Creating great mobile experiences, accessed from the sofa

I read a super piece over the weekend on Stephane Rieger's site titled, 'Mobile Users Don't Do That', a short, but spot-on and important reminder of the importance of thinking critically and specifically when designing and deploying applications or solutions for use on mobile devices.Source - Yahoo!

The main point of the piece - is that often mobile or tablet design projects get too caught up in bad or at least inaccurate assumptions, namely mobile users are typically 'on-the-go', and lack the time, focus, or ability to maneuver around complex applications or complete multi-step processes because they are hopping in and out of taxis or marching up Seventh Avenue. Rieger correctly points out, and cites several recent studies, that mobile and tablet users are just as likely to be sitting on their sofa, accessing data and applications in a slow pace, often while consuming other content on a PC or a TV. In those 'multi-consumption' scenarios, the challenge for mobile designers is not so much streamlining functionality and navigation due to the user actually being mobile, but to maintain user attention and focus when they are likely doing two or three other things.

I saw a quote online the other day, (not sure who was the actual originator), the posited that the term 'social media' ought to be dropped. The take was that in 2012 all media is social in one fashion or another, and all social networks have inherent in them some kind of media component. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Turn on CNN or any of the other major TV news channels and I'll be within 5 minutes you will see and hear calls to 'Find them on Facebook' or 'Post us your questions on Twitter and we will read the best ones on the air'. And obviously the social networks themselves are mostly morphing into media outlets, just look at what happens on Twitter and Facebook when major national or world news breaks.

I mention this because I wonder if the same merging or blending around the edges is going to happen to workplace technologies - i.e. that to users it will start not to matter if their applications and tools they need are accessed on desktop computers in the office, laptops at a client location, tablets while sitting in the airport, or on iPhones while sitting on the sofa. Delivering solutions that work for them wherever, however, whenever they want to need to work, and using whichever device they prefer, (based on lots of factors, only one being their location and mobility), will become the primary design challenge for the next 5 or 10 years I think.  And as Rieger reminds us so well, making erroneous assumptions of what people want to to and what they expect from all these access methods and potential experiences is certainly a trap that has to be carefully avoided.

It certainly isn't an easy problem to solve, but it sure is interesting. And the best solutions will eventually arrive at the point where it doesn't matter to the users where they are and with what device they are using, the solution will simply work.

Job Poaching and Designing Engaging Systems

You've probably heard or read about the class-action civil case to be held in San Jose meant to determine if Google, Apple, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Adobe, Intel, and Intuit in various combinations conspired to eliminate or at least reduce competition for skilled labor by entering into illegal 'anti-poaching' or 'Gentlemen's agreements' where these firms would cease recruiting from each others employee bases.

While the tech focused sites like TechCrunch have been following the story for quite some time, as far as I can tell, the only HR/Recruiting writer to have a take on the issue was Kris Dunn at the HR Capitalist, with a piece called 'Hey CEO: Your High Level Agreements Not to Poach Employees are Anti-Trust Violations...', where KD quite succinctly and correctly warns HR and Recruitng pros against entering into such agreements, even when the CEO wants to help a 'friend' at a competing firm, or when two firm's leaders kind of give a wink and a nod to each other, both knowing back and forth poaching (usually) ends up in increasing costs, delaying progress, and even (horrors!), having to keep and extra HR or Recruiting pro on staff to deal with all the churn.

It's an interesting story and I recommend the TechCrunch coverage as well as KD's take on it, but one other aspect of the story, slightly linked, and also covered on TechCrunch, is related to a new 'recruiting' site called Job Poacher. Job Poacher seems to have been at least partially inspired by the high-tech poaching case, and part of that response was to create an anonymous, simple, and direct platform for employees that, well, want to be 'poached' without their current company knowing.

Job Poacher 'registration'

Job Poacher is a site that "lets you make yourself available to recruiters, without exposing your identity or giving up your email address. We set you up with an anonymous email address that you control — just like on "Craigslist". 

After a potential candidate provides the basic information in the 'poachee' profile, their listing appears on the 'Poachees' tab on the site, and interested recruiters can message them via a simple 'Reply' button.

From then on the prospect and recruiter can connect and figure out if there is any interest, suitability, and so on. 

There are two things I really like about Job Poacher and I think are worth noting. One, sometimes, maybe almost all the time, looking for a new gig when you are currently employed can be really tough to keep under wraps. Buffing up your LinkedIn profile, dusting off the old personal blog that had been dormant, trading the T-shirt and cargo pants look for some sharper duds are all tell-tale signs that something might be up, and that something often needs to be kept quiet.

And two, I really like the incredibly simplicity of the registration process. Seven simple bits of information are asked for, presented in a way that makes it seem like less, and in a manner that makes the user feel more like they are telling a little bit of a story about themselves rather than mindlessly filling in another web form that they've done probably hundreds of times. When you look at the form, it makes you want to tell that little story. Even the header, 'I'm brilliant, and I want something better', is miles more engaging than most job sites pitch to 'Fill in the 17 fields below and we will (if we remember) to email you of suitable matching jobs in the future.'

I know there are a million holes that can be poked in what Job Poacher is doing here, and I am not trying to argue it can or will be an effective site for job seekers or recruiters, but I do think there are some lessons to learn about simple design, responding to a need with that design, and not over-complicating it all.

What do you think? Would you use a site like Job Poacher?

How much does the office furniture matter?

Like most of you, I've worked in all kinds of office layouts over the years. Cube farms, open plan, private offices, 'hotel' desks for more transient workers. I am sure at one time or another I have spent time in all of them.

And I probably don't have any really strong feelings about any of the office spaces I've worked in. They were, and are, mostly forgettable. Aside from the one consulting project years ago where my 'office' was a telecom equipment closet and an extra door propped up on some boxes was my desk. That one I still remember for some reason.Look like your office?

But there is a growing awareness of the importance of design, intent, and function of things like desks, chairs, conference rooms, and common spaces in the modern office. While some think the future of work will eventually become almost completely virtual, (meaning everyone will work out of a Starbucks or Panera), for most desk jockeys today, the 'office' still is the central and most common place where work gets done.

So while work is changing a lot, where we do work doesn't seem to be changing quite so rapidly. And while this is seems like it will continue, at least for the time being, creating spaces that are adaptable, comfortable, and effectively support the shifting demands of workers and organizations is still important and still should be something HR and talent professionals think about when designing spaces, creating work environments, and procuring office furniture. And if you are still trying to manage that balance between work that wants to be more fluid, collaborative, and virtual; and workplaces, that want to be more, well, static, rigid, and boring, then I suggest you check out this piece from the Workplace Design Magazine site.

The article, a take on the challenges facing workplace designers, is valuable not only for some of the practical design ideas it might provide, but for the approach to design decisions it advocates. Namely, to think about design issue as more that tables, offices, and furniture. To think bigger. From the piece:

In contrast, I believe your job as workplace professional is to support work, wherever and whenever it takes place. And for me “support” means focusing on the work itself, and how it’s being done, almost more than the workplace.

Nice. A more expansive way to see the job of designer. In a way, it is a good piece of advice for any of the classical support functions - facilities, finance, IT, even HR. Focus on the work and not on the tools you want to bring to the table. 

It is a really interesting way to look at things, and kind of instructive. If the best workplace designers don't start with blueprints and fabric swatches, what does that say about the way us technologists and talent pros approach our challenges?

Are you thinking about the work first? Or your toolkit?

Elusive Cuteness and Building Approachable Systems

The smarties at the MIT Media Lab had a problem they were trying to solve - how to create a small, mobile, low-cost, audio and video equipped, and functional robot that could travel the campus and surrounding area on its own, find and approach random people, and get them to answer questions on camera.C'mon, look how cute I am!

Not such an easy problem to solve - since most people don't really seem to want to engage with other people that they do not know when approached on the street, what luck would the little robot, named Boxie, have with rolling up on passers by and getting them to stop, engage, participate, (and not break or steal), her.  How could the designers build and enable such a robot to successfully meet this goal, while constrained in equal measures by time, cost, and complexity? When you think about it, even though this specific problem is a bit unusual, and unlikely to come up in most of our professional pursuits, the essence of the problem, how to capture attention, engagement, and assistance from audiences that are not always motivated or incented to help is much more common and universal.

So in part limited in design by practical constraints, but by also skillfully capitalizing on most people's susceptibility to anything perceived to be 'cute', the MIT team, led by Alexander Reben, created Boxie with a soft, cardboard head, (rather than the original cold white plastic prototype), a very simple set of verbal interactions, and programmed her to ask people for help, and to intentionally elicit an emotional response from the ones she engaged with. Turns out being adorable, even in cardboard robots, is a pretty powerful tool in getting what you want.

The end result was that (most) people did want to help Boxie complete her assignment, helping her when needed, (like lifting her up on a table to get a better camera angle), and taking the time to connect more deeply than is typical with most artificial, task-oriented systems.

You can see more about the project and see and hear Boxie in the video below, but I wanted to pull out a couple of key quotes from the designers that are worth considering by anyone designing tools, programs, or environments that rely on adoption by an often skeptical world to succeed.

One - "We hope that this type of interaction that we studied will lead to simpler systems that may be more symbiotic with people instead of just trying to be a cold system without much interaction."

Two - "We think we can use this simple, emotional tie to create better systems and better interactions for people."

I like this line of thinking. Even if the MIT lab had the time and money to build a more fully functional, sophisticated, and powerful robot, it seems at least possible that such a robot would not have had any more success than the small, cheap, but likely to tug at the heartstrings Boxie.

While workplace and enterprise systems can probably never be 'adorable' or even cute, perhaps we could think just a tiny bit less about what we want people to do with our systems and just a little more more about how we want them to feel when using them.

It seems to be a winning approach for a tiny cardboard robot named Boxie.

Below is the video I referenced, courtesy of the MIT Media Lab

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.