When Vultures Circle January 21, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Best Of 2009, Decisions, Denial, Florida, Vultures
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I spent fifteen years living in Florida. While some people view Florida as an idyllic tropical paradise of surf, sand, and perky rodents, I see it more as a modern taste of biblical Egypt. While I left Florida before experiencing all ten plagues, I have actually lived through plagues of frogs, locusts, flies, and hail. Some modern plagues filled in for the traditional ones; a plague of boils sounds bad, but a plague of tourists can be overwhelming. Flash floods and brush fires are lovely, and you haven’t lived until you’ve discovered that a plague of wild pigs have uprooted your entire yard overnight.
I reached my tipping point one hot afternoon while trying to mow our yard. I recognize that “hot afternoon” translates to every day in Florida except for the tail end of January; this was actually a really hot day in August, with temperature and humidity both nearing 100.
The mower had broken down. I was sitting next to it surrounded by tools and mower parts, sweating and muttering. As I wondered if a plague of mower problems was just beginning, I heard a “whoosh.” An enormous vulture landed next to me, no more than three feet away!
Vultures are huge, ugly birds. Up close, they are even huger and uglier. They spend their days circling high above the Florida swamps, looking for dead things to eat. In my current state, I attracted enough vulture attention to warrant a further look. The vulture and I sat silently, considering each other. I could see, in his beady vulture eyes, the assessment occurring. “Hmmm. Not dead yet, but close. Could be dinner tonight; definitely dinner by tomorrow.”
Mental notes taken, he flapped his gigantic wings and took off, leaving me with my mower. I was relieved that I had not warranted an immediate taste, but deeply concerned by the perception of my imminent demise.
We had had enough of Florida. Soon after, we began looking for a new job and home, which has led to many wonderful things for me and my family. While the vulture was not the single reason for our leaving Florida, I still think of it as a strong motivating event for finally taking action and getting on with our move.
When faced with difficult, potentially costly decisions, I am reminded of the vulture. It was the sign that convinced me to get moving. In our personal and business lives, we often avoid hard decisions and try to defer the pain. Moving was hard, but staying in Florida would have been disastrous.
Sometimes, it takes a vulture to force the issue and get us moving. Are you avoiding a decision? Are you in denial about a looming change to your world? Do you need a vulture?
Say The Secret Word! January 19, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings, Technology.Tags: Interfaces, Security, Software, Users
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It has become fairly common for sites to enhance their security by asking you to answer a few “secret questions” to confirm that you are, in fact, you when updating account information or even just logging in. As a result, users now have the opportunity to forget several bits of information for each web site they visit, instead of just forgetting their password on a regular basis.
We use this approach at my company, where users can reset their passwords by answering special questions. The system we use even lets people pose their own questions, which led to one user to create this question:
Question 1: How do you feel today? Answer 1: Good
So far so good. Here is their second question:
Question 2: How do you feel today? Answer 2: Bad
I kid you not. Not surprising, this user eventually forgot their password, and it took quite a while for us to figure out why they could never access the automatic password reset system.
Here’s my helpful usability tip for the day: No matter what the secret question, use the same answer every time. Choose something different from your password, but use it consistently.
People are astounded when I suggest this. It never occurs to them that the system cannot check to make sure that “groucho” really is the name of the first person you kissed, or your first pet, or your second grade teacher. It just wants a string of characters that only you know.
Before all the security people reading this freak out, I’ll concede that this is not a security best practice. It leaves you vulnerable to some tiny chance of a security breach. You assume all the risk if you choose to go this route. Et cetera.
But in reality, this is much better than the approach most people take, which is to write all this stuff down on a Post-It note and stick it on the monitor. (Security-conscious users put the Post-It under the keyboard, or in their desk drawer. Thanks for incorporating physical barriers into your security practices!)
Security breaks down when security systems are too complicated. People revert to simple solutions just because they want the computer to get out of the way and let them accomplish the task at hand. We need to stop creating complicated, unusable systems and focus on simple, usable ones. With security, as with everything else on earth, it is tough to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Brownie points to readers who know why I chose “groucho” as my answer!
At The Tone, The Time Will Be… January 16, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Technology.Tags: Interfaces, Time Zones, Users
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When it comes to user interface pet peeves, I don’t just have a few pets, I have a whole zoo. Today, let’s talk about time zones.
Many, many web sites want to know your time zone so they can correctly send you messages or set appointments or reminders. Fair enough. But the manner in which they ask for your time zone leaves a lot to be desired.
One long-standing tradition involves providing a pull-down menu with every time zone in the world, starting with Greenwich, England and heading east or west. Sometimes the list includes the official names of the zones, which may help, but often just lists the offset (in hours) from the time in Greenwich. This is sometimes known as “Zulu” time or the increasingly common “UTC,” which is the French acronym (acronym Français?) for Universal Coordinated Time. This is so handy: ask your Mom if she is in UTC-4 or UTC-5 next time you chat. I’m sure she’ll know in a heartbeat.
Occasionally the list presents you with major cities in each time zone. Presumably, you pick a big city near you and your time zone is set to match. Why, then, do they list several cities in each zone? Atlanta, New York, and Washington, DC, are all in the Eastern Time Zone (UTC-5, duh). Why three choices? Are we catering to the city slickers but rebuffing small-town America? Seems like someone is going to get offended, somehow. And then, you need that special time zone for Indiana, or at least you did until this year, and parts of New Mexico, I think.
You might also get prompted for Daylight Savings Time. I always read too much into this question. Are they asking if my locale use DST in general, or if it is in effect right now? In the summer, the safe answer is always “yes,” but in the winter you are rolling the dice, my friend.
I’ve seen lots of interfaces for setting the time zone, and they all violate the important rules of user interfaces: they require too much geeky user knowledge, they are hard to understand, and they make the user do more work than the computer.
All but one, that is. I recently came across a delightfully elegant interface that asks one simple question of the user: “What is your current time right now?” It then presents a pull-down menu with the current time in every time zone. The user just finds the time that is closest to their current time (usually within a few minutes either way) and the computer figures out the rest! What a concept! Gather one bit of trivial data from the user and do the heavy lifting to compute UTC offset, look up DST rules for that zone, and set the time zone accordingly.
Kudos to the developer! There is always a better way that respects the user and exploits the computer, if we only work hard enough to find it. Every aspect of every user interface should be this elegant and clever.
Book Review: Unlocking The Sky January 14, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Book Reviews.Tags: Aviation, Book Reviews, Software
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Everyone knows the story of the first airplane flight: working tirelessly in their Ohio bicycle shop, Orville and Wilbur Wright develop the first modern airplane, which they successfully fly on the coast of North Carolina in December of 1903. They go on to refine their design and earn their rightful place as the fathers of modern aviation.
Right? Wrong. Following their initial success, the reclusive Wrights continued their work in Ohio but shared absolutely nothing with fellow aviators of the day. Although the Wrights borrowed extensively from those who preceded them, they spent the rest of their lives litigating against anyone who dared to build any other aircraft. Their secretive nature impeded early aircraft development and nearly ruined the true father of modern aviation, Glenn Curtiss.
Seth Shulman shares the story of Glenn Curtiss in Unlocking The Sky. Detailed and well-written, the book recounts a crucial phase of modern technology in an accessible and compelling fashion. Truthfully, the book is hard to put down and is easily read in an evening or two.
Glenn Curtiss began his career as a motorcycle designer, building fast small engines that propelled him to a world land speed record of 136 MPH in 1907. At that time, lightweight engines were the real key to aviation success, delivering enough thrust to push early inefficient aircraft into the sky. With no formal education, Glenn Curtiss found himself designing and building the first modern aircraft, far exceeding the achievements of the Wright brothers. He made the first publicly announced (and witnessed) flight in 1908, covering a kilometer before a panel of judges, and set the world speed record in Rheims, France a year later in 1909.
His achievements incensed the Wrights, and they spent the rest of their lives trying to destroy Curtiss. Using a few patents that had been inappropriately interpreted by the courts, the Wrights sought to bankrupt Curtiss and regain control of aircraft development throughout the world. The Wrights went as far as to force the Smithsonian to remove references to Curtiss from their history of aviation as a prerequisite to displaying the Wright Flyer in the museum. (The Flyer was initially displayed in the British Royal Museum for years until the Smithsonian acquiesced to Orville Wright’s demands.)
Beyond the excitement of early aviation and the drama of the Wright litigation, Shulman’s book offers other lessons to modern developers one hundred years later. Although Shulman did not set out to write a book about open versus proprietary software development, anyone versed in the field cannot help but draw conclusions between the distressing behavior of the Wrights and the open, collaborative nature of Curtiss. Curtiss believed in sharing everything he learned so that the dream of manned flight would be realized and enhanced. The Wrights sought to contgrol and protect even the smallest details of their airplanes to extract as much profit as possible.
Certainly, the Wrights represent the most restrictive approach to technical development. Curtiss, while making seminal contributions to the field of aviation, never fully capitalized on the value of his inventions. Readers seeking to find a happy medium between the two will certainly enjoy learning more about early aviation as they read this compelling, fascinating book.
The Effective CIO 