Jakob Nielsen just released a study on iPad, Kindle, Paper and PC reading rates.
I have issues with this study, but it's interesting. As a user of Paper Books, PCs, a Kindle, and an iPad, I can definitely say that I have some preferences. But, what struck me is that this study really was highly confounded. When you read a paper book, you are doing something you've done for years (as a college student). When you read a Kindle, there is definitely a period of adjustment to getting really immersive.
After reading my first novel on the Kindle, the immersive reading experience for me is now much like reading a paper book. It wasn't that way at first, but it got that way. The iPad, in contrast, is more taxing on my eyes, so I don't find that I can read for as long on the iPad without being fatigued. Now, I'm just one person, but my experience is making me question the validity of testing paper against e-book readers when the users aren't existing users of e-book readers.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Innovation Lessons from Visual Perception and Walks
I was just out on a walk at the lovely Shoreline park, just behind where I work. I was walking along, thinking about Innovation challenges, and passively observing the world go by.
One of the things I noticed was the phenomenon of Motion Parallax. Things in the distance really didn't seem to move much, but things near me zipped past me quickly.
It occurred to me that there was a lesson here for teams who are trying to be innovative.
If you try to address something that is off in the distance, you can keep an eye on it and it doesn't move much as you move towards it. If you head off to one direction or another, it's still there. However, if you choose to address something that is nearby, it will zip past you very quickly.
For a bigger impact, focus on the goals that are out in the distance. They are easier to aim for...
For a quicker, but small impact, focus on the goal close to you. But, be careful... it's a moving target and the opportunity may zip past you before you are able to make the change.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Digging for innovation diamonds
This morning on NPR, I heard a story about Einstein’s brain. Bear with me, this is relevant to innovation…
Apparently,Einstein’s brain was fairly normal, except that it had an overabundance of a type of cell called a Glial cell. When I was taught neuroanatomy in college, I was taught that a Glial cell was a cell that glued the brain together and, perhaps, provided some nutrients to support neurons (the cells involved in processing information). When scientists discovered that Einstein had loads of Glial cells, they were perplexed. Why would this brilliant genius have more Glial cells? They didn’t DO anything… or so they thought. So, the scientists started taking a much closer look at Glial cells. They discovered that Glial cells did, in fact, communicate information. They just communicated in a different way than neurons: with biochemistry. This discovery radically changed neuroscientists understanding of the brain and how it works… it changed everything. And, it stemmed from digging into an observation that didn’t make sense.
When I heard this story, I was struck by how familiar it was. One of the stories we hear about all the time at Intuit is the story of how QuickBooks came about. The product Quicken, which is intended to help individuals balance their checkbooks and manage their personal finances, was being used by people for their business. That didn’t really make sense to the team. The product was for personal finances, not for business accounting… but, they finally dug into the finding and discovered that small business people, without a background in accounting, were using Quicken because it was easy to understand, and a more effective way of managing their finances than manual methods. These people wouldn’t use the existing accounting software tools because they were too complex and required an understanding of accounting principles. This insight changed everything. We built a product specifically for these non-accounting small businesses to manage their finances (QuickBooks), and were immediately dominating the market. The innovation stemmed from digging into an observation that didn’t make sense.
We don’t do this enough. We don’t pay attention to the sparkly observation that doesn’t make sense. We miss the diamonds. Why? Well, we aren’t looking for them. They don’t fit into the context of our current understanding, so we skip over them to the observations that do make sense. We’re looking for “problems” with the current state. However, looking for problems usually only leads to incremental design improvements. For RADICAL disruptions, those things that change everything, you have to look for the diamonds.
Here’s a challenge for today. Kind of a warm-up. As you go through your day, take a look for things that aren’t expected or don’t make sense.
It’s easier than you might think. In 10 minutes walking around my office filled with standard cubicles this morning, I found:
Each of these is unexpected. Each provokes my curiosity. Each suggest a purpose… although I would need to actually talk with the owners to verify. And, importantly, each were things that were easily overlooked as I glanced in people’s cubes.
Why do this warm-up? It gets you looking for the unexpected. You might find gold, you might find a rock, or you might, just might, stumble on a diamond.
Apparently,Einstein’s brain was fairly normal, except that it had an overabundance of a type of cell called a Glial cell. When I was taught neuroanatomy in college, I was taught that a Glial cell was a cell that glued the brain together and, perhaps, provided some nutrients to support neurons (the cells involved in processing information). When scientists discovered that Einstein had loads of Glial cells, they were perplexed. Why would this brilliant genius have more Glial cells? They didn’t DO anything… or so they thought. So, the scientists started taking a much closer look at Glial cells. They discovered that Glial cells did, in fact, communicate information. They just communicated in a different way than neurons: with biochemistry. This discovery radically changed neuroscientists understanding of the brain and how it works… it changed everything. And, it stemmed from digging into an observation that didn’t make sense.
When I heard this story, I was struck by how familiar it was. One of the stories we hear about all the time at Intuit is the story of how QuickBooks came about. The product Quicken, which is intended to help individuals balance their checkbooks and manage their personal finances, was being used by people for their business. That didn’t really make sense to the team. The product was for personal finances, not for business accounting… but, they finally dug into the finding and discovered that small business people, without a background in accounting, were using Quicken because it was easy to understand, and a more effective way of managing their finances than manual methods. These people wouldn’t use the existing accounting software tools because they were too complex and required an understanding of accounting principles. This insight changed everything. We built a product specifically for these non-accounting small businesses to manage their finances (QuickBooks), and were immediately dominating the market. The innovation stemmed from digging into an observation that didn’t make sense.
We don’t do this enough. We don’t pay attention to the sparkly observation that doesn’t make sense. We miss the diamonds. Why? Well, we aren’t looking for them. They don’t fit into the context of our current understanding, so we skip over them to the observations that do make sense. We’re looking for “problems” with the current state. However, looking for problems usually only leads to incremental design improvements. For RADICAL disruptions, those things that change everything, you have to look for the diamonds.
Here’s a challenge for today. Kind of a warm-up. As you go through your day, take a look for things that aren’t expected or don’t make sense.
It’s easier than you might think. In 10 minutes walking around my office filled with standard cubicles this morning, I found:
- A crystal vase, filled with markers and a USB cord
- A box of brownie mix
- A bottle of clear nail polish
- An open eyeglass case with glasses
- A thermal carafe (the kind you get at diners, filled with coffee)
- A dead plant (in a pot wrapped in purple tissue paper)
Each of these is unexpected. Each provokes my curiosity. Each suggest a purpose… although I would need to actually talk with the owners to verify. And, importantly, each were things that were easily overlooked as I glanced in people’s cubes.
Why do this warm-up? It gets you looking for the unexpected. You might find gold, you might find a rock, or you might, just might, stumble on a diamond.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Is your culture inhibiting your creativity?
I'm giving a talk tomorrow morning on the impact of working environment "culture" on creativity and capability to design great solutions. This is an update on the one that I gave a little over a year ago at the Design Research conference in Spokane. This time, it's intended to get the audience involved in identifying the barriers to creativity in their own 'corporate culture' and making a plan for how to overcome those barriers.
Is your corporate culture keeping you from designing
Is your corporate culture keeping you from designing
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Apparently, Nothing Trumps the Power of a Personal Experience
A small group of executives was given a vast amount of data about a problem they were tackling about employee engagement. They looked it over and set it aside. Then, they had frank conversations with a couple of individual employees. They came away from their conversations and dismissed the lesson of the data, and made decisions based on the experiences of the few individuals they spoke with.Things like this used to drive me crazy. As a trained scientist, I was taught to be skeptical of a single observation until you’d verified that it was a reliable learning. My background instilled a love of experiments and repeatable, reliable data. I hated when someone would challenge or dismiss my vast research and carefully controlled experiments with a personal anecdote.
Recently, though, I have come to understand and embrace this phenomenon. After seeing this happen hundreds of times (more often than not), it occurs to me that we seem to be wired to put undo weight on our own personal experiences and concrete stories of other’s experiences. We do this because the experiences and stories resonate with us as “real”. We can recall our own experiences or empathize with those of others, and it is a deep connection to the “truth” of the information. When we look at large data sets or aggregated data, it lacks the deep personal connection that makes it seem real.
In other words, for the scientists in my reading audience, although the reliability of information is important to the average person, it isn’t as critical as the validity of information.
This jibes with what others have observed about the power of story over data in presentations (e.g., see Stephen Denning’s The Secret Language of Leadership) and the power of empathy in business (e.g., see Dev Patnik’s Wired to Care).
SO… when challenged with helping people internalize reliable data, I have begun to try to give people a personal experience with the topic of information.
Nothing seems to trump the power of a personal experience.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Soaking rain of ideas in a brainstorm
I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on brainstorming. Sometimes brainstorms are wildly successful, and we come up with really new ways of approaching a problem/solution. Other times, it seems like brainstorms don't really generate much of anything new or interesting. I think there can be a number of reasons for that, but I've been paying attention so I can learn how to get a better hit rate.
Setting the field
Most innovations that have happened in history have come about through applying something that is working to solve a similar problem somewhere else. It is hard to look at the same problem the same way and come up with something new. So, brainstorms are more successful when people bring in new insights. The more successful brainstorms I've been a part of have been well planned and everyone has been a part of some "pre-work" to help prime the pump. Knowing that you have a brainstorm coming up can help you begin to keep your mind open to ideas that might be relevant. We have had good success with having people have deep customer experiences, spending time researching the "edge cases" and sending people off to advance their AQ (Awareness Quotient) through experiences in spaces that aren't directly related to the problem area. Basically, give the participants of the brainstorm some new experiences to draw upon when coming up with new ideas.
Building in diverse perspectives
For a brainstorm to be successful, the team needs to come up with lots of ideas that are different from one another. You are more likely to get a breadth of ideas if you build in diverse perspectives to the brainstorm. There are two ways I've tried that work to bring in diverse perspectives: with the people and the brainstorm prompts.
First, the people. The more diverse the roles, backgrounds and experiences of the brainstorm participants, the more diverse the ideas are bound to be. That is because our experiences shape the way we think, so the ideas we come up with are bound to be influenced by those experiences. The more diverse the people, the more influences come into play on the generation of ideas. So, stack the deck by pulling in a diverse group to participate in the brainstorm.
Second, the brainstorm prompts. Usually when doing a brainstorm, we focus on one thing. Say, for example, we're having a brainstorm about places to go for lunch. We usually do the brainstorm by saying "where can we go for lunch?" and then generate ideas. Recently, though, we've had some real success by breaking apart the brainstorm into a series of smaller brainstorms around themes or sub-categories related to the brainstorm. So, instead of "where can we go for lunch?" we might ask "What Asian food places could we go for lunch? What Mexican food places could we go to? What burger joints could we go to?" What this does is generate a much larger set of options to choose from, inevitably more diverse than we would have gotten to with the larger question. So, stack the deck by breaking up the brainstorm into several smaller-brainstorms.
Going for the slow drizzle after the downpour
Ever been in a brainstorm where everyone comes up with lots of ideas, don't really share them with one another, and then stop when the ideas stop coming? I've noticed something really interesting lately. The REALLY interesting ideas often come later in the brainstorm, when it is hard to come up with ideas and people work harder to combine or alter ideas that are already up. This is the slow drizzle... it is the point at which everyone starts listening to the other ideas and trying to build on them. I was always a little skeptical of "Creative Rainbow" and "Scamper" (brainstorming methods), but now I see that their real value is in the slow drizzle after the initial downpour of ideas. So, build in extra time so that the brainstorm seems to be faltering, then pull out the tools: "What can we combine?", "What can we amplify?"...
Setting the field
Most innovations that have happened in history have come about through applying something that is working to solve a similar problem somewhere else. It is hard to look at the same problem the same way and come up with something new. So, brainstorms are more successful when people bring in new insights. The more successful brainstorms I've been a part of have been well planned and everyone has been a part of some "pre-work" to help prime the pump. Knowing that you have a brainstorm coming up can help you begin to keep your mind open to ideas that might be relevant. We have had good success with having people have deep customer experiences, spending time researching the "edge cases" and sending people off to advance their AQ (Awareness Quotient) through experiences in spaces that aren't directly related to the problem area. Basically, give the participants of the brainstorm some new experiences to draw upon when coming up with new ideas.
Building in diverse perspectives
For a brainstorm to be successful, the team needs to come up with lots of ideas that are different from one another. You are more likely to get a breadth of ideas if you build in diverse perspectives to the brainstorm. There are two ways I've tried that work to bring in diverse perspectives: with the people and the brainstorm prompts.
First, the people. The more diverse the roles, backgrounds and experiences of the brainstorm participants, the more diverse the ideas are bound to be. That is because our experiences shape the way we think, so the ideas we come up with are bound to be influenced by those experiences. The more diverse the people, the more influences come into play on the generation of ideas. So, stack the deck by pulling in a diverse group to participate in the brainstorm.
Second, the brainstorm prompts. Usually when doing a brainstorm, we focus on one thing. Say, for example, we're having a brainstorm about places to go for lunch. We usually do the brainstorm by saying "where can we go for lunch?" and then generate ideas. Recently, though, we've had some real success by breaking apart the brainstorm into a series of smaller brainstorms around themes or sub-categories related to the brainstorm. So, instead of "where can we go for lunch?" we might ask "What Asian food places could we go for lunch? What Mexican food places could we go to? What burger joints could we go to?" What this does is generate a much larger set of options to choose from, inevitably more diverse than we would have gotten to with the larger question. So, stack the deck by breaking up the brainstorm into several smaller-brainstorms.
Going for the slow drizzle after the downpour
Ever been in a brainstorm where everyone comes up with lots of ideas, don't really share them with one another, and then stop when the ideas stop coming? I've noticed something really interesting lately. The REALLY interesting ideas often come later in the brainstorm, when it is hard to come up with ideas and people work harder to combine or alter ideas that are already up. This is the slow drizzle... it is the point at which everyone starts listening to the other ideas and trying to build on them. I was always a little skeptical of "Creative Rainbow" and "Scamper" (brainstorming methods), but now I see that their real value is in the slow drizzle after the initial downpour of ideas. So, build in extra time so that the brainstorm seems to be faltering, then pull out the tools: "What can we combine?", "What can we amplify?"...
Friday, February 12, 2010
Following Objects
When studying a new area, we often talk with and watch people doing whatever it is we're interested in. For example, if we were interested in Shopping, we might talk with people about their shopping habits, watch them shopping (maybe going with them and asking questions), etc. But, how often do we watch the objects that people interact with in the environment? While I might note that they are using a shopping cart, and maybe even how they are using it (what they put in it, etc), I rarely have taken the time to map the experience of the objects themselves.
This week, I was in an ethnography class and one of the exercises we did was to follow an object. I've always wanted to do that, but haven't. So, some of my colleagues and I went to a local Target store to study the life of shopping carts. One colleague studied the cart experience in the parking lot. She noticed a distinct non-shopping role for parents. A shopping cart is an entertainment device and a tool for containing children in the potentially dangerous environment of a parking lot. Another colleague studied the life of carts that migrated to locations other than the store (for example, to a nearby apartment complex). I did a case study of one particular cart's journey through the store.
Here is the full report, if you are interested.
I found it a really interesting experience. I noticed things I wouldn't normally notice, and I could see how this could be a really useful technique for tracking artifacts that customers use when solving problems that I'm interested in.
So here is my challenge to you. Next time you are researching something, or are somewhere that you have some time to kill, try tracking the life of an object in that environment.
This week, I was in an ethnography class and one of the exercises we did was to follow an object. I've always wanted to do that, but haven't. So, some of my colleagues and I went to a local Target store to study the life of shopping carts. One colleague studied the cart experience in the parking lot. She noticed a distinct non-shopping role for parents. A shopping cart is an entertainment device and a tool for containing children in the potentially dangerous environment of a parking lot. Another colleague studied the life of carts that migrated to locations other than the store (for example, to a nearby apartment complex). I did a case study of one particular cart's journey through the store.
Here is the full report, if you are interested.20 Minutes In The Life Of A Shopping
View more presentations from Wendy Castleman.
I found it a really interesting experience. I noticed things I wouldn't normally notice, and I could see how this could be a really useful technique for tracking artifacts that customers use when solving problems that I'm interested in.
So here is my challenge to you. Next time you are researching something, or are somewhere that you have some time to kill, try tracking the life of an object in that environment.
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