In a brilliant contrarian blog post, titled provocatively “Should you lose the n00bs?”, Seth Godin asks how simply should applications be designed, and what kind of prerequisites a programmer should expect from its users. For years, the standard approach was to design any application with an ignorant user in mind (which German speaking programmers not so affectionately call the DAU approach, for “dümmster annehmbarer User” = “stupidest user possible”). Godins objects:

“The problem with this approach is that you can never be simple enough. And of course, the bigger problem: Once you dumb it down so every single person gets it, you bake out the magic and the mystery and the elegance. (…) At the symphony, should there be big applause signs so that people don’t clap at the wrong time?”

The great idea behind this short post is that it disconnects intuitiveness from usability:

• Intuitiveness refers to how easy it is for new users to catch on – and this depends upon prior knowledge. Connecting tables in Access is intuitive, if you know how a relational database works. Using Google Reader is intuitive if you know what an RSS feed is.
• Usability refers to principles of efficiency and predictability in using a tool. A link on a website should stand out of non-linked text, preferrably underlined. The “File” menu should be the first in any windows application. A user should be able to correct errors with Undo. Usability applies to every kind of user, regardless of his knowledge about the application.

Instead of making applications idiot-proof, Godin suggest to either accept confusion and encourage questions, or to respectfully shut newbies out:

“Why not consider making it easy for the confused to ask for help? And treat them with respect when they do. If you don’t create a little confusion, it’s unlikely you’ve built something remarkable.

And to go one step further: sometimes it’s okay to lose the n00bs. Not in an arrogant way (except for some brands) but in a way that says, ‘this might just not be for you…’”

[Link: Seth's Blog: "Should You Lose the N00bs?"]

I’m observing an odd backlash phenomenon among early adopters of social media. Many high profile bloggers start posting articles describing fatigue of blogging, blog content, social media hype, and level of innovation in web apps. It’s curious (or maybe obvious) that just as the big web masses are slowly catching onto Social Media, the earlier enthusiasts of Twitter, Friendfeed, and other services drift into a post-modern stage of Web 2.0, where nothing is new and everything is re-invented again.

Here are some examples:

• She-Geeks: “The Repetition of the Blogosphere”
• Scobleizer: “Why Tech Blogging has Failed You”
• ProBlogger: “Has Blogging Lost Its Relational Focus?”

However, there are other voices as well:

• Regular Geek: “Passion, Early Adopters and the Mainstream”
• The Inquisitr: “The Changing Blogosphere and Blogging 2.0″
• ReadWriteWeb: “Mixed Messages in the Blogosphere”

In his blog, Cognitive Edge, knowledge management guru Dave Snowden makes an excellent point about the importance of diversity of IT systems:

“IT departments are simply deciding to go with a single procurement from a dominant player, rather than allowing locally contextual solutions to emerge.  They don’t even have the excuse of cost saving (…). One software package cannot replicate the richness of the web, and your employees deserve that richness as does your organisation if it is to be effective and successful.”

This quote reflects quite well my frustration with intranets (and to some extent with HR transactional systems approach). Instead of waiting years for the hailed individualized Über-portal or the One HR Process Management System(tm), why can’t we allow units to build simple local solutions, learn deeply about our processes when implementing them, and then connect or even integrate them?

Link: Cognitive Edge: The Shire Hall and Sharepoint

In a recent post, the ReadWriteWeb blog discusses “Brandstreaming“. This term is a reference to the term “Lifestreaming”, or the online record of a person’s daily activities. Web applications such as Friendfeed, Tumblr or, catching up, FaceBook allow people to connect all of their online activities onto a publishing platform, collecting everything he wishes to share with the world about himself. For example, my own lifestream – I use both Facebook and Friendfeed – includes

• my (private) blog posts
• my tweets (Twitter updates)
• my latest Flickr photos
• the videos I put on YouTube
• the music I like on last.fm
• and my latest del.icio.us links.

It allows my friends to stay up to date with what I’m doing. And since I’m doing these activities (such as posting videos) anyway, there is no extra effort in posting an update, because the feed is generated automatically.Brandstreaming is the same concept, but for brands. The RWW blog thinks that this approach would be suitable only for brands with a strong lifestyle appeal; I disagree: Speciality products with strong customer loyalty – for example medications – could benefit of it as well (if regulations allows, of course).

Link: ReadWriteWeb: Brandstreaming – what is it and who’s doing it?

The Signal vs. Noise blog has an interesting post on why Pixar, the animation company behind Toy Story, Monsters inc., Finding Nemo, and the upcoming Wall-E, produces much better quality movies than its competition. I especially liked the following statement:

Thanks to Pixar University, employees learn to see the company’s work (and their colleagues) in a new light. “The skills we develop are skills we need everywhere in the organization,” Nelson said. “Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn’t just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There’s no company on earth that wouldn’t benefit from having people become more observant.”

Link to “Pixar’s tightknit culture is its edge” via Signal vs. Noise and Readburner

Fresh off the CommsNetwork mailing list comes a discussion about how to best encourage an audience to ask questions. It’s a common problem, and there probably is no simple soluation – still, there are lots of good ideas. Here’s my summary:

Various forms of “planting” questions

• Plant 1-3 pre-defined questions in the audience beforehand
• Encourage specific people you know to prepare a question of their own choosing
• Put pre-formulated questions or topics on certain seats as encouragement

Collect questions off-line

• Prepare a wall for post-it questions to stick on (both gives passive questions and lowers the threshold of a topic being brought up)
• Put blank question cards on the seats, collect them during the event
• Generate questions per table over lunch
• Collect questions beforehand, draw prizes among submitters
• Contact “High Potentials” for questions beforehand
• “Snowball” questions: Have the audience write them on paper, crumple and throw them to the front
• Make sure the first question asked is a significant one – one that management can answer in a way to demonstrate openness for frank discussions – as it sets the baseline for others

Small Group Interaction

• Localize the call for questions or group the audience around tables
• Have a facilitator or a familiar name to generate / ask questions
• Sit the speakers amongst the audience to encourage micro-feedback
• Make short breaks and have managers wander around actively asking questions

Large Group Interaction

• Encourage questions during (as opposed to after) presentations
• Have presenters ask simple, non-scary questions to the audience (“How many of you…” – followed by question to someone who raises (or doesn’t raise) his hand)
• Distribute small prizes (car wash coupons, movie tickets) for the first people who ask a question

Meeting Technology

• Use a question submission technology like Crystal Interactive
• Use interactive voting systems

Some time ago, I stumbled across an crude yet interesting way to measure the internet reputation of any “brand” – be it companies, products, or people. The concept is simple: Count the number of times somebody says something nice about the brand, and compare it to the times somebody says something not so nice about it.

• As a counter, we use Google
• As measure of “nice things”, we search for mentions of (“I like XYZ” OR “I love XYZ”)
• As measure of “not so nice things”, we search for mentions of (“I don’t like XYZ” OR “I hate XYZ”)

Tabulated against each other, “number of nice things” vs. “number of not so nice things” gives you an impression of the overall online reputation. To relativize things, we can additionally introduce a measure of how often XYZ is mentioned at all.

This measure is by no means perfect or even remotely scientific. Search results could be distorted by all sorts of effects, and the reputation search criteria could be much more refined. Still, it’s a wonderfully simple instrument which might be useful to measure what the online world thinks about a brand. Try it!

And just for fun, some online reputation ratios:

• Paris Hilton: 32′300 positive vs 20′600 negative (ratio = 1.57)
• George W. Bush: 13′300 positive vs. 11′200 negative (ratio = 1.19)
• Microsoft: 58′400 positive vs. 103′000 negative (ratio = 0.57)
• Apple: 295′000 positive vs.  66′400 negative (ratio = 4.44)

Disclaimer: If you don’t like math, you might want to skip this post.

I have been asked if I had an idea for a numerical indicator showing the amount of diversity within a group. Let me make an example:

We have a population of N=100. Each member of that population has a favorite color. The population is therefore divideded into subgroups with the size of n(i) representing those favorite colors (e.g. n[blue]=50 people, n[red] = 20, n[green]=10, n[orange]=10, n[yellow]=8, n[purple]=2).

What I’m looking for is a one-dimensional, linear representation of the diversity of color preference, limited to the extremes 0 (=no diversity, i.e. everyone has the same favorite color) and 1 (=full diversity, i.e. everyone has a different color).

Specification: The difference between two colors can either be measured (a) nominally (i.e. light yellow and dark yellow are equally different as green and red), or (b) on an interval scale (i.e. red and green are measurably more different than light yellow and dark yellow). For simplicity’s sake, let’s leave ordinal measurement aside.

Measurement (a) is probably easier to calculate than (b), as we can neglect differences between colors. I suppose that (b) will involve some kind of internal consistency score.

Any ideas?

PS: Yes, this really has a business application.

UPDATE

Two solutions for problem (a):

1. As suggested by my friend Chris, take the square of sums divided by the sum of squares, or in Excel-speak =(N^2)/(SUMSQ(n1:ni)); this will give you an absolute diversity value between 1 and N, which can then be normalized to the scale 0 to 1 by the formula =((N^2)/(SUMSQ(n1:ni))-1)/(N-1)
2. The solution I came up (during a visit to Art Basel yesterday) was to take the geometric mean, normalized to 0-1 and inversed. In Excel-speak: =1-(SQRT(SUMSQ(n1:ni))-SQRT(N))/(N-SQRT(N))

At the extremes, both solutions are the same (0 for no diversity, 1 for full diversity). In-between those extremes, solution 1 is more conservative than solution 2 – you need more diversity to get a high score. For the example above, solution 1 gives you a diversity of 2.2%, solution 2 one of 48.6%. From this perspective I prefer solution 2, but I might have miscalculated the scaling in solution 1.

UPDATE 2

As I thought, I used the wrong scaling approach for solution 1. It’s easier to just inverse the value (sum of squares divided by square of sums), then it’s very similar to solution 2 (with the difference that it’s open-ended, and 100% can only be reached with N -> infinity).

Overheard in the corridor: What does it say about you if you accidentally call your Blackberry “Blackmail”?

From colleagues in various companies, I hear a lot about banned internet sites – especially Facebook and YouTube. While I understand managers’ reaction to limit employees’ opportunities to pursue work-unrelated and seemingly unproductive activities, it still is shortsighted:

• Firstly, these tools can and are used for work-related activities (Facebook for networking, Youtube for marketing activities, etc);
• secondly, even work-unrelated activities can prove productive in the long run (otherwise work-life aspects wouldn’t be considered as part of a companies’ reward strategy);
• thirdly, limiting employees’ activities is an unhealthy sign of a companies distrusting their employees to do the job they are hired to do; how time is spent on the job should be regulated via the performance management system.