FatDUX blog

Shame on Korean Airlines!

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:10:08 +0200

A few days ago I got so frustrated with Korean Airlines’ online booking system I decided to share the horror with the rest of the world.

I admit, because of what I do I am a bit more sensitive about bad web pages. Sometimes I overreact and get cranky (you web designers know what I mean). But this is the second time I’ve ever gotten so far as to write about my bad experience on the web.

The whole thing started the previous night, when I lost my patience with their web site and called the sales line to make the order with a live person. I was surprised that the toll free number connected me to the USA (I live in Europe). The overseas call was paid by Korean Airlines so I did not care. I was connected to a nice lady, who spent about 20 minutes with me trying to find the right flight. What was very surprising to me was that she couldn’t email me the options she found, that my only options were either to buy the flight right then and there or write down all the times and flight numbers and hope I could find the paper again the next time I call the sales line. The lady was so kind and helpful I took a deep breath and wrote down all the details. Which I lost the next day, so I had to give the web a second chance.

I was buying two long distance flights for approximately three thousand dollars

The next morning I opened the Korean Airlines site, which is a narrow (760px) stripe looking a bit funny in the middle of my big monitor. Approximately 90% of the narrow space was covered with ads, menus and options I did not care about. What I needed was the flight booking form displayed using gray on gray tiny font, where the select boxes with dates are so small the data does not even fit and is partially hidden.

(This is a screenshot in actual size, the letters blending into each other is what gets displayed on the actual site)

When filling this form one has to choose the continent and then the city for the departing and return destinations. It is not possible to type in the airport code, or the date, which has to be selected from a miniature calendar. This turned out to be quite annoying when I filled out the form for the tenth time.

The next page showed the date I had selected with a price matrix displaying three previous and following days. I was flexible in the dates, so I wanted to make sure the previous or following weeks are not significantly cheaper, but I could not change the dates in the matrix, I had to go back to the home screen and keep filling the booking form again and again. Filling the stupid form from scratch every single time!

After about ten iterations I found the flight I wanted for $1200 and proceeded to selecting the flight times and other usual stuff. After 10 minutes of fine-tuning our journey to the maximum degree of perfection I realized I forgot to add my soon-to-be wife (I was booking a honeymoon) and I could not add another passenger at this point. I had to start all over again.

At this moment I was getting really irritated, so the next obvious thing was that I made a mistake in the date. My excuse: I could not clearly see the date in the booking form, because it was half hidden in the small “select” box. When I discovered my mistake, the only option was to start all over again.

The next attempt got me almost there. I had gone through the price matrix, times, and even the inconvenient login form, this time I typed my and my girlfriend's names and proceeded to the checkout, gave my card number, billing address, expiration date, security code and all that. At the final check I realized my girlfriend will have different name after the wedding. Being so far in the process I could not believe I could not go back to change the name and my only option was to start all over again!

I thought it will go fast this time. But after filling the destinations, dates and number of passengers, the price had changed and the flights were now $350 more expensive.

And here I have to admit I lost control and almost broke the keyboard.

I had spent almost two hours with this, did not accomplish anything and felt angry and defeated for the rest of the day.

How is it possible that airlines with billion dollar budgets give such a poor user experience when they’re booking a ticket - the most crucial part of their business? Fixing this problem by adding a back button is probably less expensive then the tickets I have bought. Changing the layout of their web, such that users can see the important information, would cost less than what KA must have paid for the phone call I made the to customer support centre? How can a company be so ignorant and blind about how users interact with their systems?

Stepan at the WebTop 100 conference

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:08:18 +0100

On 25th of Novemeber I have visited the conference WebTop100 and here is some notes and interesting quotes I have heard:

First presentation was given by Jiri Suchy, the man who stands behind the redesign of O2 web pages. Link

His team tends to speak to the stakeholders and collect expectations not requirements, because expectations do not necessarily have to be implemented.
When redesigning in the corporation one good solution is sometimes forced on behalf of another good solution.
Give the job to good and motivated people. Give them the authority and trust that they will do a good job.
Programmers should not design UX but need to know the reasons behind particular decisions.
It is not possible to satisfy 100% of the users, stakeholders and your ego.

Second presentation was by Petr Štědrý from Dobrý Web. Him and his team has redesigned a web of Sencor in just 14 days.

Petr believes, that the problems in design needs to be communicated visually and that everybody can draw sufficiently to be able to participate on the "discussion".
They have started the project by the design workshop, where all the stakeholders did 3 round of drawing of their vision.

Next in line was Daniel Frouz, the owner of InetPrint, company providing not just promo materials and prints. He spoke about the redesign of their extensive portal/eshop, where they have reached some remarkable improvements in conversion rate.

Recomendation: leave enough time for the usability testing. Which should come as soon as possible in the design phase. During the implementation it is too late.
They started the project by setting the main goals and did a brainstorming using the mind maps.
When cooperating with external agencies, it is important to communicate extensively.
Various visual designs have to be done by multiple visual designers.
They decide to provide the prices on the web, but they plan on blocking suspicious request from their competition.

I did not make much notes from the presentation of Jiří Chromát from Seznam.cz. Not that it was not interesting, but because I do not know much about czech Pay Per Click and their system sClick.

The next presentation was given by Petra Brodílková from Google. The only woman on the agenda (as she has presented herself). She has revealed some nice features for the online marketers, to be used in the very near future.

Remarketing - you will be able to identify the visitors of your web pages, for whom your specified adds will be display when they browse the web. How cool is that!
She has introduced a google optimizer. A tool which automatically creates the online marketing campaigns and while it runs the campaigns, it learns itself and optimizes along the way.
She has mentioned an application Our Mobile Planet, which shows statistics of mobile usages. For some it might be a well known thing, but for me it was a cool new application.
Then she has advertised the AdMob. A system for online advertisement on mobile phones. In the Czech Republic it has 1.7M users and over 100M impressions.
Petra also spoke of the TrueView, a system which allows you to post video ads before the Youtube videos. I personally find those ads annoying and skip them, but important thing is, that the advertiser only pays, if the viewer sees the whole clip!

The next presenter came late, so after 5 minutes of waiting I left for a coffee and got sucked into the discussion with Jiří Suchý and Ondřej Kratochvíl about what it is like to be a UX designer in the big corporation.

The next presentation was by Ondřej Kratochvíl, about the critical state of the UX in the Czech Republic. From my point of view this was the best speech - bold and critical.

From Ondrej's perspective thee is 3 main problems when it come to czech web pages: Trying to be different no matter what, Putting everything into the menu, Not explaining clearly what is the company about.
It is important to deal with UX as a whole, not just the usability testing.
It is important to deal with UX across the all channels, not just web.
It is important to communicate with external agencies.
UX can not be measured, and therefore it attract lots of incapable people.
The most important marker is the "customer satisfaction" (even more important then sales)
Constant patching is often so expensive, that it is better and more effective to do a complete re-design.

For the next presentation of Martin Kalda from Mather, my attention has been weakening, so even when the presentations were interesting I just could not keep my full concentration:

Designers use the filler texts "loren ipsum", which they later replace. However they also use the filler images from the databases, which the don't! And so we have the webs full of annoying young professionals shaking hands.
We do the webs for the companies, not for the CEOs.
By default, companies should have the brand manual and use it!

Michal Špaček from Skype has complaint about the security of the webs. One of the sites he found so offensive, that he decided to punish the owners by hacking it (live). Unlike everyone else, I did not find this so amusing. I was thinking about the owners of the page who will have to spent their money to fix this and everyone else who has to spend our money to protect agains hackers like Michal.

At the end Jan Havel from Actum had an interesting presentation, not just visually, about our fears and phobias when it comes to designing webs.

What stops us from doing things properly is the fear.
Clients do not improve the agency by micromanaging it. Give them the trust and authority.
Agencies fight the micromanagement using the method of ugly green stain. They place something horrible on the design, for the client to complain about it, winning this battle and not complaining about anything else.
Every self-respecting agency is counting the time and charges for extra work.
If we make a bad decision, but quickly, it can be fixed. However, if we hesitate with the decision nothing is done and nothing can be fixed.
It is important to see where the money is.

Vestas - "We don't need no stinkin' social media"

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:45:57 +0100

Investors have totally lost confidence in the leadership of the Danish windmill giant, Vestas. Earlier this week, on October 31, 2011, their stock plummeted almost 25% - the most recent, most dramatic swing in a roller-coaster ride that started in 2008.

This most recent disaster was triggered by a discreet announcement late Sunday evening that a German turbine factory, owned by Vestas, couldn’t deliver on time, which was going to severely reduce earnings for the year.

I’ve been monitoring Vestas for over a year, not as an investor, but because I am fascinated by how poorly this company handles social media. Let me be blunt: Vestas just doesn’t get it - and it has cost them millions.

A story about “Black Tuesday”
On the morning of October 26, 2010, I read the headline on the Danish business newspaper, Børsen, that Vestas was going to fire 3000 employees. At 9:45, someone told me that Vestas’ CEO, Ditlev Engel was holding a press conference at 10:00. Around 10:15, another colleague told me that a Danish windmill company was declaring bankruptcy and that there would be a statement at 11:00.

About 10:20, as Engel rambled on to the press corps (streamed live on the internet), the first remarks started to appear on Twitter: “So when is he going to tell us the company has gone bust?” Actually, another, smaller windmill company, Skycon, had gone into receivership. Although this news had been announced earlier that morning, the particulars were overshadowed by the happenings at Vestas. No interesting statements were made at 11:00.

However, looking at Vestas’ stock price that morning, there was a curious, minute-by-minute correlation between the tweets and the stock. About 10:20, when the stock was falling, but not yet in free-fall, the first social media messages appeared. And during the next 15 minutes, Vestas lost almost DKK 20 million in stock capitalization. After 11:00, when it was clear from the news updates that Skycon, not Vestas, had gone broke, Vestas stock rallied briefly. But only briefly; the company lost a bundle that day - the company’s communication punctuated by occasional tweets providing a link to the online video of Engel’s press conference.

Coincidentally, a senior VP at Vestas told me later that day that the company had a community manager responsible for their social media. But what does this person actually do? For the next 26 hours, there wasn’t a single tweet - during which time Vestas lost over 10% of its total market capitalization.

Late in the evening of October 27, 2010, Vestas finally posted a tweet. Too little, too late.

Could social media help?
If you had looked at social-media activity related to Vestas on October 26-27, 2010, it was clear that people - including Bloomberg - were looking for some kind of useful communication. But there was none.

On October 27, 2010, Vestas had roughly 450 followers. A couple of days ago, Vestas stock again plummeted, this time by almost 25%. They now have 3,600 followers on Twitter. But did Vestas tweet? No. A repeat performance from a year ago.

Finally, a tweet - at 9:20 AM on Tuesday November 1, 2011. Throughout the dismal Monday, Vestas remained silent.

So here’s my message, dear Vestas: people WANT to talk with you. The dramatic rise in your number of Twitter followers shows this. So why aren’t you engaging with them? Do you have a social-media strategy or are you just making this up as you go along? If so, consider taking a different approach. The most recent debacle reduced the value of your stock by 24.3%. The costs to prepare a professional social-media strategy and the salary for an effective community manager are far less. You do the math.

FatDUX Prague sponsoring EuroIA in Prague

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:47:03 +0200

ENG:
I am proud to announce the opening of FatDUX Prague. Our offices are located just minutes from the famed Wenceslas Square in the heart of the Czech capital. Over the past few years, our sister company, ExperienceU, has grown to become one of the most respected usability testing facilities in Central Europe. Now, working hand-in-hand with FatDUX Prague, we are able to provide a full range of UX services – from strategy and design to usability and search optimisation.

To help celebrate our new company and build our local user-experience community, FatDUX Prague is subsidising 20 registrations for residents of the Czech Republic to the upcoming EuroIA conference. The conference is possibly the most important event of its kind in Europe. We are honoured that this year, it will be held right here in Prague on September 22-24.

Rather than the normal registration fee of EUR 430, with our discount code, you will only pay EUR 150. We will take care of the rest. For details and your personal code information, please write to me directly: stepan (at) fatdux.com

CZE:
Rádi bychom oznámili oficiální otevření pražské pobočky dánské designové agentury FatDUX. Naše kanceláře se nachází na okraji historického centra Prahy. Díky spolupráci s agenturou ExperienceU, respektovanou zejména v oblasti testování použitelnosti, dodáváme celé spektrum služeb v oblasti UX, přes strategii a design po audit použitelnosti a SEO.

Abychom oslavili oficiální vznik nové pobočky a zároveň podpořili místní UX komunitu, FatDUX Praha sponzoruje registraci 20 zájemců z České republiky o nadcházející konferenci EuroIA. Tato konference, která se řadí mezi nejvýznamnější svého druhu v Evropě, se bude konat v Praze 22 – 24. září.

Místo plné ceny 430 Euro zaplatíte pouze 150 Euro a FatDUX doplatí zbytek. Případní zájemci, neváhejte mne prosím kontaktovat na: stepan (at) fatdux.com

The story of the BB-bird

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:42:49 +0200

I don’t know when the BB-bird came into my life, but it was early – a bright, yellow canary with an incredibly friendly demeanour. His name, pronounced “bee-bee”, was related directly to my ability to say things around the age of 10 months. It entered my vocabulary about the same time as “mama”, “dada”, “bye-bye”, “night-night”, and “ford”.

BB-bird had a cage, but using the cage was at the bird’s discretion, not ours; the door was always open. BB sat on my crib, let me poke him with sticks, and even flew around outside during the summer months. But BB always returned and was an integral part of our family.

One day we returned from a short winter holiday and BB was suddenly very stand-offish. He wouldn’t sing, wouldn’t play with me, and was generally apathetic (I was about three at the time, but recognized apathy nonetheless). When spring came, I opened a window and the BB-bird flew away, never to be seen again.

A few years later, my mother confessed that the original BB-bird had died that winter weekend and she had discreetly replaced him with another bird without telling me. She said it was the only time she ever lied to me – and I believe her.

She learned a lesson and I learned a lesson – several, in fact. And now, 55 years later, the BB-bird still affects my decision-making process. Allow me to share some thoughts with you.

Lessons learned from the BB-bird

First, you can sugar-coat the truth, but you can never hide it. Truth always comes out. In my case, I was confused and upset that my friend the BB-bird no longer liked me. This was far more painful than learning the concept of death. I was genuinely relieved when my mom confessed the truth behind the BB-bird’s sudden personality change.

Today, when clients leave us unexpectedly or old friends “go off the radar” in a calculated manner, I want to know why. I want an explanation – and hopefully I shouldn’t have to ask.

This leads to my second epiphany…

There is a difference between “difficult” and “unpleasant” decisions. In truth, there are relatively few “difficult” decisions here in life – mostly, we procrastinate to avoid making the “unpleasant” decisions – or look for ways to avoid confrontation entirely (e.g. replacing a dead canary to avoid upsetting the baby).

Thanks to the BB-bird, I rarely hesitate when making unpleasant decisions. It’s not that I’m cold-hearted, I just don’t see the upside in prolonging pain. I also rip off band-aids really fast. And I always explain the reasons behind my decisions and subsequent actions.

Do you have a BB-bird in your life? You probably do. So, take a moment and see what lessons you learned.

Former Director of Business Development, Kim Schultz, has passed away

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:24:04 +0200

From October 2008 to January 2010, former A.P. Møller-Maersk director, Kim Schultz, was FatDUX’s Director of Business Development. He died on Thursday after an illness that was longer than Kim had let on. Kim was 65. I lost a close personal friend, FatDUX lost a trusted advisor, and Denmark lost one of those rare, insightful businessmen who could strengthen both GDP and international relations.

I first met Kim Schultz back in the mid-nineties when I was invited to complete a whist foursome with three business executives. Although I didn’t play whist and wasn’t yet a business executive, the invitation was appealing – “beer, chili con carne, and good conversation.” Happily, conversation, not whist, was the driving force behind these get-togethers. And although I eventually became a decent whist-player, more importantly, I received business training from three of the brightest minds in Denmark. And Kim was our senior advisor in this talented group. Kim and I also shared similar hobby interests – vintage wristwatches and cars – which provided a nice change of pace when we grew tired of discussing due-diligance procedures, the economy of Latvia, or whether the “white-tail” jets parked at Keflavik Airport might be for sale.

For years, Kim was part of the top management within the A.P. Møller-Maersk organization. Most of his career was spent in air freight, including 14 years as Vice President of Maersk Air Cargo. In 2000, Kim was promoted to Managing Director of Star Air, another Maersk company, which operated an impressive fleet of 14 Boeing 747 cargo jets. After leaving A.P.Møller-Maersk in 2003, Kim joined former Maersk Air CEO Bjarne Hansen, Robert S. Arendal, and Marita Petersen to form a new Danish air-brokerage company, WingPartners.

In the fall of 2008, Kim agreed to share his time and business acumen with the FatDUX Group where he navigated us deftly through the treacherous first year of the financial crisis. Kim had an incredible ability to maintain his cool in every kind of situation – even when our idiot bank advisor proceeded to lecture him on international cargo logistics. Our debt to our dear friend Kim is enormous – for his skill, knowledge, personal charm, and unswerving support.

Some will question whether a corporate blog is the appropriate place for a piece such as this. I say, absolutely! Kim was a vital member of the FatDUX family – and just as we use social media to share our successes, it is only fitting that we share our losses, too.

On behalf of FatDUX Chairman, Søren Muus, and all the FatDUXlings worldwide, our hearts go out to Kim’s son, Mikkel, and his extended family. Ære være hans minde.

Memorial service

We have just learned there will be a memorial service for Kim on June 14 at 11 AM at Søndermarks Kirkegård og Krematorium, Roskildevej 59.

From left: Cleantech CEO Jesper Boie Rasmussen, FatDUX CEO Eric Reiss, and FatDUX Director of Business Development Kim Schultz admire Cleantech's electric Jaguar XF in 2009.

Polish IA Summit 2011 – Warsaw – April 7-April 8

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:16:37 +0200

I am absolutely positive that someone was leaning on the Fast Forward button during April because it flew by. It is only now that I am able to see over the paper piles on my desk and talk about my fantastic experience that started my April 2011 off at a brisk pace. In early April, I was privilege to be asked speak at the Polish IA Summit in Warsaw. My deepest thanks to Wieslaw Kotecki, Hubert Anyzewski and all at UseLab for putting together such a terrific program. And, a very special thanks to Magda Wolszczak- Protas who did such an incredible job of coordinating the event on top of taking good care of this clueless American visitor to Warsaw. It was an exceptional experience.

My colleagues have done such a fantastic job of representing the content of the Polish IA Summit that I will refer you to them for specific representations of what we learned over an inspiring two days.You will also find many tweets using #iasw as your search term. The summit hash tag was the most popular tag in Poland for the first day of the Summit on April 7, 2011.

My personal epiphany from the conference was confirmation that the U.S. hegemony over IA/UX/Experience Design, or whatever you want to call what we do and where we do it, has long been over. We’re lucky here in the United States where we have been blessed for years with the thought-leadership of many of the originators of our practice. When we limit ourselves to conferences, meet ups, webinars and other information sharing venues from the continental U.S., it is easy to think that this is where all of the innovative, thought-leadership is happening. Au contraire. The viral nature of the Web has spread the good word far and wide. Our colleagues overseas are blazing many trails with innovative work and forward-thinking.

We service a global community that deserves a global perspective. Such perspective does not come from following the same superstars on Twitter or seeing the same people deliver similar PowerPoint slides at local conferences. I believe that a truly global perspective comes from the experience and intellect of our colleagues overseas. And for this you need to get on the long plane ride and go find it. Here are some international IA events for which I could find links: German IA Summit, Italia IA Summit and the EuroIA.

The IA Institute site, Boxes and Arrows and other professional sites announce other events in Australia, South America, Asia and Eastern Europe. I plan to do what I can to include educational opportunities from outside the U.S. in my professional development from now on as I believe strongly that it makes me a better IA. I hope that you do also. And, in the United States, it is a tax deduction.

Polish IA Summit Recaps

Martin Belem on the Polish IA Summit. Martin has done a fantastic job of bringing forth salient points for many of the presentations. He is too modest to talk about his own presentation that illuminated an interesting path from SEO to IA in Five Lessons from an Information Architecture career.

Peter Boersma did a fantastic job of sending us on our with with his closing plenary that examined the state of IA and UX, where it came from and where it is going, in UX: (still) the next step for IAs. He also has excellent notes for many of the sessions from the Polish IA Summit.

Claire Rowland and Chris Brown, from Fjord, delivered a thought provoking presentation on extending our concept of design in Designing Beyond the Glowing Rectangle: User Experience Design and Research Implications of the Internet of Things that closed out the first day’s session.

An open letter to John Hancock Insurance

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:10:18 +0200

The following represents strictly my personal views, which may or may not represent the opinions of the owners and employees of The FatDUX Group. This represents the essence of an email sent earlier today to the John Hancock Insurance Company, in response to a promotional e-mail.

To Whom it May Concern:

Thank you for your “personalized” e-mail. Thanks, too, for the useless flash animation. Perhaps, as promised, my personal information could have been edited but I didn’t have the patience to wait through the advertising crap.

While I have your attention, I’d like to mention that my mother paid almost USD 9,000 a year for home health care. She did this for well over a decade. But when she turned 90 and really needed your help, John Hancock made us jump through all kinds of hoops.

My mother died before your policy finally “took effect”. You never paid out a cent. Good business model. Bad user experience. Your 100-day waiting period is quite effective. Alas, most needs for home health care arise quite unexpectedly. Ah, but you know this, of course :)

When you transferred her policy from one agent to another (the original agent retired many years ago – that’s how old the policy is), you kicked two numbers: the policy number and her social security number. Despite hours and hours on the phone (mostly listening to your Muzak), I don’t know that this situation was ever resolved – whenever I called, you were never able to find her policy. Yet you kept magnificent track of her bank account across at least two account changes.

During her memorial service (held at her home), I received a phone call from your organization (the fourth), requesting an appointment for one of your “professional advisors” to inspect the house to determine if my mother was really entitled to your help. Pardon me. I think I may have been rude to your representative – I was missing my mother’s eulogy.

I’m posting this on a user-experience blog because I think someone at John Hancock needs to sit up and take notice: you have a customer who paid over USD 100,000 to you and was kicked in the balls for the privilege. Imagine my joy to find I am still on your mailing list.

Sincerely,
Eric L. Reiss
son of the late
Louise Z. Reiss
of Pinecrest, FL

–
Eric Reiss
CEO
The FatDUX Group
Copenhagen, Denmark
http://www.fatdux.com
office: (+45) 39 29 67 77
mobile: (+45) 20 12 88 44
skype: ericreiss
twitter: @elreiss

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Seven things I learned

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:02:00 +0200

1. Listen and learn. In that order.
Wisdom may come from intuition, but understanding comes from knowledge. If your urge is to show off your knowledge, that’s generally the time to shut up.

2. A perception is always true to the perceiver
If someone thinks “green is ugly”, you will rarely convince them otherwise. It is very difficult to mirror your own unique vantage point.

3. The best ideas are the toughest to convey
I’ve found it helps to say that Seth Godin, Warren Buffet, or Benjamin Franklin thought of my ideas first.

4. Insightfulness is both a talent and a curse
Did you experience a true epiphany? Or are you just creating problems in a Munchausen-by-proxy fashion? It’s not easy to tell…and always frustrating.

5. Common sense is not a common quality
The mesencephalon (mid-brain), which controls emotions, tends to veto the rational stuff coming from the prosencephalon (new brain). Very frustrating when our prosencephalon gets into a fight with someone else’s mesencephalon.

6. Honesty provides the ultimate competitive edge
Folks can take my friends and my belongings, but they can never take my integrity. Cheaters never prosper. This I believe to be an absolute fact.

7. Never take yourself too seriously
The “high horse” is still a depressingly popular vehicle.

N.B. Thanks to Erik van den Berg from Zeist in the Netherlands, for encouraging this interesting philosophical exercise via Twitter and e-mail.

A logical puzzle. A cash prize.

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:24:00 +0200

The story

Wendy was nervous about attending the 2011 IA Summit in Denver, Colorado. It was her first time at a major conference and she didn’t know a soul. But as this is an informal, friendly conference, her fears were unfounded. In fact, lots of people came up to her during the opening cocktail hour on Thursday evening to chat. And Linda even brought her a drink. By the time she had talked with Dr. Sternberg and three other IA/UX professionals, she was feeling pretty confident.

The challenge

From the following clues, can you name the first four people Wendy spoke with, the order in which they arrived, and the subjects of the various conversations?

The clues

1. One person, who operates a small west-coast studio, came up to Wendy to talk about service design. This person stepped up just before Andy, but after Ms. Smith.

2. Another person was particularly interested in personas and had many ideas to share with Wendy. This was after Prof. Jones had congratulated her on winning a FatDUX student sponsorship to the event.

3. Someone had just finished reading a post on the FatDUX blog about “Writing for the Web” and was all excited about content strategy. This was just after Wendy had spoken with Hansen, who was the next person to approach her after Lynn.

4. “I’m so jealous of your work,” said Wendy to the person who came up to her and talked about wireframes. “Deliverables are simply SO exciting!” The wireframe expert was the person who showed up just before Jeff.

The prize

As a prize, FatDUX will be awarding a USD 50 gift certificate that can be redeemed at any participating…oh screw the formalities…Eric will give you fifty bucks cash to use any way you want. But you do have to show up in Denver to collect it!

So there you have it. Can you solve the puzzle? You’ve got all the information you need. Now show us that as an information professional you know how to handle information challenges!

Send your answers directly to Eric at er (at) fatdux (dot) com. First right anwer takes the prize.

Offer may be void in Southeastern Montana, parts of central Romania, and at 924 West End Avenue, NYC. Check local regulations before responding. Employees of FatDUX are not eligible for the cash prize, but if you show up at the Hyatt Regency bar in Denver, we won’t disappoint you.

Dopamine and the mind – why good designs go wrong

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:12:00 +0200

Over the years, I have noticed a strange pattern: when executives (site owners) are asked to comment on design layouts, they often say there is too much text and demand larger pictures/graphics – whether these are relevant or not. These executives are disappointed and frustrated with the design proposals they see. On the other hand, if you listen to users (during usability testing, for example), they complain that these same pictures/graphics are getting in their way. Like the executives, they also exhibit frustration, but in a diametrically different way – “Why are you making me scroll past this crap to get to the information I really need?”

My question was simple: was there a scientific reason for these dramatically different reactions to essentially the same designs? And I think the answer is “yes”.I’ve included a few salient footnotes for those of you who are scientifically inclined.

Thesis in brief (1)

Why do two groups of people seem to consistently disagree regarding the “attractiveness” of a website design? Could it be that there was a physiological reason for these reactions? In short, was our brain playing tricks on us or misleading us? Were our development and presentation techniques actually encouraging inappropriate client reactions?

Early research

I have known about the functions of neurophysiological “reward chemicals” since my pre-med studies at Washington University in St. Louis 1972-1976. In late 2007, having spotted the curious reaction pattern described above, I started to do some more serious research, focusing on the limbic system (2) and the nature of reward chemicals (3).

I made the assumption that if the pattern I had identified was universal, voluntary intake of recreational reward chemicals (e.g. nicotine, caffine, cocaine, etc.) was probably not at the heart of these reactions. So I looked for chemical rewards produced by the body itself. Soon, my inquiry zeroed in on dopamine, a chemical messenger similar to adrenaline. (4)

Dopamine – friend or foe?

Dopaminergic neurons appear to code environmental stimuli rather than specific movements. (5) This, in layman’s terms, means that pretty pictures stimulate dopamine release, which perhaps explains why executives favour graphics over blocks of text in dummy design layouts.

Although this reaction seems obvious (pictures are more attractive than text), it was reassuring to know that there was a scientific reason for this.

Task-solving activities

The second part of my question dealt with why test subjects so often reacted badly to eye-candy (i.e. gratuitous pictures/graphics).

There are various viewpoints as to the role of dopamine and the task-completion process. For example, Pennartz et al. (6) asked in 2009:

“Given the parallel organization of corticostriatal circuits, the question arises how coherent behavior, requiring integration of sensorimotor, cognitive, and motivational information, is achieved.”

Perhaps part of the answer to this critical question can be found in Taizo Nakazato’s research, published back in 2005 (7):

“During the task performance, dopamine concentration started to increase just after the cue, peaked near the time of the lever press, and returned to basal levels 1–2 s after the lever press.”

By way of background, this study deals with rats pressing a lever to receive a food reward. In internet terms, I equate this behavior with humans pushing a button/clicking a link to receive an informational reward. In other words, task accomplishment produces a reward – in this case chemical.

Actually, though, it appears that the anticipation of task-completion triggers dopamine release (8). And it could be that executives about to see a proposed design for the first time may be anticipating the presence of pretty pictures.

Yet the essence of the problem seems to be that if something delays/hinders task completion, dopamine release actually causes post-action frustration. Dr. J.G. Fleischer describes this phenomenon quite succinctly: (9, 10)

“If the [subject] does not receive the reward when it expects to receive it, then there is a depression of dopamine release, which is consistent with the negative preduction error that would occur in that situation.”

In other words, if something gets in the way of task completion, dopamine doesn’t get where it’s needed (“depression of dopamine release”). I suggest that perhaps the pretty pictures and eye-candy that were anticipated and appreciated during the presentation phase, are actually getting in the way of test subjects who expect a more relevant response to their query (i.e. clicking on a promising link). If we make people scroll to get to the stuff they want (and expect to receive), they experience dopamine depression.

That said, a more recent study by Wanat et al. (11), suggests that further research is needed:

“[The] enhancement of reward-evoked dopamine signaling was also observed in sessions in which the response requirement was fixed but the delay to reward delivery increased, yoked to corresponding trials in PR sessions. These findings suggest that delay, and not effort, was principally responsible for the increased reward-evoked dopamine release in PR sessions. Together, these data demonstrate that NAcc dopamine release to rewards and their predictors are dissociable and differentially regulated by the delays conferred under escalating costs.”

In other words, the tougher it is to achieve a result, the greater the dopamine reward. This somewhat contradicts my thesis – and yet these findings also indicate that the response is situational. Hence, I feel certain that Wanat & Co. are actually looking at a different side of the problem, unrelated to task-based frustration, but that related to task-completion in a triumphal ”I just made it to the summit of Mt. Everest” kind of manner.

Drawing on my network

In late 2009, my online research led me to my grade-school best-friend, Jon Kassel. (12) Jon is now Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Jon’s speciality is addiction. Naturally, the effect of drugs on emotions represents a key part of his own research.

Jon and I chatted informally about the problem with which I was wrestling. And without putting too many words in Jon’s mouth, it seems my thesis holds water – certainly from a cognitive point of view, and more and more from a clinical-psychology point of view, too. I hope that Jon and I can work on this in more detail sometime.

Please note: my conversations with Jon served merely as litmus tests and should not be construed as formal endorsement of my theories on the part of Dr. Kassel or the University of Illinois.

Community research

Of course, it could be that the pattern I thought I had detected was merely a fata morgana, Maybe my community wasn’t seeing the same things I was. So in January 2010, I published a simple survey on SurveyMonkey, which I broadcast to the interactive-design community via social media and list serves. (13) All of my questions could be answered with a simple yes/no. Here they are, along with the results of the 144 people who responded within the first week:

1. Have you ever been at a client meeting where you or your company have presented detailed page mockups for a proposed website (a “comp” complete with graphics and “greeked” text)?

Note: This may or may not represent the culmination of a longer discovery/strategic/IA process, but exactly where this presentation occurs in the overall process is not particularly important in terms of this survey.

Yes: 97.9%
No: 2.1%

2. If you have been to a website design presentation meeting as described above, have you ever heard the client say, “Very pretty, but there’s too much text. We need more/better/prettier graphics.” (this is when clients start talking about including pictures of their pet cat.)

I see this mostly when senior officials have not participated in an earlier discovery/IA/wireframing process.

Yes: 70.5%
No: 29.5%

3. Having been present at the original design presentation, have you later observed (probably through a one-way mirror during a usability session) that respondents say “Don’t make me scroll through the damned eye-candy to get to the substance. Get rid of the picture of that dumb cat!”

Yes: 58%
No: 42%

4. So in short, do you see any correlation between requests for more eye-candy during the layout approvals, and irritation with the same eye-candy during task-based usability testing?

Yes: 59.9%
No: 41.1%

About 62% of the respondents were from North America, 30% were from Europe, 8% were from the rest of the world.

Even though this is a primitive survey, the statistical results are significant; the pattern I hypothesised is recognized by others by a factor approaching 2 to 1.

Today, “dopamine” seems to have become “flavor of the month”

I first mentioned this research en passant in blogpost I published in January, 2009. (14) I talked about it again briefly at the IA Summit in Phoenix, AZ in April, 2010. Today, the subject seems to be finally taking hold – most recently at the IxDA’s conference, Interactions 11, in Boulder, CO last week (February 2011). Here, Charles Hannon, presented the subject formally (e.g. as the main subject of a talk) for the first time in our community. (15) Although the subject has also been broached tangentially at EuroIA 2010 and elsewhere, I look forward to speaking with Prof. Hannon at some point; alas, I was not able to attend the Boulder conference.

A second empirical observation

When I first suspected that comprehensive design mock-ups might be creating problems, we tweaked the development/presentation process in my own company, FatDUX. Subsequently, we spent much more effort in guiding senior management through our decision-making process prior to showing actual color design mockups. Although we had always involved our clients in the earlier stages of the development process, we had never previously insisted on top-management participation.

My empirical observation is that if C-level administrators are made part of the comprehensive design process, there is less chance they will insist on bigger pictures or cuter kittens on the website. In situations where we have not been able to obtain face-time with senior officials, our designs are more often open to challenge. Only expensive rounds of usability testing have enabled us to reinstate the graphic-design best-practices we normally espouse.

Some background

Both of my parents were scientists and the value of the scientific method and controlled studies was something I learned in parallel with my ABCs. As a pre-med student at Washington University in St. Louis, I continued my scientific studies, although I did wind up in a so-called “unrelated field” (encouraged by my father, who helped me send my first e-mail back in 1982 (no typo) to his secretary at the University of Miami). I have since been involved in the creation and/or critique of over 1500 websites and online apps.

So in closing, I encourage you to do your own research to prove or disprove my contention. And if you’d like to share your own empirical observations and/or research, I hope you’ll leave a comment here or write me directly at er@fatdux.com.

Here, I use “thesis” in the literal Greek fashion: as an “intellectual proposition” (θέσις), not a “dissertation” (dissertātiō).

http://rossmed.drbuschman.com/notes/semestertwo/limbic.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence

http://www.utexas.edu/research/asrec/dopamine.html

http://biopsychiatry.com/dopaminerev.htm

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/41/12831

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=j1392rk26327525j&size=largest

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/dopamine-neurotransmitter.html

http://nsi.academia.edu/JasonFleischer/Papers/26012/Dopamine_Signaling_and_the_Distal_Reward_Problem

http://books.google.dk/books?id=BA8kvh7jgFEC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=when+an+individual+expects+a+reward,+dopaminergic+neurons+are+fired&source=bl&ots=JMINA_81vP&sig=9fC8tPBQ6hGBzweK0B9y0Og3rIg&hl=da&ei=9_tYTeDyEozoOaTzsJIF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/36/12020

http://www.uic.edu/depts/psch/kassel-1.html

Twitter, plus the SIGIA list maintained by the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and the discussion list of the Interaction Design Association. The survey was published on 10 January 2010.

http://www.fatdux.com/Blog/2009/01/10/a-definition-of-user-experience

http://www.ixda.org/interaction/ppllightning.html#CharlesHannon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Strangelove

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:25:00 +0200

Should information architects be code-monkeys?

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:37:00 +0200

At the recent IA Summit in Denver, CO, the inimitable Jared Spool suggested that information architects could do their jobs better if they knew how to code. This provocative statement did indeed provoke a lot of comment. So in answer to Jared, and as a little bit of Friday fun from the team here at FatDUX Copenhagen, let me offer my own bit of code (as opposed to cipher).

0041701        1071510        0391309        0791505        0050808        1120614

2021501        1901014        0890405        0881501        1712310        1071506

1600911        1040809        0670103        1600911        0042509        0450413

0041701        0820306        2021501        0570104        0040811        0391309

1140107        1890811        1162003        1591801        1050401        1962901

0920702        0680407        1151302        1901014        0671903        1081303

0670103        0990805        0750204        0031301        0572512        0052814

0671903        0960309        0391309        1762707

BTW, Jared, we love your most recent book, Web Anatomy. Cheers from the DUXlings.

Undercover Boss – service design bitch-slapping for clueless CEOs

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:37:00 +0200

Are CEOs out of touch with reality? I’d say a lot of you are. Although you CEOs don’t have to go to extremes to improve things, most of you do need to do something, so listen up. If you don’t want the long backstory, skip ahead to the last subhead.

About the title of this blogpost

Undercover Boss is the title of an American reality series. The premise is simple: an out-of-touch CEO puts on a disguise, takes a low-level job within his organization, and hears the truth about the company problems. After a week of play-acting, he goes back to his office and makes everything right again.

(By the way, I write “he” as I have yet to see a female CEO profiled. But I digress…)

There’s a great review of this episode by Ken Tucker at ew.com here:
http://watching-tv.ew.com/2010/02/14/undercover-boss-hooters-episode-2/

Quick recap of the “Hooters” episode

For those of you who haven’t seen the episode or read Ken’s synopsis, the “star” of this particular show was CEO Coby Brooks of Hooters.

Hooters is a chain of restaurants featuring beer and chicken wings served by buxom young women in tight t-shirts and hot-pants. FYI: “Hooters” is a slang expression for breasts. In the United States, the cute Hooters owl-logo only misleads those who are certifiably clueless (you can see it on Coby’s shirt in the photo below).

Coby Brooks (at left - duh) with two typical Hooters employees.

During the show, Coby learned (among other things), that although men love Hooters, most women feel the concept is degrading. I would have thought this was kind of a WTF “no-brainer” observation, but it certainly surprised our friend Coby as he talked on camera to random folks on the streets of Dallas, TX. (Good we got him out of his posh office and cosy private jet).

Hey, the concept is demeaning. But let’s face it, Hooters knows tits, ass, and beer is a winning combination for roughly half the population. In the meantime, Coby is now promising to rethink the company’s image. “We’re gonna tell folks about all them Hooter gals who are now doctors and lawyers and rock stars and…”

Uh…and this proves what, Coby? Did you know that feminist Gloria Steinem was once a Playboy bunny?

Lesson #1
Coby’s advisors look more like his drinking buddies than business executives.

Dear CEO, don’t hire your buddies. Don’t hire ass-lickers. Hire folks who aren’t scared of you. Sycophants and spies will never tell you the truth. And don’t take personal offence when someone disagrees with you.

Lesson #2
Coby probably would have been a better CEO if his father hadn’t just plunked him down into his current position without either warning or training. Coby seems to have had a very strained relationship with his dad and it’s clearly been tough to fill daddy’s very large shoes.

Are you a CEO looking to turn over the reins of your business to the next generation? Think twice before giving the job to a family member. This has been the downfall of many a family-owned company. Put your idiot offspring in charge of a charitable fund or something else that’s fairly harmless, but keep him away from the executive suite.

Lesson #3
Poor Coby inherits a billion-dollar business and finds out to his incredible surprise that the folks making chicken-wing sauces at his dad’s old factory in Atlanta loved his dad, but hate the current owners (er…that’s you, Coby). Why? Because Dad walked the floor and knew all his employees by name. Coby is an “absentee landlord”. The employees feel abandoned and uncared for. Which was a theme throughout this show – also when Coby visited his restaurants. Good TV. Naïve management.

Dear CEO, go “walkabout” – an Australian expression for going into the wilderness. Get your ass out of your chair and walk the floor, greet the guests, answer the phones. Honestly, you don’t need a reality TV show to get you moving.

Lesson #4
Clients come to FatDUX precisely because we can uncover problems for them without bias – which is what all agencies should provide. The amazing thing is, the work is not always particularly difficult – although it often appears impossible to those inside the organization. That’s because it’s not enough to solve a specific problem; you have to deal with the generic cause of the problem. In service-design language, this means fixing the problem both ways. We can see patterns that are often invisible from inside an organization – the more siloed the departments and functions, the more invisible the patterns are to senior management.

Dear CEO, ask questions. Ask tough questions. Demand answers. Don’t accept “it depends” as an answer from highly paid consultants. Hell, everything “depends” so there’s no need to dwell on the obvious.

Lesson #5
Dear CEO, you don’t want to be on Undercover Boss. If you’re good, you’ll never be on Undercover Boss. You’re supposed to know what’s going on in your organization. That’s why you get the big bucks.

Folks, it’s easy to get folks to tell you the truth. Just ask. If you’re honest, open, and fair, people will tell you things. But you do need to go out and talk to people. Talk to your customers (alas, far too many companies don’t ask because they are scared of what they may find out). If you want to align your business goals with user needs, you’d better understand what these needs are. The magic word is “listen”.

Coby didn’t learn a thing he couldn’t have learned in much simpler ways.

Trips and User Experience

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:00:01 +0100

We all take trips on regular basis. They might defer in destination, purpose and pace, but nonetheless we travel to that finale we once set foot to. And while we are at that, we do not venture on a flat surface, but rather go through a maze of intersecting multiple such ones. What I am trying to say is that we all have an ultimate goal, and although there are twists and turns in each road map we all get there eventually.

Fewdays back, I had to fly to Germany for one day - a quick in and out into the heart of technological country's capital Munich. There were two meetings to attend and both of them required extensive hops on the trains. Now, my German, if I can say I have any, is strictly attached to the fact that I speak French and English. And if I try very hard, from time to time I can make up the meaning of all these signs, names and direction. I have to say that prior to the trip I was worried. No one was supposed to pick me up from the airport and I had to find my way in a city I have never visited before.

To my surprise, there was not a single moment I doubted the way I took. This is not, because I am a super-duper smart bloke. It is because someone in the city's government took the time to make everything so accessible through the metropolitan's rail system. This is what I call great user experience - Munich simply did not allow me to think of anything else except my upcoming meetings. Efficiency seems to be written in bold capital letters.

Now let's take a step back to the week before the trip when I had actually to figure out the whole trip - this is my online travel to the destination - getting as much information and setting the plan up:

Lufthansa.com - I had to buy a ticket and the site offered me a purchasing process in 5 simple steps. It actually added value to me acquiring the ticket without pushing any irrelevant info or added value service.

Google Maps - East, West, South, North, you know, that type of thing. Well, street names and addresses to look up. Simply input the address and the magnify. Click on Print and the PDF is already on you Mac and then on the Kindle. Easy-peasy!

Munich Transportation System - with this one I had a blast at http://mvv-muenchen.de. Not only it saved me money by pinpointing the cheapest option for my travel, but also the info was available in 5 languages. Try to research these for Moscow, Shanghai or Sofia. Word of advise, if you decide to do that, have a shot of vodka next to the computer… On a second thought, get the whole bottle!

As I said, the whole trip was a quick and dirty job - no fancy-shmancy touristy stuff, no time for food and definitely no opportunity to be lost in translation. The only bad moment I can think of is that Munich has virtually nonexistent free Wi-Fi spots. Shanghai and Sofia rule big time over that.

But here is the punch in the whole story - User Experience. This is not a notion that applies only to your website or application. It concerns every trip the user takes in order to complete a task set up front, reach a goal or simply enjoy the ride. Great user experience is achieved through supplying all the means in terms of information architecture, content, clarity and staying out of the way(which means no messing up with my mind). And believe me, doing all that needs careful consideration based on research, common sense and ability to walk in someone else's shoes.

And before you take off to another page on the FatDUX's site, have you ever wondered how the whole thing with the Metropolitain map started?

Well, you have to give credit to Henry (Harry) Charles Beck. Almost 80 years ago, he created the London Tube Map based on a topological approach. And since, he did that on his own time (not during working hours), I guess he simply wanted to offer a better information architecture and user experience. Or in Grant Campbell's most eloquent words at EuroIA 2010 in Paris:

"Much of IA involves clarification: how can complex information spaces be made clear to users? In many cases, we achieve clarity by anticipating the user's need and selecting or suppressing details, just as the mind suppresses sensory information that is extraneous to a given task. Beck's map of the London Underground is a famous example of information visualization that achieves just such a purpose, by abandoning scale, and by emphasizing only those details necessary for a clear purpose."

In 1908 London Tube's map had a geographical approach (distance, babe!):

In 1933 Harry Beck took a structural approach that takes the noise and user's perplex off:

It seems Munich Transportation Services paid close attention. Lufthansa and Google Maps did so, too. But do you? Next time you take a trip, think about it and do share in the comment section bellow!

P.S. Thanks to our own Eric Reiss for providing pointers on background information!

SEO is an Oligarchy, not a Monarchy

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 23:42:50 +0100

Derrick Wheeler, SR SEO Architect at Microsoft, recently announced that “structure” is the new king of SEO. (http://www.seroundtable.com/structure-is-king-with-seo-12594.html) This must be news to the recently deposed Content as king, its regent, Context and whatever was considered king before newly anointed Structure. It is great to welcome someone as influential as Derrick to the community of believers in the influence of information architecture and user experience on optimizing sites for search engine visibility.

Structure as an influence on search ranking is not new. I think that it came on the SEO scene sometime in 2006, along with many other updates made possible by a giant leap in processing capacity. It is hard to tell because those wascally wabbits at the search engine companies play their methodology very close to the vest. I address this influence in my SEO & IA: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship presentation to the 2007 IA Summit (http://www.slideshare.net/msweeny/seo-and-ia-the-beginning-of-a-beautiful-friendship).

However, we must be wary of SEO monarchists that try to convince us that “anything is king" of SEO. The search engine landscape is changing so quickly that it is not possible for any one thing to an absolute monarch over optimization for search engines. And, this is how the search engine programmers and companies want it.

If anything, the influences on optimization are a fierce oligarchy between context, content, customer behavior, site interaction, page design, online social contributors and many more data points that now contribute to PageRank. The search engines want their algorithms to select the best results. They want site administrators and content creators to draft, structure and maintain their websites in a way that plays to, rather than tries to control or circumvent, the algorithms.

The best tool for SEO is a strategy. One that maps intent to technology and measures post effort success and analyzes behavior to ensure enduring optimization. The best facilitators of this type of strategy are search information architects (like moi) that labor to understand the changing nature of the governing oligarchy and bring structure, experience and behavior skills to a collaborative engagement.

Growing up slowly

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:55:57 +0100

I'm standing in the kitchen of my home in Copenhagen. It's been snowing and the branches of the tall cedars behind the house are heavy with white. The reflected light, cool but embracing, changes the room in a magical fashion.

It's Friday and from both personal and professional standpoints, this has been a difficult week. I'm incredibly tired; I hope there will be time to read a forgettably bad novel this weekend. Monday will mark the start of another difficult week.

As I gaze at the Currier & Ives landscape, a memory rushes back to me. It was Friday the 12th of February. Many years ago. In Highland Park, Illinois.

I was in Miss Ellis's fifth grade at the time. The class had exchanged Valentines Day cards that morning; Margo Dessauer, who sat across from me, said we were lucky to be 11 - young enough to be considered children, but old enough to understand and remember what was going on around us. Margo was really smart.

Later, Jim Fieldman outskated me during an ice-hockey game. And around noon, we were sent home for the weekend. I trudged through the snow past Marcia Weiland's house and Vicky Vietsch's house, and John Moroz's house, down Wade Avenue to the corner where my best friend, Jon Kassel, lived, and then up the hill to our home on Cedar Avenue.

My mother made me a warm lunch. As she cooked, I gazed out the kitchen window. Snow. Cedars. Wonderful light. Jon came over and we spent the afternoon exploring the ravine behind our houses before dusk and dinner called an end to our expedition. When I returned, my father was home, there was a fire in the fireplace, and life was lovely.

Today, gazing at the snow, I wish I was back exploring ravines in Highland Park. But I'm not. I don't live in the past and I normally don't dwell on it. But today, well, here I am with my coffee and Copenhagen and a sudden, intense memory. And I'm thinking there must be a message in this somewhere.

Status
My father passed away in 1988. I miss him. My mother is alive - but there are good days and bad days. I miss her, too.

Jon and I haven't seen each other in years. I moved away from Highland Park in 1972. Happily, we found each other on the internet a few months ago.

Various events in my late 'teens caused me to grow up quickly. A friend once remarked that I was "eighteen going on forty". This was not a compliment but an expression of concern.

So maybe this is the message: today might become one of the "good old days" you'll later yearn for. Enjoy it. Live life to the fullest.

And don't grow up too fast.

Gone in an Instant

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:28:56 +0100

The hoopla around Google Instant has finally died down. It now remains an annoying feature that Google will diminish like the equally lauded ability to comment on results that came and went. Fingers crossed for good luck at my end that Google Instant makes its exit sooner rather than later. It is an accomplishment of engineering that fails the user experience test on a grand scale.

Users do not think as quickly as machines and they certainly cannot type as fast. Below, I am trying to find information on Bright Edge SEO (www.brightedge.com). Unfortunately, the war between auto-complete and Google Instant turns me into collateral damage as I am unable to complete my search without resorting to painstakingly slow two-finger typing.

Google Instant Search for BrightEdge SEO

Trying to find information on “marketing software” was equally as painful until I adapted my behavior to Google Instant’s performance. There’s something wrong with that user experience scenario.

Google Instant Search for “marketing software

Search engines seem fast enough for their users who have consistently asked for relevance over speed. Unfortunately, computational determination of relevance is quite different from that of a user base made up of thought-processing bipeds. For people, relevance is a matter of feeling, whether one of satisfaction, awareness or resolution. Computational relevance can be revealed in an instant with changing results based on keystroke. Human relevance takes a more time and more consideration. Search engines deliver computational relevance. We searchers are responsible for the human kind and that cannot be delivered in an instant.

Just ask Clarabelle Rodriguez who purchased eyeglass frames from an online retailer that appeared high in her search results. The harrowing tale of cyber-bullying documented in the New York Times and other media revealed that this placement resulted from negative comments about the vendor. Clarabelle thought that this vendor and its top 5 result meant that the site was good because it was relevant as in trustworthy. Google’s algorithm thought the site was good because a lot of people were talking about it and that’s logical, right?

I am ready, willing and able to sacrifice the nanoseconds of time Google Instant claims to save me in the interests of typing with all of my fingers and taking a closer than the blink-of-an-eye look at search suggestions and search results that try to keep up with my typing. For those who wish to join me, you can turn off Google Instant by clicking on the “Instant is on” link (in teeny, tiny font) to the right of the search result and selecting Off (press to enter search). Unfortunately, the Google engineers won over the Google usability folks and you have to: 1) perform a search before you can turn off Google Instant and 2) cannot make this a permanent change and so must do it every time after clearing Google’s tracking cookies.

How to Turn Off Google Instant

I know that it is an effort to move the mouse and click that search button. Take my word; it is worth it in the long run. Just ask Clarabelle.

Photo swapping with DSB

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:20:25 +0100

This morning I went to the train station to acquire a monthly traveler's card from DSB (public Danish transportation) The last time I needed this, was ten years ago when I went to college. At that time you would have to bring a photo of yourself to the card personal. Not a problem! I had tons of those small photos of myself I got from the school photographer. Today however, ten years later, I don't have any photos of myself lying around - well except maybe for a few of the ones back from college.

Luckily, I thought, this is 2010 and DSB can't possibly be using the same procedure as they did in the analogue 90's. By now, they will for sure have a small handy camera attached to their computer, ready to snap my picture. It was with great disappointment I found out that this was not the case. The nice lady behind the counter asked me for a photo the same way she did in '99.

When I go to Tivoli they have an automated system for taking headshots. The same goes for the gym. And the university. And the library. And the local pool club. And the…

The number of members in these kinds of institutions is nothing compared to how many people are using DSB's traveler's card on a daily basis.

If you live in Denmark, you will know that complaining about trains arriving late, is as common as talking about the weather. In fact, it's a perfectly reasonable subject for a conversation with a stranger - and just for perspective; conversations with strangers in Denmark are the last thing that defines our cultural code.

I can imagine that it's no easy task to manage thousands of departures and arrivals each day and have them all be precise to the minute. DSB has always struggled with the goodwill of the public, and perhaps paying a bit more attention to the easy fixes would help the amount of goodwill go in the right direction.

I ended up buying an unpersonalized traveler's card - a rather expensive solution, but my options were to spend money in a photo booth, and that would have set me back even further.

I'm one of those actually appreciative for the existence of the public transportation, and I can live with the bus or the train being late by 5 minutes. But honestly DSB, look at the calendar year and wake yourself up before you go-go!

Tech tips for conference presenters and organizers

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:05:09 +0100

I attend a fair number of conferences each year. I speak at a number of these. I also help organize a conference, EuroIA. Here are some of the things I’ve learned over the years. Perhaps they will make your life easier and your presentations smoother. As an audience member, there’s nothing worse than watching novices fiddle about on stage.

Note: this is not so much about HOW to present, but how to handle the technical and practical aspects of public speaking. Presenters: I’m assuming you know that eye contact is a good thing. Organizers: I assume you understand the importance of keeping a conference running smoothly and providing free WiFi.

Note #2: I will be incorporating reader suggestions in order to keep this article up-to-date. So if you have a great tip, please let me know.

Tips for presenters

1. Take the time to check your presentation ahead of time on a real VGA projector. Under all circumstances, you need to know how to get your presentation up on both the projector AND your laptop screen (two clicks on F4 or F10 for most PC users). You’ll find that orange and yellow will become greenish. And light grey lines in graphs and other graphics may disappear entirely. Some videos may become way too dark. Adjust your colours and other elements accordingly so your audience actually gets to see the things you want to present.

2. Check your timing. Audiences feel cheated if you have to rush through or skip large portions of your presentation. And you look pretty foolish, too. If you want to take questions afterwards, make sure to leave time for this. For this reason, I ALWAYS take a small, easy-to-read analogue clock with me that I put somewhere I can see it. It is easier to glance at a clock with big hands than at your wristwatch or presentation tool. If all else fails, I sometimes start the stopwatch on my phone and put the phone on the floor in front of where I will be standing. Whatever you do, NEVER run over your allotted time. If your organiser is going to provide time signals, make sure you understand them and VISIBLY ACKNOWLEDGE them when you see them during the final minutes of your presentation.

3. Check your equipment ahead of time. Use a break prior to your presentation to set up your computer and make sure everything works properly – particularly video and sound. You can then disconnect it, knowing that when it’s your turn to present, the changeover should be a simple matter of plug-and-play.

4. If you are presenting from someone else’s computer, make sure to check your animations. (Powerpoint does not convert one-to-one when moving from a Mac to a PC and vice versa.) Also, not all Powerpoint and Keynote functionality is backward compatible. If your presentation was created using the latest product release and relies on sophisticated features, check these thoroughly after you transfer your presentation to the host computer. Personally, I still use PowerPoint 2003 because it works with pretty much everything (except a Mac, of course).

5. If you are using a remote presentation tool (I love my Logitech 2.4 GHz cordless presenter), make sure to check that it has batteries and is in good working order. If you are using a smartphone and Bluetooth (Android, iPhone, etc.) to advance your slides, make sure it is also charged and ready for action (Warning to new presenters: because smartphones use touch-screen buttons, you’ll have to look at your phone each time you need to click, which can seriously hinder your presentation style. Far better to buy or borrow a dedicated clicker with physical buttons. And practice using it and the laser pointer!)

6. Always make sure your computer has a VGA port or an adaptor to this format. If you are presenting from a Mac, make sure to bring your own MiniDVI to VGA adaptor. As an audience member, it’s irritating to wait while a presenter asks the audience if anyone has an adaptor. Organizers have a schedule to keep; the time you waste is often your own. Note: the adapter for older Macs will not fit a newer machine and vice versa.

7. Bring with you all the proper power cables and outlet adaptors you will need. Simple electrical plug compatibility can be a real hassle sometimes, so make sure you can actually plug in your laptop. 120V and 220V conversion is rarely an issue; the problem is always with the physical plug connection. Remember to take your adaptor with you when you’re finished (most of the adaptors I own have been left behind by others in hotels and at conferences).

8. Fully charge your laptop or iPad before your presentation. If someone kicks out the plug, you don’t want your presentation to crash.

9. If you need sound (typically a 3.5mm jack to plug into your headphone output), tell the organizers well ahead of time. Don’t automatically assume that sound will be available.

10. Optimize your screen resolution. PC users seem to do best at 1024 x 768. That said, older projectors will sometimes insist on 800 x 600 resolution. Mac users should probably start with 800 x 600 and work their way up to something higher. The wide-screen projectors now coming into use will probably require you to fiddle with your settings for optimum results. I have no rule of thumb at this point.

11. Older Mac operating systems require a restart to properly connect to the projector. Remember this if the computer is not connecting properly.

12. If your laptop is connected properly, but the projector gives you a “No Signal” message, try switching the source input on the projector (for example from PC 1 to PC 2).

13. If you are going to upload your presentation to Slideshare, do so ahead of time, but mark it as “Private”. The morning of the conference, you can easily switch this restriction to “Public” from a smartphone or some other low-bandwidth device so your presentation immediately becomes available.

14. If you want to read more about generic presentation tips, check out this excellent 2007 article from Lifehack:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/18-tips-for-killer-presentations.html

Or this one from BZ Media:
http://bzmedia.com/speakertips.htm

Or this great advice from Donna Spencer:
http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/2008/10-tips-conference-presentations

And if you will be speaking through an interpreter, check out this excellent advice from AZ World:
http://www.a-zworld.ca/blog/interpretation/tips-for-conference-orzanizers-and-speakers/

Tips for conference organizers

1. Make sure you have a range of suitable electrical adaptors, plus both of the Mac VGA adaptors in your emergency kit. Ensure that there are unused power outlets available at the speaker’s podium – at least two.

2. Arrange hand-signals with your speakers so they know how long they have left before their time runs out. I generally stand at the back of the room and hold up two hands with fingers outstretched to signal “10-minute warning”. A single hand is the “5-minute warning” Making a “T” using both hands means “Time up”. Put a clock on stage if one is not already hanging at the back of the room. And don’t be afraid to drop a Q&A session or simply break off a presentation if the speaker is unable to finish at the proper time.

3. If a session starts late (but not because the presenter is unprepared), don’t cut the presenter off early just to make up time. You owe them the chance to deliver their session properly. Better to incorporate longer breaks and to shave some time off of these to get back on schedule.

4. Don’t force your guests to use a standard presentation design template. This cramps their visual style. Even a simple header/footer will invariably take up valuable on-screen space. It’s better to do without.

5. Although you may need contributions for your printed proceedings well in advance of the conference, give your speakers as long as possible to edit and improve their presentations - preferably up until the night before the conference (when their own creativity and adrenalin levels are at their highest). Insisting on a “final” presentation weeks ahead of time will invariably lead to poorer performance levels during the conference itself. Note: the best presenters practice and fine-tune their stuff up until the very last minute – not because they are unprepared, but because they are gearing up for the performance they will be giving.

6. If you want your conference logo or Twitter details on the opening screen of the presentation, let your presenters know in good time. Do them the favour of sending them an optimized logo that is easy to paste into their presentation (eps, jpg, gif). Don’t assume presenters are going to bother to download something from your conference website and then Photoshop it to the right format – or that they even have the skills needed to do this.

7. Although tempting, avoid uploading presentations to your on-stage conference computer. This can easily screw up videos and animations. If swap time is critical (e.g. moving from one presentation to the next), arrange to have a VGA switch available so you can move from one computer to the other at the flick of a button.

8. If you have a cover slide to open your conference, or even a simple presentation of sponsors etc. to kick off the proceedings, consider giving this to your keynote speaker so he or she can incorporate it at the beginning of his or her own slide deck. This avoids the first presentation hand-off and starts the conference in a smoother manner. If you have a standard title slide you want to use as a transition to other presentations, give this to your presenters ahead of time.

9. If you plan on starting your conference by thanking all your volunteers, consider putting together a PowerPoint that runs automatically and loops endlessly while people are finding their seats. Seth Godin has a good article about how to do this. As opposed to a simple cover presentation, you’ll probably need to keep this on your conference laptop and not give it to your opening keynote speaker.

10. If you absolutely need a presentation delivered to you on a USB stick (to coordinate with a video recording, for example), make sure to let the presenter know exactly what is needed and how it will be used in advance of the conference.

11. If you have a screen behind the speaker, beware of using big plasma displays (LCD). These will not appear properly in photographs taken at the event. The colours always change and the effect can be very disconcerting.

12. Keep in mind that projections on a wall will be dimmer than projections on a real movie screen. Back projections will not be as bright or photograph as well as front projections.

13. Make sure projector and sound cables (VGA and 3.5mm jack) are available at the same physical location (the podium for example). Curiously, many technicians have VGA at the podium and sound somewhere else entirely. Conversely, make sure the cables can be separated; many laptops have VGA and jack inputs on opposite sides so bundled cables can create problems.

14. If you need to give your presenters a microphone, make sure they are cordless. Handheld is OK, but lavalieres are much, much better. Be sure you know how they work and where the mute button is located – don’t rely on a local technician. Ensure that the batteries are fresh in the morning – and swap them during the lunch hour. That said, if you can afford it, keep your technicians in the room at all times.

15. If you expect questions from the audience, make sure a hand-held cordless mike is available, plus a runner who can bring the mike to audience members. If you have two aisles, two mikes/runners are better than one.

16. If you want to read more about how to run a conference, check out this article:
http://www.stateofsearch.com/five-tips-for-search-conference-organizers-to-please-your-visitors/

The user experience of user manuals

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:13:47 +0100

My wife and I recently received a wonderful gift: an electric juicer. Normally, I fight to keep contraptions like this off our kitchen counters, which I view as workspace, not storage or display. But the juicer is a really neat machine (albeit a bitch to clean). Here it is:

Great piece of kitchen kit!

Our friends brought along a whole shopping basket full of berries, apples, oranges, limes, red beets, ginger, celery, and other goodies to stuff down its plastic gullet. But what was the best way to combine them? I needed some advice.

Alas, the user manual looked like a thousand other user manuals:

- exploded diagram showing all the parts
- lots of warnings to unplug the unit before doing anything (except using it)
- "Make sure unit is plugged in"

So much for creating a good experience...

What's wrong with this picture?"
Having created a great product, why didn't the manufacturer, OBH Nordica, try to inspire me? Why didn't they include a couple of simple recipes to get me started? Why didn't they tell me about how this monster conserves vitamins and gets them from their mechanism to my metabolism? Why didn't they follow through and help me complete the experience they were helping to create?

"That's what our advertisements are for," explained the myopic marketing maven I spoke with.

The sale is NEVER closed!
It's a big mistake to assume that once the sale is made, everyone will be happy. In fact, several software producers have asked us to help their customers get better results from their products. Lousy implementation will kill any product, no matter how well-designed it is. Right now, my twisted mind is wondering what would happen if I stuffed oysters into our shiny new juicer...

"Nobody ever reads the user manual"
Wrong! We might ignore a user manual if you also give us a well-written "Quick start" guide. But most people glance through the real user manual at some point - particularly for devices that feature:

- moving parts that need maintenance (cars, lawnmowers, sewing machines, etc.)
- disposable/replaceable bits and pieces (vacuum cleaners, coffee machines)
- bizarre behaviour when you push a particular button

And folks will always read the manual if your product's user-UN-friendly interface is particularly antisocial. My Danfoss ECL Comfort 200 home heating controller, for example.

So, if folks are perhaps going to look at this documentation, why not make an attempt to produce something as appealing as the physical product itself? In terms of user experience, I think most manufacturers are really missing a great opportunity.

The exception is Sandberg
I recently bought a USB hub. Naturally, it came with a user manual. Here's the EU-friendly cover - featuring all the flags of all the languages in which the manual was printed:

Cover of the Sandberg USB-hub instructions

Now, as this is basically supposed to be a plug-and-play device, I was sorry to see that Sandberg thought a user manual was necessary. So imagine my delight when I opened it up:

What a delightful surprise! Very cute, indeed.

The Sandberg people apparently felt that a user manual was as unnecessary as I did. So they turned the whole thing into a joke - boring cover, but with useful suggestions inside. Great. I'm a fan. Sandberg is a brand I will look for in the future.

And that makes user manuals part of the business model (wink, wink)

What is YOUR product?
Nokia's "PC Suite" software is arguably the most distributed in the world. But it crashes many computers. Apple's iPad and iPod are slick physical objects and the user interfaces are pretty good as these things go. Yet iTunes (the software key needed to get anything into these devices) ranks as one of the worst programs I've ever used. Sears Kenmore vacuum cleaners are great, but the bags are pretty much only available from Sears, which usually means driving quite a distance (I couldn't find the "replacement part number" I needed on their website - or even at the outlet store to which I was sent).

In short, don't think that you can get by with a great product. Your documentation and support mechanisms are key parts of the entire use-experience scenario.

Content strategy for dummies

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 12:27:56 +0100

Have you heard about “content strategy”? If you work in website development, the chances are you have. But what is it exactly?

What is content?
In the online world, “content” means stuff you put on a screen – words, pictures, videos, animations, sounds. Of course, there is also offline content. For example, when Tommy Hilfiger stations cute little pippins in tight dresses around your local department store to hand out white paper strips that stink of some expensive smell he’s created, well, that’s content, too. The sexual allure is content. The fragrant strips of paper are content. The Tommy Hilfiger logo is content. In my world view, “content” affects all five of our senses.

But for the most part, “content” means words and pictures on a website or application. OK?

What is “strategy”?
In the military, there is talk of “strategy” and “tactics”. Mostly, strategy relates to goals whereas tactics relate to the methods needed to achieve these goals.

Strategy (as expressed by the Lieutenant): “We need to take that hill, men.”

Tactics (as expressed by the Sergeant): Fat guys behind rocks. Skinny guys behind trees.”

What is “content strategy”?
“Content strategy” means giving visitors – to a website or department store – whatever “content” they need to make a decision or carry out a task. The strategy part lies in how we present this content to influence these decisions and tasks. If we’re doing a sitemap for a website, we call this “information architecture”. If we station a girl in a department store, we call it “service design”. But it’s all closely related.

Here’s an article that shows how many content strategists view themselves:
http://knol.google.com/k/content-strategy#

Please note: I take exception to a couple of the things said in this article. I include it mainly to provide equal time to the hard-core proponents. I’m not out to declare war on anybody – but I do have a low tolerance for bullshit.

Birth of a buzzword
How did the web survive for so many years before “content strategy” came along? Surprisingly well - because “content strategy” has always been part of the picture. It just got a new name and has since become a buzzword. I’ve had it on my business card for years simply because my clients didn’t understand the term “information architecture”. Incidentally, when I googled “content strategist” back in 2004 (when I first put the title on my card), there wasn’t a single hit.

My story isn’t unique. Many folks came to information architecture from a writing background. Think of “content strategists” as librarians who read and write. Since we understood the content and were often providing it, too, we were the ones who got to create the sitemap.

Just for the record, my very basic description of information architecture is this:

- We gather stuff into convenient categories
- We call stuff by names people will recognize
- We put stuff where people can easily find it.

Remember, this is IA on a high, strategic level. Naturally, when you get down to the tactical nitty-gritty of information architecture, you’d better understand taxonomy development and the other cool stuff they teach at library school. This is also why there are no easily defined borders between the worlds of IA and CS. And if you ask me, who really cares as long as the job gets done properly – and in a way that provides measurable benefits.

Content becomes valuable by virtue of context
Here’s a piece of content:

“Strandøre 15. A ten minute walk north from Svanemøllen Station”.

For 99.99% of the readers of this blogpost, this snippet of content is irrelevant and therefore worthless. But if you were taking public transportation to the FatDUX office in Copenhagen, the content becomes useful and therefore acquires value. If content is king, then context represents the kingdom.

Information architects need to understand content. Content strategists need to understand context. In terms of traditional sitemaps, the boxes have no value without the interconnecting arrows. And the arrows have no meaning if there are no boxes to which to point. And that’s why there is so much gray area in the definition – and why the pedants will spend years fighting over definitions in the years to come.

Form cannot exist without content
There’s a video on YouTube that has achieved cult status. It is of the Russian singer, Eduard Kihl, featured in a 1966 video where he “sings” his hit song, “I Am Glad I'm Finally Going Home”. Actually, in the repressive Soviet Union of 1966, the lyricist apparently was unable to write a suitable poem that would meet with Party approval. So Kihl simply trololo’ed his way through the melody and today we giggle at the results.

My point in mentioning the "Trololo Video" here is that form without content becomes absurd. And now that I've provided some historical context for the video, perhaps you'll see that it is actually more tragic than comic.

The most attractive website cannot survive without meaningful and useful content – content that is arranged in a meaningful and useful way. And somebody needs to do the work - no matter what their official title.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY&NR=1

The UX of passport control

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 14:04:37 +0200

Think your front line doesn't affect your bottom line? Nations should take a closer look at what happens at their borders - this is the first major touchpoint with a "national brand". And the impression left is not always good. Here are three stories.

Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow
Last week, I was in Moscow. It took three uniformed folks to let me out of the country. Curiously, the passport (and photo) that got me a visa and into the country, suddenly became suspicious when the time came to leave.

The young woman officiating spent several minutes staring at me and my passport. She then pushed a button (a signal that things were clearly amiss). Her colleague came over. They both stared at me. They stared at my passport. They stared at me some more. I removed my glasses (on request). I tried to resemble my photo (on my own initiative). I showed them other photo IDs (on request). I gave them my entire wallet (on my own initiative) The photo IDs included an 30-year-old Danish work permit, which they finally accepted as proof of my identity (sigh, if only the rest of the world thought I looked 30 years younger). Only when a third border officer came over and told the two younger officials that this was absurd, was I finally allowed to pass. (Although I don't speak Russian, when someone says someone else is full of shit, I recognize the international signs)

The whole seance took over 10 minutes - which is really long when only one passport lane is open and the people waiting behind you are starting to wonder what crime you have committed.

That is the Russian Federation. Western Europeans aren't surprised by this kind of nonsense as it fits the otherwise outdated stereotype. But let me share two more stories with you. And mind you, I am simply too old to take much crap from anybody unless they actually point a gun at me (and even then, I'm pretty cool, for example when poked with the business end of a Kalishnikov in East Berlin - but that's another story. Buy me a beer sometime...

Miami International Airport (aka "Wilcox Field")
Let's move on to the United States. I gathered my entire extended family and brought them to Miami last February to celebrate my Mom's 90th birthday. After we had cleared passport control, I was walking several meters in front of the rest of the family as we approached baggage claim. As anyone who has entered the United States knows, you have to show the stamped customs form to a bored official sitting on a chair before you can leave the first immigration area. Here's the conversation that followed:

U.S. customs official: Hold on there, buddy.

Me: Sure. What's the problem?

U.S. Customs official: This paper says you're travelling with a bunch of people. Where are they?

Me: They're right there (pointing)

U.S. Customs official: (angry) They need to be with you at all times.

Me: (cautiously). Er...they are. They're right there (my wife and son-in-law were now standing next to me. The others were only steps away). We have children with us. They walk slowly.

U.S. Customs official: That's not my problem. Don't move.

Me: I'm not going anywhere. Relax. They're right there.

U.S. Customs official: Don't you give me that backtalk! You stand over there! Right now! And shut your goddamn face.

Me: (no words. I stand in my appointed corner. The family regroups)

U.S. Customs official: You people come to our country and think you can tell us what to do. Well, believe me, sonny, this isn't the way we do things over here. I'll tell you when you can go.

Me: (I wait for over a minute, receive more verbal lashings, and then flash my U.S. passport): "Sonny" yourself. I assure you, I am NOT "you people". You screwed with the wrong American Citizen and you can't scare me. And if this is the way you greet visitors to our country, the Customs and Immigration Service had better find your replacement FAST. Now you let us pass - and I want your name and badge number NOW.

(I filed an official complaint against Officer Delgado. I was told action was taken. On behalf of the United States of America, I apologize to all visitors who also met this idiot.)

Kastrup Airport, Copenhagen
Fast forward to last Wednesday in Copenhagen Airport on my way to the United Kingdom.

The Danish official takes my passport, casually flips to the very last page, and plants a stamp. I roll my eyes. He reacts:

Danish policeman (in English): So what's your problem?

Me (in Danish): You just cost me two trips to my embassy - which is about 4 hours of my time!

Danish policeman: Huh?

Me (in Danish): You just stamped the very last page in my passport. Now I have to go to my embassy and have extra pages glued in if I want to travel to most countries in Asia. For instance, the Russian Federation requires two consecutive blank pages if I want a visa. You just screwed up my passport.

Danish policeman (in Danish): You should have told me before.

Me: It's not my job to teach you your job. Passport control officers around the world know how to stamp a passport. There are even instructions printed in the EU passport.

Danish policeman: This is an American passport. The stamp is just a fucking souvenir for you people (verbatim translation: "en skide souvenir for jer amerikaner").

Me: This isn't a souvenir shop. You are authorizing travel documents.

Danish policeman: Move on. People are waiting...sir. (and under his breath, "Røvhul")

Caveat Dania
Dear Danish Passport Control Policeman. I have your number - number 9. You haven't heard the end of this.

Lesson learned
Pay heed: idiots in positions of authority can create an incredible amount of bad will. All businesses and institutions should keep this in mind when planning customer-service initiatives. Your front line relates directly to your bottom line!

Typical pages from my passport as normally stamped by officials, following the best practice of filling up the passport from the front.

Very last page of my passport, incorrectly stamped by bored official who couldn't give a damn about his job.

FatDUX Ottawa Welcomes Kristina Mausser

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:11:31 +0200

It is with great pride that I announce the addition of Kristina Mausser to the FatDUX Ottawa team!

Kristina is one of Canada's leading Web Content Strategists whose expertise in identifying, positioning, and creating online content and messaging through best practices in web content writing and strategy has earned her accolades from clients and web industry professionals alike.

Her portfolio includes client work for Microsoft Corporation, Sephora, Fusion Brands Inc, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, the Government of Jamaica and McGill University. A firm believer in UX centred design, Kristina is an active member of the UX Book Club Ottawa and founder of Canada's first Web Content Strategy Meet-Up.

Kristina has been interviewed on both radio and television in Canada and Jamaica, and has guest lectured on the subjects of Information Management, Writing for the Web, and Web Communications at the University of Maryland in the U.S. and at the University of Technology in Kingston, Jamaica.

A graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature, Kristina studied advertising, web publishing and e-business at Centennial College's School of Communications, Media and Design in Toronto.

In 2007, Kristina was nominated for Canada's Top 40 Under 40 Award, in recognition of her vision, innovation, and impact within the web industry.

I have had the pleasure of working with Kristina on several projects within the private and pubic sectors here in Canada; she is a brilliant asset to an incredible International team of User Experience professionals!

What Do I Look for in an SEO Consultant?

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:09:30 +0200

While search engine optimization has been around since the moat of the academic/military ivory towers of the Internet was breached years ago, the elements of the practice have remained largely unchanged. Many practitioners are still using techniques from when the 1996 Web (see the Apple homepage from that year below) with talk of keywords and page formatting and blast service link building.

Apple Website 1996

It does not take much surfing to see that we don’t live in that Web world any more. Cheap hardware, smarter machines bigger data pipes, smaller screens, graphic designers, user experience architects bring us a Web that now looks like this:

Apple Website 2010

Soon everyone, not just the pornography industry, was trying to scam the search engines. In their defense, search got smarter until, with the advances in hardware and algorithmic computer science, they became very smart. Consequently, search engine optimization had to become smart and strategic (more on strategic SEO in another post).
Like millions of others, I belong to a number of professional SEO groups on Linked-in. Most of the posts are from SEO practioners and qualify as shameless self-promotion. Occasionally, a civilian posts an honest question, like the one that became the title of this blog, and it seemed like a good starting point for my debut. These are not meant to be “tablets from the Mount.” They just work for my clients. I would very much like to hear how your experiences with search engine optimization worked for you.

Questions to ask yourself or the prospective SEO consultant:
*) Will I know more after the consult delivers the initial meeting than I did before? I try to set my client's expectations by giving them a framework of understanding. This entails a brief primer on how search engines work and, most importantly, why they work that way. The Semantic Web has been here for quite some time and semantics are a fundamental start for any search optimization engagement.

*) Is the approach strategic? Many SEO consultants are still relying on the brute techniques that hold over from the early days of search engines. Anyone who has used a search engine in the last 10 minutes knows that things have changed. Yes, there is still a need to have the query term in the content and yes placement does have impact (browser title, headings, etc). Links do still count. However, search engines are a lot smarter these days. Context has achieved a strong position. Link quantity is no longer a key driver in relevance ranking. The quality of the link is now a factor. And don't even think about buying them.

*) s the approach holistic? SEO success is based on a broad array of factors, content, linking, page code, visibility to search technology, user behavior and more. If your consultation does not contain a performance review (against a competitor or two of your choosing if preferred), metadata strategy, content strategy, linking strategy and page code recommendations, you are not getting a comprehensive treatment to search issues.

*) Will the SEO report contain clear, concise, prescriptive and actionable steps? Ask to see a sample of their deliverable. I read a report with recommendations that alternated between the incomprehensible to unachievable. I think the consultant was asking the client to completely re-architect their content structure with dubious justification. So, now the client is looking for another SEO consultant to translate the initial investment into practical and actionable steps.

*) Do they speak in absolutes? (i.e. "no JavaScript" and "must have H1 heading on the page") There are few absolutes in SEO and there is always a workaround. If you like having your messaging in Flash, the SEO consultant should be able to find a workaround. If you need iFrames, the consultant should be able to compensate.

*) Will I know how to keep your site optimized after the consultant goes away? This is the hoary old "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" rule. As a consultant, I want you to be able to sustain the work that I've delivered. This means teaching YOU how to: craft good and Description metadata, read your site analytics tea leaves, use online tools to study customer behavior around key phrases that pertain to your product or service.

*) Will the consultant available for follow up questions? Likely, we’ve all had “movie response” (thinking up the perfect retort after the conversation has ended). This is often the case when delivering complex reports with questions that come up long after the meeting has ended. If your consultant bills for time to answer reasonable questions that emerge after you've had time to digest the report or start on the recommendations, they may not be right for you.

Oh, and before you take any consultant’s advice about software products that they recommend, make sure that the consultant can demo their own version of the product as well as the software manufacturer. If your consultant is not using the software themselves, how can they recommend it for you?

What Do I Look for in an SEO Consultant?

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 11:41:19 +0200

My name is Marianne Sweeny and I am a recent addition to the FatDUX gaggle. My specialty is search optimization, organic, paid and enterprise. Eric is generous to share the FatDUX blogspace with me on occasion so that I can share my thoughts, guidance and tips on making search engines work for you. Because, that is the way it is supposed to be with the machines working for us. At least, until Robert Heinlein’s vision of the future becomes the present.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been around since the introduction of Web browsing, millennia in Internet-years. Unfortunately many practitioners are still using techniques from when the Web looked like this:

Apple Website 1996

We don’t live in that Web world any more. The “publish-anything-you-want-anyway-you-want” Web world started about 10 years ago and now most of the Web looks like this:

Soon everyone, not just the pornography industry, was trying to scam the search engines. In their defense, search got smarter until, with the advances in hardware and algorithmic computer science, they became very smart. Consequently, search engine optimization had to become smart and strategic (more on strategic SEO in another post).

Like millions of others, I belong to a number of professional SEO groups on Linked-in. Most of the posts are from SEO practioners and qualify as shameless self-promotion. Occasionally, a civilian posts an honest question, like the one that became the title of this blog, and it seemed like a good starting point for my debut. These are not meant to be “tablets from the Mount.” They just work for my clients. I would very much like to hear how your experiences with search engine optimization worked for you.

Questions to ask yourself or the prospective SEO consultant:

- Will I know more after the consult delivers the initial meeting than I did before? I try to set my client's expectations by giving them a framework of understanding. This entails a brief primer on how search engines work and, most importantly, why they work that way. The Semantic Web has been here for quite some time and semantics are a fundamental start for any search optimization engagement.

- Is the approach strategic? Many SEO consultants are still relying on the brute techniques that hold over from the early days of search engines. Anyone who has used a search engine in the last 10 minutes knows that things have changed. Yes, there is still a need to have the query term in the content and yes placement does have impact (browser title, headings, etc). Links do still count. However, search engines are a lot smarter these days. Context has achieved a strong position. Link quantity is no longer a key driver in relevance ranking. The quality of the link is now a factor. And don't even think about buying them.

- Is the approach holistic? SEO success is based on a broad array of factors, content, linking, page code, visibility to search technology, user behavior and more. If your consultation does not contain a performance review (against a competitor or two of your choosing if preferred), metadata strategy, content strategy, linking strategy and page code recommendations, you are not getting a comprehensive treatment to search issues.

- Will the SEO report contain clear, concise, prescriptive and actionable steps? Ask to see a sample of their deliverable. I read a report with recommendations that alternated between the incomprehensible to unachievable. I think the consultant was asking the client to completely re-architect their content structure with dubious justification. So, now the client is looking for another SEO consultant to translate the initial investment into practical and actionable steps.

- Do they speak in absolutes? (i.e. "no JavaScript" and "must have H1 heading on the page") There are few absolutes in SEO and there is always a workaround. If you like having your messaging in Flash, the SEO consultant should be able to find a workaround. If you need iFrames, the consultant should be able to compensate.

- Will I know how to keep your site optimized after the consultant goes away? This is the hoary old "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" rule. As a consultant, I want you to be able to sustain the work that I've delivered. This means teaching YOU how to: craft good <title> and Description metadata, read your site analytics tea leaves, use online tools to study customer behavior around key phrases that pertain to your product or service.

- Will the consultant available for follow up questions? Likely, we’ve all had “movie response” (thinking up the perfect retort after the conversation has ended). This is often the case when delivering complex reports with questions that come up long after the meeting has ended. If your consultant bills for time to answer reasonable questions that emerge after you've had time to digest the report or start on the recommendations, they may not be right for you.

Oh, and before you take any consultant’s advice about software products that they recommend, make sure that the consultant can demo their own version of the product as well as the software manufacturer. If your consultant is not using the software themselves, how can they recommend it for you?

Why the web isn't taken seriously

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:34:43 +0200

The Danish appliance retailer, Punkt 1, has just released an ad that sums up the problems of the online industry in 31 seconds and two boobs (or four, depending on how you define "boob").

Summary: Are you confused by the offers for cheap appliances? Look here. Pris = Price (i.e. low price). Prut = Haggle (name your own price). WWW = WWW.

"Confused? I know what you're feeling. Come down to Punkt 1, we make sure you go home with the right product at the right price."

Curiously, after having characterized competing media/techniques as something from a cheap sideshow, Punkt 1 immediately offers vacuum cleaners at a 20% discount (Spar = Save). Uh...and you claim you don't belong to ANY of these groups? Hypocrites!

But there are three more serious problems. All of them relate to the portrayal of the web as an air-headed bimbo.

First, the clear suggestion is that the web is merely a sexually driven con game, which it certainly is not. Searches on Google for business-to-business and business-to-consumer information now outnumber searches for porn.

Second, the advertising agency that produced this crap apparently believes this (and the Punkt 1 marketing team bought into this goofy concept). In general, ad agencies steadfastly refuse to accept the dynamics of online communication and do their best to twist electronic media until it looks like print. Sorry, things don't work that way.

Third, the Danish business community continues to ignore the fact that the WWW is now the number one source of business intelligence. Stick that in your marketing mix and smoke it.

Two days ago, I heard from a well-rounded business executive that "we see our website as our subsidiary in cyberspace." Yikes. I wrote this 11 years ago in Practical Information Architecture. This notion has been out of date for at least six years. Today, your website needs to be an integral part of your business plan. Think, are your telephones your subsidiary in the communications infrastructure? Hardly!

Punkt 1, you should be ashamed of yourselves for promoting these various myths. You are harming your business (when I bought my expensive dishwasher a few months ago, I didn't even visit Punkt 1 because your site was so lousy). By espousing this uninformed attitude, you are actually harming Denmark's GNP (Gross National Product). And I won't even go into the matter of sexism.

Friends of the user-experience community: we will never grow and mature until our potential clients understand that crap like this particular advertisement are ultimately not in anyone's interest.

Punkt 1, for what it cost you to produce this abomination, you could have put together a website that actually built your brand and contributed actively to your bottom line. Rethink your strategy. There is money to be made.

Busby Berkeley invents the gesticular interface

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:59:01 +0200

Contrary to popular belief, Apple Computer didn't invent gesticular interfaces. Take a look at this short clip from the Warner Bros. Vitaphone production Gold Diggers of 1935 (at the 27 minute mark of the movie). Choreographer Busby Berkeley seems to have figured out some key movements back in 1935.

In this scene, tenor Dick Powell is taking poor-little-rich-girl Gloria Stuart shopping in the basement arcade of a swanky new hotel. I apologize in advance for the quality; I simply used my camera to record my iPad in a decidedly analog fashion. (Don't even ask why this movie is in my iPad to begin with).

Notice, too, the graphic incorporation of metadata. Each department is coupled with the name of the woman in charge. For example, in "Lingerie", we find "Annette". Pretty sophisticated "menu" considering that this footage predates the birth of the web by 65 years.

If you want to see the entire number, here's a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=076OAOvEMJI&feature=related

The usability of coffee measuring spoons

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:13:17 +0200

The discussion at FatDUX this morning focused on Nescafé. And which spoons each of us used to make coffee (note to self: we have a perfectly good, very expensive coffee maker. Why are folks drinking this instant crap?)

It seems that coffee measures are not standardized. They're not even close. In various drawers, I found no fewer than six different measuring "instruments". And their capacities ranged from less than 1 gram to over 10 grams. No wonder our morning coffee ranges from dishwater to mud.

Here's what we have:

From left to right, we have a very expensive coffee spoon from Georg Jensen designed by Arne Jacobsen, followed by a more traditional silver teaspoon. Next, we have a miniature scoop. The wire-handled measuring spoon is an Ole Palsby design from his Eva Trio series of kitchen utensils. Finally, there is a black plastic scoop that came with a bag of coffee, and a smaller, white plastic scoop that came with some tea.

Let's see what they can hold (the first number is heaping, the second is level), measured with real, ground coffee, not the instant crap.

Jacobsen      <1 gram (<1 gram)
Traditional      3 grams (1 gram)
Scoop            4 grams (3 grams)
Palsby            9 grams (8 grams)
Black plastic 10 grams (7 grams)
White plastic   4 grams (< 1 gram)

The directions on our instant coffee suggest "one heaping spoonful per cup".

Hmm. How many different cup sizes do we have...?

How this relates to interaction design
In the field of interaction design, we know that standardization often improves usability, although it can stifle creativity and innovation in the hands of pedantic rule-followers. Could it be that we should be chosing our standards with greater care? That there are some generic patterns that benefit from standardization and "best practice" whereas there are others areas that should be avoided if they impinge on artistic value?

Take for example, the Ole Palsby measuring spoon above. It holds more coffee than almost all the other devices. In terms of volume, it doesn't equate to any of my standardized cooking measuring spoons (teaspoon, tablespoon etc.). So where did this design originate? Did Palsby pull the size out of thin air? In truth, he could have chosen a more reasonable size without compromising his design. I wish he had - my wife insists on using one scoop per cup, plus "one for the pot". When made with this scoop, her coffee can be used to patch bicycle tires.

On the other hand, Arne Jacobsen's spoon was designed for stirring, not measuring. To change this design would also mean changing its basic function, which would be wrong from an artistic point of view (and a usability POV as well).

So, what do YOU think should be standardized? And why? Does anyone have standardized rules for standardization? If so, I hope you'll share them here.

Movies on your desert island iPad

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:23:49 +0200

OK. Here’s the deal. You’re shipwrecked on some desert island. Lots of coconuts, fish, and other food - plus a magic spring that spouts water, beer, wine, cocktails, and Coca-Cola. There is also a power outlet for your iPad.

Alas, your iPad has very limited memory and there is no wireless. So which 10 movies would you want to view over and over again until you’re rescued? Here’s my list:

Footlight Parade (1933)

Casablanca (1942)

The Big Sleep (1946)

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Some Like it Hot (1959)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

The Godfather (1972)

The Right Stuff (1983)

Good Night, and Good Luck ( 2005)

Believe me, I have a zillion movies I’d like on this list. But honestly, if you really had to narrow it to 10, what would they be?

The user experience of hot dog buns

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:29:23 +0200

We're gearing up for our annual FatDUX barbeque. Naturally, hot dogs will be on the menu along with lots of other goodies. The problem is, Danish hot-dog buns don't let you load up with chili, cheese, relish, onions, sauerkraut, and all the other stuff you get on your dog at Nathan's Famous on Coney Island and other hot-dog stands of reknown.

So, as the good user-experience designers we are, we decided to do some user research.

Upon investigation, it turns out that Wikipedia actually has an article about hot-dog buns. Let us share some of the more interesting facts:

"A hot dog bun is a type of soft bun shaped specifically to contain a hot dog. There are two basic types: top-loading, which is popular in New England, and side-loading, preferred in the South and Midwest United States.

The advantages to a top loader are that it holds the hot dog securely and fits nicely into little three-sided paper boxes. Top loaders are generally baked side by side and torn apart as needed, leaving a flat side surface for grilling.

Side loaders tend to be doughier, so are more likely to successfully sop up all the juices from chili or sauerkraut without falling apart."

Now here in Denmark, I've never seen anything except side-loaders (Gosh, who knew there was a technical term for this). That is until yesterday when I discovered the "Grab Dog" form-fitting hot-dog holder from the Danish bakery, Paaskebrød. An innovative solution? Absolutely. But a good solution?

We'll let the photos speak for themselves:

Typical Danish hot dog bun cracks at the hinge when opened.

Grab dog attempts to solve the broken hinge problem

The Grab Dog bun. Not easy to toast and fairly dry to begin with.

Grab Dog works OK with standard hot dogs (er, where did these standards come from?

But larger hot dogs cause bun to crack.
User testing at FatDUX. Our Business Development Director, Stine Ringvig, was not pleased with the dried out Grab Dog that quickly fell apart during her lunch.

On-site ethnographic research at our local ecological hot-dog stand.

Dennis shows us how Danish hot dogs are traditionally served.

Danish hot dogs come with the bun on the side, not as a single culinary unit.

Ecological bun from Korvbröds Bagarn in Sweden is delicious and doesn't crack!

Geeky relics from the past

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:14:06 +0200

I'm a pack rat. I admit it. My wife, coworkers, casual acquaintances, and even strangers on the street tell me to throw stuff out. But I never do.

So, here I am cleaning up in the FatDUX Copenhagen server room. Loads of artifacts from my previous lives.

Basically, what you see here is every mobile phone and every laptop I've owned since the early 90's. We'll take the laptops first, starting in the back row, moving to the front, left to right:

MacBook 160. The very first MacBook. Good machine. I wrote two books on it. This was one of the very first MacBooks in Denmark, purchased in the fall of 1992 in the U.S. Keyboard converted to Danish about a year later.

Powerbook G3. The so-called "Wall Street" model without a USB port. Very inconvenient, but the machine did serve me well for a couple of years. About 1997.

Acer TravelMate 350. Fantastic machine, fast, lightweight, but a crappy keyboard for touch-typists. This is what happens when hunt-and-peck engineers try and squeeze the three Danish letters (a, ø, å) onto a small piece of keyboard real estate. Note the optional wireless card sticking out the left-hand side. About 2001.

Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7010. The best computer I've had. Bar none. But the hard-disk died and my supporter cost me EUR600 before concluding that the machine could not be fixed. About 2005. So that led to...

Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7230. The upgraded version (2007) of the previous machine. But not without some quirks. In the meantime, I did manage to get the old hard-disk replaced on the P7010, so I'll probably go back to the older machine.

Apple iPad 64GB 3G. Wonderful for sharing photos, listening to music, and surfing the net. I do like it, but not for serious work that requires typing. Also seriously lousy presentation capability. The FS P7230 is still the workhorse that follows me to conferences. Summer 2010.

And now to the phones:

Motorola "brick" - about 1990. Very clunky, but a real "gee-wow" piece of kit back when everything else in the world was wired. Very Gordon Gekko. Actually, the correct name for this is a "CommNet 2000, ultra Classic by Motorola". Today, it really IS an ultra classic. I can't remember, but I think this might have been an NMT telephone rather than for the GSM network.

Motorola Micro Tac 5200. World's first flip-phone. The antenna is actually a placebo - it does nothing at all! About 1994. This was the first dual-band phone. "TAC" stood for "Total Area Coverage".

Ericsson GH 174. Really heavy piece of crap. Never liked this much - but it was a company phone so it wasn't my decision. About 1994. I can't remember why we got this phone, which was actually an out-of-date model by the time I got it.

Nokia 2110. Absolutely one of the best phones I've ever owned. And a true classic in terms of keyboard layout. This phone set the standard for much that followed. About 1994-5. I switched to a Nokia 3210 in 1999, but I forgot to include it when I took the photo.

Motorola Timeport. My first tri-band telephone that enabled me to work in the USA. Very sexy blue screen, but an unfathomable menu structure. Summer 2000.

Sony Ericsson T68i. Notice the natty clip-on camera. This was my first telephone with a color display. Very poor resolution (101x80 with 256 colours), but hey, color was incredibly neat back around 2002. And it had Bluetooth! I also owned the earlier Ericsson T68 (prior to the merger with Sony).

Nokia 6670. Still one of my favorite phones, despite the early S60 operating system, which qualifies it as one of the very first smartphones. Never got caught in your pocket thanks to the rounded corners. And the 1.0 megapixel camera was pretty good, too. Good MS Office integration. About 2004.

Nokia E70. Another great phone. With the advent of SMS, this phone was great as the keyboard unfolds like two wings on either side of the screen for really fast QWERTY input. Summer 2006.

Apple iPhone 1st generation. We bought a bunch of these in the U.S. and jailbroke them. Fantastic bragging rights back when no one else in Europe had them. I gave this one away to one of our art directors because I was constantly looking for somewhere to charge it, which drove me crazy. My friends at Apple told me, "Eric, you know better than to buy the first generation of any of our products..." Even so, three years later, the unit is still in service. Summer 2007

Nokia E71. Although the Symbian 60 operating system is still difficult to work with, this phone basically did all of those great phone things that I needed - like making phone calls. And it almost never needed to be recharged. Spring 2009

HTC Desire. This is an Android 2.1 smartphone. Devours power like I devour marshmallows. I'm constantly looking for a power outlet. But it can do a lot of stuff when it feels like it. (FatDUXling Andrea Resmini tells me to turn off the Wi-Fi to conserve energy). Unfortunately, European data-transfer rates are crazy, so I'm forced to turn off pretty much everything most of the time. For example, if I just leave the phone on for a day, it will download about 93 MB of data. I don't know where this data comes from or where it goes, but it's a lot. And when I go to the United States, 1 MB costs about USD 10. So, at a potential cost of USD 930 a day, this thing scares me to death each time it beeps. So much for smartphones. Spring, 2010.

Now, that I've showed it to you, I've really got to get rid of this crap...

Wall of Tweets

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:43:48 +0200

Download MP3

I recently had the pleasure of connecting with colleagues in Croatia Vibor Cipan and Darko Čengija about Wall of Tweets.

My first experience with Wall of Tweets was while watching talks at the TEDxMälaren event in June; and I really enjoyed the interaction!

Context is easily lost, and often misunderstood on Twitter. Live tweeting is another popular process, but unless one is sitting in on the presentation it is very difficult to convert the value of the ideas into meaningful actions in only 140 characters.

At the TEDxMälaren event I was able to watch the presentation (from Ottawa, Canada) and connect with others around the world simultaneously.

As TechCrunch recently published:

While current solutions like Twitterfall are free, they don’t look as nice and end up showing some of the tweets late, due to a limit on the API calls from the centralized Twitterfall server. Wall of Tweets is a paid service, so they do guarantee it will work, as well as letting you host it on your own server if you really want to.

As a special promotion, Wall of Tweets is offering all UX, IA and design-related conferences worldwide with free licenses – both online HTML versions and rich, venue-based versions. All you need to do is to send Vibor an email and ask for a free license. You can reach him at vcATfatduxDOTcom

Recent examples of Wall of Tweets:

FatDUX Zagreb: 9 months later - we deliver

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:20:49 +0200

It's a warm summer's night here in (Ancient Greece) Croatia. Some of you, who are fans of The Big Bang Theory show, might find this starting sentence familiar. For the rest, please excuse this off-topic, but it serves good to describe the actual feeling in the really warm Croatia.

Anyhow, I wanted to share some news with you. I sincerely love those opportunities when we get some time and chance to share what are we working on and how do we see the world around us via this blog.

On July 9th there will be exactly 9 months since our official incorporation. Before joining FatDUX, I've worked at Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. My team there was really proud on the fact that they have consistent and strong track of record delivering the solutions, products and services to customers. We used to celebrate product releases with "We deliver" parties. And that culture of constant ability to deliver was something that has influenced and shaped me, and now the team I'm leading here in Zagreb.

So, nine months behind us – we have delivered, too. Pun intended.

It's hard to list all the projects and clients we've worked with and to list specifics of those projects – some are still under NDA, but I can say that we've been working on all UX fronts – from mobile, desktop and web solutions, digital signage, copywriting, SEO and analytics to consulting and education. We've bitch slapped the crisis and opened some new opportunities and markets outside the Croatia and Europe.

Staying lean and effective is one of my personal goals. Delivering exceptional value to our customers is our DNA. Delivering constantly is our mission.

If I have to pick a single project we've worked on, it's definitely our Wall of Tweets twitter wall. It’s a best available customized twitter wall solution. Hands down. Used and accessed by thousands of users every month, used by clients big and small, it's something we did for fun, as a pet project. We kept it simple. Powerful. Engaging. And we still keep innovating and delivering on those values.

So, as we are approaching our first birthday (by the way, our mothership, The FatDUX Group has celebrated 4 successfully years last week, hear, hear!), I'm confident and inspired more than ever that we will keep delivering. After all, with this team, it’s just a game. One we are so passionate about.

It's what customers expect from us. It's what we must give to the world. It's what we LOVE.

A biased comparison of HTC Desire and iPhone

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:33:32 +0200

I’m not going to lie. I am an iPhone user, and I do love it. So why bother to hobnob with the enemy? Two reasons:

1. My boss was pulling his hair trying to fix his voicemail, so he left the phone on my desk.

2. Well – how can you truly appreciate what you have, before knowing if something better is out there?

iPhone and HTC Desire side by side

First glance
HTC Desire’s interface fades in comparison to the extremely intuitive and user-friendly one of the iPhone. iPhone does everything you’d expect it to do, and has only one main navigational button. Desire has several buttons with various and unclear functions.

Already after trying to accomplish just a few fairly simple tasks, I felt a bit stupid. I’m sure that a lot of well-meaning developers have spent a lot of time making this a user-friendly phone, but it’s like they had a big bucket of logic and just stuffed it in there, hoping for the best.

I did manage to complete the tasks I had in mind, but I didn’t quite understand the process until it was actually done.

Logic should be conceived before, and not after completing a task!

A tailored suit
HTC Desire provides a lot of opportunities for personalization, and this will definitely increase the ease of use, in the long run for the individual user. This is one of the major downsides to the iPhone; the degree to which you can customize it. HTC Desire (and other Android phones) are different.

Whereas iPhone is the Swiss knife - a slick multi-tool with great and diverse functionality – HTC Desire is a whole toolbox. You get to decide exactly which tools you carry and exactly how big your hammer is. It might be a big mess in there, but you can always find a screwdriver bit that fits if you look hard enough.

I see this as a huge advantage for the power user, but probably more of a distraction to the user who just wants to make calls, browse and listen to music.

Although logic may not be Desire’s trademark, I stumbled across one thing that it does way better than the iPhone; the browser automatically re-shapes text, according to the width, when zooming. This means that you only have to scroll one way while reading. This is very valuable, since browsing is one of the core features of these kinds of phones.
I probably wouldn’t even have noticed this, if it wasn’t because I’m used to the double-scrolling on my iPhone. And this is what great usability is all about; making things so easy that you wouldn’t even consider it to be “a solved issue”.

Navigation
By default, HTC Desire comes with seven different home scenes. Seven! Quite intimidating when you’re first trying to figure out what’s going on. I like iPhone’s approach better, where you create screens as you go along.

As I mentioned in the beginning, Desire has several navigational buttons – real physical buttons outside the screen. In my opinion this creates more confusion than value to the user. One of the things I love about touch-screen phones is that the navigation is contextual. This creates instant comprehension of your options because buttons are labeled exactly to the given situation, and not with a generic icon. Introducing five permanent buttons like HTC has done with Desire, simply breaks this great convention.

A specific example of where this can end wrong is when you have to scroll down to find the button you’re looking for. You might not even get to the scrolling part because you are unaware of the fact that the screen holds more information. Left with a bunch of buttons to push, you might end up loosing all the info you’ve just typed in, because you choose to push the button with the sweet little icon, which is actually the home button. By keeping the navigation strictly on-screen and strictly contextual, this will never occur.

Much like iPhone’s Spotlight, Desire has an internal search function as well. To me, Spotlight has proven to be one of the most powerful and fast ways to navigate. By typing just a few characters, you are able to find contacts, emails, songs, calendar posts and much more. Desire has extended their search function to include suggested web searches. In my opinion, this decreases the efficiency because it broadens the search so much that you have to type at least twice the amount of characters to find what you’re looking for.

With a great name comes great responsibility
As stated in the dictionary: ”Android = a robot resembling a human being”.

We can all agree that even the most advanced cell phone on the market is far from being human. Nonetheless, Google has chosen to name their mobile operating system as if it is exactly this. Overkill? I actually think Android is quite a clever name. It passes through the message well, that this system has more to it than just standard cell phone capabilities.

The problem is, that if I should put a head on the human being, whom the system resembles, and hence HTC Desire, it would be a software developer. Considering it is in direct competition with the iPhone, a slightly broader target group seems appropriate.

Verdict
There’s no real right and wrong here. It all breaks down to your specific needs. A good example is the way it works together with Google. If you are a Google user, you will benefit greatly from the integrated synchronization features, if you’re not, it’s just more noise on the line.

I think HTC Desire is a great phone, and I would recommend it anytime – but only to the right persons.

Personally I’m going to stick with my iPhone. It has the functionality I need, and it lets me access it quick and easy. And it still is, the sweetest piece of eye candy out there.

All-purpose company description

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:24:30 +0200

Over the years, I've personally written over 30 mission and vision statements for clients throughout Europe. As internal documents, these are incredibly important. We (management and I) invest a lot of energy in defining the business position and the strategy that will help achieve this. But, to be honest (and despite the current fashion), these mission/vision documents don't really stand up very well when companies broadcast them on a website. An internal tool is just that - internal.

Vision statements are particularly dangerous. Like watching two people make out in a darkened cinema, the better the content, the more distasteful it is to an outside observer:

"We're going to be number one in our market by...[action item]."

The more effective the action item, the less likely it is that you'll want to broadcast this information to your competition.

"Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell"
The "boilerplate" text printed on the rear cover of a brochure, or the front of a website is equally political. Enthusiastic sales reps and other unskilled laborers think that adding useless adjectives and overworked buzzwords will improve the message.

I just looked through some of the strategic mission/vision stuff I've written the past 10 years or so. Curiously, the text that was screwed around with the least, often belongs to the companies that have done the best.

As a public service, I have glued together some of the blather and buzz I've witnessed into a single, universal boilerplate.

About [the company]
Headquartered in [someplace], we are leaders in [something]. Since [sometime], our client-centric core competencies have represented the highest standards of quality and reliability, coupled with service that truly delights. We align our customers’ needs with current best-practice usage paradigms and thus enable people to seamlessly leverage their abilities and maximize their efficiency in a truly proactive manner. Our ongoing commitment to sustainable innovation ensures that we will remain the preferred supplier for our clients around the [world, region, country, neighborhood, wherever].

Use it with my blessing. It's free and could save you thousands of euros in short term copywriting fees. But hey, no one reads this anyway...or do they?

Five myths about user experience

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:20:13 +0200

My two cents...

1. “There is no definition, so we can make up our own.”
No. The definitions are there, although the details may differ. User experience (UX) deals with how people interact with stuff – it represents the sum of their reactions and subjective perceptions. So, don’t go off on your own until you’ve bothered to do a simple search on Google. If nothing else, it will keep you from making a complete fool of yourself by confusing UX with usability.

2. “If the experts disagree, then the discipline isn’t really mature.”
No. Experts disagree in all fields. Doctors argue about the best treatments. So do designers. If you’re looking for a “mature” field, stick to horseback riding, which hasn’t changed much the past couple of hundred years. Instead, consider that most fields are “evolving”. User experience is one of these.

3. “User experience is only about computers and stuff.”
No. User experience is all around us. Eat a freshly picked strawberry. That’s a user experience, too. The problem seems to stem from the word “user”, which turns up in “user-friendly” and other computer-worldly clichés. But until we find a better word, it will have to do.

4. “If it’s on a screen, it must have something to do with IT.”
No. Just because a book is printed on paper, it doesn’t mean Tolstoy was working for the lumber industry. Granted, computers may be involved. But in the online world, UX focuses on what goes on the screen and less on how it got there.

5. “User experience is a subset of [some other discipline]”
No. User experience is the umbrella under which many other highly structured activities take place – from information architecture to service management to graphic design to usability evaluation. If you put UX on equal (or lessor) footing with other disciplines, it’s easy to ignore it in favour of something more tangible – yet the forest continues to exist even if you only focus on the trees. And like a real umbrella, you'll first notice you’ve lost UX when it starts to rain.

Got a myth to add to the list? Post a comment - the floor is yours.

The user experience of dishwashers

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:51:58 +0200

I counted the number of dishwashers I have personally purchased over the past 25 years.

Five.

Two of them have been great. Three of them have been lousy. The last one I bought (about two months ago) is the worst of the lot. You’d think I’d learn to choose a good one, but this just hasn’t happened.

What I want from a dishwasher
I figure a good dishwasher should do four things:

- hold a lot of dishes

- wash dishes

- dry dishes

- not break dishes

As someone in the user-experience industry, I don’t think this is an unreasonable set of basic requirements.

“Easy to use” is also a good quality. I’ll get back to that.

Usability testing in real life
My mom had an old GE dishwasher which served her faithfully for over 30 years. When it broke a couple of years ago, I bought a new GE for her. But she insisted the dishes didn’t get clean. So I investigated the next time I returned for a visit. It seems you have to slam the door shut much harder than a 90-year-old is able. Honestly, I practically had to kick it shut myself. In other words, the machine never actually washed the dishes because my mother lacks the strength to shut the damned door.

Lesson One: Make sure you can actually start the machine.

The decline of civilization
In 1985, I bought my very first dishwasher for myself. A Bauknecht. Good German machine. Very quiet (39dB). And it was a dream to operate. It did everything you’d want a dishwasher to do. The first time I used it, I was convinced that every dish in the world deserved a ride in this wonderful contraption.

Ten years later, it died. Don’t know why. Just did.

I bought a new Bauknecht. Twice as expensive. There were several icons on the panel I never did figure out. Although touted as having the lowest noise level on the market, it was a lot noisier than the unit it replaced. In-depth interviews with my dishes indicated that they were satisfied with the quality of the washing, but not ecstatic.

Lesson Two: Don’t believe the brochure.

New house, new dishwasher
A year later, my wife and I sold our flat and moved to a house where we immediately started remodelling the kitchen. And we bought a Danish-made dishwasher from Vølund – completely hidden front panel, very elegant.

The Vølund was brilliant. The best machine yet. Easy to load, intuitive affordances (e.g. I could figure out where to put stuff inside the beast), great results. In fact, the only minus was that any Martini glass placed in the front-left corner of the upper rack would ALWAYS crack.

Two months ago, our Vølund died after 14 years of faithful service. Again, no particular reason, the dear thing just stopped working. Weeks passed before I could bring myself to let someone take it to the dump.

The trip to the store was a...trip
My wife and I liked the invisibility of our old Vølund (fully hidden front panel). So down we went to the local appliance store to find a replacement. Sadly, Vølund doesn't make dishwashers anymore.

Why does a dishwasher WITHOUT a cabinet cost more than one WITH a cabinet? By a factor of about 25%? Price moves up to around EUR 600 for the cheapest “integrated” model.

“Ohh. You don’t want to buy that one. It has a nasty cheap plastic pan at the bottom. You really want a full-stainless washing chamber,” said the helpful salesman. Add another EUR 200 (and a new expression to my growing "I know all the cool technical stuff" vocabulary).

Lesson Three: stainless is better than plastic (I guess…)

LG – “Life’s Good” – for someone else
We briefly considered Miele, but I had worked in an ad agency that went through Miele dishwashers at the rate of one every three years (as we were doing their advertising, we felt obligated to use their products). So, in search of genuine quality, my wife and I decided on an LG from Korea. It cost on the wrong side of EUR 1000 but, hey, it was top of the line. Only problem, it doesn’t really do any of the stuff a dishwasher should do.

“Low noise level” says the brochure. But this is noiser than that 1985 Bauknecht.

“Saves energy.” Only if you don’t use it. The “eco” program doesn’t get the dishes clean. The “auto” program takes hours and hours to complete unless you want to dry stuff by hand.

Lesson Four: see Lesson Two.

Affordances…meh
The insides are arranged so that it holds lots of dishes, but I wish LG would send me a photo showing me how they intended the various 21st-century racks and shelves and baskets to be used. I can’t figure it out. In practice, it holds about 20% fewer items than my dear old Vølund. I'm seriously wondering if Korean dishes have a very different shape than Danish dishes.

Glasses break. All kinds of glasses. In many different locations within the machine. That’s why Martini glasses get washed by hand these days. Always. Think about it: I just spent EUR 1000 on a device that is now making me wash glasses by hand!

When this contraption runs, it smells like there’s some plastic burning. I’m afraid to run it at night or when we’re leaving the house. The smell makes me nervous, even though the installer says this is “normal”. Does that mean all my other dishwashers have been “abnormal”? Just asking…

Back in 1985, I just went out and bought my Bauknecht. And it was great. Today, there are too many choices, too many controls, too many decisions to make.

All I want is clean dishes. Is that really too much to ask?

SEO & IA: A Roadmap for Discoverability Success

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:54:28 +0200

Frank Lloyd Wright said that the two most important tools for an architect were the drafting pencil and the sledgehammer. Of the two, the pencil is the easier to use as well as the more effective. As it is with building design, so it is with designing websites and their discoverability by search engines, the tool used by a majority of users. The Web has become so vast and the search systems have become so sophisticated that retroactive optimization can be only marginally effective.

My mantra of late has been that search engine optimization must be part of the strategy at the beginning of a site design or redesign project. I believe that user experience is as much about how users find the site as with their experience once they get there. At the 2010 IA Summit in Phoenix, I presented a poster session on an SEO/UX design framework that sees search optimization as part of the UX engagement throughout the project lifecycle.

- Discovery comes before experience. Including search optimization in discovery sessions with the client provides opportunities to illuminate the state of the competitive landscape and the current search visibility state of the existing site. During this stage, I give the client a brief education in how search engines work. Despite the sophistication behind how results are presented, the core functionality of search technology is still based on information retrieval methods from the early days of electronic data storage. In order to appear in the results, the search terms used must appear in the content.

- Planning reduces the signal to noise ratio for the search engine spider. Search engine spiders do not have eyes, ears, thumbs or fingers. They cannot read the messaging in sticky Flash and Silverlight applications. They cannot hear instructions or compelling evidence contained in videos. They cannot “click” anything to move forward. Provide on the page or in the code annotation for all rich media to make sure that the messaging contained here makes its way to search results.

- Build a relevant site structure. Something that you keep in the attic of your garage is likely less important to you than something kept in the cabinet over your coffee machine. Search engine spiders interpret your site structure as an indicator of relevance. Content buried deep in the structure is seen as less relevant that content found closer to the home page. Design site and link structures that reveal context and importance.

- Create a flexible design to ensure ongoing visibility. There is no “set it and forget it” in search engine optimization. Post-launch optimization continues with analysis and measurement. Analyze search terms driving traffic to the site, bounce rate, time on site and other analytics to discern patterns and anticipate customer needs or interests. What were they looking for? Did they find it? Benchmark positioning for key metadata phrases prior to redesign. Run regular placement reports to chart progress and provide quantitative evidence of effectiveness.

Following a roadmap of optimization through the stages of a website project is a step is extending the user experience to from start to finish.

Download the Search Engine Optimization and User Experience Design Framework Poster

Delectable UX at Gordon Ramsey’s “Plane Food”

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:13:33 +0100

Sign of good things to come..

About a month ago, I visited the much touted Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow Airport for the first time. The airy, vaulted space is the nicest of Heathrow’s offerings, but that isn’t really a recommendation – Terminals 1-4 set the bar pretty low as these things go. But I did have an opportunity to eat at celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey’s “Plane Food”.

Let me put it this way, the experience was so good, I just might start flying British Airways again. For those of you who have seen my service-design presentation, you’ll know that this is high praise indeed.

An airport restaurant by design
The first thing you notice is the friendly, attentive staff. There are a lot of them in crisp black uniforms. These are not kids who took a low-paying job that bores them to tears; the “Plane Food” crew is professional, polite, and efficient. And they actually know something about food.

Next, there’s the menu. Real food at affordable prices. And a full bar.

The table is set with good china, decent glasses, and steel cutlery (in a security approved design).

And finally, there’s the layout. For once, a designer has understood that people in airports drag around rolling luggage. Plane Food features ample space between the tables so you can concentrate on your meal and not on keeping your bags from being kicked.

The entry leads visitors away from the hustle of the terminal and into a more relaxing environment.

Great food, superb service
My entire extended family was on its way to Miami from Copenhagen. While the women opted for noodles at Wagamama, my son-in-law, Lars, and I were curious to see what Gordon Ramsey had to offer. After all, most of the world has seen the foul-mouthed chef on one of his various culinary reality shows. Well, Chef Ramsey clearly knows how to create a successful restaurant – even in an airport terminal.

The menu was large and varied – something for every taste, yet wonderfully uncomplicated. Lars (who happens to be a professional chef) opted for pasta, I had a mushroom and truffle risotto. Both dishes were exquisite; the pasta homemade and perfectly al dente; the risotto velvety and with real truffles, not just a few drops of oil.

And our servers were as good as any I’ve met at other restaurants.

The picnic box
For those of us who loathe airline food, Gordon Ramsey has reinvented the picnic lunch. For GBP 11.95, you get a full three-course cold meal in a nifty insulated canvas lunchbox. Just to put this into perspective, Scandinavian Airlines charges just about the same for a tired old cheese sandwich and a canned Bloody Mary on board their flights.

The picnic menu offers a choice of four starters, four main courses, and four desserts. There are options for both vegetarians and meat-eaters (strict vegans are advised to stick to Wagamama).

When returning to Denmark a week later, the entire family bought picnics to take home. Here's mine:

Tiger prawn salad with watercress and soy sesame dressing
Cumbrian honey-roast and parma ham with slow roast vine tomatoes
Chocolate and pecan brownie with crème Chantilly

Absolutely fabulous!

The picnic box contains everything you need for a great meal, from sauces to cutlery.

UX and the British Airways business plan
FatDUX Creative Director Søren Muus and I are off to the IA Summit conference in Phoenix, AZ in a few weeks time. We actually booked on British Airways just so we could visit Plane Food. Hmm…maybe Gordon Ramsey should take over beleaguered BA CEO Willie Walsh’s job for a while. Who knows what might happen?

Full menus, prices, cocktail lists, and more photos can be found at Plane Food's website.

Paperless society? Not yet!

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:42:42 +0100

I just returned from Interaction 10, the always-exciting conference organized by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). This year's event was held in Savannah, Georgia. I know there was a lot of live tweeting, Johnny Holland was there, and the conference site will soon feature loads of videos. Folks have been busy on Flickr, too. So, since the event reporting has been pretty well covered by others, I thought it would be interesting to look at the physical paper trail this conference generated for me.

Interaction with dead trees
I had a client years ago that refused to allow paper into the office. Everything was electronic. Needless to say, this got them a lot of PR, but made them fairly ineffective. Let's face it, paper is really, really useful. (I'm partial to beermats...for taking notes).

But honestly, is all this paper really necessary? How can we make the world a little more sustainable? Just look at what I dragged home from Savannah:

2 train tickets for the Copenhagen subway
1 printout of a so-called "e-ticket"
4 boarding passes from Delta
2 luggage receipts
5 security stickers of various kinds on passport and luggage
1 receipt for currency exchange at Danske Bank
3 taxi receipts (1 Danish, two US)
1 paper conference badge
4 schedules and maps from inside the badge
1 map of Savannah
17 sundry receipts for meals, drinks, and other conference-related expenses
1 reservation sheet from the Hyatt
1 welcome letter from the Hyatt
1 check-out description from the Hyatt
1 bill from the Hyatt
3 Delta paper napkins (with sketches)
12 pieces of promotional literature from the conference sponsors
14 pieces of United States paper currency
43 business cards

Empty your pockets in the plastic tray provided

52 reasons to follow @elreiss on Twitter

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:34:37 +0100

I just came across an article suggesting no fewer than 60 ways to attract Twitter followers (http://is.gd/7maoX). It comes from @technotip (who is worth following).

I'm completely jazzed. I want followers. I crave followers. Followers are now my raison d'etre. Follow me @elreiss. My ego is suffering from hunger pains. FEED IT NOW!

Oops. Did I get carried away? (must remember to Tweet about this - check it out @elreiss)

Penis envy in cyberspace
You really have to laugh at some of these tactics. Number of Twitter followers seems to have become the social media equivalent of penis envy. And some of these scams are clearly the cyber-equivalent of a penis-extender. Henceforth, anyone who even considers running a Twitter contest will be added to my personal blacklist.

Why the tasteless self-promotion, @elreiss?
This is an experiment. OK?

In addition to retweeting stuff from folks smarter than I am and recommending articles, I occasionally have original thoughts. Looking through some of the past year’s tweets, I found around 50 that seemed to stand the test of time better than most.

WTF, @elreiss? Get to the point!
I’m not really out to build a huge follower base, but I would like to experiment a bit with the “content is king” notion. So please remember to “unfollow” if my tweets don’t contribute in some useful way to your own life and work. I'm keeping track of follower stats from day to day. Read 'em and weep-or-whatever.

52 tweets I (@elreiss) wrote and like
Will the iPon be a brand extension of the iPad?

Why follow your Twitter followers if you don't care what folks say?

This is a day for avoiding real work. Which is why I've been pondering cross-dressers who wear burkas. How would anyone know?

I wish it was as big a crime to be dumb as it is to be dishonest.

The more time I spend on social media (Twitter and beyond), the more I'm convinced our society is in deep shit.

Not all pithy thoughts can be compressed to 140 characters no matter how hard you try.

If the meek inherit our earth, it’s because the strong have abandoned them.

I'm more convinced than ever that "unwired" has become the new "organic".

TV news interviews are great reality programming. There's nothing as dumb as an "expert" if you get them off their area of expertise.

If it's dangerous to talk to yourself, it's probably even more dangerous to listen.

Good design can never rescue bad strategy. When did pretty uniforms last win a war?

If your competition sells cheaper, it's called "dumping". If you sell cheaper, it's called "supply side optimization".

America's infatuation with reality TV suggests that many viewers can no longer differentiate between talent and celebrity. Scary!

False friendships are the emotional downside of most current social media offerings.

I love teaching. I learn so much.

Do arbitrary rules really deserve more than arbitrary compliance?

Ahh. What would the world be like without rhetorical questions?

Packaging designers should be forced to clean and organize a larder once in a while. Valuable lessons to be learned.

If I always knew what I was doing, I'd never learn anything. A little adversity can be a really good thing.

Changing the world is easy. Changing it for the positive is the real challenge. That's because no one agrees on what's good.

If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you're right.

Still trying to change the world, but I'm more and more convinced that the world would prefer that I just butt out.

Pitting UX against IA is like having your toolbox pick a fight with your wrench. UX is a cognitive container for a variety of skills.

How come "altruistic" is never a value word for companies? Sometimes you've gotta do stuff simply because it's the right thing to do.

Words of wisdom: Don't burn your bridges before you come to them.

Looking for statistics to confirm my fear that the idiots now officially outnumber those of us who know what we're doing.

I'm frustrated that there are so many folks in the UX business who are famous just for being famous, not for any work they've ever done.

Call yourself an expert? Do you really have 10,000 hours of experience, or just one hour, repeated 10,000 times?

Are you passionate or provocative? Passion comes from the heart. But most provocation seems to stem from ego.

Rules are created when people take advantage of that which is unwritten.

If content is king, is context the kingdom?

Bailouts have become the back-button of the financial industries.

How long is "new media" new? Are we now working with "middle-aged media"?

Jakob Nielsen talks about designing his tweets: http://bit.ly/KLmzf. This is what most people call "editing".

The blogosphere is the Gong Show of Generation Y.

“Thought leadership” means thinking about a community of practice, not thinking about leadership.

No discernable correlation between your popular searches and your popular pages? You have a serious information architecture issue to solve.

Never judge a book by the taste of the binding.

If you want to be a thought leader, it’s best to start your career by fine-tuning your thinking, not your PR.

"Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer." But does that really mean you have to put up with their silly twitter-chatter?

Words to live by: be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're often the same ones you meet on the way down.

The biggest threat to the future of the web is the neighbor's kid, who is programming crap sites for legit businesses using FrontPage.

Maybe we designers ask too many questions. Maybe we threaten potential clients. Maybe folks don't care if their website contributes to their business.

I'm seeing incredibly incompetent shops getting web work while really talented folks are out of work. What are the idiots doing right?

Responses to yesterday's Twitter denial of service attack lead me to believe that some folks have serious addiction problems.

Ultimately, insistence on formalized processes and standardized deliverables strives not to collect answers but to obliterate questions.

The sooner our pitches reflect the fact that most business decisions are made emotionally and not rationally, the sooner we will get rich.

Political correctness is just another way to hide prejudice behind euphemism. I far prefer straight talk and honesty.

UX certification? Reminds me of Groucho Marx’s comment: “I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club that would accept me as a member.”

Gonna take flak from the American consultants...but...IMO ”It depends” is just an unnecessary click in the verbal clickstream.

Mashups can be SOOOO ugly. Here’s a new acronym: TIDE (Tight Integration of Diverse Experiences) Goes nicely with AJAX.

Amateurish SEO drives me mad. Keyword density is the worst fairydust of all time. Fact: you cannot bore people into buying something.

Again, if you like these, please follow me for a couple of weeks @elreiss and see if I continue to live up to expectations. If not, that’s cool – I’m not really out to build a huge follower base, but to experiment a bit with the “content is king” notion. And please remember to “unfollow” if my tweets don’t contribute in some useful way to your own life and work.

Hey, you can also comment right here! Let me know what YOU think about Twitter.

Seven ways to waste a TV advertising budget

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:20:44 +0100

Denmark is a small market for advertisers - about 2.2 million households. And with the general cutbacks in advertising budgets due to the financial crisis, the TV channels are hurting. The result is that we're seeing a lot more badly produced ads from companies that have never used television as an advertising medium.

But let's not excuse crappy ads strictly because of low budgets. The fascinating thing is, organizations that can afford decent advertising are spending their money unwisely (i.e. the return is less than the cost). I sometimes think that many advertisers are economizing by bypassing the expensive creative department at their ad agency and going directly to the film producer.

Result? Nice films, lousy messaging. Don't think that "all advertising is good advertising", the Schlitz Brewery, once America's second-largest, actually reported a downturn in sales among people who could remember their advertising.

Here are seven methods guaranteed to deliver unacceptable results.

1. Irritate viewers
For some reason, this is an incredibly popular technique in Denmark right now. It seems advertisers think that if you yell, scream, and do stupid things, people will love your brand/product. Sorry. Most of you are actually suggesting that your brand or product is as stupid and/or irritating as your spokespersons.

My current "favorite" in this category is the jerk who advertises for the food-chain, Spar. I can't find the more absurd ads on YouTube, but this is the one in which his character is introduced. The basic premise is, that this guy loves his supermarket so much that he decides to "help" the store owner by creating absurdly stupid advertising gimmicks. In this case, it's a new version of the Danish birthday song. Even if you don't understand Danish, you can't help but wish this idiot would disappear:

Message: Don't assume that "dumb" is necessarily entertaining. You cannot irritate people into buying anything. And you may get people to actually boycott your brand! (Ariel, I've still not forgiven you for your awful Helle Virkner ads).

2. Overestimate your brand recognition
When you've built a brand, it's easy to convince yourself that the whole world knows what you do. This is dangerous. The following ad is a classic example of this. The production values are high, the story piques ones curiosity (is she Princess Diana?). But unless you know the brand, the advertising is actually useless.

I have much more to say about this, but I would like you to visit their website first and view the ad they're currently showing on CNN and other international channels. This will open in a new window, so when you're done looking at the ad, come back and read on. Do not explore their site (yet):

http://www.hediard.fr/Corporate/TV_Campaign/

Go back and click on the link above.

Blank line. Don't read ahead until you've seen the ad.

Another blank line.

Gosh, how many blank lines can we afford? Seems like such a waste...

Right. Now that you've seen the ad, tell me what does this company do? Can you remember the name of the brand? I couldn't. And since the ad airs so infrequently, I didn't get a chance to have the name hammered into my conscious mind. (in the ad biz, we talk about OTS - Opportunities To See).

Because I know Paris, I recognized the Place Vendôme (with Napoleon's copy of Trajan's Column in the middle). In the film, this monument seems to be right next to this shop. But no joy. I even used Google's street view and could not find the red awning. All I could remember from the ad was that the brand name started with an "H" and the bags were red.

Searching for luxury brands didn't help either. I was stuck. (and yes, this had become a slightly obsessive quest at this point)

This was my experience. But perhaps you know this brand. What would your reaction be?

Anyway, if you now return to the Hediard site, you'll find that they sell fine foods. And they're on Place Madeleine, just next to another of Paris' fine food shops, Fauchon. No wonder they mislead with the Place Vendôme reference.

Basically, this ad could have been made much more effective simply by adding some shots of luscious displays within the shop and writing a better narration. It appears, though, that this ad may be an offshoot of an artistic installation produced by Comité Colbert (http://www.ccolbert.fr/), which aims to promote 70 French luxury brands, but doesn't seem to know much about advertising. It also looks like they ripped off a concept developed for the Texas-based photographer, Matthew Mahon, whose site is well known in Flash communities (http://www.matthewmahon.com/).

Message: don't assume everyone knows and loves your brand. Telling a story is good. But telling a story that communicates your brand essence is much, much better.

3. Use ineffective sales arguments
Some arguments work, some don't. Some arguments that used to work no longer do. Car safety, for example, is no longer a brand advantage or product position (e.g. Volvo), it's now a prerequisite for all car manufacturers.

These days, there are a variety of anti-smoking campaigns running. Horror and disgust are often the creative keys. Alas, Jerry Bruckheimer's CSI and Navy CIS feature so many gory, computer-generated journeys through bullet holes and other bodily damage that it's tough to scare or disgust folks these days. Particularly hard-core smokers. We've seen it all before.

The University of Missouri claims that these scare campaigns work (see http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/11/17/scare-or-disgust-work-best-in-anti-smoking-ads/3360.html). But this is not entirely true. Although Napoleon rightly said that fear and self-interest are the two levers with which one can set a man in motion, the scare campaigns are only effective when people have already decided to change their behavior; in fact, the "Smoking Kills" message on cigarette packages has actually created a boomerang effect in some markets and increased the number of smokers - the forbidden-fruit-is-attractive syndrome.

The Danish National Board of Health published an excellent review of the problem back in 2004 (see http://www.sst.dk/publ/div/metodekataloget/skraek_som_virkemiddel.pdf) Alas, it's only in Danish. But Google Translator will help you get the gist.

In short, if you want people to stop smoking, there are more effective ways than scare campaigns. And I speak as a 27-year veteran of the non-filter brigade (Camels, Senior Service). Why do most hard-core smokers finally quit? Because it pegs you as a social loser - the habit is no longer glamorous. It prevents you from getting promotions, it hampers your social life, it makes you stand outside your office building 20 times a day instead of staying inside, exchanging gossip at the water cooler. Most importantly, it signals "stinky and boorish" rather than "suave and sophisticated. Yes. Times change. Check out Allan Carr's Easy Way to stop smoking for a far more effective method.

Message: If you want to effect behavioural change, don't preach to the choir. Moreover, threats only produce short-term results. True long-term behavioral change comes about by providing a positive alternative to the current situation.

4. Practice pseudocreativity
Sometimes lack of brand promise or genuine product/service advantages encourages advertisers to disguise the lack of message (or lack of a creative idea) behind an artsy-fartsy facade. The folks promoting Abu Dhabi are doing this right now.

We see a fellow in native Arab garb piloting a Mercedes through a Middle-Eastern city. The voice-over was written by a wannabe-poet-turned-copywriter: "As night crackles electric, a million promises are held." The effect is hypnotic, but the commercial message is unclear. In fact, there is no brand promise whatsoever.

In the final frame, we see the name, "Abu Dhabi". Alas, this only appears for a second and almost immediately whites out as the "Abu" in the text blends into the desert background.

What does the UAE want me to do? Should I visit this city? Invest? Shoot a feature film? Complain about their crap advertising on a blog?

Here's the clip. Judge for yourself:

Message: Art is fine, but are you out to entertain or communicate? As advertising guru Rosser Reeves once said, "Do you want art, or do you want the goddam sales curve to go up?"

5. Switch media in mid stream
We all know this scenario: we're watching TV and an ad tells us to visit a web address. No other explanation, only a URL. Or we're reading a magazine and a full page ad displays nothing more than a URL.

Big mistake.

Yes, online/offline convergence is critical in any modern media plan. But when I'm sitting comfortably in front of the TV, don't expect me to boot up my laptop - or even write down the web address. Granted, it's reasonable to let me know where I can go for supplemental information (e.g. the web) . But don't make your address your primary message. Make your message your message!

Message: Make every medium self-sufficient when it comes to stating your case and selling your product or service.

6. Upstage your message
If you've got something to say, say it. Make sure it comes across in clear, unmistakable terms. Unfortunately, a lot of advertisers get so wrapped up in the story they're trying to tell that they forget to give us viewers a concrete call to action. They create scenaria that are so fascinating that the message is pushed to the background.

We've already seen how Hediard and Abu Dhabi blew their budget on ineffectual advertising. In both cases, the message was clearly upstaged by high production values and an artsy-fartsy story. But here's another example that takes things in a decidedly lowbrow direction.

The leading Danish telephone service, Teledanmark - TDC - has introduced two characters in their television ads. They are named Klaus and Britta and are nudists (does TDC thinks nudists represent a core market?). The ads are fascinating, primarily because Britta is played by a well-known male Danish comedian. And Klaus is played by a well-known female comedian. Cross-dressing nudists? Hell of a campaign concept. But the rubber suits are fantastic. See for yourself:

Message: Make sure people remember what you're trying to tell them from a branding/product/service point of view. If they remember your commercials, but not your message, you've lost the battle.

7. Rely on spin and lies
No product or service can rely on one-time sales. You can con folks into buying almost anything once, but you won't get them to buy your stuff a second time. Moreover, the service-industry gurus estimate that every time you have a good experience with a company, you tell three people. But if your experience is bad, you'll end up telling 17.

Right now, L'Oreal is being sued by the Swedish Consumer Protection Agency for their smooth presentation of an anti-wrinkle cream. Dan-Sun, a Danish producer of solariums, is being chastised in the press for making health claims that can't really stand the light of day. And almost all of the Danish banks are working hard to tell prospective customers that they are solid, honest, and are willing to extend credit. Incredible...

Message: Don't lie. Good advertisers don't. Only the amateurs really believe "all advertisers lie".

Got a good war story? Share it with us!

Promoting information architecture

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:35:08 +0100

New Year’s is a time of reflection. In my case, I pondered the many and varied ways we can promote the cause of information architecture. And I think I’ve discovered a completely untapped opportunity: professional wrestling.

Amazingly, there is not a single professional wrestler with an IA background! I’ve considered making this career move myself, but my wife thinks I look dumb in a Speedo (then again, who doesn’t?). So since my plans seem to have been vetoed, let me share my thoughts with you – perhaps someone else will enter the arena to make this bold, long-overdue move.

The name’s the game
First, professional wrestlers have a catchy name. I’ve considered the following:

Leo the Librarian (famous for the “Shssh of Death”)

Doctor Depends (never looks you straight in the eye)

The Terrible Thesaurus (a magical, yet misunderstood creature)

Getting a move on
Next, all wrestlers have “signature moves,” so I think I should have a couple, too. For example, Hard-Boiled Haggerty is famous for his “Shillelagh Swing.” And Cowboy Bob Ellis has “The Bulldog Headlock.” Well, here are some ideas I’ve been tossing around.

The Polar Bearhug
Perfect for tackling large-scale opponents

The Wurman Whirl
Create anxiety through the deadly use of information overload

The Dewey Decimator
796.8 ways to send your foe back to the stacks

The Barbed Wireframe
Box in your target no matter where he happens to be.

The Berrypicking Brainbuster
A shrewd combination of the very best moves available at any given time.

Michigan Leg Swirl
Prevail by degrees (this move is known in the industry as an “MLS”)

The Morville Mindbender
Become completely unfindable in the ring!

The Dublin Corner
Trap your opponent in a maze of metadata

Full Nielsen
Use statistics to pummel your adversaries into submission.

Defining the Damned Thing
A horrifying manoeuvre from which there is no apparent escape.

Moving forward
I have to confess, throughout my years as a professional information architect, I've had a secret mentor. I'd like to share his identity with you now:

Happy New Year!
Eric

Eric's 12 Books for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and other Feasts of Gluttony

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:07:09 +0100

People are always looking for something good to read over the holidays. So here are 12 books that I’ve recently read (or revisited). You probably won’t find many of these on the usual “best seller” lists.

Just to clue you in, my interests tend to focus on:
-         good mystery stories
-         20th century history
-         entrepreneurship
-         stuff that helps me understand other cultures
-         stuff that’s just plain entertaining

And I always read stuff that’s been recommended to me.

I hope you find something that fits your tastes. And there’re no particular order to these books – I don’t feel like playing librarian today.

I really like these 12 books. I hope you will, too.

Paris to the Moon
Adam Gopnik
Random House, 2001

Gopnik is a sensible, well-educated American who writes for the New Yorker. In 1995, he and his wife moved to Paris – simply because the city appealed to them. The book is a fascinating journey of discovery that moves the perception of “the artist’s Paris” beyond Hemingway, and demonstrates the enormous cultural gap between North America and Europe, even for people who are sensible and well-educated. Really, one of the most interesting, well-written books on ex-pat experiences I’ve read in many years.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Bill Bryson
Black Swan, 2007

Bryson is my age and grew up in Iowa. I grew up a couple of hours away in St. Louis. We watched the same TV shows as kids (Sky King, Lone Ranger, etc.) and share a frightening number of quintessentially Midwestern experiences (like meeting Stan Musial). And like me, he spent most of his adult life in Europe (Britain counts as Europe unless you’re British). This particular work is a kind of memoir. But Bryson has a dozen other books out there that are equally good. If you don’t know of him, you really should pick one up.

Memories of a Pure Spring
Duong Thu Huong
Picador, 2000

Once one of the most popular novelists in Vietnam, Ms. Huong’s books have been “withdrawn” in that country. This is a wonderfully poetic, yet emotionally intense trip through a nation emerging from three decades of civil war. Struggles with the modern bureaucracy, plus flashbacks to the “American War” can put a lot of things in perspective for those who experienced the war first hand, and those who only know Vietnam as a holiday destination. The only minus is that my edition “feels” translated – unfortunately Asian literature frequently does.

The Vicious Circle
Mysteries and Crime Stories from the Algonquin Round Table
Fall River Press, 2009

Back in the 1920s and 30s, New York’s Algonquin Hotel played host to the cream of American literati, who lunched there every day. These luminaries included George S. Kaufman, Howard Dietz, Robert Benchley, Marc Connelly, Alexander Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman, Edna Ferber, and Ring Lardner. Each of these brilliant writers has contributed a short story to this entertaining compilation.

Twitterville
Shel Israel
Portfolio, 2009

@elreiss Great book by a guy from my generation who really understands social media and doesn’t just play it lip service: http://is.gd/5tSkN

(and yes, that was EXACTLY 140 characters)

Business Stripped Bare
Richard Branson
Virgin Books, 2009

For an entrepreneur like me, reading about Richard Branson’s exploits is as magical as Harry Potter. In fact, if I’d known about this fellow 30 years ago, I’d have moved to England and swept the floors in his office just to get to know him personally. This book shows you how much fun you can have when you like to build things rather than just buying expensive toys with the money you’ve made.

American Lightning
Howard Blum
Crown, 2008

A crime novel that is actually a history book. It’s about one of the early terrorist acts in the United States: the bombing of the Los Angeles Times on October 1, 1910. Curiously, the careers of William J. Burns (America’s foremost detective), D.W. Griffith (Hollywood’s industry-shaping filmmaker), and Clarence Darrow (America’s leading legal mind) intersected at Los Angeles’ legendary Alexandria Hotel at this time. Blum tells their story in a way reminiscent of Capote’s In Cold Blood.

The cover bills this as “Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century.” Howard Blum nailed them all. Great stuff.

Music and Silence
Rose Tremain
Vintage, 2000

Here’s the story of King Christian the Fourth of Denmark. He sits in his summer residence, Rosenborg Castle, pondering the fate of his nation while listening to the music that permeates the building via ventilation ducts leading to a string quartet kept out of sight down in the basement. Not only is this a great read, it was suggested to me some years by the young Australian girlfriend of the Danish crown prince. Today, she is H.R.H. Crown Princess Mary. Interesting recommendation from someone destined to become Queen of Denmark.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Marina Lewycka
Penguin, 2005

The first paragraph reads: “Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.”

I haven’t laughed so hard in years. This is a fabulously entertaining book.

Bing
Ted Dewan
David Fickling Books

Bing is a stuffed bunny, who is helped by his friend Flop (also stuffed, but difficult to identify zoologically). They paint, they play, they bake, they make incredible messes. And they’re hugely entertaining. There are a bunch of Bing books – all great reads for kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, and folks like me.

I met Ted Dewan when he spoke at EuroGel in Copenhagen a few years back. We both do road happenings in our respective cities (Ted’s from Oxford) and it was like meeting a long lost brother. You’ve simply got to check these out!

Why Architecture Matters
Paul Goldberger
Yale University Press, 2009

No. This isn’t another history of architecture. Rather, it’s an erudite review of how and why architecture affects us emotionally and intellectually. For anyone doing design work, this could be the most exciting book you read this year (or next). Why, for example, have the utilitarian boxes of Walter Gropius survived the test of time, whereas the utilitarian boxes of Iron-Curtain-era Europe are being torn down?

Now that we’ve spent years figuring out how to build usable, utilitarian websites, it’s time to figure out how to make them both utilitarian AND exciting.

Three Trapped Tigers
G. Cabrera Infante
Harper & Row, 1971

An Argentinian friend of mind recommended this book to me about 20 years ago. I read it every year or so – for the language, for the history, for the entertainment, for the pathos. Infante was the son of Cuban revolutionaries and headed the Cuban Film Board after the rise of Castro. But Che Guevara (yes THAT Che) sent out a hit squad and Infante fled to London.

Three Trapped Tigers is the story of late-Batista-era Havana. The nightclubs, the girls, the vice, the graft. An altogether unforgettable story. It’s Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy meets the Tropicana Tiki Bar. And when the United States opens up legal tourism to Cuba again, this book is going to rocket to the top of the N.Y.Times bestseller list. Although the English translation is brilliant, if you can get it in the original Spanish, you’re really in for a treat.

The 10 dos and don’ts of website development

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:11:14 +0100

For about a year now, FatDUX has been sharing the following article with business leaders and potential clients around the world. The feedback has been tremendously positive. We'd now like to share it with you. Happy holidays.

Feel free to use this in your own work. Here's an easy-to-distribute PDF (25 kb):

Download: 10 do's and dont's of web development

The 10 dos and don’ts of website development (that every CEO should know)With the current economic downturn and significant layoffs among sales staff, the web has become more important than ever as a means of communicating with customers/clients/membership. But I have yet to meet a CEO who likes website development. It makes business leaders uncomfortable. The web experts speak in a cryptic language – CMS, KM, XML, CSS. The site seems to take forever to build, costs more than expected, and invariably provides less value than the organization had hoped.

No one likes signing a big check without some idea as to what they’re getting. So if you’re a business leader, here are a few basic, non-technical tips that will significantly increase your chances for online success. And they let you do what you do best – lead.

1. Don’t confuse marketing with communication

Most marketing efforts are concerned with gaining the attention and interest of a particular target audience – often quite aggressively. But on the web, your audience has come to you voluntarily. So, lighten up on the promotional hype. Yes, your site can become an important sales tool, but it should do so in straightforward, conversational language. Don’t let an eager salesrep talk you into blinking banners on every page. Instead, regard your website as part of your service mix first and your marketing mix second. It’s about creating a valuable experience for your site’s visitors, about starting a dialog with your customers (and potential customers). Therefore, make sure your web team represents a good cross section of disciplines in your organization.

Do: View your website as part of your customer-service package.

2. Don’t view your website as a software development projectCreating and maintaining most informational websites is no more a “software project” than publishing your annual report. You write reports using a standard word processing program; you publish to the web using a standard content-management system. There are dozens of superb systems available, and hundreds of excellent add-ons (survey systems, social networks, video channels, wikis, etc.) so don’t let anyone talk you into building one from scratch. That’s also why this activity shouldn’t be handed over to your IT department. Granted, a site with very sophisticated functionality will probably require special programming, but don’t count on your in-house skills as being enough.

Do: Whenever possible, purchase professional web-publishing software from a single-focus vendor (Important note: Microsoft, IBM, and SAP probably shouldn’t be on your shortlist, despite anything your IT department tells you).

3. Don’t couple unrelated initiatives

Just because one project concerning computers and customers is in the works, you won’t necessarily create synergy by tacking on other initiatives that also involve computers and customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a frequent sinner. But unless you have a huge budget and sophisticated needs, both your website and your CRM activities will be far more successful (and much cheaper) if you tackle them one at a time. Keep your intranet development out of this, too (although you can probably use the same publishing software used for your website). In other words, don’t let HR take over the project either. And don’t turn your website into a software development project.

Do: Deal with your website – and just your website. Then take care of the other stuff.

4. Don’t be afraid to set measurable goals for your website

Your website can be an active part of your business plan. In fact it should be. Don’t just view it as your extended business card or think that a graphic redesign is going to help you attract new customers/clients/members. Your website should be assigned targets just like every other department in your organization. And don’t just go for easily measurable numbers. Merely increasing the number of visitors is a poor goal. Shortening the sales process is better. Increasing your conversion rates is great. Streamlining logistics is a good goal. Reducing manual intervention in a sales or service process is a good goal, too. And there are dozens of others that have a direct effect on the bottom line – even for companies that don’t run an e-commerce site. So get your web team to tell you which needs they have identified, the goals they have set, and how they intend to achieve them. Since most in-house teams have limited experience in web development, this is one of the key reasons for hiring an outside strategic consultant.

Do: Insist that your website become an integrated part of your company’s business activities.

5. Don’t confuse your needs with those of your visitors

You may want your website to communicate your company’s values, service offerings, products, or something else entirely. But visitors to your site will have their own agendas. Your web team needs to identify these needs and address them with relevant content and functionality. The simple truth is, unless a site fulfills the needs of its visitors, it will never fulfill the needs of the site owner. Give your web team the time and budget to do their homework and actually talk to potential users. Very few companies truly understand how their customers use the internet.

Do: Encourage research. Accept surprises that go against your basic assumptions.

6. Don’t view your website as a fixed-term project

Your website is a process, not a project. Unlike a printed brochure that might have a useful lifetime of a year or so, your site’s content should be reviewed regularly (even daily) so that it remains accurate, interesting, and dynamic. For the most part, maintenance only takes a few minutes a day. But someone has to keep the process going, studying the statistics that tell you who has visited and what they did, and adjusting the content so that it becomes even more compelling. And that means you need to allocate resources to this critical task. Your website needs to be included in your annual budget each and every year.

Do: Once you start the process, make sure to keep it going.

7. Don’t confuse print design with web design

You probably have an ad agency. For them, “concept” means look and feel. But on the web, the “concept” is what your site can do. Your brand consists of how your website “acts” just as your brand is affected by how your employees act. Don’t let an old-school art director force you to sacrifice usability for the sake of a design guide developed for printed communications.

Do: Acknowledge and embrace web best-practices that run counter to your design guide.

8. Don’t let personal opinion cloud your focus

When it comes to websites, everyone has an opinion. But don’t just assign tasks to the people who are most enthusiastic or most vocal. Instead, find people with proven expertise and then do everything you can to help them do their jobs efficiently. And as the project progresses, try not to let your personal taste get in the way either. The only opinions that really matter are those of your website’s visitors – not your friends, family, or the well-meaning wife of the chairman. Ask yourself: “Do I want to get my way or do I want to get rich?”

Do: Seek out proven experts and support their work.

9. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions

There are no stupid questions. And no one should make you feel like you’ve asked one. But be prepared to remember the answer – asking someone to walk you through the same subject six times is bound to create friction.

Do: If in doubt, ask. Always.

10. Don’t hide in your office

Your active support for a web project can make the difference between success and failure. Make sure everyone on the team is pulling their weight – particularly those who are responsible for writing and updating online content. Make sure the team leader has access to you when policy questions arise. That said, don’t become a micromanager - hire the best and let them get on with it.

Do: Demonstrate your active support for the project. Keep the whole team inspired.

My thanks to the dozens of CEOs who have critiqued this piece. You've all contributed valuable information. Thanks for sharing with me so I can share with others.

Cutback? Or just a knife in the back?

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:52:45 +0100

Hi Eric –
Bad news. I’ve been laid off due to cutbacks. That said, the company just hired two new people in my division and our profits are the highest ever recorded. In fact, my division now has sales of EUR 35 million. So let’s assume there are other reasons for letting me go.

I still need another year and a half of salary to make ends meet, so I’m desperately looking for a new job. Now most folks think it’s impossible for a 67-year-old to get a new job, but as you know I’m used to dealing with impossible challenges. I’m looking for something either in Denmark or abroad that lets me use my marketing talents, and maybe even do a little Flash programming if need be. Even jobs that only last a week or two are welcome.

If you hear of something, I hope you’ll keep me in mind.

Cheers,
S

Damned right we’ll keep him in mind!
Here’s some background on this fellow:

The incredibly narrow-minded management of this company has never really liked my pal’s out-of-the-box thinking. So each time he’s built up a profitable new business area (he’s created several), they take away his department and send him out to do something else. Recently, to get him away from headquarters, they packed him off to China. He taught himself Chinese and built up a multi-million Euro business selling his company's products in a completely new market segment! When he needed interactive marketing materials and was denied a budget, he taught himself to program Flash (and he’s pretty good at it).

I’ve worked with this man for almost 20 years on a variety of marketing projects. He’s a real gentleman, his professionalism is exceptional, and he’s a seasoned innovator who produces measurable results. Not surprisingly, we’re going to try and work him into the FatDUX family. But in the meantime, if you hear anything, let me know and I’ll pass the word along.

Three short service stories

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:46:42 +0100

Three service experiences from a recent trip to Miami, FL.

At Whole Foods in Pinecrest
Me: “Hi. I’m looking for vermouth.”
Whole Foods: “That’s like beer, right?”
Me: “It’s like a strong wine.”
Whole Foods: “This is the wine department.”
Me: “Yes. I know. Where do you have stuff like port?”
Whole Foods: “Which port? Is this something you got on a cruise ship?”

At Macy’s in Dadeland
Me: “Hi. I’m looking for black, canvas tennis shoes.”
Macy’s: “Canvas? Is that a kind of leather?”
Me: “No. It’s heavy cloth. Like what they make sails out of.”
Macy’s: “Like nylon? We have Docksides. But they’re not made of nylon.”

At Staples office supplies
Me: “Hi. I need an At-A-Glance calendar refill.”
Staples: “What year?”
Me (biting tongue): “2010″
Staples: “But that’s next year.”
Me: “Er…yes…I need a refill for my current calendar.”
Staples: “We don’t carry that brand.”
Me: “You have an At-A-Glance display over there, but there’s nothing in it.”
Staples: “That’s a mistake.”
Me: “That you have the display or that it’s not filled?”
Staples: “Yes. Sorry we can’t help you.”

And we web designers wonder why folks can’t fill out online forms…geez.

7 rules for customer service

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:34:45 +0100

Bill McLaughlin

CEO – Select Comfort

Minneapolis, MN

Dear Bill,

I have the most wonderful bed in the world, a Select Comfort bed. It has two air chambers zipped into a padded quilted mattress cover, and attached to a pump with two controls. Each sleeper can adjust the firmness of the mattress to his own preference with just a button. We’ve had it for over 15 years.

Its only flaw is that every two or three years one of the air chambers inside the mattress starts to leak, and pretty soon it mostly deflates every night. The only thing to do is to get a new one shipped out from the company.

Because it was my side of the bed this time, I was pretty motivated to solve the problem. I went to the Select Comfort website, found their customer support contact page. It was late, outside of their call center hours, so I decided to get the process going by email. I chose my problem from their dropdown list (“Previous purchase questions”), entered my name and address and phone number and email (all required). I also entered a description of my product and my problem. Oddly enough, this was not a required field. I unchecked both the “o please send me more promotional material!” boxes and submitted the form. Immediately in my inbox was an automatic confirmation that they had indeed received my email, and would gladly get back to me within two or three days. And that if I wanted to call them, they’d take my call right away.

Rule No. 1 – Respect your customer’s mode of communication.

If you’re going to offer email customer support, it should be at the same level of service as phone support. A real response should come by the end of the next business day at the latest.

Two days later I got a nice email from the customer support specialist telling me that my name and address wasn’t in their database, and asking me if I could send any other names or addresses that might have been used. I did, and shortly received an autoresponse thanking me for my interest in their product and informing me that they would be sending out the DVD package that I had requested right away.

Rule No. 2 – Listen to what your customer says, and remember it the next time you speak.

I had already provided them with a description of my problem AND a backend database code for their use by selecting “previous purchase question” as my subject. And remember? I had also unchecked both boxes asking them to send me more promotional literature. (I’m still getting it; the DVD arrived in less than a week, and I’ve gotten follow-up postcards every three or four days so far.)

I replied that I didn’t want any DVDs, but that I did want a new single-port chamber for my dual queen size bed and inquiring how I could go about getting one, just as I had in my original email to them. I got another immediate autoresponse telling me that they had received my email and that they would gladly get back to me in two to three days.

In a couple of days another nice customer service rep gave me instructions on how to confirm that the problem was indeed in the air chamber and not in the pump, and asked me to get back in touch with them after I’d verified the problem. I was pretty sure that the problem was with the chamber, but I followed the directions and confirmed it for them by email: definitely the chamber. After getting the expected autoresponse from the customer service ‘bot (2-3 days!), I then got an email from the support staff that said that it sounded like I needed to replace the chamber, and that I should order it from Customer Service. They gave a toll-free number. They also let me know that they couldn’t find me in their database.

Rule No. 3 – Respect what your customer knows.

Not only did I already know what the problem was with the bed and what I needed, I also already knew that I wasn’t in their database, and I already knew that email responses were running at 2-3 days’ response time. A full week was wasted with this back-and-forth.

Meanwhile I’m sleeping on stacks of pillows every night because I start out with a bed full of air and by 3am it is nearly completely deflated, my butt on the slats of the bedstand. I can’t pump it up in the middle of the night because the pump makes a heinous racket to which the DH for some reason objects most obstreperously. My neck and shoulders and lower back are all killing me. And then fall rolled into Los Angeles, and I found myself at the mall, looking for sweaters. And there, across from the Build-a-Bear was a Select Comfort retail store. So I popped in, spoke with the nice man there. He listened to my story, looked me up in the database (“Yep, you’re coded as a prospect!”) and surreptitiously gave me a queen dual chamber that he had lying behind a big cardboard display. I took it home and pumped it up, but it turned out to have a leak as well.

I was at the same mall a few days later and returned it to him. He gave me another one, but while he was digging around looking for it, another customer in the store who was purchasing a bed and some accessories asked me if I liked my bed. O how I did wax prolific on the wonders of the bed. I truly love it. At least fifteen years of slumbering bliss on this bed. A testimonial, dear brethren! After this, the nice store manager gave me the chamber. I asked him, “If this one doesn’t work, can I come back here and order it from you?” No, he said, I had to order it from Customer Service.

Rule No. 4 – Empower your service workers to provide service.

There was a customer sitting at the counter while I was there, checkbook in hand, ordering a bed and accessories. We all of us there in the store know that orders can be placed through the retail store. Why can I not get the replacement item I need from the nice person I’ve now got a relationship with? Why can the email support staff not take my order?

I got the second replacement chamber home, and it leaked even worse than the first one. I’m not too upset, because I didn’t pay for either of them. I girded my loins, picked up the phone, and called Customer Service’s toll-free number.

It was busy.

I called again. I got a recording that said, basically, that they were too busy to take my call, and I should call back later. Click.

I called three more times and it was busy.

The fourth time I got put into the queue, after selecting the most likely-sounding option from the voice menu. After about 10 minutes I was connected with a lady who asked me briskly for the name on my account. I gave her my name.

“I can’t find you in my database. What’s the phone number that might be on the account?” I gave her that.

“I can’t find you in my database.” I tell her what I want to do, to buy a replacement chamber. She begins to go through what I recognize as the troubleshooting script, the one I have already been through with the email folks. I stop her and start to say that I’ve already identified my problem, and that I just want to order the replacement chamber.

“I’m trying to solve your problem!”

“You haven’t even asked me what my problem is yet.”

Rule No. 5 – The customer’s problem is the one that needs solving.

So far my primary topic of conversation with these people, across ALL their modes of communication, has been about their database. Now I didn’t call them up because I’m not in their database. I’ve got a bed that deflates every night. I just want my good nights’ sleep back. I called them up because I need a single port dual queen replacement chamber, stat.

I tell her that I’ve followed directions given by the email team and have confirmed that I need a new air chamber. “Well you can’t buy that from me!” She says she’s going to put me in the database and then connect me with the right department. I give her all my information (again) and she enters it all into the database, and she gives me a customer number (2275984) that I can give to the next rep so she can pull up my record. And then she transfers me.

After a few minutes on hold I am connected to a new person who promptly barks, “Name on the account?” I give her my name and, she says, “I can’t find you in my database.” At this point my weasel is pretty steamed. I tell her that I have just gone through this exercise with the previous rep, and that she had put me into the database. “She even gave me a customer number so you could find me.” She asks for it, and I give it to her. She tells me, “I can’t find that in my database. You’re not in our database. What did she use to give it to you?”

“Her voice,” I said. “And I wrote it down with a pencil on paper.”

Rule No. 6 – Don’t ask the customer for any of your internal codes or identifiers.

How are the customers supposed to know which of your internal systems were in use? At this point I’m pretty sure that I am in all of their databases and that customer number 2275984 is CSR-speak for “Give this customer some serious hell!”

She begins the troubleshooting script. I stop her. “I’ve already done that.” After a fair amount of wrangling I force her to take my order NOW for a non-returnable $200 item. I ask for the name of the VP of Customer Service and she gives me the name and mailing address of the CEO.

And since it had been such a <sarcasm> pleasant </s> experience overall, I replied to the last email that I had finally managed to order the replacement chamber from customer service, and that I’d be grateful if they could let their VP know that he could expect me to pitch him soon for some business process redesign work. A few days later I got this response:

My replacement chamber did finally come, and it has worked very well. I still love my bed, and I’m sleeping great again. But I am afraid that any recommendation I make for Select Comfort’s product in the future will have to be tempered by serious reservations about their service. And in the 21^st century, is there any difference between the two?

Rule No. 7 – Customer service is the product too.

Give us a call, Bill. We can help.

Sogni d'oro,

Lynn

FatDUX Los Angeles