Open for business:
Announcing Bucket Studio for 2019.
What does Bucket do?
Bucket provides services and community to enable digital professionals to be more successful with connected digital experiences (CX/UX).
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.
Why should I care?
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.
We deliver strategy, execution, and analysis to make digital business efforts a success.
Bucket Studio is a boutique UX/CX practice dedicated to better personalization and connected experiences for digital professionals.
Across services, product, and community offerings, Bucket delivers high-performing, well-orchestrated customer experiences that users love and businesses envy—in every setting, at any scale, or any budget.
Bucket Studio delivers connected customer experiences, from:
1. small-squad design sprints with attention to performance measurement and optimization; to
2. proofs-of-concept that hatch personalization-driven programs and products; and to
3. hands-on implementation of a content marketing “factory floor,” yielding recurring business results across the customer lifecycle in a flywheel effect.
Bucket provides a range of services key to realizing the connected CX business opportunity.
PRODUCTS, EXPERIENCES, and PROOFS OF CONCEPT: Bucket designs for a full array of digital touchpoints, from sites and apps to emerging content formats, channels, and user interfaces. We mobilize small squads to accelerate test-and-learn insights in your digital setting.
STRATEGY and MANAGEMENT CONSULTING: Personalization is a daunting area of marketing technology. We assess and evaluate the shape of your business opportunity with personalized experience. Combined with our community services, Bucket Studio provides niche expertise in driving measurable results, brand differentiation, and clear direction for connected experience—finding the right fit for you across customization, automation, and personalization in your customer touchpoints.
- progressive personalization
- custom research and analysis
- tailored in-house workshops
- defining the best business and brand “fit” for personalized experience
- delivering a holistic, well-governed program
- vendor evaluation and implementation
- personalization strategy
- pre-personalization
- community coaching/learning
CONTENT OPERATIONS: Content is critical. All businesses have a stake in a more compelling customer experience, no matter the size, and content must perform. For content-focused clients, Bucket can tune and accelerate their business flywheel and their sales and marketing automation machines by focusing on making the most of content—and orchestrating high-performing user flows across the customer journey.
- taxonomy and metadata development
- optimization
- product and content strategy
Bucket’s principal and teams have conducted countless projects across numerous sectors and in many challenging works settings, working for some of the more signature brands on the planet.
See our testimonials on this site, request more that are available only offline, and connect with Jeffrey MacIntyre on LinkedIn to see many more.
Bucket is genuinely independent and positioned to advise you judiciously.
Apart from that, here are 3 factors that distinguish us from competitors in our domain:
Content subject matter expertise, the x-factor in personalization work. We understand how design and context impacts content ROI.
Information sciences rigor. In short, AI needs IA. Algorithms rely on architecture. We deliver a “smart” UX that weaponizes structured data.
Product-centric savvy in Bucket’s own progressive personalization technique, closing the competitive gap and revealing incremental business opportunity, creating value even through modest efforts.
See our thought leadership below to get a fuller taste of Bucket’s unique POV and approach.
Q. Can Bucket help me
A. Yes. Read on.
Aside from consulting, Bucket is committed to providing community resources to help enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to become more competitive and data-informed in their digital practices.
Watch this space for some exciting developments in 2019.
Stay tuned by subscribing to our newsletter, which treats subjects like this one, below.
The 3 keys to assessing business opportunity from connected CX.
Connected CX can increase revenues and impact KPIs. But how do you best scope that opportunity? The key to your team’s success with connected experience is closer at hand than you may realize. The following aren’t merely provocations—this is what we see unfolding in the market across brands large and small.
Budget is not your blocker. (Poor scoping will be.) There are a raft of well-regarded solutions outside the pricey enterprise tier of marketing automation and content management vendors, including suite products as well as standalone free or freemium ones. Personalization and marketing automation are no longer upmarket technologies.
“The right content to the right person at the right time” is the most dangerous catchphrase in connected experience. Why? Because it grossly simplifies a complex set of decisions.
While the tools are increasingly accessible and easy to use, the actual strategy and mechanics of personalized UX—what to tailor, for whom, and when—remain daunting. This is where expertise has value, and some seek external guidance.
The great challenges for personalized experiences today relate largely to trust, empathy, and thoughtfulness. Where design thinking and research is applied, personalized UX can thrive.
Between jobs-to-be-done and customer journeys, design can ensure the best feedback loop and a most user-centered approach: delivering holistic balance in your program, while driving business results.
(As a related bonus, traditional information architecture has already solved some of the most challenging decisions for how to decide what content to personalize.)
How can Bucket help my team? I'm a...
We provide ongoing advice and support through our community efforts.
Check out our targeted email conversations, new for 2019.
Stop us if any of this sounds familiar, CXOs and senior leaders:
—Uncertainty about how to manage internal and external expectations about the potential for connected CX
—Trying to navigate the solutions marketplace and make sound investments
—Multiple managers trying to govern and align business operations in a connected CX setting
Continue the conversation, and help us help you and your peers.
Subscribe to Bucket’s recurring dispatch for digital decisionmakers.
Oh, the non-stop thrill ride of the modern marketer, who lives at the ground zero of most connected CX programs. Sample scenarios may include:
—Marketing teams trying to scale and deepen their test-and-learn prowess
—Trying to govern and align with business operations
—Product teams seeking input from you on sequencing and scoping of various features
—Attempting to play traffic cop while repurposing creative assets and generally juggling the demands of an always-on factory floor for your marketing machine
Continue the conversation, and help us help you and your peers.
Subscribe to Bucket’s recurring dispatch for digital marketers.
Stop us if we’re being a broken record here:
—Tying to scope and sequence personalized functionality for the roadmap
—Navigating the solutions landscape
—Pressing needs for better, more structured data
—Delicate collaborative dynamics with marketing, management, and UX
Continue the conversation, and help us help you and your peers.
Subscribe to Bucket’s recurring dispatch for product management professionals.
Have you ever heard the one about the designer stuck between a rock and a hard place?
—Advocating for users’ interests and engagement
—How to apply user research to influence the roadmap and feature set
—How to build a “content machine” to fuel a marketing automation tool
—Trying to design for conversational user interface, like bots
Continue the conversation, and help us help you and your peers.
Subscribe to Bucket’s recurring dispatch for user experience professionals.
Still shy? You can also stay connected by subscribing to our newsletter or following on Twitter.


Jeffrey MacIntyre, Principal
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.
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.
Project squads available
We’re veterans of large- and small-team projects (many times over).
We also thrive in working with tight-knit teams, doing guerrilla design.
Bucket regularly taps subject matter experts across major digital disciplines to form purpose-built teams for special assignments, from designers and developers to SEO and technology-specific specialists. Our network of fellow independents spans New York, the U.S., and abroad. We’d be happy to hear about your needs and work from there to assemble the key resources.
Project results
A conversion rate at 70% on a 35% open rate
A software-as-a-service client got a kickstart to automating its email marketing efforts.
Busy users loved contextual notifications so much, they asked for more
A widely praised proof-of-concept for role-based personalization was delivered on time, under budget.
2+2=6 when content library nirvana is achieved
New product features and a big business opportunity became possible when a taxonomy crosswalk was delivered, harmonizing two content libraries.
This is a sampling. We work directly with clients and also partner with agencies and other parties.
For more project highlights, see Predicate’s track record.
Bucket was hatched from Predicate in 2016.
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 2017 Field Guide
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
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.

Recent interviews & panels
THE BIG WEB SHOW with Jeffrey Zeldman | 18 October 2018
#180: Where AI Meets IA: Improving Digital Personalization with Jeffrey MacIntyre
What people say.
All, take this seriously, Jeff is a talented and major thinker on these topics…! https://t.co/WEqXL3gC1i
— John Berndt (@rjohnberndt) October 22, 2017
This Thursday: Marvel at failtastic applications of #personalization, learn how you can start integrating it into your practice, and avoid common pitfalls with @jeffmacintyre at @SCPublicSector #UX #ContentStrategy #design #DC RSVP: https://t.co/uKcxgaXLOj
— UXPA DC Chapter (@uxpadc) April 9, 2018
Dense and worth it: @jeffmacintyre unpacks the UX challenges in product personalization—and the stakes if we fail. https://t.co/19jU8ANZfM
— zeldman (@zeldman) July 28, 2017
Why should we care about #personalization? Because our clients do! #contentstrategy #UX @jeffmacintyre of
@ThisIBucket at@SCPublicSector pic.twitter.com/Vl1cTN1cK3— UXPA DC Chapter (@uxpadc) April 12, 2018
So much fun listening to @jeffmacintyre wit & wisdom on Personalization POV (brands need to design one) #jc-ux meetup TY @orangelemons52
— Lawrence Lipkin (@lawrencelipkin) November 16, 2017
Workshoppin’ away with @BryanFromBoston and @jeffmacintyre at @MarTechConf #martechconf pic.twitter.com/WlbTcZMkwx
— jeff cram (@jeffcram) October 1, 2018
I see a lot of people talking nonsense about personalization and this is decidedly good sense from @jeffmacintyrehttps://t.co/N8h1g1hutP
— KARE🎄 MCGRA🎄E (@karenmcgrane) July 11, 2017
Fascinating read on personalization in product design. It's rather long, but definitely worth your time if you ever plan on creating personalized UX
“Progressive Personalization: Designing a Better Personalized Experience” @jeffmacintyre https://t.co/Anvoft7h9b
— The Life Of Ty (@tsmorro) December 23, 2017
“Strategy is the art of getting where you need to go” — @jeffmacintyre https://t.co/UEuyZYg6ad
— Sena Quashie, PGG (@AyigbeMantse) April 14, 2018
Personalization is a fought over buzzword. What happens when you say "Yea, but we don't need it" @jeffmacintyre https://t.co/umYZlitmIi
— dscout (@dscout) August 18, 2017
In Baltimore Oct. 25? Don’t miss “Design for Personalization: Or, Never Send a Marketer or Engineer to Do a UXer’s Job,” featuring the brilliant @jeffmacintyre of @ThisIsBucket Studio – master of personalized product opportunity.https://t.co/8SYj90G0wW
— zeldman (@zeldman) October 17, 2018
No, really. People say swell things.
Further testimonials are available by request and via LinkedIn.




After identifying key opportunities across our customer journey, he helped us pilot and standardize test-and-learn marketing campaigns. He did highly tactical work in our email channel, moving from campaigns to automations, while maintaining a strategic view on CAC and LTV.
He delivered results across a series of initial campaigns with mid-five-figure reach. We saw in one campaign conversions at 70% on 35% open rates. He included a full and transparent debrief report assessing the performance of his marketing work. I credit him with successfully demonstrating the impact that data-driven product marketing can bring. He brought not just strategy but executional chops.
It's easy to recommend Bucket Studio and Jeff for:
—aligning customer experience with product marketing strategy
—kickstarting your marketing automation machine
—ongoing coaching and support

Follow Bucket.
⚡️ @ThisIsBucket: A new consultancy for product teams: personalization, recommenders, bots + content discovery.https://t.co/d5LBOQiwqS
— Jeffrey MacIntyre 🤟🎯 (@jeffmacintyre) January 17, 2017
Read Bucket List, our newsletter.
Reach out anytime.
It’s easy to dial up a videoconference and I enjoy meeting new folks and learning about their challenges. I would love to hear from you.
Looking forward to it!
Jeffrey MacIntyre
Kindly leave a detailed message if we are unable to pick up.
Or consider using our do-it-yourself scheduling service to instantly schedule a call.
Bucket Holdings in based in New York, with offices in the bucolic Hudson Valley, about one hour from Manhattan’s Grand Central Station.
Bucket Holdings
291 Main Street
Beacon, NY 12508
We’re in the lovely old post office building, a cherished local landmark.
