Do You Believe In “It”?

As you read this post you’ll likely be able to identify an early interaction that made you conscious of “it” on a grand scale – for me, one of those would be using an “Automated Teller Machine” for the first time. 24/7 access to cash and all I needed was a card and a PIN - it was truly magical. Still, some folks were apprehensive about those machines – some fearing that they wouldn’t receive the correct amount of money, and some simply not understanding exactly how the machines interfaced with their accounts. Fair enough, but many of those trust issues have been ironed out over the years and today only the most stubborn banker still avoids ATMs.

Moving on, as I started making more customer service calls of my own, I became aware of another instance of “it” – phone trees.  Calling the airline, the phone company, the electric company…being directed through endless sub-categories only to reach an “answering machine” or be disconnected…terrible, hair-pulling experiences that haven’t improved much in 20 years.

What Is “It”?

The “it” I’m referring to is the endless march toward self-service that began sometime in the late 70s and early 80s as a way for companies to cut costs and outsource client and professional services to the customers themselves.  What may have seemed like a radical concept at the time is now ubiquitous. In fact, we’re so used to it that it only becomes obvious to us when it doesn’t work, and we really NEED some insightful help that is nowhere to be found.

I thought the image below was extremely telling of our collective response to the concept of outsourcing services to end-consumers (click to see in its full glory):

Courtesy Of Mike Sacks At www.mikesacks.com

Of course, almost everyone knows who IKEA is, and for the most part they do an excellent job creating a customer self-service model that works. However, what the illustration cleverly points out is that there can be a heavy burden placed on the end-customer when previously in-sourced roles and services (in this case, furniture assembly) are placed in the hands of the uneducated consumer without a full set of tools (clear instructions) to bridge the gap.

What Does This Example Have To Do With Customer Experience? 

More than you might think. If we go back to ATMs and phone trees, and think about all of the additional things outsourced to customers (those who don’t wish to pay a premium to continue to “have it done for them”) since, the list is lengthy – here are just a few:

• Pumping Gas
• Purchasing Stock
• Assembling Furniture
• Doing Taxes
• Instigating Legal Procedures
• Banking
• Checking Out (Retail)
• Booking Travel
• Managing Investments

Of course, the list will continue to grow, and will someday encompass areas we would today never consider as a category for self service such as professional medical services, or university education (although those areas are already becoming encroached by semi-self service).

Why Should We Care?

Well, last week I was at the grocery store checking out with my milk and eggs preparing for the impending nor’easter, and this is what I encountered:

Niiiiiiice. For All The Sordid Detail, Click To Enlarge

The user experience is so bad, the staff at the local grocery store has resorted to 3 different post-its with varying messages in the hope that the customer will read them before and during their use of the machine.  Need I say more?

The direct correlation on the web is that more and more applications and services are being placed in the hands of end-customers, and I fear that companies of all types (SAAS or on applications on-demand anyone?) are largely unprepared to fully understand and translate the needs of those customers in applications that are easy to use, and fully functional.  I suspect the “virtual post-it notes” will continue to grow in size as firms struggle with the onslaught of customer frustration they will unwittingly generate all under the guise of “making it easier for consumers to help themselves”.

If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Right

Don’t get me wrong, customer self-service can be a GREAT thing – for companies and customers alike. Back to the ATM – do you remember how things used to be? Trying to get to the bank before it closed (or risk being without cash for the entire weekend)? Being forced to wait in line for a simple transaction, behind folks with all manner of requests (large and small) and all degrees of financial (and social) aptitude? Who would want to go back there? And why should banks pay tellers to preside over the kinds of basic, repetitive transactions that can be handled by ATMs? The efficiency and amount of money saved that goes directly to the bottom line can be astronomical.

Once again, it’s about allowing innovative ideas like customer self-service to truly flourish by applying design thinking to their deployment. It’s about reducing the cognitive burden on users, providing the full set of tools necessary for interacting via the selected channel, and being honest about where the line should be drawn: sometimes the best solution will still require human interaction at some point. This in no way constitutes failure - after all, the goal is not simply to put as much of the process on the customers as possible, it is to drive them to completed transactions (satisfaction) as intuitively and efficiently as possible!

Facebook’s ‘Evil Empire” One Year Later

It has been nearly a year since I penned my original rant about Doomsdayers and Nay-sayers terrified about Facebook wanting to own their content. As many predicted, FB changed their entire business model and made a fortune selling all of those riveting lunch updates and pictures of sleeping cats. My guess is they’ll probably pull all ads from their site soon because the revenue they’ll make on all of that inanity is worth much more than the targeted ad revenue they could make off of a community of 350Million+ users.

Seriously though, in the comment thread for that posting, KS posted an understandable comment that the issue is more about privacy than content ownership. KS must be some kind of fortune teller, because the latest doomsday meme concerns Facebook making all of your content accessible to public search engines.

I fittingly put my feelings about this issue in my FB status last month. It was so funny, four of my friends copied it to their status… I practically went viral, yo:

Attention People: time to panic. As of forever, things you put up on the internet may be available for people to see on the internet. This is a clear violation of your privacy on this completely voluntary system. To disable this, go to your start button and choose “Shut Down.”

This posting mostly annoyed Mac users who could not find the start button…

Most of the rumbling calmed down once FB instituted a series of messages and annoying dialogue boxes to warn you that this meme isn’t 100% true. Then Zuckerberg opened his yap again and some chicken littles kept venting about it. Essentially, FB is allowing Search Engines to crawl the profile information that YOU determine is part of your public profile.

Many aren’t taking issue with the fact that FB has done this, they just take issue with the fact that the default settings made more of your information public than the average user would like. Novice users are probably completely in the dark. These points make sense, and are much less alarmist than the folks who are using the social networking site they (theoretically) despise to terrify the masses.

My Public Facebook Profile: Most of these people don't even like me

For me, I stand by my original thoughts: FB is a business. FB is enjoying tremendous growth. The more users, the more money there is to make. The last thing FB wants to do is make decisions that will cause them to go the way of MySpace. FB even reacts appropriately when they make a decision and forgot to consider the viral reactions of some alarmists. However, when they made the decision in 2007 to create PUBLIC profiles and recently to open them to PUBLIC search engines, it wasn’t part of some Orwellian plan to make a few bucks or deceive their users. Their thought process probably went something like this:

FB1: You know what - if an old friend of yours isn’t on FB and they’re looking for you, they can’t find you.

FB2: Well, they can search for your public profile through FB…

FB1: But wouldn’t it be better if they Googled your name and found a link to your public profile in the results? I mean, it’s a public profile, and that way they may join FB to become your friend.

FB2: Hey, good idea… it would certainly increase our organic search placement. Let’s get on that!

So, what’s the lesson here? It’s not really the privacy issue as much as it is the way FB approached the change. Somehow they have to work into their updates a communication plan to explain exactly what changes they are implementing and why. They need to get into the heads of the alarmists and defuse the bomb before it goes off. They need to be proactive rather than reactive. That’s a tough order when they’re probably making hundreds of minor changes regularly…which ones are the alarmists going to pick?

Or they could follow the path they’ve been walking and lose the folks who are terrified of Big Brother lurking in the darkness. What does FB care, though? Those people only cause trouble and the noise doesn’t seem to be impacting their market share… yet.

Taking Social Media To Task (Part 2)

You’ve been waiting with baited breath for this, no? Well, I aim to please…and this one is unique in that after posting initially, Phil sent me a response with some further insght that I think is brilliant - so I’ve included it here for a nice little point/counterpoint. Chime in!

Don’t Call It Multi-Tasking – Jacks Of All Trades Are Masters Of None

This one is really more of an observation put out there for further thought – but it was also sparked by my attendance at epatcon. At one point during the conference it suddenly hit me that 60% or more of the audience had laptops open in front of them (not counting those who were on PDAs and Smart Phones). Sure, some people use them to take notes or to look up links being mentioned, or tweet key points – the kind of behaviors that were the clear majority at AEA. But what I saw at epatcon was clearly of a different ilk. I was baffled by a woman at the table next to me who, for the entire day, worked intently on what was clearly an unrelated work document.  I wondered “why would you pay good money to come to a conference like this, and then pay absolutely no attention to anything going on around you? Why not just stay in the office…or if you needed to get away, go to the local coffee shop?”

I’ve heard people defend this behavior before by saying that they are “just multi-tasking” – but if I had asked that woman for her opinion on what had just been said, at any point throughout the day, I’m quite certain it would have been like a teacher calling on a student who had been daydreaming. People are of course free to waste their conference fees if they want to, but not only is it distracting to other attendees, it is incredibly rude to the presenters. As a sometime presenter and adjunct faculty member in the digital design program at Philadelphia University, I felt bad for those up on the stage for having to wonder if the large amount of people staring into their screens were engaged in what they were saying or in something else entirely. The lack of feedback in the form of eye contact and body language can really leave one feeling a bit out to sea.

Guilty as charged! We all do it...but for the record, this was on a break!

The really amazing thing is that we don’t see this only at large conferences where we can remain largely anonymous – we even see it in small meetings with co-workers who we know well. I know I’m not saying anything we don’t all know there – but what is the cost of this behavior? Again, forget simple manners and mushy stuff like feelings…what is the monetary cost when I have to repeat everything I just said for the past five minutes because when I ask someone’s input they are jarred and say “what? Oh sorry, can you repeat that?” And how good will their answer be when they weren’t really present during the rich discussion that preceded my question? Multiply that by the hundreds of times per week that happens across your organization…makes you think, no? Loss of time, loss of money, and loss of quality – quality of interactions, team-building, and decisions/outcomes. Quality of experiences.

So I ask, what is this ubiquitous technology doing to our real-world interactions, communications, and experiences? As in the Twitter example, the etiquette will probably shake itself out in time…but it is fascinating that somehow over the past ten years or so what would have once been considered complete disrespect and poor interpersonal skill has become modus operandi. In the words of the inimitable Mr. Horse, “No sir, I don’t like it.” It’s not about shunning the technology or stunting its integration. It’s about maximizing effectiveness and efficiency – and on the whole, the very real disconnect I felt at epatcon makes me think we ain’t there yet, folks.

PHIL’S RESPONSE:

Hey, check out this link - it offers some additional insight and perspective on this and your last post - be sure to click through to the links (particularly the Danah Boyd - fascinating).

Additionally, some comments - much my personal opinion. First, there is support for your “multitasking is a myth” argument - some you’ll find in the link above.

I personally don’t think the “people on their laptops during conferences” argument holds water. You’re up on stage, the people who are engaged are the ones you should be talking to, you don’t know who is taking notes and who isn’t paying attention. It’s time to get used to the fact that people have laptops and at large venues, it’s just a part of life. The people in the room who are distracted by others on their computers need to get over it too. To me, if everyone is cruising the internet ignoring the speaker, it means the speaker is not engaging, and that’s a different issue.

In more intimate environments (classrooms, breakout sessions) I get it… it frustrates me too. It has been hard for me to get over my own students typing during class, but now I live with it. If I notice they’re browsing and not note taking, I ask them to stop… but I know this is the way people are.

I’m not trying to detract from your argument about meetings, though. I am guilty of violating that rule too. Your point is very valid and I think you should make it. Tons of time is wasted by people who think they’re “multitasking” when they’re actually ignoring what is going on in the room. To me, it’s the equivalent of talking on the phone while someone is trying to converse with you face to face.

There are times when this kind of behavior is appropriate, but it takes some situational analysis and some agreed-upon rules… for instance, if you walk into a regulatory meeting and are told to have a seat until they’re done with their conversation, you should open your laptop and be productive. They’ll tell you when they’re ready for you. But the rule of the room is known - not everyone is relevant to the conversation, but the people who are  should pay attention.

The other day I had a pizza delivered. The guy showed up and was speaking on his phone. I asked, “How much?” and he put up his index finger to say, “Hold on.” I couldn’t believe it, so I said, “No, tell me how much.” He told the person the phone, “Hold on a sec, I have a customer.” The only tip he got was the coinage.

In the end, society will work out some generally accepted etiquette about our ubiquitous technology, but there will always be detractors. It’s like driving, there are things you just don’t do even though there are no rules about it. If someone is daydreaming when there’s a red light, you give them some time before you tap the horn to wake them up. But there are always jerks - the ones who lean on the horn the second the light turns green. They may be racing to the hospital with a severed limb, or they may just be a jackass.

Taking Social Media To Task

I had every intention of doing a timely follow-up post to Phil’s quick thoughts from ePatient Connections (epatcon) – but well, you know the drill. Still, the time lapse was an asset in this case since I’ve been able to discuss the contents of this post (first inspired by attending epatcon) with a bunch of people in person and get their opinions, which has been enlightening and convinced me that the topic is worthwhile. What I have to say really boils down to two topics:

1.    Social Media Tools Won’t Get Better If We Aren’t Really Hard On Them (And How We Use Them)

2.    Don’t Call It Multi-Tasking – Jacks Of All Trades Are Masters Of None

This post will address #1, and I’ll post my follow-up ASAP.

Image c/o Twitter

Social Media Tools Won’t Get Better If We Aren’t Really Hard On Them (And How We Use Them)

Last week we watched the video stream from the FDA’s Social Media Hearing with a client, and after a while it became a running joke that most presentations either began or finished with the phrase “in short, social media is here to stay”. Thanks, Sherlock(s)!

I think most of us have come to that conclusion and understand that the way we communicate has already changed monumentally, and will continue to change as a result of innovations like Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Most of us don’t think it’s a simple fad (whether we understand it or not), and most of us aren’t trying to shut it down or tie ourselves to the tracks in a futile attempt to stop the oncoming train (like, say, suggesting to the FDA that Google’s SideWiki should be “torn down”).

But one thing that struck me at epatcon and got me thinking back to An Event Apart and earlier, is that people (particularly at professional events) often talk about social media like it’s a bucking bronco that we have no control over - and we’d better just jump on and see how we can try to make it, even if just fleetingly, bend to our will before we get tossed. I think that to some degree, that metaphor isn’t entirely unfounded (provided that you then dust yourself off and try again) – though I also think that applying good design thinking to using the various channels can provide much more than just minor influence.

Social Media? Image c/o Beau Daniels of beaudaniels-illustration.com

However, my bigger concern is that I hear people at professional gatherings talking about social media with reverence, fear, or with an air of the apologetic – and it must be OK for us to candidly talk about the design flaws in some of these tools as well as the flawed approaches some users take when employing them, or else they’re not going to improve. Yes, by doing so you may incite evangelistic technocrats and have to weather being called “out of touch” or some other variant - but those who say those kinds of things will be swept out to sea when the tide changes next (and it will). The fact of the matter is that social media is expanding beyond the left-brainers who created it and aren’t put off by its usability issues, the youth who embraced it and helped it explode, and the early adopters who just thought it was cool – and that’s when we have to take a more critical look at the user experience for the broader population.

1. Design

We’ve already seen evidence that social media tools aren’t really as “wild west” and anarchic as we might be led to believe - we’ve seen good design trump poor(er) design in what has happened with MySpace and Facebook. Take a look at this recent usage report:

c/o alexa.com

It was a grassroots effort, and the people have spoken. MySpace ruled the roost until something better came along - something with a better user interface, a better and more consistent aesthetic, and a more robust set of tools for interacting with others. There was a time when people were talking about MySpace with fear and reverence, wondering how to harness its power…and now it really doesn’t rank at all on the priority list for organizations wishing to create a holistic online presence (unless that organization is your little brother’s hardcore band). What’s more, it wasn’t just replaced - it was further adopted exponentially. The point is that these beasts can be tamed with thoughtful, design-oriented thinking - whether it means creating a new tool or just figuring out how to best utilize the ones that exist.

2. Etiquette

Back to epatcon. At the conference, there was a large flat-screen monitor present with a running Twitter stream (using the #epatcon hashtag) on it. Tweets were of three varieties:

1. Quick and insightful distillations of key points that could provide some insight to those not present
2. High level statements that without context of actually being in the room and hearing the rest of the presentation weren’t very useful - superfluous for those in the room, and too general for those elsewhere to do anything with
3. Quips about what food people were eating/craving, where they were sitting, and other general “hey, look at me!” type tweets - which are fine amongst friends, but not worthy of the conference hashtag

(I had intended on providing examples but Twitter has been telling me that “older tweets are temporarily unavailable” for several days now,, hence the “fail whale” image up top)

Add a flurry of re-tweet messages from all three categories to the mix, and the stream ended up consisting of very few meaningful/useful nuggets and a whole lot of noise. Someone off-site who is interested in the conference can pick up on the hashtag and follow it themselves (a simple tweet saying “interested in the conference I’m attending? follow #epatcon” will do, and eliminate the need for excessive re-tweeting), and someone who isn’t interested doesn’t want to see another re-tweet every 30 seconds. Concentrate on adding original, quality content to the stream - it’s not about repetition, chiming in, or rephrasing. No matter the channel, quality will always trump quantity.

Another reason why this was somewhat amusing to observe was because we were at a conference discussing how to use social media to communicate important medical information to patients - if we were doing that, wouldn’t we want to minimize noise as much as possible and not put the onus on patients to sift through all of the static to find the meaningful content?

In the end, one of the the beautiful things about social media is that while we don’t want the tools to impose etiquette on us (and indeed, they shouldn’t), as they mature and develop the etiquette becomes self-imposed by the community. This is because, simply put, those who create the best experiences for their customers, friends, and colleagues will earn their loyalty. Sounds like something worth being proactive about to me!

Quick Thoughts from ePatient Connections 2009, Day 1

Our friends at KruResearch invited Think Brownstone to conduct 1:1 coaching sessions at the first ePatient Connections conference.

Blogs will be filled with recaps and Twitter is already teeming with comments hashtagged #ePatCon.

Rather than recap the day, I thought I would share a common theme I picked up from most of the presenters: The healthcare landscape is changing; listen to your patients and follow their lead. As we often note on our blog, listening to the user is the job of any experience designer.

Two memorable quotes from the day are good examples of how this message permeated the sessions:

We don’t blog because we have to, we blog because it helps us heal

-Kerri Morrone Sparling, Diabetes awareness advocate and sixuntilme.com blogger addressing her motivation to blog.

The users will tell you what’s relevant, it’s not about us

-Tricia Geoghegan, from Johnson and Johnson, when discussing how to determine what the best channel of communication is for your audience.

The questions asked during my Facebook 1:1 coaching sessions focused around, “How do I use Facebook to promote my (organization, product, service, non-profit…) My advice was twofold:

1. If you’re not already active on Facebook, get on it and use it in earnest for at least a month. During that time period, learn how the space works: the jargon, the etiquette. Become a user.
2. Don’t bother trying to force your audience to come to you. Every user group is different. Develop methods to identify where and how they communicate, but don’t be a stalker. The focus should not be on promoting, it should be about informing. Their voice is stronger in this landscape, when you’re providing value to your audience, they will listen.

I’ve known the folks at KruResearch for a while and even though this is their first big event, they get it. Probably because they have attended enough conferences that lacked focus or focused too much on star power and not enough on practical application.

Russ will be there today. Stop by his 1:1 coaching session if you’re around.

*images courtesy of the ePatient Connection Photostream

Learning From Overbooked Flights

This weekend I had tickets to see Andrew Bird and St. Vincent at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, where I was also planning on catching up with a close cousin of mine and his girlfriend, whom I rarely get to see. It has been on my list for a long time to see a show in the venue that housed the Grand Ole Opry in its formative years, and my wife and I were psyched for our little getaway that we had booked back in July.

However, thanks to U.S. Airways (and I suppose to the poor practice of overbooking by the airline industry in general), those plans were dashed. The culprit: multiple severely overbooked flights in a row, no takers for a consensual bump with a future voucher, and general mayhem and confusion on the part of the terminal employees. Of course I could give you a detailed blow-by-blow, but my own particular experience isn’t really the point – we’ve all been through it, so you more or less know the horror story. What is more important are some of the overarching things I thought about as it was all unfolding that would have either avoided the situation altogether, would have made it more bearable, or can serve as warning signs when designing experiences elsewhere.

1. Don’t Make Your Customers Suffer For Your Own Business/Industry Shortcomings
Look, as a business person I know that it is common practice for airlines to overbook flights, and I know there are algorithms to determine by how much they should oversell to generally have full planes without too many people getting hosed (like I did). I also know that the organization takes a hit that really adds up when there are unsold seats on flights. However, as a passenger with plans, I DON’T CARE about any of that. It’s not, and it shouldn’t be, my problem – I have no sympathy for any of that when I’m standing there watching my plane take off and I’m still on the ground. I’ve gotten used to not getting meals anymore and having to pay for everything I consume or “borrow” on the flight, but when the fundamental thing I’ve paid for – transport itself – is denied to me based on something that in no way is my fault, it simply feels like a swindle. I can’t think of another industry that gets away with behavior quite like this…why does flying always feel like a game of roulette? Why do we willingly continue to pay for something that we know (weather aside, even) might not be worth the paper it is printed on once we’ve packed our luggage, taken time off, gotten ourselves to the airport, and paid for parking? Why are we always pretty shocked and bemused when it goes smoothly and we end up where we’re supposed to be on time? I realize we’re not talking about something as simple as running a lemonade stand here, but as consumers we’re also paying really good money for this service…why is all of this emotional strain being put on the customers, for something that the business can’t effectively figure out? The industry needs to find more effective ways to manage schedules, cut costs and/or maximize efficiencies, to make sure that we actually get what we pay for and can be confident in our purchase. Without that, you’re certainly not going to increase the amount of people lining up (and emptying their pockets) to say “thank you sir, may I have another?”

2. Don’t Burden Expensive and Important Transactions With a “Luck Factor”
Our flight was oversold by 12 tickets, and we were numbers 8 and 9 – having checked in at the airport a little less than 2 hours before the (domestic) flight. Some people have said to me, “well, you should have checked-in online during the day”. Well, it just wasn’t that kind of day - we’ve all had ‘em. Regardless, that is airline apologetics, and we shouldn’t be in the business of giving them an “out” - would you say that to your grandmother who doesn’t really get what “online” even means? It isn’t OK that we’ve learned the rules to their flawed game so therefore we can exploit it at the expense of those who haven’t - that is just unfair. A ticket purchased in July shouldn’t require another mad-dash of confirmation on the day of the flight three months later to make sure it’s still valid.

3. Set The Rules, and Stick To Them
I wasn’t happy about the oversold situation but I wanted to be clear about the rules, so I asked. “You said we’re numbers 8 and 9 on that list, right? So if 9 seats free up, we’ll be on that flight? Right?” I was told that was correct, by the attendant who was being actively badgered by a woman who announced that she was 12th on the list and HAD to be at work that evening in Nashville. So explain to me then how that squeaky wheel got on the flight and we were still standing in the terminal? Because the rules were broken. Look, I know it can’t be easy to listen to that one (or those few) nut-job(s) jabber on about how much more important the flight is for them than for anyone else. But rewarding that behavior not only destroys your organization’s credibility in anything they “officially” say or do, it reinforces those behaviors in the future (and therefore makes your life even more difficult) – because in this instance you can bet you’ll read that little “tip” on a travel blog.

4. If You Can’t Avoid It, Have A Very Clear And Well-Communicated Contingency Plan
OK, we’ve already established that it’d be great if the need for the whole ugly practice of overbooking could be squashed somehow. However, in the end we’re talking about an industry that is really hurting, so we may already be at wit’s end as far as that is concerned. OK, but how to mitigate that then? U.S. Airways chooses to keep this practice as quiet and ill-explained to its passengers as possible in hopes that it’ll only affect a small percentage of them and things will generally just clunk along as they do now. Interestingly enough, as a result it is not only completely baffling and frustrating to passengers when they get bumped, but also to U.S. Airways employees – who obviously don’t know what the correct next-steps are, what the lines of communication should be (witness us being sent to 4 different desks, having to re-tell the exact same story 4 times to people who had no idea what we were talking about and generally treated us like we were criminals trying to steal something from them), or how to maintain their composure in the midst of what is no doubt a frustrating experience for all.

Until Next Time, Nashville

What it all boils down to is this: we missed an important family visit and a concert. The airline owes us more than just the price of the flight refunded, but at least we did finally receive that several days later (I wasn’t too confident even that would happen). I was ticked, but even more ticked when I thought about things that other people have missed as a result of these practices (or, at best, just bafflingly terrible experience design). I posted my plight on Facebook and heard from people who had missed weddings, funerals, and more. This isn’t buying a TV, bringing it home, and finding out it doesn’t work – this is denying people visits with their friends, family, and attendance at major life events. You cannot possibly provide me with an excuse good enough for that.

The Triple Constraints: You Only Get Two

Early in my career, I had the unique opportunity to work with Dr. Bob Graham, author of Project Management as if People Mattered and an early guru of software project management. At the time I was more cynical than I am now about ‘gurus’, but I still had the deepest respect for this guy for many reasons. Here are the top three:

1. He never lectured; he taught by telling stories and making analogies
2. When he started his career he was programming on punch cards—so he had street cred, but he was also one of the first who recognized that software projects needed Project Managers
3. Whenever we worked late and went to dinner, he always ordered good wine

An IBM Punch Card: The UI on these things is AMAZING!

I learned a lot from Dr. Bob, but one lesson that has stuck with me is the lesson of the “triple constraint” of projects. Dr. Bob would say that everyone wants projects cheap, fast and good, but his stance was that you could only have two. Later in his career, Dr. Bob changed “Good” to “Features.” In other words, you can build something cheap and fast with only a few features—but if you want a lot of features, you’ll have to give up something else. Quality becomes a tug-of-war between “good” and “features.”

I hadn’t thought about Bob in a while, but I was reminded of his wisdom when I found Dan Maginn’s article on www.good.is last month. While he may be preaching against the American trend of “bigger is better” he is also promoting the architect’s version of the triple constraint. If you want it big and good, it ain’t gonna be cheap. If you want it cheap, think smaller—and smaller isn’t always worse.

Now think about what you do and read this quote:

“We want so bad to believe that we can have it all—a cool design with lots of space, for not a lot of money. But we can’t have it all.”

Replace “…with lots of space..” with whatever third constraint your projects are constantly struggling with… “in a short period of time” or “with a ton of features”… Dr. Bob started this conversation years ago. Guess what? You still only get two. No amount of brilliance, technology or vision will fix this formula. You only get two.

As Depicted Over At ProjectManagementBlog

This is why:

• We were OK with the price tag when JFK said he wanted a man on the moon in ten years
• We’re fine with it when cheap cars don’t have heated seats and navigation systems
• You see the occasional client who hired the lowest bidder on a big project with a short timeline suddenly running around saying, “Can you fix this for me? Money is no object!”

Russ has written about Kristina Halvorson on this blog in the past. In her new book, Content Strategy for the Web, she often references this concept when speaking about the battles all content ‘owners’ have over making their stuff as prominent as possible. If you give in to everyone, you get something that’s huge, difficult to maintain, time consuming and, in the end, expensive. In other words, you fail on all three constraints instead of volunteering to give up one. Exactly what Dr. Bob told me over that bottle of wine.

The Cost of Not Focusing on UX? $170M

The Think Brownstone design team has been closely following Mint.com for almost 2 years now. From the very beginning we’ve been enamored of its “sexy” design; intuitive, clean, fun and free. We’ve been equally impressed by its evolution – each new iteration being better and smarter.

We’ve told our clients and prospects about the site and encouraged them to sign up. Most of them did, and it was always an eye-opening encounter for them. In fact, in a lot of ways it was a great proof-of-concept for us – it helped clients understand the importance of a great user experience and helped streamline the path we would take with them. It was a concrete example to use when warning them that if they didn’t pay serious attention to their users’ needs, one day two guys working out of their studio apartment might come along with a competitive product that would steal market share – market share that they were already fighting to hold on to.

Sure, that competitive product might not have as many features, but it would instead succeed based on the tried and true 80/20 rule:  80% of your users employ about 20% of your features; so instead of giving them every bell and whistle you can possibly think of (jack of all trades, master of none), carefully identify what that core 20% is and do it better than ANYONE else. That makes that 80% of your users (at least) very happy, who tell their friends, and before long the amount of users that make up that 80% has grown significantly. It comes down to this: all else being equal, users will pick that which is most intuitive, simple, and yes, pretty/fun. As mentioned earlier, figuring out how to make it “free” for them also ain’t too shabby.

Earlier this week, on the second anniversary of launching, Mint.com announced that Intuit (makers of the behemoth Quicken, among others) would acquire them for $170 Million. As the saying goes “if you can’t beat them, buy them” – and the folks at Intuit are likely thanking their lucky stars that they managed to grab hold of that nimble little nuisance before Mint.com completely left them in the dust.

The real gem in all of this is the fact that Mint.com made something exponentially better by making it simpler.  We should probably get that printed up on t-shirts or something. Congrats, Mint.com – stay cool.  Please.

The Piazza At Schmidts GETS IT

OK, the last of our summer vacations is over (mine), and it’s time to get some new thoughts and ideas up on ye olde blog! So here’s something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now…

Our group of extended colleagues and friends, much like yours I’d expect, has been having an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of the different types of online communities available to us. That’s not my direct focus with this posting, but suffice to say that I have a love/hate relationship with them that continues to ebb and flow weekly. One thing that doesn’t waver for me though is that even when I’m in “advocate mode” they still just don’t rival actual, real, tangible communities that you can get up off your nerdy computer butt and go walk to.

Piazza Images Courtesy of GoPhila.com

However, I’d suggest that one of the reasons online communities have gained such a stronghold (and I’m quite sure I’m not the first), is that many traditional communities have gone the way of the dodo thanks to poor urban (and suburban) planning that has given preference to sprawl, strip malls, auto traffic over pedestrians, and the relentless focus on quantity over quality that started plaguing us going back to the 1950’s.

I know that other areas of the country have made strides against this trend, especially in recent years, but in our stomping grounds of the greater Philadelphia area there haven’t been enough. Sure, we’ve got some great squares in the more glamorous parts of town like Rittenhouse – but there’s an elitist quality to what surrounds them that makes it feel a bit inauthentic. You just wouldn’t expect to stumble upon Rittenhouse on a mid-summer afternoon and see an incredibly diverse group of folks sporting big smiles and un-self-consciously dancing together with their kids and pets to live music. This, however, is standard fare at the recently opened Piazza at Schmidts in the continuously evolving and improving Northern Liberties section of the city.

My wife and I stopped by earlier in the summer when a good friend of mine happened to be in town promoting his new album and had a performance scheduled in the square as part of one of the regular afternoon shows that are staged there – free of charge. This time it happened to be one of the fantastic shows organized by Sundae Philadelphia – so we’re not talking about puppet shows here; this is the real deal. In fact, here’s a video filmed the day we were there:

We had no idea what to expect, but stumbled upon what she called “a little utopia”, the kind of place we fantasized about bringing up our kids around.  We marveled at the huge open-air plaza with new apartments atop rent-controlled artist studios, funky shops, market stands, and affordable cuisine (including killer pretzels and bubble-tea right next to fancier restaurants) – filled with people of all ages, races, hairstyles and lifestyles strolling around happily interacting. Then at the end of the plaza was the giant 400 square foot year-round LCD panel that is used to project everything from “Family Movie Night” during the week to the Phillies games – with the stage below pulsing with fabulous musicians from around the world being joined by locals dancing on roller skates and playing with hula hoops.

At The Piazza with Nickodemus

Yeah, it was all “peace and love” but in a very urban, modern way – and it was completely refreshing. There’s a lot of sensational media out there aimed at scaring the pants off you – that’ll keep you tuned in and the advertising money flowing – but by and large, people are awesome and it’s worth it to get out there and meet a few new ones every now and then. We honestly didn’t want to leave, and talked the whole way home about how this model might be applied to our own neighborhood, our work, online communities, and elsewhere. We also hoped out loud that what they’ve created over there is sustainable and will be supported by the city and the people who live in it. Maybe the climate is finally right for more Piazzas out there, breaking down superficial social boundaries and mirroring the same diversity found in friends lists and iTunes playlists in the “real” world.

There’s no “I” in Design

Recently, I was griping to Brian McIntire about the Gmail interface… I hate it, but Brian loves it. That’s OK because I can check and sort my mail using Thunderbird, so I only venture into what I believe is a ghastly, unusable interface when absolutely necessary. An informal survey of friends showed me that I am in the minority on this issue. Brian, on the other hand, always has gmail open. He’d move into gmail if it had a bathroom and a place to store Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream.

Our discussion of the gmail interface moved on to a different debate. I have always made the assumption that Google didn’t do a lot of iterative design or complex user testing; Brian disagreed. My assumption was based on a preconceived notion about how they work over there in Google land. Between the simplicity of their UI design and all the stories about the company’s agility, it seemed to me it would be easier to do some hallway testing or throw stuff out there, watch actual users, then modify the work. When appropriate, I’m an advocate for Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” style of testing. So I thought, “If I worked at Google, I’d have a bunch of smart people around me. I probably wouldn’t bother with testing processes that require fancy facilities with eyetracking technology and two-way mirrors.”

A few short minutes with Google’s new search options panel led me to a blog entry about the design process around the Google Search Panel. I was wrong, Brian was right, and I learned a little something about their thought process. Pretty cool*.

DESGN?

So I got caught in the same trap that I’m often heard venting about when we’re designing something: I was making assumptions about a group of people based on my own biases and opinions of that group. I was using “I” statements - something I always try to be aware of.

Just the other day, I was sitting in a room filled with very smart people watching Russ present a preliminary conceptual design to collect some feedback. One aspect of the design had some minor gaming elements that spoke to the natural competitiveness of our audience. While the concept as a whole received very positive feedback, one member of the group said something similar to, “I am not a gamer, I would never play that game.” It wasn’t an important moment in the discussion to start a debate, but having spent many years developing training simulations for adults, I have done a fair amount of research that shows that a large percentage of adults ARE engaged by games as long as the design and content are relevant to the user.

Illustration by Nathan McGrory

DESiGN!

When working on a design, any sentence that starts with “I” catches my ear. You see, the very fact that we are gathered in a room consciously talking about an audience removes us from that audience. We are no longer them, no matter how much we want to be. Everyone on the team is now a designer - none of us are the user. This is why so many design disciplines use User Profiles or User Personas. We can no longer get into their heads by thinking like us… we have to get into their heads by writing personas and profiles and by reaching out to them early and often to ensure we’re getting it right.

Obviously the title of this blog posting was more to catch your attention than it is to express a rule. As designers, our personal insights and experiences are important, we just need to beware of equating ourselves with our users. “I” statements do have their place - they sometimes give us a glimpse into what may happen. They help us ask better questions, focus our research, and conduct better user sessions. The problem with using an “I” statement alone to make a decision is that you will never know if you represent the pack or the outliers in the audience. You may just be the one person out of the 1000 tested who didn’t like the gmail interface…

*Useful tangent: try saving a history of your design process on one of your projects. It’s kinda like when you buy a fixer-upper and four years later, when you’re showing someone all your renovations, they ask, “Do you have any before pictures?” and you want to kick yourself for not taking a few photos back when the house was a wreck. Here’s a good example of the genesis of the Google Logo.