Notes From the Road #5 - Regional Candy

NOTE: This is the latest in an ongoing series of quick dispatches from the trail - things I pick up from airports, hotels, cabs, meetings - anywhere really, in hopes that at least some of the observations will be interesting and even worthwhile. And also, since being out on the road for work usually throws off the schedule and gives me less time to worry about the little blog here, these Notes from the Road pieces have a internal timer set at 15 minutes. Whatever ideas, no matter how half-baked or thinly developed, get the 'Publish' treatment at the 15-minute mark.  

Ready, set, go. Fifteen minutes starts now.

Sometimes when you travel quite often the cities, towns, streets, airports, rental cars, and restaurants start to blend together into an almost indistinguishable collage of, well, 'somewhere else-ness.' You can really easily see the places you go and the organizations and people that you see as not being all that different from the next organization you've just visited, or the one you'll be calling on tomorrow or next week. The uniform blandness that is perpetuated by the endless series of 'pretty much exactly the same so you know what to expect' series of Starbucks, Applebees, Outback, Marriotts, and McDonalds that you encounter pretty much where ever you go. Ever had one of these?

All this 'sameness' is comforting in a way, I suppose. The challenges and stress of business travel often drives us to make choices that are low risk and low reward when in comes to lodging, eating, socializing, etc. It is hard enough to be away from home and the home office, who needs to wander lost in a strange town trying to find a local gastropub to sample some free-range chicken and a microbrew. Not when 5 dollar foot-longs are just off the interstate.

Last night I was driving home, from Cleveland to Rochester, about a 260 mile drive. On the one stop I made for gas and a Diet Coke, (at a small, non 'name brand' gas station), I picked up a handful of chocolate candies, one of them (the only one I did not eat), is pictured on the right. It is called an 'Ice Cube', and I had never seen them before. I asked the clerk about them, and she said they were really good, and it was impossible to have only one. I took her at her word, and she was right. They are really good. I bet I ate 5 or 6 in between Erie, PA and home.

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I actually have no idea if 'Ice Cubes' are a local, Ohio or Midwest delicacy or not. They could be sold anywhere and everywhere for all I know. But I had never seen them before, and the only way I would have seen them was by stopping in this local station somewhere east of Cleveland. I probably never would have bought some unless I took a minute to ask the clerk about them.  And its quite likely I may never have them again, unless I have to bo back to Cleveland.

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But I was glad that I did sample some of these little treats. If nothing else they gave me a good reminder that while we can allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking that the places we go, the people we see, and the organizations that we work with are really kind of the same, and therefore our strategies to working with and helping them can be the same as well; that often the small differences in these situations are the important ones to notice. Understanding these differences is often the key to truly relating, understanding, empathisizing.

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We can't always try and apply our Snickers bar solutions in a place that loves their Ice Cubes.

Notes From the Road #4 - Ice Buckets and Usability

I've stayed in plenty of hotels these last few years, and have found that fewer and fewer standard hotel rooms come equipped with in-room refrigeration of any kind. First the stocked mini-bar started to fall out of fashion in most rooms a couple of years ago, often to have the empty space replaced with one of those mini, college dorm-sized refrigerators. Which was to me, a far better deal anyway. The days of casually dropping $7.25 on a can of mini-bar Miller Lite or $3.75 for a Snickers bar have came and went with the pressure faced by organizations and people to carefully watch travel expenses. At least with an in-room refrigerator, one could store some extra beverages or snacks without having constantly hit the vending machine or wonder in the morning if it is ok to drink orange juice that has been sitting on the table all night, (it probably is not ok.)It needs a cold beverage.

But lately most hotels I've been in seem to have dropped the mini-refrigerators as well. I imagine it was simply a cost/usage decision. Many hotel guests were apparently not using the refrigerators all that much, and the energy costs to keep potentially hundreds of these appliances running when compared with their limited use made for what was probably a simple decision - get rid of the refrigerators. Not a big deal really, a convenience sure, but not generally a trip ruining development. Besides, there's always that ever present hotel room ice bucket and industrial ice machine down the hall.

Yep the ice bucket - that normally utilitarian device that is generally only used in hotel rooms, and typically is designed with about as much thought and care as is to be expected from a tool that for the most part simply needs to keep a pound or so of ice and the one, (maybe two) beverages that can be squeezed into the full bucket. Most hotel room ice buckets are the same - round, flimsy, and cheap. In fact, most of the time the combination of overfilling, (who wants to march down the hotel hallway more than once), the round shape of the bucket making one-hand operation tricky, and the vagaries of hotel room door locks tend to combine to make the entire ice-bucket experiences a bit of a hassle.

What could solve this little, (and I agree, problems with hotel room ice buckets are squarely a first world problem), conundrum and make the usability about 100x better? Simple: a handle on the bucket.

The picture on the right shows the ice bucket in my room this week at a Marriott in New York. Sturdier than the garden variety model and possessing what I have found to be the rarest and most needed of features - a HANDLE. The handle, a small and probably inexpensive add-on improves and enhances the experience immeasurably. The handle allows you to carry the bucket easily in one hand, (important for those many, many hotel rooms that are about 7 miles from the ice machine), and re-open your room door without having to balance the cold, overfilled bucket against your body or set it on the floor as you fumble with the elecronic lock that may or may not feel like co-operating with you.

Whomever designed this particular ice bucket realized something very important - that while the bucket's 'job' is to hold a small amount of ice and keep a drink cold for a few hours, that is a passive use case. When the actual users interact with the bucket, they are CARRYING it, half of that time filled with ice and needing to open a door. The designers thought not just the functions, but about the process and the experience of actually using the bucket. Something they could have easily missed if they focused too much on 'ice melt rate' and 'temperature after 3 hours' and not on the environments and challenges inherent on where and how the ice buckets would actually be used. Something they might not have appreciated if they never left the confines of their design lab and ventured out into the environments where their product would be used.

Have a made too much about this? About 800 words about an ice bucket? Probably so. But to me the handle on the ice bucket reinforces a great lesson no matter what you are in charge of building - tools, technologies, or processes. 

You'll never know if they will work until you try them in the field. Better to do that when designing and not after you've contracted with a Chinese supplier to build a few hundred thousand units.

Notes From the Road #3 - Technology Can Make Us Stupid

Note: This is the latest installment in an occasional series of quick dispatches from the trail - things I pick up from airports, hotels, cabs, meetings - anywhere really, in hopes that at least some of the observations will be interesting and even worthwhile. And also, since being out on the road for work usually throws off the schedule and gives me less time to worry about the little blog here, these Notes from the Road pieces have a internal timer set at 15 minutes. Whatever ideas, no matter how half-baked or thinly developed, get the 'Publish' treatment at the 15-minute mark.  Remember the good old days?

Ready, set, go. Fifteen minutes starts now.

Late last night, (so late it was technically this morning), I picked up another one in a long chain of non-descript rental cars from the San Francisco airport. The kind of small, uninspiring, utterly forgettable kinds of cars that seem to survive solely on fleet sales to the Hertzes and Avises of the world. So what?Not a big deal really. With these kinds of weekly business rentals what companies and travelers are mostly interested is reliable, safe transport at the lowest cost possible. And my typical ChevroFordNisOyota boxes generally fit that description.

As I loaded up the blue/gray/white, (actually I sort of don't remember what color it is), and headed for the exit all I was really thinking about was finding the hotel and crashing after what had been an extremely long day of last day of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend travel. When I pulled up to the rental car exit to show the attendant my driver's license and answer 'No' to the endless series of upsell questions, ('Do you want to take out insurance in case you and the rental car are kidnapped  and shipped to the Crimea?'), I suddenly and surprisingly froze, as I was unable to find the button or switch that would lower the driver's side window so I could hand over my paperwork.

Where the heck was the button? Why can't I find the button? I am sitting here like a idiot that can't sort out how the rental car works. The guy behind me just started honking. What the hell?

Then it hit me, (finally, although it probably only took a few seconds, it seemed like a lot more), the car had manual windows. And the window handle was kind of small, and positioned pretty low on the inside of the door. That, the unfamiliar car, the darkness in the rental car garage, the late hour, and an extremely tired Steve conspired to render me unable to operate one of the most basic and primitive user interfaces ever invented - a little handle that simply needs to be turned a few times to lower the window.

I can't remember the last time I was in a car that did not have automatic windows, power locks, intermittent wipers - really all of the once amazing technological advances that have made driving easier, more fun, and more sophisticated. But becoming accustomed to all these things, I think, has made many of us kind of technologically dependant, and has reduced our ability and even our curiosity about the tools and technology we have come to expect that will take care of us to some extent.

Modern technology is truly amazing, wondrous, insert your favorite adjective here. But relying on it too much, and never having to operate in more primitive environments, can also allow the technology to own us in a way.

And one day, when the machines rise up against us...

Notes From the Road - #2 - Lower Manhattan

I was able to spend a few days in lower Manhattan this week, attending and co-presenting at The Conference Board's Senior HR Executive Conference, which was held in lower Manhattan, extremely close to Ground Zero, the site of the fallen World Trade Center towers, and now, the recently opened 9/11 Memorial site. When I realized the proximity of the event to the Memorial, I made plans to visit on Tuesday evening, after the conference activities were complete for the day.View of South reflecting pool

The Memorial is as expected - sad, striking, contemplative; and in my view, a must-visit for anyone making a trip to New York City. The Memorial does require a reservation and a ticket to attend, (they are free), and there is a visible and attentive police and security presence throughout. Which makes perfect sense as when touring the Memorial grounds one gets the sense that the uniformed staff were guarding and protecting their own.

I had previously written about one of the heroes of 9/11, FDNY Firefighter Thomas J. Hetzel, as a part of a blog tribute called Project 2,996. And while I did not personally know any of the heroes and victims of September 11, 2001, Firefighter Hetzel for me, has become almost the face of the tragedy. Brave, selfless, a true hero. And taken from his family and friends far too soon. At the site I located Firefighter Hetzel's name inscribed on the Memorial, almost as if searching for the name of a friend. While I never knew him, I think he represents well the idea that the brave souls lost that day are still a part of all of us, and their loss and sacrifices should never be forgotten.

While the 9/11 Memorial forces us to look back and to reflect, there are obvious and apparent signs that allow us to look forward as well. The sounds and machinery of new construction fills the space, and the rising Freedom Tower looms large and spectacular over the scene. When the final touches are placed on the new Tower, and on all the other projects in the space, they, combined with the Memorial will be even a more fantastic and meaningful site.Freedom Tower - click image for a larger view

Whether or not the process and debate as to what to do with the former World Trade Center site took far too long or was too political, does not not seem to matter much when you look down and see the Memorial or you look up and see the gleaming towers rise to the sky.

I hope everyone that gets a chance to visit New York City in the coming days and months does take the time to head down to lower Manhattan and see the Memorial for themselves, and to pause and reflect on sacrifice, bravery, loss, and rebirth.

Have a great weekend!

Notes From the Road - #1 - Technical Instructions

This is the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of quick dispatches from the trail - things I pick up from airports, hotels, cabs, meetings - anywhere really, in hopes that at least some of the observations will be interesting and even worthwhile. And also, since being out on the road for work usually throws off the schedule and gives me less time to worry about the little blog here, these Notes from the Road pieces have a internal timer set at 15 minutes. Whatever ideas, no matter how half-baked or thinly developed, get the 'Publish' treatment at the 15-minute mark.  

Ready, set, go. Fifteen minutes starts now.

So if you spend any time in hotel rooms you've probably came up against the scourge of many a traveler - the 'in-room coffee maker'. These tiny, devious machines are notorious for being impossible to operate, usually having a series of cryptic line drawings that pass for operating instructions, producing horrible coffee, and generally leading to a disappointing experience overall.Coffee!

I've had many a run-in with these little devils, and two days ago made a gigantic mess by overfilling the machine and spilling hot coffee all over the place, (sorry Aloft Hotel). So this morning when I cautiously approached the in-room coffee maker at the Sheraton in Reston, VA, I was stunned and grateful to see the little instruction card you see on the right of this post propped up in front of the machine.

Why are these technical instructions so effective?

1. They are written in plain language. No jargon, no weird or awkward phrases. They are written like someone would tell you how to use the machine.

2. They address common concerns without condescending to the user. The pod did seem too big to fit in the machine, but it worked just fine.

3. They are dirt simple. Making in-room coffee should be easy. And it almost never is. But by combining a well-designed machine with a just-right set of instructions, (and some quality coffee as well), the entire experience was positive.

Simple, simple, simple. Don't over think your messages, instructions, communications. Write like you'd speak to people, like adults, and like adults that are not necessarily experts in your wonderful new technology or process.

Well done Sheraton. 

That's 15 minutes, (give or take), and I am out.