Open for business:
Announcing Bucket Studio for 2019.
What does Bucket do?
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?
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.
The 3 keys to assessing business opportunity from connected CX.
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...
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. 
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
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.
Selected thinking
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.
No, really. People say swell things.
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
Read Bucket List, our newsletter.
Reach out anytime.
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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.
