Pleasure and Pain

Can Leadership Be Learned?

whitney — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:04:19 +0000

The words both start with L-E-A, but can leadership really be learned?

As a consultant, I have the pleasure and challenge to work with a variety of different teams. I am a team of one, but I collaborate with agency teams (such as Happy Cog, whom I’m working with on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum project), internal client teams, freelance designers and developers.

Sometimes I’m brought in by an executive on the client side. Sometimes I’m brought in by an agency who has already won the client. Sometimes I’m brought in by a consultant to the client, who is helping them to build a team.

Almost every time, it’s incredibly unclear who’s leading.

I mention Happy Cog above because I fall over myself with excitement every time I get to work with them. Not just because they’re some of the most talented, most professional, most revered people working on the web today — but because everyone’s role is crystal clear, and every team member can point to the project lead in under 3 seconds. Not only that, every team member respects the project lead and follows their lead. It is in NO way a dictatorship, but it is also not a sociocracy — “a system of governance using consent-based decision.” It’s a meritocracy, where the lead becomes the lead because he demonstrates that he can lead, and that he’s willing to.

It’s a deep honor to work with these people, and have the opportunity to do things right, and well. But at the same time, it has made me acutely aware of the leadership problems that I have faced on almost all of my other projects.

Since I am always brought in as a consultant, I am never the true project lead because it is ultimately not my responsibility to implement the solution and integrate it into the business. One day I would very much like it to be, but that’s simply not the case right now. While I do currently get to lead almost all of the user experience phases of these projects, I still have an overall project lead that I report into — and in order for my work to be successful and impactful, the leader has to possess some pretty specific qualities.

My expectations for a leader are:

To set clear goals, and to continually articulate them in written and verbal form to the team
To motivate the team to believe in their vision
To recognize and nurture the expertise that each person on the team brings to the project
To assign actionable tasks with measurable results
To express their appreciation for the contribution that each team member makes
To be decisive and confident
To ask team members for their input on key issues, but to always take responsibility for making final decisions
To stay calm
To ask for help when they need it
To put the needs of people above the needs of things

I very rarely come across people who possess these qualities, and who take pride in not just what they do, but how they do it. I’ve been spoiled by working with Happy Cog, and I worry that I’ll have a really hard time working with people who don’t meet these expectations.

Part of my responsibility as a consultant is to clearly and respectfully communicate to my clients what I need from them in order to be successful. But I have to ask myself: Can leadership be learned? If it can, do I have the authority and chutzpah to express my expectations to the person who’s supposed to be my leader, or should I simply use this list as a rubric against which I evaluate potential projects and working teams?

I’m sharing my thoughts with you as I’m going through a period of discovery, so not all of this is entirely clear in my mind. I would love your honesty and guidance in helping me thinking through some of these issues.

Thanks in advance for your advice and understanding.

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Around the World in 80 Days

whitney — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:15:18 +0000

In thinking about my upcoming travel schedule, the classic French adventure novel Around the World in 80 Days (Le tour du monde en 80 jours) popped into my head.

Then I quickly looked at the calendar and counted the days – exactly 80 days from today.

I have a few upcoming speaking engagements, a couple weddings, and a couple awesome personal trips planned.

If you live in any of these cities or are going to be at these events, I’d love to grab a local beer with you when I’m in town. Just make sure to let me know in the comments or on Twitter @whitneyhess.

Follow my adventures on Dopplr, and of course Flickr.

March 11-17

SXSW Interactive
Austin, TX
Not speakin, just chillin

April 2-5

Childhood friend’s wedding
San Francisco, CA

April 8-12

IA Summit 2010
Phoenix, AZ
Giving the closing plenary

April 16-19

CMU Spring Carnival
Pittsburgh, PA

April 29-May 1

Family friend’s wedding
Miami, FL

May 2-5

STC Technical Communication Summit ‘10
Dallas, TX
Presenting “10 Most Common Misconceptions About UX Design” and “Evangelizing Yourself”

May 18-21

UX London
London, UK
Giving a workshop titled “Creating a Culture of UX”

May 22-26

Vacation!
Paris, France

And that completes my 80 days. I’m not exactly circumventing the globe, but it’s quite enough for me.

I should mention that on top of everything I’m moving to a new apartment in April. And of course I’ll be doing client work that whole time as well.

Oh, life is swell. Now you get why I need that beer?

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How Little You Really Know

whitney — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:13:44 +0000

You have no idea how little your users really know. And that shows just how little you know.

You work in technology for a living. You’ve been using a computer since you were born. You are obsessed with learning new things. You are a nerd and you hang out with other nerds. You constantly think about the future. You love math. You spend the vast majority of your day staring at screens of varying sizes.

In other words, you are not normal.

You are utterly convinced that the things you know are obvious, but meanwhile you think you’re brilliant. That doesn’t make everyone else around you stupid; it just means that they know different things than you do. Trust me, you don’t know everything.

“The man who knows something knows that he knows nothing at all.” — Erykah Badu

“And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” — 1 Corinthians 8:2 (King James Bible translation)

If you do anything at all in the field of technology — if you are a designer, or a developer, or a writer, or a product manager, or a marketer, or a business strategist, or a venture capitalist, or a lawyer, or an entrepreneur — you are helping to create products and services that people use. If you don’t give a shit about those people, please do the world a favor and go away.

You think your target market is “everybody,” yet you have no idea just how little “everybody” knows. You tell yourself that your product or service is for the “average person,” but you really mean that it’s for yourself. You cannot possibly imagine how little domain knowledge about technology the average person on the street possesses. You need to watch this video that I recently saw on Matt J. McDonald’s blog:

Do you still think you want “everyone” to use your product or service? Are you using language and concepts that they’ll even understand?

What are you doing to find out what your users know and what they don’t?

Death to assumptions. You don’t know anything until you ask. Start today.

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My Top 10 User Experience Blogs to Watch in 2010 on Blogs.com

whitney — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:00:15 +0000

Last April I had the honor of contributing a guest list on the 10 Best UX (User Experience) Design blogs [the list, my blog post] for Six Apart’s Blogs.com.

I still regularly read almost all of the blogs I listed, but recently realized that there are many new, revamped or lesser known UX blogs that really deserve some attention. Another year, another list.

Now live on Blogs.com is my 10 UX (User Experience) Blogs to Watch in 2010!

Okay, so I couldn’t pick just 10…there are 11.

Here are my picks for the UX blogs to watch in 2010, in alphabetic order:

52 Weeks of UX
For each week in 2010, co-writers Joshua Brewer and Joshua Porter each offer a highly focused post that packs a lot of punch.
90 Percent of Everything
Harry Brignull illustrates Sturgeon’s Second Law — “90% of everything is crud” — with periodic insights on how to create the 10%.
Bobulate
Liz Danzico’s scrapbook of seemingly disparate ideas brilliantly broadens the scope of experience design.
Johnny Holland
An international group of writers explores the meaning of interaction design and aims to have its (sometimes incendiary) essays start new conversations.
Pure Caffeine
Nathanael Boehm shares his thoughts on the intersection of social experience design and Government 2.0.
UI&us
Keith Lang talks about technology trends and how they relate to cognitive psychology and user interface design.
Usability Post
Dmitry Fadeyev provides weekly tips and resources on how to make your products more usable.
Uselog.com
Jasper van Kuijk posts design examples, news, and observations on consumer product usability as he works on completing his PhD.
UX Booth
Andrew Maier, Matthew Kammerer, and David Legget are three fresh-faced guys behind the blog that’s becoming one of the most widely read UX resources.
Winning Content
Colleen Jones shares demonstrates the crucial role that content strategy plays in creating positive user experiences.
Wireframes Magazine
Jakub Linowski proves that there’s no right way to wireframe with regular samples of practitioners’ UX deliverables.

Did I miss one of your favorite blogs? Feel free to tell me about it in the comments!

Many, many thanks to Wendy Taylor, editor of Blogs.com, for her generosity and guidance.

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Photo of the day: Bags on Board

whitney — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:00:36 +0000

My cousins have an adorable Boston Terrier named Luna. She likes to play tug of war, and fetch, and tear her toys apart. And unlike the dogs I had growing up, she also likes to poop outside.

Over the summer my cousins were taking Luna for a walk and I noticed their completely amazing leash.

Made by a company called Bags on Board, the retractable leash has a built-in doggie poop bag dispenser. Imagine: no more napkins or Ziplocks or oversized grocery bags — or worse, having nothing at all!

I mean, it’s no Pooper Scooper, but it sure does save the pocket space and make the whole process more efficient. I find it pretty innovative, and I’m shocked it took this long for someone to invent.

The best ideas are always so obvious, aren’t they?

Cat owners, you’re in luck. They make a litter box scoop with a built-in baggie, too!

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Who is Harry Max’s mentor?

whitney — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:30:17 +0000

[This post is part of a series on Mentors and Heroes]

Harry Max is an independent management consultant and executive coach for a variety of startups and major brands. Previously he was a Principal Consultant at Rubicon Consulting. In 1994, he co-founded Virtual Vineyards (wine.com). Follow him on Twitter @harrymax.

Harry Max’s mentor is…

Brian “Fitz” Fitzgerald, Entrepreneur

How long have you known each other and how did you first meet?
I’ve known Fitz for about 10 years now. I met him through one of my Public Mind investors while he was still SVP of World Wide Operations for Intuit. Brian attended one of my board meetings as an observer. Afterward, he took me to a bar, bought a round of Macallan 25, pulled out his checkbook and invested in our early vision of demand aggregation, now more commonly known as “crowd sourcing.”

How would you describe how you relate to your mentor?
I’d have to characterize the relationship as complex. At times, I’m an apprentice. Other times, I’m a peer. Part of what works is that Brian doesn’t put people into boxes. And, even though some people might perceive him as an “old salt,” his amazing energy, commitment to bringing out the best in people, and supporting what they’re trying to accomplish shines through brightly.

How formal or structured is the mentorship? Does Brian know you consider him a mentor?
Fitz probably doesn’t realize that I consider him a mentor. I can imagine he thinks that we’re just friends who share a common philosophy about how visions get built, and how value gets created and exchanged.

What is one piece of advice your mentor gave you that has stuck with you the most?
Actually, there are two pieces of “advice” that continue to reverberate through my daily interactions. The first is that “Business *is* people.” On some level, I always knew that. But Brian’s words really brought it home to me. The other, as overly simplistic as it might sound is that business boils down to the following things: Making money, saving money, avoiding unnecessary costs, hiring and retaining excellent people, achieving business goals, take care of ALL your stakeholders, and (above all else) provide products and servcies of real and lasting value to customers.

What else do you want the world to know about your mentor?
Brian Fitzgerald is one of two or three people for whom I’d drop everything to follow into battle.

Thank you Harry for sharing your mentor with us!

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Sketching made easier by UI Stencils

whitney — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:00:24 +0000

Yes, I’m obsessed with Konigi’s Omnigraffle wireframe stencils, but what if you could have real-life stencils to help you sketch? You can. They’re called UI Stencils, and they’re made by Design Commission, an experience design agency in Seattle.

Drawing can be intimidating for a lot of folks, and the fear of not being a “good drawer” prevents people from picking up a pencil to communicate their ideas. But UI Stencils make that a breeze by providing stainless steal stencils for common UI components for websites, iPhone and now iPad. Their kits also come with a mechanical pencil and PDF templates. Not bad for just 18 bucks each.

They also sell sketchpads and sticky pads with the browser chrome pre-printed so you needed worry about drawing to scale.

Follow them on Twitter @uistencils.

[I honestly can't remember how I happened upon these, or if someone sent me a link directly. If it was you, tell me so in the comments. I apologize in advance :)]

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Photo of the day: Penn Station, Charging Station

whitney — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:00:48 +0000

I’ve found myself at Penn Station quite a lot lately. You see, I’m working on the project of a lifetime with Happy Cog Philadelphia, so I visit by train from time-to-time.

A few weeks ago I observed some unusual behavior:

I’ve passed by this column dozens of times when I walk into the Amtrak area from the subway — and I have previously noticed the power outlet at the rather unusual height. But I didn’t think much of it until I saw a guy charging his phone there the other day.

A few things immediately came to mind:

Is it considered “legal” for Amtrak customers to use this power outlet for their own purposes?
If not, what is the purpose of that power outlet?
Is this an example of an opportunity to pave the cowpaths? Should Amtrak recognize a customer need and install a mobile charging station?

What comes to mind when you see something like this?

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UIE Virtual Seminar with Tamara Adlin: Ad-Hoc Personas

whitney — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:30:20 +0000

User Interface Engineering (UIE) hosts wonderful virtual seminars every month on a variety of UX-related topics. This month was no exception. Tamara Adlin, a user experience consultant based in Seattle, WA, put together a smart and practical presentation titled, The Power of Ad Hoc Personas: Truly Practical Methods to Get Your Organization On the Same Page.

The essence of Tamara’s 90-minute virtual seminar is that an inability to do user research should not prevent you from focusing key stakeholders on who their users really are. Some techniques that she discusses are ad-hoc (or non-data driven) personas, user stories, and feature prioritization.

Read my Twitter notes on the presentation and follow along with the slides below. Enjoy!

Slides

Ad Hoc Personas Virtual Seminar Preview

View more presentations from adlin, inc..

Tweets

So excited! RT @UIE: Tamara Adlin’s virtual seminar on Ad Hoc Personas starts [at 1:30 ET]. Follow along at #uievs http://j.mp/bUPmsA
Get a 20% discount on @tamaraadlin’s new book: http://www.elsevierdirect.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780123814180 Use code: 98704
“Swoop and poop” or “Seagull Management” = when executives fly over the project and crap all over it, then fly away
Cute! @tamaraadlin’s dad does the illustrations for her book covers
Personas are a valuable part of the process whether you’re working on the inside or the outside of an organization, big or small
“Myth: If you don’t have data, personas are worthless.” @tamaraadlin intends to debunk that myth today
Persona rules – Rule 1: If you don’t have clear goals, don’t bother. Rule 2: The execs *must* be involved from the start.
Ad-hoc personas are the same as data-driven personas except they’re created in direct collaboration with high-level stakeholders…
Rule 3: You *must* align personas with goals. Rule 4: Use @tamaraadlin’s magical persona template.
Ad-hoc personas can (and should) be created before you collect any more data about your users or customers…
@tamaraadlin believes that companies are suffering from a lack of data, but rather from a lack of *focus*
Unlike data-drive personas, ad-hoc personas are a focus and communication tool first, and a product design tool second.
Why care? Personas are already floating around your org, and they’re probably wrong. Personas can solve unclear business objectives
Collecting more data is expensive and often not very helpful. Ad-hoc personas can be created quickly and inexpensively
And chances are you’re not sending people to the moon. Not everything has to be super-complex. Ad-hoc personas solve basic problems
“Most companies are so confused, the last thing they need is more data.” — @tamaraadlin Too much data can be paralyzing for an org
“Disorganized assumptions are like ghosts; they will haunt your project.” Use ad-hoc personas to bring clarity and focus to your org
When developing rich experiences across multiple channels w a large team, few ppl have the same users in mind when making decisions
Hidden personas wreak havoc on products. People are making small compromises that end up becoming huge problems for lots of people
“Barnacle-based” design happens. Over the years, you add more features and clog up the works of something that was once well designed
“Corporate underpants” = when your site or product IA mimics your organizations internal structure. HA!
Shared, prioritized, well-communicated personas align the whole team — inside and out. Even without data, the picture is much better
Marketing vs. design personas: marketing drives eyeballs to your product, product design moves those eyeballs around once they arrive
Rule 1: If you don’t have clear goals, the persona effort won’t work. Dirty little secret: no one knows what the company’s goals are
Identify top three measurable biz objectives for company/project. “What does success look like from a business perspective?”
Write down your guesses for the goals and make sure you get them approved by the execs before you move forward with the project
“Increase revenue” and “decrease costs” are not clear, measurable goals. “Increase revenue by X% through online tools” is however
Woah, this is going a bit fast. Hard for me to keep up. @tamaraadlin is giving great advice for how to set up these meetings w/ execs
“Never do anything without sticky notes”- @tamaraadlin Get everyone in the room to write all their goals on post-its, then categorize
Let execs use their own language, then help them adapt it to “I want/I need” statements. This is hard, but will be a major sea change
Find patterns across the user goals. (You’re doing all this together in a room) Put like items together, and there are your personas
Ad-hoc personas = testable hypotheses. Now you have a place to start gathering more data. That’s pretty smart, actually.
Ad-hoc personas are less about getting to the write answers, and more about getting the biz execs sharing how they’re thinking
“You’ve gotta get the scribbles out before you can draw.” — @tamaraadlin’s dad. Get the old ways of thinking out first to get to new
As business goals change, previously developed personas can still hang around but you might need to re-prioritize them accordingly
@tamaraadlin refers to your boss’s boss and your boss’s boss’s boss as “grand boss” and “great grand boss”. Too funny
@tamaraadlin is answering my question about why we should call these ad-hoc “personas” instead of “target audiences”…
She says if you’re planning data-driven personas, it’s good not to give ad-hoc personas names/titles in case you need to revise them
But calling them “target audiences” might create a turf war with marketing, so instead consider calling them “sketch personas”
@tamaraadlin talking about the technique she uses for getting execs to prioritize ad-hoc personas using a points system
Fill in the blank: “If we don’t make ________ ridiculously happy, we’ve failed.” That really gets people talking
@tamaraadlin persona template elements: alliterative, descriptive name; photo; weighted score/priority; category-admin, end user, etc
…key quote; meet the persona (2-3 paragraphs); persona’s main questions (in their terms); how we’ll answer (in org’s terms)…
…lastly, “Oh, by the way” what we (the org) can do for her that she wouldn’t even think to ask for. This loose structure is helpful
@tamaraadlin just hit on the salient point from Paola Antonelli’s Interaction10 talk: UX is about the stories people tell themselves
Persona-weighted feature matrix: weight=priority. Score: 2 = persona will love this feature, 1 = sure, it’s fine, expected…
0 = doesn’t affect the persona. -1 persona will hate this. Take each feature and plot it against each persona, then score & add up
@tamaraadlin’s Persona-weighted feature matrix: http://img.skitch.com/20100218-rmr7hu556bhj9ca6mxhhs1w6d8.jpg
A great example of plotting personas on a grid to clarify & get buy-in: http://bit.ly/czgtnV
Last link is particularly useful for communicating with development
You have the feature priorities, based on persona priorities, based on business or brand goals, which were approved by the executives
“Personas are the characters. Now tell the stories.” This is similar to scenarios and use cases, but focus on end-to-end stories…
Not just little snippets of the experience. Users see it as one experience and you need to understand it and plan for it that way too
This webinar is about way more than ad-hoc personas. It’s really a project definition work session tutorial
Data is great, but it’s not the only tool in the toolbox. Ad-hoc personas get execs on same page, & help us design a story of the exp
This story crosses functional areas, product descriptions, politics, etc. Personas get you out of yr own heads, talking to each other
Your execs aren’t hiding their goals from you…they don’t even really know them! They’re your #1 user — guide them thru the process
Rule 5: Use tools that *force* people to use the personas. Rule 6: Create stories, not solutions. (missed those two before)
@tamaraadlin’s new book is available for pre-order now. Essential Personal Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building & Using Personas
Again, you can get a 20% discount off of the book at http://www.elsevierdirect.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780123814180 use code: 98704
I wasn’t able to capture this before. Check out how persona prioritization works using point system: http://bit.ly/9lAK5J
Personas tend to be evergreen because users’ goals don’t change that much over time – @tamaraadlin. But their behaviors do, no?
If exec team can’t agree on the priority of the personas, how are you ever going to design a product they believe in?
“If any of these steps feels terribly difficult, something went wrong in the step before it.” — @tamaraadlin I love that!
Haha, @tamaraadlin says that many of us listening think the idea of not bringing in users to talk to is heresy. She’s right, I do :)
Add the upcoming @uie virtual seminars to your calendar! 3/10 Folksonomies with Stephanie Lemieux. 3/31 Prototyping with @zakiwarfel
4/22 Web Form Design with @lukewdesign. Learn more about them all at http://www.uie.com/virtual_seminars
Check out @UIE’s Web App Masters Tour! http://uietour.com San Diego, Minneapolis, Philly, Seattle. So many great names on the lineup
That’s all folks, hope you enjoyed the tweets! :)

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Fire your worst customers

whitney — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:16:10 +0000

In Seth Godin’s recent blog post, more, More, MORE!, he makes the unpopular-but-wise assertion that until you fire your worst customers, you’ll never be able to do your best.

I think it applies to clients just as much as consumers. The bottom line: you can’t please everyone, and it’s stupid to try. You’ll end up making no one happy — most of all yourself. Read on.

Some consumers are short-sighted, greedy and selfish.

Extend yourself a little and they’ll want a lot.

Offer a free drink in the restaurant one night and they’re angry that it’s not there the next.

The nuts in first class weren’t warm!

The challenge of winning more than your fair share of the market is that the best available strategy–providing remarkable service and an honest human connection–will be abused by a few people you work with.

You have three choices: put up with the whiners, write off everyone, or, deliberately exclude the ungrateful curs.

Firing the customers you can’t possibly please gives you the bandwidth and resources to coddle the ones that truly deserve your attention and repay you with referrals, applause and loyalty.

This seems to be the opposite of conventional wisdom to most people. Why not just charge the most difficult clients more money — an aggravation surcharge? Because there is no amount of money that will ever offset the penalty you’re passing on to your better-behaved, more deserving clients by having your time eaten up by one giant monster.

Last summer I met Anthony Casalena at a casual happy hour gathering, and we got to talking about the evolution of Squarespace, the company he founded, from a freemium model to a subscription model. I asked Anthony how he can get away with not offering a free version of his blogging platform. His answer: “I can’t get away with offering one.”

Why? In his first year of business, 90% of the time he spent answering support requests was for — you guessed it — non-paying users. He realized that the people willing to pay for the service are the ones who really believe in what he’s doing, and those are the people worth his time. Since eliminating its permanently free option (not to be confused with its 14-day free trial), Squarespace’s profits have skyrocketed, and today they’re considered one of NY Tech’s greatest success stories. Read more over at Center Networks.

I have had to deal with this in my own business. I’ve had clients whose actions made it very clear that they didn’t respect my work or my time. I convinced myself that I could just work harder and give more of myself to the project, to prove I was up to the challenge, to show that my determination has no bounds. All I really showed was that I had no self-respect. I finally got the wake up call I needed when the check never came.

You can’t win them all. But would you rather the defeat be on your terms or someone else’s? Always be conscious of who’s treating you with the graciousness you deserve, and who isn’t. When insolence is staring you in the face, it’s best to cut your losses early, and make the space in your life for those who really matter: your fans.

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