Garrick Schmitt
Garrick Schmitt is Vice President of User Experience at Avenue A | Razorfish. Over the past eight years, he has helped a range of Fortune 500 clients and industry leaders envision and deliver breakthrough customer experiences across multiple platforms.
Most recently, Garrick has focused on emerging media, publishing and eCommerce. He has lead the design and development of several user-generated video products, a broadcast network, a mobile service and redesigned several specialty retailers.
In addition, he leads an in-house innovation team at Avenue A | Razorfish that is focused on next-generation consumer applications and technologies—including social media, viral messaging, mobile applications, interactive advertising and IPTV. He recently authored Avenue A | Razorfish’s Digital Design Outlook http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/reports/RegDDO2007.html, as well as writing and editing the company’s Digital Design Blog http://www.digitaldesignblog.com
Prior to joining Avenue A | Razorfish, Garrick developed localized broadband content at Cox Interactive Media for Excite @Home and Looksmart and worked on early search and directory services for CNET’s Search.com and Snap.com, a media portal that later became NBCi.
Blog Posts
Short Blogging Break Update — Back in October
--September has nearly come and gone and still no blog posts. We’ve been buried with new work and prepping the release of our original consumer...
Short Blogging Break — Back in September
--As many of you may have noticed, posting has been a little light over the past few weeks. We’ve been buried with new initiatives, clients and...
Disruptive Mobility Roundup: m-Banking in the Maldives, WordPress hits the iPhone, AdMob AdMonitors
--Mobile Banking in the Maldives Interesting BBC article on how the banks of the small Indian Ocean nation have collaborated to offer a single mobile...
US Mobile Internet Hits “Critical Mass” for Marketing Efforts
--Nielsen is out with some interesting stats on the US mobile Internet market. According to Nielsen, the US is the global leader (!) in mobile Intern...
Best and Worst of Social Network Marketing, 2008
--Forrester is out with a report this week on the “Best and Worst of Social Network Marketing in 2008.” Jeremiah Owyang, who authored the...
Google’s Krauss On Connecting People, Killer Apps
--We’ve been doing a lot of work lately on understanding consumer digital behavior and the adoption curve of Internet technologies. Needless to...
Disruptive Mobility Roundup: Free Apps From iTunes, Mobile Design Gets Intelligent, Sony’s “Full Change”
--Never mind the iPocalypse - some of the best iphone apps will be free Let’s not talk about the fact that I’m still trying to restore m...
Facebook Previews New Design, Profile Pages
--As the not-so-secret Facebook redesign readies for launch, the company is asking users and developers for feedback on the new profile page layout: ...
The Major Revolution in Microformats
--Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take the reviews and ratings of a product from one site and automatically plug it into your blog? Or if you ...
Top 12 Digital Design Posts of 2008, So Far…
--We have hit the halfway point in 2008. So, as we start to gear-up for the July 4th holiday weekend (and put the Digital Design Blog on a short vaca...
Social Media Hasn’t Killed Off The Traditional Marketing Funnel, Yet
--Back in December my colleague Shiv Singh made 10 predictions about how social media would change the way we do business in 2008. He forecast gloom...
The Data Source Dilemma: Can Anyone Make The Numbers Add Up?
--John Battelle has a fascinating interview with ComScore founder and Chairman Gian Fulgoni on his Searchblog today. The majority of the interview fo...
Reframing Online Retail Around Experiences, Not Products
--The battle for customers, whether online or off, has always been fierce for retailers. But even more so online, where consumers are literally a cli...
Are You Passionate About Interaction Design and Design Thinking?
--Do you believe that digital means more than websites? Do you enjoy designing applications equally as much as presenting at industry conferences? Do...
Tag Cloud Art: The Ultimate In Geek Chic
--Think tag clouds are unsightly? You are not alone. The folks at Wordle, a Java-based “word cloud” generator are helping tag clouds move...
Digital Brands vs. Traditional Brands: Is There Really A Difference?
--Last week my colleague Joe Crump discussed “Digital Darwinism” at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. He argues, very persuasively, that...
The Top 50 Apps on Facebook: Slide, RockYou Dominate
--Today the Inside Facebook blog, an independent publication tracking Facebook for developers and marketers, released a run-down of the top 50 most a...
Disruptive Mobility Roundup: Cellphone Anthropology, Delta Barcodes and Skydeck
--The Cellphone Anthropologist Jan Chipchase is a design researcher slash corporate anthropologist who works for Nokia. His job involves traveling t...
Talk Is Cheap: Why Do Social Media Advocates Give Advertising Such Bad Rap ?
--This week I appeared on a marketing-focused panel, called Marketing S.O.S!, at Supernova ‘08 in San Francisco. Joining me were Kuiumarse Zama...
No Academic Pursuit: Making The Case For Adaptive UIs
--Any consumer who has made a purchase at Amazon.com understands what a personalized experience on today’s Web looks like — essentially p...
Re-Thinking Digital Design: How To Feel Your Way To Innovation
--Innovation can be defined simply as “introducing something new for the first time”, according to The Myths of Innovation author, Scott ...
Supernova ‘08: Marketing in the Network Age
--Supernova, one of the best technology conferences, is kicking off in San Francisco next week. The theme is how to best navigate the “network ...
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
--This article by my favorite contrarian/futurist Nicholas Carr is the hot topic of the day. The main theme: Is the Internet changing the way we thin...
You’ve Been Rickrolled!: When Geek Chic Internet Phenomena Goes Mainstream
--This past week getting “Rickrolled” went mainstream. That’s when a number of political blogs, including Wonkette and Andrew Sulli...
Social Media Hasn’t Killed Off The Traditional Marketing Funnel, Yet
--Back in December my colleague Shiv Singh made 10 predictions about how social media would change the way we do business in 2008. He forecast gloom...
Note To Start-Ups: Advertisers Could Not Care Less About Your Site, App or Widget
--A few of us attended this week’s Dealmaker’s Forum Under the Radar Social Media + Entertainment Conference in Mountain View. It’s...
Disruptive Mobility Roundup: Virgin Mobile, Fon, and ZYB
--Half the World’s Population Has at Least One Mobile Phone The Daily Telegraph reports that mobile phone usage has reached 49 percent penetrat...
Don’t Stop Believing: YouTube Is The New A&R
--Bypassing a reality game-show, ala INXS, Journey scours YouTube to find a replacement for lead-singer Steve Perry. The result, Arnel Pineda, a 40-y...
Google Android Comes To Life: Demo Video From I/O In SF
--Google’s Android has progressed by leaps and bounds since CES. The demo at Google’s I/O developer conference in SF is stunning. Definit...
Empty Promises, Damaged Brands: When the Digital and Physical Collide
--With the increasing focus on total customer experience – the philosophy that micro-experiences in their entirety are strong influencers in defining...
On Muxtape, Twitter, and the Future of Web Services and Platforms
--My favorite web service of 2008 is Muxtape which, inspired the analog mix tape cassette culture of the 80s and 90s, allows users to create their ow...
Emerging Media Trends: Getting (Wii) Fit, UGC Cell Phone Minutes, Contextual TV
--1. O.K., Avatar, Work With Me – The Introduction of the Wii Fit What is it? The Wii has become the best-selling gaming console of our time, selling...
R/GA, AKQA and Avenue A | Razorfish on the Future of Digital Agencies
--I spent last week in New York at our agency’s annual event, the Avenue A | Razorfish Client Summit. Part soirée, part agency showcase an...
Facebook Releases Top 25 Most Popular Pages: Brits Dominate
--Our office is buzzing this afternoon about the recently released Top 25 Most Popular Pages on Facebook. The top spot goes to Barack Obama with 834,...
TubeTagger: Semantic Concepts To Fuel Next Gen of Video Search
--Finding video on the web has been a pretty hit or miss affair for quite some time. This is due to the fact that we solely rely on the descriptions ...
The Hotel of the Future?
--What does the hotel of the future look like? It’s a common question and a massive opportunity given the relationship that many travelers have...
Google Maps Integrates Panoramio Geo-tagged Photos and Wikipedia
--Google integrated Panoramio’s Geotagged photographs and Wikipedia articles to Google Maps. Google purchased them in May of last year. The Wikipedia...
Disruptive Mobility Roundup: Blackberry, MSFT and AT&T Join Contest Fray
--Blackberry announces mobile application contest It all began with Nokia and its MobileRules contest. Then Google announced the Android Developer C...
Understanding Micro-Interactions and the New Brand Ecosystem
--If I mention Apple, the first person that pops into most people’s minds is Steve Jobs. If I mention Microsoft it is Bill Gates. They are the ...
Enter the Zooming User Interface (ZUI): Spatial Expirements On Rise
--The ZUI, or zooming user interface, seems to be on the rise as websites with 3D aspects to them proliferate. ZUIs fundamentally change the feel of ...
Emerging Media Trends: Twittering House, Mobile Sweets, Virtual Festivals
--1. Home Tweet Home: Energy-Savvy House Broadcasts on Twitter What is it? A small number of nerdy homeowners are combining Web 2.0 and eco-conscious...
Adobe Launches Open Screen Project
--Adobe, in a bid to increase the proliferation of Flash and Air installations across platforms and devices, launched “The Open Screen Project” and ...
McDonald’s Enters Mobile Coupon Market
--McDonald’s is running a trial in 113 store across Nevada, Utah and Wyoming to test mobile coupons using the Cellfire mobile application. Cust...
Advertisers Catch The Twitter Bug, But Too Small To Matter?
--Advertisers are starting to move, en masse, towards Twitter but is it too small to matter? Southwest Airlines and JetBlue have taken the lead and ...
Spike Lee, Nokia and the Democratization of Film
--Spike Lee and Nokia Productions are joining forces to create a film consisting of video shot from mobile devices, according to Reuters. There will ...
Emerging Media Trends: Plum Crazy, Shopping 2.0 and Sony’s Bubble Bath
--1. Plum, the Color, Is Having Its Star Turn What is it? Is plum really the new black? Marketers have recently embraced the color in everything ...
Consumer 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Changing Moods, Metrics, & Monetization
--The Web 2.0 Expo is kicking into high gear tomorrow in San Francisco. I’ll be participating on the Consumer 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Changing Mood...
In Defense of Social Simplicity: Why Idiomag Gets It Right
--In this age of microblogging and social integration, it is nice to run across a site that has a singular purpose. Idiomag, a music magazine, combin...
Online Is The New Primetime
--ComScore came out with some interesting data around internet usage and TV viewing habits recently. Marv Pollack, who posted his findings on the Com...
It’s In The Mail: Thoughts About Designing Meaningful Email Interactions
--Engagement is the cornerstone of email marketing’s value to a business. All the things we love about the channel exist to support and foster ...
Emerging Media Trends: Unlike.net, Twitter Me This and Flickr Videos
--Every week we send out updates on emerging media trends across Avenue A | Razorfish. Now we’ve decided to share them with you as well. H...
IA Summit 2008: User-Centred Design Is Dead?
--Jared Spool, the IA Summit 2008 keynote speaker, posited the idea that UCD was an out-dated methodology that should be retired by the UX community....
MIT and BofA to create “Innovation Engine”
--Bank of America, in partnership with MIT Media Lab, has announced it will fund up to $15 million for the creation of the Center for Future Banking....
IA Summit 2008: Do Real People Really Use Tag Clouds?
--Here’s the presentation that I’m giving at the IA Summit in Miami on consumer behavior and Web 2.0. It’s called Do Real People Re...
Behavioral Targeting: From Site Conversion to Acquisition and Beyond
--Relevancy. 2007 was the breakout year for behavioral targeting for both solution providers and marketers. According to Forrester Research, more tha...
Innovation at Your Fingertips: Designing for Multi-Touch
--How do you design one of the first multi-touch, multi-user interface experiences for a retail environment? That’s what our Avenue A | Ra...
Scrolling: Do They or Don’t They? A Data-Driven Analysis
--We’ve all heard it: “Web users don’t scroll.” But through our analytics work, our team has found very little actual data to...
Smorgasfeed: Designing an RSS Inspired Future
--It’s come up again, with my current client, as it has with almost every project I’ve worked on: How do you put all the important information on the...
Yahoo Raises Mobile Internet Bar With oneSearch 2.0
--Yesterday at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas, Yahoo introduced the new version of their Mobile search. This latest incarnation of mobile ...
Muxtape and the Future of Music
--Who would think that uniquely digital re-invention of the much beloved (and seriously antiquated) mix tape would be setting the music blogsphere at...
Web Pranks Run Rampant On April Fool’s Day
--I woke up this morning and checked my Gmail and saw a new feature alert for “Google Custom Time“: I thought to myself … er this could ...
CitySearch Brings 2D Barcodes to San Francisco
--Rolling out one of the biggest — if not the only — large scale urban 2D barcode program in the U.S., CitySearch will now be tagging sc...
How Digital Can Save Starbucks and Why “My Starbucks Idea” May Not
--Starbucks, more than any other company, has given rise to the “experience economy.” But today the company, with its sagging stock price, is in a de...
Quick Web Design Hits For Hard Economic Times
--Last week I had the opportunity to talk to a leading industry analyst about a number of potential small web site investments that marketers and pu...
More Than Messaging: Voicemail 2.0?
--There has been a lot of discussion recently about how web design is influencing mobile. You don’t hear as much about how phone interface desi...
Weekend Fun: Photoshop Disasters
--Reason # 238 that we love the Internet: The Photoshop Disasters Blog.“With great power comes great responsibility” is the tag line at t...
Scrolling Enthusiasts, Unite!
--Once upon a time, long pages that forced users to scroll were anathema. ‘Nobody looks below the fold,’ design stakeholders cried. ̵...
The Next Open Platform: Gaming Systems
--We’ve seen it with personal computers and we’re seeing it with mobile phones, so it’s interesting to note that video game console...
The Long Tail: Has the Bird Flown?
--Wired Editor Chris Anderson has had a profound effect on the internet industry with his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling ...
The Lost Posts: Adweek and Ad Age Weigh in on Future of Digital Design
--At this point we’ve just about given up on retrieving our lost data from earlier this week. Here’s a quick recap of what we covered: A...
Airlines Embrace 2D Barcodes For Electronic Boarding Passes
--Continental has started testing electronic passes as an alternative to paper boarding passe. Travelers simply display a 2D barcode on their mobile ...
Technical Difficulties
--Still don’t know why, but our servers went down last night. We are rebuilding today and have backed up to last Friday. Thanks for your patience.
Adweek on Form + Function in Online Advertising, Digital Design Blogs
--In a great article on the changing digital landscape, Form + Function, Adweek’s Brian Morrissey named Avenue A | Razorfish’s Digit...
On Cloud Computing, Mobile Demographic Diversity and Wireless User-Generated Content
--How open will wireless networks be to user-generated content? This is a key question posed in a report published by the Pew Internet & American...
The Web Agency: There Will Be Blood…Or Not?
--And if there is going to be blood in the digital agency world, who’s blood will it be? That was the question (or more accurately “quest...
Social Media Dominates Conversation at SXSW
--Social media, social networking and just about any other type of digital communication literally dominated the conversation at this year’s SX...
SxSW Keynote: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder and CEO
--Photo Source: Wired Blog Referred to by some industry analysts as a train wreck interview, there is no shortage of opinions debating the merits of...
SxSW: The 10 Things We’ve Learned at 37 Signals
--I went to Jason Fried’s talk about what he’s learned from starting 37 Signals, the Chicago-based company responsible for Basecamp and Highrise. Wit...
SxSW Opening Remarks: The Youth of Today is Engaged, Creative and Politically Active
--A lively and thought provoking panel between Henry Jenkins (MIT professor and Cultural Theorist) and Stephen Johnson, CEO of outside.in and author...
Rocking the Digital World at SxSW Interactive 2008
--SxSW Interactive is now well and truly underway. The crowds have gathered. This year the Interactive Festival is expecting more than 7500 attendee...
Hitting the Open Road for SXSW
--Like many of you, we too are packing our bags for this years’ SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. The schedule, events and party list...
Apple Releases iPhone SDK, VCs respond with $100 million “iFund”
--To coincide with the much anticipated release of the iPhone Software Development Kit, venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers...
On Millennials, Marketing and Money: Why design for Gen Y?
--Do we really need to create unique digital experiences for Gen Y? That’s the running debate I’ve been having with some of my colleagues...
The Politics of Digital Participation
--Wired.com has a great piece on Barack Obama’s utilization of the Internet and custom social networking tools to fuel his ‘Net-centric c...
Does the Home Page Still Matter?: Why Distribution Trumps Destination Online
--From the Avenue A | Razorfish’s Digital Outlook Report…my take on why marketers, advertisers and web site publishers are still pla...
A Global Tipping Point for Cellphone Ubiquity?
--Joel Garreau of the Washington Post has written a very interesting piece on the social impact of mobile telephony titled Our Cells, Ourselves. In i...
Information Visualization and the Art of Making Data Easy to Digest Online
--Much has been made of Mint.com, a money management site that makes it easy to get an aggregated picture of how you spend your money, regardless of ...
The World’s Most Recognized Brand Spent How Much on Advertising?
--Google was recently rated by Millward Brown’s Brandz report as the number one global brand, all the more suprising because Google does not ad...
Where to Spend $735 Million Dollars Online?
--On Monday Avenue A | Razorfish released its 2008 Digital Outlook Report, an annual report helps marketers, publishers, advertisers and others ...
The Evolution of Social Shopping: ThisNext and Lemonade.com
--Think about the last five or so products you purchased; how many of them were influenced by recommendations of friends or even random strangers? If...
Green Mobile Base Stations and the Economics of Renewable Energy
--There’s an interesting article by Jack Ewing in BusinessWeek that talks about how companies like Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens are embracing re...
Microsoft Expands Open Initiatives and Interoperability
--In a press release last week, Microsoft announced that it would increase the openness of its products by adhering to four new interoperabil...
What’s the Role of User Interface in Mobile Phones?
--On February 12 a panel of human behavior and technology experts gathered at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. One of the sessions was ...
Google to Test Video Ads in Search
--Get ready for the next wave of digital display and video advertising. From today’s New York Times: On Thursday, Google started testing video ...
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