Corporate Templates Still Don’t Work

Since my original post, I’ve received good feedback on this (thanks) and had 22 months of additional insights and frustrations. I am changing some of my original recommendations, but in general most corporate Powerpoint templates still have a long way to go to become useful and usable tools for their intended users. (I’ll consider corporate Word templates in another post.)

Why? There are many reasons, but I think they all have a common root cause: developers (those who make the templates) do not fully understand or appreciate their customers’ world (customers = users: people who use the templates). Some broad issues to consider:

• Too many cooks. Between Corporate Communications, marketing, IT, operations, HR/ training, and senior management, many enterprise-level template initiatives have way too many well-meaning but unnecessary people involved. It’s understandable, particularly in large organizations, but it has two unhelpful consequences: 1) templates designed by committee (see camel) where, 2) the committee is usually made up of staff people with little or no experience in the organization’s real product development, sales, or service delivery – that is, they don’t do what the company does.

• One size does not fit all. In many organizations, Powerpoint is used to produce lots of different types of outputs. At the least, most organizations would benefit by having one version for ballroom-style presentations and another for boardroom-style documents. When you also consider people’s individual skill level (e.g., ordinary vs expert), you could easily imagine a simple 2x2 (below). This suggests at least 4 different “base” templates.

	Ballroom	Boardroom
Expert user
Ordinary user

• Built as a tool, not as a system. To be effective, good template files need to be part of a larger system that supports your organizations’ visual identity and brand. Depending on the size and culture of your organization, this might include: training and support materials (e.g., video how-to’s, reference documents, central repository/ website, etc.), a network of trusted internal advisers/ experts, and a change management plan (i.e., keeping up with customer and technology changes).

• Application development, not design. Today, templates are as much dynamic software as a branding tool, yet few marketing, communications, or even IT groups are comfortable with the rapid and continued iteration necessary to develop and maintain useful apps. A useful enterprise template cannot be a static file (or group of files) that doesn’t evolve or continue to change based on feedback from its user community and their needs, including those who represent the organization and its evolving needs.

• Not meeting people where they are. Many corporate templates that I come across are either too complicated or too simple for their audience. Too complicated: people ignore all the embedded wisdom or maybe avoid using the template altogether. Too simple: people make up their own rules about what to do under every circumstance, undermining one of the reasons for having a template. This is the audience/ user side of “one size does not fit all” – developers of effective templates really need to understand their audience (i.e., “customers”) and the everyday worlds they live in. Even in small organizations it’s worthwhile to map the various users and uses.

Designing for the organization or enterprise is a complex and artful process, no wonder we see so few successes.

Your experience is your brand.

Irony: Wired magazine's iPad app keeps crashing.

Wired is in the magazine business. Or they were. But the second they released an iPad app, they also became a player in the app business, and the user experience business, and the "maintain your brand over more platforms" business.

Back when it worked (like three weeks ago), it was a good magazine app. Different content, optimized layouts, links and videos, etc. Print subscribers could download issues for free. Great.

But... Something happened, and now the Wired app is decidedly not wired. To use their own label, it's quickly approaching tired. It would be one thing if this were Vanity Fair, but this is Wired - aren't they supposed to be hip, cool, and tech savvy?

There's aother lesson here in brand: I'm pretty sure Wired didn't actually code this themselves, after all, they're in the magazine business. But it doesn't matter, it's still their name on the app, and their customers who are frustrated.

The value of making real things

My father was a well-respected civil engineer. A colleague of his told me he was an “engineer’s engineer, the go-to guy when you had any question.” But he was also a craftsman who took pride in doing things well and paid attention small details. His father (my grandfather) was the same way: he did so many things with the intentional precision of a of a fine cabinetmaker.

I’ve been thinking about this recently as I try to discover meaning in the second half of my own life, and trying to better articulate the organizational value of craftsmanship and good work when good enough seems to be the measure for many in business.

Soft issues like feelings, intuition, aesthetics, style, or behavior really matter to an organization’s health in ways that are difficult to measure. It’s not that smart people don’t understand this (intellectually), it’s that they can’t act on it (emotionally). And I think there’s a connection between that emotional engagement (or lack of it) and craftsmanship.

Fewer and fewer people today actually make stuff – real tangible things, not abstract ideas like wealth or solutions – and so fewer and fewer people have the opportunity to develop an appreciation for the meticulousness that is required to excel at a craft and do really good work.

When you enter a craft, you quickly realize that it takes both patience (time) and persistence (effort) to master it. The idea of building fine furniture or cooking a world-class meal is straight-forward, but actually doing it exposes you to feelings and emotions that don’t ever appear in the measured drawings or recipe. And the only way to get good at it is to keep trying. And trying. And trying (that is, just because you’ve tried something 50 times doesn’t mean the result is going to be wonderful).

In many business activities, good enough seems to be sufficient – the presentation, brochure, report, website, product, event is good enough. Good enough to make it to the next stage, meet the immediate expectation, satisfy the boss, check it off the list. Which is fine – but that doesn’t mean it’s good (or great). Think Oldsmobile.

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when good enough is just fine. When the stakes are low it would be silly to use limited resources to produce world-class stuff. The slide show on the company picnic probably doesn’t need the $300/hour agency treatment. Of course the challenge is if one can’t really distinguish between good enough and good (or excellent), then how can one know when good enough isn’t?

My theory is that those with little experience in making real things also lack certain emotional experiences that help them understand and act on the softer ideas that help give an organization meaning and soul.

Well, that’s my theory (or maybe half-theory). I’m still working on it.

The subway, Helvetica, and graphic standards

I recently read a fairly long, very-well researched article on how Helvetica became the typeface of the New York subway.

While the article may only be of interest to typographers and designers, those that would suggest that brute force application of simple templates or clever computer trickery will address an organization’s graphic consistency might invest the time to read it. The article is an excellent review of the real-world challenges of implementing even modest graphic standards, and goes into the complex subtleties of applying uniform ideas to fluid and localized conditions.

As a distantly-related side note, the typographer in me reminds the reader that Arial ≠ Helvetica (more on that elsewhere).