Shape of Things

Even as the excellent Usability Week kicks off in Washington, D.C. this week, I’m thinking that web usability doesn’t get much respect. It’s like the offensive lineman that opens the holes for the superstar running back.

There are good people telling us about web usability, but not enough designers are listening.  The gospel preached by the Nielsen Norman Group and Steve Krug is not mystical – it’s based on real studies with real people.

Still, web designers go on making life miserable for people visiting their sites. Why? They want the coolest site on the planet, even if the intro screen makes us wait 30 seconds. And who cares about visitors? What do they know about great design anyway?

Well, we might not know design, but we do know frustration. And how not to return to a web site where we’ve had a bad experience.  Like the site of the small record label I want to support, but which continually makes me wait more than a minute to go from one page to another or doesn’t send me access to my password when I forget it.  Or, the online magazine that makes me navigate through multiple links in order to increase its page views.  Or, the major newspaper that doesn’t make it easy for me to subscribe to a blog.

Jakob Nielsen’s recent study of 20 high-traffic sites showed improvement over past years, but still 80 percent had page download times of 19 seconds or more.  Nielsen sets eight seconds as a tolerable level for page download. So, usability isn’t anywhere near where it should be, given the fact that for most companies the web site is the face of their entire business.

While designers fiddle, web consumers burn, taking their money to companies whose websites show them a little respect.

What website practices cause you frustration?  At what point do you abandon a site? Who does usability well?

Note: Donald Norman of the Nielsen Norman Group will be speaking at the highly recommended Business of Software 2009.  Steve Krug spoke last year.

In January 1969 the Beatles went into the studio to prepare for a live concert and a new album.  Recording sessions were filmed and almost everything – from musical noodling to offhand comments to deep discussions – was captured on audio tapes.  The resulting film and record were named after the song “Let It Be.”

A blow-by-blow account in the book Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of The Beatles’ Let It Be Disaster, documents the painful end of a decade-long relationship.  It also offers lessons to business managers about paying attention to the changes their organizations are going through.

By “Let it Be,” George had become a major songwriting talent, but John and Paul refused to acknowledge his remarkable ascent.  In many ways, he was still seen as the adolescent kid of the group.  George reacted according to casting: bitter, sarcastic and uncooperative.

John, who formed the band and was its leader for most of its history, had become withdrawn and uncommunicative. His new obsessions: Yoko and hard drugs.  He was barely an active participant in the sessions.

With John’s abdication as a leader and George’s recalcitrance, Paul had to take on too much responsibility.  He pulled out every trick – cajoling, pleading, joking, challenging – but to no avail.  He ended up coming off shrill and egotistical.

Ringo, well, was Ringo.

“Let it Be” was a train wreck.  But, could it have been avoided?

Maybe — if someone had filled the leadership void left by Brian Epstein’s death.

Maybe — if someone could have figured out the now-conventional approach of letting individual members of a band record solo albums to give them a creative outlet for passions not shared by the rest of the group.

Maybe — if The Beatles could have taken a step back from their commitments and tried to define a common goal and sensible timetables.

What they did instead was to ignore much of what was happening around them and try to conduct business as usual.

The events leading up to The Beatles breakup are eerily familiar to anyone who has managed a business: Employees growing on divergent paths, at different rates, or not at all.  Wasteful spending. Scattered priorities. The perceived need to do more, more, more. An organizational structure riddled with cracks.  Without continuous monitoring, discussion and adjustments, companies can find themselves in the same situation as The Beatles in January 1969.

Let it be at your own risk.

A few decades ago, I worked at a very large electronics company.  A good company, with good benefits and pay. My parents and relatives were proud. I was almost immediately distraught — stuck in a job with little chance of advancement, working for a  boss who was miserable and wanted to share his plight with others.

In those times, you didn’t leave a company like this one.  But, my mental survival almost depended on it. I got out and went to work for a little-known association, where I was given a huge amount of responsibility. I learned more than I ever had in my life.  I was happy.

One of the things that is happening as a result of the recession is that people are realizing that multinational conglomerates are not the future.  We’ve sacrificed too much to accommodate them.  The future lies in small- to medium-sized companies with a big distribution arm enabled by digital technologies.   Ping Fu of Geomagic calls this digitally enabled cottage industry.

One of the hopes we can cling to as we emerge from this recession is that the big dinosaurs will be replaced by small, agile companies that are driven by passion. Companies that make their employees their first priority, followed by their customers.  Profits will be critical, but they will not be obscene. There will be a proliferation of what Bo Burlingham calls Small Giants.

Peggy Noonan, who has gone through some pretty big changes herself, says it well in her February 20 column from the Wall Street Journal:  

I end with a hunch that is not an unhappy one. Dynamism has been leached from our system for now, but not from the human brain or heart. Just as our political regeneration will happen locally, in counties and states that learn how to control themselves and demonstrate how to govern effectively in a time of limits, so will our economic regeneration. That will begin in someone’s garage, somebody’s kitchen, as it did in the case of Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak. The comeback will be from the ground up and will start with innovation. No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local. That’s where the magic will be. And no amount of pessimism will stop it once it starts.

At Convergence 2009, I heard a lot about technologies that connect different entities: physical with digital, humans with products, different functions within the product development cycle.

As Ping Fu pointed out in her keynote, technologies run in advance of social and cultural change.  The big challenge: How do you get people to cooperate and share for the benefit of the greater whole?

Rus Emerick of Schneider-Electric points out that almost every company uses individual achievement as the basis of its personnel evaluations.  As a teenager, Rus was told by his grandfather that he knew nothing until he shared knowledge.  He’s taken that philosophy to Schneider-Electric, implementing DSSP throughout the company for annual savings of millions.

Sadly, most of us aren’t like Rus.  We use knowledge like currency, keeping it to ourselves and meting it out grudgingly in small drips.

Companies need metrics to award knowledge spreading, and it can’t be competitive.  Otherwise, we get into an “I share better than you” competition.

Maybe we can take a cue from the NBA.  In an article in the NY Times magazine, Michael Lewis talks about non-traditional measures of performance used by the Houston Rockets to gauge the contributions of Shane Battier.  By conventional statistical measures, Battier is an average player.  By the Rockets’ measures, he’s an MVP candidate.

Are there measures out there to reward those who are exemplary in coming up with new ideas and spreading them throughout the organization? Send your comments here.  I have a few good books to give away for the best ideas.

Rus Emerick won’t let well enough alone. And that’s great for his organization,  Schneider-Electric.  Emerick has been an evangelist for DSSP within Schneider, and as a result the company is saving millions a year applying scanning-based technologies across its design and manufacturing processes.

Rus is rare in his zeal and vision.  But, there are plenty of people with insights in your business that can be leveraged. It’s win-win. The person becomes more engaged, and the company reaps the benefits of better information flow. 

Think of the value a support person could add if encouraged to not only help with problems, but to systematically share information on customers’ needs and frustrations.  How about if your sales people made it part of their jobs to solicit stories of successful projects involving your products or services — stories that could then be shared within your customer community?

As Rus says, it’s good to be the star of your rodeo, but there is so much more possible.  If you are a manager, give your people incentive to go beyond their jobs.  Help them redefine themselves. Don’t let yourself or your people be limited by the rodeo ring.

“We’re not for everybody” — my wife, Peggy Kelly.

“I don’t want to get another pair of Hush Puppies” — Nick Lowe

There will never be another Michael Jackson. Or another “Hey Ya.” Or another Pong. The days of the massive hits are over. Customization rules. 

It means you need to profile your customers and decide who you want to engage intensely and how, and who you need to leave behind. Your product or service can’t be for everyone.  If you’re lucky, you can develop a devoted tribe that will interact with you, spread the word about what you are doing, and give you a nice welcoming reception for new offerings.

Not being for everybody is marvelously freeing.  Once you define who your customers are — their needs, problems, working habits — and address them with respect and great products or service, the relationship can deepen beyond vendor/buyer.  You can engage in honest dialog. If you make a mistake, you’ll likely have a bit of a cushion to pad your landing.

Find your tribe, and be true to it.

Did anyone ever come up with a brilliant idea or make someone feel special while drinking a latte, talking on the phone and checking stock prices simultaneously? With apologies to all the multi-tasking geniuses out there, I doubt it.

The irony of texting and tweeting is that we often lose that precious moment — the real experience of it — while we try to document it.  There are times when the simple life is better, as David Mantey, editor of Product Design & Development, points out.  

Simple has its values in business too.  In an SD Times editorial, Simon Galbraith, joint CEO of Red Gate, asserts that as software developers pile on the features, version after version, they just might be missing the opportunity to make something truly great.

When times get tough, evidently marketers get loud. And insistent. And intrusive. At least that’s been my experience over the last two months. More junk calls, despite Do Not Call. More spam. More hectoring. And as James Brown once said “You’re like a dull knife that just ain’t cuttin’. Talkin’ loud and sayin’ nothin’. 

Don’t we all have enough on our minds — keeping jobs, paying bills, staying healthy — that we don’t need rabid sales people attacking us?  Before you mildly annoyed me, now you’re making me angry.

Instead of punching up the decibels and frequency of attacks, how about giving listening a try? Find out what customers are dealing with and figure out a way to help them, even (or perhaps especially) if it doesn’t have anything to do with your core product or service.  Pass on savings.  Give discounts. Rather than sell, solve a problem. Help a customer save time and money, or do more with less.  Provide some value. 

Now’s the time to listen. And, hey, a little empathy wouldn’t hurt.

Life would be hard without assumptions.  We assume people can understand us when we speak.  Otherwise, we’d have to get painful verification one….word….at….a….time.  We assume if that engine light doesn’t come on our car is running OK.  We assume we’ll be allowed a certain amount of behaviorial leeway from friends.

Sometimes within companies, however, we can assume too much, especially when it comes to our internal language.  The same lingo that greases the skids inside our companies might bring communication to a screeching halt in the outside world.  I was speaking to a phone rep today and he was telling me that I would need to call back when “my order was provisioned.”  Huh?

This style of tribal language runs rampant within technology companies.  A suggestion: Anytime you are communicating something to the outside world, run it by a few friends or customers to see if it makes sense.  Doesn’t take much time, and it could prevent a big assumption gap.

Matthew Scudder, the long-running character in Lawrence Block’s detective series, once coined an acronym for how he would treat his new wife.  It was SCHLEP. I believe it stood for share, cooperate, help, love, encourage and protect. 

It always struck me as a good mantra for every relationship: spouse, significant other, friends, clients, business partners and customers. 

If that sounds too personal for your customers, think again.  It’s all personal and it’s all a relationship.  Bad things happen when we turn a customer or partner into a thing.  Good things happen when we treat customers as sentient human beings.