Roger Hudson presented on taxonomy, social networks and pace layering at Oz-IA 2008. He summarised a survey of 90 people that he did to understand their usage of web tools.  He looked at:

• Comments on web pages
• Blogging
• Tagging
• Use of video
• Use of RSS
• Use of social networks

Of particular interest to me were his findings about the web usage of people who were simply web users and those who were web evangelists (i.e. members of the Web Standards Group in Sydney).  The web evangelists almost always had a blog and a page on a social network. They also contributed to a social networks and wrote on other people’s blogs. They leveraged tags to manage their web content too.  This all means that they are online a lot and therefore more likely to be up to date on the best ways of doing things on the web.

In this way, the evangelists may be more likely to be exposed to the most cutting edge technologies or applications of technologies. They are moving around in the cyberspace networks where the new technologies are most likely to be described and then reviewed by peers.

Roger then went on to describe how traditionally business people have had the most influence on what technology people could use and how it could be used. However, these days the end users, whether they be normal users or evangelists, have much more influence over how the technology is designed.
 

This model puts the feedback from web users and evangelists, though online mechanisms, at he end of the line.  Isn’t that too late to get their input?

I have often met web workers, including UI and IA people, who are too busy in their daily jobs to have time or interest in using social networks, RSS, blogs or other new applications.  So why should we leave it to them to come up with cool websites?  

Surely better technology is created (and recreated) when evangelists are involved at the strategy end of the process?  If they are not, then how people who are too busy doing their own job (normal users) possibly know what is available to them and how it should be executed.

If you are a busy web user, then I reckon you ought to be engaging a web evangelist early (and often) so that you can be innovative or at least know that what you will appeal to people in the not to distant future.

‘Innovation is the creation of the new or the re-arranging of the old in a new way’ Michael Vance, creativity expert

I saw this go cart on a hill in the park across the road today…

Someone bought a kite too…

Innovation equals

Cool hey?

In the past I’ve been asked by readers of my blog not to just write about the information I have gathered at functions, but instead to write down my experience of the event.

This has been a good tip, as it has helped me to gain further insight into my experiences and contextualise my learnings so that other people can digest what they read from a completely different point of view to their own.

I’ve been raving here and on Twitter about Garr’s Presentation Zen workshop in Sydney - which was all about improving the way that you present.

So, here’s what I experienced:

What to present?

Nancy Duarte contributed to Garr’s book. Her company did Al Gore’s presentation that was turned into the Academy Award Winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth. They also do many of Steve Job’s presentations too!

Her tip for ‘digital natives’ was to use Mind Mapping to plan out your presentation. It was interesting to note that Garr didn’t propose this, he reckons you should use paper and pen.

I don’t consider myself a digital native! However, I do use mind maps to plan all of my presos. Because maps are essentially pictures it is easy to remember the presentation content and they also help with creativity, as I discuss in this post.

So I punched out the mind map in an hour, easy!

BUT

Then it took me 15 more hours (a weekend) to finish my first 70 slide presentation!

WTF!

Normally, it takes about another hour to whip up the preso. I’m thinking, ‘Jeez this stuff is slow going. Is it worth it?’

Side note - Mindmanager is even kind enough to export the mapped presentation to PowerPoint in a completely boring hierarchical fashion, just as PowerPoint and KeyNote were designed! Not that the Zen man, Garr, from Japan allows that!
B O R I N G

Finding piccies

Once I was happy with my mind map I procrastinated….

Then, when I got up the gumption, I searched for pictures representing ‘web2.0′ into iStockPhoto. It didn’t work!

then I clicked on ‘Did you mean: web’ and started looking tediously through iStockPhoto for images. As I found ones that looked pretty I stuck them in the lightbox thingy.

lightbox thingy

Then I tried to buy it a low res image and realised I had no credit.

$$

This stuff doesn’t come for free! I ended up spending a 100 bucks on ‘low res’ iStock images - they seemed good enough for a Keynote slide. Plus a few I took other very low res images off Google images too.

I soon got sick of this and asked my Twitter crew for any ideas. Some suggested using the search function, but that was not good enough.

I tried a few searches on the most popular piccies, and I found this…

That wasn’t very fruitful.

And then I realised that I needed a process!

The process

I went through each box of my mind map and got a pic for each thought. That allowed me to focus and use a repetitive task.

As meditators know, repetition, without distractions helps to get you into ‘the zone’.

Kinda Zen really!

Time faded away and I cranked through hundred of images and ‘lightboxed’ any that reflected an emotion related to each box on the mind map. Afterwards I quickly picked out the ones that worked.

When the word in a box wasn’t particularly interesting I just used text or a quote from some other smart person. Actually when I got sick of finding photos I did this!

A principle that I used through the whole presentation was to ensure that the slideshow could be read [on slideshare] by someone clicking through it in a couple of minutes. They had to be able to draw enough info out of it to leverage some understanding. By doing this I was able to present the slides to a client on Monday in 10 minutes. And at the conference, later that afternoon, I managed to string it out to 25 minutes.

This is a high level representation of how I looked at the map and picked out relevant images (slides)

‘Of course some nodes of the map are just words, you need to fill up the time you have!

So what happened next?

I had another presentation to prepare for the following day. It was along similar lines and it only took 30 minutes! This is because I reused 2/3 of the slides and I knew what to do and could quickly and easily predict how to find the images I needed for the slides.

This alerted me to how professional presenters do their preparation.
Garr uses the same iStockPhoto images in his slides and book and his slide deck is massive. During the preso he selected relevant slides to talk to. He even added some photos relevant to the day, which I’m sure he does each time he presents.

Then I had to do some presenting!

So I practiced it with:

• my wife
• a client, and
• in my mind.

All the time worrying that it might:

• take too long
• come out wrong
• run out of time
• be too short
• be boring

I went to the toilet 3 times before I delivered the presentation. You know, in the hour before I delivered it. Ok, half an hour

Then I couldn’t get Keynote to display the time and next slide on my Mac.

Then it worked.

So I presented.

And I never once had to look at a presentation plan like this:

Although I did check the time 3 times. I finished ready for questions within 30 seconds of my ‘glass tap’ from the chair.

My experience

When I was at Garr’s presentation, I asked him. ‘How do you know what is on the next slide?’ ‘I don’t know’, he said. ‘It just happens.’

Well funnily enough it did just happen. I was right in the zone and engaged with the audience. My hair stood on end and it just flowed.

This is the mind map:

and this is the preso:

User Centred Design For Web2.0 And Beyond

view presentation (tags: socialnetworks objective usableworld ux)

Try it for yourself.

Vanilla Ice hit the nail on the head with that opening line!

I was out at dinner a couple of months ago with some friends. We were talking about the huge number agencies some companies have working for them!

One brilliant solution that Steve, a friend, has implemented in his Telco business is to run an ‘All Agency WIP’.  They had been doing it for about 3 months, when we spoke,  and meetings were coupled with the sharing of info between the agencies during the week, via an FTP site. This helped maintain communication and momentum between meetings.  They found the meetings quite a challenge, however, there have been massive improvements in communication and innovation in Steve’s business!
 
Steve realised that within his company he has access to an additional 20 full time employees (within his agencies). And just as he would have a weekly update and brainstorm with his direct line managers together, he believed that he should do the same with all the key agency staff. This happens regularly, not just on projects where the agencies are forced to work together.

Steve’s company currently has 6 agencies (Media, PR, Brand, Point of Sale & Collateral, Merchandise & Distribution, Promotion, DM Agency) …..they’re still trying to work on what the optimum size group is to make the meetings effective. …..Currently they have all department heads from his company’s marketing & brand teams plus 1 - 2 from each agency (Group Account Director, Account Director/Manager) so its generally a largish group. They clearly require some management.

You see, he’s doing something that is the same as the norm - a boring old WIP. But it’s a little bit different. He is thinking outside of the square. It might be a little hard to get all the [competitive] agencies engaging in a meeting together, but the outcomes are fantastic!

No longer to different agencies do parallel projects that double up on budgets, making it harder to drive profitability. Now the initiatives are being aligned to drive further sales success and manage consistent brand messaging.

In order to make the most of the meetings he set out some high level objectives:
 
Marketing Objectives
-         Drive brand and challenge the market
-         Get customers to buy stuff, spend more money & stay with us
 
Why have an all agency, all company marketing WIP?
-         increase communication (internally and between agencies)
-         better planning
-         increase consistency
-         reduce costs
-         accountability
-         challenge each other for best ideas

In order to execute it you need a good leader, a lot of will-power and openness to new experiences on the part of participants. And, of course, you need some metrics that put people’s balls on the line. That will make sure the all agency WIP is successful!

With the right strategic thinking up front, any reporting process for a consulting job can be as simple as filling in the boxes.

Last week Joanna and I were a bit overwhelmed by the number of pages of notes that we had both taken in the research and scoping phase of a knowledge management project for from a large listed Australian Corporation. They have over 300 franchises.  Together we had documented a myriad of new and legacy communication mechanisms and numerous technical systems that included email, intranet and CRM etc. The challenge now was to make sense of the data and sensibly combine our notes to create a report!

I started by looking at the mind map notes we had taken and identifing some common themes around what each person we interviewed had told us.  By finding these themes I could create a list of things that we could report on for each communication system they had.  Like this:

When I showed it to Joanna she breathed a sigh of relief! By using this framework and filling in the boxes about the key themes for each system, she can easily ensure coverage of the important issues across every communication mechanism.  And, more importantly,  work out what else we had to find out.

The creation of a framework allowed us to get our heads around a massive amount of data and also allow collaborate on the reporting framework in a quick and easy fashion. All with the confidence that no strategic issues will be missed.

I use this framework approach to any work I do. If I don’t have a framework to think from the tasks will feel overwhelming. It’s just like when you have lots of things to do. Writing a list very rapidly dispels any angst you may have.

Have other people seen frameworks like this?

Here’s my response to a thread on Catalyze about people blaming the users for not knowing what they want.

Users always know what they want, but you need to work how ‘how’ they want it!

Firstly, the word ‘User’ is ok.  It is an age old discussion, I used to ban the word in my business! Now I’ve changed my mind.  When people say ’users’ at least we all know that they are talking about the people in front of a [computer].  

Users are best described in the context of what they are doing and tasks, scenarios, workflows (Human decision making) and personas are better at defining this than user cases.  At least we can all easily empathise with ‘things people do’.  It is a common communication tool.

In terms of user needs, what people need is common.  It is as simple as Food, Water, Shelter, Sex and something for their BIG brains to chew on.  What people want is determined by their previous experience.  When we look at what a business is trying to achieve with technology it is almost always dealing with things that people already do. 

The fundamentals of interactions that humans make are all the same. Offices work in the same way.  They all have resources, money and information to manage.  Looks at banks they are all the same at a fundamental level.  If we don’t understand this then we will continue to make stupid design decisions that people (users) don’t understand.

Therefore the need already exists and the user knows exactly what they want.  The problem is, have you appealed to their current or future need in a way that they expect based on their previous experience?  Before ERP existed we did things on paper, before internet banking existed we did it on the phone and before that in a branch.  It’s all the same.

Because we are all the same at a base level, things can be modelled and broken down into common patterns.  Patterns of interaction, workflow, interface design, code, architecture, the list goes on.  It is these patterns we have to thank for the reuse we always try to do in technology design.  It just that the things we are trying to reuse were not designed the right way at the beginning. 

The only differentiatior for a system that delivers the same fundamental business need is a 1) brand externally to an organization and 2) a culture internally.  I’m not writing off innovation here.  We can still do things better.  But at the fundamental level we are all humans and there is a core set of expectations that must be met.  Otherwise we get confused.

Things should work as people expect and if it is new then their should be indicators in the process so that people learn as they go.  Just look at the ipod, a completely new interaction process for music but it works the way we expect based on our fundamental experiences with wheels, lists, stop and go buttons.  It even knows we are lazy and doesn’t need to be turned off.

Senior execs should know exactly what they want! And you must ask them!
If a business customer doesn’t know what they want be very scared.  If they don’t then you must drill them for it.  They are smart and they are sure to have a strategy to achieve positive outcomes for the business.  You must understand this to make any useful decisions about their technology.  However, don’t expect them to tell you how their staff work or how technology should be designed. They are managers…

I unequivocally showed in my Masters of Organisational Psychology these that the senior management of a 300 strong Australian organisation had a completely different perception of organizational culture to employees.  They have very little idea about how their staff work, particularly if the system is poorly designed and staff go about their day with work arounds that make sense to them.  The only way, in this case, to find out about this is to ‘watch ‘ them.  As someone said what people tell you IS different to what they actually do.  Just think about the last time to taught someone to drive a car.  Could you remember the detailed processes?  No, you had automated it.

Also, you can’t just show management pictures and expect them to get it.  If the pictures are coloured in then they will likely dwell on the ‘design’ not the ‘function’.  Instead you need to get them invo vled and make them think.  I engaged some executive stakeholders with a simple card sorting exercise last week and my did they change their tune after that.  In another case I engaged them by getting them to watch a video of their customers (users) wth their system.  That also go them off their asses.

What rigorous process?
Combing two screens into one is possible if the workflow is consistent with the expectations of the user.  Before deciding to combine, delete or add screens you must find out exactly what people expect and how they go about the tasks involved.  Only when this is documented in a worlflow can you work out what screens to put things on. Find this stuff out by engaging the person ‘on the ground’ not their boss.

1)    Start with the executive
•    Find out what their business (unit) does?
•    What are their issues and concerns?
•    What do they want to achieve next and what are the KPIs?
•    What is the status of the existing technology?
•    What do they think they want to do - the innovation?

2)    Confirm these needs with the users
•    Look at the context and choose the right kind of research.  You will need to see how well defined is the problem space.  Is it a common tool? How long have people used it? Are there other solutions available (check them out)? How well is it understood? If the tehnology is new how similar is the interaction process to existing technology?What are the risks?
This will help you understand how and how often to test during the SDLC.

3)    Feed it back to the executive and tech team and update your requirements

4)    Plan the interface with the whole team to leverage usability, business, technical and design innovation.

5)    Flesh it out and test it if you like – no surprises is my motto!

6)    Work out the technology requirements to deliver that interface

7)    Build the technology and manage quality

8)    Test it with users

9)      Keep testing and measuring

My business is driven to ensure that IT projects are successful and one way of achieving this is to get all people (customer experience, business, IT etc) in an IT project working together at all stages of the project.  In addition to this, they must have successful communication and empathy for each others’ perspectives.

I once saw a user-centred design project where all the right step were put in place to involve users but the requirements at the end we not implementable.  The developers had been ignored. Why?

By understanding the way different people think we may be able to overcome communication barriers between tech and business teams.

As a psychologist, entrepreneur and business person I have always been keen to understand why the business and IT factions of an organisation have so much trouble communicating with each other?! To my mind, much of it can be explained with a Star Trek metaphor.

Trekkies have unique (predominantly left brain) ways of thinking about problems and their experiences that is lost to predominantly right brain thinkers.

Let’s look at language for example. 

Only once you understand a language framework, say English, you can interpret what people are saying.  If you learn a second language at an early age, you will have a propensity to learning a third, forth or fifth language.  This is because you have learnt the framework of ‘learning a new language’.  If you haven’t learnt this framework at an early age you will find it incredibly hard to do so in later life.

Culture is a framework that we use to associate meaning around social interactions in our lives.  In some cultures a particular behaviour, say spitting, is a ‘normal’ thing, however, in another culture that behaviour is entirely unacceptable.  Exposure to multiple cultures provides an individual with the framework to accept behaviours that are further from their original cultural ‘program’ .

Frameworks are used by technologists to make sense of logical, but complex , data relationships in computing. Once a code framework is learnt, say Java or CSS, then within that a developer can spend hours, even days ‘having fun’.  Without the framework to think from, any programming will be totally pointless. With a framework coding can be incredibly creative.

If a left brain thinker gets enough exposure to Star Trek, the overarching logical framework is learnt and can become very interesting to them.

 

 

Man, there must be a book in this… Let me know if you want to help me write it, I’ve started!

 

BUSINESS OUTCOMES

Business/IT communication is so important to understand because of what it does to our lives.  We end up with train wrecks like the Australian Customs Service new process management system.  The design project was not user-centred, people were not consulted and it was really hard to use. This meant that the Unions boycotted it, nearly shutting down the Autralian economy, as freight stockpiled on our wharves.

Even if the users are involved early in the project, poor communications between predominantly left and right brain thinkers can still make the project fail. Let’s tackle the major left/right brain dichotomy first. Then we can get users involved.  Only once we understand how people think can we clear the mind space to look into the finer details of project communication. 

 

LOGICAL FICTION

A recent experience on a technology project lead me to ask a business focused techie if she thought that kids who like Star Trek will likely enjoy technology careers? ‘YES!’ was the resounding response.  ‘I can’t put my finger on why… but that is absolutely true!’

I pondered this and asked a few friends if they agreed.  All of them did, however no-one could give me a good reason.

Talking with Mark Neely one night over a glass (bottle) or two of red, he put it down to ‘Logical fiction’, which is why it appealed to left-brain dominant people (e.g. technical).  In a later email he expanded on this:

The best way for me to explain what Mark is on about is by discussing frameworks.
 

WORKING WITHIN A FRAMEWORK

Things that we do in life are necessarily bound by frameworks.  They help us draw meaning and understanding from our experience. 

 

BACK TO STAR TREK

I never got into Star Trek myself, and was not interested to even try and get it. I’m right brain dominant. People are polarised over Star Trek, why? Because it comes down to the predominance of left vs right hemisphere thinking. 

Once people understand the framework they may become a trekkie.  They are part of a group of people that have learnt to draw meaning from the framework set out by the creators.

Logical reasoning and frameworks are the reason that trekkies have a propensity to take up programming.

WHAT ABOUT MY CREATIVITY!?

Usability, accessibility and information architecture people are often involved on projects too late in the process. For example, I was at one of the Commonwealth Bank’s digital agencies doing a presentation on Accessibility. It was after a new microsite had been completed and the site was pretty much inaccessible to people with visual impairment. We wanted them to change some of the interactions to be more accessible.  The resounding response was… why should we do that?  It will limit our creativity! Nevertheless, they had to rebuild the product.

I contrast this to my recent experience working with an agency right from the start of the technology project using a user-centred design approach.  They absolutely loved the experience and their perception was that they could be entirely creative within the constraints of the framework which we set up with them at the beginning.  Because these boundaries were set and there was little change to the framework during the project, the technical people felt totally comfortable with their role, and able to be creative.

The user-centred design approach can still go wrong, particularly if the developers are not consulted in the beginning (by a business analyst or similar).  There’s nothing worse than simply giving the developer a requirements spec without consideration of what their code can actually do (or not do).

In the example where usability was wheeled in at the end of the project, the techies were left to their own devices and put a lot of time and effort into creating their own user interface framework.  When I threatened to change it down the track they became very defensive.  In the second example the framework was created with them at the start of the project. It was correct from a users perspective and did not need to be changed.  Therefore the project was on time and on budget.

THAT’S ‘COOL’ CODE

The picture keeps falling into place for me.  If you don’t acknowledge a technical person’s creativity, and get them involved at an early stage in the project, then you will get them offside and forever have a battle on your hands.  Technologists ARE creative.  Given the right framework, they will come up with something that, in their mind, is incredibly funky!

Business people always neglect developers’ creativity. How do I know this?

• Both developers and business people do not get involved at the start of projects.  Either the developers go ahead and build what they think will work or business people try to force their view onto the technical team, without due regard for the tech guys knowledge, skills and abilities.
• Business people wonder why, when things change half way through a project, developers get shitty. 
• I even inappropriately told someone they couldn’t be creative working for a bank.  If I understood what creativity meant to them I would not have said that.  I know now.
• Einstein was creative…