Three Options - Like it, Garbage, Crap

Risk Model Inversion

2011-09-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years I have had several discussions with colleagues, co-workers and friends around turning their mental models of risk management upside down (at least as far as it applies to taking risks within a particular job or consulting engagement).

Way back in 2003 I had just accepted a new job at a fortune 500 company and did "the unexpected". I took a big risk in my first project. Coming from the outside, I was surprised to learn that my employer at that time had not been using conventional UX practices or deliverables in their projects. I went to both my teammates and to my leadership and told them that the best way for my project to be successful was to create wireframes and perform a paper-prototype test on the interface (neither of which had they ever seen before). I did this knowing one basic truth:

Starting at day 1 in any job or engagement, your ability to try new things or to get change-oriented requests approved decreases over time. Stated another way: People don't like to crush the spirit of the new guy/gal.

The enthusiasm and energy of the new recruit is a cherished asset that will erode over time. Most clients, managers and co-workers, in my experience, unconsciously seek to extend that honeymoon period of rose-colored glasses by allowing the new teammate to demonstrate their capabilities (i.e., "give them enough rope to hang themselves").

Many people I personally know have tended to go the opposite direction and follow their instincts in choosing to "play it safe and establish themselves" in their new role before "shaking things up". In my experience, this rarely works and in fact works less the further/higher you go in your career. Case in point: a colleague who opined that one of his friends, who was the president of his firm, was unable to make the changes he thought were necessary to increase the overall chances of success within his shop. This was very curious to me as I sometimes have a hard time understanding why autonomy is not pushed down along with responsibility within organizations. In response to my question he summed it up thusly:

"He has been in his job 2 years and has not been able to meet the one part of the established success criteria. Given his perceived shortcomings, why would the owner/board take the risk now?"

Most leaders put someone in a position to fill some gap. Whether it's solving a problem or taking advantage of an opportunity, the wishful-thinking perception of the leader (especially the higher you go) is that the new resource will be "fire and forget" (i.e., give basic direction and then hear the good news at the end of the project or the engagement).

The dynamics in the large organizations I have worked with, tend toward rewarding those who perform without flaw rather than those who exhibit a presence of strength. This bias leads to any flaw becoming magnified and being used as the catch-all reason to not moving into unfamiliar territory (because most humans and animals alike correlate unfamiliar with uncomfortable). This discomfort with the unfamiliar tends to be smaller in magnitude than the discomfort of crushing the spirit of the new guy, but depressingly is larger in magnitude than the discomfort of saying no to the established person even if the established person has a good track record (see chart below).

The point where the two discomforts become close enough to flip the bias of the decision maker tends to happen somewhere between 90 and 180 days. I believe this is specifically because most of these types of decisions are made based upon qualitative relationship dynamics. The better you get to know a person, the more comfortable you become in pushing back. In other words familiarity breeds contempt where contempt equals comfort in being the source of disillusionment or disappointment.

I'm not sure I know how to solve this, in fact I am sure that I don't know. I only claim to have a method to identify a time to take risks when the tolerance for change is greatest.

Rating Time:

Playing it safe at the beginning: Garbage

Taking timely risks intelligently: Like it

"Remember that postcard Grandpa sent us from Florida of that Alligator biting that woman's bottom? That's right, we all thought it was hilarious. But, it turns out we were wrong. That alligator was sexually harrassing that woman." - Homer Simpson

True value

2011-09-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

Those who work with me know that I am often wont to say: "The best value good user experience consulting can bring to executives of medium to large enterprises is sleep at night." In my experience, executives in medium to large companies are plagued by a downward spiral dynamic that leaves executives awake at night trying to find answers to questions.

The CIOs ask themselves: "Why do they hate me?"

The CMOs, and many other business leaders, ask themselves: "Why don't they get it?"

The dysfunctional spiral I am referring to is so pervasive in corporate America that many a professional has given up on trying to improve things. People don't see any way out. It's been this way forever. It's been this way before most employees started working for the enterprise and it'll be this way after most people change jobs or retire. There are many contributing scenarios that result in this dynamic and I'll attempt to illustrate a few them here:

Scenario 1: Quantitative success can still mean qualitative failure.

Marketing/Business Executive: "I have an a great idea. Let's build a new system to automate process X. We'll save a million dollars annually!"

IT Executive: "That is a great idea. Let's start the process"

Marketing/Business Executive: "ugh!"

<insert corporate business case budgeting processes here>

Marketing/Business Executive: "OK! My team has made an business case. I am allocating X dollars in budget. Get to it!"

IT Executive: "Great! Let's start the requirements gathering process"

Marketing/Business Executive: "ugh!"

<insert requirements gathering processes here>

IT Executive: "My team has gathered requirements. Sign off here and we can start building it!"

Marketing/Business Executive: "Do I have any other choice?"

IT Executive: "Don't worry. Your team helped make the requirements. The system will do all of the things it says in the SRS."

Marketing/Business Executive: "OK. I guess."

<insert development processes here>

Marketing/Business Executive: "My team tells me that the system isn't what they were led to believe.

IT Executive: "My team tells me that the system meets all the requirements."

Marketing/Business Executive: "My team tells me nobody is going to use this thing."

IT Executive: "That's not my problem."Marketing/Business Executive: "ugh"

Scenario 1 | Epilogue
IT Teams more often than not judge success or failure in quantitative terms and use a checklist like approach to define success. This sort of language is aligned with most business executives, so projects float along until someone figures out it is a failure.

The developers and contractors are labeled as incompetent. Major blame is put on the nature of the organization itself as it is not in the position to make any effort to raise the level of talent in the work force.

The bodies are then hidden and crime scene cleaned up so nobody important gets a bad performance review (but that's a story for another day).

The known contributing factors to this dynamic are as follows:

The deployment centered methodology that is central to corporate culture in America - this orientation creates a development philosophy that believes that a wrong product served on time is sufficient.
The complete lack of understanding or appreciation that corporate leaders have developed with the regard to the skills and activities necessary to create quality experiences (agile methodology has shown some promise to fix this, but as it does not attempt to hit the dysfunction at it's root, only time will tell)
The IT bias towards functionalism and left-brained thinking. The idea that function is not only superior to form, but that form is irrelevant compared to function creates the space for the above scenario to start.
The root as I see it (and yes this is a recurring theme for me) - contempt for others. Contempt bleeds out as as a lack of respect for the perspectives, thoughts, methods, time, effort, etc. of others. Much of American culture, business or not, falls into a narrative cycle wherein everything should be simple and clean. If it is not simple and clean, than someone else is thinking incorrectly.

Scenario 2 | Scene 1: The shuffle.

Marketing/Business Executive: "I have an a great idea. Let's build a new system to automate process X. We'll save a million dollars annually!"

IT Executive: "That is a great idea. My development team can do it."

Marketing/Business Executive: "I've been down that road before. I want to outsource it."

IT Executive: "No! That will cost much more! Let our team do it!"

Marketing/Business Executive: "Well, alright. But it needs to be done next quarter and it can't cost more than X"

IT Executive: "No problem"

Scenario 2 | Scene 2: The deal.

IT Executive: "I saved this project from being outsourced. Don't screw it up."

Team: "With this deadline and budget restriction, we can't afford any training and we can't bring in any experts"

IT Executive: "I don't care to know how many bubbles are in a bar of soap. You asked me to keep the development work in-house and I did it. Now don't screw it up."

Team: "Ugh."

Scenario 2 | Scene 3: The flop.

Marketing/Business Executive: "This isn't what I wanted"

IT Executive: "Yes it is. It got done within the time limit and met the budget."

Marketing/Business Executive: "Ugh"

Scenario 2 | Epilogue
Business executives share the same misguided bias towards quantitative measures that IT personnel do, it just has a different set of targets: money and time. For some reason, executives can't seem to get on the same page about the realities of the contexts that face them (e.g., time constraints of the marketplace, skill constraints of the teams, the need for collaborative design work throughout a project lifecycle, the inherent risks in the waterfall model of traditional SDLCs, etc). With these realities, it's not a wonder that 3/4 of IT projects fail. The wonder is that the ratio is not higher.

The known contributing factors to this dynamic are as follows:

The American business paradigms that elevate short term results above all (this has been discussed in detail by people all over the world for more than 30 years).
The missing roles for research and design disciplines within large corporations (another story for another day).
The rampant practice of empire building within corporate America (I think this one has roots in American culture more than anything else).
Fear of change (this is part of the human condition)

What I find very curious, is that people don't actually use the same singular focus on budgets and time outside of work. People, in my experience are not as reluctant to bend personal deadlines and budgets to get what they really want. For some reason, there has been a failure in the business community to admit that the current dynamic is inherently broken and that the rules and very structure of the game need to be changed in order to fix it.

I do believe that the injection of UX perspectives is a step in the right direction. However, I believe this step can only reach its potential impact when UX professionals in combination with IT and business professionals separate needs from positions. Focusing on needs rather than positions is the only way, in my experience, to bring the warring tribes together before they kill their projects or one another.

Separating needs from positions isn't as hard as it seems and while it's not the sole province of UX, UX seems to be very well positioned to drive the dialogue. Ultimately, it requires a curious, empathic mind in search of authentic motivations. This is what, for me, separates UX from interface design. A desire to understand the answer to a question simple to pose but hard to answer;"Why?"

Rating time:

Typical american business/IT culture: Garbage

"I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here." - Homer Simpson

Contempt Hall of Fame

2011-09-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

Comcast and Blockbuster have been one-upped by Allstate. While not as brilliant as Comcast's outsourcing of system integration to it's customers, in terms of displaying blatant contempt for it's customers, Allstate has got it going on like Donkey Kong! The highlight came when an Allstate manager literally claimed that "Allstate is not accountable for the promises made by its employees". Talk about guts! Telling a customer that anything they or any other employee says to you is meaningless! Allstate must have hired a senior official from the US state department. No other organization knows that the only sure way to avoid dialogue is to systematically shut down the conditions necessary for dialogue to occur.

Think about it, what can you say after this? Given that any actual resolution has no future value what-so-ever, the possibility of a fruitful discussion is completely nil after this basic statement.

My specific disagreement with Allstate is in this case not the relevant factor. The real importance to me is the formalism (an emphasis on the ritual and observance of religious dogma, rather than its meaning) rampant in US companies and how it is destroying customer service inside and outside of enterprises. I saw a brilliant presentation from Netflix the other day which highlights the flip side of formalistic process-centric cultures.

Many organizations teach process as a thing to be worshipped separate from the intended state to be arrived at via adherence to the process. This fundamental flaw creates organizational dissonance (a context wherein an organization has internal discomfort based on mis-alignment of it processes and cultural mores). You'll see this when a company representative says that they want to help you because they believe you are right, but that they cannot because a process prevents them (side note - they never actually say this...it's usually articulated as "I'm sorry. I can't do that", which infuriates me more, because they don't actually mean either of these two sentences, but there does not seem to be much I can do about the fact that actual communication is a dying art form).

This is not the root of the problem however, The real root is a lack of commitment to hire "the right" people (i.e., smart people who are aligned with the vision and values of the company). Both the Netflix presentation and the well respected business book "Good to Great" explain the concept very well. Process centric cultures are created to lessen the effect of bad/mediocre hiring decisions. The long and short of it is explained in two steps:

Hire good people who are aligned with your values
Trust them to make decisions aligned with your values

An old boss of mine described me and another process-breaking colleague thusly: "The difference between you two is that he will act first and beg forgiveness later and that you will act first and then deny that forgiveness is needed at all." This is a pretty accurate description of me - In professional contexts I'm usually trying to act in a manner that is in direct alignment with the long term goals of my leadership.

The sorts of organizations that use formalism, have not grasped a great lesson from the military - "Commander's Intent". When my leadership asks me to do something, I ask an annoying list of detailed questions to suss out what they are actually trying to achieve and I use this understanding of intent to make the appropriate calls on the field. Arbitrary rules are for employees who cannot be trusted to make decisions appropriately. The question I ask of these organizations is this: "If you can't trust your people to make reasonably good decisions, then why did you hire them?"

Rating time:

Rigid processes that sap the spirit and passion from an organization - CRAP

"Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way." - Homer Simpson

What's holding back UX

2011-03-24T17:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know if my peers would agree with me.

On second thought I'm pretty sure they would disagree.

Actually, the more I think about it, they might even be skeptical about my claim to be their peer.

Which brings me back full circle to the title of this post - What's holding back UX.

UX is a niche discipline. UX strategy is a niche within a niche. Consulting organizations barely recognize UX at all. Some would argue with this point, but I believe that's because the big organizations that have UX professionals more often than not put them in the role of interaction designer and call it UX. Only a few private industry companies have just begun to allow the discipline into their organizations and a ridiculously small minority have actually created an operationalized talent and role structure to support the discipline. Most companies who hire Information Architects ram them into some other label in their existing structure because HR doesn't recognize the need for a discernment.

Is this because the discipline is "new"?

That just doesn't ring true to me. When businesses started bringing programmers into their companies in the 60's and 70's, I dont think they were shy about calling them programmers or system analysts or some other unique label. And even if they did not know what to call them, it did not take the dozen years that UX has been a formal discipline to create a unique title taxonomy within industry.

So why is UX a niche discipline? I have a unique theory.

Pretentiousness.

I have been formally working in the field since 1999 and was a avid reader of HCI books back in 1993. I still to this day get judged all the time by other UX professionals because I came at UX from technology. In 1999, because I was an engineer, other UX practitioners assumed that I not only lacked an ability to design useable interactions, but even went so far as to say that listening to my input was by definition a waste of time. While not all designers or researchers or strategists or visual designers treated me like this (big props to my peeps who worked with me on cancer.org and vitaminshoppe.com), the vast majority went out of their way to snub me and every other software engineer or architect I worked with because we were, in their eyes, not educated in design. This attitude is still rampant today and may even be more so with the hordes of graduates from formal HCI programs across the country.

There are too many flaws and horrible repercussions of this to name, but I'll go over my top 5:

1) Not all engineers or non-designers are alike. Many of us actually care that something will be adopted and used. While I whole-heartedly agree that there are way too many technologists who are too biased by how much perceived effort it takes to write code to make something work in a particular way, it is not universal. And i truly believe that if anyone took the time to show the engineers the math behind why making something useful, usable and desirable was the right thing to do for the business, they would be on the bandwagon cheering the loudest. Any software geek I have worked with has been easily converted to User Centered methodology once they understood why it was superior during the discovery, concept and design phases of a project. The numbers are just too compelling for a geek to deny.

2) The exclusionary attitude scuttles the whole philosophical premise of UX - people count and deserve to be treated in a way that makes them feel respected. You can't be taken seriously as a practitioner who supposedly cares about people's perception when your demeanor towards your teammates is so arrogant.

3) Revolutionary breakthroughs in any discipline only come from those who can see past the conceptual boundaries that hold back transformative progress. Non-designers have something designers lack - a lack of knowledge of convention of the design industry. The very reason their input is met with disdain is the reason they should be embraced.

4) UX needs more allies. We have to fight to get in on strategy and concept. And sometimes even have to fight during the design process. The more allies UX has, the less adversarial the process will be, and subsequently more opportunities, acceptance and success will follow.

5) Work actually can be fun. The most fun projects I have worked on are the ones where the collaborative multi-disciplinary process was set up as "play time". Weather its a design slam or an ideation workshop, collaborative projects are more fun and are more often more successful (duh...teams that like and respect each other more often than not produce better work).

Some readers may argue that software geeks can often be this way too. I agree, but it's just not as pervasive in my experience.

One seemingly esoteric ingredient that I believe has led us all to this place of pretentiousness is surprisingly enough the semantics of the disciplinary labels them selves. When you label disciplines and people as "Creatives", "Designers" and "Technologists" or other variations on these themes, it is an implicit slight to the people on the outside. Are UX professionals who use crazy hard applications not technical? Are software geeks who solve ridiculous challenges not creative designers? This may be heresy in the field, but I believe that being more careful in how we create and apply these labels will go a long way to starting to tear down the adversarial boundaries between the disciplines.

Rating time:

Pretentiousness of disciplines: Crap

Acceptance of outside perspectives: Like it

"If you really want something in life you have to work for it. Now quiet, they're about to announce the lottery numbers." - Homer Simpson

Official prognostication

2011-01-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

I'm a relatively avid user of LinkedIn.com and I can easily say it falls into the bucket of "like it" for me.

This does not mean, however, that the site cannot be improved. I had an idea a couple of weeks back that I believe to be inevitable and it would not surprise me if LinkedIn is the first to do it.

I have given and received my fair share of recommendations on LinkedIn, but I know that they are pretty close to worthless. It is my belief that the recommendations are only really used by the people getting the recommendation, and not at all in the way that they seem to be intended - to allow a third person to gauge if they would like to work with or hire the person being recommended.

Think about it for a second. Do the recommendations actually have the supposed effects that they are intended for?

Do recruiters or hiring managers or clients really look to see if a person has recommendations? Maybe, but I doubt it.
Do recruiters or hiring managers or clients actually read recommendations? Maybe, but I highly doubt it.
Do recruiters or hiring managers or clients take the recommendations into consideration when making a hiring decision? Maybe, but I completely doubt it.

Why would any of these effects take place when everyone knows that the person being recommended can filter all the recommendations anyway? Everyone already knows what your friends would say about you in an open forum if you had complete editorial control.

So if they don't have these effects what effects do they have? I'll throw a couple I find much more likely out there:

The recommendation alerts people in the network of the person being recommended that they are a flight risk from their current job.
The receiver of the recommendation is likely to post a recommendation for the giver of the recommendation as a gesture of gratitude to the giver.
That's it. I'm stumped after that.

So I got to thinking....what would actually result in the desired end state of influencing a person's ability to get an opportunity? Then it hit me.

Create an open rating ecosystem for people just like movies on Rotten Tomatoes or products on Amazon.

Now before you think I'm completely insane, please hear me out.

In my scenario, Person A (let's call her Alice) could decide on her profile to set ratings and recommendations to 1 of 3 levels where Alice's profile calls out what model she has set.

Authenticated - any person who is willing to have their identity linked to the rating can say whatever they want, rate the person as a professional on some sort of scale (as simple as 1 to 5 stars, or as complex as a multi-dimensional rating system, it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this topic) and Alice cannot edit or remove it.
Connected - any person who fits the criteria in number 1 and is already connected to Alice can say whatever they want, rate the person as a professional on some sort of scale (as simple as 1 to 5 stars, or as complex as a multi-dimensional rating system, it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this topic) and Alice cannot edit or remove it.
Filtered - Alice gets final say before anything hits her ratings page.

In this model, people would have the option to open themselves up to criticism from their peers and what would be so wrong about that?

Would flame wars happen? Maybe. But I really don't think so, as people would fear retaliation.

The worst I can see happening is that a couple of so-so reviews might get out and would be out-weighted by the community at large.

What I think would really happen is 2 things:

Over time, people would be compelled to at least move to Connected, in that allowing yourself to be open to criticism would be perceived by others (e.g., hiring managers and recruiters) as a sign of a stronger professional, and because a person with a Filtered ratings page would be perceived as maybe having something to hide.
People would be MUCH more selective about who they connected with because any actual connection could then say anything about them (this could be counter-balanced by having a contextual connection model which is a post for another day).

One additional thing that could also happen but to a smaller degree is that people who chose "Authenticated" would also be perceived differently in that they would either be really stupid, really brave or really good at not ruffling other people's feathers.

As long as there was a good way to visualize the ratings and reviews for people, I believe recruiters and hiring managers would come to depend upon them in the same way consumers depend on online ratings and reviews of products and services.

I think this model will be out there sooner rather than later. Weather it's on a professional site or a dating site, it's just a matter of time.

Rating Time:

Filtered rating systems: Garbage

Open rating systems: Like them

"If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English" - Homer Simpson

Predictable irrationality

2010-09-06T12:57:00.001-07:00

I have many friends and family members who have joined the likes of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert (both of whom I watch and like) to decry the backlash against the building of mosques around the US, most notably the proposed community center near ground zero.

My new friend Eric Bell is shooting a documentary about the opposition to the mosque that is being built in Murfreesboro Tennessee. I have not seen any of the footage yet, but in my conversation with him, he took issue with the irrational fear, prejudice and hatred that is now arising in America to muslims. The broad brush that many are applying to any and all muslims in this country and abroad was, in his eyes based on fear based perception fueled by propaganda and not based on factual evidence.

To be clear, I am not disputing his argument. The only issue I have is that Eric does not seem to addressing what I believe are the conditions necessary for this irrational fear to arise and for the propaganda to gain credence. Many people take issue with how the actions of a few will then be used to impugn whole segments of a population - and I do as well. The biggest differentiating fact for me is the lack of any tractable or visible evidence that the muslim community is doing anything to address the "rotten apples".

I do not deny that there are pockets of muslims and imams who denounce the actions of those who endorse and participate in violent acts and claim that this is not what islam is about. I do not deny that I can't tell you where the line is for me in terms of "what level of action is enough". These sorts of arguments contain the hidden assumption that we are somewhere close to "enough" right now and if one or two more things were done than that would be sufficient. I believe that in order for rationality to take hold in the American populace - there is an enormous abyss that must be not only crossed but also filled. Crossed with words and filled with deeds.

What sections of the islamic community speak out or act when the Libyan nation state routinely celebrates the Lockerbie Bomber?

What sections of the islamic community speak out or act in relation to the Iranian death sentence given to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani? As far as I have seen, France and the Vatican are leading the way and the Islamic nation-states are silent.

What sections of the islamic community speak out or act when the Palestinian people elect into office a group of people whose life mission circles around violence and death? What sections of the islamic community are now speaking out as women's rights are being curtailed in gaza by the Hamas government?

The voices I have heard and the actions I have seen coming from the islamic community are ones of defensiveness around the prejudicial perceptions and not around taking back their religion or their governments. The voices I have heard blame fear of retribution by the extremist elements if they were to speak out or stand against the violence and rhetoric. This, in my mind, is just as much to blame for the mass prejudice and fear, and I honestly find it to be a completely predictable irrational reaction.

When there is at least one islamic group or nation state who begins to turn the tide of violence in the world that is when it will be most opportune to start working on the prejudice and fear here in this country. Any attempts to do otherwise are equally irrational in that they will not be successful in changing the public opinion. They may indeed bolster the opinion in that they seem like defensive words intended to pacify the rage with no visible attempt to address the source.

Rating:

Irrational fear - garbage

Condemnation of irrational fear with no share responsibility - crap

It takes two to tango

2010-08-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

The amount of coverage that has been given to JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater is not surprising to me at all. What is surprising to me is that no one has hit upon what I believe is at the core of the hostile encounter.

Some articles blame Slater as an individual, more articles and pundits speak to the trend in air-rage, some blame the downgrades in service. While I understand the thinking behind all of these, I don't think any of them have identified the core dynamic that is occurring repeatedly.

It is my belief that what we are seeing is a variant of the Stanford Prison Experiment, wherein flight, airline and airport personnel from terminal to terminal have been placed in a pseudo-prison guard role and passengers are nearly prisoners.

The authoritarian undertones from flight, airline and airport personnel is palpable. Quite often, the communication borders on contempt. Things that could be phrased as polite requests for cooperation are worded as mandates from an all powerful machine. The security checks further the metaphor and end result is rebellion.

The solution to this problem does not lie in spot fixes like returning peanuts to flights, but rather in analysis and increased training across the entire air-travel eco-system from organizational behavior professionals. Air travel workers need to be able to recognize confrontation and hostility and be trained to both avoid and defuse it.

In the meantime, try a little bit of niceness (OMG! I used "nice" in a positive way! I'm on record for hating the word!) and stop blaming passengers for responding to cramped spaces combined with overt and rigid authority with hostility - it's human nature.

RATING TIME

Prison guard mentality - Garbage

Steven Slater's dramatic exit - I hate to admit it, but I like it

Maybe, just once, someone will call me 'Sir' without adding, 'You're making a scene.' - Homer Simpson

Why poor design seems to be the rule in business.

2010-08-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've been working as a consultant advocating good UX design for more than 15 years now and one thing has pervaded almost every interaction with executive management. I'm constantly asked to justify the time and expenditure required for good design practices. Nobody ever asks for a business case to justify the poor design practices that are systemic in corporate IT. My guess is that people do not recognize that the lack of an intentional design is still a design. It's just a poor one (usually).

In thinking about this topic again and again, I think I've had a revelation. I now understand exactly why this attitude is the rule.

It is a habit learned over the last 50 years.

It takes a person about 66 days to form a habit. I could not find any research on how it takes for an industry to form a practice.

Think about it. When computers first entered into business environments, most people did not interact with them, most people interacted with the artifacts that computers could produce and with minority of people who could program the computer using punch-cards. Do you remember punch-cards? Have you seen them in documentaries? This is where the habit started. At this time the equation was very simple:

Cost to design and create a new interface system more usable than a punch-card reader > Cost to train the people who interface with the computer

This was abundantly true for so many reasons:

The people who interfaced with the computer in the time of punch-card readers were super geeks and punch-card logic came easily to them

The people who interfaced with the computer in the time of punch-card readers were very few in numbers

The concept for other possible interfaces did not even exist yet

As time progressed and command line interfaces became the norm, this equation held. The number of people who interfaced with the computer increased ever so slightly, the types of people using them did not shift at all, and a small group of people saw the possibility of graphical interfaces, but the numbers were still overwhelming.

As time progressed even further and WIMP interfaces (thank you Xerox!) became the norm, this equation still held. The number of people who interfaced with the computer increased a little more rapidly, the types of people interfacing with them began to shift as people who used computers in grade school hit the work force, and a different, but still small, group of people saw the possibility of putting standardized graphical frameworks on top of information systems, but the numbers were still overwhelming.

Time moved on yet again and web browsers have now become the norm (thank you Mozilla!), and despite the fact that the equation has finally shifted most businesses do not even realize the basis on which the original decision was made. It's not anyone's fault. There is no "big book of corporate assumptions" lying around that people are supposed to check every couple of years. Just like a habit, the mode of operating has become somewhat unconscious. When executives ask for the business case for good design, I do not believe that they know the basis for the question itself has completely changed.

The number of people who interface with computers in business or consumer settings is rapidly approaching 100%.

The types of people who interface with computers has dramatically shifted in ways beyond thinking styles; People of all ages now access computers and a new generation has entered the workforce; A generation of workers who don't view their employers as bosses, but as an easily replaceable organization entering into a trade agreement with them.

Useful, usable and desirable interfaces and experiences are readily conceivable (thank you Amazon & Apple!)

The equation has changed!

The required investment in user experience pales in comparison to the amount required to train an entire population of job-hopping workers and fickle consumers.

The first step in breaking the habit is admitting we have a problem. If we are to remain economically viable we must challenge our base assumptions.

RATING TIME:

Non-intentional design habit - Garbage

Turning over a new leaf - Like it

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that." - Homer Simpson

Hard. Easy. What's the difference?

2010-07-19T10:22:00.001-07:00

You ever watch one of those modeling shows and snicker to yourself when the model says: "Everyone thinks modeling is easy, but it is soooo hard!"? I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I'm beginning to think they're right. Imprecise, but right.

Several months ago, a colleague of mine said. "Sales is the hardest job. Convincing someone to part with money is the hardest thing to do in professional services." It is my belief that this is wrong. It is my belief that, for the most part, no one job is harder than any other or more important than any other. It is my belief that the job itself isn't hard, it's being great at your job that is the hard thing.

Doing a job well enough to "make it to the top" of any field is extremely hard given that "making it to the top" basically means finding a way to push your performance and abilities to a point where you can be better than more than 90-95% (and sometimes more in highly visible fields or fields where people's lives are on the line) of the rest of the population.

Being a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist isn't hard at all. It's being a good one that's hard. It's fairly easy to do a poor job at almost any discipline.

Professional services can basically be broken down into 3 components - sell the work, do the work, support the work. Some people like to articulate a narrative where one component is THE critical ingredient or one job is harder than the others. I'm just not buying it. I'm a big fan of the "three legged stool" model for professional services. Take one leg off and it's just a hunk of wood that is of very little use to anyone.

If you can't sell the work - nobody gets paid.

If you can't do the work - nobody gets paid.

If you can't support the work - nobody gets paid.

It's as simple as that.

RATING:

Elevation of disciplines or jobs at the expense of others - Garbage.

Looking through the lens of system dynamics where all parts are necessary but not sufficient - Like it.

"I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman." - Homer Simpson

If I were CXO of Disney

2010-07-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

Still playing with my new experiment. This is number 3!

If I were CXO of Disney I would:

Make grand gestures - I would immediately remind each and every member of the Disney team of the overall vision imparted by Walt and remind them to think and act as Walt would want them to. Establishing the necessary framework for a commander's intent model is only half of the equation. The other half is to show the level of commitment that leadership is making to achieve Walt's vision in order to remove the fear of consequences of "mistakes". I would look throughout the company to find highly visible ways to reinforce the desired cultural behavior and make several grand gestures to walk the walk. The first on my list - dramatically expand the monorail system at Walt Disney World. WDW is supposed to represent the mix of fantasy, adventure and hope for the future. I never knew Walt personally, and I do understand that transportation memes change, but I'm pretty sure that the current hodge-podge patchwork of buses and monorails & shuttles is not what Walt had in mind.
Focus on story telling - Story telling is the heart of everything that is Disney from movies and TV to the park. In past years, Disney seemed to forget this and now with the Pixar acquisition, it seems this has improved but I would work to find ways to spread the concept further into other areas of the business (e.g., Disney TV, the Parks, etc) noting that Disney is at its very best when it is telling great stories. Story telling is not an abstract concept reserved for media communications. Epcot told a story. Space Mountain told a story. The original contemporary hotel at WDW told a story. I would find ways to bring that spirit back.
Bring excellence to the employee experience - Great companies know that while brands are envisioned from the outside in, great brands are built from the inside out. Good employee experience drives good customer experience drives shareholder value. Showing the cast & crew that Disney is a magical place to work will drive the passion that will make Disney magical to interact with.
Make Disney TV parent friendly - The sheer amount of shows that paint parents as mentally challenged is egregious. Disney is on the edge of losing its reputation of wholesomeness. I'm not saying return to the 1950's style Mickey Mouse Club, I'm saying that shows on Disney TV should not consistently make parents out to be clueless buffoons out of touch with the lives of their children.

Rating:

#3 (of my experiment) - getting harder to keep up the frequency, but I still like it.

Losing the essence of greatness - garbage

If I were CXO of AT&T

2010-06-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

This is the second in a new experiment for me. If I make it beyond 7, I think I'll make it to 30.

If I were CXO of AT&T I would:

Acknowledge risk - I would immediately recognize that AT&T must make a revolutionary improvement in customer satisfaction to prevent a significant amount of churn once the iPhone is available on Verizon.
Tend the root - Actions to improve the network would help, but they are not the root of customer loyalty. True loyalty transcends momentary transactional advantage. If AT&T is to stave off this near-term defection, it must act to win the hearts of consumers and then capitalize on momentum to win back the minds. The hearts can only be won if people truly believe that AT&T is committed to doing more than just short term talk. Start with saying what we mean, and meaning what we say in every communication (i.e., Be Authentic).
Spend like there's no tomorrow - Do the thing we've said we are going to do. Do "everything possible" to fix the network issues. People from government to private industry cavalierly use this phrase with no thought to the actual meaning. It doesn't mean "everything within reason" as most people seem to think. "Everything possible" means doing things at a breadth and speed that approaches recklessness. In order to win the hearts, a gesture must be made - improve the network in the most populous areas "overnight". Set ludicrous goals for improvement and throw enough money at them to make the impossible possible.
Simplify - AT&T bundled plans are industry leading. Capitalize on this and go further. Simplify beyond the realm of what consumers think is possible. Throw away concepts like the "triple play" and go for the "whole enchilada" $200 unlimited everything (TV, phone, wireless, data, internet, long distance, local... etc.). I don't know if the number is right, but the concept is incredible - and that's what AT&T should be shooting for: beyond credulity.
Be world class - make our core service offerings world class. I don't mean "be perceived as world class". I don't mean "look like we are world class". I mean actually "be".
Develop an innovation strategy - scour the enterprise for the best and brightest and find mechanisms to directly and in-directly incent innovation. AT&T lost something big when it lost Bell Labs. Bring that back.

Rating:

#2 (of my experiment) - still like it

intentionally not being #1 - garbage

I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here. - Homer Simpson

If I were CXO (part 1)

2010-06-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

This is the first in an experimental series of entries. I am going to pick 10 different companies and explain what I would do if I were hired as the CXO (Chief Experience Officer). I don't know if I'll continue just yet, but I'm willing to give it a shot to see how it works out.

First off, my favorite company to hate, and a frequent bash victim of this blog - Blockbuster.

Discarding the fact that I would more than likely turn down an offer by a company that is doomed to be out of business before 2020 and is squarely opposite in orientation to my principles, this is what I would do...

Start with why - Refocus the company from making short-term revenue to one of providing truly great in-home entertainment experiences
Apologize with a megaphone - Blockbuster recently reinstated the dumb tax and is once again collecting late fees. This action speaks to the fact that Blockbuster exists to make money first and foremost and does not exist to be of preeminent value to people seeking home entertainment. I would immediately and publicly apologize for this misstep, remove the late fee policy and explain how it is antithetical to Blockbusters fundamental reason for being.
Make amends - Just like a past entry in this blog points out, apologies without genuine gestures that show contrition are platitudes and ultimately contemptuous. I would refund each and every late fee collected since the reinstatement in the form of store credit.
Catch-up - Partner with a hardware retailer (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, or possibly Tivo) to get downloadable movies off of computers and onto the television.
Fix the in-store experience:
- The lines are too long and picking a movie from the shelves is too time consuming. Put kiosks in the store for help selecting movies and checking out.
- Stop yelling "Welcome to Blockbuster" as customers walk in.
- Upgrade the POS and peripherals (scanner, printer and signature pad) along with the couponing process that barely work, waste paper and power and serve to commoditize the offering.
- Unify all the CRM systems to enable promotions to be applied and tracked without the use of paper
- Enable "return to any store"
Fix the multi-channel experience - starting with quantitative and qualitative user research search for opportunities to ultimately improve customers in-home entertainment lives and execute on those that align with the overall brand proposition.
Expand the reach - Put vending kiosks or mini-stores into airports and other locations where impulse meets opportunity. It is critical to integrate these with the overall CRM system and "return to any store" policy in order to drive the sense that Blockbuster exists to serve it's customers in the way that will most fit into their busy lives.

Rating:

My "If I were CXO" experiment - Like it. I Think I'll do it again.

Current customer experience at Blockbuster - Garbage

"No, no, no, Lisa. If adults don't like their jobs, they don't go on strike. They just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American Way." - Homer Simpson

Paradox of Language

2010-06-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

As my career has progressed one thing that can lift me up or conversely drag me down is the linguistic capabilities of my coworkers. My wide vocabulary and semantic orientation for precision drives some people batty and I have often been made to feel pretentious at best and elitist at worst for using "fancy words" (e.g., cognitive dissonance) in business conversations.

Over the last year my wife and I have watched the complete Tudors series on Showtime. While my wife is most fascinated with the drama, cinematography and history I can't seem to get enough of the linguistic pirouettes engaged in by subjects and nobility in discussions with governmental figures and the king.

As I have watched the fabulous dialogues unfold I have been ironically reinvigorated with my desire to use language more precisely in that I am at the same time vexed with the paradox therein - it's not what you say, it's what other people hear.

There is another paradox, however, that fascinates me even more; how language is at once the vessel to new rational understanding and the horizon that bounds our ability to conceive. It is both the device of perception and the blinder.

This conundrum became apparent while watching the Tudors in that I was stunned how lords accused of treason, and royalty seeking fealty could use language in such a precise manner that enabled verbal jousting of a form we rarely see today. What was equally apparent is that we have lost something in our culture - nuance.

In our constant endeavor to use terms and language accessible to the common man and shunning orators who use complex concepts and ideas as "too intellectual" we have lost the ability to see subtle yet important differentiators in topics in culture, art, business, relationships, politics and everywhere else.

The English language has an intrinsic beauty in its unique ability to differentiate between concepts so close that they can seem one and the same but have chasms of difference in meaning when applied. The English speaking populace used to pride itself on it's ability to break new ground and find new conceptual understanding through the use of language and dialogue.

The very construct that we use to break through our boundaries and create new communicable understanding is also the barrier that we must break through if we are to mature our intellectual capabilities as a species. This is apparent when we talk about how certain concepts or cultural idioms are only understood if you can truly think in a particular language. Some words do not have equivalent translations between languages. One mildly famous but erroneous example is Schadenfreude (which actually has an English equivalent - epicaricacy).

So what? Who cares?

It is my opinion that the inevitable result of the dumbing down of our cultural linguistic capabilities is the rise of anosognosia (meta-incompetence - the inability to discern competence from incompetence) in that when you lose the ability to describe the difference between things you begin to lose the ability to see the difference between things. One unexplored consequence of this trend is that deception will increase as those with a greater command of the language will be able to dupe those with only surface level understandings.

I beg all of my readers/followers (are there more than 3 of you now?) to fight back! Do not succumb to the penchant for simple un-nuanced language. Rather, educate your listeners and readers such that they may begin to see discernment as a valuable skill to protect themselves from deception and chicanery.

Rating:

The Tudors - like it

Nuanced Language - like it

Aspersions of elitism for using nuanced language - garbage

"How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive? " - Homer Simpson

Outsource your system integration to your customers? Brilliant!

2010-04-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

I've got to hand it to Comcast (a.k.a. Comcrap). They figured out how to save millions in system integration. They chose not to do it and then force their customers to act as bridges between the groups and systems. How slick is that?

So after giving up on Comcast ever making a compelling bundle offer that doesn't contain at least $50 in hidden extra monthly fees (cable modem rental, HD upcharge, extra box fee, DVR fee. HD+DVR fee) I decided to call AT&T to try the U-verse bundle. I couldn't actually get U-verse, as it is not available in my area yet, but the bundle was still available with NO extra fees with Dish network.

Once everything was setup, I called Comcast to cancel my service and hit a series of obstacles that highlight how brilliant Comcast management is.

Organizational Fragmentation - Comcast customer service is totally separate from the organization that retrieves the equipment. They had no ability to schedule the pickup. They had no ability to transfer my phone call. They had no ability to email me the phone number. They had no ability to pass on a request to them. In other words, it was now my job to integrate the customer service and logistics teams.
No Continuity - After I successfully memorized and dialed the phone number (I was in the car but not driving), I scheduled the equipment pickup which was no picnic either. They refused to give me anything other than a four hour window and would not take a note for the driver such that I could leave the equipment in my screened porch. This is another stroke of genius by Comcast - when you make it as inconvenient as possible for people to end their service there are bound to be a couple of people who just give up ans stick with it out of some form of Stockholm Syndrome.
No Tools - After the equipment recovery person missed his window and showed up 1 hour late I happily handed all the equipment over to him. Choosing to be frugal and not give their employees wasteful tools, the equipment recovery person collected the two set-top boxes, manually captured the serial numbers on a form and gave me a copy of the paper receipt.
No Follow-through - Where other companies might blow a whole bunch of money and time actually tracking their operations, a brilliant analyst at Comcast noticed that actually not tracking returns was in the companies interest! If a former customer is upset at being charged for equipment they already returned, they'll follow up and hound us. If not, who cares! And given that equipment recovery is not integrated with billing they'll hound the customer by phone 3 or more times a day anyway to provide a "legitimate excuse". Genius I say!!!
Contemptuous Attitude - Start the calls off right! Comcast calls with an auto-dialer and shows blatant contempt for customer time by having the auto-dialer ask customers to hold for an "important business call". This sets the tone just right to make everything be coherent around the core brand message - "your time and money are not nearly as important as ours".
No Accountability - Narrative, Narrative Narrative! The Comcast team has it down! The only way to make policies and decisions like these stick is to be completely unapologetic and obtuse on the phone and make the customer wrong on every level. The phone reps had the story and they stuck to it - it was my job to track the repair, my job to prove that they had picked the equipment, and it was even my job to call the billing department to get the erroneous charge for "not returning the equipment" changed. Why on earth should it be Equipment Recovery's responsibility to close the loop? It is this narrative which enables a phone rep to be legitimately upset with the fact that customer's are upset or frustrated. When an employee does not acknowledge that they are "representatives" of the brand or of the corporation then, clearly, the customer is the one who is rude for being frustrated!
Plausible Deniability - Make sure your phone systems are easy to blame. Calls with Comcast were never pleasant in terms of the discussion, but what makes them even worse for the customer is that the auto-dialer is in control and calls would drop almost at random. As always, this serves the greater objective - now Comcast reps can honestly say: "I did not call you, the auto dialer did!" and "You keep hanging up on us!". i.e., "It's not Comcast's fault we keep calling you, It's the auto-dialer! It's you!"
No Empathy - By hiring barely literate people with chips on their shoulder who are unhappy with their jobs. The message will really be sent - "You are not a customer anymore. You are not worthy of respectful communication or empathy. Being upset that you are called incessantly early in the morning, or late at night and being asked by a machine to hold without telling you who is calling is not our concern - even if we picked up the equipment already. We will just keep calling you for weeks. We will choose not to listen. We will choose not the enter the receipt number into our system because you were frustrated or the call dropped after we got the number but before we said we were done with you. We will hang up on you because you are audibly frustrated - but don't worry, we will call back and start all over again!!! You will comply sooner or later! Resistance is futile! You will integrate us!"
Universally Low Expectations - Hire people who are in alignment with your brand. Make sure that they are ignorant of common business conventions. Make sure they are not accountable for their actions. Make sure that they are not grateful to be of service. This orientation will enable people to bluster on and hold forth on clearly specious arguments where precision and crispness of service delivery are of no importance at all. This false sense of self importance will further enable the phone reps to take personal offense at former customer frustration and will further solidify the organizations will to impose the company's responsibility onto the former customer.

Rating time:

Disgustingly contemptuous policies and decisions that force former customers to be accountable for Comcrap's organizational fragmentation - CRAP

Myth: It's only fair to pay for quality first-run movies. Fact: Most movies shown on cable get two stars or less, and are repeated ad nauseam."

What I Do

2010-03-12T22:13:00.000-08:00

Quite often, people ask me "What do you do?"

This is how the conversation typically goes with the exception that I usually give some real world examples that are very freaky, but given that I can't put my sales pitch into the public domain, I'm sorry for the disappointment. :-(

Person X: "What do you do?"

Me: "I'm a User Experience Consultant"

Person X: "That sounds interesting. What is that?"

Me: "Well, there are a lot of different types of User Experience Consultants. I work with businesses to help them design and develop experiences that engender desired attitudes and behaviors without coercion or external support."

Person X: Best case: "Can you give me an example?" / Worst case: Puzzled look that says "How am I going to get out of this conversation?"

Me: "Let me give you an example. We go out and do a number of types of research with different audiences. In observing and talking to these people we learn a bunch of different things, some big and some small. The small nuances are the most interesting. For example, in working with a large home improvement retailer we learned a lot about the purchasing contexts for power tools. We analyzed the quantitative and qualitative data from the research and made very specific changes in language and photography to raise the percentage of people who purchase tools as opposed to those who just browse.

Imagine you walk into a friends kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee. Where do you look for the mugs? Near the sink? Near the coffee maker? Near the pantry? Near the stove? There is some thought process that each person goes through. A UX consultant learns about people to understand how different types of people will go about their search. We combine that understanding with the types of people most likely to come to that particular kitchen and put the mugs right where people will look for them. More than that, we tell businesses where each type of person will look for the mug and how to create or modify the kitchen so that the right people will not feel stupid or get frustrated looking for the mug when nobody is around to help them find one."

Person X: "Wow! That is interesting. How did you end up doing that?"

Me: "Well, I started out as a software developer who hated being on the phone. I had all these pesky users who would call and email me all these questions that I did not want to answer. I also hated writing technical documentation. It was all just so boring to me when what I wanted to be doing was improving the business. Being an engineer at heart, I figured that there must be some way to design the interface in a way that they will never call me again that did not involve me writing a full an comprehensive user manual which they would never read anyway.

So I went out and bought a bunch of books on human factors, eye tracking and usability and started trying to design the interfaces just for them. Then I got lucky enough to work with some great UX consultants who were willing to let me play in their sandbox.

10 years later, and this is what I love doing. I hardly ever code anymore. I focus on some fairly esoteric stuff in strategy and technology that's fun and challenging for me.

There are college programs for it now, but there really were not specific programs or degrees for it when I went to school. Not in the mainstream anyway. I kind of got lucky. It just sort of happened organically based on my context, what I was interested in and my own stubborn refusal to do support work."

One of the worst aspects of this conversation is that I have to explain it over and over again to my dad (so that he can brag about his "brilliant genius son" to all the other Jewish fathers at the retirement community in Florida) and my friends outside the industry (remember how stubborn I am in answering the same question over and over). So this is my first attempt to write it all down (even though very few will read it - and yes, dear reader, I see the irony).

Which brings me to another aspect of what I do - craft experiences that people will want to engage in; i.e., craft desirable experiences through strategy (remember that esoteric thing that I said I focus on). But that is a topic for another day.

Rating time:

What I do: Like it
Explaining it over and over: Hmmm... I'm tempted to say Garbage...but I actually kind of get excited in talking about it because I like the fun insight stories so much...OK, I give up. Like it.
Explaining it to my dad over and over: Garbage. (Dad, be grateful I did not use the "Crap" rating ;-)

Well, it's 2 a.m. Better go and spend some quality time with the kids.

Concepts of Creativity

2010-02-23T17:46:00.000-08:00

I saw a question on "Linked In" today:

Do software companies need creative thinkers?

If yes, why? for what kind of work? Typically, what fraction of their developers are creative thinkers?

For most, what's more important - creativity or discipline?

what do companies do to enahnce their developers' creativity?

When reading this question and the proffered answers it reminded me of a topic that has bounced around for quite a long time.

Companies typically label visual designers or UX designers as "Creatives" or talk about the "Creative" disciplines.

Companies typically label software developers, architects and DBAs as "Technical".

This has bothered me for a long time, which, given my semantic nature is not surprising.

Anyone who has worked as or with a good software developer would not for an instant say that software developers are not creative.

Similarly, anyone who has worked as or with a good UX professional (either visual designer or information architect) would not say that UX professionals are not technical.

These labels of creative and technical are imprecise in their nature and cause much hostility and tension between the two camps who, amongst a myriad of other things, have something in common, which is ironically a large contributor to the hostility and tension; they don't like to be labeled.

This hostility and tension is apparent if you read the answers to the question.

"Creativity" and "Tool Usage" (the underlying skill behind technology) are skills we all have in different degrees. We are human and it is part of who we are as a race. When the question is asked as it above, it implies that disciplined developers are not creative. This is a blatant fallacy.

I think a more precise way to talk about the behaviors and thinking styles that people are referring to when they apply these labels is through the terms "linear" and "non-linear" thinking. Intuition and non-linear thinking are deeper components of what we percieve as creativity.

With this nuance in mind - I would rephrase the original question: "Do software companies need intuitive, non-linear thinkers?"

Answering this question without hostility becomes easier - Yes. Non-linear intuitive thinking allows for revolution where strictly linear thinking allows for evolution.

Conceptual holism (think Amazon, Apple) - comes straight out of non-linear intuitive thinking

Evolutionary atomism (think eBay, Microsoft) - comes from direct linear thinking.

If you hold all other factors neutral, enterprises with both linear and non-linear thinkers (assuming that the individual players can work in harmony) will ultimately be more successful over the long term.

Neither is more important. At the extremes - "non-linears" have trouble executing without linear practitioners, "linears" have trouble moving out of seemingly malicious compliance.

Some people answered that sending developers to conferences "where the latest and greatest ideas are shared" would develop their creative skills.

Conferences are not the answer to enhance developers capability to think non-linearly - because ideas are shared as an end result and not as a process.

Several philosophers from Jiddu Krishnamurti to Bruce Lee talk about the concept of "no way as way" to illustrate that those who are beholden to a particular dogma in any discipline, are very likely unable to see beyond the limits of the dogma.

Bruce Lee stated that his concept is not an "adding to" of more and more things on top of each other to form a system, but rather, a winnowing out.

The lack of capability to understand or appreciate non-linear thought is most felt in countries like the USA where language and discourse are focused on "Topic Centered" methods vs "Topic Associative" methods.

To actually enhance the capability of non-linear thinking (and ultimately affect that which we see as creativity) you must strike at the base assumption that every problem needs to be approached with a linear and fully predictable process.

Unfortunately, this concept while easy to explain at a high level tends to not be "teachable" through a lesson or a book. Rather, enabling a person to be more in-touch with their intuition is something that needs to be experienced and then practiced as opposed to practiced and then experienced.

So how do we attack this? Teams. Team linear and non-linear thinkers together to iteratively solve problems. When using this method, it is important to note that the success of these teams will correlate with the chemistry of the individuals and way in which the task is laid out to not give too much power to either type.

Rating Time!

Divisive labeling as "Creative" and "Technical" - Garbage
Appreciation for different thinking styles - Like it

******************************************************************************************

I have not invented a "new style," composite, modified or otherwise that is set within distinct form as apart from "this" method or "that" method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds. Remember that Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirror in which to see "ourselves". . . Jeet Kune Do is not an organized institution that one can be a member of. Either you understand or you don't, and that is that. There is no mystery about my style. My movements are simple, direct and non-classical. The extraordinary part of it lies in its simplicity. Every movement in Jeet Kune-Do is being so of itself. There is nothing artificial about it. I always believe that the easy way is the right way. Jeet Kune-Do is simply the direct expression of one's feelings with the minimum of movements and energy. The closer to the true way of Kung Fu, the less wastage of expression there is. Finally, a Jeet Kune Do man who says Jeet Kune Do is exclusively Jeet Kune Do is simply not with it. He is still hung up on his self-closing resistance, in this case anchored down to reactionary pattern, and naturally is still bound by another modified pattern and can move within its limits. He has not digested the simple fact that truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness is never exclusive. Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back.

– Bruce Lee

Human, all too human

2009-12-29T19:38:00.000-08:00

My friend Staylo and I engage in many dialogues on many topics. But we rarely do so online for all posterity. He asked me to read his posting on leadership and comment on it. I really loved the post in that I found it distinct, insightful and nuanced. It was so well written that I found myself puzzled at what to say about it, other than simple praise.

While looking through his posts, I came across an older one on User Experience and the motives from which it arises.

The central point of this post is that the motives of many User Experience professionals are somehow less honorable because they are rooted in obtaining business benefit. While I find this articulation to be very well written and very well thought out, I see some subtle contradictions within the post and also choose to see some of the points from a slightly different angle.

First - I must disagree with the precept that the motive of honest enlightened self interest is somehow less honorable. This line of thought strikes me as pompous, self-righteous and inherently false. Mutually beneficial relationships are not superior because they are more honorable, rather they are superior because they are more sustainable, allow for the reaping of emergent benefits for both parties, they allow for the creation of additional beneficial relationships and ultimately allow both parties to benefit society at large in more meaningful and lasting ways.

When society continues on with the charade that self interest is dishonorable, we end up with the behavior that the post itself identifies as the most dishonorable - acting with disingenuous motives.

Being authentic with your motives is, in my opinion, necessary (although not sufficient) for being honorable.

Second - I must disagree with the precept that "When people are given a viable alternative to soulless, hollow, insincere, inauthentic, self-interested manipulation, they take it. Customers prefer the human, and so do employees". It is not that this is wrong, it is that it is not precise. I would reword it as such "When observant & sensitive people are given a viable alternative to soulless, hollow, insincere, inauthentic, self-interested manipulation, they take it. Observant & sensitivecustomers prefer the human, and so do observant & sensitive employees."

This may be provocative and controversial - but in my experience, many people float through interactions in a fairly careless fashion with an almost singular focus on short term self interest.

Lastly - The title of the post reveals the endemic contradiction with the whole line of thinking - "Being human is a competitive advantage". i.e., Be human, so you can gain advantage.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just too much of a functionalist.

Ratings:

Anomalogue Blog - like it.

Synetic Brand Blog - like it.

My friend Staylo - like him.

Leadership post - like it.

Not embracing enlightened long-term self interest as honorable an desirable - crap.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Adventures in Barcelona (Days 4 & 5)

2009-11-02T14:06:00.000-08:00

Day 4:

Spent the morning at Sagrada Familia - I was blown away, and I'm a Jew! The Cathedral in process was the most insane thing I've ever seen. If you are a fan of architecture, you must come to Barcelona. The museums honoring Gaudi and the construction are fantastic.

Moved to Hotel #2 - Willow Moon B&B on a boat. Captain Steve is a great host. Spent the afternoon going over to Montjujic (Mount of the Jews) on a Funicular (cable car) and then roaming around looking for the Miro museum. I got us lost on the mountain (some Jew I am) and we got to the Museum just before closing.

Had tapas for dinner in the Born at Taller De Tapas. Pretty good fare. Went back to the boat and talked for hours. CRASHED HARD and slept like a rock!

Day 5:

Steve made us eggs with smoked salmon for breakfast - Fabulous! We got to the Miro late again, but went in anyway. Saw some good art (I liked Picasso better). Wandered around the mountain for the rest of the afternoon and went shopping for gifts (got some great coats for the girls). Ate Tapas at Palau de Musica and saw a great classical guitar show (I was so tired, but the show was great). Had a crepe before bed and spent the late hours with Kathleen.

Modernista architecture - like it
Staying on the boat - like it
Being with the love of my life - LOVE IT!!!!

All props to my love.

Adventures in Barcelona (Day 3)

2009-10-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

OMG - I am awed by the genius and creativity of Antoni Gaudi.

Took a bus tour today... went EVERYWHERE to get the macro view of the city.

Stopped at one of the apartment buildings designed by Gaudi. Truly astonishing.

But I am getting ahead of myself...back up.

Brought cafe con leche y groissants to Kathleen for Breakfast. Went on the tour. Two more coffee breaks!!! Bought some presents for friends and family.

Looking forward to a fabulous seafood dinner with the love of my life. Will upload some pictures tomorrow.

Buildings by Gaudi - Like it.

Adios!

Adventures in Barcelona (Day 2)

2009-10-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Meta Subject First: This is strange to me. I don't really write in my blog about my day to day goings on - and this sort of feels like that. The blog isn't usually meant to be my daily journal.

I try to write about experiences that inspire me, and this qualifies... so I guess it's OK.

DAY 2 - Woke up at 11:00! Had breakfast in a little dive where no one spoke English. My meager Spanish got us through with exactly what we ordered:

Dos cafes con leche - did I say the coffee here was magnificent? I think it was an understatement.

Juevos y patates frites for me - my arteries hardened just looking at them.

Juevos y beicon for Kathleen - per Kathleen they tasted like a mix between Ham and Bacon.

Went to two Museums

Disseny Hub Barcelona - very odd indeed! Devoted to souvenirs and other oddities. I'll post photos later.

Picasso Museum - there is nothing so humbling as seeing the masterworks made by a 13 year old picasso.

Had noodles for a late lunch, took a nap, had black rice for dinner and went dancing until 2.

Went to bed and slept like a rock!

Day 2: Like it.

Muchas Gracias

Adventures in Barcelona

2009-10-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

Like it! Like it! Like it!

I know I'm supposed to end with ratings, not begin with them, but being on my honeymoon has me overflowing with ebullience.

Delta performed near flawlessly - two minor hiccups during the reservation process, each time Delta CSRs managed me in my angst ridden "OMG! Is my honeymoon gonna crash and burn?" state and made everything right.

We managed to use the metro to get to our hotel (Grand Central). A little hiking involved, but I can stand to lose a few pounds anyway.

The hotel is very, very nice. 3 strong points: 1) Comfortable Bed, 2) Nice Pillow, 3) Blackout Curtains. 3 "Could be betters": 1) The clock in the room was an hour fast, 2) The shower head droops, 3) Oops! Only 2! So much for parallelism.

Other hotel goodies: Nice staff, DVD player in room, free minibar, bittersweet choclates, middle of the gothic quarter, pool on the roof.

Walked around Barcelona, eating at cafes and restaurants (The coffee here is truly magnificent!).

Saw a flamenco show - very impressive, so much emotion is conveyed in the dance.

Today's plan: We don't really have a plan as such, we'll probably go to the Picasso Museum &/or the Gaudi Cathedral.

Yes, I do like Barcelona. More notes tomorrow.

Peace out.

Who Da Man?

2009-08-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

My good friend Staylo (http://anomalogue.com/blog & http://syneticbrand.com/) sent me the following fable:

The captain of a lost ship reasoned thusly:

“If I were at my destination I would no longer be lost. What separates me from my destination is distance. Distance is traversed through the rowing of my oarsman.

“If it is untraversed distance keeping me from my destination and the responsibility for traversing distance belongs to the oarsmen, it is obvious that my oarmen are to blame for our being lost!”

So the captain ordered his navigator and all his officers to report immediately to the galley. He called the oarsmen before them, rebuked them and had them flogged. Then every man, officer and crew alike, grabbed an oar, and together they sat straining in the dark, rowing and rowing and rowing and rowing across the distance.

After some discussion, I sent him the quote below:

"It is the greatest houses and the tallest trees that gods bring low with bolts of thunder. For the Gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves"

I'm not sure if Herotodus knew of "The Man" but it sure sounds like it to me.

I see the main idea is to relate the "Gods" to "men in power", e.g., The Man. One of the main signatures of The Man is to crush the bright lights of those whom they can in order to illustrate what "power" is to them (not intelligence, merit or any other aspect worthless to them). The Man seeks to reward those he can control and dominate and will be forever limited in this fashion because he is mortally afraid of being seen as "less than" the ones he is accompanied by.

Staylo more so thought the quote was about hubris and pride in men and spoke about the tower of Babyl. I can see his point, but I like to think my interpretation is more the intended one.... Or maybe I'm just obsessed with the concept of the man...

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell posits that people who let their outlook be impacted by a sense that those in power (e.g., the Man) can crush them curtail their likelihood of achieving success and leading an impactful life.

Herein lies the safe zone...

1) Acknowledge that The Man exists and navigate accordingly

2) Acknowledge that The Man only has power over what you grant him and act accordingly.

Ratings:

1) Denial of the Man - Garbage

2) Fear of the Man - Garbage

3) Fight the Power (intelligently) - Like it

PS - Big props to my man Brant Barton for one of my favorite Halloween costumes ever. He showed up in a 3 piece pinstripe suit with vampire fangs - i.e., The Man!

Well, it's 1 a.m. Better go home and spend some quality time with the kids.

King of Eight

2009-07-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

I sent the above video to one of my co-workers the other week as I was trying to explain some stuff to him. He is a good amount younger than me and we have some highly similar personality traits.

We both have a professional and personal approach that seeks to "define the moment" rather than "be defined by circumstance". This amongst many other aspects puts us in the category of "Eights" as defined by the Enneagram of Personality.

In talking with my comrade about the characteristics of the eight, he basically referred to personality typing as "new-age" and followed up with some disparaging profanity (very typical thing for an eight to say).

As we talked more, about the original subject and beyond, he has lowered his guard a little bit and sought out more career and professional advice from me and another of my network.

I've been very happy about this for a couple of reasons:

I get a lot of self actualization out of being helpful in a meaningful way to other people

I like watching other people move out of self-imposed mental constraints to break-through to a new way of seeing

I'm very happy that my professional relationship has turned a corner in a way that enables us to be personally more in-tune with each other

My dad had an aphorism that he used to quote:

He who knows not what he knows and knows not what he knows not is a fool; avoid him.
He who knows what he knows and knows not what he knows not is a student; teach him.
He who knows what he knows and knows what he knows not is a wise man; follow him.

In later years I tacked a corollary on it:

He who knows that he is at times a wise man, at times a student and at times a fool is amongst the wisest of all men

I love teaching, and I love learning. I'm very happy to be an eight and at the same time, I strive to be humble enough to know how god laughs at the plans of mice and men (as the king of eight finds out at the end of the video).

Rating -

Life long pursuit of learning - like it

That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!

The Long OW!

2009-07-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

Brandon Schauer, one of my past Sapient co-workers, now works at Adaptive Path and is relatively well known in UX circles for his thought leadership. One of my favorites is The Long Wow. In brief, "the long wow is a means to achieving long-term customer loyalty through systematically impressing your customers again and again."

Well, true to my nature, I feel compelled to point out the flip side, which I call the long OW. In brief, the long OW is a means to achieving long-term customer hatred through systematically disappointing your customers again and again.

Where long wow companies like Apple and Nike continually look for ways to express to customers how much they appreciate them through phenomenally well designed, user-centric products and services. Long OW companies like Blockbuster, the cable companies and phone companies seemingly look for ways to contemptuously exploit their customers through products and no-service processes that are equally well designed, except that the products and no-services are dollar-centric.

I understand the mindset and organizational culture that drive the long OW companies to make decisions like these. Like many American cultural aspects they are all focused on $ tomorrow. What they fail to see is the long term lasting hatred consumers have for them and the taint these business practices have on their brands that can't be washed away.

Blockbuster is the perfect case study for this. I know, I know... I pick on Blockbuster quite often... But THIS IS EXACTLY THE POINT! Neither I, nor other consumers have forgotten the YEARS of gouging we suffered from the late-fee nazis in Blockbuster management. Even when Blockbuster's Click & Mortar offering is VASTLY superior to every online only offering - people still choose netflix. The people who still patronize Blockbuster do it only begrudgingly and silently hope for the day when a online & meat-space combo retailer will offer something better so that they can stick it to the man REAL GOOD!

Cell phone companies and the Cable companies have paved the way for this type of business model for decades! The Cable companies were first. Having regional monopolies, the combination of easy money and little competition has created crappy behemoths of companies who really could not give a rat's ass about how much consumers hate them. Maybe instead of focusing on churn, they should focus on the root cause - the legacy of contempt they have shown for their customers.

How can the leaders of these companies not get it? Consumers generally feel that all the options suck it's up to them to choose the one that least sucks for them and their lifestyle.

My recommendation for these purveyors of contempt is to either:

1) Go for a "truth and reconciliation" approach in which you actually try to make legitimate amends with people who despise your organization. If you decide to do this one, you have to do more than say "sorry", you have to show you mean it. See my past blog entry on this topic for more information.

-OR-

2) Prepare for an upstart with a clean reputation to come and eat your lunch.

Rating Time:

Long Wow companies - Like them.

Long OW companies - Garbage.

Tell em' Large Marge Sent Ya!

Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!!!

2009-02-16T19:40:00.000-08:00

I loved the Super Friends. I loved the Legion of Doom. I even loved it when they trotted out the politically correct heroes who just so happened to match almost every genetic heritage (Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, Samurai, Rima the Jungle Girl, El Dorado).

What I wasn't too thrilled about was the use of the sidekicks. At first it was "Wendy, Marvin and Wonder-Dog". This is too lame to garner more than a passing mention. "Zan and Jana", however, are more than just lame. They defy any use of common sense - and I love ridiculousness. The girl, "Jana", changes into animals - I get it, good power. The boy, "Zan", can change into water or something made of ice. What kind of drugs were the script writers on? An ice cage? Breath on it really hard, and you're free! Whenever they had to go anywhere, Zan changed into water and was carried in a bucket by Gleek the pet monkey!

The way I figure it is this: The writers thought that Wendy, Marvin and Wonder-Dog were too stupid to continue and so they tried to think up something better. Alien shape shifters who have to touch to use their powers... good start. And then for some reason, the whole travel in a bucket and turn into ice things comes up and ruins the show for several years.

Super Friends - Like em.
Legion of Doom - Like em.
Wonder Twins - Garbage.

Go on with your bad self!

Resolution Schmesolution

2009-01-12T20:48:00.000-08:00

'09 is here. So are new year's resolutions.

Lose weight? Exercise more? Not for me.

I've had the same set of resolutions since 1989. Well, technically not exactly the same.

1989-1994

Always remember it's only school.

Eat more ding-dongs

1994-2009

Always remember it's only work.

Eat more cake

The changes... Well, I'm not in school anymore. And I never really ate any ding-dongs at all, so I decided to go easy on myself and make it more achievable by going with the more generic "cake".

My deal with resolutions is that - if you need a specific event to commit yourself, then you probably don't really want to do the thing you are committing yourself to. If you want to lose weight, go on a diet... TODAY. Not 3 weeks from now on your birthday.

Rating:

Resolutions - Like them
New Year's Resolutions - Garbage

PS - Yes, I'm Writing about New Year's Resolutions just before January ends. At least it is not February.

Party for your right to fight!

Air Tran's argument clinic

2008-12-25T12:47:00.002-08:00

I have recently been flying every other week on several different carriers and have had experiences that leave me flummoxed.

All of the actual flights I took were relatively pleasurable. Yes I know most flying experiences are mildly painful at best... remember I said RELATIVELY.

I flew on AirTran round trip to DFW.

Making the Reservation - Good.
Getting my tickets and seats - Good.
Flying - Good.

Applying my A+ rewards number... not so much.

Given that one of my co-workers made the reservation for me, my rewards number was not attached to the reservation. I talked with the ticketing agent. No dice. I called the 1-800 number. No dice.

Listed below in ascending order are the three things that were really frustrating for me:

1) Poor systems design - any person along the reservation and flight supply chain should be able to serve a passenger in common use cases. This is good multi-channel experience design.

2) Poor understanding of the human mind - who memorizes their A+ rewards number? I already have enough numbers in my brain and companies want to keep tossing more numbers at me when I have no space to keep them in my wallet, or facility to write them down. The only time I have to be on the phone with them is in the car, where I can't write. Good design requires basic understanding of your customer and their lifestyle.

3) Poor customer service philosophy - when I called the 1-800 number, the representative went into detail about why I was wrong to expect him or the ticketing agent to be able to attach my number to my reservation.

I highly doubt that he was trained to argue with customers, and when I asked him why he was arguing with me, I got the proverbial Monty Python response. Here are some responses I would deem as acceptable when my request goes beyond the boundaries of policy or system capability:

a) I'm sorry Mr. Fishman, our systems are not designed to do that.

b) I'm sorry Mr. Fishman, our policies won't allow me to do that.

c) I'm sorry Mr. Fishman, I'm not authorized to do that.

d) I'm sorry Mr. Fishman, I am unable to do that right at this time, however, I could take your information down and call you back when this is done.

e) Any of the above followed by: I'll mention it to my supervisor that I had a problem expediting a customer request.

Here are the two most common responses:

1) I can't do that. <- I hate this one with a passion. Can't means unable. What they actually mean in most of these situations is that my request is against policy or that they are individually are unwilling.

2) You need to call to do that. <- This one raises all the original problems listed above. The very simple and compelling aim is this: One face to the customer.

Separately, I flew Delta this week and while the Sky Cap applied my frequent flyer number (YAY! Woo-Hoo!). The customer service person had to give me another number to call to log a "lost and found" request that left me on hold for 20 minutes before I gave up (BOO! DOH!).

Official Rating:

Most airline's customer service experience design - Crap

Tip your servers well. I'll be here all weekend.

Why I don't love my Nuvi

2008-12-25T12:47:00.001-08:00

Now don't get me wrong, I do indeed like my Nuvi. As GPS devices go it is really usable and useful, but there are some simple improvements a good UX designer could have implemented if just a little more effort had been put into the design process.

Without further ado, here is my open letter to Garmin as to how to improve the Nuvi experience:

1) Change the alphabetical ordering of the keypad to QWERTY. This is a no-brainer and needs no explanation.

2) Modify the algorithm and interface for finding fuel, restaurants, etc. to allow the user to filter the results that are on or close to the current route. Picture yourself driving on a road-trip to Albuquerque and wanting to stop for a quick bite to eat or to grab a coffee at Starbucks. Now you passed the last exit 3 miles ago and you're not really into turning around. The current interface always shows the closest first and only allows filtering by restaurant type or name...but not "on the way". C'mon folks, this isn't rocket science UX work here.

That's it. Short and sweet. I do think that they are wasting their time on device unification features like making the Nuvi hold photos and music. This is feature bloat that the device and brand are just not elastic enough to support in my mind.

Anyway, it's rating time:

Nuvi - Like it
Nuvi's design team attention to detail - Garbage

See you dudes on the flip-flop. I'm out.

New Frontiers for our Celebrity Obsessed Culture

2008-12-14T14:55:00.000-08:00

Two years back or so I remember seeing some statistic where more than 2/3 of respondents said they would rather be an assistant to a celebrity than a US Senator. I think this really says a lot about loneliness in our society and many people's complete lack of meaningful connections with other people in their everyday lives (along with a complete lack of meaningful connections with intelligent ideas).

Everyone already knows about American's deep obsession with fame. Within the last couple of years, however, a new form of celebrity has emerged - The Internet Celebrity. Crossing over on to the cover of WIRED, or showing up on the Today Show are meat-space nobodies who have what it takes to be cyber-space somebodies.

You may have seen them pop-up every now and then - David Elsewhere, Philip Chbeeb, lonelygirl15. Marina Orlova, the Hot For Words woman, has taken it to a new level. If you have not seen her, she is the hands down favorite of every word-nerd. She has all the bases covered - her own youtube channel, facebook page, twitter following - and her own ecommerce site - all centering around her brief entymological explanations on the most mundane words. She has used her web-based platform to get on the Today show, the O'Reilly factor and several others - and now it is a career for her. What is that career? Selling herself as a brand through her web content (i.e., advertising) and her product (i.e., pin-up calendar).

The concept of web celebrities as a a concept is even crossing over to the mainstream (e.g., Weezer's "Pork & Beans" video at the top of this entry) and the phenomenon is now feeding on itself. Facebook's video posting application has allowed for the faster spread of viral videos and of course allows for shameless self promotion.

Speaking of self promotion... I know I have some guilty pleasure when people comment on my blog and I've just added subscription and "following" links. Part of the enjoyment of writing for me is knowing that people read it and find it interesting. So yes... I have been shamelessly promoting my blog on my facebook page. Will I ever become a web celeb? Probably not. But I'll still keep experimenting with ways to increase my web profile. Why? I guess it's like the lottery, you gotta be in it to win it.

Celebrity Obsession = Garbage
Web Celebs = It is a guilty pleasure, but I have to admit I like it.

You stay classy San Diego.

Improper affordance

2008-12-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

For the non UX (User Experience) professionals out there, affordance is a term from "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman, that speaks to concept of how objects in life seem to speak out to people in terms of how they can be used. e.g.,

A door with a protruding handle "affords" a pulling action.
An image on the web that looks like a button "affords" pushing (i.e., clicking).
A baseball "affords" throwing based on it's size, density and shape along with it's cultural context.

So what?

Who cares?

If you have a facebook account, you care. The current facebook interface affords messaging through the "wall" in such a way that messages meant for private consumption are being written in public places. This is exacerbated by the explosion of facebook to the masses, many of whom are unfamiliar with social networking. People are using facebook to stay in touch with extended family and friends and now the mixing of these groups in a "public" context like the "wall" is becoming quite embarrassing for many users.

Think of the posts that could show up from one of your crazy friends that your mom might see:

"yeeeeeeah boy! did u get any action wit that grrl last night? she waz so drunk and totally HOT!"

Think of the posts that your crazy friend might see:

"I do not like the idea of you prowling around for girls at bars! Go meet a nice Jewish girl at temple. And make sure you wear that nice blue suit I bought you. You look so smart! A real Mensch!."

It would be easy to blame the unfamiliar users with not knowing that facebook has private messaging capabilities, but that would be pointing in the wrong direction. The real problem lies in how facebook is revealing its functionality to its user base. Facebook was designed for college students and technorati - not thier grandparents. And thus we come to the big problem facing UX professionals - How do you design an interface that is at once targeted towards people of many demographics and experience levels without moving the design to the "lowest common denominator".

Many designers lose sleep over this and no clear solution has emerged at this point short of designing multiple or adaptive interfaces which are cost prohbitive. Either way, I still love facebook. It's greatness is showing in an odd way - it is a victim of its own success and many users are feeling the mild pain of being embarrassed within their social circles.

Rating:

Facebook - like it
Facebook wall/message design - garbage

Peace up. A-Town Down.

Design by committee

2008-12-06T19:47:00.001-08:00

Ruth's Chris Steak House?

Lettuce Souprise You?

WTF! What is a "Chris Steak House"? I would say this about the worst choice I have seen for a restaurant name except I have a hard time picking between "Ruth's Horribly Named Restaurant" and "Lettuce Surprise You With A Really Bad Pun". One of my wierd eccentricities, I will refrain from patronizing establishements that have made bad marketing decisions for that reason alone.

Actually these do not surprise me. Why not? One big reason... Steve Jobs aside, taste does not often correlate with power. Many executives, managers, owners, directors etc. have great vision while at the same time, have little to no aesthetic taste or ability to remove themselves from their own shoes in perceiving their vision. This realizes itself when project owners, sponsors and their bosses give "creative feedback" in the only way they can. A bad way. "It needs to POP more", "I love Apple's taste for design. Make it like that with MORE!", "Be MORE creative!" All of these exact quotes belie the same actual lack of a clear vocabulary and understanding of design and are the result of a desire to imbue a design with their fingerprints so they can feel they were a part of the design process without any actual aesthetic motivation.

One of my favorite illustrations of this sort of behavior is...

props to Danny Elfman - composer for the music, originally from one of the modern movie masterpieces... "Pee Wee's Big Adventure".

One of my smartest friends once told me - when you take two great visions and mix them together sometimes all you get is a watered down version of both that actually appeals to no-one. Someday I hope to run into a sponsor who can own the vision and be confident enough in their own contribution to let designers do their job

Rating:

Business Executives making design decisions - Crap
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure - Like it.

What is a facebook friend anyway?

2008-12-01T14:47:00.000-08:00

So I have been using linkedin for professional relationships and facebook for personal ones and I am very comfortable with that. But I have recently been bombarded by friend requests from people with whom I have no interest in re-connecting with or personally connecting with. Maybe I'm kind of whacked (well, I actually already know that I am whacked, but that is more like a chapter in a book than a blog post), but I do not want to have the entire world as "facebook friends". In fact, I almost long to have some new sections:

facebook enemies - for people who have invited me and I want to ignore with extreme predjudice
facebook acquaintances - for people who I might meet once or twice but they are not really friends yet
facebook co-workers - for people with whom I have a professional relationship with but am not really comfortable with them having full access to my profile

What's more unusual to me is that I am not a private guy. I really don't care who knows what about my status and infomation. I just don't like calling them "friends". Am I so crazy in that I don't like the label "friends" for people whom I am not "friends" with? Doesn't this devalue the people whom I am friends with? Does the facebook modifier actually have an effect on the meaning of the term? Facebook is still too new for me to know.

Rating:

Facebook - Like it. It really has set a new standard in terms of a killer RIA.

People who want to be "friends" with everybody - Garbage

Oh cruel Starbucks! Why do you mock me so?

2008-09-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

I read an article in INC magazine online today about Starbucks, authored by one of my favorite bloggers Joel Spolsky and was inspired to write an entry wherein I do my usual thing; offering free advice to those who did not ask for it and certainly won't take it.

Many people already know what is wrong with Starbucks, what I am going to do is identify 3 ways to fix it.

1) Well Designed Kiosk Systems - I've been harping on this one forever! Some people say that Kiosks would impact the illusory atmosphere of a little coffee house escape that Starbucks has so carefully crafted, and I'm not sure that they are wrong. What I sure of however, is that the daunting rush hour lines crush that illusion in a way no well-designed kiosk could ever deign to. Picture walking into a Starbucks (even during rush-hour) and passing a little fob (which knows who you are, what your favorite drink is and your preferred form of payment - including credit card, just like amazon) over the kiosk. The kiosk presents your typical order (which is transmitted to the barista), along with an upsell pitch (offering a free biscotti if you buy a travel mug) in a way that does not require you to take ANY extra steps at all (much like a banner ad on a web site) if you chose not to touch it (of course the kiosks are touch screens) and also presents you with any other recent orders you have made (like when you came in with your insanely hot girlfriend and ordered her favorite drink too). You touch your choice, the order is submitted to the barista, your card is charged, you read the paper until a barista calls out: "Herman! Your grande non-fat ice latte is ready!". At which point you enjoy your drink.

Get it?

Walk in
Flash an RFID embedded fob
One touch for a typical order
Read the paper / check email on your phone / chat up your girlfriend
Drink your expensive coffee beverage

You can't tell me that is not a remarkable experience.... well you could, but I would think you were lying, joking or not too bright.

2) iBucks iPhone App - Picture an app on your iphone that knew all the starbucks locations, your calendar and your location too(if you allowed it to). You could:

tell it to have your favorite drink ready in 5 min for when you walk in (of course the charge is handled in the same way as it is described above)
have it offer you text-alerts 20 -30 min before certain meetings with discounts on your favorite drinks
invite your other iBucks enabled pals to join you

3) Solve the actual problem at the root - Create a position and hire a "Chief Experience Officer" whose job it was to continually infuse and reinvigorate every location, every system and every employee with the essence of the Starbucks brand promise - A truly great coffee drinking experience.

Oh yeah, almost forgot... If Starbucks already has a CXO. Fire him/her and hire a new one who will actually do their job well.

Starbucks rush-hour experience - Garbage

American Brandstand

2008-09-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Brands are strange enigmatic beasts that are omnipresent in our daily lives in more ways than most people think. Most people who live in a commercial society are familiar with organization-based brands. Some people are also highly tuned to individual brands of well-known personalities. I sometimes refer to certain aspects of my life or personality being “on brand” or being harmonious with “brand Fish”.

Just as many people are aware of brands, both organizational and personal, many people and organizations are unaware with how to care for and enable a brand. It’s actually a lot more simple than many people think, but the problem is that simple does not mean easy or pain free – simple means lacking complexity.

How I care for and engender my personal brand are grounded in my upbringing. Growing up, there were things my parents taught me by explanation and then there were things they took for granted that I would absorb from their example and the culture around me. The value of standing for something fell into the latter category.

The reason why it has fallen into the "took for granted" category is sort of interesting - it emerges out of my Jewish heritage. Being raised as a Jew on Long Island meant I grew up hearing Holocaust this, Anne Frank that, Elie Wiesel the other! One of the key parts of these stories and lessons was that amidst all the horrendous tragedy that befell the Jews and many other minorities, there were some things to be learned – in the forms of perseverance, courage and the respect for life. Some of the greatest bravery displayed was by people who had the courage to do what was right by hiding Jews from the Nazis while risking the well being and safety of themselves and their families.

As I grew up, finished school, and got a job that I turned into a career, the stories gave me a sense of honor and continuously affected my everyday work and life choices.

When I became a father, however, things changed subtly. My engrossing responsibility to someone other than myself took the highest priority in my life and for some time I was conflicted on how to think about this in the context of my upbringing. After some thought I figured it out - it was not that my principles had become luxuries, my principles had remained the same, I just now had new "input" into the decision-making process. My questions then became, "How do I apply my principles to this new situation?" and "Where does 'protecting' them become forsaking my values and heritage?" The answer for me became that if, in the act of protection, I cease to be a figure they can admire and trust, then that "protection" is not something that actually serves their best interests. I believe that my children are best served by seeing me behave in a manner that is consistently honest and forthright – regardless of context.

Reader – “Whoa! Is this crazy dude ever going to get around to talking about company brands or what?”
Blogger – “Patience please.”

Being a person of deeply ingrained principles, tradition and devotion, I have stood fast on many "small battles" that seemed to hold precedent and consequence within them. Over time, I have refined this approach by improving my ability to actually see looming precedent in balance with long term interests and goals.

These sorts of decisions where short and long term interests seem to be at odds are the same sorts of conundrums that face many companies and organizations every day. The difference between sustained greatness and short term success is in part tied to the fortitude of the organization's members, the clarity of purpose and the ability to see the decision points as they actually are.

My point is this - companies who are willing to compromise who they are at the most core level are NOT protecting shareholder value as some of the decision-makers proclaim. In many cases they are actually compromising the value proposition that the organization holds to the public and ultimately short-changing the both the shareholders and the community at large of the long term promise of the organization (i.e., THE BRAND!).

Blogger – “Comically enough, this matches up with all the data and data-oriented conclusions of the phenomenal business books Good to Great and Built to Last by Jim Collins.”

Many people think a brand is a logo. It is not. There are some more-educated people who think a brand is a promise (what an organization says it stands for) - they are half right. There are still some other educated people who believe that a brand is an emotional context held by the customers, employees and partners who are served by the organization when thinking about the organization (what people believe an organization stands for – see The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier) - they are half right as well.

Blogger – “Almost there!.”

It is my belief that the brand is a two-sided coin - the promise and its reflection, the perception. In order for an organization to be of sustained value to others, it has to define its promise clearly and live up to it every day so that the beholders of the promise can see it for both for what it is and what it aspires to be. In this manner, individuals can have relationships with the organization on something other than price - because to many individuals TRUTH HOLDS VALUE!!!

Blogger – “Wait for it…”

Just like truth holds value in how my kids look at me.

Blogger – “Wow! I wasn't sure if I was actually gonna get there!!!! Thanks for sticking it out.”

Standing for something - Like it.
Purporting to stand for something - Garbage.

being known vs just being

2008-08-24T20:02:00.001-07:00

Several years ago I was in a company all-hands meeting where one of the speakers posited the idea that it was highly important that our clients felt like we were experts. After the meeting one of my enlightened co-workers opined that it would be better to "be experts" rather than to be "thought of as experts".

I am often faced by this subtle differentiation both in the workplace, in politics and in personal relationships where people focus on being known for something or being perceived as something rather than just plain being what they want to be.

One of the consequences of this differentiation is that the overriding focus on the perception is actually one of the barriers that will prevent the reality from occurring.

Does Apple want to make the best products or be known for making the best products?

Does Adaptive Path want to make the best user experiences or be known for making the best user experiences?

Does Chad Johnson want to be the best wide receiver or be known for being the best wide receiver?

Does Barack Obama want to help the poor or be known as candidate who is out to help the poor?

Does John McCain want to always talk straight or be known as candidate who always talks straight?

Stop worrying about being known and just be!

Managing perception = Garbage.

Managing Reality = Like it.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

2008-07-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

Inconceivable!

No not in that way...

While this blog does often talk about the elusive nature and meaning of words and it sometimes plays with them, I am not going to talk about the meaning of "inconceivable". Rather, what I find to be inconceivable is that so many people do not understand the meaning of the word "sorry".... hmmmmm, no that's not it. I do think they understand it, I just don't believe that they grasp what it means to actually mean it.

So many people use it as an attempt to claim compassion or empathy. While in reality what they actually mean is that they are uncomfortable with the current situation and either:

don't know what to say
want your absolution of any wrong-doing
want to be acknowledged as permitted to end the current portion of the conversation

While I find myself on the "being sorry" end of the first example when confronted with someone else's tragedy, I more frequently find myself on the other end in business contexts - which strangely enough also leaves me as "being sorry" - as in a sorry state of affairs.

In business contexts - a retail or service employee will say "I'm sorry" or "I apologize" or something else with a similar supposed meaning. What I find offensive is that they believe I should accept it at it's face value when they are un-willing to back up said sorrow with any action or any actual attempt to make amends. The lack of any willingness to make amends robs the supposed empathy of any sincerity or meaning.

Professed empathy without sincerity makes "sorry" a platitude - a trite remark uttered as if it has actual meaning.

The crux of the matter is this - If a service employee says "I'm sorry" in the above fashion without any actual sincerity but as a means to end a topic of contention, then they are essentially assuming:

that I should believe that they actually have empathy for me
that saying "I'm sorry" is sufficient to make amends
that I should belive that saying "I'm sorry" is sufficient to make amends

And while a small apology is appropriate in small circumstances, many organizations use it as if it were an panacea to any deficiency in any product or service. Stop insulting the intelligence of customers and consumers. If you are going to express remorse, empower people to back it up with an attempt to make amends - It doesn't have to be a grand gesture, It just has to demonstrate some level of sincerity. This sincerity is what will lead to authentic brand relationships and brand loyalty. A great example of a sincere apology is flickr's coloring contest - The site went down for a brief period of time and as a sincere apology to its users, flickr made a simple coloring contest and gave away a "pro" account. The cool thing here is that flickr goofed and in its sincere apology capitalized on goof in a way to strengthen their brand, user loyalty and raise their awareness profile!

Why? Because in the world of falseness - people crave authenticity! Smart customers don't judge the character of your company when things go right, they judge it by your conduct when things go wrong.

Insincere platitudes - crap.
Authentic responses - like them.

We don't need to build the Bentley... or do we?

2008-06-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've been inspired. Some recent experiences have pushed me to the keyboard once again.

Lately, I've been seeing a common myopia (HAH! SEEING! MYOPIA! That's a joke son! Don't you get it? I'm too fast for you! You'll never learn nothing with your nose in a blog boy!) . The people who typically surround me are overachievers and we all seem to share a passion for excellence in what we do. This is not so strange. What is strange and interesting is that when we ask for something from others and have certain constraints (like time or money) we seem to lose some ability to empathize with the passion for excellence from the other party.

In a past life, we called it "building the Bentley syndrome" - the endemic need in groups of overachievers that nothing but their best work was remotely acceptable. In trying to lead teams of overachievers, I am constantly faced with this problem... and I think I have made some sort of break-through.

I've tried the "redefine" approach where "best" is subjective and requires a balance of all constraints to little avail.

I am loathe to try the "dictatorial" approach where my option is the only option. I feel that this option is doomed with people who bristle at authority.

Well, maybe break-through is a little strong. Gained some new insight is more appropriate. Maybe what people need is a little understanding and empathy. All the people around me want to create "remarkable" solutions and feel that shortcuts and delivering to managed expectations is not very remarkable. When challenged on their approach the replies basically come to this - it
is always easy to do something poorly. I agree with this sentiment - but my new retort will be, I understand your need to do your best work. I empathize with the need to shine. Please understand that even work that is half-assed by your standards will more than likely be better than anything the client has dreamed. Please empathize with the fact that the quality of work you are capable of delivering when you are not tying up every loose end will definitely exceed what the client is willing to pay for. Sometimes, if we deliver crisply, we leave clients wanting more. And over time, that delivery focus will lead to trust and partnership. That shared trust and context will allow us to do our best work and get paid appropriately for it.

Understanding & Empathy - Like em.

Intolerant of Tolerance

2007-11-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

Tolerance? WTF? To tolerate something literally means "to put up with" and has direct association with pain and hardship. Why on earth do we need to use tolerance as a term in reference to a lack of racial prejudice or hatred?

I don't think that any person who actually wants interpersonal harmony amongst different demographic groups wants to imply a negative connotation to the act of getting along with people who are different. But that's what the word means.

Well, I'm out. I am no longer using the word in that fashion. I am not tolerant of others who are different than me. I actively embrace those who are different from me. I want to know more about them, their culture and their ways. I want to learn all I can from them.

Tolerance = Garbage.

Acceptance on the other hand, I like!

Friends. How many of us have them?

2007-10-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

True Friends? What are those? Most friends these days are fair weather. It's easy to be a "good" friend when it's easy to be a good friend. How many will be there when you are under fire?

A friend of mine once told me that he knew that people in this country were basically good. He knew this because he has traveled extensively around the US and had to depend upon the kindness of strangers. What he saw were many people who were generous and giving. I understand and appreciate this vignette, however, I believe it demonstrates very little in terms of the character of the average US citizen. My retort to him was "It's easy to be a kind when nothing is at stake. Put money, sex or power into the equation and watch the knives come out." When it is so easy to be kind to a stranger, what does it prove?

If a person helps someone else out and stands nothing to gain (other than a warm fuzzy feeling) that's one thing. If a person helps someone out to their own detriment that's another. This is where my definition of true friendship comes from. A true friend is someone who will take it on the chin so that you don't have to take it in the ass. - Colorful? Yes, but very illustrative as well.

Many people I know are amazed that I have friends who go back to the 2nd grade. Actually, when I think about it, I'm amazed that I have friends who go back to the 2nd grade. Some people use the term friend colloquially - I'm really not sure what it means for them. Someone to hang out with? Maybe. I'm totally guessing. I just don't have many acquaintance/friends. My friends come in two varieties:

True friends whom I depend on and who can depend upon me.
People who I am feeling out to see if they are someone whom I would and could refer to as a true friend.

Rating time:

acquaintance/friends = garbage
true friends = like it

Now or Never?... Never!

2007-10-16T20:33:00.000-07:00

A rule of thumb that my dad gave me was - If someone needs you to "say yes today or this offer will be gone" then the answer is no.

Whenever I've followed this advice, I've come up on the winning side. You know who uses the now or never technique? Time share salespeople, used car salespeople, club salespeople, job recruiters, and the like. Fundamentally, the now or never technique is used because the people offering you something know that if you had the time to figure things out, you would realize nothing is as good as it seems and those "can't miss" offers are in fact - too good to be true.

If it's a job - then they don't really want you.

If it's a membership - then they are trying to sell you something you don't really need.

If it's a car - then they are trying to screw you.

If it's a timeshare - then find any way out of that office... threaten to call the police... RUN FORREST! RUN!

For a limited time only = crap.

Lick the lollipop of mediocrity and you'll suck for life!

2007-09-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

Mediocrity in and of itself is a contradiction. Why? Because most people and organizations who accept and endorse mediocrity get results that are actually below mediocre.

This is not surprising at all for me. When faced with the combination of low expectations and an actual desire to not achieve excellence, motivation goes out the window.

How did this happen? Growing up, did our parents, teachers, and coaches say "Good enough for government work"? Not mine. Mine, and the role models of many other people I know would say things like "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well!" or "Effort beats talent when talent shows no effort." Many people still vociferously aspire to achieve greatness or to produce great results but their numbers across many disciplines appear to be in decline. Where did this desire to just get by come from?

Did it come from our cultures denigration of competition? Could be... We live in a society where "everyone's a winner", and "all children are special". This nonsensical crap gives people nothing to shoot for. Why try when all results are viewed as equal? Of course some self motivated souls still identify with the concept of doing anything less than your best is cheating yourself and that the reward is in the doing, but the implicit message of the role models of today must bear some responsibility.

Did it come from the disillusionment with the establishment? Could be... Our parents and our peers grew up where many people believed (erroneously) that their employers actually cared about them as people, that they were a part of some bigger vision and that a "job for life" was just that. When corporate corruption, treacherous leaders and over-eager downsizing became prevalent many from generation x and beyond have a different view of what the relationship between an employer and an employee should feel like.

Did it come from the complete destruction of accountability? Could be... My parents forced me to come clean no matter the implications. You were responsible for your actions and you accepted the consequences. How many role models in our society (all the way up to the president - and not just the last two administrations either) do their little verbal dances around any and all allegations no matter how trivial or how critical. Parents now actually lie and endorse lying to their children to avoid punishment or to gain reward that they are not entitled to.

In the end, I'm not sure where it comes from, but I can see where it leads to. The USA will more than likely continue its social, artistic and economic decline and as I said at the beginning, it won't stop at mediocre. Aiming for mediocre doesn't work. High expectations will more than likely get people's best effort out of them. Medium or low expectations often get the same thing - whatever they believe is the absolute minimum necessary.

Mediocrity = Crap.

Nice doesn't cut it

2007-09-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

Q: "How was your date last night?"

A: "He/She/It was nice."

See what I mean? Nice is affable, amiable, agreeable and.... wait for it.... BLAND.

People use the word nice so casually and as a catch-all so often for anything that is non-offensive, that it has actually come to mean "non-offensive" when used in actual conversations.

Nice does not mean kind, interesting, exciting, fun, honest, worthwhile, etc. A nice person would not tell you if a booger was hanging out of your nose.

If nice is the first adjective, or the only adjective that comes to mind when describing something or someone, then I probably would not like it or them.

Official rating:

Nice when used as a primary description or as a stand alone description = Garbage.

False Niceness = Real Rudenss

2007-09-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

"Hello! Welcome to Blockbuster!" "Welcome to MOES!" "Thank you for calling Bank of America. Your call is important to us." Please spare me your meaningless platitudes.

We've all heard them. What do they all have in common? A complete lack of sincerity or authenticity. Does the minimum-wage earning person checking DVD's in at Blockbuster sound anything like someone you know who is happy to see you? No? Why not? Because while they might not be unhappy to see you, they are probably more likely apathetic. So if the people are apathetic and we know it is a given that the IVR (irritating voice response) machine is by definition apathetic, then why do they say the things they don't mean? Simple. Because they are forced to by the man.

Some people who are in charge of these brands just don't get it. Sincerity sells. Maybe not as much as sex, but it still sells. Employees at Nordstrom are genuinely happy to serve you and it shows (maybe I'll write a post about why I like Nordstrom). That's part of the reason people actually enjoy shopping there. So what is going through the mind of the marketing and branding executives who make these decisions? In order to figure this out, I have laid out the possible options 1) They think customers will actually fall for the false platitude. i.e., they think the masses are egregiously stupid. 2) They think customers will notice the insincerity and they really don't care how the customers feel when faced with it. 3) They think customers will not even notice the greeting at all and will go on their merry way (more on this later). 4) Some combination of the above.

I loathe all of these possibilities with 1 and 2 leading the pack by a wide margin. Now each of these also has something else in common - they are all actually rude - why? Because they are both insincere and obtrusive in nature.

Back to option 3, where customers don't notice the "greeting". The ironic thing here is that customers who don't notice (or those who choose not to respond) could actually be perceived as the ones who are being rude here because they did not respond to a greeting.

You may notice that I have not called out the famous Wal-Mart greeters. This is not an omission. Wal-Mart greeters get a bad name from all the meaningless (i.e. - devoid of any meaning) fake welcomes we receive every day. Wal-Mart greeters, on the other hand, actually are sincere! They are usually senior citizens who are happy to be there and are happy to interact with people. This is not rude. This is genuine friendliness, which I like. The rest... garbage.

Satisficing is not always satisfying

2007-09-06T19:47:00.000-07:00

Satisficing for those who are new to my lexicon is the practice where someone will pick the first available acceptable solution, rather than continue to search for an optimal one.

I for one, am going to try an minimize my tendencies to satisfice. Why? Two big reasons.

1) It enables sub-optimal offerings. I like goodness in my life. I like things that give me that warm fuzzy feeling when I interact with them knowing that I am ecstatic with the decision I made to engage in some way with a product, company or even a person. George Bernard Shaw said it very well - “All progress depends on the unreasonable man. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” If you want something better in life, don't settle. Settling perpetuates mediocrity.

2) Staisficing can quickly become habit forming and be applied inappropriately in your life to areas where consequences can be monstrous. Satisficing on toothpaste is one thing. Satisficing on love is quite another. There is this big contradiction in American society, where movies, television and other forms of story telling mediums simultaneously relate that "true love" is this precious and joyous thing that can happen to anyone and that "true love" is a romanticized fantasy created by Hollywood. Most people buy into the second message because it is easier to believe and lets people be impatient and lazy (WHAT? Impatient and lazy Americans? How can such a thing be?). It also advances the thought process that "you really aren't worthy of true love". I personally believe that most Americans are pessimistic on their own intrinsic worth as people and put masks on in the form of consumerism, pride, vanity and braggadocio to hide their inner insecurities about themselves. It is my further hypotheses that since the social morays that dissuaded divorce for baby boomers and the greatest generation have been removed high divorce rates are mostly a result of people satisficing when it comes to finding a life partner.

In relation to this I have some new rules to live by for myself:

1) Don't satisfice on anything that you will have to live with for more than 6 months. Any longer than that and you will regret your involvement and your settling. Satisficing has it's place (e.g., toothpaste or when it is used as a tool to learn and understand what you really want) but as you get a keener sense of self awareness and knowledge, satisficing should proportionately decrease as a practice.

2) Don't give up on finding that "perfect" outcome. I use the term perfect a little loosely because perfection is defined by the beholder and it is very rarely what we think it is even for ourselves (i.e., we know what we want, we rarely know what we need).

3) Truly buy into the concept that if you have to ask yourself "Is this what I really want?" the answer is no. That epiphany moment where total clarity emerges is the true hallmark of something that will be lastingly meaningful and satisfying.

So my rating: Satisficing = Garbage.

BAD Retailer!!

2007-09-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

There are many types of bad retail experiences. And today I'll talk about the ones with a poor mental model.

For those people not in the design community a mental model is an imaginative construct a person makes in their head to try to understand how something works - e.g., many e-commerce websites give us a mental model of a "shopping cart" to illustrate how one component of the shopping process works.

Many people in the design community use the concept of mental models to ensure that what they are designing, be it a product or a interactive experience, is comprehensible by the intended audience. Well, maybe it is time that executives of certain physical retail establishments tried to use this concept in regards to the physical shopping experience in their stores.

Why do I say this - as usual, because I am gosh darn angry! What mega-moron came up with the concept that a store should try to change the way humans think and behave to fit into a non-intuitive logistical model.

I don't remember if Circuit City or Service Merchandise came first with the whole "get a ticket, pay, and walk out of the store to a loading area" model. But I hate them both equally for the setting a horrible trend that other stores have followed.

First off, the whole concept is flawed - The process is designed around a concept where a store is trying to save the cost of holding inventory and using a warehouse like layout "in the back" to minimize the space needed while still maintaining an aesthetic store environment. NEWS FLASH - PEOPLE WHO SHOP AT LOW OR MODERATELY PRICED STORES ARE MORE CONCERNED WITH PRICE AND CONVENIENCE THAN HAVING A LINOLEUM FLOOR! Just ask any successful big-box retailer like Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, Sam's Club, etc. - Not that these companies don't have their issues, but that's a blog for another day. My point here is open up the back room you dolts! You can have your savings on the footprint required for inventory and have even more savings by removing your "tastefully decorated" store.

Secondly, who goes to a store with the idea of buying a ticket which represents a piece of merchandise? Nobody does. Enough said.

Lastly, every time I go to one of these establishments there is always some problem at the loading area. I wish I could avoid this whole part of the process and pick what I want from a shelf, put it on a cart, pay for it and GET OUT OF YOUR STORE WITHOUT TALKING TO ANOTHER SOUL!!! I don't come to Brandsmart to make friends, I come because I want to buy something at a reasonable price as quickly and pain free as possible.

Threadless - Immersive, Expressive & Transparent

2007-07-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

I Love Threadless!

www.threadless.com that is. If you haven't seen it, go check it out. It fits the model of long term staying power in web 2.0 land. And what is that model?

Immersive - You can get lost on threadless for hours looking at and commenting on all the designs, blogs, photos, etc.

Expressive - Threadless allows members of it's devoted community to express themselves in all sorts of ways. Designers can upload their designs, have them voted on, commented on and produced (if enough people vote for them). Consumers can grade designs, comment or suggest improvements, create blogs, or even get into the act themselves by submitting slogans for "Type Tees". You can also get credit for uploading photos of yourself in threadless shirts.

Transparent - working with or purchasing on threadless is a seamless process that is hassle free.

When online businesses come into existence that bring immersive, expressive and transparent experiences to consumers, success is sure to follow.

IVR = Irritating Voice Response

2007-06-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

Do you know what I hate more than IVRs?

NOTHING! (Well, maybe something, Hitler for example - but I'm ranting for effect here people, gimme a break)

There are so many things wrong with them it is hard to pick where to start.

Zero or "O" hardly ever means what the caller believes it should mean - I WANT TO TALK TO A PERSON. If I wasn't a libertarian, I would say that this should be the law of the land. At the very least it should be a cross-industry customer service best practice. Why doesn't it always take you to a person? The answer is obvious...
This is all a symptom of the larger issue here. No matter what that disgusting platitude laden recording says - YOUR CALL DOES NOT MATTER TO THEM. It is so clear to anyone with an actual brain. The only thing that matters to the dehumanizing trolls who implement these systems is making money off you or exerting power over you. Here's a tip to that one company who actually does care about customer's calls - HIRE ENOUGH OPERATORS TO KEEP HOLD TIMES UNDER TWO MINUTES.
Voice recognition systems with no synonym recognition are moronic on their face. Most of these systems require that the customer know and speak in the lexicon of the company you are calling. Why should I have to say "representative" instead of "person" or better yet "help" or god forbid - PRESS THE DAMN "0" KEY WHICH AMERICANS HAVE BEEN CONDITIONED THEIR ENTIRE LIVES TO DO WHEN THEY WANT TO "Talk to the operator". For the big brains out there it's called an ontology. The technology is out there to maintain taxonomies with what are called "synonym rings". At least pretend like you care and try to make this hideously painful experience just a tad more tolerable.
No standards for anything - Wouldn't it be nice if there were some basic cross industry conventions (see #1) like pressing the # key repeats all the options, pressing the * key backs you out one level.
Force feeding the same pedantic instructions to me every time I call is just a wee bit irritating. Hello! I'm trying to leave a voice mail for someone. Neither I, nor any other human being with an IQ larger than a mass of kelp needs to hear the stinking recording tell me when to talk. I know... pressing "1" will skip the recording and take you right to the beep. But once again the dim-witted designers have doomed us to a standardless world where this only works some of the time. The other times pressing 1 will result in "We're sorry. That is not a recognized option." How much effort does it take to identify convention and implement it. But I expect too much, after all...my call and my time don't matter to them (see #2).

So make a wild guess about my opinion. Do I... 1) like IVR's? 2) think IVR's are garbage to me but somebody somewhere might like them? or 3) think IVR's are complete and utter crap and nobody with a shred of intellect likes them.

Three Options Explained

2007-06-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

I'm still figuring out exactly how to convey my inner rage in a way that others would find interesting to read, so please feel free to help me get better in my quest to classify all things as either:

Something I like - this category is for anything that is interesting or well executed like threadless.com (a very interesting site)
Garbage - this category is for most anything I don't like that someone else may find of value like David Hassellhoff (I don't really understand this at all)
Crap - this category is for anything that has no redeeming value whatsoever. If anyone finds any redeeming value in something in this category it's probably because they had something to do with it being so crappy or they just haven't thought it out well enough, like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems

If it doesn't fit neatly into one of these three categories then I'll completely reinvent the blog because it's just my opinion and I don't have to be logically consistent here. So, my postings will come when I find stuff that compels me to write about how good it is or how egregiously bad it is. I hope it all turns out well and that people find it at least mildly entertaining.