…I dial the phone…
Receptionist: Hi, Dentist’s office.
Josh: Hi, I was wondering if it would be possible to make an appointment for next week.
R: Sure, let me look at the schedule…yep, it looks like we have some open spots. How will you be paying?
J: Um, I have insurance…Allied, I think.
R: Is that a PPO?
J: Yeah.
R: Good, the dentist takes all PPOs.

Why is this how the dentist-patient relationship has to begin? It isn’t about care for the patient, but about money…pure money. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Imagine how this would play out if you had to have insurance to buy shoes:

…Enter shoe store…
Shoe Salesperson: Hi, welcome to Foot Source. How will you be paying today?
Josh: Um, I’m just looking.
SS: Oh, in order to take part in our browsing service, we have to ensure that you’ll be capable of paying. Do you have shoe insurance?
…et cetera…

All I’m saying is that Dentistry is also a service profession, believe it or not. Dentists still have to deliver value to their patients, and first caring about money, and patient care secondarily does not make for a very pleasing experience. Plus, I bet he’ll still make me gag…

Alternatively titled: On Covering Your Ass

Check out that picture on the right. That’s from my credit card’s website. My favorite part is the red link on the bottom that proclaims, “See fewer choices.” You know what that option is? That’s a designer or usability person saying to the team, “Hello team, we have heard from users that there are too many choices on the screen.” Then the usability/design person recommends that we prioritize the options on the screen and progressively disclose them so that only the most used choices will be shown up front.

Then someone on the team shouts, “But we can’t remove links that are already there! Users will haaaaate that! Maybe we can just put an option to ‘See fewer choices,’ that way we can make everyone happy!” The designer/usability person shakes their head in disapproval. What the team did in is take the easy way out. Rather than analyzing user needs on a deeper level and getting an understanding about what choices are valuable at each point in time, they simply put a link to “See fewer choices.”

Lazy, lazy, lazy.

Building usable tools is about more than giving the user exactly what they ask for. It’s about designing for needs…needs that the users themselves can sometimes be blind to. It’s about thinking deeply about problems, and crafting creative solutions based on data (that has been gathered from the real world of the users).

Let’s work a little harder to make better software, shall we? I shall. Who’s with me?

I hate to be a complainer, but Yahoo Messenger just keeps going to sleep on me. I don’t understand. Google Talk sometimes doesn’t let me connect, but once it does it doesn’t just go and die all the time. I understand that I’m the one with the finicky internet connection, but Yahoo could make this connection problem a whole lot better for me if they tried: How about automatic resign-in? How about not killing my away message when I am automatically signed out? How about not putting the messenger window on top of what I am currently working on when it signs out? Well? How about it?

Time for a quote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others”

- Marianne Williamson

One of the greatest things about being in Israel is the abundance of amazing hummos places. These small restaurants sometimes serve foods other than hummos, but many times it’s the main course. The hummos here is different than in the US. It’s smooth & creamy, with actual garbanzo or other beans in tact.

Of course, as a tourist I have found myself in a number of the highest quality hummos places here. Places that can be compared to In-N-Out burger in California…there’s always a line and they never disappoint.

But if you come in after 1 PM, you might not get any food at all.

In the morning, the restaurants make a good amount of hummos. When they run out, the restaurant closes. The owners know that their product is amazing, and they know they could sell just about any amount that they make, but they don’t. This is amazing to me.

This is a mindset one rarely sees in the US. The common line of thought is that if you’re selling out today, then tomorrow you should sell out more. The thing is, the fact that these restaurants sell out every day actually helps their brand. People are willing to stand in line in the heat, and come earlier than they would have liked…just to have some of that great hummos.

Anyway, this was an inspiring situation to me. A business that strived not just for money, but for balance as well.

You know, every once in a while you start to use a really great social networking tool, like LinkedIn or Facebook, and the time just flies by. Thanks wholly to Karen, I found a new one…GoodReads. There’s a lot to like.

I’m constantly on the lookout for a good tool for keeping an index of my personal library. For a while there I was using Delicious Library on my mac. It is a pretty sweet and full-featured app. If I had a web-cam on my computer I’d even be able to add books by simply taking a picture. Now if that’s not a cool feature, I don’t know what is. The problem is, I don’t have a web-cam, and there’s nothing all that rewarding about taking a picture of a book I just read.

Conversely, it is nice to be able to tell my friends about a book I just read. Using a tool like GoodReads allows me to keep my personal index, and also talk with friends (and non-friends) about the books I’ve read. There’s also this little side effect where I’m in a pseudo competition with my friends about how many books I’ve read. Though I probably shouldn’t start a competition like that…my friends are waaay smarter than me.

Of course, GoodReads has all the standard social networky features that we’ve all come to expect. It’s still new, though, so don’t expect all the bells & whistles just yet. At times it’s still a little buggy, especially in Safari on my mac. (Side note: why do websites have to use non-standard buttons? The ones built in to the browsers/OSes are nice, and they always work perfectly.)

Anyway, check out GoodReads. Check out what I’m reading, then start an account for yourself.

If you’re going to accept a meeting invitation and come to the meeting, make sure you’re not sending mail on your Blackberry throughout said meeting. Get off the phone, and pay attention. Please. Oh, and if you pick up the phone when it rings, I swear I’ll…

I’m generally not the kind of person that makes a it a point to read books about cities. Even if I’m visiting or traveling to or even living in an interesting place in the world, I haven’t been known to read about that place.

A few weeks ago I picked up Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz at Powell’s, the local used book store. It was brand new, never read, and only five bucks. The purchase was not a mistake.

If you’ve been to Chicago before, you’ve probably seen all the hot tourist spots: Millennium Park, Sears Tower, Navy Pier. The list goes on. None of these places are mentioned in the book.

What are discussed in the book are the stories of a number of everyday Chicagoans. People from the Far South Side’s steel mills and the West Side’s Soul Food scene. There are stories about the downtown courthouse and Cicero’s politics. These places are not famous, and never will be. But as a Chicagoan, this book was important. It’s a celebration of the everyday style of life that this city affords. We’re not classy or stylish the way New York is, nor are we glitzy like LA. Sure we’ve got all the accoutrements of a major city…but in the end we’re all regular people.

That’s why I love Chicago. And that’s why I loved the book.

Quotable Quote:

Jack loved the city for its ingenuity, as well as for its easygoing demeanor. ‘I can’t see why anyone would want to live anywhere else in the world,’ he used to say. And he relished its tussles, large and small. He hustled, peddling his V-Vax, embracing the underdog, finding ways to reinvent himself—not for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, but rather because life is short and sometimes another path seems enticing and just worth the try.”

I almost missed my flight this evening. Nearly every Sunday for the past few months I’ve taken a flight to Raleigh, NC. This flight is preceded by a trip in a taxi from my house to the airport.

Except tonight it didn’t go as planned.

As routine turned to complacency, I wasn’t alarmed when the cab wasn’t there 5 minutes early…nor was I alarmed that it still hadn’t shown up 10 minutes late. Then 20 minutes late. Finally at 23 minutes late I picked up the phone.

Me: Um…I ordered a cab for 7:15 and I just wanted to check the status of my ride.

Operator: Oh, he should have been there a while ago. Let me contact the driver.

…Waiting…

Operator: Yeah, he’s right down the street. You should go outside…he should be there any minute.

Me: Great! I’ll be out there.

…10 more minutes pass…

Me: *Muttering* I better call again… (This time was same as before, just with a new operator.)

Operator: Yep, my system shows that the driver is right up the street. He should be there any minute.

Me: Great! I’ll be out here. (I don’t know why I’m endlessly positive with people in service industries. I have patience well beyond my needs…)

Eventually Karen noticed that I was still outside and offered to drive me to the airport. I took her up on it…and it’s a good thing I did. The cab never showed.

But why did all this miscommunication occur in the first place? Perhaps it has something to do with the communications systems that the cabs are using. This technology is a likely culprit. If you look around at the driver’s seat in any cab in the US, you’ll find that it’s a mess of wires, screens, and sounds…and this is before you take into account the fact that the driver has to drive. Of course the driver says he’s right up the street…that’s how he gets the operator to leave him alone, so he can get to his destination/talk on his mobile phone (by the way, who do these cab drivers talk to on their phones all day? My guess is that they talk to each other. It couldn’t be their family members…could it?).

All of this is turning into one big rant. The point is, a cab driver’s seat holds endless opportunities for innovation. It is ripe and ready to be tapped. So, somebody, please (pay me to) do some ethnographic research and redesign this workplace. I’m sure us regular taxi riders would benefit immensely.

Whatever happened to clear, consistent language? Why do we use words that have inconsistent meaning in contexts where they’ll be unfamiliar? Why, oh why?

Day in and day out I work with clients in an Agile development setting. I use words that have been trained into me, that I’ve been taught over and over again. But when I sit back and think about these words, they just don’t make sense. Let’s look at two of my favorite examples. First, some standard definitions:

Story - the plot or succession of incidents of a novel, poem, drama, etc.

Narrative - a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious.

Sounds pretty familiar, no?

Well in Agile these words take on a whole new meaning. A story is the encapsulation of some sort of requirement, based on a given user’s needs or wants. It generally takes the form of:

As a [user]
I’d like to [some action]
So that [resolution of need]

But wait, is that really a story?

A narrative is the document that describes this story in detail. Chock full of high level objectives, UI prototypes, test cases, and other minutae. If you asked a person on the street what a “narrative” is, there’s no way they would describe it this way.

So why do we insist on using these terms, with their off-the-mark definitions? I don’t know. They probably seemed all cutesy and different at the start, something that sounds fun and light when compared to heavier terms like REQUIREMENTS DEFINITION DOCUMENT. When it comes down to it, “Story” just sounds less beefy than “Requirement.”

Damn Agile, You Just Stole My Words

Aside from the simple misappropriation of terminology, I have a bigger issue with the use of these terms. In the Design world, “Story” and “Narrative” have real, relevant meanings that align with the standard definitions of these terms.

Both of these terms are used to describe, in detail, a user’s experience, either today or in some envisioned happy future. The Narrative is generally a more detailed version of the story, which includes a narrated scenario in the context of the tool’s use.

I might be splitting hairs, because I think the Agile use of these terms tries to get at the same thing…but they just don’t. An Agile Narrative generally doesn’t tell a real story in detail, it describes a requirement in detail. Likewise, an Agile Story describes a requirement, not a user’s journey.

In Conclusion

We have to be careful with the words we use. In the end, we’re all trying to build software that solve real human problems. Surrounding these problems is real human drama that can, if described well and designed for, be turned into happier situations. I believe the use of words with alternate definitions muddies the water, but certainly doesn’t get in the way on a day-to-day basis.

Whatever words we use, we have to be sure that our solutions fit into the contexts of our users. We must ensure that our software fits into our users’ everyday stories.