There’s been a lot of talk about ‘digital first’ recently. But precious little about what that actually means.
So here’s my take on it. Very much off the top of my head.
| Digital first is … | Digital first is not … |
|---|---|
| open, transparent, and sharing | closed, opaque and controlling |
| engaging and engaged | trying to “own” the message, ignoring people with contrasting views |
| using native web & digital technologies | distributing print material electronically |
| agile | process |
| done | documented |
| driven by user needs | driven by the organisation’s politics |
| always learning from users | imposing our failures on users |
| using new technologies to meet our objectives | inventing new objectives based on new technologies (the ‘shiny thing’ syndrome) |
| value | volume |
| behaving strategically | behaving impulsively |
| planning | making it up as you go along* |
These are just my warblings. What do you think?
*I have to admit, I do a lot of this.
I'm a service designer in Scottish Enterprise's unsurprisingly-named service design team. I've been a content designer, editor, UX designer and giant haystacks developer on the web for (gulp) over 25 years.
just heard about digital first, good summary! is it an internal thing, or something promote with clients, sector, projects?
Hi Daniel,
We’re at the very early stages at the moment, so mostly aimed at an internal audience for now but we expect that, over time, our focus will widen.
If you’d like to come and see what we’re doing we’d be happy to do that.
We should get posters with this on it. T-shirts too. Maybe some coffee mugs. In fact let’s open a shop – http://www.spreadshirt.co.uk/