Hide your wife, hide your kids, we’ve got a Design Battle on our hands!

Last week you saw Jose build on Aure’s wireframes for the ThisWeekIn Web Design redesign, today the two designers battle live on the internet! That’s right, Jose and show favorite Aure Gimon will simultaneously riff on design concepts, competing and collaborating to see which is the wildest web design gunslinger of the west. And of course, by watching live you’ll pick up some great tips and techniques from two of the best designers going on the internet today.

00:00 Open
00:30 Web Design Battle introduction
01:35 Robert Haydock, our first member of the Producer Program joins us on set
02:02 Blank Spaces and the joys of co-working spaces
02:45 Why did you join the Producer Program?
03:20 How was the pace of the Groop Skool event?
03:45 Jose reads the Groop Skool reviews on air for the first time.
06:30 The treu benefits of the Producer Program: watch the show as preparation and then go to Groop Skool for the real world practice
08:00 Prepping for the Web Design battle with Aure Gimon.
09:15 Talking with Aure about designing with a creative brief in mind
10:30 Talking about competitors and media partnerships
11:20 Setting up two different perspectives for approaching the design process
12:20 Avoiding too many restrictions in the design phase
13:05 Robert talks about meeting Eric Ries of The Lean Startup
16:30 Jose talks about benefits and learning curve of applying lean development to web design
18:30 Announcing Groop Skool 3, November 12th and 13th
21:45 How does Lean Methodology transfer over to web design?
24:00 The importance of committing to process
27:00 Finally, the battle starts!
28:00 Choosing fonts (just read Stop Stealing Sheep and Learn How Fonts Work)
31:00 Finding a foundry and chasing type trends
36:40 House Industries
37:45 MyFonts.com as a great source for fonts
38:15 Checking in with Aure and how he prioritizes page layout
41:30 DaFont.com – full of bad free fonts and some hidden gems
43:45 Jose and Aure compare their work so far.
45:45 Using Adobe’s Kuler website to generate color combinations
49:30 How crazy can you get with a logo?
53:30 “That K is hideous”
55:30 “A logo is a vessel that you inject meaning into over time”
58:30 Comparing Aure’s work to Jose’s

Register at http://www.groopskool.net
For more information about the HOW Interactive Design Conference, go to http://www.howinteractiveconference.com/

Our first ever “Groop Skool Video Newsletter”. All video newsletter covering updates, upcoming Groop Skool workshops and events.

CEOs talk about their experiences working with The Groop and how The Groop has helped their business grow.

Thank you to our guest expert JP Bedoya, Sr. Director of Product and User Experience at Citysearch, for helping explain what User Experience is and how it can help our viewers design their own successful websites. Below you will find our User Experience Presentation available for download.

In addition we want to thank YOU our viewers, for all the great questions and video responses you left on our weekly promos on The Groop’s youtube page. Our mission is to provide expert answers to your questions and this show wouldn’t be possible without you.

How can great project management help make running your web projects less painful?

 
On next week’s episode joining us will be Project Management guru Tony Wong, Founder of Pointman Project Management and Leadership. He will be helping us learn how to align your team towards the goals of your project and what it takes to get there; be sure to tune in.

This Week in Web Design
Tuesdays 3pm PST 6pm EST
www.ThisWeekIn.com

If you have any project management questions for Tony and I, get them answered LIVE on next week’s show by following the link below:
 

 

What is User Experience?

Round of applause for our Executive Breakfast panel and all of you who attended Groop Skool’s Executive Breakfast. Thank you to everyone who participated as we answered your questions about project management, technology, brand strategy, design and more. If you missed out take a quick look at some of the highlights from the breakfast below!
 

Our featured panelists include:

 
Julie Glassman: Creative Director and Founder of BRAND
JP Bedoya: Sr. Director of Product and User Experience at Citysearch
Tony Wong: Founder of Pointman Project Management and Leadership
 

 

So remember:

 

It’s not about you! Define your brand and website in the eyes of your users.

Align the interests of your team; work together towards a defined goal.

Have a single product manager. Remove as many people out of the decision making process.

Total Brand Execution from Jose Caballer on Vimeo.

I would like to personally invite you to The Groop’s Total Brand Execution workshop on Thursday, February 26th at 6pm. We are going to share with you methodologies to define, monetize and execute online projects. Because we know your time is valuable the workshop will be at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. Come join us for a fun, engaging but, more importantly, valuable workshop.

Only a few seats are left,  please EMAIL US if you would like to attend.

What are 3 of the most painful challenges we often face in the digital space?

Challenge 1: How to define what features and functionalities you need and which will work.
Solution: First define your brand, your users, their needs and what your value proposition is, then, let that drive your features and functionality.

Challenge 2: How to monetize your online content, service or media platform.
Solution: Build a comprehensive sponsorship sales approach by creating a clear value proposition and a compelling brand narrative.

Challenge 3: How to guide your team to execute on time and on budget.
Solution: Work in a natural and iterative fashion that gets you to your business objectives faster

Speakers:
On Brand Driven Product Definition:
Jose Caballer, CEO and Chief Business Builder for The Groop
Jose, an award-winning Creative, is the founder of The Groop with over 10 years of business and creative experience providing clients and students alike with an insider’s look into the ever-changing methodologies that are used to create engaging and profitable digital experience.

On Monetization:
Tom Feegel, CEO of Brand Neutral and Groop Sponsorship Partner
Tom, founder of Brand Neutral, has nearly 15 years of experience leading successful strategy consulting firms and capitalizing on new media to create and sustain competitive advantage for his clients. He has advised dozens of Fortune 500 companies on the strategy, development and launch of their digital services and offerings.

On Agile Project Management:
Laura Kleger, Director of Project Management for The Groop. Certified Scrum Master
Born and raised in NYC, Laura is a cum laude graduate from Yale, received her MFA from Columbia and is a certified Scrum Master through the Scrum Alliance. Laura works directly with many of The Groop clients including Disney, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Savings.com.

Who Should Attend?
CEOs, COOs, CDOs, VPs of Product Development, VPs of Marketing,
VPs of Digital Strategy, VPs of Production, etc.

Testimonials:
“You’re a regular Jerry Springer. Thanks for keeping it lively.”
David Brody, Managing Partner, North Venture Partners

“Jose, is an excellent teacher, and his methods are a must…”
Mike Flynn, Co-Founder Opportunity Green

In a recent article all about service design, Live | Work talks about how user involvement in the design process is crucial.

“The only way to deal with this complexity is to keep people’s needs and desires central to any development. Service design is part of the solution to this challenge, with deep user involvement throughout the creative process and a keen view on the functional and emotional details that enable people to enjoy the services that are important in their lives.” Excerpt from www.livework.co.uk.

At The Groop this is a core fundamental of our process. We work in agile/scrum to ensure that our clients are engaged with the product on a day to day basis. This way our clients know exactly what they are getting and get exactly what they want. Read the entire article by Live | Work by clicking here.

Many of you have recently asked what it is like to work in SCRUM. If you want to come to scrum training, let us know. Meanwhile, check out this PDF.

For those of our clients that are already working with us in Agile. Congrats. For those of you who will soon be working in Agile with us I put together a nice selection of Agile videos from YouTube.

Spread the word: Agile Saves
And look for The Groop’s own Agile video. Coming soon to a browser near your.

“I have been in the web business for over 12 years and I am extremely impressed with how well SCRUM worked on RipeTV.com. Matter of fact I am training my entire team in SCRUM”
Ryan Magnussen, CEO RipeTV