If we could only be like the weatherman. Making predictions about the future, talking about the chance of something happening, and never being held accountable for being inaccurate. Ruin someone’s outing because you failed to predict rain? No big deal, the weather gets blamed, not the person who told you what it was going to do. We cut the weatherman slack because he can’t nail down all the factors involved. If he could, we’d have a legitimate reason not to like him when our supposed-to-be blue skies are gray. Too bad a programmer’s ballpark estimate doesn’t get the same leniency. An application build is just not one of those things that is easy to predict.
With programming, an accurate estimate is created from a list of what the software is supposed to do. Usually, even the most custom application is still going to be composed mostly of things that an experienced programmer has done before. If a programmer has 10 specifications, they will break each item down by the time it takes to do them and add them all up to reveal the cost. Then there are the “X” factors, or the things we are asked to do that either have never been done before, or are so unusual that it’s going to take a little extra effort to figure them out. The best course of action is to relate the task to a similar activity and go from there.
Accurate estimates are made from realistic expectations. Not surprisingly, the ballpark figure is the mother of all false expectations. A ballpark figure is a generalized price range that you give to clients to help them understand if a project is within their budget. True, you can’t sell something without a price. But a ballpark figure is always a bad idea because you are taking something that is mostly not subjective and making it entirely subjective. Now everyone is guessing what they can and can’t get for a price. When things go bad and profit margins erode, you can usually trace it back to false expectations set by a ballpark figure. So how do you fix it?
The first step is using an interaction designer. This is integral to the process of an accurate estimate. The interaction designer communicates with account, creative and the programmers to understand what the software is supposed to do. Next, the interaction designer will document a flow of how the application should work by producing a series of pictures. That way, no one will be left interpreting a Word document, which most people don’t read anyway.
Now you have a visual document that sets expectations for the designers, programmers, account, project management and the client. These are your documented specifications. Now the programmer has as much information as everyone else and can better gauge how long it will take to produce.
At this point, you can circle back to the client and say, “This is what you asked for and this is what it costs. Anything else is extra.” You can start small and build up from there, but the important thing is that you only ever estimate on known specifications.
When you generalize, programmers have to guess at specifications and sometimes don’t factor them all in because, quite simply, they aren’t mind readers. Under the most ideal circumstances, it can be tricky to nail down exactly how long something takes to produce. If you don’t provide all the details, however, your programmers should be held no more accountable for inaccurate predictions than your local weatherman.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Ideas Are Meaningless
A good idea can come from anywhere. People say it all the time because it is true. But, an idea by itself is utterly worthless without someone who knows how to take that idea from dream to reality.
Ever watch the television show House? Each week, Dr. House solves the latest medical mystery though an obscure idea that seems to approach him from anywhere or anyone. The “a-ha” moment that reveals itself does nothing more than point the way. It takes the doctor’s creative genius to recognize the idea when he sees it. And it takes his experience to make the idea a reality and actually solve the problem. Understanding the value of an idea is the first part of good creative direction. The second part is having the know-how to make it a reality. We are surrounded by ideas all the time. Recognizing value in a single thought floating in a sea of ideas takes not only creative intelligence, but experience.
Benjamin Franklin said, “At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.” As a young designer, I came about good ideas by spawning hundreds of bad ideas. I would push myself like I was at the gym. Just 4 more ideas, just 3 more ideas, 2 more, okay last ooonnne. Done. Now in my thirties, I feel like good ideas happen more quickly. By comparison, they are certainly more clever. The difference is, I now see ideas through the scope of my experiences.
We see a lot of good ideas with poor execution on the internet. Actually, some studies have shown that people watching YouTube are turned off by high production value. I don’t know. Maybe free content needs to look like it’s free. I always ask, “could it be better?” How would you improve it? How could you make it more meaningful? In looking back at my blog, it’s no big surprise to me why some entries do better than others. It’s not only the quality of the idea, but the quality of the execution that counts.
Crowd sourcing uses submissions from an online community to solve a particular problem. This is probably the most literal interpretation of how a good idea comes from anywhere. The Pepsi Refresh project is one of the most popular expressions of crowd sourcing. This project not only outsources the generation of the idea, but the judgment of the idea too, through online voting. I feel like crowd sourcing is an interesting way to generate ideas. I am always willing to listen to anyone, but it’s the judgment aspect that I have trouble with. In the end, I feel like average judgment equals average success.
A lot of CEOs make unpopular decisions, only to become wildly successful. Sure, they could have done what everyone expected them to do. And that would have sufficed. But recognizing the value of a good idea, even when everyone else doesn’t, is a hard road to follow. You’re stamped with a lot of nasty labels until you prove your detractors wrong. The flip side is that, sometimes, unpopular decisions are just bad decisions. But that’s what makes it interesting.
Everyone has the right to their own opinions and ideas. In a professional setting, they have the right to express those ideas, or at least should be able to express them without fear of reprisal. But who makes the final call? There always seems to be some confusion surrounding opinions.
In the mind of a creative professional, there is a real separation between professional creative evaluation and personal opinion. Having an opinion does not qualify your average person for anything more than having an opinion. A creative director’s opinion reflects years of training. Sometimes it’s based on intuition, other times it’s easier to explain. They push to understand both failures and successes. This becomes the basis of a trained professional’s decision. A personal opinion is about what you like; a professional opinion is about what an audience will like. Sometimes it’s the same, other times it isn’t.
Creative evaluation does not come from having an idea or two. It’s about having thousands of ideas, and executing hundreds of them over years. A creative professional at an advanced level knows how to prioritize, evaluate and judge what is better. The process of raising an idea can sometimes be anything but lucid. It’s tricky to know when you’ve arrived at the right solution, but experience teaches you judgment. And that judgment is what gives meaning to an idea.
Ever watch the television show House? Each week, Dr. House solves the latest medical mystery though an obscure idea that seems to approach him from anywhere or anyone. The “a-ha” moment that reveals itself does nothing more than point the way. It takes the doctor’s creative genius to recognize the idea when he sees it. And it takes his experience to make the idea a reality and actually solve the problem. Understanding the value of an idea is the first part of good creative direction. The second part is having the know-how to make it a reality. We are surrounded by ideas all the time. Recognizing value in a single thought floating in a sea of ideas takes not only creative intelligence, but experience.
Benjamin Franklin said, “At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.” As a young designer, I came about good ideas by spawning hundreds of bad ideas. I would push myself like I was at the gym. Just 4 more ideas, just 3 more ideas, 2 more, okay last ooonnne. Done. Now in my thirties, I feel like good ideas happen more quickly. By comparison, they are certainly more clever. The difference is, I now see ideas through the scope of my experiences.
We see a lot of good ideas with poor execution on the internet. Actually, some studies have shown that people watching YouTube are turned off by high production value. I don’t know. Maybe free content needs to look like it’s free. I always ask, “could it be better?” How would you improve it? How could you make it more meaningful? In looking back at my blog, it’s no big surprise to me why some entries do better than others. It’s not only the quality of the idea, but the quality of the execution that counts.
Crowd sourcing uses submissions from an online community to solve a particular problem. This is probably the most literal interpretation of how a good idea comes from anywhere. The Pepsi Refresh project is one of the most popular expressions of crowd sourcing. This project not only outsources the generation of the idea, but the judgment of the idea too, through online voting. I feel like crowd sourcing is an interesting way to generate ideas. I am always willing to listen to anyone, but it’s the judgment aspect that I have trouble with. In the end, I feel like average judgment equals average success.
A lot of CEOs make unpopular decisions, only to become wildly successful. Sure, they could have done what everyone expected them to do. And that would have sufficed. But recognizing the value of a good idea, even when everyone else doesn’t, is a hard road to follow. You’re stamped with a lot of nasty labels until you prove your detractors wrong. The flip side is that, sometimes, unpopular decisions are just bad decisions. But that’s what makes it interesting.
Everyone has the right to their own opinions and ideas. In a professional setting, they have the right to express those ideas, or at least should be able to express them without fear of reprisal. But who makes the final call? There always seems to be some confusion surrounding opinions.
In the mind of a creative professional, there is a real separation between professional creative evaluation and personal opinion. Having an opinion does not qualify your average person for anything more than having an opinion. A creative director’s opinion reflects years of training. Sometimes it’s based on intuition, other times it’s easier to explain. They push to understand both failures and successes. This becomes the basis of a trained professional’s decision. A personal opinion is about what you like; a professional opinion is about what an audience will like. Sometimes it’s the same, other times it isn’t.
Creative evaluation does not come from having an idea or two. It’s about having thousands of ideas, and executing hundreds of them over years. A creative professional at an advanced level knows how to prioritize, evaluate and judge what is better. The process of raising an idea can sometimes be anything but lucid. It’s tricky to know when you’ve arrived at the right solution, but experience teaches you judgment. And that judgment is what gives meaning to an idea.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Flash - Clay vs. Legos
With the iPad out there seems like there is a lot of Flash bashing going on. Part of the development community is dusting off their old arguments against using Flash and touting HTML5 as the up and coming golden era in Web development. I am not praying to the HTML5 gods to wish away Flash just yet.
As a material, I have though of Flash like clay. I can model it into any shape I want. It's receptive to my ideas. For me, I simply have not found anything that allows for this level of creativity. I know in the hands of the inexperienced, Flash can look like a high school art project. But, in the hands of the experienced, a well crafted experience that gets noticed. And that could be said of any technology.
HTML/CSS is more like Legos. It has predefined pieces that snap together in a predefined manner. Often development is tempered with the logistics of execution. Jquery and similar things have made strides to make open standards tools that are more like Flash, but they lack the same capabilities and a sophisticated environment that is instrumental to the creative process.
All products have a life cycle. With so many things that come and go, it's real easy to start predicting the end of the world for just about anything. Flash has evolved from a simple animation tool to a complex RIA ecosystem. Flash seem to be riding the wave of change just fine. I expect it will be around for some time.
As a material, I have though of Flash like clay. I can model it into any shape I want. It's receptive to my ideas. For me, I simply have not found anything that allows for this level of creativity. I know in the hands of the inexperienced, Flash can look like a high school art project. But, in the hands of the experienced, a well crafted experience that gets noticed. And that could be said of any technology.
HTML/CSS is more like Legos. It has predefined pieces that snap together in a predefined manner. Often development is tempered with the logistics of execution. Jquery and similar things have made strides to make open standards tools that are more like Flash, but they lack the same capabilities and a sophisticated environment that is instrumental to the creative process.
All products have a life cycle. With so many things that come and go, it's real easy to start predicting the end of the world for just about anything. Flash has evolved from a simple animation tool to a complex RIA ecosystem. Flash seem to be riding the wave of change just fine. I expect it will be around for some time.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
B2B - We do training not usability
“We do training so we don’t need to focus on usability,” ever hear that one? All I can say to that is, thank god you don’t make anything I have to use. Imagine if DVD players were built like that. Picture it on the shelf now. 100 buttons, half of them labeled, the other half aren’t. Next to it is a big sign, free 6 hour training webinar with purchase. Hey, can’t beat free training right? Of course next to it is a well designed DVD player with an implicitly understood user interface. It looks simple to use. And it should be, I want to watch a movie not problem solve for half the time it would take to watch said movie. Which one are you going to purchase?
Let just pretend I purchase this nightmare DVD player. First off, I can’t just use the DVD player because I have to schedule a time that my entire family is available for 6 hours. Also, my wife and I have to schedule time off from doing things that make money to sit through what I am sure will be a riveting training session. After the training, no one will completely get it because of the complexity, so we all will have to also play with it for a couple more days before it starts to make sense. Now it’s hard to use, but we get it after a good month or two. But now, every time we want to watch a movie it takes around 25 steps to get it started. And since nothing is well labeled, we are also prone to making multiple mistakes. Often it’s so irritating that we often abandon the process and do something else. Now we resent the DVD player and typically only use it as a last resort. Using it just makes us angry.
Inefficiencies, wasted time, abandonment, and let’s not forget the negative branding experience are all very real problems that pursuing training over usability causes. If you look at the numbers you can really see your usability ROI at work. Say on a piece of software it takes 200 hours to design the application with usability best practices. First, the applied usability removes the need for training, (150 employees) x (6 hours) = (900 hours) of company time saved. But wait, there’s more. We also have optimized the application so that it takes 5 minutes less time per session, (150 employees) x (5 minutes) x (using the application 3 times a week) x (using the application for a modest 4 years) = (2400 hours) more time saved. That totals 3300 hours of saved time for a 200 hour investment. I am not even going to mention the time saved on support.
Usability in the B2B world should be expected, but all too many times training is the answer. For the companies that seriously focus on usability it can become a strong unique selling proposition. Like with our DVD players, in a side to side comparison, usability driven products will outshine anything that was created “broken” with the crutch of training to bridge the gap.
Let just pretend I purchase this nightmare DVD player. First off, I can’t just use the DVD player because I have to schedule a time that my entire family is available for 6 hours. Also, my wife and I have to schedule time off from doing things that make money to sit through what I am sure will be a riveting training session. After the training, no one will completely get it because of the complexity, so we all will have to also play with it for a couple more days before it starts to make sense. Now it’s hard to use, but we get it after a good month or two. But now, every time we want to watch a movie it takes around 25 steps to get it started. And since nothing is well labeled, we are also prone to making multiple mistakes. Often it’s so irritating that we often abandon the process and do something else. Now we resent the DVD player and typically only use it as a last resort. Using it just makes us angry.
Inefficiencies, wasted time, abandonment, and let’s not forget the negative branding experience are all very real problems that pursuing training over usability causes. If you look at the numbers you can really see your usability ROI at work. Say on a piece of software it takes 200 hours to design the application with usability best practices. First, the applied usability removes the need for training, (150 employees) x (6 hours) = (900 hours) of company time saved. But wait, there’s more. We also have optimized the application so that it takes 5 minutes less time per session, (150 employees) x (5 minutes) x (using the application 3 times a week) x (using the application for a modest 4 years) = (2400 hours) more time saved. That totals 3300 hours of saved time for a 200 hour investment. I am not even going to mention the time saved on support.
Usability in the B2B world should be expected, but all too many times training is the answer. For the companies that seriously focus on usability it can become a strong unique selling proposition. Like with our DVD players, in a side to side comparison, usability driven products will outshine anything that was created “broken” with the crutch of training to bridge the gap.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Satisficing the Client
We know that when people make a decision, they don’t normally weigh all options, gather all relevant information, or consider the big picture - Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. They simply go with the first thing that makes sense, and do a quick logistics test in their head to see if there are any major gaps in the plan. It’s called satisficing. This is a well understood idea for any usability professional thanks to the book, Don’t Make Me Think. And we apply this concept well to the online experiences we craft.
However, it occurred to me in a client meeting not to long ago that this is also the way group decisions tend to be made, which is unfortunate. You’ve seen it too; someone throws out an idea and someone else may comment on if it’s good or bad. If there are no objections someone on the account side calls it out as the solution and everyone stops thinking about the problem. Is that a solution, yes. Is it the best solution, not likely.
When I draw on my experiences for visual problem solving (design work), I can recall thinking to myself okay, I have two solutions, but what else can throw down there, what are my other options, how else can I see the problem. That’s a normal process for any creative. Once we generate a healthy selection of ideas, we sit back and evaluate them against relevant information and the big picture. Sometimes we have the solution, sometimes we need to think about it more.
That level of problem solving and critical evaluation may be a lot to expect from a meeting, especially when you are expected to think on your feet and be decisive. It’s also difficult to get non-creatives to keep poking at something they think is fine. I am not advocating we turn every meeting into a creative brainstorm, but it’s a quality issue, and just a little of that creative spark can go a long way to improving the direction.
For me, the first step to getting more ideas out there is to realize satisficing is happening. Before you see a closure of the problem solving process, simply asking the question out loud, “is this the best option,” can get things going again. Having just two options are better than one. Jumping out the window to get outside is one option, but I would like to be able to use the door too.
Adjournment is another way to handle it if you have the time and an open minded client. Letting them know you will explore other ideas in addition to the one they’ve developed is the key. I rarely have had push back on that, but you have to watch out they aren’t in love with the first idea. When you are ready to show options again, objectivity is the stage you need to set. Remind them of their goals then present.
Overall, I think it’s an easy situation to remedy. If you intend to stop the presses in the interest in quality, most people are game, but you do have to step up and effect the typical process.
However, it occurred to me in a client meeting not to long ago that this is also the way group decisions tend to be made, which is unfortunate. You’ve seen it too; someone throws out an idea and someone else may comment on if it’s good or bad. If there are no objections someone on the account side calls it out as the solution and everyone stops thinking about the problem. Is that a solution, yes. Is it the best solution, not likely.
When I draw on my experiences for visual problem solving (design work), I can recall thinking to myself okay, I have two solutions, but what else can throw down there, what are my other options, how else can I see the problem. That’s a normal process for any creative. Once we generate a healthy selection of ideas, we sit back and evaluate them against relevant information and the big picture. Sometimes we have the solution, sometimes we need to think about it more.
That level of problem solving and critical evaluation may be a lot to expect from a meeting, especially when you are expected to think on your feet and be decisive. It’s also difficult to get non-creatives to keep poking at something they think is fine. I am not advocating we turn every meeting into a creative brainstorm, but it’s a quality issue, and just a little of that creative spark can go a long way to improving the direction.
For me, the first step to getting more ideas out there is to realize satisficing is happening. Before you see a closure of the problem solving process, simply asking the question out loud, “is this the best option,” can get things going again. Having just two options are better than one. Jumping out the window to get outside is one option, but I would like to be able to use the door too.
Adjournment is another way to handle it if you have the time and an open minded client. Letting them know you will explore other ideas in addition to the one they’ve developed is the key. I rarely have had push back on that, but you have to watch out they aren’t in love with the first idea. When you are ready to show options again, objectivity is the stage you need to set. Remind them of their goals then present.
Overall, I think it’s an easy situation to remedy. If you intend to stop the presses in the interest in quality, most people are game, but you do have to step up and effect the typical process.
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