2011: ATF New Year’s Resolutions

From left to right: Jim, Marli, Heather & Joe

2010 was a great year for us at ATF. We more than doubled our revenue, executed our own content strategy and landed two key accounts. There are many other successes that I could note, but this post isn’t about the past; it is about the future. What lies ahead for ATF in 2011?

We have 3 New Year’s resolutions (some may call these “company goals”) that we have our eyes set on:

1. Mobile UX Design

Resolution: Acquire 5 new mobile app projects by year-end.

It’s no doubt that mobile apps are a huge market. In fact, IDC predicts that the mobile app download market will grow from 10.9 billion in 2010 to 76.9 billion in 2014. And, with the monetary success of mobile, such as the Android app Beautiful Widgets which as grossed over a half million dollars since it’s release, you can imagine more companies are going to want to mobilize their services.

To start us off in this direction, we recently did a web and mobile UX design project for MediaFriends, the makers of the newly minted HeyWire – a web and mobile product that provides free international text messaging. Since their debut this past fall, they’ve garnered 3.5 stars out of 5 with 7,500+ ratings.

2. Evangelizing UX

Resolution: Support 5 new organizations in promoting and teaching UX.

Why didn’t I say “UX Design”? Well, because I like to think of UX as a mindset, and not a topic. And this mindset is what we at Above the Fold want everyone in the Boston business community to have when dealing with software. It may be design related, usability related, content related, accessibility related, and on and on.

Thus far, we have worked with Christine Perfetti to co-sponsor Boston UX Social Hour, but we don’t want to stop there. We think that the members from other groups, such as BostonPHP and Mass Innovation Nights can benefit tremendously from gaining a UX mindset and are building those relationships.

3. Grow

Resolution: Hire 2 more folks and double our revenue for 2011

Aside from our current and future hiring needs, we want to get the same double-digit growth we had this year. To do that, we not only need to increase our production capacity, but continue to optimize our internal processes so that we operate like a well-oiled machine.

We’re very fortunate to have such a creative team, dynamic clients and relationship-oriented partners. We hope that our resolutions will inspire you to create your own resolutions, be they for personal or business.

Happy New Year!