Groups of Fear

On Google+, Dave Gray asked about effective ways that humans organize themselves into groups. A combination of that question, the general political environment in the US right now, and some projects at work got me thinking (which can be dangerous).

One particularly effective way I think we humans organize ourselves is around common fears (or at least perceived common fears) – fear of an idea, a group, a person, a practice, etc. This is what political types call blocking coalitions, groups of people that ordinarily have nothing in common except their opposition to something (or someone). Their common fear doesn’t even have to be that well thought out or clearly articulated for such groups to be wildly effective. “Not this” or “not that” is usually sufficient, the enemy-of-my-enemy sort of thing.

As a group, people organized by fear can be a powerful force – though not always one for good.

Seems to me there is a design challenge in there. Because while these sorts of fear- or anger-based groups can be good at stopping things or steering a conversation to their interests, how often do they really address the root issue, rather than the thing that brought them together in the first place? My guess: not often.

This sounds like the sort of big meta-design problem we designers should be able to help reveal.

The Microsoft Ribbon, what’s up with that?

Microsoft has created some great tools over the years, but the ribbon isn’t one of them.

Two trends make me wonder if the good people at Microsoft have been paying much attention when it comes to user interface:

• Over the last ten years, the proliferation of LCD screens that are generally wider than they used to be.
• HD TV has made the 9:16 aspect ratio much more common for lots of people.

Enter the ribbon. Putting aside the task-centric structure for a moment, the ribbon takes up valuable screen real estate and cannot be moved. On a laptop, the result is a smaller effective work area that is cluttered, visually noisy, very short and very wide. This is not useful for most work.

Other companies, like Adobe, have figured this out. These companies seem to realize that people have work to do, and that those people may want to customize the software interface to more effectively do their work. For these crazy need-to-get-work-done people (aka “users” or “customers”), these companies have built “palettes” into their software, allowing people to move and resize those palettes in a way that makes sense based on their needs.

Heck, Microsoft has done this before. Office Mac 2008 had (wait for it) a “Format Palatte.” It wasn’t perfect, but it was on the side, and you could move it. I guess that camp lost the UI Battle of Redmond. Pity.

The ribbon does reveal additional functions, as it was designed. But it does an equally good job of hiding existing functions from people that regularly use them. I’d argue the net effect is neutral at best (gain some things, loose others).

So now the ribbon infects everything and appears to be here to stay. I wonder how much productivity in business has been and continues to be lost because of the ribbon?

Social media responsibility

Just got about 30 RTs on my Facebook page from a business I like. Well, I did like them until they discovered they can automatically cross-post everything from Twitter to FB. We'll see if they figure out that just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should (the people who have posted variations of "please stop" on the business's wall might be an indication).

Typographic Irony

(Hello again. Yes, it’s been a while.)

I noticed this bit of typographic irony this morning in an ABC World News Tonight promo. The typeface used in this graphic for their series “Made in America” is DIN, short for Deutsches Institut für Normung.

If that sounds not-so-American, you’re right. It’s a German typeface that goes back to the 1920’s, though this particular cut is probably from the 90’s.

Not a big deal. Really. But if one was concerned, there are some strong sans-serif faces whose pedigree is distinctly American. Franklin Gothic, for example. Or Gotham.

Still, a little appreciation of the history and tradition of one’s profession might be useful too, eh?

Social media artifact

Funny things happen when one lives life transparently on Facebook. Earlier today, saw this series of posts:

Way to score Susan! Gooooooaaaaaal!
2 Hours ago via Facebook for iPhone

Headed to the hospital with Susan

1 Hour ago via Facebook for iPhone

Thankfully, Susan (not her real name) will be fine, though her arm may be fractured.

What I didn’t recreate above are the dozen comments that came in almost immediately asking if everything was ok. A bit of a trade-off for people (or organizations) who bravely live more transparently through social media: on one hand you can present a more vulnerable self, but that same authenticity can be rewarded by people (or customers) that care about you.

Of Mice and Hotels

My wife was online the other night and started laughing uncontrollably. I asked what was so funny, and she brought her laptop over and pointed me to a hotel’s homepage, asking if I noticed anything unusual. I looked, and I really couldn’t find anything unusual until she pointed to the dropdown menu list:



Mice?

It turns out that mice is an acronym (Meetings, Incentives, Conferencing, Exhibitions). Who knew? Still, with bedbugs in the news, I wouldn’t expect to see mice on the homepage of a hotel.

I guess for people who know what mice means, this is fine. But I wonder how many people who visit this site are not mice-aware? And then there are OCD visitors like me that start investigating the mice section and forget about the rest of the site.

Just an amusing manifestation of the curse of knowledge.

Service excellence (the best presentation?)

We live in neighborhood with narrow streets. Normally this is charming, but when it snows it becomes a bit of a nuisance. And when it snows like it has in the last 24 hours (18 inches on top of a few feet already on the ground) it can be frustrating and dangerous – imagine one-lane streets with four- to six-foot canyon walls on each side.

So I was happily surprised tonight when the township’s contractor was still out at 11:30 pm using a Bobcat to patiently widen each side of the street.



This is laborious and detailed work, and this guy has probably been working the whole dang day or longer already. Still, he was attentively going down each side of each street (about 3 miles altogether), cutting close to the curb, and carefully dumping the snow between the sidewalk and road.

So I’m a raving fan, and I’m going to find out who these guys are and talk them up among my friends. That’s a heck of a presentation.

It is important to present well, but it’s even more important to deliver well.

My Grandfather’s Map

For Christmas, my mother gave me one of the most meaningful gifts I have received for some time. She had framed a map my grandfather drew when he was in his Tertia year at Penn Charter (the 1915-1916 school year, I think). I get weepy when I really think about it.

Though he was only around 15 when he drew it, it shows an attention to detail and craftsmanship that I have always associated with my grandfather, and also reminded me why I think making real things is so important.

Some disclaimers:

• I loved my grand-pop and have long considered him to be the spiritual source from which both my father and I inherited our respect of and devotion to making well-constructed things. (My wife probably labels this trait as compulsive and occasionally annoying. Sorry Hun.)
• I love steel pen-and-ink drawings. The line weight variations that are introduced as one changes pressure on the nib are a wonderful artifact that says a human being has made this.
• I love cartography and maps – the more detailed and well-designed the better. They may be one of the last graphic forms where the combination of good design and good printing yield something that just cannot be duplicated electronically.

You can’t read it on the image, but the title (in carefully lettered capitals) is Historical Map of the British Isles. It documents Heptarchy boundaries (I had to look that up), Roman roads, battles, and treaties. I assume it was done as part of a history study.

This map required homework and some serious thinking to execute – no Google Maps in 1915. For example, look at the latitude lines. If you had to draw a smooth, thin, shallow, 12-inch long arc with pen-and-ink today, how would you do it? (The map is about 12 x 18 inches.) You may not be able to tell, but the latitude lines are very thin and very smooth. And this is a 15-year old kid.

Ok, here’s the point…

This sort of thing matters today too. Everyone has Powerpoint and everyone can draw boxes and arrows and lines. And we know that everyone can add bullets galore. But evidence suggests that not everyone can draw a useful diagram, or construct a meaningful 2x2 model. And giving a presentation with really good typography and well-crafted graphics is a rarity.

Details matter.

I’m not sure if you can test for it, but the really good presentations that are continually referenced (Jobs, MLK, Godin, Gore, etc.) all reflect really good craftsmanship – these people pay attention to lots of details. And you should too, especially if your presentation includes tangible stuff like on-screen slides or paper handouts.

It doesn’t matter if you’re building a deck, carving a turkey, or drawing a map, paying attention to the details matter.

A very orange moon

I'm up at 3:30 am on Tuesday morning admiring the moon during a total lunar eclipse (during the winter solstice).

Monday was also the anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death. Carl was a man who was so passionate about science that he inspired a generation of people to care about the physical sciences (a friend of mine says she had a crush on him, now she helps companies deal with their environmental impacts – coincidence?). Carl had an impact on me too, I vividly remember his visualization of the cosmic calendar, walking across a huge grid and kneeling by the last day in December, pointing to the last second of December 31st as the place that all of human memory resides. It is still powerful: if all of evolutionary history is the size of a football field, all of human history fits into the palm of your hand.

Carl didn’t use Powerpoint, but his impact still resonates 14 years after his death. Oh that our ideas could be so powerful.

Diagrams without meaning

This is a real diagram I encountered:

It’s not wrong, it just doesn’t mean anything. It could have easily been a bullet list or some other collection of shapes and lines, but I assume that somewhere along the way someone wanted a graphic to “liven things up” so here it is – the ubiquitous Microsoft SmartArt graphic. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve drafted more clever but equally silly things in my life to help people inject variation into their presentations.

But it doesn’t work.

It may break up 51 straight all-text slides and make the presenter feel a bit better, but a gratuitous diagram doesn’t help communicate. It may actually confuse things.

Jakob Nielsen discussed this in November. He was talking about images on web sites but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to include diagrams too. Louis Sullivan said form follows function,* and that sure applies here.

Useful diagrams reveal something better than just words alone, but a diagram doesn’t automatically have value just because it’s not words. The diagram needs to add something to the idea, something beyond the words. N.C. Wyeth talked about illustrating scenes that the author didn’t necessarily describe, and his illustrations were something beyond the words. So it is with a diagram.

Two resources:

1) Dan Roam has good ideas on developing good pictures. (Hint: start with paper and pencil.) His Visual Thinking Codex is very useful.

2) Andrew Abela has developed a great chart chooser as part of his Extreme Presentation Method.

* I have seen this quote attributed to three different people. The Wikipedia entry seems to make sense.

Good photos = useful ones

Jakob Nielsen’s latest research shows that users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to “jazz up” Web pages.

Seems to me this also applies to presentations:

• Maximize use of images that carry relevant information.
• Minimize images that are just there to be pretty.

Full post is here.

(I’m sure I have drastically over-simplified things, but this just seems so inline with Tufte, Raskin, earlier Nielsen, etc.)

Update: AK-47 as story-telling success (or propaganda)?

In March, Dave Gray wrote a post where he referenced using the AK-47 as an example of good design thinking: designing stuff to work in the real world. He was not praising the gun, he was just using it as an example. He also mentioned that using the Kalashnikov as a subject for his speech probably gets people engaged better than some dry facts. I liked Dave’s post so much I pointed to it too.

Part of his story is retelling the development of the AK-47: how “Mikhail Kalashnikov designed the AK-47 because his homeland had been invaded by an enemy with superior weapons. He wasn’t a ‘hired hand of an industry, doing whatever was needed.’ He was a tank mechanic who saw fellow soldiers and civilians gunned down and wanted to ensure that it would never happen again.” It’s a great story, and one that has obviously succeeded for years. Only one problem:

It’s not true.

According to Wired, the AK-47 was the result of a multi-team effort to design a better gun. And the story about Kalashnikov? Soviet propaganda.

The “design for the real world” part of the story is still true, if not enhanced because it was a team (or teams) that created the weapon, not a lone genius. And in the real world, it’s often teams that need to create useful stuff, and that means checking your ego at the door sometimes and working together for the good of the client and the project.

But...

It is a weapon, hardly what we would call “useful stuff.” And the story about a tank mechanic defending his country isn’t true. It’s a good story. It’s lasted 50 years. And it is stickier than “industrial complex invents better gun.” But it is a lie in service to a political cause. (Or a former political cause.)

I’m a big proponent of good story-telling, it’s at the heart of good presentations and good branding. But isn’t there also an ethical component to developing a great narrative?

I think there is. I think the basic story has to be true. Exaggeration or hyperbole is fine, making stuff up is not.