enterprise 2.0
old business processes/tools allow management impose their will on company
enterprise 2.0 is the use of emerging social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.
Importance of enterprise 2.0
Technology and approaches are novel
Offer more than incremental improvements
Who's pursuing 2.0?
google, avenue a/razorfish, mckinsey, lockheed, US intelligence, BT, fidelity, IBM
Underlying Trends
1. social software
2. network effects
3. free and easy platforms for communication
4. Lack of upfront structure
5. mechanisms to let structure emerge
Channels and platforms
enterprise IT loves structure
how does IT bring structure to work?
Why is choosing no structure (or emerging) valuable
Newpedia: tried to do the same thing as wikipedia first, but had a 7 step workflow, as an author you had to be credentialed... Jimmy Wales was afraid to submit. Newpedia got closed down with about 25 articles.
Delicious and tags
Tags were not from a dropdown, not from a controlled vocabularly. Things like enterprise 2,0 show up as well as enterprise 2.0... delicious doesn't try to keep you from screwing up upfront. And users are tolerant.
Mechanisms to let structures emerge.
They used to say, the internet is the biggest library in the world, the problem is all the books are on the floor. Search used to be hard.
Google changed the rules by realized the web had structure, but it was not apparent, it was in the links.
Delicious tags... when you see a tag cloud, you see that others are tagging similarly, and if you can tolerate a little slop (blog and blogs) you get the value of the collective wisdom and the emergent structure.
Flickr clusters allows types of images be collected i.e. boston creates an architecture cluster, a red sox cluster, then boston terrier cluster, and then lousy winter weather cluster
The potential benefits of Enterprise 2.0
A Knowledge worker's benefits
(read strength of weak ties)
Teams with weakties get more done, weak ties get you jobs. etc.
Prototypical tools: strong ties
Protypical tools: weak ties
Prototypical tool: potential ties
Avenue A | razorfish
Used mediawiki
Wiki, blog, but also flickr, dig, and delicious ... tags of AARF get called in to the intranet
(see his blog)
Ppl thought it was intel, but AARF didn't.. they said, it would be a shame if our competitors discovered we like starbucks.
Prototypical tool: no ties
Iowa's prediction market is better than any of the professional polls consistently.
Collective and convergence: Hollywood stock exchange
A professional said no one can tell you how well a movie will do, but the crowd does.
Challenges
(prospect theory) we overweight the incumbent by a factor of 3, and underweight the replacement by a factor of 3, so it has to be 10 times better or it'll be a niche technology.
Conclusion
via IT conversations
Malcolm explores why we can't trust people's opinions -- because we don't have the language to express our feelings. His examples include the story of New Coke and how Coke's market research misled them, and the development of Herman-Miller's Aeron chair, the best-selling chair in the history of office chairs, which succeeded in spite of research that suggested it would fail.
I know this is an oldie, but it's also definitely a goodie, and worth noting.
Alinea Image Gallery - Cuisine
Food has been around as long as humans. Restaurants date back to somewhere around the French revolution, when the sudden lack of royalty motivated chefs to convince ordinary folks to eat somewhere other than home. Cuisine was invented, and codified and Escoffier wrote it down. There were rules, and you were either good at it, or bad. Michelin could score it, because they knew where the points were won and lost.
But from El Bulli near Barcelona to WD-50 in New York to Alinea in Chicago, what and how we eat is being taken apart and reinvented, aided mightily by technology. Wylie Dufrense's signature dish is "Pickled Beef Tongue with Fried Mayonnaise and Carrot-Coconut Sunnyside-Up," if that helps illustrate the shift.
We that live in the Silicon Valley pride ourselves in living innovation, but it doesn't take much courage to be different in a place that "thinks different." To have the courage to embrace science in a profession that typically refuses the label art for craft, that times a process with gut and nose and measures with palms and fingers takes balls. To do so in Evanston, Illinois as Grant Achatz does, and still pack the house takes big talent. To make beauty and taste so elevated that even those who declare "it's not cooking" have to pause, as Anthony Bourdain did at the end of Decoding Ferran Adria, takes more than just creativity.
You have to prove there is a point to doing things differently. You have to prove it's valuable. And you have to prove it thoroughly. And every night. Consistently. Imagine being wacky and creative with impeccable technique and style 24-100 times a night, seven nights a week.
Molecular Gastronomy is slowly gaining respect. We of the valley should embrace it, for it is an edible manifestation of all be believe in: the urge to play and explore. Even if the thing doesn't need to be reinvented, we do so. Because we have got to know what could happen if...
if you could make a false caviar from eucalyptus tea, if you could make a ravioli not only stuffed with peas and encased in peas, if foie gras as a foam or ice chips.
Not because we are bored, but because we are curious. Not because we are jaded, but because we are hungry from stomach to brain.
I was hurt to hear Grant Achatz of Alinea announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth. If John Cage went tone deaf or Steve Jobs went mute you might know what it means.
Go look at the gallery of his dishes, and know you are only getting a tiny, tiny part of the story. Remember if you never eat there, you will never know what all the fuss was about. You can listen to a Cage record on an iPod but you can't eat Achatz's applewood ice cream unless you go there. In fact, due to the performance-nature of cooking, you may never know it. It can change with produce quality, the chef's boredom, or simply get replaced. More than any other art form, every meal is a precious moment shared between you and the chef, not to come again.
So let's applaud these chefs who live our values Then, please please please, go out and invent a way to record taste.
The Sony - Mylo is one of many devices that will force the phone companies to rethink their approach-- just as the widespread acceptance of digital cameras forced Kodak to rethink theirs.
Our (MIG's) new website sports a section for essays and presentations, Ideas. I'm extremely delighted by the intial offering, an essay by Scott on how some companies seem to be only able to innovate when the fat is in the fire, and John's presentation from IIT on what design can and cannot do for strategy. Do not miss these!
Saw Paul Saffo Thursday also, at Stanford. he's a wonderful, funny speaker. The way he talks about innovation was particularly enlightening-- he points out in the natural world innovation is called mutation, it's usually in response to extreme stressors, and is typically fatal.
He also talks about the unique nature of the silicon valley, particularly in its (tolerant-to-positive) attitude toward failure, and why that attitude is critical to innovation. Because the percentages are so poor on innovation succeeding, failure has to become a badge of honor or else no one will keep doing it. He points out in France bankruptcy is a shame that is spoke of in hush toed three generations later. In SV, if you haven't gone bankrupt, you aren't a player.
He also spoke quite eloquently on California being the land of dreams (using extensive historical precedent, starting with 15th century romantic novels about a amazon island named "California") and how critical dreaming was to our failure tolerance... it was far less mushy than it sounds.
Saffo also claims the reason so much innovation happens in the valley is because companies are badly managed, and gives the example of java and sun. The story goes, some engineers were working on java (with being assigned to it), and showed it to Scott Mcnealy who said, well, it's kinda interesting, but not useful, kill it. But the engineers kept working on it, and they showed it to him again later, and he said, well, it's interesting but we decided to kill it, so kill it. Then the engineers kept working on it off campus, they show it to him again, and he said "Hey that's great, I'm glad I backed it" Which is a bit of a joke, but his point about neglect and chaos being good mulch for innovation is a pretty insightful one, I think. Although the idea that (good management)=(controlling employees every activity) is a questionable premise, one he doesn't even fully subscribe to, since he spoke admiringly of David Kelly saying "hire well, hands off."
Saffo also talked a bit about how horrid many SV managers are: tyrants, managing by shouting not walking around, using the HR as a dating pool-- and nods to Steve Jobs, a genius but not a pleasant manager. But no connection of abuse and innovation is made. I'd like to see him explain how bad management beyond just neglect fuels innovation.
Doblin - Ten types of innovation with examples of each.
innovation is a byproduct of an unfettered pursuit of excellence.
"Thus we want to suggest an approach to watching customers that is less expensive and more expansive: Watch what a hypothetical customer would do. Since the customer is imaginary, this approach brings the costs way down. To encourage expansive thinking, we give our hypothetical customer extremely large resources -- if there is a solution to the problem, this person can find it. In short, we ask, What would Croesus do? "
This intially struck me as a strange variation on personas... rather than design for the least able, we start with design for the most able....
Gosh, Darwin Magazine is always so darn good: Are You Ready for Social Software? - explains social software in a manageable way.
I'm having a a good time playing with the newYahoo! Messenger Search IMV. I can see it being helpful to teach my family how to be better searchers. At work I play with it to look up random information as I chat-- such as when people tease me about my powerful sneeze, I can look up odd facts on sneezing. Try it-- I can imagine some really cool applications of it if we could take it still farther....
We (as in me and a team of amazing designers not we as in invisible corporate entity) just relaunched Yahoo! Shopping.
I'm pretty exciting. We've got the comprehensiveness of a froogle with the comparison power of a dealtime and we're working to reviews like amazon (we need more) including much-needed merchant reviews.
Plus I think it's got a simple crisp look, a slight updating of the classic Yahoo! style.
Search rocks, browse does a cool thing where we blend hierarchal classification into facets where appropriate (not unique, admittedly, amazon and a few others do it too)
And guess what? A sitemap on every page.
Check it out, leave feedback on our beta-baby!
Well, they are at it again. This is a neat little tool-- let's you flip back a couple products seamlessly. So I play with it, and many questions leap to mind.
Is this the right location? I found it, so maybe... but it is in a location that is about leavin your current task, shopping, and doing a differt sort of task-- going more global-- to checking an order, or checking out... why don't more people do task analysis on the interface? it works wonderfully for understanding what folks are paying attention to when. The location also requires the product images to be so small as to to be utterly unrecognizable.
This flavor of dropdown is surprising. At least they don't make it look like a traditional dropdown. Still, it's odd to see a list of items ended with a little "see also" unit.
The question is my usual one-- when a designer wildly flouts conventions, then what? I can't condemn it out of hand because I haven't seen it in the usability lab. Conventions are fine, but one never knows when breaking the rules will allow one to leap past the competition. Could this be such a leap?
And yet my experience watching hundreds of users interact with websites makes me guess that it won't work very well. On the other hand, Amazon is known to test everything-- though I've heard its A/B testing. They put out a design to a percentage of their users. And they watch clicks. Is it getting clicks?
But what do those clicks tell Amazon? That users like/understand/value the property? Or that the colors drew their eyes however breifly?
Quantititative for what, qualitative for why.. you don't want half the story...
I'll be interested in what this new widget does in the next few weeks. Will it change, grow, or disappear like amazon's earlier stacked tabs?
It doesn't take usability testing to tell me this is bad. Having looked at products, I go to "my account. And look what happens to my history.
Re-reading Textism » An Annotated Manifesto for Growth, thanks to the antman, and this hit me where I live:
"18 Stay up late. Strange things happen when you've gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world. "
"Translation: the best work is done, the most inspiration comes, from the only real muse: Fear. Especially the fear of what's due in the morning. "
My 100% date is monday. I still have one more chapter to write.
pray for me.
Much like my homepage, Audi Redesigned uses information modules that rearrange themselves upon browser sizing. James asks if this will make a difference to usability. I wonder.
Personally I think this is a difficult but effective way to use screen real estate. Why difficult? It makes designing into a game of tetris...
Go to CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminar and watch the first archived talk, Scott Klemmer's. Do not be fooled by the title, he demonstrated a new wall-sized GUI, a smart whiteboard. It blew me out of the water. The attention to understanding the nature of design that allowed this new tool to come into existence... well, that's the way it's supposed to be.
BTW, Terry's Winograd's seminars are open to the public. If you are ever in the area, it's well worth making an effort to attend.
More on Design Outpost project: the chi paper and the overview, with videos, etc.
Anyhow, it's not only a cool product, but a good talk as well for thinking about the nature fo the design process and how tools support modes of thinking. Oh, and it's in english, not academic jargon. At least I could follow it.
Excited!
From parc history "In 1970, Xerox Corporation gathered together a team of world-class researchers and gave them the mission of creating "the architecture of information." "
Jakob's been mourning the big research labs and looking at the list Parc complishments, I can see why Parc's quiet (and confusing) passing/mutating might be alarming. Will the new Parc be as innovative as the old? I hope so. It's always been my fantasy to work there, even though I know I have a deficit of letters after my name. I'd like it to continue on the hill to fuel those dreams, though.
During the research mania, tripped over this old column: Why good design comes from bad design. Ah yeah, thaz right.
I admit it: I read the entire Sunday comics section. The ones that make me laugh (rhymes with orange), the ones that don't (the rest)-- I even do the kiddie puzzles. Don't ask me why, I'm not sure.
So I did see Sunday's Cathy Strip . And as soon as I saw it I knew: opportunity is everywhere. Please go read it, and come back. I'll wait here. It'll just take you a sec.
Each and every frame is an opportunity. Each frame of that comic is a place where a product has failed, and a competitor can sneak in. Each problem is a chance to steal market share. Each problem is a opportunity to innovate...
Google is not an anomaly:
A blueprint for inventing and building innovative and successful user-centric products is a great talk I caught at Stanford a few weeks back, and forgot to post... the whole talk is online. Great stuff.
In the Economist.com
Who would have thought that the pen could stand--let alone need--any further innovation? In its long history, it has evolved from a sharpened stick scraping cuneiform on tablets of Sumerian clay to become, in turn, a quill, a metal-tipped implement, a ball-point and a felt-nib. What is there possibly left for it to evolve into?
I know this! A sharpened stick to scratch graffiti onto a palm. We're back to the beginning folks.
pretty cool article, anyhoo....
I worship Stephan Johnson. Like Don Norman, he always has interesting ideas
and a way to say it that make it mean something to you. it's not enough to
be a visionary; you have to be able to communicate your visions so they have
a chance of life in the world.
Technology Review - The Next Computer Interface
"The desktop is dead," declares David Gelernter.
thanks, Dan!
I've talked on this blog before about the importance of beign a best-mover rather than a first mover. Speed is not the route to success... being better is (as well as many other factors). Just found this article from a new book on this very subject: Will and Vision: How Latecomers Grow to Dominate Markets
"Consider for example the following:
Gillette entered the safety razor market decades after it began but has dominated it ever- since. Microsoft dominates many markets but has pioneered none. Amazon is the dominant but not the first Internet bookseller."
Recieved yet another notice I had become somebody's friend via amazon (hi brad!), and once again was perplexed to see this line
"Click on the link below to see Brad Lauster's About You area:"
and my first thought is "what has that brad lad been writing about me???" Oh, it's a slippery slope. Time to reread Peter's old chestnut from 98, Whose "My" Is It Anyway?.
C'mon Amazon, you're better than that.
Check out this new book from Curt Cloninger, Fresh Styles. An expansion of his terrific article Eyecandy from the Underground, the book showscases several distinctive home-grown web styles. It then goes through them one by one, deconstructs each, looks at comercial applications of each, then adds a few tips on how to "get that look."
I've long enjoyed his writing at ALISTAPART.com, especially the infamous "Usability Experts are From Mars, Graphic Designers are From Venus." He's articulate and lively, funny and straightforward-- kind of a steve krug if he was a designer. Fresh Styles is a great wake-up call for any designer whining for print, or anyone trying to design who can't quite break through a creative block... and its fun for kids like me who just like to dream of better design.
tasty stuff.
they get it: quite a while on the Jupiter site, there was a terrific article on relanches and the dangers that lie with them (such as massive user bailout at the horror of trying to learn something new, no matter how much "better" it was) One of the ways to mitigate this was to inform user of an upcoming redesign and solicit feedback on it. Amazon did it for their new navigation. Alta vista does it here
redesigns are in the air: adobe.com
from newmedia.com "BROADBAND Walkthrough: Adobe.com
(Thursday, 3 August 00) Adobe completely sheds its old corporate image
with a dramatic redesign of its Web site. Aimed at fostering a sense
of community, the site features expert QuickTime tutorials, interviews
with noteworthy designers, online galleries, forums, and a free
virtual portfolio area. By Jeff Burger."
Speaking of Jupiter, and their research compatriots, I'm reading "how to lie with statistics" that appears to have been written in the 30s and makes quite entertaining light reading.
also found this
Salon: From September 2, 1999; Jupiter shoots for the moon
and
Boston Globe: Fortunetelling.
Ideas, visibility, and marketing drive that image. Forrester's researchers are
paid based on a complicated formula that considers their involvement in
closing sales and appearances in the media.
lately the CHI-WEB list has been talking about exercises in pointlessness (sites that are pure marketing tools and provide no value to user)
included were
http://www.eu.levi.com/LEJ/
http://www.myautogarage.com
here is a resource to make your life saner: standard banner sizes
Okay, this has nothing to do with IA, I just want to be able to find this site when i feel like it, and I'm betting you will too (see the honkworm entry) 5k was a content to build engaging websites that would be 5k or under... and engaging they were. sometimes designers need constraints... (take that sapient, you slow loading dhtml monster)
