Saturday 31 July 2010

Something for the Weekend - Social Networks

Only last week the 500th Million user joined Facebook - with 85% of the UK population now online, what opportunities does that present to us as Business Analysts? 
 


Earlier in the week I watched three fascinating presentations from Clay Shirky on TED (links below). Without a doubt Social Networks via the web are revolutionary - for the first time in history communication can occur both ways via the same medium (One to One & Many to Many). Today communication is becoming more about convening likeminded supporters rather than creating and controlling content centrally.


Social media and networking is growing extremely fast in the UK. Eighty-five percent of the population are now online; they spend more than six hours on social media sites every month, nearly 60% of them read blogs and 64% have their own profile on a social network.


Through his three presentations Shirky shares examples of both profound (like social tracking of violence in Africa) and frivolous (LOLcats.com!) cases of groups of unconnected people coordinating themselves to create 'cooperative value'.
It's interesting to think about what's motivating people to take part. What is that drives people to stop just consuming media and start publishing content? Shirky attributes it to 'cognitive surplus' - it's an important part of intrinsic motivations for people to be able to share and help others so two way media is our natural preference. It no longer becomes the defacto position to spend spare time watching TV.


So how can we use Social Media to support ourselves as professionals and create 'cooperative value' for others;


  • Register for www.Linkedin.com - a business networking site with some great discussion groups on there (recommend IIBA, IIBA UK, ModernAnalyst) that issue a weekly email digest of what discussions are trending.
  • Register for www.modernanalyst.com - a useful source of news and discussion.

Sources & Credits 

Clay Shirky at TED
Mashable shares Simply Zesty research

Sunday 25 July 2010

Something for the Weekend - Waterproof Power Strip

I thought I'd follow up on last weeks SFTW on vision and fit with the real world with a great example of the opposite! www.wetcircuits.com offers waterproof power strips! A great safety increment on the standard power strip but as Wired.com explains 'Your TV isn’t going to be any safer when perched on the end of your bathtub'!

A great physical example of not considering the things that interact with your design (in this case the socket and the devices you might plug in!!).

So whilst we're at it, what are the factors that change data based thinking (waterproof power strip) into creative thinking (safer power)? I was reading a book by Tim Brown this week and he recommends a simple but effective model developed at IDEO. His book (Change by Design) is fantastic and I could never do it justice but here's a summary of the model:
  • Inspiration - actively seek out sources of inspiration...That might be other industries who do something similar or even analogous situations. Comparisons are drawn in the book about F1 pit stops and A&E units. Be open to less obvious inspirations too.
  • Observation - watch your customers in the real world without agenda. Observe the way they naturally adapt ways of working to overcome small niggles (keeping log books, labelling things, ordering items together to quicker serve customers, etc) and understand why they do these behaviours - they're rarely an accident!
  • Empathy - take a different mind set, rather than considering what your customers need, imagine you are your customer, how you would feel and what you would need. Perhaps interview some of your customers to ensure you've got the right picture.

Small activities that lead to more creative solutions. If you want the book there's a link below, ditto if you want the power strip!

Sources and Credits
Wired.com
Wetcircuits
Tim Brown IDEO


Saturday 17 July 2010

Something for the Weekend - Henry Ford

Henry Ford was without doubt a revolutionary and left an indelible mark on the world. He changed the face of the both transportation and attributed quotations but I'd like share one in particular:

"If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse" - Henry Ford

That quote was taken just after the launch of the Model-T in 1908. The Model T was simple to drive, easy to repair and cheap to buy. A huge commercial success by 1920 the majority of Americans had learned to drive in a Model-T!

I've written previously on the difference between 'Listening Vs Understanding', and this acts as another great example of that, but I wanted to take a slightly different slant. What causes the need for revolution rather evolution? What makes the case for throwing it all away and starting from scratch?

There are obvious 'signals' that trigger innovation or more fundamental overhauls of something existing but when you look at true revolutionaries there seems one obvious commonality and that’s a clear sense of vision. An understanding not only of the product, the company or the customer but how the product fits in the world as a whole. In the case of Ford there are plenty of examples of this, one of his principles was about higher wages for his workers. It meant that he got the best workers but it also meant that they could afford to buy Ford products and act as advocates - something that would typically have been out of reach.

So what can we do as analysts?

  • Root cause analysis - really understand the problem or opportunity and think widely about how the solution fits within that.
  • Consider what might be required on the periphery to make your solution a true successes.
  • Start operational designs early even if its just rough notes to help you discover the right questions to be asking - I'm a firm believer that you can't define the function until you've understand how something fits operationally and organisationally.
  • Design visibly and iteratively - allowing you both to 'fail fast' and use the collective brain power of your SME's before you're too far progressed.
  • Have the confidence to challenge the solution even if you designed it.

Sources

Thursday 8 July 2010

Something for the Weekend - the Fail Whale

Apologies for writing two SFTWs in a row on the topic of failure but this week I wanted to share a story of UX that I love... and hope you will too!

I'll start by explaining what the Fail Whale is... When Twitter gets overloaded and goes out of service, instead of giving a techie failure message you get the friendly picture of the 'Fail Whale' (below), a polite apology and instruction on next steps.

The interesting thing is that it seems to absorb a lot of frustrations and, in fact, the fail whale now actually now has a cult following! Check out the fan club http://failwhale.com/ where you can buy the t-shirt! Or if you're really excited why not go ahead and get the tattoo Click here

Now, I'm not saying we need pictures of whales but here are a few thoughts to tie this back into our roles as BAs:
  • It shows the value of spending time on actively designing the User eXperience for when things don't quite go to plan... giving the appropriate consideration to the 'unhappy path' as well as the happy one.
  • Its a rare event that error messages make people happy and we can't stop all exceptions but we can be sure to handle them as well as possible.
  • When things do go wrong use a style that's meaningful and explains to the user what's going on and, perhaps most importantly, what they need to do.
  • Ensure that error messages can be communicated back to IT support teams in a meaningful way when required and that there are unambiguous (e.g. unique numbering) for as many outcomes as possible.
  • It's important to consider this with process failure as well as IT failure. Can we automate the feedback of something going wrong in an operational process? (LEAN visual management techniques spring to mind)
Sources and Credits
Check out the designers page http://yiyinglu.com/
http://failwhale.com/
CNN http://edition.cnn.com/
www.twitter.com

Enjoy and have a great weekend-

David