F* the Real World: A video of David Heinemeier Hansson’s talk at FOWA Dublin
This is a great speech by David Heinemeier Hansson on how one should believe in an idea and bring it to fruition and disregard the nay sayers who will always find faults and reasons why things won’t work.
I too have found what David speaks of to be the case. Many of the things I have accomplished were only due to perseverance when many said something couldn’t be done. I am currently in the process of developing my idea into a business so this speech came at a good time as it is hard to stay motivated in the face of hearing all the negatives about what I am trying to do. Enjoy
David Heinemeier Hansson – FOWA Dublin 2009 from Carsonified on Vimeo.
Everyone is so G*d D*mn unique
I have yet to find a company that feels that they are just like everyone else. In my career I have been fortunate to work in a variety of industries including Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, Semiconductor, Entertainment, Standardized Testing, Software etc. Everyone always thinks they are unique. It’s probably a defense mechanism or an excuse as to why things are so poor in that particular company.
This morning I was watching a live Q&A with 37signals and David Heinemeier Hansson was talking about customizing their application to a specific industry vs. being generic. That’s when he inspired this post with the words that became it’s title.
DHH went on to say:
Everyone thinks they are this perfect little snowflake
What he said was that the things that work are those which work for everyone, like email. I couldn’t agree more. People think that just because some solution worked at one company it does not mean that it will work at theirs. What companies don’t see is that most of what they do is pretty generic. If you focus on the 5% that may be unique, your company will not progress because it will get stuck in never ending analysis.
At a company I once consulted for, they were developing a large piece of software for something I knew other companies were doing. I was not in a position to convince them that they should find an off-the-shelf solution, but I knew it was wasteful to try to build something internally especially if what they were building was not their core competency. Needless to say that company didn’t complete that project because when new management came in and saw the lack of progress, they quickly killed the project and set out to implement the generic off-the-shelf solution which was used at other companies.
If what you are doing is that much different from your competitors and you are not the leader of the pack, then you should seriously analyze what you are doing because your “uniqueness” may be your downfall.
Make an effort to learn what works at other companies even if they are in other industries. You will gain a tremendous amount. I’ve had clients who talk every acronym under the sun from LEAN and Six Sigma to PRINCE2 and RUP. In most cases what they were missing was not a unifying technique for improving their business. What they were missing was a change to their corporate culture which hindered progress. In the end these companies were not unique because of what they did, but because of how they were doing it. So stop thinking you are so special and work on actually getting things done and changing the complacent attitude which is what is really holding you back.
Apple embraces accessibility and helps everyone in the process
Most people don’t know that Macs are by default the most “off-the-shelf” accessible computers sold today. Every single Mac comes with accessibility features for the physical and motor skills, hearing, and vision impaired. This means that a blind person can walk into any Apple store and use any computer without installing any software. They can even carry all their settings on a USB drive so that their customization can travel with them. On Windows computers these features need to be purchased separately from third parties and as such lack the level of refinement and availability of the Apple solution.
Since 2002 Apple has been investing on accessibility on the Mac platform, but in the last year it has been taking steps to make it’s other products namely iTunes and iPods more accessible to the blind.
Today Apple demonstrated how a company can use accessibility to it’s advantage. By integrating Voice Over into the latest iPod shuffle not only did they make the product accessible to the blind, they made it accessible to everyone. Since the shuffle has no screen the product has always been marketed as one where the listener has little control of the listening experience, hence the Shuffle name. Now that the device has Voice Over a listener can select a specific play list allowing them to customize their experience to their current mood.
Making Macs accessible led to making iPod Nanos accessible. This work led to Voice Over in the new iPod Shuffles giving Apple another competitive advantage. A short sighted company would not invest in this feature for a product line where they already own the market. But at Apple this work will not be limited to the iPod line. I am sure this trend will continue at Apple because it makes sense. The iPod “experiment” is just baby steps.
Currently the iPhone is the least accessible device they make, but think of what text-to speech can do for Apple. Imagine your phone reading your RSS feeds and email while you drive to work or speaking the name of the caller so that you don’t need to take your eyes off the road? The iPods currently don’t have enough processing power to actually generate the speech real time, Apple actually does the work on the computer prior to loading the music on the device, hence the different voices depending on whether the iPod was synced on a PC or a MAc. However, the iPone’s CPU is a lot more capable and the next version will be even more so allowing Apple to explore these capabilities on the device.
Apple, unlike Amazon and the Author’s Guild, today demonstrated how a company can embrace accessibility and not only help those in need, but improve its product along the way.
Here is a video of the new iPod Shuffle in action. (Quicktime Required). More info can be found on the Shuffle page.
Bad Design will piss off your customers
Over at the Signals vs. Noise blog there is some great dialog about the poor American Airlines online reservations systems.
As a person who has done a lot of flying as part of my consulting work and as an Industrial Engineer, analyzing processes comes second nature to me. AA.com has always been my #1 worst site. Come to think of it, American Airlines in general has been at the top of my list for worst companies to deal with. The funny thing is that what is being discussed in the post above goes far beyond online reservations, it gets to the root of the real issues at American Airlines and the other major carriers in the US.
Their entire operation’s design sucks…
OK, maybe not all of it, but most of the customer facing ones. Here are examples of things I have encountered while flying AA and other major airlines in the US.
1. Booking online is a nightmare
Most of the websites are designed like it’s 1995 and no one has heard of web 2.0. You can’t do simple searches easily and God help you if you need to change a date once the search results are displayed.
2. Checking in feels like you arrived at a cattle call or you wait and wait…
Anyone who likes using the electronic check-in kiosks at the majors hasn’t flown Jet Blue or Southwest. I flew on United in November and not only did I have to enter my name and destination, I also had to enter the confirmation ID(I think that’s what it was). How about we just do the confirmation number like Jet Blue and output it with a bar code so I can just scan it? If I enter a confirmation number, don’t ask me where I am going, you should know that…
How about redesigning the checkin area so it is less intimidating for passengers? At LAX they actually have an employee at the front of the line whose whole job is to call out which kiosk is open. Ridiculous.
The funny thing is that if you are lucky enough to be a Platinum AAdvantage member as a was a few years ago, you can opt-out of electronic checkin and actually go up to a person. Only problem is that this process is actually slower. Two employees serving a line of about 10 customers takes over 45 minutes. I don’t know why this takes so long, but I sure hear a lot of typing when all I want to do is check into my flight.
3. Why don’t you take my bag?
So you go through the nightmare of checking in, now you get the privilege of waiting in another line. At American Airlines at LAX there is another place you have to take your bags so they can be x-rayed before they go on the plane.
It’s been seven years now since security measures were changed. Maybe it’s time to redesign this whole process?
Why is their design so bad?
I would guess that these airlines approach problem solving from the company’s point of view with little to no regard for their customers. They know they need to reduce costs, so they decide to work on an online reservation system for their customers and when customers don’t use it because it’s lousy, they will just impose surcharges to force them to use it. If they need to cut employees to reduce costs the can just install kiosks and give customers no option but to use them. Security procedures change? We can just add another process as an afterthought and never look back.
Herein lies the problem. No one is thinking “we can make this better.” They are not saying:
- “The internet is here to stay, how do we improve our site so customers WANT to book online”
- “Pre screening the bags is not going to change and electronic checkin is here to stay, maybe there is a way to redesign the terminal so the process is more efficient and less intimidating to our customers.”
- “If we are going to have a loyalty program, we have to make the experience for our most valuable customers exceptional”
I challenge the executives of the major US airlines to fly Southwest, Jet Blue, and travel internationally is I did to Singapore in November to see how much better the process can be for both the customers and the airlines.
If you design your product to meet and exceed your customer’s expectations, you will be able to command a higher price than your competition. On the other hand, if you approach every problem with a selfish attitude and not from the customer’s point of view, you end up like GM and the countless other companies who focused too much internally and too little on the customer.
Marketing to Hispanics
I came across this article today and I thought it had a lot of great insight on marketing to the growing Hispanic population in the US.
Goya is Big, But Not Great (Yet)
I have felt for a long time that many companies miss the boat when trying to market to hispanics especially English speakers. Marketers tend to want to put one generic message that “should” apply to all hispanics, but they miss out on the big picture. In my experience, a lot of this has to do with not really knowing the population. It is one thing to study something, it is another to live it. Companies should focus more on diversifying their workforce to bring in the type of diverse talent needed to reach this market.
There are amazing organizations like NSHMBA and SHPE where companies can attract and interact with top talent. Just like in any relationship, a company can’t expect to just jump into a new market and be successful. First it has to want to slowly get to understand the segment by bringing into the decision making process those who have the insight that will allow the company to be successful.
Amazon caves on text-to-speech, a loss for accessibility
On my previous post I mentioned how the Author’s Guild was putting pressure on Amazon due to the inclusion of the text-to-speech feature in the new Kindle. Amazon eventually backed down and is now allowing publishers to disable this feature on a per book basis.
This is too bad because not only did the industry not realize the opportunity they failed to capitalize on, but it also means that people who could benefit from this technology, namely the blind and visually impaired, also suffer.
As I mentioned before, no one who can read by sight would choose text-to-speech for their book consumption. Not only is it slower to have something read aloud, but it is also not the best experience.
The following article on Slate is among the dozens which outline how poor text-to-speech really is and gets into detail on the technology and the fact that replacing human actors in audio books is still very far away.
Why computer voices still dont sound human. – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine
Hopefully the industry won’t enforce the option to disable text-to-speech on their books because the only ones who would be hurt are the ones with no other options.