Communication Analytics

My friend and now entrepreneur, C R Mahesh, pointed me to a Google announcement this morning. The GMail team at Google has created a shiny new toy - GMail Meter. The service looks into your email history, scrapes out metadata from your communications and then presents back to you Communication Analytics (CommAn). Those familiar with Xobni will instantly associate this as an ape – well, somewhat – of that service

But Xobni is a cul-de-sac product – it is destined to hit a wall with no turns in its future unless it navigates into the murky world of alliances (someone I respect said recently – “alliances are naturally unstable”). Google however has downstream assets like Google+ that it can potentially marry this service with. And the key with successful Communication Analytics is the efficiency with which it can be partnered with one or multiple social activities. It is not necessary for builders of CommAns to have a clear line of sight into the downstream activities so long as their architecture is open enough to accommodate and analyze different classes of metadata. For example, an extensible CommAn system should be able to satisfy social commerce serving up specific metadata as elegantly as it does for social self directed investing use cases

CommAns by itself is not the holy grail – it is the means to an end. The end is Social Activity

Goodbye Knol

On 23rd November, 2011 – day before that is – Google announced it will close down Knol. A few days after its launch in 2008, I had ranted about Knol being a rip-off on Squidoo. Seth Godin – pretty much the insider at Squidoo – explains how they dealt with it.

Plagiarized products do not work, even if you throw in weight and technology behind it.

Thanks Google

In my earlier post, I had ranted about the icons that go against feed identifiers in Google Reader (that wasn’t the only thing I ranted about but yes, they did look like 1990s). I was pleasantly surprised today morning that Google has started showing brand thumbnails against the feeds. That’s good.

Before: 1990s style icons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With Brand Icons

 

Lipstick on a Pig

Google was the pioneer of simplicity in UI. The company that made billions had a rather strange website – a big text box to accept your search string. It later went on to doodles, which became an instant hit. Simplicity was key, which was fine so long as someone was zealously guarding that cornerstone of design philosophy

Google’s approach to product development has been a mixture of organic and inorganic development. Google unleashed its engineering expertise in the form of Labs onto assets, extending their capabilities. In that process it succumbed to the “UI is too important to be left to engineers” syndrome. The Gmail user interface looked very different from Google docs (which had inconsistent UIs amongst its own components as some of them came via acquisitions) and Google Reader had a different look, feel and navigation. So it was natural that Google stepped into an area not exactly its strength – designing UIs to make them consistent. It dealt itself either a weak hand or set for itself a low bar by defining the coverage of consistency to imply just the look

Google users were slowly pushed these UI updates with the login page to a Google service being the first. Then other services took over. Notice the first inconsistency in this consistency drive – the login page has a big blue button while other services have red. Users ignored such glitches up until Google brought out the new-look “Reader” – a service that allows RSS aggregation and sharing

My Twitter timeline was a first warning that things did not go as planned for Google. After a quick check, I can understand why. The first rule of UI refresh is not to apply lipstick on a pig. The user interaction on Google Reader was always dated – one reason why services like Flipboard and Zite pretty much took up the reading experience leave Google with just the menial task of fetching. And Google passed up an opportunity to redo the design to not just make the service consistent with its brothers but also more modern and egg the reader to stay on by making reading easier. Instead, other than changes in fonts (oversized ones in the main column – Jesus Chirst!) the only other thing I see is a shroud of white all around. Improving user experience to induce more reading (or more +1’ing if Google was after that) was surely not a design objective

(click to see larger, clearer image)

And Google, for reasons they know best, chose to retain a list of keyboard shortcuts on the right panel, leaving the rest of the real estate – copious one – totally blank (adding to the already dominating whiteness of the page)

Ability to aggregate content from publishers that expose them via a common protocol was a tough problem to solve several years ago. No longer so, unfortunately. As Google bets big on its social gambit it has to understand somewhere that it is effortless usability much rather than astute engineering that greases the wheels of social interaction

Let’s first get them all

And then do what with them?

The first fallacy of creating a community is just this. The mindset of a hoarder. Gathering anything without a purpose places the cart in front of the horse – or, the business model in front of the raw material. People are the raw material in a Community. Just as a steel manufacturing business does not hoard up strawberries, a Community must eschew the lure of mindless “customer” acquisition at the cost of defining upfront who are being served and with what purpose

Hoarding impacts your community in two equally destructive ways. One, once the purpose of the community is established (post membership acquisition) members discover they do not have intersecting interests or expectations with the rest of the gang. There is no tribe to speak of. They quit. Secondly, a few acquired members are perhaps of the correct profile who would quickly discover there are a sprinkling of non-conforming audience engaged in community activity and will quickly disappear

What about multi-interest communities then? Yes, they do exist. If that is what you have in mind then it is better to think in terms of platforms. A Platform with different communities as tenants. It is perfectly possible – and correct – to design a handful of services as horizontals that each tenant feeds off. Then get onto community (tenant) specific services.

Irrespective of tenancy plurality, member acquisition should not broadbrush to pixalate the specific community picture. The rule of member acquisition remains unchanged

Photo courtesy Broadmoor Community Church

Positive Reinforcement

“What is good about life is as genuine as what is bad and therefore deserves equal attention” – C. Peterson, 2006

The days I play my favorite songs driving back home are the days I had a truly enjoyable work-day. And invariably those are days when someone recognized something good I did at work – and said so. Positive reinforcement – the official organizational psychology term – as an instrument of motivation has been long understood but sadly less implemented. Let me rephrase that – improperly implemented I should say.

Over the course of our employment we end up doing a gigantic stream of good work (and some stupid stuff as well but since societies have made evolutionary progress, I am assuming the algebraic sum of smart and stupid work is positive). These bits of work all go on to make something substantial in both volume as well as the impact it has on our employers (and ourselves). Many of these accomplishments are recognized – and that is where the problem begins

The problem is not in the recognition per-se but in the manner in which recognition happens, gets recorded, accumulated, propagated and associated. A bulk of the recognition takes the form of a verbal – “great job” or a short e-mail of thanks. Some employers have systems of physical rewards & recognition, which gives an employee a physical object – a trophy sometimes – that reminds her of her good work each time she looks at it. In most cases however these micro-recognitions fail in getting associated by either the employer (manager) or the employee to their performance goals, reducing the evaluative impact of the bits and pieces of work that go to stitch up an year’s work. Does it then surprise you that year end performance evaluations are usually an evaluation of the last assignment or worse, a totally subjective discussion of perceptions?

Happy employees make great workplaces. And great workplaces make great businesses. Happiness is a steady stream but has its ebbs and flows. Organizations rely more on point-in-time appreciation of positive employee efforts but have failed to put their employees bang in the middle of this river of happiness. The failure is perhaps not due to lack of intent but more attributable to absence of a solution that addresses this issue

Image courtesy: baobabinc.com

 

Simply Steve

“Aha, Mr. Steven Jobs. Welcome Sir. I daresay the world has gone into a mourning with your untimely death. And we are trying to understand why”. St. Peter’s at the Pearly Gates was both anxious and curious as he welcomed the technology magician
“Quite Simple”, said Jobs. “Let me show you” – and he unslung his backpack and took out a handful of Apple products and laid them out
“That’s it?”
“Yeh, that’s it. Sorry if you were expecting more but I guess you have to wait for some more while for that. Not until Bill shows up”, Jobs chuckled as he took a dig at his favorite punching bag

I woke up the news that Steve Jobs is no more. Pages of flowing eulogy has already gotten written by authors who are better and people who were lucky to have had personal run-ins with the great man. So I will, like Jobs’ product portfolio, keep this a short affair.

And Simple

If there is one lesson Jobs taught us businessmen it was simplicity. Simplicity in business models, simplicity in portfolios, simplicity in design and simplicity in commercial models. The world is already far too complex and evolution isn’t exactly an accelerated science – which means people in this world have far more deconstructions to handle than expect to have to do the same with technology. Technology whose calling card promised to make life simple in the first place. Jobs’ business played purely to that feeling. In world where everyone was designing with the SUV Syndrome, Steve Jobs discarded layer after layer of complexity to finally reach the core. And then he drew as few concentric circles as he could. Doing less is not a sin, doing more – and spectacularly complicating things, is.

With this knowledge, what would you do to your product? To your business? And to your life?

PS: This post is my tribute to Steve Jobs. I wrote in on Pages on my i-pad 1 and posted using the WordPress app. Thank you, Steve. I know it’s tough, but try to get some rest Sir.

Playing in a Sandbox

What if LinkedIn decided to play in Facebook’s sandbox? Afterall, both are about creating social connections and sharing networks & information within that social circle.

The answer to the choice lies in aspirations. A newbie firm wants to test the waters and looks at the path of least resistance. A social business, they might argue, has got to mostly do with people. So why not gravitate to where most people are? The trouble with this is that the answer is correct but the question is wrong. The fabric of a social business is not the people per-se but what those people do within the sandbox. A social sandbox is like a society – and people get enamoured by reciprocating behavior as much as they put off by actions that seem incongruent to that sandbox-society. Example, notice how many times your eyes roll-over when you notice someone posted that “my cat’s just rolled over” type update on LinkedIn?

The sandbox you choose has got to answer a very important question. If you were given the choice of asking the entire population of your intended audience live inside a gated community what would that community look like? If that looks like Planet Facebook, please go ahead and play in that sandbox. But please ask yourself this question before you make the choice

PS: LinkedIn was a poor example perhaps – it had critical mass – and a different sandbox already as Facebook started its own growth. But you get the drift. Branchout is a better example and they made a choice of playing in Facebook’s sandbox

The Seven Thens

With a starting point in a situation, one can choose their turns. There is a way to go backwards in time, which is what quality assurers and detectives do – and call it root cause. They ask the question – “why?” (Toyota wanted that to be repeated five times. That many layers of reason hide the truth that each subsequent “why” pulls back). There is another turn however that leads to insights about the future. We will come to it but just a spot of background building

Organizations and decision makers have depended on analytics – or analysis – for making better, fact-based decisions. With an explosion of data, available both publicly and within organizational confines, coupled with sophistication of computational technology creating analytics is not as onerous as it once was. The great thing about analytics is that they are never dead-ends. They are not what I refer to as “terminal” (this is where a lot of data vendors have a problem because they have always seen – and called – their offerings as “terminals”). In order to glean true insights from analytics one must further the analysis. Furtherance happens either by extension (“this is fine, but how about a further analysis of all our lost businesses”) or collaboration (“hey Steve, I think there is something funny with our sales trend. Can we take a look at it together and try make sense of it?”). Thus, analytics almost always casts an eye to the future. When we stand at the cross roads of a situation and we want to take the turn towards understanding the future, what question do we ask?

“Then”?

“Then” sets us out on a path of inquiry that hurls us into the future. “Then, once I have the current price of a security, I look up what the price trend has been in the past”. “Then?”. “Then I try to figure out if there is a price level from where it has bounced back so I could buy at that price”. “Then?”. “Then I place an order with my broker to buy at that price”. Theoretically we can go on but you get the drift. If you are building a product or service that has to do with user workflows, the word “then” is the best friend you can hope to have. Leave the “Why?” to the policemen.

Post Script 1: Of particular interest will be for interaction designers is this “then?” concept. Anyone has examples in action will post in comments, no?

Post Script 2: Someday a management consultant or an Ops Research person will work out the optimum number of “Then?”s required to capture most of forward workflows – till then let’s call this “The Seven Thens”. It lils nicely on the tongue

Picture courtesy: Deposit Photos

Bird-Tweeting-Revolution-Creating Fuss

“Sir, we have come up with this new innovative idea and wanted to run it past you. This is something we have moonlighted on for the past six months”. The group of youngsters looked visibly excited and their leader, in a striped shirt and chinos, held a laptop that obviously had some demo version of the “innovative idea”

“Nice”, the boss looked up, setting aside his Blackberry. “Give me an elevator pitch – I have a hard stop in 15 mins”

“Sir, this is something that will revolutionize the way people communicate”

“Hold it just there. We are an ERP company. What’s communication got to do with our business?”

“Umm, sir, we see your point. But if you just for one moment look outside, you will see how social tools like Instant Messaging, Skype, Facebook – for that matter RSS feeds – are changing the way we communicate and build networks. So yes, this is not to do with ERP, but we daresay just as interesting”, the young leader looked a little flustered but he gamely held on to the conversation

“Okay, proceed”, the boss man said, not sounding either entirely convinced or terribly interested

“This is like a communication paradigm where you can send instant updates that can be seen, essentially, by anyone with an Internet connection. So it is like an ocean where everyone pours in their bits of communication. But most interestingly it is possible for a user to create a list – a group if you may – of people who he is most interested in and he will get their updates instantly without having to search them out”

“Oh, that is like a chatroom combined with IM. That problem is already solved”, boss said, “and what’s wrong with email to multiple recipients?”

“But sir, in this you don’t need to know the email ID of people you are updating. They choose to get updates from you. In fact the analogy we have is that of a bird tweeting in the morning. When it tweets it never knows all who might listen to its tweet”

“Have you considered privacy? I may not like someone- let’s say the VP of Product Engineering at a competitor firm to see my updates”

“Great point Sir. So you can stop specific people from receiving your updates”

“Won’t work. They could take you to court because you just said that all updates are available for everyone. And look son, if I want to get someone’s updates I will just connect with him on Facebook. You are solving a problem that does not exist”

“That is exactly why this product is revolutionary, Sir. It creates an Open Facebook. A Facebook where everyone can follow everyone. At will. And similarly one could block access to whoever they don’t want to send updates to. And there is an immediacy of these updates because they must be less than 140 characters”

“What? What do you think you can communicate within 140 characters? Won’t work”

“But sir this could be the novel touch – forcing brevity on the world and..”

The boss interjected impatiently. “Like the world wants brevity. Have you asked, for example, our marketing guys about whether they want to send short messages to our clients?”

“Umm, we did Sir. The response, I am afraid was not very positive. They said they already have a Facebook page and that is where they connect with clients. And they were apprehensive that an open thing like this could be disastrous if there are too many negative things said about our products”

“See, those are my sentiments exactly. Look, the matter of communications is over-solved by the industry. We do not need another channel. My prognosis is that, if anything, there will be consolidation as people will want lesser channels to communicate, not more”

“Research done by sociologists however point that…”, the young leader, quite pushed to the brink made an attempt to recover

“Now look, as I said, I have a hard stop. But I would strongly advice you to not bother with Bachelor of Arts subjects like Sociology and Psychology and rather concentrate on core ERP technology. This bird tweeting in the morning thing is all hogwash”

“Sir, we – and all of us here – understand that while this is a new concept, it could revolutionalize…”

Visibly impatient, the boss curtly cut off the leader. “Revolutionize? Like what – start revolutions? People will start using this platform and start political movements”, he thundered, sarcasm oozing from his words. “I recommend you please go and focus on your core work., young men. Please don’t make me scrutinize your time-sheets for the past six months when you were building this bird-tweeting-revolution-creating product of yours”

This conversation never happened. But it could very well have. This is possibly how Twitter would have been killed if born within the precincts of a large technology company

PS: There could very well be a counter argument to this fictional anecdote. Is there a way this idea could have been pitched – to the same protagonists – to yield different (positive) results?