Archives / October 2005

Part of my goal in Good Experience - in the newsletter and its associated projects - is to point out where the user experience is failing.

One of the repeat offenders is consumer technology. Consider some recent analysis from this Wharton article:

Complexity among consumer technology products has never been greater -- a good thing if the complexity means product improvement. But Wharton experts say new bells and whistles pose challenges to businesses and consumers alike. Complexity -- along with choice -- can have a big impact on how firms make and market new and improved gizmos, and on the decision processes of the people expected to buy them...

"In introducing tech products today, the main emphasis is on differentiation and how your product is unique. But if you fast-forward another five or 10 years, ... we will start to see ease of use become the most compelling feature of all."

Notice the two problems mentioned: complexity and choice. There is a Good Experience project that addresses each.

The complexity of most technology is a topic never far from my typing fingers, as I've endured and railed against some of the worst of it for years. However, many of us in the Good Experience community took it a step further a couple of years back with This Is Broken, which is a compilation of readers' complaints about poorly design, over-complex technology (as well as other offenders). I'm happy to announce a full redesign of the site, which I hope helps to invigorate the project. Check it out.

And regarding choice:

As we learned from Barry Schwartz at Gel 2005 this past April, and in the Good Experience interview, the paradox of choice is a growing phenomenon in affluent societies - in everything from technology products to the hundreds of salad dressings we choose from. So much choice weighs us down rather than freeing us up as it was supposed to do.

The problem of too much choice isn't caused only by the manufacturers of all these gadgets and devices; it's fueled in large part by the media, which delights in showing off and comparing a near-infinity of models and configurations of the various devices: cameras, PDAs, plasma TVs, DVRs, and on and on. The more devices they review, the more "content" they have to sell to advertisers.

The only constituency left out of this process, of course, is the customers themselves, who are left scratching their heads and still wondering which device to buy. I mean, even the venerable and respected Consumer Reports shows enough digital cameras to make a reader's head spin.

I've had it with too-complex products, too many of them, and too little information guiding non-techies to a good buying choice... so I just rewrote my own buying guide and you can get it right now.

Download the Uncle Mark 2006 Gift Guide and Almanac, rewritten and updated for the 2005/2006 holiday season.

This is my set of answers to questions I get all the time - "which digital camera should I by? which laptop? which gift for my high school-aged nephew? when should I go to the Met?"

And the twist: I only give ONE ANSWER. When someone asks me which digital camera they should buy, I don't give a four-dot comparison of "the 45 leading brands"... I give ONE answer. Here's the ONE that I endorse, as a technology expert, for all the non-techies who don't want to have to become techies just to buy a camera.

Read it, e-mail it, print it, pass it along. It's yours.

I'll finish with some words from MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, who at last week's Pop!Tech conference in Maine said (and this is not a quote but my best paraphrase)...

For a long time we've seen how the technology industry works. Andy Grove makes the processor faster, Bill Gates uses up more of the processing power. And we, the users, never see any of it. But it's not just that; it's even worse. We're actually getting less from our technology now.

My laptop five years ago ran faster and more reliably than the one I have today.

And the one I had five years before that ran even better, and so on, all the way back to my first 512k Mac in 1985. I flipped the switch, it went "bing", it was on, and I could start typing. Instant on.

The problem is that software programmers get paid for putting in code, and so the programs they write get slower and slower. If we'd just pay programmers for every line of code they remove, we'd have a much better software world.

Until we reach that nirvana of a customer-centered technology industry, keep sending in your gripes to This Is Broken, and keep buying the best technology we have at the moment, as picked by Uncle Mark.

Just released at unclemark.org - the brand new guide that gives you the single best choice in each technology gift category.

Download the Uncle Mark 2006 Gift Guide and Almanac.

From this Wharton article:

Complexity among consumer technology products has never been greater -- a good thing if the complexity means product improvement. But Wharton experts say new bells and whistles pose challenges to businesses and consumers alike. Complexity -- along with choice -- can have a big impact on how firms make and market new and improved gizmos, and on the decision processes of the people expected to buy them...

"In introducing tech products today, the main emphasis is on differentiation and how your product is unique. But if you fast-forward another five or 10 years, ... we will start to see ease of use become the most compelling feature of all."

As a child of the 1980s, I grew up reading the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books - an early attempt at interactivity in the decade before the Web. Each chapter of the book would conclude with a list of choices for the reader to decide how to proceed in the story.

It would be fun to write such a book for all the designers, IAs, customer experience analysts, and other practitioners I meet in the industry - most of whom love their jobs but wish they had more impact on their organization.

For example:

Today is your annual employee performance review with your manager [with the gender-neutral name] Pat, who heads up product management in the business.

After covering your accomplishments and areas for improvement, Pat asks you if you have any suggestions for how to improve the business. In your next year, you want to have more impact on the business and want to show Pat that you know how to lead it.

Which of these do you suggest?

a - Pat should read all the latest design guidelines from the "gurus" in your industry. You'll show Pat the website addresses.

b - Pat should send you to a training course so you can get certified in all the latest methods of testing and analysis.

c - Pat should directly observe customers talking about how the company can improve for them; you'll facilitate the customer sessions.

If you chose (a), then turn to page 99, wherein you return to your desk, send a couple of e-mails to Pat, and return to your workaday routine for the next year.

If you chose (b), turn to page 355 of your course book that you'll be reading to learn how to run ever-more-specific methods in tests that Pat wouldn't be caught dead participating in.

If you chose (c), congratulations! Turn the page on your story to see how this impacts you; more importantly, Pat; and most importantly, the company and its customers.

Of course, signing on for (c) means that you'll have to then convince Pat to spend a day - a whole day - with customers, observing their real, unscripted experiences with the company and its services.

It might go something like this:

"Pat," you say, "it's time for us to schedule a day for you and other stakeholders to observe customers using our service."

Pat says, "Oh, that? Actually, I can't make it - I'm really busy right now... could you send me a Powerpoint with findings like you've done in the past?"

How do you respond?

a - "Sure thing. It's such a hassle to schedule everyone for a whole day. I'll e-mail you the Powerpoint when I'm done with the tests."

b - "If you're not going to come, at least send me to a training course where I can learn the latest testing methods, so my time here is at least more academically interesting."

c - "We really do need a full day from you and anyone else with decision-making power. It only works if you're physically present to watch first-hand, and then discuss afterwards with the others. Plus, I'll bring donuts."

If you chose (a), once again, turn to page 99 and return to your desk.

If you chose (b), head back to that course book, page 355!

If you chose (c), congratulations - and get ready to move on to the next challenge in the customer experience process: glazed or powdered sugar?

Continuing our advertising reviews... is this a better investment than improving the customer experience? From the NYT: AOL pays $50 million to promote AOL.com.

(Previously: Reviewing Good and Bad Advertising).

Most big expensive videogame launched these days have better graphics than gameplay. This article suggests how games could aspire to better gameplay, with examples.

(Of course, plenty more good examples in Good Experience Games...)

I've been taking more notice of ads I see on the streets of Manhattan. Spending on customer experience and advertising is a zero-sum game, so every dollar companies spend on ads is a dollar not spent on improving the actual customer experience of the service or product.

As I see the ads, I keep thinking: Were these ads better investments than improving the customer experience?

Here are some examples:

1. An ad for the Palm Treo - a good product, by the way, which I've
recommended in Uncle Mark - promises: "We will talk less but say more."

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889974/

A reasonable interpretation is that phone minutes are more expensive on the Treo, so users will want to talk less. The ad says nothing about the Treo experience (the simple interface, the strong feature set) being superior to competing products... just that you'll want to talk less. Not much of a promise.

Conclusion: Money would be better spent on ads that emphasize the experience (and to improve the palm.com website).

2. An ad for Chase and Duane Reade (a drugstore chain) shows a twenty-dollar bill folded onto a cheap dispenser of generic hand-soap, and promises, "Your Choice. Your Chase."

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889040/

Uhhh... what? In other words, use a Chase ATM to pay twenty dollars for some cheap Duane Reade hand soap...? Hey, it's your choice.

Conclusion: Kill the ads and make the in-store experience a little less irritating.

3. A great ad for the ASPCA shows three images - a roll of duct tape, a can of gasoline, and a cat - and as you immediately begin to think of a scenario joining all three, you see the tag line: "Whatever you can imagine, we've seen worse."

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889038/

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889039/

Conclusion: Good investment. Here's an ad based on the actual service being offered - guarding animals against abuse. It's clever and visually impressive - but not unclear (like the Palm ad) or downright harmful to the brand (like the Duane Reade ad).

My challenge to companies with big ad budgets is to consider:

- would this money be better spent on the customer experience?

- if we must spend on ads, can we at least focus the ad to communicate about the customer experience?

(If you're interested in more detailed thinking on this topic, read below; otherwise, skip the rest of this column :)

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My recent column, Defining Branding, got one of the larger responses in recent memory.

If you click the Comments link at the bottom, you'll see over a dozen thoughtful responses from readers... like this comment from Kerry Thompson:

I am wary of calling brand components such as visuals, narratives, advertising campaigns "secondary" to customer experience. These things are actually part of the early customer experience.

I would define brand as being the customer's perception of your company, which early on is shaped by commercials, web sites, ad campaigns, stories told by friends and associates, etc. That perception is later (hopefully) shaped by their customer experience, which is ultimately, as you said, more influential than any conceptual incarnation of the brand a company can dream up.

As I considered this and other feedback, I thought back to another past column, on a similar topic, which also got a large response: Budgeting for Advertising and Customer Experience.

In this column from July 2004, I compared a typical budget for a customer experience project - tens of thousands of dollars - with a standard advertising budget: tens of millions of dollars.

Obviously, these numbers are way out of proportion at a time when customers tune out most of the thousands of ads they see a day; and at a time when the customer experience is so vital to a company's survival and success. When are companies going to follow Jeff Bezos's suggestion to invest more in the experience than in shouting about the company?

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P.S. Am I the only person who thinks Amtrak and Sprint hired the same designer for their new oh-so-cool logos? Seems that swooshes are now in fashion again:

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889037/

http://flickr.com/photos/37996581195@N01/51889036/

I'm happy to announce my latest Goo' app, which I hope will greatly increase personal productivity for thousands, eventually millions, of Internet users: Gootodo.com, a todo list that lets you forward e-mails to future days, so you don't have to deal with them today.

[Updated June 22, 2006: thanks to Seth for the pointer! -mh]

More detail below.

Now, I occasionally write about "bit literacy" - the idea that people should become proficient with managing digital information. Just as they had to learn software in the age of "computer literacy" 20 years ago, knowledge workers must learn how to manage information today, in the age of bits.

A great deal of productivity is at stake. In my experience, bit literate users are several times faster at completing tasks, with fewer errors, better organized in general, and perhaps most importantly, less stressed about their jobs.

One key piece in bit literacy is knowing how to use e-mail. So a couple of years back I wrote a Managing Incoming E-mail report, which has been very popular (and recently covered in this Forbes article [and later in this Chicago Tribune piece]). But while better e-mail practices helped users to some extent, there was always still one missing piece: the todo list.

Today I supply that missing piece.

For years - through many versions of Windows - most computer users have been saddled with the Microsoft Outlook task list, which - to put it generously - didn't get the attention it deserved. In fact, except for one or two niche software apps I've seen over the years, almost no users in the world have a good todo list application that allows them to stay organized. (37signals created the excellent tadalist.com, but I put that in a different category - a shareable listmaker.) Users have long needed a single todo list on which they could organize all their personal and professional tasks.

Enter the Good Experience todo list, or Gootodo for short: a Web-based app that in my experience is the most productive todo list I've ever seen, on any platform.

(To get a 30-day trial account, go to https://www.gootodo.com.)

---

About Gootodo

There are four key components in Gootodo:

1. Each todo is associated with a particular day.

If you don't need to finish a todo today, redate it to a future day, so that it doesn't clutter your todo list today. (This is a paradigm shift from Outlook's task list, where every todo from now into the ages is shown, incredibly, on today's list!)

Here's something you don't generally hear in discussions about productivity: it's good to procrastinate. In Gootodo, you should move todos as far in the future as possible (remember, "let the bits go"). This way, today's list is filtered to the fewest, and most important, todos.

Of course, if you finish everything on today's list, you can look at future days and begin completing those todos as well... and if you don't complete a todo today, at midnight it rolls over into tomorrow's list.

2. Each todo has a ranking within its day.

For example, in today's todo list (see first image below), you can use the arrow buttons to re-order the todos so that the highest-priority item is always on top.

A good exercise at 9:00 a.m. every morning is to filter the todos for today: redating non-critical todos into future days, and sorting today's todos from most to least important. You then have an ordered list of everything you need to get done today - and you always know what you should be working on at any moment: the todo on top!

3. Each todo has both a summary and a detail.

This allows the user to view the todo list by summary, but also store notes that are accessible in a detail view. This way you can store all the textual context around a todo item in the todo list, without having to cross-reference with other files.

For example: you can create a todo called "call steve", and in the details, you can write (or paste) the entire meeting agenda, and of course steve's phone number.

4. Any e-mail program can create new todos - for today or a day in the future.

This is perhaps the most important advance that Gootodo offers over any other productivity tool. Easy example: if you're in a meeting with your Blackberry and think of a new todo, just e-mail today's todo list address. Gootodo reads the e-mail and creates a new todo: the subject line of the e-mail becomes the summary, and the body of the e-mail becomes the detail.

Another example: If you e-mail someone a question, just BCC the Gootodo address (for today or in the future), which will create a todo item, on the correct day, reminding you to follow up with that person to make sure you got a response.

Linking your e-mail - whether Outlook, Gmail, Blackberry, or any other mailer - to your todo list and a calendar allows for a significant jump in productivity. I personally use this feature all the time, every day.

Gootodo Screenshots

Here are a few screenshots of Gootodo.

Above is the main todo list view.

After clicking New Todo in the first image, you can (above) create a summary and, optionally, details for the new todo.

Clicking redate allows you to send any todo to any date in the future.

Above is a future day's todo list.

Try Gootodo now: To get a 30-day trial account, go to https://www.gootodo.com.

See also: Summary of the e-mail/Gootodo method

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More notes:

Gootodo boosts productivity and thus is not for free (after the 30-day free trial, anyway). If used correctly as your only todo list, Gootodo can dramatically boost your personal productivity, saving you time, money, and energy and freeing you up to spend time on profitable, fun, or personally meaningful activities.

Gootodo is a productivity tool, not a listmaker. If you want a tool to help you make lots and lots of lists, then use a listmaker - which is totally different from what Gootodo does. If you'd really rather use a listmaker, then we'd recommend tadalist.com and rememberthemilk.com, both created by developers we like and respect.

Gootodo is insanely useful to people who use it right. Below are some comments from paying customers (three of our first early adopters, in fact).

Testimonials

"Simple. Clever. Genuinely useful. Gootodo is a keeper."
- Mike B.

"Gootodo is a to-do list for everyone from geeks to grandmothers. It is powerful and easy, the best of all combinations."
- Ted, Omaha, Nebraska

"My productivity has increased since I started using Gootodo. It helps me keep my inbox clean and lets me quickly and easily prioritize short- and long-term tasks."
- Elizabeth A.

"Thanks to everyone at GooTodo fo such a great service! Dave Allen's system wasn't quite working for me... I had "Next Actions" lists all over the place, and multiplying. Only when I started putting all my next actions into GooTodo did I start to get a handle on things. Now I deal much more efficiently with those moments when I have to actually decide what to do next. No more wondering which list to look at, much less where they all are. And the increase in my productivity is pretty amazing."
- Lenni H., Dallas, Texas

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Questions, comments? Contact me: mark@goodexperience.com.

P.S. If you're interested in other Goo' apps, see our free e-inviter site at Goovite.com.

P.P.S. The logos for Gootodo, Goovite, and Gel were all drawn by Sam Brown from explodingdog.com. Buy his books.