Utah Open Source Planet

Peter Abilla
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shmula

» Maintain Forward Tension

One principle in Wing Chun is the maintaining of forward tension. To explain, I’ll draw the distinction between Tension and Energy and show how this principle in Wing Chun can be applied to Change Management.

Tension is a type of Energy

A Wing Chun maxim goes as follows:

soft and relaxed strength will put your opponent in jeopardy

That maxim means that forward tension is not necessarily using force, or forcing through a barrier or “pushing through”. But, there is soft force, or tension, such that when a gap presents itself, then the hand or arm shoots forward like a spring. The “shooting forward” is not done with force, but is an unleashing of potential energy.

Using that definition, then, Forward Tension is much different than the overly-used business term “Breakthrough.” In the context of Forward Tension, the notion of “breakthrough” is ridiculous, because it connotes a forcing of oneself or of one’s ideas. Forcing anything only invites resistance and rebellion, not conversion.

So, in sum, tension is really potential energy and when a gap presents itself, that potential energy becomes kinetic energy. Forward Tension works with the current context in such a way that does not invite rebellion or resistance or eventual back-biting. It is open, but straightforward.

Application to Change Management

Don’t force things on people. The most humane approach to change management is to treat those involved in the change as human beings; this means having a dialogue — listen, speak, listen some more, argue a little, and steadily deposit goodwill.

As much as I like love data, I also fully understand that data does not soften hearts or change people’s minds: true change happens when people feel heard, have given their opinion, are willing to try something new, and are part of the change. The challenge in change management is largely an emotional one; a psychological one; a relational one.

Hold The Tension

Without forcing or pushing of people, maintaining the tension encourages discussion, debate, and invites people to inquire and become curious about the topic of change. That is the key: behave in such a way that it invites people to learn, argue, debate, and eventually try it out.

Tension in Wing Chun

The video below shows Sifu Grados in Chi Sao (Sticky Hands). This sensitivity exercise demonstrates the principle of holding the tension and visually explains the principle of transformation of potential energy to kinetic energy very well.

NOTE: none of the movements are rehearsed. What is taught and practiced are the principles and how those principles are applied during Chi Sao depends on the situation.

Articles on Ethnography and Design:

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by psabilla at 7:36 AM under 5s , a3 report , bullwhip effect , business , change management , click-to-ship , complexity , customer obsession , customer service , design thinking , drum-buffer-rope , dynamic systems , efficiency , ethnography , featuritis , gemba , genchi genbutsu , general , heijunka , ishikawa , it at toyota , kanban , leadership , lean , lean consumption maps , metrics , muda , obeya , operations , pareto principle , poka-yoke , process measures , productivity , quality , root cause analysis , six sigma , statistical process control , strategy , supply chain , takt time , the beer distribution game , theory of constraints , the profit tree , the visual factory , toyota , variation , visual management , waste , wing chun , zero defects (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» We Remember Experiences, Not Features

“people remember experiences, not features or attributes” - a.g. lafley

I love companies and products that are disruptive, simple, and yet elegantly meets an unarticulated but dire customer need.

Today, we are speaking with Gauri Nanda, the inventor of Clocky and founder of nandahome.com.

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Tell us a little about yourself: education, background, and career focus.

I have been designing products for a few years now, since I was a student at the MIT Media Lab researching the intersection of design and technology. Because of all the interest surrounding him, Clocky gave me the drive to start a company. Since graduating, I founded Nanda as a place to find things that are missing from our lives and create them. Our ideas come from ordinary questions like ‘Why does my alarm do such a terrible job of getting me up?’ and ‘Why can’t I find a bag that makes it easy to carry my heavy laptop around?’ Then, from these ordinary questions, we set out to create extraordinary products. Things that are at once both simple and exceptional.

What is Clocky?

Clocky is, quite simply, the most obvious way I could think to get out of bed. He is an alarm clock that runs away when you don’t get out of bed on time. He will jump from your night-stand and run around the run in random directions. Because you don’t know where he’ll end up, you have to get out of bed, and find him to silence his alarm. In this ‘hide-and-seek’ game, you wake up in the process!

What is the Alarm Clock Problem?

When I was a student, I would hit the snooze bar repeatedly, never realizing how late it was getting. I had friends who told me that they would put the alarm clock on the other side of the room, but because they knew where it was, they would just sleep walk to it, turn it off and go right back to bed. As a designer, it was obvious that the alarm clock needed to be improved, both in functionality and in personality. In addition to doing the job of an alarm clock better, Clocky is also an attempt to imbue alarm clocks with living qualities so that it is ultimately more fun to use.

Did you study people sleeping? Can you share a little about the ethnographic steps to observing people sleeping and waking up — what insights did you gain? How did those insights evolve into your solution, Clocky?

During the development time, we received countless emails from people who needed a better solution than their current alarm clock was providing. Over and over, I heard the same story of people repeatedly hitting the snooze button and never reaching a wakeful state. During the design process, we tested the product out with potential customers and made changes to the program as well as the interface (including buttons and backlight) to ensure better usability. It was very important to me to maintain a minumum of user interface controls so that anyone could use the clock almost immediately.

Past the concept phase, tell us about the product development process and the iterations Clocky went through to finally arrive at the current version. For example, the Clocky prototype was much bigger than the current version — what led to that design decision?

The original prototype took me a couple of weeks. It was put together with the materials I had at my disposal while I was a student at the MIT Media Lab, and turned out to be little more than a pair of Lego wheels and motors and a shag covering to hold it together. At this time, I wasn’t optimizing Clocky for size and efficiency, but rather just creating a proof-of-concept for a class project.

In order to get Clocky ready for commercial sale, I worked with a team of engineers and manufacturers on the design for about a year. We went through about 3 design iterations on the external casing. We didn’t want Clocky to take up too much room on a night-stand so we reduced the size considerably. We also wanted Clocky to be much lighter, since it was to withstand a drop to floor everyday. Through a lot of engineering and testing, we identified the parts of the clock that would endure the most shock when Clocky jumps off of a night-stand. We designed those parts so that the force would be directed away from them.

Material sourcing and manufacturing — can you share about your experience in that arena.

The original prototype I put together quite quickly using limited materials I had at my disposal. The shag was used to emphasize Clocky as something with living quality. In a manufacturing context, materials are chosen that are durable and easy to work with. I decided to retain the living quality of Clocky by arranging the buttons and the LCD screen in such a way to describe a face.

We compared and contrasted various strong and shock absorbing materials. For example, for Clockies wheels, we needed a material that would bounce back and not wear too much over time because the body should not hit the ground when he falls. We tested out several different customers for this purpose.

How long has Clocky been in the market now? Clocky has a (funny/cool) factor to it. Do people really like using it? Do people laugh or curse at it when they wake up? Tell us about that.

Clocky was launched right around the holidays. If had quite a lot of good feedback:

“Just talked to my daughter - She was thrilled with her first morning with Clocky! She said it woke her up smiling and then she was giggling as she chased it around her room and downright laughing by the time she turned it off! By then she was wide awake and ready for her 8AM Bioengineering Class!”

“My daughter is presently at Dartmouth. She’s the master of the snooze alarm. When home, she can go for hours with the alarm going off, hitting the snooze button, and probably not waking up at all. When I saw the info about Clocky on line, I immediately ordered one to be shipped to her at college. It’s been a week after Clocky’s arrival, and already I have success to report. For example, she got up today in time to go to a job interview, which went well. She reported having to find Clocky behind the refrigerator. It Works!”

Certainly, a lot of people may purchase Clocky because they think he’s funny or just out of curiosity. I think it’s great if people just get a good laugh out of Clocky. I hope that Clocky enables a new way of thinking about the things we use every-day. The buzz surrounding the product may be attributed to the fact that Clocky attempts to humanize technology and make it more personable, a concept which I believe could be applied to many products that we use on a daily basis so that they become more usable.

Why is there a Snooze Button? Can I program it to travel to where my Gym Clothes are, so that when I finally find it and turn it off, I have no excuse but to work out because I’m where my clothes are at?

Well I sort of felt (and a lot of people agreed), that a person should have some time to get up, and have a chance to turn off the alarm before Clocky runs away. So we allow for one snooze. If the person using Clocky is alert as soon a they hear the alarm, the may opt to disable to snooze button. We found that Clocky does not need to employ sensor technology to do his job. He may bump into objects on the floor or hit a wall, but because he is programmed to change directions a few times, he will usually get ‘unstuck.’ We have a couple more versions of Clocky in R&D. Future versions of the clock will employ more sophisticated technology to achieve some exciting features we have planned. We envision an entire Clocky product line.

Where can people buy Clocky?

Clocky is currently only available for purchase online at nandahome.com. We will be announcing select retail availability soon.

What is next for Clocky? What other projects are you currently working on? What problems are trying to solve through innovative product development?

We have a line of ‘Lapsacs’ out now, which are bags with laptops in mind. The idea was to reinvent the common black laptop case into something more stylish and more comfortable for carrying around a heavy computer. Much like Clocky, the Lapsacs came out of what I observed to be a common need. We have other products in R&D which I can’t disclose yet!

Thanks very much Gauri!

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Articles on Ethnography and Design:

Articles on Leadership:

Please articles on Queueing Theory below:

Articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

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by psabilla at 6:12 AM under business , clocky , cnbc , customer obsession , design thinking , ethnography , gauri nanda , genchi genbutsu , human-centered design , humane design , lean , unarticulated customer needs (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» On Customer Obsession

I’d venture to say that most products and services are bloated with features that customers most likely don’t care for; I’ve been part of product development teams where the focus is on features, with an implicit goal to stuffing as many features as possible — in consumer packaged goods and in software. This is the wrong approach to developing memorable and sticky products.

The above statement might be best described by Kathy Sierra’s Featuritis Curve:

In my own personal venture in product and package design (a side project), I employ ethnography — the science of watching people do stuff; of learning about unarticulated customer needs, which is otherwise known as ethnography; Toyota calls it Genchi Genbutsu.

A.G. Lafley, the CEO of Procter and Gamble, understands this well:

JANUARY 28, 2005, Business Week

I wanted to get after what we call unarticulated consumer needs. What she wants that she can’t tell us about. And there are lots of techniques we have developed or are developing to do that. And two, I wanted to focus more on the consumer experiences as much as on the product and technology.

People remember experiences. They don’t remember attributes or benefits or features. We talk a lot about how you create a delightful experience. Now, when you’re dealing with underarm deodorants and cleaning dirty floors, you have to work real hard to try and deliver a less unpleasant experience.

The key phrase here is this:

People remember experiences. They don’t remember attributes or benefits or features.

What a simple, yet profound statement that still many, many companies fail to understand.

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Please find originally-written articles on Queueing Theory below:

For a few articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

Managing Constraints Under Peak Volumes

Order Pipeline of Events

On Game Theory

Series on Queueing Theory

Applied Regression Analysis

5S

Click-to-Ship Processes

Kanban Sizing and “Pull”

Lean at Krispy Kreme

Theory of Constraints and Camping

Lean for Software Development

Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer

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by psabilla at 6:53 PM under amazon , business , customer obsession , ethnography , featuritis , genchi genbutsu (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» Visual Mismanagement

A few months ago we adopted our baby girl, Mylie. During that hospital experience, I had an encounter with a faucet fraught with featuritis and one that wasn’t humane and, during that same time, I noticed a piece of visual management in the hospital room that wasn’t effective in its intention to provide or share information. This involved a sign in one of the cabinets, where the sign indicated in text the contents of the cabinet. Below is a picture of what I saw:

In the context of the entire cabinet, below is a picture of what a typical user might see:

The taped signage is small, doesn’t distinguish the writing from the wood-colored background very well, and is confusing since there are 3 signs on the same cabinet.

I wonder if the nurses or doctors can easily tell what is in the cabinet? If the more seasoned hospital staff know the contents of the cabinet from experience, then I wonder if new hospital staff could easily tell what was contained in the cabinet? My hypothesis is that new staff would have to open the cabinet in order to see what was contained inside. If that is true, then the intention of the signage fails to meet its promise.

Why Visual Management?

As I indicated in this post regarding Visual Management and teaching kids the principle of work, effective Visual Management can be a control as well as a display:

Visual Management as Control: As a control, effective Visual Management can prevent defects or warn of defects. For example, the noise of metal-to-metal screeching in car brakes is a signal to change your brakes — the machine is warning the human that there is a defect (audible management). Effective Visual Management as Control answers the question: "If I am doing something wrong, how will I know?"
Visual Management as Visual Display: As Visual Display, effective Visual Management can aid in effective information sharing or encourage standardization in processes. For example, a Standard Operating Procedue (Standard Work or SOP) is an instantiation of this principle. An SOP answers the following questions: "Am I doing this right?" and "How do I know that I am doing this right?"

Back to the Hospital

The signage on the hospital cabinet was an attempt at information sharing — sharing with hospital staff the contents of the cabinet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t effective. Below is an example of a simple and effective Visual Management as Display (courtesy of mike):

This is a simple shadow board that displays pictures of the items. As a display, the above is pretty good. But, it misses the point of the principle of display. How? Well, a shadow board is meant to inform the human that an item is missing; which is why a simple outline of the item with text is more effective than the picture of the actual item. Nevertheless, the above is a good attempt and a step better than the hospital cabinet.

Here is an effective and simple example of Visual Management as Display (courtesy of my friend jon miller):

The horizontal stripe across the binders presents a quick and easy way to realize and discover that a binder is missing or a binder is not in the proper sequence. For example, if the top-left binder was on the top-right side, then the user would immediately know that it is is out of place. This simple Visual Management technique supports the principle of informing the user if something is wrong. It’s simple and elegant.

Back to Principles

It’s easy to get caught-up in the language and "tools" of the Toyota Production System, popularized in America as Lean Manufacturing. But, it is about principles, concepts, and how "tools" support those principles. The tools change and are improved, but the principles remain.

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Articles on Ethnography and Design:

Please find originally-written articles on Queueing Theory below:

For a few articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

The Gemba is the Dojo

Order Pipeline of Events

On Game Theory

Series on Queueing Theory

Applied Regression Analysis

5S

Click-to-Ship Processes

Kanban Sizing and "Pull"

Lean at Krispy Kreme

Theory of Constraints and Camping

Lean for Software Development

Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer

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by psabilla at 10:08 AM under 5s , a3 report , customer obsession , design thinking , ethnography , gemba , genchi genbutsu , heijunka , ishikawa , it at toyota , lean , lean consumption maps , muda , obeya , simplicity principle , six sigma , the visual factory , visual management (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» Abraham Lincoln on Genchi Genbutsu

I just finished reading the book Lincoln on Leadership. I found it to be an excellent book, highlighting the leadership lessons that made Lincoln one of the most revered and respected people in the world. I highly recommend this book.

Abraham Lincoln’s life, in my view, was a personification of the Toyota Way — his respect for people, his personal tutoring of his followers through effective use of ambiguity and the Socratic approach, and his common sense — all pleasantly wreak of Toyota.

To highlight how Lincoln’s demeanor and leadership style captures some of the essence of the Toyota Way, I want to share his general approach with people and how that is really a manifestation of Toyota’s principle of Genchi Genbutsu.

Amazon.com Widgets

Get Out of the Office

Lincoln once fired one his Generals because the General was "out of touch" with his troops. In Lincoln’s words:

He [General Freemont] is losing the confidence of men near him, whose support any man in his position must have to be successful. His cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself, and allows nobody to see him; and by which he does not know what is going on in the very matter he is dealing with.

Lincoln on Leadership, page 14

Lincoln’s letter, an excerpt of which you find above, is instructive as it is very pointed: Lincoln is teaching while he is correcting. This is a subtle but strong hallmark of a good leader.

Genchi Genbutsu

To illustrate the concept of Genchi Genbutsu, Taiichi Ohno does this well through a distinction he makes between Facts versus Data. In his words,

"The root cause of any problem is the key to a lasting solution," Ohno used to say. He constantly emphasized the importance of genchi genbutsu, or ‘going to the source,’ and clarifying the problem with one’s own eyes. "‘Data’ is of course important in manufacturing," he often remarked, "but I place greatest emphasis on ‘facts.’"

Data is a degree removed from the actual place where the phenomena is happening. In other words, there is a big — but subtle — difference between data that shows how often a machine fails versus being present at the machine and observing it failing. Genchi Genbutsu is about being there and observing the phenomena while it is happening.

Taiichi Ohno placed a greater value on being where the work is done and where value is added. Whereas data is often on a computer screen or on paper. He preferred to be at the source of the phenomena.

Management By Walking Around is not Genchi Genbutsu

Peters, a former Mckinsey-ite, once put forth the notion of Management By Walking Around (MBWA). Management by Walking Around is more about "visiting" and being seen by the people. The intention is, in my view, quite superficial.

On the other hand, Genchi Genbutsu is about knowing, experiencing, and building empathy for those who are in the Gemba. The spirit of Genchi Genbutsu is about knowing first-hand what happens in the Gemba by actually being in the Gemba and participating in the Gemba. The difference is subtle, but stark.

Tom Peters MBWA is not Genchi Genbutsu.

Articles on Genchi Genbutsu

Sponsored Links: Kitchen Faucets, Bathroom Fixtures

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by psabilla at 6:28 AM under business , ethnography , gemba , genchi genbutsu , leadership , lean , lean consumption maps (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» Representing an Idea with Visual Identity

My daughter recently turned 10 years old. So, because her friends have email and communicate via email, I recently helped her obtain an account. In the process, we both learned something very important about abstract ideas and the icons we use to visually represent them.

My daughter attempted to create a "Contact List" of people and their email addresses — mainly family members that she would like to email with. As she created a contact, she didn’t know and couldn’t find a way to "Save" the contact she just created. Here is what the user interface looked like:

Notice the "Save" button in the top-left corner? Yes, it does say "Save", but my daughter didn’t see it. She, then, asked a very good question: "daddy, what’s the square thing next to the ‘Save’ button?" It dawned on me that she is part of a generation that has actually never seen a Floppy Disk. Yes — Floppy Disk — remember those?

A Dead Visual Representation of a Simple Idea

The actual gesture of "Save" work or an action is simple. But, what made the work confusing and difficult is the icon used to represent the idea. If the visual representation of the idea doesn’t make sense to the user or customer, then you introduce confusion, complexity, and eventually that customer might stop using the product or service.

Reflection

Representing abstract ideas, actions, or status with effective visual management is plain good ‘ol management. In doing that, we must make sure that the icons we use to represent our ideas have to be relevant to the audience. There is a growing generation of humans that have never seen a Floppy Disk or know what one is.

Be relevant; Connect; Be Accessible; Be Simple; Create Awareness — obeying these principles in visual management will enable the audience to better UNDERSTAND and obtain MEANING from your work.

Don’t go the way of the Floppy.

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Articles on Visual Management, Ethnography, and Design:

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by psabilla at 3:01 PM under business , complexity , customer obsession , ethnography , gemba , genchi genbutsu , general , heijunka , ishikawa , it at toyota , kanban , lean , lean consumption maps , muda , obeya , operations , pareto principle , simplicity principle , six sigma , the visual factory , toyota , visual management (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» Featuritis and the Customer Experience

The more I learn and practice ethnography and design-thinking, the more I notice subtle but incredibly frustrating experiences. For example, I had a frustrating experience with a faucet that was in the hospital room where our adopted baby girl, Mylie, was born. This faucet is an automated one — with a sensor. So, whenever an object passes the sensor, the faucet would turn on even if the intention of the human was not to use the faucet.

A few facts about this faucet: this faucet was in the corner of the room, against the wall. It is a faucet that has a sensor, whereby an object would cross the sensor and then a signal would be sent for the faucet to expel water. I imagine the designers of this faucet designed this hospital faucet this way to encourage bacteria-free habits — that is, the sensor eliminated the need for a knob that both turns-on and turns-off the water. That is a good and charitable thought — but totally wrong. Here is a picture of the hospital faucet:

shmula.com, faucet, design thinking, ethnography, featuritis

And another picture of the faucet:

Notice the faucet head with the sensor at the base. To the right of the base, notice the knob? What does the knob do, you ask. Answer: nothing. Whenever the faucet turned on, my first reaction was to turn the only-available knob, only to find out that the knob does nothing. Very frustrating.

Root Cause Analysis on "Why did the Faucet Turn on Unintentionally?"

Following Taiichi Ohno’s 5-Why’s, it is important to understand why the faucet turned-on when that was not the intention:

Why did the faucet turn on unintentionally?
Because whenever an arm or hand passed across the sensor photo-eye, the faucet would turn on.
Why would an arm or hand pass the sensor photo-eye?
Because we need to put or get our camera, jackets, or other belongings.
Why did we need to put or get our camera, jackets, or other belongings?
Because the only available counter in the room to place anything was beside the faucet.

So, we see from this quick and effective excercise that the root cause of unintentionally-turning-on-of-the faucet was that the only available counter-space was next to the faucet. Hence, whenever we needed to put or get our stuff, our hand or arm would cross the sensor and then the faucet would turn-on.

Practical Solutions

There are several practical solutions to the verified root cause. One simple and very practical one is to create more counter space, preferably away from the faucet and simultaneously eliminating the available counter-space to the right and left the faucet. Another practical solution is to revert back to the good ‘ol faucet with a knob that actually works. One variant of this "knob" is that it could be a foot pedal, thereby encouraging sanitized hands.

There are several that, I’m sure, you can think of. These are just a few that I came up with.

The True Tragedy of Featuritis

The real tragedy of poor usability of devices and products is that the user feels stupid. For a discussion, below is Kathy Sierra’s Featuritis Curve

As one walks the curve to the right, the user hits an inflection point where there is an equilibrium between the number of features and the user’s happiness. As the user continues that walk to the right, the user eventually gets to the point of what I call "user resignation" — where the user gives up, calls it quits, and blames self.

To some degree, I felt this way about the hospital faucet. Although the faucet didn’t have the complexity of features, it still behaved that way and I felt dumb that the "knob" wasn’t working like I expected it to work. Moreover, I felt dumb everytime the faucet turned on when I didn’t mean for it to turn on. The real tragedy of featuritis is that the user is burdened with feelings of self-loathing and self-blame. From a businesses perspective, this means that users are unhappy and will abandon the product or service.

Who’s Fault is it Really and The Customer Experience

Here’s what my good friend and fellow University of Chicago Alum, Aza Raskin, son of Jef Raskin (inventor of the Macintosh) says regarding Humane Design:

The main thing you have to remember—and please remember this, because it could be vital to your sanity—is that any problems you have with an interface are not your fault. If you have trouble using your microwave, it’s not because you’re "not good with technology", it’s because the people in charge of designing the interface for that microwave didn’t do their job right. User interface design is incredibly hard, and carries with it a great deal of responsibility; this is something that’s taken quite seriously when it comes life-critical systems such as flight control software. But in today’s consumer culture, what should be blamed on bad interface design is instead blamed on the "incompetence" of users. Just remember that it’s not your fault.

A Crappy Faucet and A Cute Baby

The hospital is still there, probably with the same crappy faucet. But, I take with me a few things:

Mylie is healthy and is home. Mylie’s birth parents are also home now. I am thankful to them for choosing us to be Mylie’s parents.
The way interfaces, products, and services are designed have a profound impact on all of our lives.
Simple is best — Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) — this is a true principle.
There is still a lot of opportunity to do good in the world of products and services.
There is still a lot of opportunity to do good in the world.

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Articles on Ethnography and Design:

Please find originally-written articles on Queueing Theory below:

For a few articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

The Gemba is the Dojo

Order Pipeline of Events

On Game Theory

Series on Queueing Theory

Applied Regression Analysis

5S

Click-to-Ship Processes

Kanban Sizing and "Pull"

Lean at Krispy Kreme

Theory of Constraints and Camping

Lean for Software Development

Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer

Share This

by psabilla at 6:54 AM under aza raskin , business , complexity , drum-buffer-rope , dynamic systems , ethnography , featuritis , gemba , genchi genbutsu , heijunka , it at toyota , kanban , leadership , lean , lean consumption maps , muda , obeya , operations , pareto principle , product development , quality , root cause analysis , simplicity principle , six sigma , statistical process control , strategy , variation , waste (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» Aza Raskin on Cooperation & Fence Throwing

Aza Raskin is the founder of Humanized, the son of Macintosh inventor, Jef Raskin, and an all-around good guy. A few months ago, Aza Raskin agreed to answer several readers’ questions. In today’s post, Aza Raskin tackles a reader’s question about Product Management, cooperations with other groups, throwing stuff over the fence, why large teams generally suck, and political in-fighting and politics.

I work as a product manager for a technology company in the valley. In large companies like mine, the department of Product Management, Software Engineering, and Customer Experience work together, but in a clunky way, to build a product. What is the best way, in your opinion, to infuse the Humane Design Principles in a hot political environment?

For example, the classic problems of: product will define a feature based on market research and define the personas. Engineering feels like we define something and "throw it over the fence" to them to develop. At the same time, Customer Experience is bothered that Product Management didn’t involve them, etc.

My question is turning out to be more of a human resources question than about design, but wanted your thoughts.

Maybe you should start an "Ask Aza" column, like a Dr. Phil segment, or something.

Successfully bringing a product to market is a holistic endeavor. User requirements drives customer experience; customer experience drives marketing; marketing drives user requirements. Nobody should feel that a set of requirements has been "thrown over the fence". When this happens, the recipient-of-the-throw is beholden to an abstract deliverable and is no longer connected to the end-user. That’s a real problem. Combating this requires a tight-feedback loop which is most easily created with a small team: engineering gets to see the market research come in, and the usability people can guide engineering throughout the actual creation process.

In an ideal world, everyone on the team would have a foot in engineering, design, and marketing. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible. What is possible is that we can create small, tight teams that collectively have intimate knowledge of all three disciplines.

The small-team idea is by no means new. In the book In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters explains over-and-over again that it’s the small groups; skunk works, home-brew projects, and strike teams that drive innovation at companies both large and small. The most successful teams are those of 10 people or less — preferably between 4 and 8 — that include people from the required disciplines.

By keeping teams small, products don’t get commitee-ized. The team is directly responsible for success. Success is dependent on making a product that meets the needs of the user and to the user, the interface is the product.

P.S., I like the idea of an "Ask Aza" column: Anything that’s alliterative must be good!

Aza’s point above about team size is important, and one that I’ve discussed before. Quantitatively, we can show why, in general, large teams aren’t the best way to go. Here is what I wrote back in Ocotober 15, 2006:

Stinky Large Teams: A Proof

I’ve written about the importance of team size before, here, here, and here. Previously, this is what I said:

I’ve written about efficient teams before here and here. At Amazon, there is a concept of a 2-pizza team: no team should be larger than 2 pizzas can feed. It’s a great approach to team size. In my short career, I’ve learned how true that rule is. Here’s another thing I’ve learned –

2 people are smarter than one

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 people are smarter than 2

a team larger than 9 people is just one big dumb blob

Ok, that’s not true at a wholesale level, but it sure feels like it. A small team with highly smart and capable team members can do much more than 10 mediocre team members. The Wisdom of Crowds mentality doesn’t work that well when it comes to efficiency in teams — especially software teams.

A more quantitative explanation is as follows:

One of the root causes of failure in projects is communication — either a lack thereof, or miscommunication. Large teams are inherently vehicles for bad communication. This is basic combinatorics — for a given project, suppose there are persons A and B. In this scenario there is only 1 communication link. Add person C, now we have 3 communication links, A-B, B-C, C-A. Add person D, then we have 6; Add person E, then we have 10 communication links. Inductively, as team size grows, the raw combinatoric communication link counts grows geometrically, not linearly. To demonstrate this, we use basic statistics of the form n-choose-r, where !, such as n!, is equivalent to n factorial, to arrive at the formula for how many pairs we can choose from n items:

shmula.com, combinatorics

For the number of pairs, we can reduce the above formula to the following:

shmula.com, combinatorics

Visually, as team size grows, the communication links grows non-linearly, but exponentially:

shmula.com, combinatorics

A Rejoinder

Do not let the above dissuade you from large teams; if the product requires a large team, then that is what is needed. Caution, is what I am arguing here. The facts are that the larger the team, the more communication channels there are and the entire process then becomes more error-prone. If the product requires a large team, then expect the above challenge and manage it.

A Conclusion

There is wisdom in Bezos’ notion of the 2-Pizza Team. Small teams work incredibly well. Also, there is wisdom in Toyota’s usage of “The Big Room” as a way to mitigate defects caused by large teams. A combining of the two will most likely make for a great team and a successful product.

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Other articles in the "Ask Aza Raskin" Series:

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Articles on Queueing Theory

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For articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

The Gemba is the Dojo

Managing Constraints Under Peak Volumes

Order Pipeline of Events

On Game Theory

Series on Queueing Theory

Applied Regression Analysis

5S

Click-to-Ship Processes

Kanban Sizing and "Pull"

Lean at Krispy Kreme

Theory of Constraints and Camping

Lean for Software Development

Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer

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by psabilla at 6:16 AM under 2-pizza teams , amazon , aza raskin , business , complexity , ethnography (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» Aza Raskin on Google Search Results

In a previous post on Ethnography, I invited Aza Raskin, founder of Humanized and son of Jef Raskin, the inventor of the Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems — to possibly answer reader’s questions about design, visual management, ethnography, genchi genbutsu, man-machine interactions, or anything related. Several readers responded with interesting questions for Aza. In today’s post, Aza Raskin responds to a reader’s question about Google Search Results page and how messy it is.

The Google search box is simple, clean, and intuitive. BUT, the search results, from what customers tell us is confusing and messy as hell. How do you suggest we clean up the natural search and the paid search results? Is there a more intuitive way of doing it? Thanks — A Googler

Ironically, one of the fundamental goal of interaction designers is to reduce interaction. When we do our jobs perfectly, few people ever notice (except when comparing your solution to other products).

In this light, I would make one suggestion: remove the pagination from the Google search results. At best, its somewhat annoying to click through the pages, and at worst its aggravating trying to remember which page had the result you are looking for. One of Google’s magics is the extremely fast loading times, and I understand that loading long pages takes a long time. The solution is a good implementation of an non-intrusive infinite scroll.

As a side note, playful touches make a great interface into home-run products (as long as playful doesn’t become annoying). I like the elongation of "Goooooooogle". That’s a great playful touch. That should be kept in some form.

Other articles in the "Ask Aza Raskin" Series:

+++++

Articles on Queueing Theory

+++++

For articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

The Gemba is the Dojo

Managing Constraints Under Peak Volumes

Order Pipeline of Events

On Game Theory

Series on Queueing Theory

Applied Regression Analysis

5S

Click-to-Ship Processes

Kanban Sizing and "Pull"

Lean at Krispy Kreme

Theory of Constraints and Camping

Lean for Software Development

Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer

Share This

by psabilla at 3:55 AM under aza raskin , business , complexity , customer obsession , ethnography , featuritis , simplicity principle (Comments)

Peter Abilla
no nic
shmula

» Root Cause, Genchi Genbutsu, & Design Thinking

One Pillar of the Toyota Production System is "Respect for the Human" or, more commonly known outside of Toyota as "Respect for People." That Pillar has given rise to an approach to improvement that is uniquely Toyota’s and is starkly different than the Taylorist approach proposed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, which fails to see the individual and under-appreciates the physical and psychological differences in people and in how people prefer to work. The Toyota Production System, I argue, appreciates the individual and empowers the individual to improve her work within the System; by doing so, a firm can increase its ratio of problem-solvers to problem-finders. But, this article is not about Taylorism versus The Toyota Production System — ignoring my propensity towards tangents for a moment — this article is about Root Cause Analysis, Genchi Genbutsu, and Human-Centered Design — all elements I found in the book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande.

I recently read a short excerpt from the book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande, which is an excellent example illustrating the relationship between Root Cause Analysis, Genchi Genbutsu, and Design. The book is a series of essays that explain, with heart-felt candor, how difficult it is to be a physician and also points out the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the system, the physicians, and its impact on the rest of us.

Eye Injuries & Poor Design

In the excerpt that I read today, battlefield physicians noticed that soldiers and marines were getting a lot of eye injuries. They physicians asked the patients why they weren’t wearing their protective eye coverings. The answer? — The soldiers didn’t want to look like dorks! This point may seem subtle, but is a critically important one: These are soldiers on the front-lines, facing death everyday. Any amount of humanity — even vanity — that they can hold on to is important to them. Part of good, human-centered design is that the product must be elegant — in it’s design and functionality. So, the goggles were redesigned to look like cool sunglasses, and the eye injury rate went down. This is also a great example of why you need to ask users about problems with products.

Amazon.com Widgets

Conclusion

In conclusion, we see the physicians quickly arriving at the Root Cause of eye injuries. They "went and saw" for themselves by asking the patients themselves why they weren’t wearing the protective goggles. Then, the practical solution was to redesign the goggles to make them more attractive. The result? — reduced battlefield eye injuries and cooler-looking sunglasses.

I’ve already ordered the book. I can’t wait to read it.