Getting Back in the PC Saddle Post-Umpteenth Crash

About a month ago, I was sitting at my 6-month old, kick-ass computer doing work. The next moment, I was staring at a black screen, with a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen. The Black Screen of Death had bitten me. I spent extra money on this super machine to trick myself into believing that this wouldn't happen again. Oh well, almost a month later, here I am back to re-installing all the software and licking my wounds.

So what should I do to avoid losing data and more importantly time? Do I need 2 computers? A home server? The more content we put online the better in cases like these. But then who do you trust with all of your content? Facebook? Flickr? Seems like a good place to innovate now that more and more of our living room is going digital. No more photo albums, home videos and CDs in cases to keep safe from things like fire. Now it is jittery operating systems.

The Google Phonetic Alphabet

The Military phonetic alphabet is that thing you hear on TV when a cop or army guy is trying to spell out a word, with words. For example, "Uniform - Xray - Alpha - Romeo - Tango - Sierra" would spell UXarts.

Earlier today, I noticed that if you type in a single letter into Google, it provides you with what is probably the most searched on term starting with that letter. Taking that as a lead, I put together the Google Phonetic Alphabet. The next time you have to spell out your website or email address to someone, try using it. You sound like an uber-geek. "USPS - XM - Amazon - Realtor.com - Target - Southwest Airlines" signing out, over.

• Amazon
• Best Buy
• Craigslist
• Dictionary
• Ebay
• Facebook
• Gmail
• Hotmail
• IRS
• JC Penney
• Kohls
• Lowes
• MySpace
• Netflix
• Orbitz
• Photobucket
• Quotes
• Realtor.com
• Southwest Airlines
• Target
• USPS
• Verizon Wireless
• Walmart
• XM Radio
• Youtube
• Zillow

Field Studies 101, Part 2: Cheryl Hines Leads The Witness

Cheryl Hines likes to "keep it real" with her next customer interview for Vitamin Water. I need to remember to say, "Wow" at innapropriate times during my next customer visit. I also like how she asked the customer to take down his own notes. This is so funny while so scary at the same time because we all know this may be going on right now as we speak.

Steven Ballmer is Not a Good Listener

This past year I have thought about how products can take on the personality of their leadership. That thought came back to mind this morning as I read an interview with Steve Ballmer from Microsoft in the New York Times. The first question he answers is if there are areas that he needs to improve as a leader:

I race too much. My brain races too much, so even if I’ve listened to everything somebody said, unless you show that you’ve digested it, people don’t think they are being well heard. Sometimes you really don’t hear because you’re racing. It’s just the way my brain works. My brain is just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And so, if you really want to get the best out of people, you have to really hear them and they have to feel like they’ve been really heard. So I’ve got to learn to slow down and improve in that dimension, both to make me better and to make the people around me better.

His response is interesting because not only does he know that he's not a good listener, he knows that even when he tries to listen it doesn't work. If Microsoft truly were only about developers, developers, developers then this wouldn't be such a big deal to me. Unfortunately, Microsoft's products seem as if they don't listen to us. The good thing is that he values listening. I hope he values it enough to put people in places of leadership that are great listeners that build products mindful of what people are saying to them.

Direct Link to Developers, Devlopers, Developers video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE

User Experience Design is an Art, Not a Bottleneck

The New York Times had an article last week about Douglas Bowman's experience of working at Google as a designer. The focus of the article was how frustrated he became by not being able to have any design decisions approved without always having to provide data to back it up. He has left Google and is now the creative director at Twitter.

This story reminded me about how at Cooper design, Alan Cooper likes when designers have 2 pieces of rationale for every design decision. I agree with concept, but not implementing it as martial law. Years ago, User Interface departments would have Standards that development would have to follow. It was a bottleneck, so many places changed Standards to Guidelines to try and help remove the congestion. These days pattern libraries are helpful in getting user experience components shared, but not if in order to implement them you need to do research each and every time.

As in life, balance is needed when implementing a user experience design process. You need analytics, field studies, heuristic evaluation and common sense to help make good design decisions. So far Google has been successful by requiring analytics for all designs, but as they move into new product arenas we shall see if it is sustainable to take out the gut instincts of good UX designers.

Listening To Your Customers Saves You Money

Sid Probstein, CTO of Attivio, wrote an article which lists a lot of reasons why you should listen to your current customers instead of just focusing on getting new ones. Here are some of them:

• Acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers
• A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10 percent
• The average company loses 10 percent of its customers each year
• A 5% reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by 25-125%, depending on the industry

Enough reasons for you to start doing field studies?

Read the entire article here: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Web-Exclusives/Viewpoints/Listen-to-the-Voice-of-the-Customer-53239.aspx

Getting The Story of Stuff Shared

The New York Times published an article on Annie Leonard, the creator of the movie, "The Story of Stuff." The story tells the dark side of consumerism. It is like a cliff notes version of the book Natural Capitalism but suited for children. This video is being shown all over the world in schools. A reason that they give for this getting passed around globally and not something like Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is a simple one. It's only 20 minutes long as opposed to Gore's 94 minute film. This makes it easy to play in classrooms and for people to make time to watch it. If you want something consumed, make it easy to digest.

Here is the website if you have 20 minutes to spare today:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Gabriel Byrne And The Art of Listening

Gabriel Byrne has always been one of my favorite actors. This interview with him on NPR is really magnificent. In the first part of the interview he shares his thoughts on "listening" and how profoundly important it is to him. Being a great listener is a vital quality for User Experience Designers to be able to deliver empathetic products. Here's a quote from the interview

"To constantly be absorbed...To try to be outside yourself so that you're not aware that you're listening. Because really, truly, profoundly listening is to be unaware of yourself at a deep level.

Listen to the 40 minute interview here (click on Listen Now button). It will be the best 40 minutes you spend today:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103651864