MM: Right. That means that they had a system that was flexible enough to accommodate your evolving set of requirements and needs? What other criteria did you use in selecting a vendor?

BG: That their interface be user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing to the creative eye—and as I say—”Apple-esque.” It’s a very creative atmosphere, here. If you put some really boring software enterprise solution in front of these designers, they’re not going to want to use it. You want these designers to try the system and see how easy it was. So I really wanted a cool interface.

AS: This is an important point. There is a direct connection in creative environments between user-interface and system utilization. Enterprise solutions seeking to expand into media content workflows will need to place a higher priority into improving the state of their system’s usability. [NOTE: Andrew Salop joins this interview. As a consultant, he worked with BJ Gray in implementing the DAM at Victoria's Secret]

BG: I also wanted a company that was using the latest and greatest technology out there to build their DAM application so that we weren’t always a step behind of what was being offered by others. Like high-speed file transfer, etc. I wanted a company that was on the cutting edge of their industry.

MM: Brilliant! So then, that gave you an optimized workflow that you could visually depict—probably using pretty standard workflow diagrams. Right?

TM: Yes. Sometimes there would be a written step. Sometimes it would be a screenshot with the new data. Sometimes it would be a screenshot of a directory.

MM: So these are basically the artifacts that went into the user manuals.

TM: Correct. That’s exactly what they were. Yes.

MM: So now in the course of then developing this optimized workflow—creating it one screenshot at a time.

TM: Yes.

MM: In the course of developing these screenshots, you had the operator—the intended operator—come in and interact with you and ultimately say, “Yes. That’s what I want my screen to look like.”

TM: Partly. Remember that we really hadn’t chosen the vendor, yet at that point. There were basically mockups that were just done in Excel that showed a basic idea of what it would look like from a data standpoint. But not what it would look like visually in the application.

MM: Perfect! So you developed the wire frame or the exposed data model for that particular screen or activity?

TM: Yes.

MM: Then, how long did it take you to develop that idealized workflow model?

TM: I was trying to think about that—how we broke that down. It was nine months for the total. My guess is that it was like six months for the current workflow and three months for the optimized.

MM: So take us through how you begin to develop a visual depiction of Sally’s engagement with the workflow vis-à-vis an online get-it-right-upfront workflow process.

TM: One of the things that we did that we felt was very important was—and this was typical with all the vendors that we talked to—they wanted to do their training based on their features of the software. Is this where you’re headed? Is this what you were thinking about wanting to get at?

MM: Yes.

TM: The classic analogy is this. Let’s say you’re working in Microsoft Excel. Somebody tells you they want you to write a formula.

Well, how are you going to write that formula? You could type it in. You could click on cells. You could do one of their automated things. There are probably about eight different ways you can write a formula in Excel. Well, with these database-publishing solutions, there are probably about eight different ways you could create a product manager’s role.

But what we did was—we had a core team. We learned the features. We said, “Okay. We’re going to populate the database. We’re going to have our information in there. We’re then going to create a training manual using our information, based on what we feel the optimal way to use that system is.

That’s what we trained on.

MM: So, before you actually configure the software—much less buy the software—you create a training module for an operator.

TM: Right.

MM: In this training module, you described the performance of that job—the job function within work cell. You described that work cell as a trainable, repeatable process…

TM: Absolutely.

MM: In the course of doing that, you documented for Sally what her job looks like—and using the training manual to really mock up the user experience.

TM: And making it real for her. Because when she’s looking at the data and the examples in the screenshots, it has information that she’s familiar with.

MM: So this also then entails you mocking up screenshots, because that’s what you would need in the training manual. Is that right?

TM: Correct.

MM: So in essence, what you did was to design at the level of business process, workflow and accountability. You defined the user experience not just as screenshots, but also as a user manual.

TM: Yes.