How We Think

Earlier this month, KHJ was honored to receive two Lamplighter Awards from the New England Society of Healthcare Communications (NESHCo) at their annual spring conference in Providence.

What does this season of ‘gratitude’ and ‘thanks’ really mean today? If you leave it to marketers, we can be pushed to be giving thanks that Toyota is not doing a traditional Black Friday sale but are extending the sale for the month. Or that Kmart is opening at 6am on Thanksgiving Day to give shoppers even more time to shop the deals.

While we were chatting about the ‘grateful thanks’ and its often watered down messaging we as marketers sometimes capitalize on, we began sharing our own memories and traditions for Thanksgiving. What makes us long for this holiday and what brings a smile to our face? We thought we would share some of our memories and traditions with you. Will you share your traditions with us?

Thank goodness it’s Friday! What a week here at KHJ. If celebrating Friday wasn’t enough, we have something BIGGER to celebrate. Our very own Judy Habib is being celebrated for her accomplishments that led to her becoming one of the top 100… no scratch that… one of the top 50 women led-companies in the state by The Commonwealth Institute and the Boston Globe magazine. 

That was a quote from our CEO Judy Habib in today’s Wall Street Journal article “The Missing Boom in Small-Business Sales.” Journalist Ruth Simon dispels predictions that with baby boomers reaching “retirement age,” sales of small businesses would also rise. As Judy was quoted, “The world has changed and lifespans have changed…Do we really think (baby boomers) will fade off into the sunset? NO.” That’s no surprise to  the crew at KHJ. Whether you’re a baby boomer, GenX or millennial, it’s all about new horizons. See and realize what’s possible. That’s us for sure.

Recently Larry Page wrote a short letter that had a seemingly large impact on the world. The behemoth that is Google and all of its entities, has now become a subsidiary of something else, what Larry Page and Sergey Brin are calling Alphabet. Is this a joke? How can this thing that has become the de facto answer to any of life’s questions, the thing that billions of people use, talk about and rely on every day, be something that is now a child of something else? Sounds a bit crazy, right? Well, that’s just how Larry Page likes it. “We are still trying to do things other people think are crazy but we are super excited about it.”

As one of our UX designers so eloquently put it, the guiding principles for UX design is about getting the user from point A to point B as easily as possible, creating a pleasurable experience, making the journey intuitive, improving the user’s interaction with your brand and delivering on the user’s expectations.

UX is involved, insightful, learned and complex – so where do you start?  There are UX best practices abound, far and wide. Best practices that are always evolving through a combination of art and science supported by different approaches, insights and technologies available. And although best practices provide great strategic guideposts for planning and design efforts, they are not always a cookie-cutter blueprint for success.