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Experience optimization | Personalization | Content operations

Optimization. Personalization. Automation.

Whether you conduct a CX symphony or an orchestra-of-one, it's time to face the music:

Connected experience
is already shaping your
customer experience.

Prepare for what's next.

Learn how organizations are evolving to deliver smarter experiences.

Develop, and challenge, your own POV:

What shovel-ready techniques speed teams to early success?
What skills, talent, and tools are setting standards?
What are the solved problems—and those we still can't fix?

Join readers from the worlds of B2B, B2C, leading consultancies, government, and nonprofit organizations for a perspective on business, design, and information management in the age of the algorithm.

Nike
Mastercard
McDonalds
Capital Group
Prudential
Lowe's
Shopify
Lilly and Company

About Bucket Studio

Welcome to what's next in your digital business evolution.

You’re in a digital transformation.

You have tough questions. How can you:

Use optimization, personalization, or automation technology to differentiate?

Become more user-centered?

Best leverage and measure the performance of content assets?

Simplify, yet innovate, the ways you serve your customers?

Beware the personalization gap.

Personalization software is immensely powerful, yet it requires poise to use effectively and safely at scale.

Strategy, design, and fast-track results from connected experiences.

Bucket Studio delivers strategy, execution, and analysis to make those digital business efforts a success.

We are a boutique UX and product practice dedicated to better personalization and connected experiences for digital professionals.

We believe in the beauty of design constraints.

We specialize in “shovel-ready” solutions that can be swiftly shipped, no matter your budget, technology, or resource level.

Connected UX is any digital touchpoint—from a product to a site to a contextual user flow—that requires orchestrating assets across multiple systems of record and, usually, multiple channels. CX here usually refers to the overall system, the UX to the particulars.

Popular examples of connected experience include Disney’s Magic Band and Sephora’s customer-to-customer messaging interface (credit: Bryan Malezsyk).

Personalization is a set of techniques and technologies for delivering a variety of connected experiences celebrated for their effectiveness.

An experience that uses customer data and understanding to frame, guide, extend, and enhance interactions based on that person’s history, preferences, context, and intent.

—James McCormick, Forrester (2017)

It includes everything from notifications to recommenders, dynamic content modules to bots, and test-and-learn practices.

Popular examples of personalized experiences includes Spotify’s algorithmically-generated music playlists, Amazon’s product recommendations, StitchFix, and Netflix’s user interface.

Personalization is hard, essential, and evolving fast. (Disagree?) It’s also part of a broader business trend.

Organizations today are seeking competitive advantage by becoming more user-centric and performance-focused across everything they do.

Part of that involves implementing robust, complex marketing technology. Another part involves finding new ways to measure, enhance, and systematize the value they bring their customers.

Bucket can accelerate your digital capabilities each way.

An independent content-focused strategy consultant, and avowed information sciences obsessive, Jeffrey works at the crossroads of product development, user experience, and information sciences.

His byline has appeared in WIRED, the New York Times, among many other publications. Jeffrey is also a founding member of the Consortium of Personalization Professionals. He has spoken and workshopped widely at conferences in North America and Europe.

His clients include the American Museum of Natural History, Best Buy, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Condé Nast, Consumer Reports, JP Morgan Chase, Mailchimp, Mastercard, NBCUniversal, News Corporation, Philips, Thomson Reuters, UNICEF, Universal Music, University of Michigan, Viacom, Vimeo, and Yahoo!

Predicate, his original consultancy, was founded in 2008; Bucket is new to late 2016.

Predicate’s focus is to define content offerings and product strategies. Bucket’s approach is to help organizations grapple with personalization, marketing automation, and content operations.

His consulting, speaking, and advisory work spans cultural institutions, startups, and the Fortune 50.

Clients of Bucket Studio and Predicate, LLC

Clients of Bucket Studio and Predicate, LLC

Selected thinking

Progressive Personalization: Designing a Better Personalized Experience
A framework to design for personalization today.

You Don’t Need Personalization 
So you say. A zoology of naysayers and naysaying.

Navigating the Personalization Gap: A Field Guide (Updated 2019) 
Success in a personalization initiative requires understanding the solutions landscape—and the true place of your needs within it. 

Notification Schemes are Raw or Cooked
There are two ways of looking at how to work with notifications. One is right.

Stay in the loop with Bucket’s efforts, and we’ll do our best to provide assistance—incorporating tips and techniques on ways to address challenges you share with us (anonymously, of course) through our existing speaking and publishing activities.

—How to uncover business opportunity in personalized experience

—How to design for personalized experience

—How to get started with personalization

—Where to get started with personalization or marketing automation

—How to master connected CX in a large organization

Feed us your best ideas.

Want to connect on something specific? Book a time to talk today or find us on Twitter.

Selected workshops & talks

KM Showcase 2020 | 4-5 March 2020
Knowledge Pros: Heroes to Personalization Programs Everywhere

Content Ops Summit | 9-10 December 2019
Orchestrating CX, Minus the Orchestra

Taxonomy Bootcamp 2019 | 5 November 2019
Taxonomy and Personalization

(with Salesforce and Tendo Communications)

Creating Connected Experiences 

MarTech Boston | 16 October 2018

Stop acquiring more marketing technology and start better connecting it to your digital customer experiences. This event will help you realize the full potential of your existing martech investment by better aligning it to your customer experience strategy and digital execution.

BUX | 25 October 2018
Design for Personalization, Or: Never Send a Marketer or Technologist to Do a UXer’s Job

UXPA DC | 12 April 2018
Putting Personalization in Your UX Playbook

JC-UX | 15 November 2017
Craft Your Personalization POV

What folks say. Bucket Studio in the conversation online.

CPP Boston | 12 February 2020

Proceedings from the semiannual meeting [PDF]