Jeff Croft

I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.

Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.

I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.

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Items tagged strategy

  • Blog entry // 09.16.2011 // 11:36 AM // 21 Comments

    Should social media be paying you?

    Back in 2006, my buddy Mike Davidson left ESPN.com to launch a citizen journalism product called Newsvine. Newsvine encouraged folks to write articles for the site, and in a novel twist that differentiated it from most blogging and community-oriented sites of the time, it actually paid its users to do so. In fact, it still does. Newsvine was acquired by MSNBC.com in 2007, and it continues to pay 90% of the advertising revenues on pieces written back to their authors.

    I thought it was brilliant, and since that time, I’ve always had a feeling deep down that all social media ought to work this way. Think about it: what would Twitter be without your tweets? How useful is Yelp without your reviews? Maybe — just maybe — as social media companies become profitable, they should be sharing some of it with their users. After all, without them, they’d be nothing as companies.

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  • Link // 12.29.2010 // 10:58 AM // 0 Comments

    ‘Like an Army of 41 Shades of Blue’

    Terrific piece on the business model for Google’s Android, and especially what it means to Google’s OEM partners,

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  • Link // 12.18.2010 // 12:19 PM // 2 Comments

    Notes on “how to clone delicious in 48 hours”

    A good reminder that the whole, “I could build that in a weekend” thing is usually a fallacy. Sure, the frameworks and libraries we have today make building the core of most web apps fast and painless. But there’s a lot more to productizing and launching an app than that core. You’ve got to deal with design, user experience, scaling, merchant accounts, legal docs (terms, privacy, etc.), scaling, SSL, security, scaling, lost password flows, error messages, copywriting, deployment strategies, scaling, backups, APIs and API docs, unit tests, scaling, and so much more. So, when your programmer tells you the app you want is “simple” and he can build it in “no time,” realize he probably just means the core functionality, not everything that is required to productize and launch your project.

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  • Blog entry // 12.15.2009 // 2:43 PM // 31 Comments

    Are web agencies design-heavy?

    Since I couldn’t fit my thoughts in 140 characters, this is a short post prompted by a discussion on Twitter today about development resources at web agencies. First, let’s define “agency.” When I say “web agency,” I mean a company that does web work for clients. This does not include internal teams, such as the web staff at a newspaper or university, nor does it include companies that build apps for themselves, like 37 Signals or Alamofire.

    My impression, which I’ll admit is entirely speculation and not backed up by any real facts, is that web agencies today may be under-staffed on the development side of things.

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  • Link // 11.04.2009 // 4:54 PM // 0 Comments

    Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy Is Brilliant

    I thought the same thing when I noticed it.

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  • Link // 06.10.2009 // 10:03 AM // 0 Comments

    Startups: Keep It In Your Pants, by Ted Dziuba

    Good advice.

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  • Link // 05.11.2009 // 12:16 PM // 0 Comments

    The “How Are You Different” Question

    Over at the Blue Flavor blog, Tiff talks about the importance of understanding your competitive difference, and talks specifically about what makes Blue Flavor different from a lot of other agencies.

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  • Link // 02.16.2009 // 4:57 PM // 0 Comments

    Andy Budd: Don’t treat your website like a commodity

    Although there may be nothing new or revolutionary here, Andy reminds us that focusing on user needs and user experience instead of conversion rate almost always wins, when it comes to create a successful online presence.

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  • Link // 02.05.2009 // 10:26 AM // 0 Comments

    5 options when website budgets get slashed

    Good stuff from Mr. Boag.

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  • Link // 06.05.2008 // 7:49 AM // 0 Comments

    Working With Blue Flavor, Part Three: Enabling Design

    In part three of Keith’s ongoing series of post about working with Blue Flavor, he talks in detail about how best to empower our designers and get their best work out of them. I think many potential clients do have a misguided perception of how the relationship between client and designer should work, and Keith aims to quell some of those misunderstandings. Really good stuff.

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  • Link // 06.03.2008 // 5:55 PM // 0 Comments

    Mark at A List Apart: Developing Creative Ideas

    Besides the afore mentioned piece from Ms. Bolton, there’s also a great piece from Mr. Boulton in the latest A List Apart. Mark talks about fostering ideas. He notes that the brilliant moment of creative inspiration is rarely a great idea in and of itself — it needs to be honed and fostered, and he presents some suggest on ways to facilitate that process.

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  • Link // 05.06.2008 // 3:20 PM // 2 Comments

    Web natives need to lead Web operations

    > Web operations can only thrive when they are staffed by people who get the Web and enjoy using the Web. These are people who categorically prefer the Web over print publications. If this doesn’t describe your journalism organization, then you are doing something wrong.

    Word.

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  • Link // 02.11.2008 // 10:42 AM // 0 Comments

    Brian Fling: Edge Cases are the Root of all Evil

    Great piece by Brian over at the Blue Flavor blog. As he explains, edge cases aren’t usually presented because someone has a serious concern over the viability of an idea, but are rather a result of ulterior motives — and, they tend to totally deflate inspiration and creativity.

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  • Link // 02.07.2008 // 7:48 PM // 1 Comment

    Brian Fling: The Immutable Laws of Web Design and Development

    I would have included DHH’s “PHP is the devil,” but what do I know?

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  • Link // 01.11.2008 // 7:47 AM // 0 Comments

    Tom at Blue Flavor Blog: Setting Expectations

    Tom wrote a great piece at the BF blog on setting expectations — perhaps the most important part of successful project management.

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  • Blog entry // 01.10.2008 // 10:06 AM // 0 Comments

    Solutioneering, or putting solutions before problems

    “Solutioneering” is a term our Creative Director, D. Keith Robinson, came up with back in the early days of Blue Flavor. Essentially, it means putting solutions before problems. In technical fields like web design and development, solutioneering is especially prevalent. However, this approach rarely yields good results.

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  • Link // 12.15.2007 // 3:30 PM // 0 Comments

    24 ways: 10 Ways To Get Design Approval

    Paul Boag has some great tips on how to get you designs approved by your client or boss.

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  • Link // 11.27.2007 // 4:31 PM // 0 Comments

    Ask 37signals: Getting real breaks a stalemate

    If you ignore the tired “getting real” brand masturbation, there are some really good thoughts in here.

    In fact, that could be said about pretty much every post on SVN.

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