Category Archives: Technology

Design or function?

It’s not a new question, should something be built to be beautiful or should it be focused on usability instead? I’ve seen this question play out while developing web sites and print materials for years. The sweet spot is that the design actually improves usability like the iPhone that’s both beautiful and easy to use – “your world in your pocket” as Steve Jobs said. From my experience, that’s very difficult and very rare. In a past life, my company mailed two 16-page full color magazines out to employees to help them make their benefits decisions each year but no one ever read them and the call center was jammed for two weeks. So, over the course of five years, we went to a simple postcard and an interactive web site with good content and modeling tools and the call center heard crickets chirping rather than the phones ringing. It can work the other way too, one time I was building a web site and the prototype was so ugly (against my will by the way) that people couldn’t figure out how to use it. Don’t worry; we fixed it!

Until yesterday though, I never realized how different the design of an elementary school building could be or the outside pressures for functionality that influence design. I am lucky enough to be on a team that’s designing a new K-5 elementary school in the district where my kids attend. It’s an expensive and important decision – but it’s also a confusing one that’s filled with trade-offs about expenses (of course this is a public project), utility, instructional needs, access requirements, etc. Here are my observations from a tour of four schools:

  1. Why build computer labs with desktop PC’s when every student has their own iPad? This one has been solved by a regulatory requirement unfortunately – all the standardized tests that students are required to take and the fact that they are taken online, on computers that must be hardwired to a network. So, you have to both waste the space on computer labs and buy all of the equipment as well.
  2. At one school we visited, they had used a beautiful industrial design throughout that carried through to the entryway. But, birds built nests on the beams and sat on the lights and exposed pipes and pooped on the children and visitors as they walked underneath each day. The solution, compromise the design by adding some ugly screens and netting.
  3. One school put their media center – a combination library and technology hub in the center of their school and put windows all around to let in natural light from the surrounding hallways. Now you have a fishbowl where kids – remember those 600 people that you’re building the school for – lose focus while inside the lab because everyone who walks by is always waving or showing off.
  4. What colors should you use? The temptation at an elementary school is to go with primary colors but yellow can look dirty and red can be a little too emotional. Green is great because it can represent peace and harmony in the right shades and blue can be calm and friendly – do you think it’s an accident that the logos for Facebook and twitter are both blue?
  5. Do you add enough parking to accommodate every parent or guardian when all of them only come to the school at the same time a couple of days a year?
  6. Another dirty example. Would you ever put carpet in the lunchroom to reduce noise when you know that kids spill everything? It’s apparently cheaper and less slippery but really?
  7. What about recreational or community space? The main purpose of the building is to instruct students but gyms and soccer fields and rooms for groups to meet are in short supply and after all, the community owns this building. So, do you design flexible space into the cafeteria and classrooms so they can be used outside the school day? One school we saw had a partnership with the city that threw in the money for a second full size gym.
  8. How about lockers? Do you put them in the classrooms for easy access and require kids to share the space? Do you put them in the hallway outside the classrooms where you have more space? Do they have doors or not? What about space under the locker for wet boots?
  9. Security is a huge concern in the post-Columbine world. Some experts say to take out all of the windows so those who would do harm are left in the dark and others say put more in because natural light is better for learning and so authorities can easily see into the space.
  10. I’ll end where I started, with technology. Do you put screens and projectors and so called “smart boards” everywhere or do you design the space for the future more flexibly with walls that can be projected and written on with the use of a new adhesive film. What about all those iPads, do you put Apple TV in every room so you can go right from each student’s iPad to an LED LCD on the wall?

Those are just the top ten things that stuck with me. I’m going to be living this project over the next six months and then hopefully seeing a great new school in 2016 that will make students, staff and our community proud! Let me know if you have ideas and wish us luck.

Musical Memories

We all have musical memories right? When that song comes on the radio and takes you back in time, you can feel those memories, smell them, maybe even taste them. That’s amazing isn’t it? That’s why music is so important.

Here are some of my musical memories:

  • George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning” takes me back to my dad’s Dodge truck, it was raining lightly, he was smoking and we were driving around looking at our crops
  • Chicago’s “You’re The Inspiration” takes me back to a gym at a school dance where I had my first kiss with a girl who was quite a bit taller than me
  • Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” takes me back to a time with my brother in his girlfriend’s Chevy Chevette driving way too fast on a gravel road where we grew up
  • Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” takes me back to my grandma’s basement at Christmas because my cousins got “Thriller” on cassette and we just sat there and listened to it over and over

Maybe you’re one of those lucky one’s who can actually make music. It’s interesting how many of us try, even Seth Godin says he played the clarinet for eight years but then corrects himself,

Actually, that’s not true. I took clarinet lessons for eight years when I was a kid, but I’m not sure I ever actually played it. Eventually, I heard a symphony orchestra member play a clarinet solo. It began with a sustained middle C, and I am 100% certain that never once did I play a note that sounded even close to the way his sounded.

I watch – and listen – to how much progress my son has made with the trumpet this year. It’s amazing. He played it for the first time about 20 months ago and that was painful, I’ll admit. The dog hid, we put him in a room with doors that we could shut, the neighbors called to ask if everything was ok. It was, and now it’s much better and it sounds like music. The whole band sounds like music. He’s not getting calls to join The Roots or anything but I can tell what he’s playing. Maybe he’ll be in the high school pep band, maybe he’ll get a scholarship to play the trumpet in college, maybe he’ll get paid to play the trumpet – who knows?

What I do know is that he’s learning a system and once you learn a system like math or music or another language, you can transfer that experience. For those of you who don’t think that technology is changing everything, even the way people learn, let me tell you about an app called SmartMusic, check it out at http://www.smartmusic.com/ This is a piece of software that listens to you play an instrument and then gives you instant feedback on the quality of the notes so that you can fix them. That’s a revolution. I wonder if it would have helped Seth? I wonder if these first memories of my son playing the trumpet will be one of those moments that I remember for my whole life or if it will be those first bad notes instead? What are your musical memories?

 

 

Forget Law And Medicine, Try Software Engineering

I was reading yet another article about Yahoo and Marissa Meyer this week. Apparently she’s fixed the company’s biggest problem – talent. Read all about it here on QZ

I pulled a couple of insights from this article that I can’t help but comment on. First, the long tenured Head of HR at Yahoo was replaced by a former private equity exec. Then, they went on a buying spree, but not for market share or synergies, which drives many acquisitions, Yahoo bought 37 companies including Tumblr for over a billion dollars – for their talent. For other CEO’s who have “talent” as a goal, and they all should, this is an interesting strategy right? Their CFO was quoted as saying they lost a lot of talent and companies didn’t even want to be acquired by them so they had to pay a “Yahoo Premium.” Apparently their reputation has been repaired to a certain extent because the number of job applications more than doubled in the past year and they are the third highest paying company for engineers in the Silicon Valley. I’ll get to the pay issue again later but one other interesting place that Yahoo doesn’t score well is being a great place to work. Mayer’s ideas in that area haven’t been as big a hit. According to Glassdoor, which provides the salary info too, Yahoo did not make the 50 best places to work list like their other high tech peers.

Now let’s talk turkey. If you clicked the link to the QZ story above, I hope you noticed the table that lists average base salaries for engineers. If you didn’t, let me enlighten you. I remember when I was growing up, not that long ago by the way, the cool careers were law and medicine. They came with good pay and prestige – the two most popular TV shows were St. Elsewhere and L.A. Law. I wanted to be a lawyer for a very long time – until I bombed the LSAT and did some internships that is. I have friends who are doctors, that’s no picnic either, lots of headaches with insurance and patients. Here’s some advice for you parents out there – get your kids into software engineering or let them develop their own social network app.

At Juniper Networks, the highest paying company in the Silicon Valley, the average base salary for engineers was $159,900 last year. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook all pay over $120,000 a year.

Oh, and by the way, there is no end in sight to the demand for software engineers. Everything runs on software and everything will for the foreseeable future. Remember, Yahoo bought 37 companies to get their engineers. Forget clarinet lessons and getting into the Ivy League, let your kids absorb and learn to love technology because we need them to take care of us so we can eventually retire.

Social Media Breakfast?

Have you ever been to a social media breakfast? It’s almost an oxymoron right? It could be on a list with bitter sweet, definitely maybe, jumbo shrimp or seriously funny. It sort of sounds like one of those virtual conferences where people synchronize their watches to tweet each other or all agree to post their status on Facebook from the comfort of their homes along with their coffee and toast.

Well, it’s a real thing where people gather together in an actual place and have breakfast and discuss social media. I’ve been involved with the Minnesota version of the breakfast, SMBMSP, and am part of a panel discussion on the use of social tools inside the firewall at SMBMSP #63 on Monday, March 3: http://smbmsp.org/2014/01/smbmsp-63-behind-the-firewall-social-networking-for-employee-collaboration/

There are SMB’s all over the country from Boston to Seattle. The event in Minnesota started in February 2008 and has been going strong ever since. I’m rather fond of their informal motto of “community + coffee with a side a bacon.” According to their web site,

“Since it’s founding, SMBMSP has been a regularly occurring event where like minded folks across the Twin Cities get together to share & learn about social media. Online membership has grown to over 2,300 professionals from all different disciplines, and many partnerships, jobs, career changes, and friendships have blossomed because of this group’s ability to connect people who enjoy sharing what they know!”

That kind of sounds like what social media was intended to do right? Bring people together? I know facebook started out being a way for college kids to rate their peers and find out if they were single. Now that almost everyone is out there, it seems like people share too much that is worth too little. Twitter was an ingenious innovation, limiting the length of communications! After working in corporate America for almost 20 years and creating lots of 70 page PowerPoint presentations and sitting through full day meetings, that’s a concept I really like. It’s much harder for people to understand though with the hash tags and the mini urls and the language all it’s own. LinkedIn is easy but it’s status as a meat market of sorts for talent and recruiters is a little hard to get past. Do you understand all the social tools like Pinterist, Snapchat, Instagram, Google+, Vine, and the hundreds of others? Some brands have like 9 icons on the bottom of their page so you can “connect” with them. I mean really? Are they bringing people together? Are they even doing a good job with their brand?

However you feel about social tools, find a local social media breakfast and connect with people, dress business casual, create a new tradition and be alone together.

What does it mean to be social?

I guess Facebook is kind of important with over 1 billion users. But, did you see their first ad campaign? Are they overdoing it a little comparing themselves to a chair? Here’s a great cartoon about it from my favorite marketing cartoonist, Tom Fishburne.

I still know a lot of people who are not on the Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter and their lives go on. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like chairs. I also know a lot of people who are on Facebook who don’t seem like they are accomplishing much of anything. But I guess they are trying to redefine being social and I’m all for progress.

Then there’s enterprise social, or using private social tools inside the firewall. There are a lot of players in that market too but I’ve worked with NewsGator, who is doing a great job of making big companies more social. Sure, it’s easy if you have a great corporate headquarters where everyone sits and gets free snacks. But, what about everyone outside of corporate? Don’t you want your corporate marketing people and your remote sales people to be better connected? What about your global supply chain? How about that consumer insights person in Asia that just ran a test on a new product that you may never see? If you’d like to learn more about building a successful social workplace, check out NewsGator’s latest white paper

What about people who are actually social? In our new neighborhood, where we’re all new and trying to build a community? We do things like get together – you know, in person – every Thursday night. And last night, we were sitting in our living room minding our own business just after it got dark and our doorbell rang. The guard dog sprung up from the floor and ran to the door and I was expecting a desperate politician or a gutter salesman. I was pleasantly surprised to look down and see a little pumpkin container filled with candy and a note. The note encouraged us to make a copy and share a “boo” with two other neighbors. What a nice change from e-mail chain letters right? We’re doing it tonight, making copies, filling containers with candy and ringing doorbells. What about you? Are you social?

The acronyms are all wrong

There are millions of business acronyms. At my last company, someone went through all the trouble of actually developing an acronym dictionary for new sales people. That’s a pretty helpful idea isn’t it? We’ve all been in that meeting where things are moving fast and people are referencing acronyms that we don’t understand but we don’t want to interrupt and ask what we’re talking about because people will think we’re dumb. One of my favorite acronym conversations happened on Friends when Chandler’s boss said that the WENUS (weekly net usage) has not been good at all over the last few weeks and that’s going to create a bad ANUS (annual net usage). The acronyms were clear but unfortunate. I even have a good story from my past. My first job out of college was an Assistant Analyst, you had to be careful how you abbreviated that title, I was trying to shorten it once and came up with Ass. Anal. and realized I needed a new job.

Anyway, it seems that many of our system acronyms, although cute, actually allude to the systems themselves solving the wrong problems. Take the LMS or Learning Management System for one. A friend of mine posted a question on LinkedIn the other day about lessons learned from LMS projects. I enthusiastically commented that usability was overlooked for functionality. So, maybe it managed learning or reported on learning or connected learning data to employee data but what part of that is good for the learner? In my experience, very little. We actually had a group that went from two clicks to access learning on their old system to about six clicks in the new one. And don’t think that those six clicks were as fun as playing doodle jump either – they were confusing and you had to do things like “book a course” before you could “take a course” and then you had to “confirm participation” at the end in order to get credit. We also had to train people to use the system. Yikes. One time I did a series of usability sessions before launching an intranet site and when we asked about training, people emphatically said not to send them paper because they wouldn’t read it and not to invite them to training because they wouldn’t come. They were a little crabby but isn’t that how it should be? The new system should work better than before right? The LMS should help learners, the Content Management System should make content better and easier to organize, the Applicant Tracking System should help applicants. In my recent experience, all those acronyms are a lie. How about yours?