Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

by Marianne Williamson from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles
This quote is often found on the Internet incorrectly credited to Nelson Mandela from his Inauguration Speech, 1994, especially the last sentence of that quote, “As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Note: My fear is that I won’t be as valuable or useful in a bigger pond. This poem helps inspire me and gives me confidence.

Our washer and dryer is on its last legs.  I think it was purchased about 20 years ago.  Its a cheap stacked unit.  Very small, breaks down alot.  We are thinking of replacing it with two good modern units.  However, there are a million options.  Do you go with a top loader or a front loader?  Katie thinks the front-loader is better, but we need the power of the internet to help figure this out.

Interesting review of washers here. It says front-loaders are better because they are gentler on clothes and have better spin cycles.  However, it also says that they are more expensive and have spotty reliability.  Man, this article is making me more confused than knowledgeable.

This article is about front-loaders. It says they have larger capacity, but that’s not what I saw at sears.  Most of the front-loaders were 3.8 cubic feet.  The top loader got as big as 4.5.

Shoot, I gttoa get to meetings.  Any advice on an innovative, energy efficient washer/dryer?  We want something that will last a long time and be great.

Anyone interested in getting the flu?  Well, come on down!  You are the next contestant in, “The Virus is Right”!  First it was Jared, then it was Katie, now its Matthew.  All with high fevers and flu-like symptoms.  Cough and fatigue mostly.  I am trying to avoid getting too close to any of them.  It’s hard when you have five in a house.  I am just hoping to avoid it all.

Kids are regular germ factories.  They pick up germs from other kids at school.  Then they bring it home and pass it to us.  You know, I was wondering.  Why is it that pediatricians aren’t sick all the time?  I never see them wearing masks.  What is their secret?

At work, they promoted me to Director, UX and Product Management.  I feel pretty excited about the whole thing.  As part of taking on more product management responsibilities, I can also hire a product manager to report to me.  I haven’t managed anyone since 2002.  Very exciting!   It brings back all these thoughts about mentoring people and about teaching. (When one person teaches, two people learn).

We are also moving forward with REAL agile product/project management.  I reviewed a bunch of online tools like Version One and Rally. I settled on TargetProcess.
The reason I liked them was that I felt the UI was simpler.  Rally and Version One intimidated me.  There were so many buttons and features.  I thought that I needed to start with something simpler.  Over the last week, I have started using TargetProcess (TP) and have discovered many cool things and many lame things.

They have tool called TP.Tray (only works on windows is a little bit of a bummer).  The purpose is to make a system tray icon you could click on, take a screen grab and write a bug, without leaving the system.  It’s a great idea, but it has a few serious failings.  One is in the screen capture part, you can write text on the image.  The text tool is horrible.  It’s confusing to delete the text and moving the arrow is impossible.  Plus the font colors make it very hard to read.  More importantly is the bug writing part. You are supposed to log the bug against a User Story.  The problem is so simple.

The list is not in alphabetical order.  It also isn’t searchable.  I have ALOT of user stories.  Are they kidding me with this?  How hard would it be to render these in alphabetical order??  And not having an autocomplete is just lame.

In the application itself, I am running into alot of bugs.  Things just go wrong pretty often. The release planning tool has a serious flaw that is also easy to fix.  It works by having a long list of features on one side, and you drag them into releases on the right side.  The problem is that the list on the left scrolls way off the page.  So you have to scroll down and then drag way to the top.  A better solution would be to put the tasks in a DIV with overflow:auto and height: 100% of the viewport.  Then I could scroll independently of the releases on the right.  It would make it much easier to do.  The bugginess was driving me nuts though.  I kepting trying to show a release, and hide another and it refused to comply.

Overall, I am pretty happy.  It is relatively flexible and understandable.  It doesn’t overwhelm me and gives me really useful information.  But the UX is so shoddy in places, that I just shake my head.  For example: There are 3 levels of detail called Feature, User Story and Bug/Task.  You can see Features with an expand to see the user stories but not the tasks or bugs.  You can see user stories that expand to bugs, but they dont have the features.  Why don’t they have the whole tree in one view?  Another example is change password.  It took me 10 minutes to find it.  It’s under “People”.  Not settings or admin.  No, that would be too easy.

I think this application also suffers from JavaScript homegrown issues. If they were to switch to EXTJS, I think they would improve the experience significantly right away.  There is just so much that is ugly or sketchy.

I know I keep flip-flopping, but there is a reason I like it.  There are alot of good things about it.  It’s just the little details that keep making me unhappy.  I wonder if I could reach out to their UI designer and have a heuristic with him/her.  I think I could help them.  Anyway, it’s a cool tool, but I am still working on it.

I am watching the NBA All Star competiton.  While I wait for the slam dunk content, I was checking out old slam dunk offerings.  Some of these are just awesome.  I love the 1986 contest that Spud Webb won.  I love when a 5′6″ short guy wins the slam dunk contest.  I love when short tennis players win too.  Being a pituitary giant shouldn’t make you a star.  My favorite dunk of all time though, didnt come from the NBA.  It was from the AND1 league.  Check out the 720 dunk.  Although, I have to admit that this dunk by Vince Carter, in a real game, is stunning.

When I was younger, I would try and try and try, but could never quite get high enough.  Once in college, I got a fast break and ran up the court.  My adrenaline was pumping.  I launched up in the air and realized that I was high enough to dunk easily.  However, I didn’t think I was going to be that high.  I misjudged the distance to the basket.  I tried to get the ball in.  Klunk!  I missed.

Moral of the story:  Slamming the ball is more than just jumping high enough.

UPDATE:  I just finished watching.  The birthday cake slam and the superman slam were AWESOME.  I’ll post youtube when its posted.

My general theory of arguments/disagreements it that they occur for one or more of the following reasons:

1. One party knows something the other doesn’t.
2. One party is making an assumption the other isn’t
3. One or more parties is feeling an emotion that instigates disagreement.

The first reason is the easiest to solve, although it isn’t simple.  You need to find out what information the other person is working off of.  Questions like, “Did you see the memo this morning?” help.  Always be sure that you and your discussion partner are working off the same information.  How can you agree if you have different info?

The second reason is similar to the first, but it isn’t based on the information itself, but rather the interpretation of that information.  Two people might read the same memo and come to very different conclusions about what it mean.  Language is a critical factor here.  On NPR this morning I heard that Condoleeza Rice said, “There will be no ‘permanent’ bases in Iraq.”  I thought, “What exactly does she mean?  Does she mean that we will have 25 year bases?  No bases at all?  Bases that are mobile?  Language can be interpreted in so many ways.

Yesterday, I was describing a bug in the system we are working on.  I said the window “freezes”.  That word created disagreement on the bug.  What does freeze mean?  Is it permanent?  Does it go away ever?  How we describe things  creates assumptions about exactly what we mean.  It is critical to choose your words carefully and also LISTEN to the other party.  It’s hard but you have to try and pick up on the words that are throwing your discussion buddy off.  These words lead to assumptions.  Different assumptions lead to arguments.

Additionally, arguments can come from differing assumptions about priorities.  Both parties might have the same information and the same language, but are making different assumptions about what is most important.  What/Who are you solving for?  Does the other party want to solve for someone/something else?  If you can find the root, boil it down to the basic solving assumptions, you can get the argument down to a discussion of pros/cons of priorities.  This certainly can have disagreement, but it is much easier to make a decision and agree to it.

The last reason is emotions. Penny, Katie’s mom, sometimes argues when she is feeling physically uncomfortable, like if the kitchen is too hot.  Or if she feels that the other person is coming on too strong, she will take a defensive stand.  These are the hardest arguments to get out of.  Sometimes people are in the arguing stance and just can’t get out of it.  Maybe they feel anger, or jealousy, or fear, or anxiety.  Regardless, they get themselves into a state that is very difficult to get out of.  The critical thing is to recognize that this is the case.

Whenever you see that this is happening, you need to break the cycle.  I sometimes use humor for this.  If you make a joke (A funny one), then the other person sometimes realizes they are taking things too seriously.  Other times, I will just step back and let the other person  work out the feeling without me adding fuel to the fire.  It’s hard to argue without someone else there.

Sometimes it’s helpful to mirror back to the person what they are saying.  Don’t try to make a “point”.  Making a point is a competitive stance.  It comes from debating.  Making points assumes that agreement isn’t the goal, but rather being “right” is the goal.

Just to zoom up for a sec, I want to be clear:  I am no argument expert.  I get in plenty of them.  I screw up language and assumptions all the time.  However, in the spirit of UX, I feel that everything in this world can be looked at closely in terms of cause/effect and psychology.  UX means that you care about WHY.  Why do arguments happen?  Why does the user loves or hates your product?

The theme of UX for me is about trying to understand the underlying truths about our world.  If we can do that, we can design for better experiences.  This is a journey for me.  I don’t have all the answers.  But I think there may be some wisdom in the approach.

What is the difference between User Experience Design and Product Management?  Additionally, should product management come out of the marketing department or the engineering department?  This issues are coming to the fore recently at work as we start to mature our process and organization.

I have seen it both ways. Both ways are bad.  Reporting to marketing leads to a disconnect with the engineering realities.  Reporting to engineering results in a disconnect to real people and real users.  Both ways lead to conflict between engineering and marketing.  And where is the design department?  We are stuck reporting up to one group or the other, neither of which understands why we exist.  Both seem to think we are supposed to make it look pretty.  “Design is the way things work, not how they look.” - Jobs

My personal feeling is that product management should report to neither department.  It should be its own thing.  It should empower the engineering department and the marketing department at the same time.  The marketing department represents the ideal world.  They should ask for the sun, the stars and the moon.  The engineering department represents the reality of production.  What can be handled in what amount of time?  They need details and specifics.  Marketing should not be forced to provide those details.  They should be blue sky.  Engineers should not be told they can not have details, that is just unfair.

By having the product management department as an independent group, then it is the function of that group to interpret the dreams of the marketin/business people and turn it into the details and reality of the engineers.  I described this exact thing to the Intuit CEO, Steve Bennett as a UX conference.  He didn’t get it, but I tried.  It is the role of the designer to understand both worlds and produce the bridge between them.

It is an exciting time for me, as I try to help bring about this and see if it works as well as I imagine.

Katie and I voted this week. They used a new kind of electronic voting machine with some serious UX issues. To give them the good news first, they solved one of the most important issues. Before voting, the machine gave a PAPER version of your votes for your approval. It was under glass, but you could read it and make sure that you didn’t vote for Pat Buchanan. This was a good thing and made Katie happy.

However, there was alot of bad news. The picture to the right is an exact replica of the voting interface. Notice the large screen. Both Katie and I thought, for sure, that the screen was clickable with your finger like an ATM machine. It took me three hard raps with my finger to get the idea. It’s not clickable at all. The way to move the cursor is with the round dial at the bottom right. This was really odd to me. A dial is not the natural UI to move a mouse around the screen. It had a nice depression for my finger, but overall, I hated it. It was too sensitive and created a bizarre mental model for me that I just couldn’t figure out without forcibly ignoring the UX annoyances.

Another problem was the selection model. The button to press to “select” is to the left of the dial. My version of the machine had a green sticker on it, which helped a little. The button was fairly discoverable, but the problem was on the screen. The indication that a choice was selected, it filled a small box with a red background. Red denotes a problem, so it took me a little time to make sure it was ok. Then, the real annoyance set in. On a Yes/No vote, like a proposition, it was really hard to see which was selected and which wasn’t. I had to change my vote several times just to make sure that the red meant selected, as opposed to the exact opposite. My suggestion to them is to use a basic green checkmark. It’s so simple. Check means selected. Unchecked means not selected. Red is a bad choice. If it was green, it would have helped a bit, but the check is the right model.

A more serious error is the Vote Now button on the left. Forget that it is red. The process is:

1. Click the red button when you are finished.
2. Read the screen and review your choices. Click the red button a second time.
3. Watch the paper ballot come out and read that and review it. Then click the red button a THIRD time to commit your vote.

Three times??? Seriously? Is that the best they could do? When I arrived to vote, the woman next to me said, “Excuse me (to the polling volunteer), I think the last person didn’t vote. It was stuck on the third vote, they only pressed twice. The volunteer informed me that this was happening alot. It was only 7:30AM, so I assume it continued through the day. This is a bad interaction design. If 1% people don’t understand how to vote, then the system is failing. My suggestion is to create 3 buttons. One called “1. Review Choices” another called “2. Prepare Vote” and the last one called “3. Finalize Vote”. And it would only let you click them in order.

My suggestion is really a band-aid. The system really needs a better model overall. My real suggestion would be to design the system better. Some possibilities:

• Widen the screen and maintain the results of your vote in a column that is there the whole time. That way you never have to review the choices. They are there all the time.
• Make review of the paper ballot optional. There are lots of people who want to review the paper ballot, and alot who do not. By making it optional, then you are making the people who want it “extra” happy. And it doesnt get in the way of the people who don’t care. Maybe the vote now button could say, “This is your last chance to see the paper version. Click “review paper version” or “Vote now” to finalize your vote. Big letters. (That was another problem. Small text.)

Lastly, the booths are fairly open. I wonder if this is to prevent tampering. However, it had the effect of making the vote seem less important and less private. Someone could look right over my shoulder and I wouldn’t know. I miss the big curtain that made a great sond when you opened and closed it. The device was not locked in it’s cabinet. Maybe if they made a more secure cabinet, they could bring back the curtain. I miss my curtain.

Anyway, we voted. I hope next year the interaction is a little bit more better.

Great article on the psychology of voting.  This is exactly how you have to be thinking about your web applications.  Drill down deep into the mind.

I have been working more on the book. The chapter I am working on deals with specific UI elements, like menus, buttons and other controls. It is amazing to me how many details there are in just a simple button. Bill Scott calls these “interesting moments“. For example in a button:

1. At rest: The button just sitting there waiting to be clicked. How does it communicate its affordance (click-ability)?
2. Hover: What happens if the mouse is placed over the button? Does it reinforce clicky-ness? Is there a tooltip? Does it warn?
3. Focus: What if the user used the keyboard to tab over to the button? Does it look different than hover?
4. Mouse Down: On the beginning of the click, what happens? Does it work right away or wait for the mouse up?
5. Mouse Up: How does it let the user know what is happening? Does it allow double-clicking? How does it manage expectations?

There are others too. Disabled buttons? Toggle buttons, (pressed and not). Menu buttons (muttons, a.k.a. Split buttons). Also, what does it look like with alot of text, what about a small amount of text. Does it have an icon? Does anything happen to the icon? The list is long.

All of these need detailed thought about what it looks like and how it works. I made this button demo, which starts, but I realized I missed several interesting moments. I should work on it some more.

Now imagine something more complex. UX is a hard job.