Print, Slowly March 30, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Customer Service, History, Shopping
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I recently wrote about the demise of print media, lamenting the loss of PC Magazine as they shifted to an online-only distribution model. I received a lot of sympathetic email from people who also liked printed magazines. We all agreed that the world really needs printed media.
With such a fan base, why do print magazines make it so hard to subscribe to them? Subscribing to a magazine is, by far, the longest and most tedious process on the web.
With PC Magazine gone, I had a slot available in my reading hierarchy. In my world, you must always read the more transient items ahead of the less transient. Thus, you should read any available newspapers first, followed by any available magazines, and then any books you have on hand. I find that bringing rigid rules and structure to a relaxing pastime like reading makes it that much more compatible with a compulsive lifestyle.
I decided to replace PC Magazine with Wired. I had abandoned Wired years ago, when its propensity for ransom-note typography and “we’re too avant-garde for you” layout made the magazine illegible. Nonetheless, I had recently picked up an issue while traveling and found it much improved. At $1 an issue, a subscription was hard to resist.
I went to the Wired website and ordered the magazine. That was six weeks ago. I still haven’t received my first issue! In a time when second-day delivery is considered to be the slow, economical choice, taking six weeks to get anything is incomprehensible. I can go online and order a custom-made dress shirt and get it sooner! Why can’t I get a magazine in a few days?
I know why: my subscription was processed by some aggregating service center in Iowa and dropped into the Wired subscriber database. I’ll get a magazine when the next issue is mailed. This is the model the magazine industry has used for about 100 years. They’ll continue to use it until the last issue is sent to the last subscriber, about ten years from now.
Here’s a bold, out of the box idea: print a few extra copies of the magazine and keep them in Iowa. When my subscription arrives, send me a copy of the current issue right away. Even if I’ve already read it, the quicker response will earn you brownie points. You could even start my subscription with the next issue and spot me the current issue in the interest of (gasp) good customer service.
Will this happen? I doubt it. I fear that the print industry has all but given up. Their only focus is on making some sort of transition to online delivery that can still pay the bills. Rather than finding a way to make print work with a receptive audience using modern technologies, they are chasing the trailing edge of digital technologies with clumsy efforts at blogs and such.
It’s sad to realize that we live at the end of an era: 550 years of printing, drawing to a close. We’re witnesses to history, but will be left with no way to permanently write it down.
Wwwwhy Designs Fail March 18, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership, Random Musings.Tags: Interfaces, Irritants, Users
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Here’s a simple test: pick a web site, any web site. Try typing the URL the old-fashioned way, with “www” in front. Did it work? Most certainly. Now try it again, with just “ww,” “w,” or even “wwww.” Did any of those work? I’ll give you even money one or more of them failed.
Why? People mistype this stuff all the time! Don’t you think that some considerate, thoughtful systems administrator would have taken the time to create the “near miss” versions of his web site, just to make it easier on the users? You’d think that, but they certainly didn’t. And hundreds, maybe thousands of users feel the effects of one unthinking person.
This isn’t about poor web site name management. The real issue here is that too many developers don’t take the time to figure out where users might make mistakes so that they can program around them. The goal of any system is to make it as easy as possible for the user, and that includes silently detecting and correcting mistakes wherever possible.
Much like interfaces that force users to perform mundane tasks better left to the computer (like insisting on perfectly formatted credit card numbers) mistake-intolerant tools force the user to do more work for no good reason. By definition, humans make errors. When dealing with other people, we silently recognize and correct minor errors all the time. People are really good at figuring out intent based on context and ignoring minor faux pas. Computers aren’t naturally good at this, which is why developers need to consider all sorts of potential errors that might occur in their systems. Wherever possible, they need to accept the error, anticiapte the intent, and move forward.
This kind of design error is not limited to software systems. It extends to leadership as well. Too many leaders insist on “correct” behavior from their team, expecting behavior that exactly matches what they might do when presented with a task. Good leaders allow for creativity and understand that there are many paths to the goal. Tolerating multiple paths that reach the same goal is a sign of a confident leader.
This isn’t to say that it’s OK to miss the goal. It’s not, and failure needs to be addressed. But are you allowing your people the latitude to take routes you didn’t anticipate and still reach the goal? Like a system that gauges intent and still delivers the desired result, strong leadership encourages creativity that will find other paths. In the best scenarios, your people will find a way that is better than yours, and even in the worst case, you can use the less-optimal paths as teachable moments to improve your team’s performance in the future.
Survey Says… March 4, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Customer Service, Interfaces, Irritants, Surveys
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Most people are shocked to learn that I like to give my opinion on things. Normally reluctant to speak out, with a little prodding I can come up with a viewpoint on almost anything. Given my natural desire to share, it’s also not surprising to learn that I like to fill out surveys.
Most surveys. Well-written surveys are fun to fill out, and provide the illusion that someone cares about what I have to say. I always volunteer to be on a customer feedback list and am actually registered with several online survey companies that periodically send me surveys. I take my role as a shaper of public thought seriously.
That is, until I get sent a lousy survey. You’ve all seen them. For some reason, they tend to be attached to subscription renewal forms, wherein I have to describe my budget and spending habits in excruciating detail. Who writes these surveys? Who actually uses the results?
They start out simple enough. A few questions about your business, gross revenue, employees, etc. Then you get hit with an enormous chart listing two hundred different technology areas. For each area, you need to provide your projected spending, ranging from $0 to $10,000,000, divided into 15 or 20 buckets. Good grief! I don’t know! And I’m in charge of this stuff! We’ll spend what we need to spend, as the business needs it. Just the act of clicking on each item and selecting the range makes my wrists hurt.
Having waded through all that, you then get hit with comparison questions, having you compare one vendor with another on attributes like “trustworthy,” “humble,” and “good with children.” For each attribute, you get to make Solomonic distinctions between “strongly agree,” “adamantly agree,” and “insistent.”
Even for a hard-core survey-taker like me, getting through this is tough. I often punt a survey half-way through, leaving me to wonder if my partial answers were counted. All things considered, I have to wonder if there is any statistical validity to the results when all is said and done. Most of these things are clearly written by marketing people with no direct exposure to the technology they address. I have to assume their understanding of statistics is similarly limited.
I do like the idea of these people sitting around a big table, lattes in hand, poring over the results. Imagine the discussion: “Brandi, why do 77.293% of our customers ‘reluctantly admit’ that we are less likely to ‘offer actionable solutions’ than our competitors?” “I don’t know, Geoff, but look on the bright side: 58.909% are ‘unwilling to dispute’ that we ‘bring fresh perspectives’ to the market.”
Here’s my fresh perspective: I want to keep filling out surveys, if companies make them sensible, short, and easy to fill out. On that, I strongly agree.
State Your Name February 25, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Caller ID, Communication, Phone
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There are many unsung heroes in the history of technology. Today, I’d like to salute Ted Paraskevakos, the inventor of Caller ID. Ted started working on Caller ID back in 1968. I cannot believe that 40 years have passed and we still have not erected a monument to him somewhere. I would have settled for a Bud Light Real Men Of Genius salute, but even that has not come to pass.
Caller ID converted the phone from something controlled by the caller to something I control. In olden days, you pretty much had to pick up the phone; you never know what lay at the other end. Good news or bad, you took your chances, and you often got stuck with some interminable sales call.
With Caller ID, I get to choose my conversations. Whether the goal is catching that important call or avoiding a bothersome caller, Caller ID puts us all in charge of our phones. In the past, this luxury was reserved to those with full-time personal assistants. Now, we are all in control of our phones.
Best of all, I can now completely avoid calls from people who insist on blocking their Caller ID information. When the phone rings and the display shows “Unknown,” there is only one course of action: dump the call to voice mail. Who in their right mind would take a call from someone who is intentionally hiding their identity prior to the call? Most telling, the vast majority of these callers never leave a message.
Long-time readers know that I am a big fan of YouMail, the personalized voice mail service for your cell phone. Among the many marvelous features of YouMail is the ability to detect and handle blocked Caller ID separately from your other calls. In my case, callers get a message telling them that I do not accept blocked calls, and that they need to call back with the Caller ID information exposed. The call is then dropped, without even giving the caller a chance to leave a message.
So, a word of advice to potential callers: show yourself. If I have time, I’ll usually take the call. But if you block your name, I guarantee that I will never take your call, at home, or work, on on my cell.
On the other hand, if “Ted Paraskevakos” ever shows up on my phone’s display, I will definitely take the call.
Wireless TV February 16, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Technology, Television
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In the fall of 2000, our family moved into a new house in a new neighborhood. Since we were living in a construction zone, cable cuts were common. As a result, reliable television and internet connectivity was not a given and we would lose our signal at the drop of a hat (or backhoe, as the case may be).
As you may recall, there was a heated election that fall, and it took thirty days for Al Gore to throw in the towel. He was scheduled to give his concession speech at 9 PM on December 13. I was determined to see the event, having waited so long to see what should have happened a month earlier. (I had no idea that his concession would ultimately lead to the horror of global warming, but that’s a topic for another post).
I turned on the television around 8:30 and was presented with a blank screen. No! Not another cable outage! Knowing that it could take hours to fix the cable, I began to look for alternatives. I ran to the garage and grabbed a spool of wire, pulled the TV away from the wall, and began to rig a quick antenna.
My kids thought I had lost my mind. Muttering to myself, I stripped the end of the wire, screwed it to the 300-ohm antenna jack, and draped it across the shelves in the family room. I switched the TV to the ANT-1 source, clicked to channel 5, and got a decent, somewhat snowy, picture.
My kids were stunned! They gazed, slackjawed, at a modern miracle: television from thin air!
Until that moment, it never occured to me that my kids had never experienced television that was not delivered via cable. They’d never tuned to a distant UHF channel, never been stuck with three channels, never used a paper television guide to see what was on. They had never even used a TV with knobs! They had no idea that television signals ebb and flow around us all the time, free for the taking.
I like to share this story when the conversation turns to rapidly changing technology and the generational divides that result. As we deploy new stuff at an ever-increasing rate, we need to keep in mind that not everyone understands why things work a certain way, or why some ideas may or may not be worth revisiting. More importantly, we need to remember why we didn’t do certain things, to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.
The Effective CIO 