Archives / March 2006

Scott Heiferman Gel '04 writes the 50 Reasons Why People Aren't Using Your Website

11. Because it doesn't make or save them a ton of money
12. Because it doesn't save them a ton of time
13. Because they can't think of what they're passionate about
14. Because it doesn't save lives or save the world
15. Because it's not as exciting as vegas
16. Because it sounds like a citibank ad and they hate citibank ads
17. Because nobody's waiting in line for it
18. Because they've got jobs & kids & they're busy
19. Because they've got an appointment with american idol20. Because they're scared of the computer
20. Because they've got enough friends

Thanks to Scott Berkun for his post describing Gel:

Good Experience live is the only conference I've been to that is self-reflective: many of the principles of design and good user experience espoused during the day can be found in the way the conference itself is run.

Scott will run the Sacred Spaces Tour at Gel 2006... it's shaping up to be one of the hottest tickets for Thursday's Day 1 lineup.

A couple of good reminders to share with you today... I only wish they had greater awareness of "good experience" and its role, even greater than design, in business and technology today.

(This - if you'll permit me a side-rant - is precisely why I started the Gel conference - to promote greater awareness of who and what is really driving success today - good experience, and the people who focus on it in their work. if you haven't signed up yet, this is your near-last opportunity for this year: just three days left at regular price: http://gelconference.com/c/gel06.php )

First - writing at Design Observer, Adrian Shaughnessy calls it "odd" that Google "should have a folksy logo that looks more like a school project than the mark of a global corporation."

From Google and the Tyranny of Good Design:

...[T]here's something magnificent about Google's lack of design. There's something defiant, almost obtuse about its reluctance to indulge in the sort of oleaginous branding and design that is now the corporate norm. We've reached a point, in the homogenized West, where good graphic design is everywhere. The battle has been won: every business knows it needs good design - you don't have to tell them anymore. It's enshrined in the business schools, established in the corporate HQs. Even small businesses understand that good design is good for business. It's a universal truth, like "customer service" and "value for money," and all the other boardroom nostrums that drive modern commerce.

But the consequence of all this feel-good business is that design has become, more often than not, a badge of mediocrity.

Very well put. But missing in this piece is what is most important in business these days: creating a good experience. Logo design is really important to graphic designers; what's most important to users is the user experience. So it's no surprise that Google's user experience would be a better predictor of their success than whether the logo was "folksy" or not. Good experience drives business success.

(What comprises good experience? See the three strands of good experience.)

And then a nicely written reminder in The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites, which expresses surprise that some websites perform well despite their lack of beautiful visual design:

The general lesson here is simplicity. A beautiful website may draw a user in initially, but a simple website will keep your users coming back. If one of your users gets lost trying to navigate your website, check out of your web store, or finding simple contact information, then you unnecessarily are increasing the chances that this user will simply leave.

I have to say, though, I'm surprised that anyone in 2006 could still call this a "surprising" truth... :)

Video of "Robotics in Space Exploration" with Rodney Brooks Gel '04. From MIT World:

As eager as he is to invent robots that can travel to a moon of Saturn or Jupiter, and function autonomously in these hostile environments, Rodney Brooks would love a shot to explore space himself.

Charly Gehring Gel '05, who runs the New Netherland Institute, and Russell Shorto Gel '05 got some press today in the Times. From Pressing a Claim for Dutch History:

The vision for the New Amsterdam Center is to assemble under one roof New York's earliest historically relevant organizations supported by Dutch commercial interests. The anchor tenant would be the New Amsterdam History Center, run jointly by the Collegiate Church and the New Netherland Institute, which is now in Albany. The institute has undertaken the New Netherland Project, which involves translating all Dutch documents related to New York's earliest founding.

... Henry Hudson sailed into the harbor in late August 1609 for the Dutch East India Company, paving the way for the Dutch to become the first settlers of "Manna-hata," as the island was originally referred to, according to "The Island at the Center of the World," a history of Dutch Manhattan by Russell Shorto.

Congrats to Stewart Butterfield Gel '03, on the cover of Newsweek this week with his wife Caterina Fake.

(Remember - you saw them at Gel first, pre-Flickr :) Who else will debut this year that you shouldn't miss?)

From the cover story:

Canadian-born Flickr, by building a 2.5 million-member community solely around a passion for sharing photos, has become a poster child on how a well-executed Net effort can make big changes in people's habits. Welcome to the new tech boom.

(Thanks, kottke)

I'm happy to welcome world-renowned mentalist Marc Salem to Gel :'06:.

One week left for Gel 2006 regular tickets - register now.

If you've already registered, log in to make your Day 1 choices!

Sort of a strange coincidence.

Since I've been writing about bit literacy a lot lately I've been meaning to link to my speech from February 2001 when I announced the concept at the TED conference. Here's the speech (mp3).

I was looking around online for the exact date of the talk and happened upon a news story published the very day I gave my talk - Saturday, February 24, 2001:

Mathematician Claude Shannon dies | CNET News.com

MEDFORD, Mass.-Claude Shannon, a mathematician and computer scientist whose theories became the basis for modern mass communications networks, died Saturday after battling Alzheimer's disease. He was 84.

Shannon invented the bit. Everything in my TED speech - and much of what I (and you, probably, if you're reading this blog) - write and think about and work on derives from his important work. In the hurry of events that February, I missed the story that day.

Thank you, Dr. Shannon.

 Gel 2006 attendees: You can now rank your Day 1 choices, upload your headshot, and find other attendees.

Log in to your Gel attendee page: gelconference.com/db (If you were at Gel last year and forget your password, just click "forgot your password?").

You'll then see the page, excerpted in the screenshot above. You can then do any of these, as shown by the red circles:

1. Rank your Day 1 choices - just click "Please rank your Day 1 choices for Gel 2006."

2. Upload your headshot - just click Add Photo. (Don't worry about resizing - we'll do that automatically - just submit any picture file.)

3. Find attendees by interest area, company, or name. Just click Attendee Search.

Enjoy - and let me know if you have questions..

Get ready to be sent this link by lots of friends... fingers breakdance.

I'll probably also link to it in the e-mail newsletter, in Fun Stuff.

(Thanks, kottke)

I mentioned it in the e-mail newsletter earlier today... I'm happy to welcome Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, as a speaker at Gel 2006.

Seth's post on authenticity earlier this week reminded me of my interview a year ago with Ron Pompei, all about authenticity:

Where would you rather shop, at a farmer's market or a supermarket? At a farmer's market you get good food, sold to you by the farmer who grew it. And she's not pretending to be Amish - that's not a costume. Everything there is authentic.

In a supermarket you get unidentifiable material, wrapped in plastic, with a bar code on it - you bring it to the front, swipe it with a laser, and then if you want to ask that person anything about that product, they have no idea. They only work the cash register. Ever notice how a supermarket is a horrible experience?...

Read full interview

You can also watch Ron's video clip on the Gel 2005 video clips page.

If you have ridden the New York City subway recently, you might have noticed little speech bubbles stuck on to the ads that line the walls and halls of the subway. The bubbles invite passerby to write their own text into the bubbles, thereby adding a caption and commenting on the ad, the city, or anything else on their mind. (One ad for fashion brand DKNY, for example, has a young model wondering, through a speech bubble, "What am I gonna do when I'm 23?")

These stickers are all the work of Ji Lee, who started the Bubble Project as a way of allowing New Yorkers to talk back to the advertisements that often dominate their urban experience.

Ji Lee will be speaking at my Gel 2006 conference in a few weeks, so I had a phone call with him to talk about why he started The Bubble Project.

(The text below came from my notes I scribbled during our phone call, so any rough edges are mine.)

Ji Lee: The Bubble Project grew out of my experience working at an ad agency. I had learned a lot about how clients think, and how mass communication works, and I was frustrated with the often politically correct and conservative aspects of these companies.

Everything was a problem-solution setup. The brief comes from a big company like General Mills, or one of the big airlines - millions of dollars is budgeted to produce these ads. Every time I came up with an interesting idea, a great idea, I saw the potential of how to make communication interesting and engaging to the public - but these ideas always had to go through many layers of client approval.

I remember this one assignment for Cheerios, which was about communicating all the different flavors. Consumers are used to the yellow box, but there are several other flavors. So my partner and I came up with this line - "only the holes taste the same." The client loved it, everybody in the meeting was laughing - and then all of a sudden, this discussion started about the difference between "flavor" and "taste." So all the excitement shared in the beginning disappeared, and we were locked into this absurd discussion, forgetting the big picture. This experience was really common, having meeting after meeting discussing details, instead of seeing if the idea worked.

This is why a lot of ads look the same today. If you turn down the TV volume and remove the logo, the ads could work for practically any product or brand. There's a sense of fear about experimenting in anything, but also a sense that traditional ads are no longer working, because consumers have choices to skip the ads - TiVo, the Internet, video games.

On one hand, the companies are afraid of trying something new; on the other hand, they don't know what to do, they're lost. But when people in advertising see the Bubble Project, they're excited - it's a simple, inexpensive way to engage people.

I'm not against advertising - it's like money, it's part of our capitalist system. Advertising will be with us for a long time, like it or not. I'd like to see it be more entertaining, more challenging. And the Bubble Project is good for advertisers - most ads are boring, but with the bubbles on top, people look at the ads and interact with them. I'm trying to humanize advertising. It's not intended to be damaging. It's a form of graffiti, but it's disposable and inexpensive. And it's a lot of fun for everyone.

Mark Hurst: And you're expanding?

Ji Lee: Yes - there's also a bubble project in Italy now, Progetto Bolla.

- - -

Note 27 Mar 06: Edited the sentence "So my partner and I came up with this line - 'only the holes taste the same.'" because the original version had the wrong quote. Thanks to Ji for clearing that up. -mh

- - -

Remember - you can see Ji Lee speak at Gel 2006, May 4-5 in New York City.

Regular ticket prices end in about a week, so register soon!

I'm happy to welcome Dennis DiFlorio, president of retail banking at Commerce Bank, as a Gel 2006 speaker.

Saw Dutch drummer Han Bennink euroGel '06 perform a couple of nights ago - we'll see him again at euroGel this September. Thanks to everyone who came out!

From the Times' review of the performance today:

The ICP Orchestra, a flagship in a small fleet of like-minded projects, took shape in the early 1980's, with Mr. Mengelberg and Mr. Bennink at the helm. The 10-piece group still adheres to Mr. Mengelberg's mandate of "instant composition," a term that's best understood in opposition to the formless expanse of free jazz.

Han is touring the US now - here's his tour schedule.

Seth Godin :'06: has a great post on authenticity on his blog. From Seth's Blog: Tom Chappell sells out:

The moment you take your special, authentic, limited-edition product and leverage it, make it widely available and normal, the very people who loved it inevitably rebel. "Starbucks isn't what it used to be," they tell you. The tastemakers who made you successful in the first place turn on their heels when they smell that you're not authentic anymore.

When a product is everywhere, when it's hyped in the media and advertised on the sides of buses, sometimes it seems as if the product exists and succeeds because it is everywhere. Before ubiquity, when it seemed as if the product (or its creator) wasn't in it just for the money, somehow that felt more real, more wonderful, more authentic.

From the Economist, a highly satisfying look at the madness that is the increase in multi-blade razors lately.

Shaving technology | The cutting edge | Economist.com

[B]lade after blade has been added to razors in an attempt to tech-up the "shaving experience". For the most cynical shavers, this evolution is mere marketing. Twin blades seemed plausible. Three were a bit unlikely. Four, ridiculous. And five seems beyond the pale. Few people, though, seem willing to bet that Gillette's five-bladed Fusion is the end of the road for razor-blade escalation.

(Thanks, kottke)

(Also see The Onion's prophecy on the matter.)

The e-mail inbox isn't the only source of overload these days, it seems. From the UK, discount shopping:

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Going cheap

[P]lanning regulations and the changing tastes of home-owners are filling these dwellings with ever larger and more numerous bathrooms, and more fitted kitchen appliances. The space left over for storage is shrinking accordingly."It is a worry," Mitchell says. "Eventually something's got to give between how much we own and how much space we live in."The solutions may not be elegant. Garden sheds, he says, are growing in popularity, as cheap spaces for general storage rather than tools...

(Thanks, bb)

From Finland, Niko Nyman's response to my Three strands of good experience... a neat 2-d matrix: How Good Experience?

From ABC's Primetime came this interesting game theory experiment played out on the streets of Manhattan: Mission Impossible: In Search of Strangers in New York City

"Primetime" set up a seemingly impossible challenge for six pairs of people in different locations all over Manhattan: Try to find the other couples -- all complete strangers -- with no clues or additional information, just $100 to spend as they wished.

The couples converged on the Empire State Building and Times Square. Not sure this would work as well in other cities, which don't have such tourist-recognizable landmarks...

I'll never forget something I saw last week at the ETech (Emerging Technology) conference. This guy, a very smart technologist, is excitedly demo'ing his new software, which allows users to fly through hundreds of bitstreams - pictures, RSS feeds, e-mails, calendar stuff, and on and on - in the slickest way possible. He's pitching it as though it's supposed to make overloaded users more productive, which it won't, but at least he's identified the problem correctly.

And he stands there showing me this demo, very nice guy, pecking out each - letter - on - the - keyboard - with - one - single - finger. And I thought, you just spent a year of your life creating a tool to fly around information more quickly - and yet you could double your productivity by just learning how to type. (Or triple it, if it's Dvorak.)

Learn to type! I wanted to tell him. Pursue the technology that truly helps you, even if it seems basic and not new or slick. But of course I didn't say it. I couldn't, because that would break the techie rule of ACKNOWLEDGE THE COOL.

I re-learned something about the technology industry last week at ETech, where I presented bit literacy and Gootodo:

The tech industry is full of people who really, really like technology.

It should be so obvious, by definition, right? Birds of a feather: Aren't Star Trek conventions full of people who really love Star Trek? What's the big deal?

What struck me in San Diego was that technology doesn't need to actually help users, or improve their lives in some way, in order to look really, really cool. Something that looks cool and exciting to me (as MIT-trained geek) can also be largely irrelevant to me (as user advocate).

The love of technology isn't, by itself, for or against helping people - it's a different interest altogether. Now for the most part I do think that technologists tend to have an interest in helping people - but technology itself doesn't have a bias... and what you choose to love defines your outlook.

It's important to draw that distinction, I think. What some techies call great, cool, exciting, slick, compatible, open - all those have nothing to do with whether the technology is useful, productive, simple, valuable, meaningful, indispensable.

Sometimes - here's the real heresy - sometimes the best option for users might be less technology. It's less cool, and makes for decidedly less exciting press, but it could very well be the more useful option.

I propose that the technology industry begin to consider what is important for users, not only what's cool; what's going to improve people's lives, not only what's "hot"; what's going to make our jobs meaningful, not what we can cash out.

What I'm saying is, tech needs a new outlook.

(We need a new Outlook, too, but that's a whole other column.)

- - -

If you want to see what I presented at ETech, read this...

...or ETech attendee Phil Windley's notes from my session:

...or my rough notes after returning from ETech.

- - -

Update: Jason Fried from 37signals was nice to link to this column... it reminded me that my rant on "less" is hardly unique; Jason wrote Less as a competitive advantage last fall. Keep up the good work, 37sigs!

Laurie Rosenwald Gel '05 is writing a new book on "making mistakes on purpose", and she wants to know if you've ever made a mistake:

they can be creative mistakes that lead to inventions, life experiences, epiphanies and discoveries, or they can just  be real lulus.

www.rosenworld.com

I'm excited to announce that our friends at Google have agreed to sponsor the opening party for all Gel 2006 attendees on Thursday, May 4.

This is the first year we've been able to have a Thursday night party for all attendees; thanks to Google for making it possible!

Ze Frank Gel '03 writes in his excellent blog recently:

i get frustrated when advertising agencies reframe themselves as high-end "content providers", envisioning a shift towards specialized media production companies. its a losing battle. there are too many content providers (all of us) to contend with. advertising, in my opinion, needs to move toward understanding and creating spaces that facilitate content sharing and conversation. participation, not consumption has become the currency of loyalty.

Han Bennink euroGel '06 is touring the US this spring - here's his tour schedule. (NYC on 21 March!)

Seth Godin :'06: recently gave a very good talk at Google (yes, where Marissa Mayer Gel '03 works :) - here's the video.

Scott Heiferman Gel '04 mentioned in Alive and Well in Silicon Alley, a profile of several NYC dotcoms that are doing well. (Thanks to Scott for his monthly Tech Meetup!)

Russell Shorto Gel '05, from Amsterdam, on Pieter Fransz's house: This Very, Very Old House - New York Times.

I'm happy to welcome Linda Stone to the Gel 2006 speaker list.

As you might know, I announced the launch of Gootodo.com - the Good Experience todo list - at the ETech conference in San Diego yesterday.

I need to develop this into a longer piece, but some quick thoughts on the trip:

- Many smart people developing lots of slick apps.

- With some exceptions, very little thinking about how this might help the bulk of technology users (i.e. non-techies).

- Dominant mindset: is it AJAX, is it RSS, is it geo-located, does it have an API, does it plug into Google Maps, is there a tag cloud? Several people walked out of my session when it became clear that Gootodo had none of these.

- I'm always reminded at events like these - the technology industry is about building technology and selling it; not primarily about improving users' lives. (Again, with some exceptions..)

- The tech industry isn't particularly for or against improving users' lives - it's just not the primary agenda. Cool gadgets, big sales numbers, hefty IPOs - those are the primary goal; genuinely helping users to be more productive is a possible nice-to-have side effect.

- So what do we call the group of people, companies, projects that are primarily about improving users' lives through better technology? The "good experience tech industry"? (GETI? That's not a keeper, just a first draft...) I'm open to suggestions.

- Thanks to Linda Stone (Gel :'06: speaker) for her presentation, reminding everyone there that the metric should be about improving users' lives - and not even (primarily) about ease-of-use, which is what it was 10 years ago.

Oh, and if you're interested, the bulk of comments about Gootodo so far:

- "Nice work, thanks/good luck with it" and/or "I'm becoming more productive already" (thanks to everyone who took the time to write in)

- "Nice work, but I'll only use it if you add my two pet features..." (my response, multiply that by a thousand people and you end up with MS Outlook)

- "Nice work, but you really need Ajax/RSS/an API/etc. before it becomes relevant" (my response - it's a productivity booster, not a gadget with tech-of-the-month baked in)

- "You need secure server" (we're working on it)

- "How dare you ask for my credit card up front before you give me a 30-day free trial"- one person called it "borderline criminal" - my response, guess you don't have a Netflix account :)

- "This is nothing new, David Allen's Getting Things Done method is all this and more" (my response, actually this is quite different, but you'd need to use this method exclusively for a few weeks to really understand why)

Thanks to everyone's feedback! It's a journey.

- - -

Update 11 Mar 06: Don't get me wrong - I would like to add Ajax to Gootodo - it's just a nice-to-have compared to the essentials we're working on: secure server, more e-mail addresses tied to future dates, better documentation on how to use Gootodo, how it fits into the "bit literacy" discipline, and why it's different from and (imho) better than other methods out there. So yes, Ajax may come sometime after the essentials.

LA Times profiles the outstanding product design company OXO (The sharpest knives in the drawer):

The measuring cup is one of five Oxo products that were not in-house eurekas but came to the company from outside in the last 10 years. "We have some very passionate consumers," said Gretchen Holt, who handles media for the company, demonstrating to editors why "they should give a damn" about an Oxo breakthrough. Ideas also flow in from retailers and wannabe inventors.

An ice cube tray that releases one cube at a time came from a man who only insisted that the tray carry a line saying it was invented in Peru; a potato masher was suggested by a "mom in Toronto who was not looking to make money" and took a case full of mashers as payment; a mango splitter was devised by a minister from upstate New York who travels to underdeveloped countries in the tropics where mangos are a staple.

(Thanks, Zimran)

Paul writes:

I am very intrigued by Gootodo and strongly subscribe to the principles behind it. The key question I have is the following: if I spend most of my time on my laptop and am frequently off-line, is there a seamless way to get some form of local replica of my todo list?

My answer:

Yes, you can easily export your todos (in plaintext or in comma-separated) to any e-mail address, for any date range of todos. Really easy way to take your todo list offline.

(Once logged in, just go to Your Account -> Export Your Todos.)