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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
