Interesting situation yesterday. We had been debating at length how to present a simple user interface to quite a complex function and have lost a fair bit of time to it.
We felt we had two choices. Leave it as is, which is sub-standard at best, or continue to try and improve it and spend considerable time on it. Our perspective had us stuck there. We thought we only had two choices.
Then Alex came along and echoed the rules that we are supposed to live by. Simplify it! Take it out. A light bulb came on. We took it out.
We actually had three choices but didn’t see it; leave something that doesn’t work that well as is, continue to invest in it, or don’t do it all as it isn’t worth the trouble of making anyone use it or anyone improve it.
This was a software situation but I think these rules apply to everything in all walks of life.
I just read this in Seth’s Godin’s new and free ebook – which I think is fantastic by the way – and my only complaint is that it is in a PDF and as such it is really hard to share ideas like the one below, which I cut, pasted and reformatted to get here.
“How many times have you paid your taxes? Ever get a receipt back telling you what you bought? You’re paying for something, right? Why is everybody arguing about taxes and deficits when they don’t know how their money is being spent?
What if you went to Lowe’s, and paid to improve your home, then Lowe’s did work but didn’t tell you what they did. Would you notice if they fixed faulty wiring?
It is time for us to rationalize the debate. Let’s parse the data and free the facts.
Imagine if we organized around meaningful data instead of vapid rhetoric. What if you could see how much you spent on your commute to work this year, or defending your country, or keeping your neighbor healthy?
What if there was as much data about John Barrow (D- GA) as there was about Manny Ramirez (LF-Dodgers). There are 750 players in Major League Baseball, and only 535 Members of Congress. Most of the data exists and what doesn’t we need to demand. The answer to healthy democracy lies not in rhetoric, but in our data.
Clay Johnson is the Director of Sunlight Labs for the Sunlight Foundation. He tweets at cjoh.”
So often we move to debate when we have no idea what the facts are and this example of the tax debacle is a perfect example. How easy would it be if we the purchasers of government could understand exactly what it is we are buying and what the costs are? Imagine if all parties could agree on the reality of the situation, devoid of emotional verbs and blame games, and consider how powerful it would be if we then discussed not what the problem of the situation is but rather the goal that we would like to achieve as it relates to the situation? In other words we all recognized and agreed upon what we want and we understood exactly what we have and from that position we could agree on the discrepancies and the actions that we would like to take to eliminate them.
Imagine if life worked like this in your home, at your work and in your government.
More on how a tablet, slate, or whatever your preference, could change how we work and play. This article doesn’t touch my favorite subject – how does a tablet impact digital signage – but it doesn’t take much imagination to read between the lines. Take a read!
via Five Ways Apple’s Tablet May Change the World – BusinessWeek.
I’ve harped on in the past on what the convergence of the mobile phone and digital signage could mean but now add the slate to that mix. One has to wonder if the stationary display – so called digital signage – will be relevant, or if proximity – opt in – display on your personal device will be the wave to ride. No answers, just wondering…
“Next year is shaping up to be the year of the slate computer”
via Why a Google Slate Could Dominate – GigaOM.
We use Jing for just about everything – daily development reviews, bug reporting, sales updates, financial overviews, you name it, we use Jing to help describe it. If you aren’t using Jing – you probably should, or something very similar.
And, I never knew that I could tell how many people saw my Jing. Very cool.
via How Many People Saw My Jing? – Jing Blog.
An even better way to deal with air travel insanity!
I think most international travelers would like to know who made the rule that bans wifi from international flights. Or the name of the other person who made the rule that you can't have a blanket covering your legs during the last hour of a flight. If we knew the bureaucrat’s name, could we lobby to have them fired for being ridiculous actors in security theater?”
via Seth’s Blog: Put a name on it.
Read the whole post and if you have ADD like me and just can’t do it, then read the 4th paragraph and if that is just too painful meditate on the last line of the 4th paragraph.
“show me what individual people whose opinion I respect think is cool simply by allowing me to observe them appreciating”
If you want to engage and leverage a crowd, the tribe, or any other host of over-used hype words that all mean “get allot of people behind you” I think this is the key. I think we are moving from “what’s popular” to “what do those that mean allot to me think about this”.
via Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: Weblog: The Long Tail of Humor.
Inevitable.
The 2009 Super Bowl attracted an impressive 95.4 million viewers (approximately 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes) and many of those watch the commercials as attentively as the football game. By contrast, in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company.
Pepsi’s Big Gamble: Ditching Super Bowl for Social Media – ABC News.
How long before digital signage as the primary medium becomes digital displays that augment, or are secondary to personal / mobile displays? I think it is happening faster than we think and it is coming from a wave of technology that today has nothing to do with what we have traditionally called the digital signage industry.
Twitter acquires geo-enabled API provider Mixer Labs
Instead of the “where” of the tweet “earthquake” how about “at the mall”, “hungry”, “at office”, or “looking for a blue dress” and the mall map becomes available to guide you to what you want and the stationary displays show where you are, restaurants and their specials near you appear and greet you at the door – and they know what you like, the office informational displays greet you and show you the metrics you are most interested in before returning to their standard loop and photo’s of blue dresses that are available near you and for order over the web scroll on by on your phone.
For those that fear the new order and have privacy concerns – it’s all on an opt in basis only! No minority report retina scans!
