The second of my two posts on my work team’s blog about UCD Gathering, the remote conference I attended in October.
This blog post covers the third theme I wanted to highlight: how we can better demonstrate the business impact of human-centred approaches.
At Service Design in Government, I discovered that service designers see themselves as Mario. But that is an unrealistic model for what service design should be. Read full article
11 comments
Last week I attended the Service Design in Government conference, held here in Edinburgh. It was a hugely thought-provoking event. Almost every session I attended was excellent, sparking new ideas and thoughts that I am still getting to grips with almost a week on. Read full article
4 comments
A useful guide for those of us trying to push user research forward in our organisations.
Business design can be very different to service design if it’s focused on the wrong things. But Ben Holliday notes:
Service design is business design when we focus on and care about designing for both internal staff and external user experience together as front and back stage of how a service works.
All too often business design is narrowly self-serving. If it’s not focused on ultimately improving things for your users or customers, it will do damage in the long run.
What Perez’s shock decision tells us about Force India’s uncertain future
The current turbulence surrounding Force India F1 Team is possibly the most extraordinary Formula 1 story in over 20 years since I began following the sport. The fact that a driver, Sergio Pérez, has played a pivotal role in his own team going into administration was scarcely believable when the news emerged last Friday. As this story by Dieter Rencken outlines, the plot is thicker still.
I greatly admire the Force India team. When I was a child I was a huge fan of Jordan, from which Force India is descended via various owners. And they have consistently demonstrated that they are the team able to deliver the most on the scarcest of resources.
As Dieter Rencken’s article notes, the odds are more stacked against them than ever. The fact that they have finished 4th in the constructors’ championship for the past two seasons is an awesome achievement. And the fact that such a successful team finds itself in such financial trouble is a damning statement on how unjust F1’s current payment structure is.
Annoying online ads cost business
Results from a study of users of Pandora has quantified the effect of shoving adverts in users’ faces. As part of the experiment, a section of users were served fewer ads than normal, and another section were served more ads than normal.
…after 1.5 years of being exposed to the experimental conditions, people did use the service more, the fewer ads they were served. At the end of the experiment:
- The low-ad group listened for 1.7% more hours weekly than the control group.
- The high-ad group listened for 2.8% fewer hours weekly than the control group.
Guardian Media Group digital revenues outstrip print for first time
The company’s annual report, which covers the 12 months to April 2018, shows the Guardian website attracted an average of 155m monthly unique browsers, up from 140m the year before, with an increased focus on retaining regular readers rather than chasing traffic by going viral on social networks.
Digital revenues — which include reader contributions and online advertising income — grew 15% to £108.6m, as income from the print newspaper and events business fell by 10% to £107.5m.
Could it be that — shock horror — focusing on quality rather than vapid clickbait is the sustainable business model journalism was looking for all along?
If you say something is “likely”, how likely do people think it is?
Very interesting analysis of how people perceive what probability is meant by phrases such as “likely” or “real possibility”. It turns out there is a lot of scope for misinterpretation.
However I would quibble with the following:
You are trying to assess the probability that the [product launch] doesn’t happen. The way to frame your bet might be: “If the product fails to launch, I receive $1 million, but if it does launch, I get nothing.”
Now imagine a jar full of 25 green marbles and 75 blue marbles. You close your eyes and select a marble. If it’s green, you receive $1 million, and if it’s blue, you get nothing. You know you have a one in four chance (25%) to get a green marble and win the money.
Now, which would you prefer to bet on: the launch failure or the draw from the jar?
An interesting thought experiment, but not quite true. People prefer to receive an amount of money sooner rather than later. So you’d still rather place the bet on the jar, even if you thought the probability of product failure was 25% — because you wouldn’t receive the money until the unspecified future date.
Thanks to my colleague Lauren Tormey for the tip.
This is an 11 year old article that has just recently come to my attention, but it resonates today. It describes how graphic designers have protested about being seen as the ones that make it pretty; how they have sought to be given more respect, as if being tickled in the tummy.
I found myself at a design conference listening to still another demand that clients give us designers that coveted place at that legendary table where all the big decisions are made. Sitting next to me was one of my favorite clients, someone I treasure for her levelheadedness and good humor. “I’ve spent hours at that table,” she whispered to me. “It’s not that great, you know.”
We found out that tunking (pronounced “toonking”) is a word this team uses for blunt critique, made with the intentions of the people on the receiving end uppermost in mind. It’s honest feedback.
The people doing the tunking don’t hold back. They say what they really think. They do this because they want the people being tunked to succeed.
I really like this. And it’s important to appreciate that giving honest feedback can be just as difficult as receiving it, if not more so.
Research: Women ask for raises as often as men, but are less likely to get them
The theory that women are paid less because they are less likely to ask for a pay rise appears to be nonsense.
The bottom line of our study is that women do “ask” just as often as men. They just don’t “get.”
Even we were surprised by the results. We had expected to find less asking by the females. Instead, we found that, holding background factors constant, women ask for a raise just as often as men, but men are more likely to be successful. Women who asked obtained a raise 15% of the time, while men obtained a pay increase 20% of the time. While that may sound like a modest difference, over a lifetime it really adds up.
The rise of business bullshit — and how we can fight it
The modern organisation is obsessive about collaboration and consultation – but encouraging everyone’s opinions on everything invites bullshit.
Social media should have taught us by now that more opinions aren’t necessarily better…
The same applies to work. More consultation = more bullshit.
This is so true. Increasingly, I find myself feeling exasperated if I’m asked the provide an opinion on something I have no evidence about. We are often pressurised into giving opinions — “you’re supposed to be the expert”.
Baseless opinions fly around left, right and centre in any workplace. The last thing the world needs is another middle class dude like me with yet another opinion.
Let’s find the evidence instead.
Excellent piece by Wojtek Kutyla on why UX needs to get out of its comfort zone, and an excessive focus on technology — and the temptation to make binary declarations.
We are all reasonable creatures and we know how to seek rationale when we’re dealing with daily tasks. If we’re hungry, we’ll ask ourselves: “What do I want to eat? Eggs? Avocado? Or a burger?”. If we’re planning to buy a new car, we’ll consider it carefully, basing our ultimate choice on how functional the vehicle is and whether we can afford it.
Yet, when faced with a design problem in a professional setting we’d often go for a solution that does nothing else but fulfils a set of requirements based on assumed values communicated by stakeholders. All too seldom we’re doubting their choices and ask “what’s the rationale — where did this come from?”. Perhaps we should start doing that?
People often say things like “change is hard” or “people don’t like change”. That is a dangerous delusion. Read full article
Comment
Paul Taylor argues that small teams are undervalued, drawing an interesting comparison with introverts.
These small teams promote autonomy but also a better approach to collaboration. Having lots of small teams means they all need to be able to work together and to be able to access the common resources of the company, in order to achieve their larger goals.
The thinking has precedence in things like Brooks’ Law – which states that “adding manpower to a late project makes it later.” Getting bigger often means your communication overheads grow and doesn’t necessarily yield faster results. As Brooks said: “Nine women can’t make a baby in one month.”
Chinese firms pile in to sponsor World Cup 2018 amid Fifa fallout
As Western firms have begun to desert Fifa due to the corruption scandal, Chinese firms have seized the opportunity to “to get their brands in front of billions of global eyeballs”.
It has been noted that companies are more willing these days to take a stand (see also ABC cancelling a sitcom because its star is racist). But this appears to be a western phenomenon.
Chinese firms seem to have no qualms around being associated with Fifa. Perhaps this is a dimension to keep an eye on as China becomes more and more important on the global stage.
This year’s Fifa World Cup provides a unique opportunity for little-known Chinese companies to get huge amounts of exposure to global consumers.
Most customer relationships don’t stumble because something went wrong. Your best customers know that mistakes happen.
It’s what happens next that can cripple the relationship.
I would be tempted to agree with Seth Godin here. But it actually reminded me of the recent incident with Ghostery.
Ghostery is a browser plugin that is supposed to protect your privacy online. But on Friday, when attempting to email its users about GDPR, they accidentally leaked the email addresses of hundreds of their users by CCing them into the email — the most basic and facepalm-worthy data breach of all.
I once briefly used Ghostery. But I uninstalled it after I found it kept on crashing my browser.
My response in this case was to find it deeply ironic that Ghostery should fail at the one thing they were meant to do. It’s true “you had one job” stuff, this. So I deleted my Ghostery account entirely.
Perhaps if my prior experience with Ghostery had been more positive, I would have been more lenient.
Your employees’ user experience should be a strategic priority
Enterprise software is notoriously bad — and that’s bad for business.
A poor user interface sends a message to employees that their time and commitment have little value, and that — just as my engineer colleague believed — the problem is their own fault. Then leaders wonder why their people don’t innovate or embrace change…
There’s a lot of good stuff here, so I had some trouble picking just one thing to highlight. Read on to see why actually watching people try to use your design is vital.
A year after United’s public-relations disaster
What happened after United violently removed a passenger against his will from an overbooked flight? What do you think…?
Flyers may have said in that survey that they’d avoid United, but they really kept choosing whichever airline offered the best price and itinerary. And often that was United. In the month that followed the Dao incident, United flew more passengers than a year earlier, posted its biggest gains in months in passenger-miles flown, and had its fewest cancellations in its history (and fewer than any of its main competitors). A month after the incident, United’s share price hit an all-time high.
We all bemoan bureaucracy in the workplace. Its prevalence is down to it being easier to impose a process than to cultivate a strong culture.
Clothing sales are on the decline. Guess what? Millennials are to blame.
In seriousness though, it is interesting to consider the declining role of clothing in how people express themselves.
As clothing sales have declined, technology purchases have climbed — as have experiences.
So, pay for a good smartphone. Go on an experience. Brag about it on social media. A new pair of jeans would seem weak in comparison.
Who needs fashion these days when you can express yourself through social media? Why buy that pricey new dress when you could fund a weekend getaway instead?
BrewDog's latest marketing stunt has generated predictable outrage. As the company grows, its usual controversial approach may become unsuitable, and it might lose some friends. But here is why I still love BrewDog. Read full article
CommentEthan Marcotte on the “delicate act” of working with a design system. It’s the same challenge facing anyone working with a hub and spoke structure.
How do you balance a drive to standardise designs (or business processes, or policies, or whatever), against the often legitimate requirement to meet unique local needs?
It’s easy for an organization to look at that one-off pattern as a problem of compliance, of not following the established rules. And in many cases, that might be true! But it’s also worth recognizing when a variation’s teaching you a lesson: namely, that your design system isn’t meeting the needs of the people who’re using it.
Anyone who reads this blog will know by now that I am no fan of Facebook. But I will defend them on this. The newspaper industry's attempt to pin the blame of their woes on Facebook is wrong. Read full article
2 comments
The big problem with change programmes
An intriguing connection between modern human narcissism and corporate change programmes. Did they both start in the same place?
Far from pursuing some unrealistic dream, perhaps we’d be much happier if we learned to live with our imperfections, neuroses and human frailties…
Maybe we need to accept that not all problems are there to be fixed. That our organisations are flawed. They always have been and always will be.
Innuendo about the difficulty of working with Japanese firms constantly surrounds Honda. But perhaps the pragmatic Toro Rosso team can make the relationship work. Read full article
CommentAs designers have gradually become more senior (or perhaps more experienced), their role in organisations has evolved. But it’s not necessarily a good thing.
Products will always be made through compromise. But in a world where Designers are focused on balancing business needs against user needs, while other stakeholders are focused exclusively on business needs, these compromises will almost always favor the business.
Why Microsoft Office is a bigger productivity drain than Candy Crush Saga
Computers can certainly continue the process of specialisation, parcelling out jobs into repetitive chunks, but fundamentally they are general purpose devices, and by running software such as Microsoft Office they are turning many of us into generalists.
Net promoter score considered harmful (and what UX professionals can do about it)
You have probably been asked in a customer satisfaction survey how likely you would be to recommend a company to a friend or colleague. This is used to measure the net promoter score, and it has become very popular.
Here, Jared Spool has comprehensively outlined why net promoter score is not as valuable as businesses hope.
As usual, the problem is that net promoter score is a tool that has been sold as a silver bullet — “This number is the one number you need to grow. It’s that simple and that profound.” And businesses looking for a silver bullet have lapped it up.
But of course, reality is much more complex than that. Net promoter score, when applied consistently by a business, probably does have some value. But it should be used as just one tool of many that you should be using to ensure you are meeting your customers’ needs.
The most popular strategies companies use to save money also kill innovation
An interesting take on business process improvements such as Lean and Six Sigma. It suggests that while such process improvements improve reliability, they also make innovation plummet. Moreover, the effects are difficult to spot because they take so long to emerge.
Innovation requires different ways of doing things, and this is exactly what this system ends. But they don’t tell you that in the ISO9000 handbook, do they?
Making good decisions as a product manager
While this article was originally aimed at product managers, the author concedes that it is relevant to any role.
Essentially, it argues that the key to good decision-making is not just understanding what the correct decision would be, but also how quickly you should make each decision. In other words, you need to know which decisions to agonise over, and which to make quickly.
You can be right 99% of the time, but if you’re wrong the 1% of times when it really matters, you’re not an effective decision maker. The takeaway is that when the stakes are high, you should work a lot harder at making the right decision.
Ashamed to work in Silicon Valley: how techies became the new bankers
It definitely feels like there has been a sea-change in people’s perceptions about Silicon Valley in the past year or so. This article goes some way to explaining why.
MBA jerks used to go and work for Wall Street, now wealthy white geeks go to Stanford and then waltz into a VC or tech firm…
The focus of Silicon Valley used to be innovation with the wonderful bonus of money on the side of that, but those two things seem to have switched – just as the pencil-pushing mentality of finance in the 70s became the champagne lifestyle in the 2000s.
Your strategy should be a hypothesis you constantly adjust
Why do strategies often “break down in the execution stage”? According to this study, it is often because big companies fail to learn from new information.
Staff on the ground will often fail to raise the alarm for fear of being blamed for failing to execute the strategy correctly. But often, the flaw was in the plan itself.
The Volkswagen diesel emissions case is one stark example:
VW’s culture — specifically, its executives’ lack of tolerance for pushback from people lower in the organization — seems to have played a major role in its diesel-emissions fiasco… VW leaders lost out on the opportunity to revisit and update the strategy. Meanwhile, engineers had developed software to fool the regulators — postponing the inevitable.
This article suggests taking a ‘strategy-as-learning’ perspective instead. It’s an approach that reminds me a lot of Lean UX methods.
How Netflix started the UX revolution – Justin Ramedia, Prototypr
The Netflix v Blockbuster case study is familiar to most by now. Even so, this article contains some interesting insights.
Time to remove the Lib Dem invisibility cloak
On all these people trying to set up moderate, pro-EU political parties.
Like it or not, if you want a pro-EU, pro-business, pro-tech UK political party, there is already one that has over 100,000 members, 12 MPs, thousands of councillors, and an internal democracy that compares favourably to every single one of its competitors.
With an implied probability of 30% that Scotland will become independent, it is already costing us too much. Read full article
1 commentWhy user-centred design is like a trade. Read full article
Comment