Mister Owl Don't Tweet...

So, my social experiment was a complete failure.  Only a couple of my followers retweeted, I was not awash with interest in my skillz as a deep-thinker and idea guy...  The experiment flopped.

However, this raises other questions around actual utilization of Twitter.  I have 80 or so followers on Twitter between my 2 accounts I post to.  Of these followers, 2 retweeted and I had 12 total clicks on the link I sent out.  So, my followers aren't all that active.  This is probably explained by the fact that they have jobs and can't spend all day watching Twitter and participating in my social experiments.

Oh well, I guess I will find a job the old-fashioned way...

Unless...  I wonder if I could get Ashton Kutcher to send out my tweet?

Tell Me Mister Owl, How Many Tweets Does It Take?

Do you remember the old adage that everyone in the world was six phone calls away?  It implied that you could, through your network of friends and acquaintances be put in touch with the famous person you wanted to chat with by being introduced to their friends and friends of friends.  Well, with the growth of social media, and with my recent job loss, I got to thinking about ta concept after a phone conversation with an old friend of mine...  How many tweets does it take to reach someone?  In particular, how many people would have to retweet for you to get a new job?

Here is the premise, an individual sends out a tweet telling their friends they are unemployed, what kind of work they want, and a link to their resume or something like their linkedin profile.  Friends retweet and friends of friends retweet (and so on)...  I would be curious to see how many tweets it took for them to get a  solid lead on a job.

Of course, this is the entire model that Linkedin likes to push for their jobs service (association via your network contacts), but I am thinking about it more from an active participation perspective, which I think has many implications for a variety of industries and channels.  Think about selling a used motorcycle, for example.  You could tweet that you have a bike for sale, with a link to the craigslist ad, your friends who share a love of motorcycles retweet (making it much more targeted, as we can assume their friends might have a propensity to like motorcycles as well) and so on.  Eventually, someone might see that you have just the bike they were looking for...

I am sure this has been thought of elsewhere, but it has kept my mind occupied for a few minutes, which is always better than watching TV when you are unemployed.

How many tweets does it take, Mister Owl?

By the way, When I send out my "out of work" tweet, please retweet :-)

EDIT:  If you aren't following me, I can be found @adownie...

The Experience is the Reward... Part Deux

I have been considering my earlier post about the concept of the experience of performing a task well as being a major part of the overall reward of completing the task.  I think there is certainly something there that needs to be applied to product design, in general.

In product design today, there are a variety of design methodologies which can come into play.  In some organizations, people focus on experience-based design, but they are typically talking about the experience of interacting with the product, not the experience of accomplishing some derivative goal.  Or, there are the schools centered around the concept of efficiency of design, or completing the task as quickly as possible so that you can move onto other tasks.  Some folks like go with a minimalist approach so that you can stay focused on the task at hand, while others (this is particularly true in software) like to load up the "interface" with as much information or interaction points as possible so you can do the most work from the fewest locations.

All of these approaches have merit, to be sure, but what if we strip away a couple of layers and think about what lies beneath.  Why do people use products in the first place?

I am sure there are several books on the psychology of product utilization, but I think we can easily sum it up into a couple broad concepts:

1. The individual derives physical or emotional satisfaction (pleasure?) from the product or by using the product to complete some task.
2. The individual is forced to use the product under penalty of some negative consequence.

Even simpler?  You either want to use it, or you have to use it.

That's pretty straightforward as a general concept, and yes, it is an oversimplification, but it can be applied to most anything.  For example, televisions.  You either have a top-of-the-line A/V system with high-definition and 7.1 surround sound which was professionally installed in your custom-designed home theater with stadium-style seating, or you have the TV that you could afford that sits in your family room in front of your off-the-shelf couch.  How is this an example?

Well, in the first setup, you have the satisfaction of knowing you have the best audio/video experience your money could buy.  Your friends envy your theater and on game day you invite them over and hold court like the king of TV land.  In the second setup, you aren't "unhappy", but you see the new, super-think LED TVs at Costco and you sigh.  Sure, your TV is okay, and your only other choice is to not watch the game at all (that would be the negative consequence).

Sure, maybe a nonsensical example, but the same concept could be applied to most any product.  I am sure most of us wouldn't choose to use Microsoft Outlook for work, but we aren't given much of a choice if we want to keep our job.  I use Google docs a lot because it does what I need it to do, and I don't have to pay for it.  So, I get the double-whammy satisfaction of accomplishing a task using the tool and saving money over buying MS-Office.

So, we established why people use products (for some value of "established"), now, what if we were to go a little deeper and look at the root motivations that reside somewhere in the core of human psyche.  Can we not say that people use products to either generate pleasure (emotional or physical) or to prevent pain (the "negative consequence")?  If this theory holds true, couldn't we design products with those root motivations in mind?

What I am thinking is a concept of "Motivation-based Experience Design", which basically means an intelligent design which adapts to the current root motivation of the user.  This could allow a system to support the goals it was designed to accomplish, but do so in such a manner as to make it enjoyable for the user.

In the software industry, people have been working on interface design for quite some time, and they have certainly improved.  However, I think there is still something missing, and that something is adaptability, actually, motivation-driven adaptability.  So, I use a Macbook Pro for most of my work, if you are unfamiliar with Apple products, it is a laptop with a 15" screen.  Attached to this laptop, I also have an 24" external monitor, where I do the lion's share of my work.  However, when I have an application open on the monitor, the menu bar is still over on the laptop screen, which is a hassle when I want to us it.

What if the operating system determined my focus and moved the menu bar to follow?  Or, what if, when I opened two documents that were very similar, the application automatically put the windows side-by-side and highlighted the differences (maybe the second document could have been opened with a "open & compare" menu item).  These are the kinds of things that take the daily tasks we have to do to avoid negative consequences and make them much more positive, therefore allowing us to get positive emotional benefit from completing the task.  They could be done by establishing what my current motivation was ("Oh look, he is using a word processor on an external monitor...") and then adjusting the interface to adapt ("Hey, why don't I move the menu bar over there so he doesn't have to drag the pointer waaaaaay over there...").  Or, perhaps the system could change your startup applications based on time of day and network availability.  Each of these things could make utilizing the operating system and applications much more agreeable, therefore tickling the pleasure centers of the brain instead of tripping up the emotional "pain" centers (like when you have to wait for all your applications to start, even though they don't have any network connectivity...).

I'm not trying to say that product design rooted in core motivations will change the world, what I am saying is that, as product designers, we should start really thinking about who we are designing for.  It isn't us, because we aren't our customers.  Also, to be honest, the people we think are our customers probably aren't our customers either.  Know who you are building the product for, before you design it, and make your product so it adapts to their motivations.  If you do that, and you manage to execute the product well, you will change your part of the world, that's for sure.

Just some food for thought.

The Experience is the Reward...

I was having an interesting conversation today about matcha tea bowls, a subject I wouldn't have thought to be discussing, to be sure.  What was interesting was the concept that their are varying levels of quality of the tea bowls, with varying levels of cost, with the more expensive ones being fired in such a way as to enhance your entire matcha experience.

That got me thinking about the traditional Japanese approach to many things, where the accomplishment of performing some task is, many times, secondary to the experience of performing that task well.  That is an odd concept for Americans to grok, and it is something that I want to bring into some of the projects I am currently working on and something I want to apply to some of my product designs.  Not in the sense as I think everything Japanese is awesome (even though sushi really is, and sake), but in the sense that the concept of the experience being the reward is one I think we could adopt to great benefit of users of our products.

This is something I will have to think on for a bit and flesh out.  I know that there is a lot written these days on experience-based design (I am mostly thinking of the book "Subject to Change", a good book), but I don't think the concepts being presented go deep enough.  I'll noodle on it a bit and post again on the subject.

The Importance of Important Things Which are More Important To You Than What is Important to me...

I was at lunch with a colleague in New York City today and I happened to notice that three of the employees of the establishment were behind the bar discussing glassware and bottle placement and that they had a tape measure out to ensure equality of item distribution patterns.

This was very important to them, as they spent quite a bit of time debating and trying new approaches to solving their issue, whatever the root issue actually was.  However, to me and, most likely, everyone else on the planet.  This was not an important issue.  In fact, I would probably guess that no one else really gives a shit about where the Kettle One bottle is in relation to the rocks glasses.  However, to those three, at that moment, this subject was of enough importance to cause them to take action, and it got me thinking about the concept of importance in general.

So, what makes something important?  I mean really?  Well, the simple answer is that we arbitrarily assign an internally ranked value to the accomplishment of some task based on our root motivations at that moment in time.  This is an interesting concept, if one were to deem it important enough to consider for a moment.  What we are doing is, in real-time, prioritizing tasks based on our given motivations, and then establishing an expectation that other people will accept the prioritization that we have applied.  Pretty selfish of us, if you think about it.

In my life, I have a lot of "important" stuff I have to get done that cause me to put off the things that really should be my top priority.  I am a bit saddened to consider the number of times I have told my daughter that I had to take care of some task instead of playing with her, when the task could have been put off for awhile.  Plus, I think Americans, in general, put work way ahead of family on the importance scale.  But thoughts like these are just scratching the surface of the topic, if we look a little deeper, the really scary stuff comes out.

How many times have you said, or heard the phrase, "I don't have time"?

Think about that for a second, then consider this.  Every time you say this or it is said to you, the real message is, "I have heard your request and have decided that my arbitrary list of tasks has a much higher priority than the request you have made of me."

Now, if you are talking about some task at work, this might be not only true, but completely okay to say.  However, if we are discussing interpersonal communications among family or friends, then it is really an insanely selfish thing to say.  I am guilty of this, as is everyone I know.

So, I think we should all consider this the next time we are about to utter, "I don't have time."

Oh yeah, and as to all our important things we do at work, we should also remember that what is important to us is never the same as what is important to others, be they a customer, a vendor, or the guy behind the bar who is wondering why the rocks glasses are too far to the left.  And to those of you who rant and rave about politics and how important the issues are?  Yeah, if it hasn't caused you to take some action, even something as simple as a phone call to a representative, then it really isn't that important to you and I would rather not hear about it.