How to Save the World

Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

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RSS FEED IDEMS: How to Save the World

  • The Short Shelf Life of Information (and the Long Life of Memes)
    US Energy Map
    A great example of how to use a graphic to convey a ton of information. It shows all the sources and uses of energy consumed by the US, and how much of it is lost, in a single picture. It's from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and it's slide 31 of 50 in this PowerPoint deck by Marty Sereno of UCSD on Peak Oil.

    Here are six important discoveries I've made as a result of fifteen years' work in so-called 'Knowledge Management':
    • Almost none of the 'just-in-case' archived content of most corporations gets used at all, and the older it gets the less likely it is to be used
    • Most public Internet sites are used mainly by job-seekers and by students for homework, not by customers or even the general public
    • What is valued is know-who (not know-what) – connection not collection
    • What is valued is just-in-time knowledge acquired through context-rich interaction (i.e. conversation)
    • But even most conversations are only valued by their participants, and only until a few days after the conversation has passed (by which time it has either been internalized or forgotten)
    • What is valued is information to which value (meaning, suggested action) has been added through visualization, synthesis and analysis 
    I don't think any of these discoveries should come as a surprise to anyone, yet we blithely continue to behave, in most organizations, as if they were not so. The cost and energy that goes into acquiring 'raw' information, organizing, presenting at and attending conferences, and populating and maintaining Intranets, public Internet sites, document repositories, groupware etc. is staggering, even though most of this work has little or no value.

    What does have value, but only for awhile, are these five types of content:
    1. Conversational content -- face-to-face, Open Space, phone, Skype, desktop videoconferencing, IM, blogs, podcasts -- mostly of value to the participants in the conversation (who have the necessary context to understand it), and only until they have internalized it (shelf life: maybe a week)
    2. Visualized and otherwise synthesized, filtered and analyzed content -- the work of information professionals that (like the example visualization above) tells readers/listeners succinctly either what something means, or what should they do about it (shelf life: maybe a year before it's obsolete)
    3. Project content -- the organized collection of stuff relating to an active project, in wikis, file folders or other places accessible to the full project team (shelf life: the duration of the high-activity stage of the project)
    4. Know-who directories -- the (rare) up-to-date lists of who knows what (not to be confused with internal phone directories or organization charts, which are generally valueless unless you are studying how management wishes things worked) (shelf life: as long as they're relatively complete and current)
    5. Stories -- context-rich anecdotes about things that have actually happened, from which we can learn, and which can provoke good ideas to respond to (not to try to change) those realities (this includes cultural anthropology stories -- direct observations of and conversations with customers 'in their native habitat') (shelf life: as long as the culture that gave rise to the story remains unchanged -- usually a long time)
    I have excluded technical/learning content from this list because it is so subject-specific; many of us, especially those in entry-level jobs, need technical manuals and regulatory reference materials until we reach the level at which we basically know these cold or depend on subordinates to know them. Procedure and policy manuals, despite the energy that goes into them, are generally ignored or worked around by those who are supposed to use them (usually for good reasons) so I would not include them in the above list. 'Best practices', as I and many others have explained elsewhere, are rarely worth the paper they're written on.

    How much of the work of information professionals and 'knowledge managers' is actually focused on these five types of information? In my experience, much less than half. And much of that work is spent maintaining these collections way past their shelf life, to the point that they're no longer valuable, and start to add to the clutter that makes it harder to find the good stuff, and may actually be so obsolete that they're dangerous.

    Most bloggers (and those in other media like radio, TV and print) have figured this out. It's not just that we have short attention spans that causes us to forget what was printed or broadcast last week -- we lose the context, so if it's important, we need to be re-briefed anew anyway.

    This has been a hard lesson for me. I keep a table of contents of my past blog posts by subject (though I confess I'm slow to update it). That's because I naively think people (beyond just students working on assignments) will actually be inclined to go back and re-read what I wrote a month or a year ago about a subject. For the same reason, I hotlink back to earlier articles, in the hope that this is a 'shorthand' way of providing readers with context when I write about a relatively complex subject. Even though when I read others' blogs I almost never click back or read their tables of contents.

    Silly me. My review of the hits on my pages suggests that 95% of the page-reads on my blog are articles less than a week old, and that almost no one clicks the links to my older posts (except the aforementioned students working on assignments). Readers are telling me: Don't ask me to re-read an old article, tell me, here and now, the gist of that earlier article and why it's important, and then get on with the new stuff.

    So why do I still maintain the table of contents and continue to link back to earlier articles? Because it helps me to organize my own thoughts. This blog is an extension of my personal memory. It's where I think out loud about what's important to me. Even my Signature Essays list is a note-to-myself of my best writing, to use when thinking about future writing.

    So I get it, dear readers: If my blog blew up tomorrow and the archives were gone, all you care is whether I have my own back-up copy for my own use, so that I can keep writing tomorrow. If you're a blogger and you think your archives are valuable to anyone but yourself, if you think anyone, even your most faithful reader, cares about what you wrote more than a week ago, think again. Your archives are for your use, not theirs.

    In a way this is a relief. It means I need not feel guilty about my table of contents being nine months out of date, except for the fact it is hard for me to research what I may have written on a subject more than a week and less than nine months ago. It means I need not agonize about migrating my blog from the obsolete Radio Userland platform to something newer -- I need only migrate my most recent one or two posts on each of the subjects on my table of contents, plus perhaps my Signature Essays, to the new blog platform, and no one will care about the lost threads to the rest (though it might be worth paying to keep the old posts on Radio Userland just to preserve my Google Rank). All the rest of my writings and their table of contents could be kept on a flash drive for my personal reference only.

    Do any other bloggers find this discovery -- that no one cares what you wrote last week -- as sobering as I do? When you click on a Google link and find yourself on on 'old' 2005 or 2003 blog post, do you read it or do you automatically back-arrow to find something more current?

    This is important, because the same thing applies to 95-99% of what organizations are trying to keep in their content repositories, internal and external websites -- what they hopefully call 'organizational memory' -- no one values it and no one cares.

    The consolation in all this resonates with my most important learning from 35 years in business:

    The value you bring to an organization is not what you do, what processes and infrastructure and other 'organizational changes' you implement, or even what decisions you make. Those things are all transient; they are gone before you know it. The only sustainable value you bring to an organization is what you show and teach and inspire in other people you work with. Because those things are infectious, so that even when you've gone, even when the people you knew there have gone, that learning and that important information and those mind-changing ideas that you precipitated will go on and on, passed virally from one person to another. Those viruses are what makes the organizational culture what it is. That is no small thing.

    That's why the so-called 'leaders' are no more valuable in any organization than anyone else. We each have the same number of hours to infect others with our knowledge, our passion, our ideas and inspirations. Viruses only spread one-to-one. You can't do this 'top-down'. Nothing of value can be 'cascaded downwards', no matter what they might tell you in MBA school.

    It's also why businesses established by owner-managers, once the owner-manager leaves, are only worth something if they have been non-hierarchical -- if the owner-manager has generously and continuously shared ideas, information and authority to the point the employees left behind have co-created and internalized the culture.

    That doesn't just apply to business. The only sustainable value you bring to any social group of which you are a member is what you show and teach and inspire in others in that group. That's the value you bring when you write your heart out on your blog. That's the value you bring when you raise your children, when you spend time in the communities that matter to you, when you stay up all night talking with someone about the things you both care about.

    You may never be credited as the originator of a virus. It is enough to know that it lives, on and on, in the minds and hearts and beliefs and actions of thousands or millions of people who have passed it on, mutating and evolving, until it does produce a collective change. It is the only way real change occurs. That is what culture is, and why it is so hard to change it. We all change it, in ways we can only imagine. Your idea could be the flap of the butterfly's wing that causes a social tsunami on the other side of the world.

    That should be enough. Enough to keep you working, blogging, creating, thinking, sharing, conversing, doing what you can to make the world a better place.

    Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:48:34 GMT

  • Sunday Open Thread -- October 7, 2007
    boracay Second Life
    Me in Second Life. (Everyone here is beautiful)

    What I'm Thinking of Writing (and Podcasting) About Soon:

    Coping With the Strategy Paradox: I met recently with Michael Raynor, who wrote The Strategy Paradox. He's now looking at what else we can do to deal with this paradox, and he poked some holes in my argument that what we need is resilience, not planning.

    Does Our Formal Education System Preclude Natural Enterprise and Natural Community?: There is some strong evidence that the education system destroys our creativity, and our natural propensity and ability to collaborate, self-organize and self-manage. Can we hope to have Natural Enterprise and Natural (Intentional) Community unless we first re-form, or blow up, the education system? Is the kibbutz a better environment for learning, or does it merely invoke and reinforce social tyranny, conventional wisdom, short-term, uncreative thinking and industrial-economy action without allowing time for research, imagination and reflection?

    What Do We Do With Old Social Network Content?: When MySpace was succeeded by FaceBook, what happened to all the old MySpace stuff? Perhaps old blog posts are like old newspapers, of no use to anyone except historians. If our posts are essentially 'forgotten' once they slide off the home page into the archives, perhaps we should just delete them and, if they become important again, resurrect and update them. This 'loss' of thousands of terabytes of 'information' into forgotten archives may be just a reflection of its conversational, transient nature, rather than a catastrophe of unprecedented loss of collective memory.

    A Coming Class/Generational War?: Exploding economic disparity, and the widening wealth and opportunity gap between the old and the young, may be sowing the seeds for a class war between the old & wealthy, and the young & poor, that could transcend geographic borders.

    Second Life as a Platform for Videoconferencing and Distance Learning: I'm part of an upcoming forum on the future of education -- the forum is being held in the virtual reality environment Second Life. After just an hour there, I can already appreciate why it has such enthusiasts, and how it might revolutionize videoconferencing and distance learning.

    Why We Handle Risks So Badly: In our failure to prepare for and mitigate risk, as decision-makers, citizens and investors, we play out our essential human nature.

    Why We Need a Public Persona: The journey to know yourself is the first step towards understanding how the world works and becoming truly yourself, which is necessary before you can make the world a little better. As de Mello said, this journey is mostly about getting rid of the everybody-else stuff that has become attached to us as part of our social conditioning, and getting rid of this stuff is perhaps what ee cummings meant when he said the hardest thing is to be nobody-but-yourself when the world is relentlessly trying to make you everybody-else. From birth, we pick up all this everybody-else stuff that clings to us and changes us, muddies us. We are rewarded by society for doing so. I find the 'figments of reality' thesis helpful in this hard work -- realizing that our minds are nothing more than problem-detection systems evolved by the organs of our bodies for their purposes, not 'ours'. That 'we' are, each 'one' of us, a collective, a complicity. What makes it so hard is that becoming nobody-but-yourself opens you up to accusations of being anti-social, weird, self-preoccupied, arrogant etc. So we end up, I think, having to adopt a public persona that is, to some extent, not genuine, not 'us' at all. That's hard. How can we make this public persona as thin and transparent as possible?

    Why are Gas Prices So Low?: Delayed until I have some clue as to what the answer might be. This has got me stumped.

    Vignette #6

    Blog-Hosted Conversation #2: This week I'll be publishing my narrated, edited interview of Jon Husband, which I recorded earlier this week, on hierarchy, community and education, and recording a third interview.

    Possible Open Thread Question:

    What would happen if we just abolished the education system, and in its place allowed communities to create their own sets of learning objectives, programs and assignments, which would be done hands-on, collaboratively with others of the student's choice, mostly involving research and practice out in the community, and completion of which (at the student's own pace, their own way, self-managed) would entitle them to claim certain credentials, apprenticeship-style?

    Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:47:30 GMT

  • Saturday Links for the Week - October 6, 2007
    inconvenient truth
    Image from An Inconvenient Truth: Blue curve is average temperature on Earth for the last 650,000 years, red is amount of CO2 in the atmosphere for the same time period. Lower yellow dot is today's CO2 levels. Top yellow dot is where it will be in 2030 (median projection). That's Gore on a forklift beside it.  Difference between top and bottom of the blue curve is half-a-mile-thick ice at the bottom (ice age) and today's climate at the top.

    Videos of the Week:

    Charles Hall Explains Peak Oil in Ninety Minutes: A thorough explanation of the concept, with some great graphics in the accompanying slides.

    James Surowiecki on the Future of the Organization: A rambling half-hour video of the Wisdom of Crowds author on theory X (we work only because we must) and theory Y (we work for a creative outlet and self-actualization as well), bottom-up self-managed communities (open source etc.), the failure of top-down motivation, Goldcorp's Wisdom of Crowds online exploration of where to mine for new gold, how humans and primates behave altruistically and respond to status symbols, and why experts and leaders are over-rated.
    Thanks to my colleague Gordon Vala-Webb for this link and the one that follows.

    Malcolm Gladwell  on Collaborative Genius: A half-hour video by the Tipping Point guy from small-town Ontario who argues that individual genius is not as valuable as that resulting from collaborative effort. Modern complex problems, he says, requires persistance rather than genius, and assessment of large numbers of diverse ideas rather than a few great ideas.

    News of the Week:

    Canada Knuckles Under to US Blacklist and Refuses Entry to US Protesters: The Bush regime has blacklisted protesters at the last International Women's Day demonstrators arrested for passive civil disobedience, and the Harper regime in Canada is using this US blacklist to prevent liberals from entering Canada. No coverage on this in the mainstream Canadian media.

    Plexus Tackles the Complex Problem of MRSA: The Plexus Conplexity Institute is working on complex solutions to the challenge of MRSA, one of the growing epidemic of antibacterial-resistant strains of germs plaguing hospitals and communities. The major challenges are complacency and the alarming lack of compliance with hygiene practices by hospital workers, especially doctors. The approach to coping with these perplexing challenges is to engage the wisdom of crowds in the hospitals themselves (some of the best ideas come from housekeeping staff and patients) and use the complexity principal called 'positive deviance' (the principle that some people have much better approaches and practices than others doing the identical work). Notice how similar this is to Gladwell's point above? Thanks to education reform guru Barbara Dieu for the link.

    Co-op America Finds the Best Green Businesses are All Small: A fascinating survey of America's greenest businesses from the Responsible Shopper Boycott List guys suggests that to be really green you have to be small and community-based. This should not be surprising, but it is important.

    Why is the Dow So High?: HTWW wonders why, given the credit crisis, the collapse of the US dollar, and $80/barrel oil, the Dow is at record highs, especially since the price of US homes and volume of home sales are still plummeting.

    9/11 and the Anti-Feminist Backlash: A great Salon book review (of Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream) by Rebecca Traister wonders if 9/11 has given the anti-feminist movement incredible power and impetus to reverse decades of gains, and how our reaction against Arabs in the wake of 9/11 echoes our reaction against First Nations people during the first decades of our invasion of the Americas. Fascinating ideas here.

    Why is Google Stock so High: Dave Snowden wonders why Google stock is still so high when no one lloks at the ads on their pages.

    Sy Hersh Explains Why Cheney/Bush Will Attack Iran: Bad news all around, and Hersh is usually right.

    Thought for the Week: It's World Animal Week. Ten ways to make the world better for animals (from WSPA via Common Dreams):
    1. Help reduce animal overpopulation - Every year, between 6 and 8 million dogs and cats enter shelters in the U.S. Sadly, about half of these animals are euthanized because there are not enough homes for them. This problem is made worse by “factory-style” dog-breeding facilities known as puppy mills, which put profit above the welfare of animals. You can help by:
      • Adopting your next new friend from an animal shelter or rescue group instead of buying from a breeder or pet store.
      • Making sure your new companion animal is spayed or neutered.
      • Doing research to ensure you select the companion animal that's right for your family.
    2. Report animal cruelty - Despite the fact that animal cruelty is illegal, it remains prevalent in our society and often goes unreported. Not only do these acts cause animal suffering, they are linked to violence within families and society. You can help by:
      • Learning how to recognize signs of cruelty, abuse or neglect.
      • Reporting cruelty to your local humane society, animal control or law enforcement agency.
      • Educating yourself and others about how to properly care for companion animals.
    3. Live in harmony with your wild neighbors - As urban development continues to destroy wild habitat, animals are forced to live in closer proximity to humans. Here’s how you can help:
      • Prevent conflicts with wildlife before they occur by securing garbage cans, feeding companion animals indoors, blocking holes in your home.
      • Control nuisance animals humanely.
      • Keep your cat inside.
      • If you find an orphaned or injured animal, contact your local wildlife rehabilitator, police, or animal control officer. Never approach or try to handle a wild animal.
      • Create a haven for wildlife in your backyard by planting trees or shrubs, providing water and limiting your use of pesticides.
    4. Make more humane food choices - Billions of farm animals are raised and killed for human consumption each year. Most of these animals are subjected to cruelty behind the closed doors of factory farms, where they are treated as little more than meat-making machines. You can help by making informed, humane choices:
      • Beware of misleading labels such as “natural,” which have no meaning in terms of animal welfare and may be placed on products from animals raised on factory farms.
      • Choose only free range or organic meat, milk and eggs, or products certified as coming from humanely raised animals.
      • Make healthy food choices by adding more fruits and veggies to your diet and reducing your consumption of meat.
    5. Use the power of the purse - Every year, untold numbers of animals are subjected to painful procedures in safety testing for cosmetic and household products. Here’s how you can help:
      • Shop with compassion. Choose only products that you are sure have not been tested on animals. Look for the Leaping Bunny Logo – the highest level of assurance that a company is cruelty-free.
      • Write or call companies to let them know you will not be purchasing their products until they stop testing on animals.
    6. Live light on the land - Pollution poses a threat to animals in many forms. To help, follow the three “Rs”:
      • Reduce. Don't use "throw-away" products like paper plates, napkins, and plastic silverware.
      • Recycle. Rinse all recyclable glass and plastic containers that might attract animals and cut apart each ring in plastic six-pack carriers before discarding them.
      • Reuse. Take your own bags to stores to carry home your groceries and shopping.
    7. Be a compassionate traveler - The exploitation of animals is a common by-product of the tourism industry. Cruelty, confinement, neglect and abuse is the price millions of animals worldwide pay for tourist entertainment. Here’s how you can make a difference:
      • Support animal-friendly services and avoid those that exploit animals.
      • Don't accept culture as a justification for cruelty.
      • Never pose for a photo with a wild animal.
      • Never use animal rides or transport that could cause suffering.
      • Never buy wildlife souvenirs or products that may have endangered or caused suffering to animals, such as ivory, tortoiseshell, fur, and horns.
    8. Avoid establishments that keep wild animals in captivity - The public display industry exacts a heavy physical and mental toll on wild animals. Meeting the complex needs of wild animals is nearly impossible in captive situations. Here’s how you can help:
      • Don't visit marine parks, zoos, or other establishments that hold wild animals in captivity.
      • If you want to observe animals, visit places that allow people to view them in natural and humane conditions such as national parks, nature reserves, animal sanctuaries, or rehabilitation centers.
      • Try wild dolphin or whale watching. These eco-friendly excursions enable tourists to become immersed in the natural world of marine mammals without threatening the health and welfare of wild species.
    9. Be prepared for disaster - Tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes can strike at any time, with little or no notice. Without an easy-to-execute plan, families are sometimes forced to choose between their own safety and the safety of their beloved animals. Be prepared by:
      • Assembling an emergency kit in advance for your family including companion animals.
      • Evacuating early, if you can, before a mandatory evacuation order is issued.
      • Taking your animals with you and making sure they wear identification tags.
    10. Support international recognition of the importance of animal welfare - Billions of animals around the world rely on people to treat them with compassion. WSPA believes that an international agreement on welfare standards should become a key goal for the animal welfare movement in the 21st century. A Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare at the United Nations would recognize animals as sentient beings and act as a catalyst for better animal welfare provisions worldwide.

    Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:15:53 GMT

  • Baby Boom in Affluent Nations: Population Bomb Still Ignited
    Birth RatesFor decades, the United Nations and the US Census Bureau have been accusing those who have called for strong measures to curb global population growth scare-mongers and neo-Malthusians. Restricting population growth is politically very unpopular. It flies in the face of the world's dominant and most irresponsible religions. It conjures up fears of eugenics and Big Brother restrictions on individual freedoms. China's "one-child" policy is notorious for the corruptness and arbitrariness of its application. And most couples, come hell or high water, want between two and five children, with the average around 2.5.

    So it's not surprising that population forecasters are pressured to repeat the popular and reassuring mantra that global population growth is slowing down, that soon population will start to decrease, and that in many nations the problem will be too few babies, not too many.

    You can, of course, develop statistics to support just about any prediction you want to make, including that one. The problem is that the basis for this prediction is the one that has got us into so many problems before -- that what has occurred in the past will continue to happen in the future, only more so.

    Unfortunately, it never happens that way. That's why the predictors always give themselves wiggle room by predicting a 'low estimate' and a 'high estimate' along with the 'best estimate'. Here's what the UN and USCB say these will be for this century (population in 2000 was 6.1 billion, today we're at 6.7 billion, up 0.9 billion in the past decade):

    2050: Low 8.0 billion, Median 9.5 billion, High 11.0 billion
    2100: Low 7.0 billion, Median 10.0 billion, High 14.0 billion

    These median forecasts assume that struggling nations' fertility rates will continue to rapidly converge on the affluent country fertility rates of 1.85 children per couple (i.e. below replacement level). There is no basis given for this forecast -- it is simply a projection of current trends. The projection ignores several facts:
    • That in affluent nations, the presumption that population will go into permanent decline is proving false. The charts at right attest to this. Not only is absolute number of births increasing, the fertility rate (children per couple) is increasing at the same rate (i.e. this increase isn't due to the 'baby boom echo'). The UK has acknowledged its baby boom is creating a desperate shortage of midwives. 
    • That in affluent nations, fertility rates among older women are soaring -- couples who have waited until they are financially secure are making up for lost time, having more than one child late in life, with a record number of multiple births due to use of fertility drugs.
    • That exploding populations in many struggling nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America will have to be accommodated in affluent nations of Europe and North America, to prevent a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions, driving birth and fertility rates way up in affluent countries as immigration soars.
    • That whenever couples are surveyed, across the world, they always report wanting to have more children than they have been able to (I've reported on this before). So the presumption that fertility will converge 'magically' on 1.85 children per couple, and stay there, when the average couple wants 0.5-1.0 children more than that, makes no sense whatsoever. Even if all the struggling nations' fertility rates were to plunge to a more reasonable 2.35 children per couple, population would be at the High estimates above (i.e. 11 billion by mid-century and 14 billion by end-of-century, and still climbing). 
    Given the accelerating footprint of the average human on the planet, in every nation, none of us can imagine what a world with 14 billion humans would -- will -- be like. It will be desolated beyond our comprehension, its oceans turned to giant sewage lagoons and devoid of life, its forests razed to the ground and largely turned to desert, all non-human creatures extinct except for zoo specimens, and energy, breathable air and clean water desperately scarce.

    It's another 'inconvenient truth' for us to consider. Not that we have much of an appetite for considering such truths. Easier to bury our head in the (expanding areas of) sand and hope for magical solutions.

    Sources: Governments of Canada, US and UK -- vital statistics departments. UN and US Census Bureau population forecasts, 2006 revisions.

    Category: Overpopulation, the Crash Catalyst

    P.S.:

    KM World & Intranets 2007, November 5-8, San Jose California, McEnery Convention Center. I'll be there, presenting on the first three days. If you're going to be there too, drop me a line.

    Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:50:15 GMT

  • Sketching the Future of Innovation
    sketchLast spring I wrote about Bill Buxton:

    Many years ago, when e-mail and Internet access were just becoming the norm in business, I met a guy named Bill Buxton, who was then with Alias Research. His passion was trying to make virtual 'presence' imitate, as much as possible, physical 'presence', to get the technology to adapt to our preferred information behaviours, instead of the other way around.

    Bill's mantra was:

    Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the "things" that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.

    To that end, he had computer screens around a circular table in his office, each showing the head and shoulders, and the computer desktop, of one his meeting participants, so that virtual meetings were as analogous as possible to 'real' meetings. He had another screen above his office door with a picture of a door on it, that he could virtually 'open' or 'close' to signify whether he was, or was not, available for impromptu e-consultations and e-conversations.

    It was a little hokey, but Bill was (and still is, in his new work) on the right track.

    Since then, Bill has moved forward with his work on the Customer Experience and written a book called Sketching User Experiences. The concept of 'sketching' is summarized in the graphic above. It is a "low-fidelity representation" of the customer experience that is detailed enough to provide context for how the customer lives/works/uses your product, but short enough that it doesn't consume inordinate time to do so. The video (1:26:00 in length) explaining this in detail is here. He's very entertaining, though the technical quality of the video is not great, and the first half is more valuable than the last half, IMO.
     
    The key points he makes in the video and book are:
    1. Nobody creates new products from scratch -- almost everything produced today is a sequel, incremental, "n+1" product.
    2. Innovation only comes from inside organizations when "someone misbehaves and it turns out well" -- through skunkworks and other 'unauthorized' activities.
    3. The software industry (and, I would argue, just about every other industry) therefore only innovates and grows through acquisition.
    4. What is needed to remedy this is a much better creative design process.
    5. Apple was rescued from the brink of extinction when a returning Steve Jobs authorized its exceptional and long-suffering, long-ignored lead designers to do what they do best -- the result was the iMac and then the iPod. Although the iPod was best-of-breed and quite innovative, it still had (and has) many serious design flaws stemming from disconnects among the various groups of designers and engineers ("I have 50 different songs on my iPod all named 'Adagio'")
    6. If we critiqued books the way we critique technologies, the reviews would all be about the binding and the type font. We need to start critiquing all products by the quality of the user experiences they deliver, not by their features.
    7. Great successes only happen when they are preceded by miserable failures. That's why you need to do lots of experiments and fail often and early in order to learn how to succeed. The Prototype blog (who I thank for pointing out Buxton's new work to me) relays a great story that Buxton uses to illustrate this:
    The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
    1. Sketching is fundamental to ideation, and ideation is the critical 'front end' to any good design process. Unlike prototypes (see diagram above) sketches are freehand, gestural, and they telegraph intent and emotion. They are caricatures, exaggerations -- like the drawings of concept cars and new fashion models, accentuating what's different and engaging. They are tentative and exploratory, and the best ones resemble the design-idea sketches of Renaissance thinkers. They are quick and inexpensive, plentiful (so you have many alternatives to explore), and clear about what problem they're investigating.
    2. A challenge with sketching is: How do you sketch interaction? You need to practice a lot to become skilled at conveying feeling, phrasing, intention, movement in a sketch.
    3. As you move from ideation (sketching) to pre-production engineering (prototyping) you get more invested in fewer alternatives, the idea gets harder to change and criticize, and there is less room for new ideation and innovation. Sketching is getting the right design, while prototyping is getting the design right. Two different skills needing two different kinds of people. The more sketches you offer, the more open you remain to constructive criticism, iteration, learning from failure. Ideas are not valuable -- it's what you do with them that brings value. So entertain as many as possible, and use sketches to ensure they get a fair airing.
    4. The more persistent (how long and extensively it is available for review and consideration) and the more malleable a sketch is, the more thorough the iteration and the better the ultimate design. You need to give ideation time and space. You can't afford not to.
    5. Sketching, like music, involves both a craft (the technical skill) and an art. You need to learn the craft first. Both need practice to become good at doing them. Not everyone is good at it -- just make sure someone in your organization is.
    6. The art of sketching is to some extent a wizard's art -- it is about simulating and representing reality using 'illusion'. In the video Buxton shows several examples of how inexpensive illusions that simulate user experiences produce 'aha' understanding of unmet needs and design problems, and allow exploration of solutions to them. For example, he shows how, by pinning a complete newspaper to a wall and then trying to read it through a cutout cardboard 'window', you can start to appreciate the user experience of looking at a window on a computer screen without the context or awareness of all the rest of the content in the site, and start to think about ways to start to create information landscapes and context-setting mechanisms that overcome this online limitation.
    7. We have a dangerous propensity to think we understand things intellectually, like our customers' wants and needs, without reproducing the customer experience in sufficient depth to really understand their experience, and hence to 'get' experience.
    8. We also need to be good 'collectors' of information that could have value later. We need to be constantly paying attention. Buxton carries a camera everywhere he goes.
    This approach seems to work well for technology companies (hardware and software producers) but suppose your 'product' is, say, research reports, or improved health outcomes for your community? Can you 'sketch' new product design ideas using Buxton's techniques?

    I think you can. And I think that's where the idea of customer anthropology comes in. This anthropology is one of the techniques you use to research unmet customer needs. The transcription of the customer observations and interviews is a kind of "sketch" of your customers, and the needs that your enterprise might fill. But this isn't what Buxton is getting at when he talks about sketching -- he's referring to the process of ideation to address those needs.

    In my new job, we're starting to use customer anthropology to get a deeper understanding of our customers. We've identified about 15 distinct customer 'segments' with clearly different needs for the five types of research 'products' we offer:
    • Awareness products: Reports that filter and distill the firehose of information out there down to short, succinct explanations of what's happening in the economy, the industry and society as a whole that would appear to be important and will probably affect our customers.
    • Research products: More in-depth reports that explain what these current developments and trends mean to our customers -- how these developments are affecting our customers and how they're dealing with them.
    • Guidance products: Reports that suggest what our customers should do in response to these developments.
    • Events and spaces: Facilitated seminars, workshops and meetings, in physical or virtual space, that allow our customers to help each other learn about or act on these developments.
    • Tools: Applets, online or on flash memory or CD, that help our customers self-assess their knowledge or understanding of these developments and their implications to their businesses.
    As regular readers know, I generally tend to believe that things are the way they are for a reason, and before I propose changing things I want to make sure I understand those reasons. So my hypothesis is that the current design of these products is pretty good. But my instincts tell me that, like most products out there, the design could be much better.

    So I'm going to try to develop "sketches" of possible new designs for our five types of products, that draw on understanding how the current design has evolved, and on the results of our customer anthropology into what our customers want and need that they are not currently getting. I'd love to get Bill Buxton, a fellow Torontonian, involved in the process, to see how his technique translates to non-technology product design.

    I suspect I may have to 'hire' a sketch artist, though I'm certainly going to scour our organization to see if we have some hidden talent in this area.

    If this is successful, it could become the standard 'front end' to our ideation and innovation process -- the means by which we respond in a consistent, disciplined and creative way to identified unmet customer needs and develop new and better products.

    What do you think? Is this a process that might work in your industry? Is there a sketch artist in your future?


    Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:10:35 GMT

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