Blurred Boundaries

According to ABC News Australia, two girls, 10 and 12 years old, got lost in a storm drain and were rescued after they updated their status on their Facebook page instead of using their cell phone to simply call for help. The story quotes Glenn Benham of the Metropolitan Fire Service in Adelaide as saying, "If they were able to access Facebook from their mobile phones, they could have called 000, so the point being they could have called us directly and we could have got there quicker than relying on someone being online and replying to them and eventually having to call us via 000 anyway."

I think there's an interesting point to be made here about interaction design and the mental models of naive users. Consider times when you may have helped a naive user with their computer, and found that they didn't understand such basics as the distinction between the operating system and applications, and between applications and what they do. Email is email, internet is internet. You click on the envelope icon for email and you click on the big blue "e" for internet. More advanced users (whose friends or family have installed Firefox on their machines) may talk about starting Google (since that's the default Firefox home page). Talking to them about their email application or internet client is hopeless because they don't understand the concept. This may have made it difficult to communicate the concepts required to resolve whatever problem they were having.

The point for design is that designers are always the world's leading expert in their product, and they often assume that their users will share their mental models. So their interaction and interface designs often presume some basic understanding of an underlying framework: client/server architecture, application-specific preferences, the need for application updates, file formats, even the basic notion of files and operating system services, all of these may be presumed by the designer and escape the user. The consequence is products that are almost unusable by naive users. Typically, such users will learn a very limited path through the interaction logic to perform a very specific task, and become confused if they deviate from that path.

Two trends are conspiring to make this problem worse in the future, as demonstrated by the two girls lost in the storm drain. Technology is becoming more broadly used by less expert users, and the functional boundaries between applications are becoming more blurred as more and more of them add social networking features. It used to be that calling 911 (or 000 in Australia) was the way you called for help and email was how you kept up with friends. Now, whether you're lost in a storm drain or want to see what your friend is doing, you can call them, email them, Twitter it, update your Facebook page, IM it, blog it, ....

The more functional overlap there is between applications, the more likely it is that naive users will learn, and stick with, one preferred way of accomplishing a task, however inappropriate that may be for the situation at hand. I'm not suggesting that designers should limit application functionality to prevent over-burdening users with choices, but rather that they simply recognize that naive users often don't recognize the basic framework and context of systems and applications that designers take for granted.

Iranian Democracy

So those terrible Iranian Muslims that we don't want to have anything to do with are taking to the streets to protest a stolen election and demand democratic justice. In contrast to us Americans, who sat on our hands after the Supreme Court gave the Presidency to George W. Bush in 2000.... I wonder if those terrible Iranian Muslims might have something to teach us patriotic Americans about Democracy.

On Balance

Wednesday was tax day in the US, and Fox News took full advantage of the opportunity to stir up the masses with a series of "tea parties" across the country. Conservatives gathered to protest high taxes and government spending.

To which I say, "Amen".

You have to admire the generous, selfless spirit of the protesters. They undoubtedly realize that the red states, the ones in which conservative republicans are prevalent, are net recipients of tax money, while the democratic blue states are net contributors. Recognizing the unfairness of this arrangement, these protesters are willing to sacrifice the benefits of their positive balance of payments. As a resident of a blue state with a negative balance of payments, I welcome their endorsement of reducing tax revenues to their own states. I'm sure that's what they have in mind, aren't you?

Self Reference

I recently read an article in Fortune ("GM and Me", December 8, 2008) describing the gradual decline of GM. While reading it, I thought of Microsoft, and of the US as a whole. Why?

One of the themes of the article is how insular and self-referential the culture at GM is. They seem to hold themselves to their own standards rather than measuring themselves against competitors. Having captured so much of the market for so long, they apparently continued playing to that market. Meanwhile, over the years, the market gradually shifted out from under them, and they failed to either lead it (as Toyota has done) or follow it. The consequence of this has been a gradual decline over several decades. Perhaps the most telling part of the article: "Ask Rick Wagoner why GM isn't more like Toyota, and he'll tell you, 'We're playing our own game - taking advantage of our own unique heritage and strengths.' Turns out GM should have forgotten that and become more like Toyota. Toyota's market cap is now $103.6 billion; GM's is $1.8 billion."

So why did I think of Microsoft, which is still minting money on the strengths of Windows and Office? Perhaps it's because I heard a podcast (Windows Weekly) several months ago in which Paul Thurrott, a Windows expert, was asked by Microsoft PR how he liked Windows Mobile 6, which had just been released, and they were surprised when Thurrott asked them if they had even seen an iPhone, which is lightyears ahead of WM6 in just about every way. Perhaps it's because of the insistence, from Steve Ballmer on down, that Microsoft executives' kids shouldn't be allowed to have iPods. Both of these behaviors suggest the same kind of self referential, insular culture that caused GM to stall out.

Microsoft these days is a strange combination of competitiveness without inspiration, inward-looking but imitative. When Vista was released, the list of features apparently copied from OS X was striking. Apple releases the iPod, and Microsoft releases the Zune. Google has Google maps, and Microsoft has their own satellite mapping site. Google has Google Earth, and Microsoft has Virtual Earth. Adobe has Flash and AIR, and Microsoft follows with Silverlight. Even Microsoft's development environment, Visual Studio, has its roots in Apple's Hypercard and Interface Builder tools. Now, Ray Ozzie wants to lead Microsoft into the world of cloud computing and online apps, but Google and Adobe are already there. And Microsoft is trying to follow Google into the world of ad-supported search.

I think that Microsoft is at that point where GM was around 1980. At that point, GM employed about 853,000 people and dominated the largest automotive market in the world. Today, Microsoft claims about 90% of the world's desktop operating systems and provides software to most major businesses. But where GM's market moved to higher quality, more efficient Japanese cars, Microsoft's market is moving to Linux, Apple, and web apps. As GM struggled to design cars that people wanted to buy, Microsoft is struggling to gain traction online. Despite claiming to lead and innovate, GM continued to fall farther and farther behind, continually shifting strategies in the process. Same with Microsoft.

The lesson here, I think, is that the biggest mistake any organization can make is to start believing it's the best. That belief establishes the foundation for using oneself as one's own standard, which in turn leads to insularity and self-reference. At that point, you listen more to yourself than to your customers and competitors.

If I were running Microsoft, the first thing I'd do is let anyone buy and use an iPhone, iPods, Macs, Linux, Google, anything, to make sure that everyone understands the competitive environment that the company is operating in. Their customers understand that world - why shouldn't Microsoft? The next thing I'd do is ask whether the world really needs Microsoft to keep providing late, less compelling counterparts to every new big product, and whether continuing to follow the market leaders is a recipe for long term success. Finally, I'd ask the bright, creative, and entrepreneurial people in the organization to ask themselves where Microsoft could be leading instead of following, and how it can leverage the advantages it has in business platforms, Exchange, .NET, and so forth, to do something that no one else is doing yet.

I've left out one part of this story. Another thing I thought of while reading about GM is the US itself. Like me, many of you (Americans, at least) have probably been told countless times that we're the "greatest nation in the world". Americans have believed that for a long time, and the pitfalls of self-reference apply there as well. Like GM, we've become inward looking, unaware of the advantages that other nations may have. As a consequence, we're losing ground in life expectancy, education, quality of life, and productivity. I guess the old saying is true: as GM goes, so goes the country.

A Few Minutes of Calm

I have started a video blog at A Few Minutes of Calm. I've been writing music since I was a kid, and I've always been interested in the combination of music, visuals, writing, movement, and so forth. The videos are all of local scenery here in Point Roberts, Washington, which is a small piece of the US attached to the bottom of British Columbia, south of Vancouver. All scenes are taken with a still camera on a tripod, and all music is original. The intent is to capture a moment in time and a sense of place, in such a way that someone can check in any time they need a few minutes of calm, a break from a stressful day, or some time to relax or reflect. I hope you enjoy it.

Financial Innovation

In a recent Business Week article ("Get Credit Flowing, Heal Housing", November 17), the CEO of Ernst & Young is quoted as saying, "It would be a mistake to regulate so strongly as to stifle innovation." It's easy to reflexively agree with this statement if you don't think about it too much. But let's think about it for a minute.

Recent financial innovations have included junk bonds, derivatives, no-doc loans, interest-only loans, mortgage-backed securities, and credit default swaps. Recent prominent financial innovators have included Michael Milken, Enron, and Long Term Capital Management. Financial innovation seems dedicated to finding new ways to privatize profits and socialize losses, and innovations spread and generate profits until they cause a crisis, require a government bailout, and become regulated. Perhaps the field of Finance is mature enough now that innovation is more likely to cause harm than good.

Villains

This election has been characterized by much villainizing of the other side. People on both sides are genuinely scared of what will happen to the country if the other side wins. As a liberal, I think this has been encouraged more on the right than on the left, and I think this has been true since Reagan started villifying liberals. Since then, the right has framed liberal values and gay rights, in particular, as moral issues, and demonized people on the left for supporting those values.

I wonder how much of this is facilitated by our predilection to view stories in terms of good guys and bad guys, protagonists and antagonists, good and evil. As kids, we heard or read about evil witches, evil stepmothers, and so forth. As adults, our books, movies, and TV shows are filled with conflicts between good and evil, between heroes and villains. Villains are motivated by inexplicable evil tendencies, or by greed, fanaticism, and other traits that make them easy to hate. How much does this framework bias us toward seeing the world in the same way? And how much of our recent history has been shaped by an overly simplistic worldview, encouraged by this perspective?