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.
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.
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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- Show quoted text -
On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 12:16 AM, John Hancock South Florida Group
<XXXX@jhnetwork.com> wrote:
> Dear Eric,
>
> Every few months, I try to keep my clients and friends up-to-date with current financial issues or critical concerns. Here is the latest.
>
> Access Here for Your Information.
>
> If you want more information on this subject, just click-on the additional details box at the end.
>
> Feel free to send me a message. It’s always good hearing from clients and friends.
>
> Sincerely,
> John Hancock South Florida Group
> (305) 579-4026 (O)
> xxxxx@jhnetwork.com
> John Hancock Financial Network
> South Florida Group
> 1101 Brickell Ave. 16th Floor North Tower
> Miami, FL 33131
>
http://www.jhfnsouthfloridagroup.com
>
> If the link above does not open, try this link – or copy and paste this link into your browser.
> http://ebriefme.com/1/?d=411&r=4mcM1zuoLkqlUa2-XXXXX>
> Registered Representative/Securities and Investment Advisory Services through Signator Investors, Inc. Member FINRA, SIPC, a Registered Investment Advisor
>
> This material does not constitute tax, legal, financial or accounting advice. It was not intended or written for use and cannot be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding any IRS penalty. It was written to support the marketing of the transactions or topics it addresses. Anyone interested in these transactions or topics should seek advice based on his or her particular circumstances from independent professional advisors.
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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.
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?
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
Here at FatDUX, we recognized our responsibility to remain politically neutral at all times. This is a natural addendum to our
Code of Conduct. Thank you for your time and consideration.
The three FatDUX directors demonstrate their political neutrality.
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***blatant political overtones and overtures forthwith. don't say you weren't warned.***
I've been trained by the Obama campaign as a data manager for hope. I volunteer in pod 33. We're a bunch of believers using weekend-empty offices and restaurants, our own laptops, cell phones and chargers, and this awesome database. As in a database that inspires awe. Along with
pod 30 the canvassers are making about 50,000 calls every weekend to registered voters in swing states, and we talk with about 20% of those 50,000. And whenever they talk to you, they hammer you with questions. And when you answer those questions (Who ya votin' for? Which way ya leaning? Gonna vote absentee? Need a lift on the 4th? Know where to vote? Could ya put in a couple hours for us down at headquarters?) the canvassers record your answers and put it into a database.
And it makes us stronger. Because come November 4? We're gonna know where to send vans. And who can drive vans on election day. And who not to bother because they've already voted early, or voted absentee, or because they've told us they're voting McCain. Yesterday I had the privilege of being lead data manager for hope. And when one of my crack datageek team was lamenting that she had a full page of 5Ms (committed McCain -- datageeks don't mince words) we talked about how actually knowing that all those folks didn't need to be called ever again between now and election day was a feature, not a bug. And then we got busy and had all 7500 calls entered into the system by 7pm.
Here's to the re-election campaign in '12!
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