Archives for July 2013

Solving your users problems vs. your problems

I often keep some notes on what I don’t like about a product. I really appreciated what Elon Musk said about this in an interview. He talked about how he goes out of his way to ask for negative feedback. People (especially friends or people sucking up to you) can tend to not be 100% candid with you, and you actually want that.

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I recently really enjoyed Aral Balkan’s talk on design where he also discussed the critical look among much much more. So, I thought I would start to writeup small thoughts on product improvements. This isn’t to be snarky and make fun of other peoples work. It is much easier to sit with a beer and talk about what someone else should do than actually do it, and I am more and more aware that generally people are trying to do the best job they can.

I am trying to learn.

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Audible is a product that I use as I listen to books on tape primarily when driving in the car. I have a couple of use cases:

#1 Listening to my own books (I try to rotate between different genres, to make sure that I am learning and also having some fun)

#2 Listening to books for the kids. I really have enjoyed this recently. The current kid favorite is the Magic Tree set.

There are many issues that I have had with the service, and a large chunk of them have the theme of “the user shouldn’t care about your implementation challenges!”

Download Limitations (Cell vs. WiFi)

When you download a book it can only grab 50MB without getting the rest from WiFi. This has been really frustrating when you get to the end of that chunk and can’t listen to any more. The average user doesn’t get why this is a limitation at all. I can switch to other content just fine but for some reason I can’t download a book chunk????

The app is poor at detecting when you are on WiFi and going ahead and grabbing the rest for you, again frustrating.

Argh, I was on WiFi all day and now back in the car but it didn’t download!

I find myself setting reminders. The user shouldn’t have to do that.

Audio Sync

A large percentage of the time when I go back to the app to listen to more I get a modal popup telling me that “last time you were at minute 4:41, resume from there?” and it is normally only off by a few seconds. Don’t bother me with this. Work out your timing issues, and at least give me smarter info (telling me “hey, probably not a big deal mate, the resume time is just 1 second behind now” and not making it modal would be a nice start!)

ERROR CAN’T PLAY

In about one in every 3 books I will get an error where the playback will stop and I will be told that the audio is corrupt. The “suggestion” is that I:

• Delete the recording
• Re-download at a different quality setting (e.g. set to high quality)

Argh! Remember the fact that you can’t often can’t download the entire book without WiFi? Screwed again.

Audio Quality

Give me an automatic option. Give me the quality that you think I can handle, and be adaptive. Don’t be static.

Audio Parts

You split up the book into multiple parts as an implementation detail. Hide this with the other points. I am listening to a book, I don’t think of it as something that is “in parts”.

Why am I thinking about “should I download all the parts now? If I don’t, I may get into the situation where I am done with Part 1 but didn’t download Part 2 yet. Hmm”.

Per Book Settings

I talked about my split use cases of listening to a book for me vs. my children. When I listen to books I setup a speed that makes sense for my consumption. With the kids I stick with 1x.

The app remembers the speed as a global setting when I would love for it to remember it based on the content, as that is what I am matching it too.

The Store

I know that this is an Apple issue, but not having the store in the app is a royal pain in the arse and sad to see. The audible site is pretty meh too which adds to the pain.

Help me find the next book

I hate it when I get to the end of a book and haven’t gotten the next one ready. Up-sell anyone? Help me.

Give me feelers. Audio books are bloody expensive, so a tease can really help.

Since the cost is high I sometimes grab a book for Kindle first to see if I like it enough to get it as an audio book. This can be great with WhisperSync, but not the cost is even MORE.

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In general, so much of the implementation details shine through that shouldn’t. Is there anything you would like to see?

Changing the culture of static meetings

After reading the research on how bad for you sitting for prolonged periods can be, even if you are very active, many of us are looking for answers.

How about standing desks?

I enjoy my adjustable desk. I try to stay standing as much as possible, which is quite an easy task these days as I am rarely at my desk so my stamina is not often tested. Standing burns calories and is generally good for you, but standing for too long can have detrimental effects, so it is nice (and important) to be able to change it up. When I am sitting I try to work on my posture and have gotten value out of my back support.

In my path to West coast hippie-dum, I am even looking into the Grounding/Earthing movement and wondering if I should try a mat!

Standing has another interesting side effect. People seem to interrupt you more often. My hypothesis is that normally when you see someone that is standing they are in-between tasks, and this more open for an interrupt. Has anyone else noticed this?

It has me curious about having a system that watches what you are doing on the computer (e.g. Typing in a code editor) and a display shows “coding” so people who walk by know what you are doing (also broadcasting via Campfire for your remote folks?). I also want to hook this up to see “On Facebook” show up too. Or worse!

Walk with me

As I looked for reasons to get out of sitting around I noticed that a slew of meetings are 1 on 1, and if we don’t need a whiteboard / presentation, could be held in a much nicer environment than a boxy room. Thus started my quest to default to walking and talking versus jumping in my touch base. I have had a few giggles when I yet again say “mind if we get a coffee?” or walk around the block.

I have seen some nice side effects beyond the benefits of getting off your bum:

• It allows for others to use my touch base (e.g. If they have more than 2 people, or need that white board or privacy)
• I often have different types of conversations. I think there is something different about talking when walking side by side versus being face to face in a conference room. This is subtle, but I find more intimate conversations occur even though (or because of?) you aren’t staring at each other
• Since you are outside of the work environment you see less distractions. People aren’t coming to your area to bother you, and you aren’t overseeing things that you want to jump into.

At first I was tentative at making this change as I didn’t want people to think “wait, did Dion read the Steve Jobs book and now wants to ‘go on walks’ to be like Steve?” Then I got over it and stopped projecting my concerns on others.

There are some downsides too though. One that I am cognizant of is the feeling of “where is he?” Since I am often traveling or in meetings, it is easy for folks to feel like you aren’t around. You can also lose touch of what is happening in your area (the other side of not being able to jump in to something that you witness).

All in all though I am excited to get outside into the fresh air more.

There is no reason why as a group you can’t get out there. I often try to persuade people to walk to lunch, which seems to shock people in the US culture (and for some reason my band of Swedes are scared of a good walk too….. I am looking at you Steffie!)

I have had a few instances of walking around the block to really think about a problem and use the lack of distractions and get my head into another space…. And it has often been a good thing. I am trying more and more to map out time to think. One example is giving myself a few minutes before a meeting to really get myself ready for the topic that is coming. That couple of minutes can make a big difference versus running from one meeting to another and feeling like you are on an Improv circuit.

I have much more to learn and experiment with. As we work out how to help teams be effective I think we will see a lot of changes to the typical corporate environment.

What do you do to hack the work situation?

American Football specialists is to Soccer generalists as Engineering specialists are to Developer generalists

Last week I was thinking about the comparison of cycling vs. running
and how the decision related to technology (in that case: CoffeeScript
vs. JavaScript as a choice).

Those thoughts revolved around the choice of actions, platforms, and
approach. This reminded me of another topic of conversation that has
been doing the rounds recently.

A couple of startup friends have been asking me about whether they
should be hiring generalists or specialists. E.g. Backend guys and
client UI guys. And then you get the niches of “big data guys” and
“iOS guys who know CoreAnimation up the wazoo!”

This comes up a lot at larger companies too. In my world I run
engineering as part of a global team, so beyond creating amazing
products, we are looking to get leverage (I know, I hate the term
too!) as we scale out.

One way to do this is to create a “services team” that is in charge of
the platform and services that sit on top. Then you have client teams
(in our mobile world, iOS, Android, and mWeb folks) that talk to the
services guys. This means that the API contract is key. It is the
place where the world meet. To do this right involves:

• Working closely together on this contract
• Having great test suites that both sides can write too. To be able
  to work in parallel there needs to be a mock tier that the client can
  hit, and the services guys need to be implementing a real solution
  that results in more and more tests passing. If this isn’t rock solid
  then you are in for a world of hurt.

I have seen this model go wrong more than I have seen it be
successful. The culprits of disaster have been:

Misalignment of the teams

The teams aren’t on a shared mission to product an experience with a
set of outcomes. Instead they are working to implement some features,
and are in the weeds in their world so just want to “get it done”.

Rather than making a call to do something right for the end user, they
want to “finish” their piece.

Often the client and services worlds don’t have good touch points. It
is very common for the services guys to move off to something else
before the product is finished which leads to changes not being made.

One team; One Mission

If you structure the team around the mission with generalists who can
back on the Android app in one sprint but then jump into the backend
the next, you make sure that everyone has a lot to do and people feel
empowered. There is no “waiting for those guys”.

Football

When I think about sports, I find it interesting to see how different
sports evolved different solutions. American Football is the ultimate
extreme. You not only have different players for offense and defense,
but you have amazing specialists (e.g. A kicker). The context of how
the game works allows for this of course. It is a game of “plays”
where new teams sub on and off at will.

If you look at something like soccer (football 😉 then you have
players that need to be more generalists. Sure there are wingers and
attackers and central defenders and goalies, but everyone has to
attack an defend. In fact, the Dutch team famously came up with the
notion of total offense and defense and changed the way the game was
played (to great affect).

Even in American Football you see hybrids who can change the game by having special skills. E.g. Deon Saunders on special teams and
defense, or the new quarter backs who can run. Michael Vick and the
new San Francisco 49ers quarterback open up new options not just
because they can run so well, but because now the defense needs to
account for that.

This all leads me to believe that:

• What is special about what you are building? What specialists do you really benefit from?
• You should be mindful of the players that you have and how you are
  using their skills
• Know they any “other” skills can change the game, so use them
• Hybrid players can give you a massive boost in flexibility (including:
  if a team member gets sick / leaves…. you have built in backup)
• Having people who have “done this before” and bring experience to the table is incredibly valuable
• Having people who have “never done this before” and have other
  experience is also incredibly valuable!
• Making sure the entire team is aligned on one set of measured outcomes is what matters more than the structure

Have you mapped out your team like a coach would in sport? Mapped it
to strategy? Thought about how “injuries” would change things?

Maybe now is the time.