Something for the Weekend - Emotional Connections (iPod)

As promised, I wanted to follow up on the last SFTW with some validation as to why creating an 'emotional connection' in what we deliver is equally as important as creating a functional one… an argument that the iPod can make without too much justification from me!

The iPod is often held aloft as a great design example… It's practical, intuitive, functional but also has the ability to engage with people in a way that's very hard to put your finger on… good physical design, creativity, brand, tactility, universal / consistent navigation, simplicity? - what is that x-factor? I don't know the answer but I know it's important!

Creating an emotional connection is not at all frivolous, it has huge commercial advantages. Apple have sold 260,000,000 iPod units worldwide and hold around a 70% market share of the global portable media player market (I want to say 'iPod market' which is a sign in itself!). Just imagine getting a tube or plane and not seeing the ubiquitous white headphones! To remain streets ahead of your competitors despite a higher unit cost is impressive.

In our world it's equally important to remember the importance of these connections… we need 'our customers' to feel a sense of satisfaction when using a system or process not just acceptance. I'm not sure there's a fixed recipe for creating this (or I'm sure I'd be a lot richer!) but I think a strong starting point is the recognition that 'functional' is not enough... Understand every detail, understand your customer and pursue perfection.

Something for the Weekend - Anthora Coffee Cup

Lesley Buck passed away a fortnight ago aged 87 - In the 60's Buck was Head of Marketing for the Sherri Cups company, an established disposable cup business. As a man with no design experience; he calculated that slathering a paper cup in Greek motifs and the colours of the Greek flag would help him crack into the ethnically-Greek dominated New York diner market. The gambit worked.

The sheer ubiquity of the cup (total figures are hard to come by, but Sherri Cup sold half a million of them in 1994 alone) has propelled the design into museums, T-shirts, and countless television show prop masters seeking a visual shorthand for hard-boiled detective, hard-working hack or Gothamite-on-the-go.

Reflecting on his success is relevant to our roles too. Buck had a real understanding of his customer base, not just what they needed (or asked for) but also what they valued beneath the suffice, perhaps even sub-consciously. Looking at other companies, Apple act as a great pioneers of this, fan's often quip that "you don't know what you need until Apple have invented it".

It's a concept that's I'm increasing embracing... we're great at delivering highly 'functional' things, and that's a good foundation, but to take things further we need to add that much needed 'emotional' connection to our work... more on that next time!!

Finally, I can't end this with out covering the issues with packaging waste! With 58 billion paper cups being thrown away each year, the challenge for today's paper cup designers is how to design a functional AND sustainable solution. People like Tom Farriday think they've got an answer with a cup made from 100% recycled, recyclable plastic! Read more…

Sources

NYTimes

The Graffik

Something for the Weekend - Visual Onomatopoeia

I thought I'd share something related that I spotted on SVN. Keith Lang gave a talk called 'The Science of Aesthetics' at UXAustralia last year and in it he talks about (synaesthesia) what I suppose are deep-rooted, even instinctive, human behaviors and how an understanding of that can benefit application design. The images below give a great example of what he's talking about...

... when the shapes of objects all look the same (worst of all friendly and rounded) it's hard to understand at first glance that they have different consequences. Make the big decisions look significant (in this case, like clicking it too fast might cut your finger!) and it breaks the autopilot behavior. It's almost like a visual version of onomatopoeia, objects can look like what they are. It’s similar to using ‘red’ for cancel buttons or ‘x’ to close windows, just a bit more dramatic!

As the tools we develop increasingly get deployed globally the challenge of understanding a users common 'frame of references' increases dramatically. The considerations we apply today only touch the surface when you consider your user to be just about everyone. Hooking UI into deep-rooted human instinct means we anchor on at least a small part of everyone's frame of reference.

If you'd like to watch the full video here's the link. Also check out the Kiki & Bouba effect if you're not familiar with it.

Something for the Weekend - Mystery Flavour

I spotted a great example of LEAN practices this week that I really wanted to share. You may remember before Christmas I wrote about the importance of establishing flow in processes with the article of the Empire State Building, this isn't quite as impressive as building the world's tallest building in a year but its good thinking all the same!

Dum Dums are a US lollipop and they started creating a 'Mystery Flavour' in 2001. Basically Mystery Flavour is a by product that the manufacturing process creates as it switched from one 'actual' flavour to another. So you might get a mix of Cherry Cola and Banana split… quite good fun but also a really good example thinking differently.

Two things are noteworthy with this example:

• The downtime of shutting down production, cleaning and restarting would obviously cost more than the waste - so they've got the LEAN flow principles down correctly by leaving the machines running and increasing production.
• Creating value from waste that can’t be removed is an interesting thought. Do we have unavoidable waste that could used to better effect?

Sources & Credits
Thanks to Dum Dums and the Signal Vs Noise Blog reflections on programming by products

Something for the Weekend....Andrew Kim's Eco Friendly Coke Bottles

There's not much in the packaging world that you can point to as inspirational. That is except for Andrew Kim's concept design for Eco Friendly Coke Bottles.

3 million bottles of Coke are sold worldwide each day - so savings, environmental or otherwise certainly add up. Whilst the current design keeps (albeit quite loosely) the iconic Coke Bottle design, it is cylindrical which means that lots of air is shipped in each box. Andrew's square, stackable and collapsible design means that an additional 3949 bottles could be squeezed in per shipping container (321,856,830 bottles of Coke shipped per year with a zero carbon footprint!). And when you've finished with it, you can squash it down, so you can make fewer trips to the recycling centre.

Even if you don't design packaging I think there are lessons here for us all the same. Probably more on the operational design side than technical but the crux is the acceptance that the decisions we take with process design can have long term operational cost and environmental impacts.

• When improving processes removing as many physical items as possible (most likely paper / stationery in our world) will create savings - each item has a cost and a need for creation, processing, storage, transport & destruction.
• Follow the 'life' of any physical items and remove 'waste' wherever possible.
• Just because something is valuable (like the brand aspect of the Coke bottle shape) doesn't mean it’s the only way to do things - it's always worth the challenge!
• Perhaps the most simple of all, remember that 'waste' is multiplied by volume. Even small improvements can make huge differences in our high volume processes.

You can read a little more on the coke bottle here. Lets see if Coke adopt it!!

Something for the Weekend - Technical Debt

Technical Debt is a metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to raise awareness of some of the long term impacts of the decisions that we take to get project or technical change live. 
 Ward's metaphor refers more to 'debt' taken with ugly coding or patched together architecture but I think this concept expands well to design too.

We all take shortcuts in order to meet deadlines, restrict cost or work within other constraints. More often than not it’s the right commercial decision but the metaphor really helps to ground the decisions you need to take. 
So what is Technical Debt… imagine it as a bank account, if you take a shortcut with your project/design you go into debt and will, one day, need to repay that debt (correct your shortcut).

Also, just like an overdraft you incur interest... perhaps operational pain, perhaps defects in the code & most likely rework. The longer you live with the debt the more you pay. 
No ones saying you can't go into Technical Debt but there are rule…

• Make decisions that are deliberate - inadvertent decisions are just bad design (or worse)!
• Take the debt if its prudent to do so, if the commercial advantages outweigh the debt you're in the right place.
• Have a plan to repay the debt - a follow up release, back out, etc. Compounding the problem will just make it un-repayable.

This virtual bank account isn't really measurable in £ - it's unquantifiable productivity cost and therefore needs subjective judgment but I really like the concept to articulate some of the decisions we take and live with. 
This cover the basics but if you want to read more check out the links below.

Sources and Credits
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
http://senses.thirdi.com/posts/225-what-is-technical-debt/

Something for the Weekend - A Community of Thinkers

Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke are actively involved with the development of Agile Software techniques. They recently met up with the objective 'to give something back to the community' and this week I wanted to share what they created with you.

The output was a statement of commitment, a pledge if you will, for their group - Here's a copy of it:

“A Community of Thinkers”
I am a member of a community of thinkers.
I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
I challenge each community in the software industry to:

• reflect and honour the practitioners who make its existence possible;
• provide an excellent experience for it's members;
• support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
• exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behaviour of its members;
• engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
• embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and,
• thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.

I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviours, and that people who exhibit these behaviours will become leaders.
I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.
”A Community of Thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Please attribute to the distributor of your copy or derivative.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment entirely (albeit a little manifesto-ish for my personal taste). The point that interests me particularly isn't as much about the code of conduct itself but the thoughts behind the need for a community in the first place... And the questions of whether we view that we're part of similar communities in our respective worlds.

The statement really acknowledges two things which I think are important to us as a community of Business Analysts (regardless of whether that involves IT development or not):

• Continuous Improvement - It's obvious but the way we do things today isn’t the only way that we can do them. We need learn from our combined success and our failures in equal measure. The world keeps moving and so must the disciplines and techniques that we use… weather that's for better product, better results or simply to do things faster and cheaper.
• Respect for Communities - A 'community' in this sense is just a boundary-less, hierarchy-free group of people who are committed to driving their industry forward regardless of their organisation, team or political agendas. The statement to me really embraces the old management cliché of 'people being our most important assets' and does this with conviction. The community are the root of the improvements, innovations and developments that we see.

Equality important is the recognition that we're all part of that community and with that comes an equaled responsibility to contribute & support it. The level of our contribution to the community directly correlates with our success (or failure) and how fulfilled we are by the roles we play both today and in the future.

Something for the Weekend - Weird or Just Different

Derek Sivers (musician, businessman and ex-circus clown!) gave a very short but effective presentation at TED last year and I've been meaning to share it for a while.

It's just two and a half minutes long and to me demonstrates a key point in effective communication.... understanding that people look at the world with different perspectives and with different frames of reference. The examples provided by Derek are particularly relevant as they show conflicting, but equally correct views, against our (western in this case) frames of reference.

Do check it out....

Click Here

I don't want to dissect such a short video too much but there's three key thoughts that crossed my mind when I watched it;

• Considering whether we truly search for other perspectives on the activities that we do or whether we just look for agreement.
• Whether multiple perspectives do actually provides a stronger end result?
• Whether we truly take the time to understand what people are saying and where they are coming from or just hear the words and think we understand.

Something for the Weekend - Understanding vs. Listening

I recently read an article from the Harvard Business School on elBulli. elBulli is constantly recognised as the worlds best restaurant, people travel from all over the globe for the 5 hour dining experience. Not just that, each year, some 2 million hopeful diners vie to be one of the fifty customers he serves each evening for the six months that elBulli is open (8,000 a year). The HBS report (some of it plagiarised below) had a marketing lens but I'd like to look at the same case from a LEAN perspective.

There is much about the restaurant that's inefficient, as MBAs are quick to note:

• They should employer fewer staff - (1 waiter per customer is unnecessary!)
• They should source cheaper ingredients
• Less complex cooking techniques
• The restaurant is a 2 drive through mountains from Barcelona - they should relocate to Barcelona and perhaps open another branch in Madrid.
• They should make the booking process easier (2 year waiting in some cases!)

However the study also recognised that if you stripped all that away what you'd end up with is, McDonalds! (if you put that logic on steroids). I'm not saying McDonalds isn't popular but certainly wouldn't wait two years for one!

There are number of interesting points that relate to this, in particular in understanding what motivates seemingly irrational customer behaviour but I'd like to focus on is one point in practical relating to LEAN and its Voice of the Customer principles and the difference between listening to the customer and truly understanding the customer.

To summarise Chef Ferran Adria's comments in the report he believes that if you listen to the customer they'll tell you what they want based on what they know and they'll be happy with it. But it'll never be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I agree with sentiment, listening and delivering against expectations gives good service (Critical Success Factors) but GREAT customer service (enhancing features) is about something more, going above expectoration.

LEAN techniques, being grounded in manufacturing, are naturally efficiency based - I'm certainly a big LEAN advocate but I can't help reflecting on whether certain processes could risk being over-LEANed? Is an element of service orientated 'waste' acceptable if it provides a differentiator? Or should the processes and systems be slick and efficient and our people be the differentiating feature?

An interesting point to consider…

Full HBS report is available here

Something for the weekend... Paul Rand (Quote)

'Simplicity is not the goal. It's the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations'

Who was Paul Rand? Labelled by Steve Jobs as “the greatest living graphic designer,” Rand had a great appreciation and studied knowledge of European artists and advertising styles. Largely known for his famous corporate logo designs of the 50s and 60s. Rand is widely considered to have almost single handedly change commercial art into fine art.