Monthly Archives: March 2010

“Killing two birds with one stone.”

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Multi-tasking may work for some peo­ple, but rarely is it effec­tive on human beings. Peo­ple want you to pay atten­tion to them – it’s a basic human need. If you try to serve two dif­fer­ent cus­tomers at once, it may cause one or both of the cus­tomers to lose inter­est. You will frus­trate your­self because you expect to win them both over, but when it doesn’t work, you will lose momen­tum and motivation.

If you try to kill two birds with one stone, you will run the risk of wound­ing the birds, and not really killing them. Your cus­tomers will not be happy if you promise duck on the table for din­ner, but serve birds that aren’t even dead yet. I always appre­ci­ate some­one who devotes the time and atten­tion to each cus­tomer, report, task, — and still man­ages to ship on time. They may serve one cus­tomer at a time, but they cer­tainly don’t lose momen­tum, or motivation.

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Hand Gestures and Distractions

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

One thing I tend to do a lot is two-handed ges­tures when giv­ing a talk, speech, or pre­sen­ta­tion. I some­how don’t know what to do with my hands, so I claspe them together, or wave them around, etc. But from watch­ing other speak­ers — one handed ges­tures seem to be not only less dis­tract­ing, but more effec­tive. It is so much more obvi­ous that you are mak­ing a point. I don’t know why this is, but per­haps ‘less is more.’

Sim­pler is Bet­ter. Only one hand is nec­es­sary, and more likely to get your audi­ence to focus on your mes­sage. There’s a rea­son why pedes­trian stop lights only have one hand to tell you now to walk.

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The Tribes We Lead

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

The Tribes we lead are both inter­nal and exter­nal to the orga­ni­za­tions we serve. Inter­nally, we lead tribes of peo­ple who care about the work we do. These peo­ple con­tin­u­ously find value in our work, and keep com­ing back ask­ing for more.

Exter­nally, we lead tribes of peo­ple who care about the good work we pro­duce. They care more so about the end result of what we do. These peo­ple care more about what dif­fer­ence it makes for them as con­sumers, cus­tomers, or buyers.

We must find cre­ative ways to give back to both Tribes.

Inspired by Tribes, by Seth Godin.

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Gorillas and Public Speaking

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

“There is a rea­son that the num­ber one fear reported by most peo­ple is pub­lic speak­ing.” Seth Godin, Linchpin

About two years ago, my hus­band and I vis­ited the gorilla exhibit at the Santa Bar­bara Zoo. It was sort of inside a cov­ered cave, and there was big glass win­dow that sep­a­rated humans from the goril­las. Most of the goril­las were hid­ing, but one was walk­ing towards the win­dow. I said, “He’s com­ing — let’s say hi to the gorilla!” I got down on my hands and knees, and flexed my arms and mus­cles like a gorilla would do, to sort of play with the gorilla. I looked right into his eyes, which were the sweet­est lit­tle eyes, and then BAM! Before I knew it, he had taken his big fist, and pounded it against the win­dow, right at my face!

In his new book, Linch­pin, Seth Godin uses this gorilla anal­ogy to illus­trate why humans are so freaked out by pub­lic speak­ing. He illus­trates how eye con­tact is threat­en­ing to goril­las, and has lead to attacks. Then he goes on to explain that:

“Eye con­tact all by itself is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imag­ine how scary it must be to set out to do some­thing that will get you noticed or per­haps even crit­i­cized. There is a rea­son that the num­ber one fear reported by most peo­ple is pub­lic speak­ing.” — Seth Godin, Linchpin

Goril­las may never over­come their fear of eye con­tact. But I think humans can.

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“Heart and Soul”

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

“Heart and Soul” is a blast to play with some­one else. It chal­lenges both peo­ple to be in sync with each other, with the rhythm, and with the melody. One player can’t start play­ing their own tune. They must lis­ten to each other, and find a way to play together.

Team­work takes prac­tice, it takes lis­ten­ing, and a will­ing­ness to play the same tune. In the end, if you do these things, you might just play a won­der­ful duet that will delight (and maybe sur­prise) those who hear it.

Cre­at­ing good expe­ri­ences for your cus­tomers means your expe­ri­ence needs to har­mo­nize with their expec­ta­tions. Together, with their insights, you can make a fan­tas­tic experience.

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Spend some time improving what’s inside your head

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

One of my class­mates in grad­u­ate school once com­mented in class, “I am over­loaded with infor­ma­tion — every­thing is just com­ing at me on TV, radio, etc.” In response, our pro­fes­sor said, “I don’t watch TV — there really isn’t any­thing good on there any­way. I read dozens of books a year, I read 5 news­pa­pers a day, I seek infor­ma­tion out, instead of wait­ing for it to come to me.”

I was really impressed, and for some rea­son, his words always stuck with me. But how do you do this? How do you find time to read more books, read more news­pa­pers, and actively seek to be informed? I recently came across a great blog­post by Seth Godin that talks about where to find time to do these things:

“1. Delete 120 min­utes a day of ‘spare time’ from your life. This can include TV, … com­mut­ing, wast­ing time in social net­works and meet­ings. Up to you.

2. Spend the 120 min­utes doing this instead:

  • Exer­cise for thirty minutes.
  • Read rel­e­vant non-fiction (trade mag­a­zines, jour­nals, busi­ness books, blogs, etc.)
  • Send three thank you notes.
  • Learn new dig­i­tal tech­niques (spread­sheet macros, Fire­fox short­cuts, pro­duc­tiv­ity tools, graphic design, html coding)
  • Vol­un­teer.
  • Blog for five min­utes about some­thing you learned.
  • Give a speech once a month about some­thing you don’t cur­rently know a lot about.”

3. Spend at least one week­end day doing absolutely noth­ing but being with peo­ple you love.

If you some­how pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intel­li­gent, best funded and moti­vated per­son in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other peo­ple don’t, you’d have a wider net­work and you’d be more focused.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/is-effort-a-myt.html

My pro­fes­sor, always had the most amaz­ing ideas to improve and cre­ate great expe­ri­ences. I always won­dered where his bril­liance came from — and I think at least in part, it came from the time he spent improv­ing what’s inside his head.

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Becoming more efficient

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Many of us want to be more effi­cient with our work. We want to cover more ground in less time, use less energy, etc.  Run­ners seem to have this down to a sci­ence.  They aim to accom­plish more in less time, cover more ground, and use less energy.  They pre­pare well, and push them­selves beyond their limits.

What’s even more spe­cial is:

“After com­plet­ing the train­ing and the marathon, many run­ners break through men­tal con­fi­dence bar­ri­ers and go on to accom­plish­ing things they never thought pos­si­ble before their fin­ish.” — Jeff Galloway’s Blog

http://jeffgalloway.typepad.com/jeff_galloways_blog/2010/02/why-do-runners-take-on-the-challenge-of-a-difficult-event-like-a-marathon-or-half-marathon.html

Becom­ing more effi­cient helps run­ners accom­plish more than they ever dreamed. If  you became dras­ti­cally more effi­cient, what would your life look like?

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Shipping Gifts from the Heart

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Seth Godin’s book Linch­pin dis­cusses the impor­tance of ship­ping — he asserts that good ideas mean noth­ing unless you can ship them. He says we don’t need more cre­ativ­ity, because there are plenty of ideas out there. What we need is to get those ideas out there, ship them, and see what happens.

When I think about how this applies to User Expe­ri­ence Design and Research, I think about gen­er­at­ing more ideas, get­ting them in front of users, deliv­er­ing more oppor­tu­ni­ties to observe peo­ple using these design ideas. How­ever, what seems most amaz­ing to me, is how these ideas get imple­mented — get­ting these ideas from test­ing to release.

User Expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­als typ­i­cally rely on skilled prod­uct devel­op­ment teams to make their ideas come true (writ­ing code, writ­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, QA test­ing, etc.). User Expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­als don’t really ship any­thing that end-users can actu­ally use, they ship ideas, test those ideas, and work with prod­uct devel­op­ment teams to see those ideas get implemented.

I think peo­ple who rely on oth­ers to imple­ment their ideas should ship more of these: thank you notes — to users, stake­hold­ers, and team mem­bers. These cost hardly any­thing to ship. If you are short, con­cise, thought­ful, funny, and write from the heart, they can make all the dif­fer­ence in the world to users (who inspire your ideas), to stake­hold­ers (who pay you for your ideas), and prod­uct team mem­bers (who imple­ment your ideas). Also, your team, stake­hold­ers, and users will feel more con­nected together too.

Seth says to ship the things you enjoy giv­ing, and gifts that help improve lives. Ship more appre­ci­a­tion and grat­i­tude, and your life will improve too!

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Designing efficient experiences

Posted on March 31, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

“The will to win means noth­ing with­out the will to prepare.”~Juma Ikan­gaa, NYC Marathon Champion

Marathon Run­ners learn to be effi­cient. They try to cover more ground in less time. When they can’t shave off time, they try to cover more ground, with less energy. It is all about becom­ing more and more effi­cient, and the run­ner who runs most effi­ciently wins.

What is inter­est­ing to me is the tech­niques and strate­gies run­ners choose to use to pre­pare to win. Speed work­outs, rest, long runs, recov­ery, and cross train­ing all go into that prepa­ra­tion, and in the long run, it helps them get to the fin­ish line in few steps than before. Metaphor­i­cally speak­ing, can the same tech­niques be applied to cover more ground with the work we do?

As User Expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­als, we need to make the expe­ri­ences we cre­ate more effi­cient. The expe­ri­ence using our designs needs to be faster, so that the user doesn’t have to take as many steps. Our goal should be to help users accom­plish their goals in less time, using our sys­tem. In order to do this, we need to con­stantly be test­ing our expe­ri­ences, and see­ing how fast they are — how quickly do they allow users to use them? As NYC Marathon Cham­pion Jumaa Ikanga said, our “will to win means noth­ing with out the will to pre­pare.” If we want to build great expe­ri­ences, we need to train our sys­tems to be effi­cient — through con­stant “speed work­outs” with users.

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