Woodward and Bernstein and their series on Watergate set the modern lexicon of scandal and how people deal with them. Here is the formula:

1. A problem or suspicious of a problem arises.
2. People look to the source and say, “What is going on?”
3. If the source says, “Nothing, nope, no problem here. Everything is great.” (Denial) then people will relentlessly pursue the problem until they uncover the truth.
4. If the source says, “Yes, there is a problem.  Here are all the details we know.” (Transparency and full disclosure) then people will calm down, lose interest and do something else.
5. When finally the “truth” is discovered, if the source continues to cover-up or deny, then people will hammer the point and look for other inconsistencies.  They will destroy you.
6. On the other hand, at the moment of truth, the source sincerely apologizes (without crying), then people will calm down and move on to another issue.  (Self-deprecating humor always works)

A scandal or cover-up or unapologetic source is like a vacuum and as we know, “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

So Tiger Woods and David Letterman both had affairs.  Tiger went silent.  Letterman went public with full disclosure and humor.  Letterman was forgiven and Woods is thought of as suspect and untrustworthy.

Toyota has issues with their cars from obvious quality assurance problems that have been systemic for years.  How have they handled it?  Denial.  Of course, the public is going to hammer away until they stop acting like that.  Toyota’s handling of the problem is costing them billions of dollars.  They don’t see the obvious strategy.  Open the flood gates of information and be as public as possible.  Invite reporters to ride shotgun with the inspectors.

What is the lesson for a software product?
Software products (all of them) have bugs and problems.  When they arise, you just have to be up front, honest, transparent and try and fix the problem.  If you deny or ignore, people will smell blood in the water and attack.  Great UX requires a trust relationship.  You don’t get that at arms length.  You have to dirty dance with your customers.  They have to know what you are packing under that kimono.  Otherwise, they are not going to trust you and you will always struggle with user experience.

Three things to have UX greatness.  Last one.

1. Great doesn’t mean good.
2. Eat bad babies.
3. Invest in your future

Invest in your future.
It is so rare that anyone does this.  Seriously, everyone talks about it and no one ever does it.

At a previous company (which shall remain nameless), there was a project to redo the UI shell.  Someone (who shall remain nameless) wanted to kill the project.  It wasn’t a feature.  It didn’t provide immediate value.  However, the old UI shell was a mess. (Partly because of  ”someones” bad code.)  The bad state of affairs made improving the UI very painful.  Adding features was annoying because you had to jump through hoops.  There were lots of bugs because of the way the architecture was built.  Something could work in 20 situations and fail on the 21st.  Like I said, a mess.  So the project to redo the UI shell would clean that up.  I had to fight hard to get the project finished.  I had to blur the details of the project to avoid naysayers killing it before it had a chance.  I had to put all my chips on that effort.

In the end, it was a strategic and wildly successful/valuable project.  It made all UI projects from that point forward easier to manage and build.  It made the UI consistent and reduced bugs by half.  It sped development and made everyone who used the application feel that it was faster and more responsive.  The new skin also looked more modern and sold/demo’d better.  It transformed the entire application and breathed new life into the team.

Why was it so hard to get that project done?  Why is it so hard for a team to spend their time/energy on architecture and infrastructure.  The reason is that most people and most executives are short-sighted.  They can’t see the end of the tunnel.  They are looking at their feet.  They are caught on Local Max Island.  It takes vision to see the investment turn into value.

The analogy I use is a sports car.  Most people want to put it in 5th gear right away.  You turn the ignition, put the car in 5th gear and back out of the driveway.  Someone doing this will likely kill the engine and never make it to the highway, much less get the car to above 60mph. Sounds silly, but most people I meet think this way about software. The lower gears to get you started pave the way for a faster speed later on.  The low gears are the infrastructure and architecture.

Build the system to build the application first.  Then the application will go much faster.

So what does this have to do with UX?  User Experience is how people interact with your whole company.  You will never get everything right on the first try.  However, if you can react, you can change.  You can take out the bad and put in the good.  You can test.  You can improve the UX.  However, if every change takes a long time, and you are fighting bugs all day, you will never be able to change and adapt.  Only by investing in systems today will you be able to improve UX in the future.

Think about what you are working on, right now.  What if you spent a bunch of time creating a system and architecture to make that much easier to implement so you could change it and add to it with ease?  What would that mean in the long run?  Invest in your future.  The payoff is enormous and almost all of your competition refuses to do it.

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There are other ingredients to UX greatness, but these three are ones I think make a big difference.  I hope you can make use of them.

Three things to have UX greatness.  Here is #2.

1. Great doesn’t mean good.
2. Eat bad babies.
3. Invest in your future

Eat bad babies.
Every group I have ever witnessed has reached this point sooner or later.  They have something that used to be a good idea.  However, right now, it has become a bad idea.  It no longer works or was ill-conceived or just plain failed or maybe something better came along.  To certain people in the organization, this thing is their baby.  They have nurtured it from a little flicker of an idea into something people have dedicated hundreds or thousands of man hours.  To them, it is beautiful.  (Only a face a mother could love).  To other people, it is an ugly baby and needs to be destroyed.

This moment of crisis is huge.  What do you do?  Do you scrap the thing and start over?  Do you try and salvage it?  Are you polite and walk on eggshells around the mama?  Or do you say, “This baby is ugly” and deal with the consequences.  If you want UX greatness, you must call the baby ugly and then eat it.

It sounds brutal, but it is the only way to get to great UX.  You can’t keep trying to increment your way out of the problem.  An ugly baby almost always can not be saved.  However, the baby isn’t what is important.  The survival of the group is the important thing.  The UX of the customer is the important thing.

Don’t fall in love with your own work.  The baby is ugly, not you!

This was a critical lesson taught to me by Bill Mirbach at Intuit.  Don’t worry about throwing away code or redoing something.  The only way to greatness is to remove mediocrity.   You know what the ugly baby is.  You know why the ugly baby “can’t be removed”.  Now imagine if you DID eat the baby!  Try it once and you will realize that it energizes the team and makes your customers much happier.  It’s worth doing.

I think alot of people confuse these two concepts.

Not knowing how to do something may not be surmountable.  Either you learn how or you get lucky or you just do it wrong.

I’ve made a handy chart to help understand.

If you don’t know how to do something, it doesn’t matter how much time you have to do it.  I could spend all year on inventing a pill that will grow my hair back and I am not going to succeed.  However, if you ask me to take a complex issue and boil it down using a cool drawing…I can do that.  However, it may be time consuming.  I know how to do certain things, but that doesn’t mean they are easy and will take 5 minutes.

To people who don’t know how to do something, how long it takes is a mystery.  My lasik surgery 13 years ago took 5 minutes.  I had no idea.  An hour?  A day?  Who knew?  To people who don’t understand super great UX design, it is really hard to know how long it will take to deliver.  I am not an engineer although I know alot about it.  I still can’t make rhyme or reason around why certain things take a week and others take 5 minutes.  Everyone has things they can do that other people don’t understand.

I guess what I am advocating is this:  Be supportive of people who know how to do things you don’t.

Who is Andrew Garcia?  He is a contestant on American Idol.  What can he tell us about UX?  I’ll jump to the answer and then backtrack.

Great UX comes from making a segment of the audience love you with fanaticism, not from trying to please everyone.  Critics are the sign you are on the right track.

American Idol just got started, but Andrew Garcia has completely won me over.  He has taken two songs (so far) and completely transformed them into his own style.  The first was Straight Up by Paul Abdul embedded below.

The second was  Sugar we’re going down by Fall Out Boy embedded below.

The first one, the judges loved and the second one they hated.  To my ear, they were nearly identical treatments.  Why did the judges flip-flop?  I think it’s because they didn’t know the second song and they were familiar with the first.  Anyone who has heard the original Sugar we’re going down completely got what he did and it was brilliant.  Katie said she hated the Fall Out Boy’s version and loved Andrew Garcia’s version.

The point is:  You can’t try to please everyone.  If you know you have something special, you have to believe in it and build your tribe (Seth Godin’s term).  Judges in this world are like critics.  They don’t sing, they don’t entertain, they just pass judgement.  It’s like testing ideas in focus groups.  Archie Bunker, Seinfeld and Friend all had horrible test group scores.  But they had someone who believed in them.  That is what makes something spectacular.

Hopefully Andrew Garcia won’t compromise his artistic integrity.  Based on his last performance, which I won’t even link, he fell short.  He looks so awkward without his guitar.   I think he is letting the judges get to him. He should go for it, believe in himself.

Think about your own ideas.  Do the critics of the world water you down?  Do they pressure you to make everyone happy?  What do you aim for?

The lesson is:  25% ultra fans is WAY better than 75% like you ho hum.

I made a little sticky note for someone I manage, but I don’t have a scanner here.  So I recreated it for you.

It’s amazing to me how often people break this rule. Everyone thinks the other person knows what they are talking about.  People are happy to pass the buck and add features or functionality that they have no idea why someone would use it.  It’s not enough to know HOW it works.  You have to understand what is happening in the user’s head.  Ask “Why would they be interested in doing this?”  Often you might realize that only a tiny fraction of users actually are interested.

If you are a designer or an engineer, you shouldn’t just take the other person’s word for it.  Really understand the motivation of the user and you will build the product better.  I promise.  Take my word for it.

Previously I posted on how the little things are the ones that make/break your product/service.  Here is an illustrated example.

Don’t be fooled.  This doesn’t mean you can just build the details and forget the big features.  Obviously a cup holder without a car isn’t much good.  Table stakes are the big features.  Your product has to do something useful.  However, that will not be the reason they love you.  See the following chart:

You can’t get to love if you don’t travel through great functionality.  However, if you don’t bake in wonderful little details they will never love you.  At best, they will like you.

Why does Love matter?
Love is what makes a user do a video testimonial for you. (Wow, 20 videos.  That is awesome)  Love is what makes a user willing do give a glowing reference, even though they never do that.  Love is what makes a demo be a grand slam.  Love is what seals the deal.  Sales people will say, “It sells itself”.  Love is money.  Love is massive success.  Love is loyalty even if you screw up.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  If you build an application or service without some wonderful details, you will eventually lose those customers.