want to present will be able to self-organize and talk in the Unconference track both days as well.

If you’re a developer or a social marketer, you should attend SocialDevCamp this weekend. There’s a lot packed into the two days, especially for a free event. However, registration is almost full, so make sure you register if you want to attend. Visit the SocialDevCamp Chicago web site for complete information and to register.