Thoughts Bin

Technology projects can only be successful if the environment has been made fun. Make it inviting and you are sure to have a successful product as a result. I’ve been comparing work projects like games and the teams involved in the project like the sports teams. Technology project teams or any project team for that matter should be treated like sports teams. Players love it when they don’t have non-player or non-experienced people directing their play. When you have upper management (owners, GM, presidents and the like) dictating how the players should play and how the coaches should coach, it really affects the performance on the field. Similarly on technology side, when non-experience people dictate how the product should be developed, it will be an un-motivating environment and the product could suffer.

Of course there are many factors that goes into a project’s success but I believe this is a key factor. For example, the Texas Rangers baseball team for many years was owned by a businessman that was clueless on how baseball teams play and function. He spent a lot of money, brought big names to the team but in the end no one was really happy and motivated. Players that could perform were mediocre and the ones that performed to their calibre ended up leaving for other teams. He pretty much lost the team, and the GM at the time didn’t do any better with making bad player decisions. The result was no playoff appearances for almost a decade, the owner lost $500 million and went into bankruptcy. The team was auctioned and bought by a former player, hall-of-famer and overall good personality that believed in only managing the team with a vision. Never got involved in how the players performed on the field or dictated anything over the coaches. The result, the players are happy, over performing, enjoying their work and the end product was two World Series appearances straight. Again there are lots of details and I’m pretty much paraphrasing all the above the I believe that was the key to the success.

You can compare that with companies like Palm, Yahoo and HP where management sucked and as a result are becoming non-existent companies. Bad decisions and bad leadership caused these companies to be where they are at this time.

So the success is directly tied to how leadership manages the people that actually are important to any company…their players.

I’ve been using my Sprint GPS software quite a bit this past weekend and I have to say after a bunch of hassles and repeated searches to find destinations in the software, the dedicated GPS units are still winners in usability.

I’m on Sprint network with the Galaxy S II and use the TeleNav app that comes bundled with the Sprint subscription. First of all, and I’m not sure it’s just my phone but, it takes close to 3-5 mins for the phone to catch on to the GPS. Throughout the trip the GPS signal kept going in and out making it very hard to follow. But even just trying to get a search listing is very difficult.

Dedicated GPS units have it down (at least for the most part) when it comes to get it up and running and on your way. I like the first thing the GPS unit I had asked, “What City”? I really value that question when I was using the TeleNav software. Not only does it not ask that but when I search for a business place in a city, that listing never showed up. It showed all the listings of that business near where I was..how stupid.

Second the TeleNav version does not have a “drive” view where I can just turn it on and drive. It has to be provided with a destination for it to work. What ware they thinking when designing the UI.

I would say that it hasn’t given me any wrong directions (as long as it can find the address) as Google Navigation software has. Multiple times Google Navigation failed to provide the right directions. And when it did there were several occasions where it took a longer route or a route I would not have taken if I were on my own.

Finding nearby places is also very rudimentary in the apps on the phone. The dedicated GPS units always did a great job of letting me find nearby gas stations or grocery stores or any search item I put in, but these software apps only did things like gas stations properly, others it was non-existent. Searching for Starbucks while I was on a trip in San Antonio Texas while driving was a just frustrating.

So before you put away your dedicated GPS unit, remember the smartphones are nothing like them in terms of proving user experience.

Past few weeks have been eventful to say the least in the personal cloud storage space. Google, Microsoft, Box.com (Box.net) and Dropbox have all re-launched their services. I say re-launched because most of them had some sort of cloud drive offering for a while now, although besides Dropbox the rest were pretty un-usable at the Free plan level.

Google launch their cloud storage offering called Google Drive. It has been in the rumor mill for a long time, and once they launched we finally came to know what the details of it entailed. Before Google Drive, Google had offerings of cloud storage on couple of fronts. First it was Google Docs (which is now combined with Google Drive) and then came Google Music which allows you to store music in the cloud and get to it via a web browser or mobile app on your smartphone. Google Drive brings the proper storage of any type of file along with the sharing capabilities of Google Docs all in one offering. What was missing in Google Docs was ability to quickly and easily upload / download your files from Google Docs. The new Google Drive fills that gap with providing a desktop application and actively monitors a dedicated folder and syncs your files between the cloud and your computer. Very similar to Dropbox, right? The free version offers 5GB and you can pay more for more storage.

After seeing Google’s offering, Microsoft did the same with their old cloud storage, Skydrive. Skydrive has been around for ages but the same issue plagued it that plagued Google. There was no easy or fast way to upload files to Skydrive. Sure there were work-arounds, and 3rd party software that connected to it but there wasn’t anything native. With the relaunch Microsoft also added a desktop application that again does the same thing, monitors a folder on your desktop and syncs between. Free accounts get a whopping 25GB of free storage! That has changed now for new users, where they are allocated only 7GB of free storage. There are ways to upgrade to 25GB and a quick search on the internet can lead you to those. Another upgrade was the ability to upload files unto 2GB in size, previously limited to 50MB I believe. Both Microsoft and Google also have an open SDK to allow other 3rd party apps to take advantage of the space.

Box.com had the least amount of changes but they did follow suite and started handing out their desktop application (that previsouly was a paid only service) to some of their free accounts. I see them opening it up to all free accounts just to stay competitive with Google and Microsoft.

Dropbox which is basically the leader and up until now the lone leader in personal cloud storage, added few minor but long awaited features to their existing desktop app. Now users can share and get the public link of files directly from the desktop application. Before you had to goto the website and to these things. Viewing files has also been upgraded and made easier. The free account still limits the user to 2GB of storage but I’m sure that will change as they see Microsoft and Google become popular.

Good write up by Enric Quintero about importance of usability in the creative process and why it is necessary to involve usability processes in the creative process.

He also gives some good advice on approaches to take to achieve a good user experience. One thing that stands out and is not done often enough is a continuing involvement of usability testing and improving based on results.

The good designer and /or architect is one who tries to contrast his feelings with the end user’s perception in order to create the best web experience.

At the end the day, the outcome is still based on opinion since a UX expert still guesses what the end user really prefers. That is why it is necessary to use user testing in addition to a good creative process. This way, we blend the scientific with the creative.

Read the rest of the post here

This post on Blog on a Stick demonstrates a transition I think will be occurring in the mobile app space over the next few years. I think it should be a best practice to develop a web app rather than a mobile app if your website/service doesn’t need to leverage any of the hardware (camera, mic, gyroscope sensor etc). Even websites can get location services through a web app so if your site needs to know the user location it can be done. A great example of this is Pizza Hut’s web app, you can pretty much order anything via their web app and send the order to the Pizza Hut close by. Twitter and Facebook web apps are model apps that have paved the path for others to do the same.

There will always be a need for native mobile apps like games, instagram and the like but I have a feeling more and more apps will be moving to web apps.

An article posted by Mitch Joel on his Six Pixels of Separation blog, talked about today’s information overflow and how no one can really consume all the information thrown at them. While I was reading it, it occurred to me that on a personal level I go through this everyday where I collect, bookmark, store, tweet content on the internet with the intent to read and learn but really can’t stay up with how much is coming in. It makes me feel good that understanding and making the leap to having an “intent” is better than having no “intent” at all and ignoring all the information the world has to offer.

Read rest of the article on Intent is Everything

This is a well written post by Mitch Joel on his blog Six Pixels of Separation. Engaging on the Social Media channels shouldn’t be done vertically. You have to present yourself to your customers in the same way they see your company, a single entity. Most brands screw it up today by allowing their individual departments to take on Social media responsibilities on their own. Social should be a department on its own, reporting directly to the CEO, comprised of representatives from all departments and overseeing all Social media activity for the brand.

A marketing director wanting to implement social components into their business is unlikely to change the world. It has to come from the top. Social business touches everything from human resources and operations to business development and product development.

Continue reading Mitch’s post on Horizontal Marketing

Nice infographic here. One of the best comment in it is from Roger Parks:

It’s an exciting time to be a CIO because new technologies are changing IT from a support function to a creator of greater value.

The Changing Role of Today’s CIO

Via: Wikibon

I experience this first-hand as like many others and wrote a post about it recently. With not only “speedy” cloud services, but also the emergence of mom-and-pop service shops. From getting creative work done, to building websites and mobile apps to cloud/hosting services. Usually the culprits are business folks that have “connections” with such service shops neighbor, friend, relative. The way they get around it is posing these service shops as “Media” agencies that are focusing on a “marketing” initiative. But the marketing plan also includes website, mobile app, hosting, cloud service etc etc. In these situations a strict governance is a must, but also a culture shift is needed. Otherwise the perception will continue to be that IT is a slow cost center instead of a fast value provider. All CIOs should read this post!

via To the cloud: Get your governance house in order first « Wikibon Blog.

Om Malik wrote a post on his blog on April 5th that linked to some great posts about design. One of the things that that I come across often is design influenced by the potential “WOW” reaction from business users (mostly marketing types). The design has nothing to do with usability or functionality. It only addresses aesthetic appeal.

Om interviewed a designer Christian Lindholm whose “of course” design principle hits the nail on the head about what makes a great design. His quote below:

Most companies (including web startups), he said, are looking to “wow” with their products, when in reality what they should be looking for is an “‘of course’ reaction from their users.”

Read Om Malik post The of course principle of design and read the great posts that are linked there.