Agile Communications: Rethinking the Need for Speed

Google's user experience (UX) department designs its products based on 10 design principles to deliver the best possible experience to its users across a growing and diverse portfolio. Number two on that list (behind useful) is the principle:

"Every millisecond counts.

Nothing is more valuable than people‘s time..."

Often when product and UX designers address this challenge, they think about code optimization and technology tweaks, simplifying their interfaces, and streamlining processes. These are all laudable goals, especially in the face of very convincing metrics from Microsoft's Eric Schurman and Google's Jeff Brutlag in their Velocity 09 conference presentation entitled, "Performance Related Changes and their User Impact".

[Click image for larger version (via Tek3D)]

Schurman and Brutlag showed how delays of even a half second decrease user satisfaction with the product experience, significantly affecting their desire to continue and /or purchase. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever fought with connection speeds, long load times, poor usability, or even inefficient customer return queues in retail stores. People hate waiting. It's no wonder, therefore, that metrics like this went on to inform Google's own business strategy, with the Google UX page now proclaiming:

"Speed is a boon to users. It is also a competitive advantage that Google doesn't sacrifice without good reason."

When things are fast, users can maintain focus on what they are supposed to be doing instead of dwelling on all the things they hate about the company that is making them wait.

As a user experience architect for a software company serving the PR and marketing industries, these thoughts are often central to designing products for folks who are measured on how fast they can react in a crisis, and who need to respond yesterday in order to satisfy customers. As a recent company blog post notes on the need for agile communications:

"You need to keep up with the conversations that are happening in social media not only so you know what’s being said, but so that you can take action and do something about it."

Speedy machines and speedy designs are needed for this kind of response, but I can't help but feel the need for speed goes beyond responsiveness and capabilities we enable in our software. Delivering agile communications also relies on a framework of understanding how to decide and act — empowering users differently; one that allows them to make better sense of their communication ecosystems and respond faster with better judgment.

Applying Marketwire's audience engagement model (illustrating the communications lifecycle) in this manner, is not too unlike using another model for sensemaking — one with its roots in air combat. Stay with me here [click for larger images]...

The classic OODA Loop model has been around a long time, and stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It was first coined by American fighter pilot Colonel John Boyd as a way for pilots to process information during air-to-air combat, where changes in the situation happen in the blink of an eye, and mere seconds can make the difference between life and death. The model helps to orient (and reorient) people to new information coming in about a situation, and enables one to potentially act faster than one's opponent. It is inherently a sensemaking approach (like the Audience Engagement model can be), in that it guides those who apply it to make better decisions, faster. In other words, to understand their environment faster.

I think the next big "speed breakthrough" will be a better and more elegant content delivery system allowing contextual display of information and instant publishing to enable users to do just that. Respond better, faster. When handling a PR crisis for example, software would present sentiment-infused notifications based on a certain kind of condition (Observe), emergent content from a number of different perspectives (Orient) to assist in drawing the operational picture, and offer functions that allow for rapid curation and routing to internal decision-makers (Decide). It could then facilitate quick deployment of response content, conversation (both official and influential perspectives), or even an entire community of interest, across multiple networks and channels.

The extent to which this "operational picture" (or snapshot) can then be archived and available to others in the future, also means extra value to the organization in handling similar incidents again. In this way, the model not only assists organizations to act, but also helps tap corporate memory, recall, and thus, wisdom.

While the "enemy" in these types of scenarios may not literally be life and death, speed is definitely of the essence. The more we can harness sensemaking capabilities into our products, the more we can help deliver competitive advantage.

What do you think of this approach? Is it too reliant on adoption of new processes or software to be immediately effective? Many of the folks I chat with about this would lump this under analysis, or business intelligence, but I think just fielding the right information at the right time might make all the difference. Do you have such views, or dashboards that you use to do similar things?

I'd love to hear your opinions and experiences on this, and whether speed was indeed a factor in your success.

Thanks for reading.

Making it Personal: Three People-Centered Techniques for Promoting Enterprise Software Adoption

This post was originally published on 9Jun10 while working for Open Text Corp.

I recently had the opportunity to hear first-hand from customers some stories of their enterprise software rollouts. The scope of these rollouts is often enough that many things about the organization change to support the new system. Big software, big change. One basic pattern that usually emerges from these kinds of stories is how much the end users can resist that change, ultimately holding back not only their own productivity but also their company’s ability to really tap the value of these expensive new systems.

Business software users are often hesitant to drop what they know for the latest flavor-of-the-month solution, especially if past rollouts had poor communications or training, or were plagued with problems. One of the lessons learned by user experience designers from the early eCommerce days was that people wouldn’t tolerate websites with poor usability when they had a choice… they would just go to a competitor’s site. When there is no choice, poor usability just aggravates a poor experience into something that people end up hating. That’s when change can get nasty in terms of staff morale, productivity and compliance. Software that doesn’t consider its adoption in the enterprise can virtually “shelve itself” in terms of its own uptake. Even when staff understands how important it is to their organization’s bottom line, many won’t handle the change easily. “Change has rocked a lot of worlds,” one interviewee told us from the trenches. That reaction, when not anticipated by management teams, can often derail entire software rollouts and the associated productivity enhancements that go with them.

In searching my own personal history, there have been many times when my own mindset has resisted change while trying to embrace it. People resist change without even realizing it, sub-consciously subverting their ability to see the greater context of what they are doing, only the tools in front of them. Once users connect to how they all operate as a system, the system begins to serve them. In short, when people know better how or when or why to use their software, it gets used.

Although there are more than these, below are three techniques I have personally witnessed helping connect people together, reduce the negative effects of change and promote adoption. They are:

Share the Big Idea (Concept)

One thing users must ultimately connect with is the initiative they are part of and how they fit into it. Ultimately the user experience design for the initiative should be a reflection of that model to some extent. Social and corporate communication channels must be used to do this with consistent messaging, and most importantly, with consideration for the “You are Here” factor. How do they fit into this plan? The earlier this vision is explained to users, the better, since people need time to adjust their mental models of what they about to start doing. How and when do they use the new software? Where does it fit in the process? Does the process change? If so, does their role change? How does the software itself help them answer those very questions? By introducing concept maps or a visual process model, pictures, or BRIEF overviews explaining the whole system as it is affected and where the new tools and processes fit in is a huge benefit.

The ultimate goal is a shared mental model of the system. People need to see their part in the grand scheme of things. While not always neither easy, nor agreed upon, once users see the anticipated fruits of their efforts, they also tend to be that much more engaged… they have imagined it together with their team.

Getting Their Opinion

People love control, and they love being heard. While we can hear a lot of great feedback in formal tests, it can be a challenge keeping requirements sessions from turning into venting sessions about past poor software experiences. But when people feel they have a voice in the design of the process that affects them (not just where the search button is on the interface), they are much more tolerant of that system and are willing to work with it. Why? Because they’ve invested their time, ideas, and ego into the solution. Nobody gets behind something faster than when they have had a hand in creating it.

New software is kind of like introducing a new core member to your team, with their own distinct personality and strange quirks. Chances are we have all experienced times where a new member of the team gets added without sufficient preparation, and ends up confusing both the process and the roles, regardless of their competency? Also, there is no better way to treat experienced staff with respect than to ask their opinion. This sets up a great rapport to help develop champions and evangelizers to help to help smooth the transition. Software companies are also now starting to experiment with customer feedback and quality programs embedded right inside the software itself, so that users can give feedback and request features right at a point in the experience where they are most inclined to participate.

Use Social Media Tools

Social media software and tools allow users to connect with each other to share not only work, but also thoughts and status. These small, subtle ways of working – this “team metadata” if you will – all connects members to their shared milestones and progress often much more efficiently than a status meeting can… especially in near-real time. Sometimes, all that’s needed is the ability for the team to self-organize on the new tools. They are especially effective if the team themselves can have a hand at their configuration and setup, or have some personal control over the layout they will spend much time in front of. What is important to see? How do you want to use the tools? How often should you check up on your colleagues? Can the software remind you to do so? What rules should be in place governing their use?

If your applications have collaborative components, this might start as a social game or conversation. Project teams who remember to update their status once or twice a day, can be connected together so that their shared presence can give them situational awareness of where they are in the project. The social component of work makes it enjoyable, and in that sense, social media software (at least for consumers) often has a lot of fun built into it to make it personal. The same should be considered for enterprise software in terms of how it uses fun or “sticky” features to harness adoption.

Nurturing adoption is an important exercise that goes beyond software, and yet the two are intertwined. Sharing the big idea, involving users in the change, and utilizing social tools are just three ways you can help to avoid making the new rollout all about the software or the process, and start making it about the people. By connecting their personal missions to the larger one and providing the right tools, you automatically get more than the sum of the parts.

Let me leave you with a final thought: Consider the impact of Microsoft’s first global ad campaign back in 1994 to promote and extend how Windows let the ordinary person do much more incredible stuff with a personal computer by asking: “Where do you want to go today?”. Microsoft was attempting to make the personal computer just that: more PERSONAL. And look where that adoption curve has taken us not even 20 years later…

What are your thoughts on adoption? How important is it to your organization? Share one of your adoption stories or just drop me a comment to say what you thought of the article.

Thanks for reading.

(Net)working the Conference Floor

This post was originally published on 22Apr10 while working for Open Text Corp.

Industry events like Content World (Open Text’s annual customer conference) are great opportunities for focused networking amongst peers. I’d even go so far as to say it’s THE reason to attend, but not just because I’m a Gemini social (media) butterfly. Conferences like these connect together the ecosystem of people who care about this stuff on many different levels and really want to make it all work.

A couple of months back, I arose one cold, bright morning, looking forward to helping run the Innovation Lab (OT’s traditional UX Design Group booth) at our latest conference. There were customers to meet that day, and I was excited to make some connections and show the “human face” (and ears) of our team… something we product designers can’t get enough of. As I entered the conference hall, I was immediately jazzed by the buzz of the crowd in the main exhibit hall and the layout of the booths in the distance. It was quite an impressive setup. But, first things first: I got myself registered, grabbed some breakfast, checked out my photo ID, and sat down to admire the lab setup. We had a great decorative banner to help catch peoples’ eyes and draw traffic, the glow of multiple computer stations loaded with usability tests, and a rack full of materials that attendees could take away with them or answer onsite.

So far, this had the makings of another great conference.

So what was I doing sitting there in my underwear?

Oh, didn’t I mention…? this was a virtual conference! Open Text’s Virtual Content World. And that’s the beauty of virtual meetups to some extent. They can obscure some of the smaller, potentially awkward social moments and shyness to help focus participants on what they’re talking about. As long as I kept the company shirt on in my digital profile photo (my avatar), I could pretty much wear whatever I wanted in real life. Still, it was interesting to note how the designers of the conference software had even thought to include ambient crowd noise at the hall-level experience. Nice touch to give you the “vibe” of the conference and subtly remind you of where you were, but with a much lower barrier of entry for people to start participating. Think back to the most engaging conferences you have ever been to. Chances are it was because you became engaged with people over some topic or experience and it set the tone for the whole time there. The best conferences are designed around plentiful social interaction. That’s what we as an industry are discovering along the way in the quest for social media software glory: The concept that conversations are an incredibly powerful thing to hang content around, and therefore a great tool to say, kickstart an event, or a project, or begin creating social change around some initiative even.

Now, I know what you may be thinking: “Virtual events are pretty much just webinars on steroids, right? I’ve even been in a chat room or two in my time and they lose their appeal pretty quick. That’s basically what we’re talking about here, right? It’s boring, sparse, utilitarian and most importantly, impersonal.” Well, lots are, and for sustained periods of time… that’s just not natural. And let’s be honest; most of the time when we attend webinars at our desks, we’re pretty much indulging ourselves in a level of nose picking we’d never get away with in public, all while trying to reduce the backlog in our email inboxes. We often become glorious multi-taskers in those moments, arguably taken farther away from real connected discussion. Right? In other words, it’s not always so much the tool but how it’s used.

OT’s first virtual conference was different for me however. Maybe it was the newness of it; maybe it was the idea that the conference emulated a physical space. Although the visuals were a little cheesy, the experience stimulated enough of a sense that you were someplace and that was orienting. You could then go start exploring what was being offered. And due to a well thought-out design, you could also recognize that the booths had people in them, including a way to differentiate staff, and talk to them. The controls also allowed you to chat in every public space so there was never a lack of opportunity to join in or just eavesdrop a bit. And of course, each space had its place to prominently display content, even if it was only just the itinerary for the other sessions.

I slipped into my staff role easily, and even remember remarking how the old retail sales awkwardness when reaching out to customers in a store to ask if they needed help was gone. In fact, I was trying to come up with neat ways to “engage the room” more in an attempt to avoid feeling like I was just watching a series of room entrants shuffle silently past our displays. The point of the Lab after all, was to engage with attendees, and I to some extent was the sidewalk performer out front. It challenged my networking skills to come up with ways to do so, so that people wanted to engage with the Lab, and yet… engage they did. I began to realize that the “booth” and the event itself were natural conversation pieces, and others were recognizing it too. In a way, it actually ended up focusing our conversations a bit.

There were plenty of reasons why this experience was as rewarding to the participants, but a big part of it developed because there was an almost instant online culture (and voice) of interaction that was formed. Culture and connections – not the tools – kept the interactions going. People would jump around to different rooms and still recognize one another, leaving and creating conversations in their wake; creating other connections. If a presenter gave a “speech” or staff person showed someone a piece of content, or how to do something, they usually made a strong digital first impression. They became memorable community members. That’s the power of networking, and when connected to shared content, the essence of the value of using social media in the enterprise. I have been part of less-than-successful online work communities from time to time due in large part to the fact that there wasn’t this strong networked sense of connection to people. Communities like that became big, empty faceless rooms with drawers full of files that people used less and less. This is the community manager’s worst nightmare, and a real ECM problem out there. It also contributes to the notion that the tools don’t work and are to blame. But I digress…

Like all conferences, by the time it was done, my extremities hurt – except in this case, it was my typing fingers and my brain rather than my feet. I kept hearing the voice of a past customer I had met at another conference: “I learn more from just connecting with my peers than I do with any of this conference stuff”. In a way, that’s kind of what this virtual conference had given to us: the ability to create an experience out of a basic networking event, populate it with conversation pieces, and provide the tools to create rapport, capture interactions and create business value. The exciting part for me will be when we only have one place to fill out information about ourselves. Nobody wants to keep filling out their profile when they change communities. Nobody wants to keep adding the same friends or contacts. It is a major barrier to entry. Developments with a concept called the Social Graph are what might make all of this a moot point in the near future, where our contacts and calendars ride with us into whatever communities we join.

I'd love to get your take on this or related topic. Please add a comment, or just say hi from your virtual self.

Thanks for reading.