t-minus

I was on campus today taking care of some business and I had occasion to indulge myself with a Red Bull. While I stood there drinking, I started to think about which direction the label was facing. I could say I did this because I’m a designer and I’m always thinking of such things, but the truth is that I was concerned with how I looked holding that can in my hand—I’m narcissistic like that. I mean, this is an expensive soft drink; movie stars drink Red Bull. So can people tell that I’m drinking it? Do I look cool?

In this case, the answer was no. The label was facing me, so people were getting an eyeful of Nutrition Facts. I thought to myself, “what a wasted opportunity”. But as I began to think about it, the problem was more complex than I’d first thought. It’s a narrow can. There’s only enough room for a label on one side. So which is more important? Having the label face the customer so it builds association from the shelf to the first drink? Or facing the label outward, to advertise to others that someone is drinking the brand? I think it’s a tough choice. Fish or cut bait, right?

As I quaffed my caffeinated corn syrup, I turned this problem over in my head, but I couldn’t come up with a solution that would satisfy both goals. Everything I thought of was too complicated. When I came back to the refrigerated case for more “research”, I stumbled upon a profound solution, Zen-like in its perfection.

Do nothing.

What I noticed, as I looked over the cans, is that the placement of the mouth is completely random. I assume this is just a quirk of the manufacturing process. On average, the label will face out half of the time and face the drinker half of the time. Pretty elegant, I must say.

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human. - Alan Turing

In my first post on users, customers, etc. as friends, I touched on the idea that anyone who gives money, time, or positive attention to your business should be considered a friend and treated as such. There are no users or customers from this vantage point.

Some may consider this a noble (but unattainable) goal or just too fluffy an idea to implement in any meaningful fashion. I’ll actually provide some real world examples in my next few posts, but first I want to touch on the state of the nation, how things tend to go in our daily business interactions.

International Business Machine

Most companies are not capable of passing a Turing Test when it comes to their daily interactions with customers. Sometimes sales does ok. They put their seemingly friendly people up front with lots of latitude to “make” the sale, but customer support, “keeping the sale,” usually drops the ball.

I know I’m talking to a human being at the counter or on the phone, but, for the most part, their company processes get in the way of allowing them to address my concern. The customer service representative’s actions are strictly limited to a particular set of responses. Often, these responses come without emotion, as they have repeated the same phrases thousands of times.

The company has tricked you. They placed a human being where they would have preferred a machine. Still, before you is a human being, someone with real ability to help, but they’re limited to a small number of programmatic options that may not actually resolve your issue in a meaningful fashion. You, as the “customer,” act politely and hope the person before you has some leeway beyond what the manual says, but this is certainly the exception. They can offer you two options, if you don’t like it, well, “this is our policy.”

Somewhere along the line, shortsighted companies thought this type of interaction was appropriate. They could pay less skilled individuals to recite the script. Furthermore, due to internal marketing department decisions, they might truly believe “uniformity of experience” is more important to their company than actually helping people.

These companies are clearly deluded. People may sign up for your service because of price or benefits, but people quit because of poor treatment, and they recognize when they’re being “run through the machine.” I would suggest it’s the secret number one reason why people stop doing business with a company.

Ask yourself, how many times have you stopped going to a store because of very poor treatment? On the other side, how many times have you frequented a store because of excellent treatment, even if the store is more expensive or in an inconvenient location? People do business with people they feel good about and, to put it in typical business terms, customer retention is always cheaper than customer acquisition.

Failing the Turing Test

My cable internet service has been off-and-on for months. I call the cable company’s national customer support center. They ask me the same scripted questions they do every time, in the same order. They tell me they are sorry my internet is down. I don’t believe them. Because the issue recurs on such a regular basis, I know the problem is greater than just my connection and try to express this to them. They tell me they are only authorized to schedule a technician to come to my home, so that’s what they do. The tech (a contractor) comes out, fiddles with the box at the back of the house, and viola, I have service again. Rinse and repeat every two weeks.

What I didn’t realize is there’s a silent game of musical chairs going on in my building. The tech is just pulling out someone else’s connection and plugging me in. Then my neighbor calls customer service. They come out, plug her in, and rip me out. The cable company has spent hundreds of dollars, far more than the total bills for the whole building, for temporary fixes. The only people authorized to really get this fixed, the techs (contractors remember), don’t give a damn, because they are paid to fix things in people’s homes, not to improve the network as a whole. If the network was great, they wouldn’t get as many support calls, and they’d make less money.

At this point, the company has yet to convince me it is run by humans - Turing Test flunked. There isn’t a single person I can call to get this fixed in a long term way. I can’t call the contractors directly – they only take orders from the company itself. I can’t call customer service, they can only schedule contractors to come to my home, and then it’s more musical chairs. This company is getting used by its program. It’s in a loop. They are losing money on me and everyone else in the building, thus driving up costs for all subscribers.

So, is there a better way? I’ll take that challenge. In fact, the same company is already doing it; they just don’t know it yet (actually, because it’s considered against the rules). But it’s saved them time, money, and my good opinion. What’s not to like about that.

Next time, we’ll get to the meat - if your friends were in charge of resolving your situation, how would they have done it? For that, we’ll have to head to Brazil…

All things considered, this is significantly less inflammatory than it might be perceived, for at least three reasons (not including the fact that it has been asserted by GM himself before):

1. The computer-industry-vs-the-speed-of-sound principle: the plain fact is that we’re still talking about 10 to 15 years - “an eternity in technology time” - of exponential increase in the transistor budget for an integrated circuit. (All good curves must come to an end. Ars Technica, September 19, 2007.)
2. The oh-yeah-we’re-still-dealing-with-the-physical-world-here principle: “Something like this can’t continue for ever. If you extrapolate too far you always end in disaster, and we are approaching the size of atoms, and that’s a pretty clear limitation.” (Moore’s Law: at least 10 to 20 years before the limit is reached. Electronics Engineer Magazine, September 20, 2007)
3. The brute-force-isn’t-the-only-strategy-we’ve-got principle: Or, the fact that we’re a creative species, and maybe we’ll continue to dream up clever ways to use all this brute power: “even then that’s not the end of the progress as by then engineers will have a budget of literally millions of transistors on a chip for their designs.” (Ibid.)

This is also interesting for those of us on the software side of things. When we reach a point where either a) we can’t just get more power to fuel inefficient code, operating systems or frameworks or b) chip design ceases to be a math problem and starts to look more like architecture, and thus has to start thinking software earlier and earlier, it’s going to be a game-changing moment.

EEE: With computing performance growing so fast, does the software hold us back?

GM: People can’t develop and debug software properly until they have the hardware so software does tend to lag the hardware. I certainly want a simple interface although I don’t know what it looks like. I think we are losing ground a bit in general purpose computing — its not through a lack of effort but they want to add so many new features its hard to simplify it, but it works pretty well.

Here are some nice trading cards from Intel about Moore’s Law:

The debate that never seems to go away resurfaces over at Copyblogger. To “click here” or not to click here. That is the question.

Wouldn’t read more, continue to the next page, get a free ice cream sundae, something… anything, more accurately describe this link, thinks the good-natured web designer.

Well, maybe… just because “click here” proved successful in this circumstance doesn’t mean we should start screaming it from the top of the user-friendly mountain. To recount the click-through results from the original study:

• “Click to continue”: 8.53%
• “Continue to article”: 3.3%
• “Read more”: (-)1.8%

As with any experiment, these results are only valid under the particular conditions tested, in this case, a marketing newsletter. I would conjecture “click” directives are very successful with certain audiences and virtually abhorrent to others. The most obvious example: content aimed at web designers.

Web designers have often considered these sorts of links beginner’s mistakes, which would likely devalue the trustworthiness of such content in their eyes.

Do some A/B tests for yourself. See what works best for the particular blend of folks visiting your sites. They might just be the sort of people that find eat an octopus now far more compelling. Mmmm. Octopus.

Since they were acquired by Yahoo, Flickr has implemented a censorship scheme that is so poorly thought out, it’s offensive.

If you use Flickr, you are obligated to tag anything in your photostream which might be offensive. Later (at night, while you are sleeping, no doubt– like the tooth fairy, but with uncompromising moral fiber), someone at Flickr will look at your account and verify that you have correctly tagged your offensive images. If you do not do this, or Flickr disagrees with your self-policing, your account is labeled as ‘unsafe’. Oh, and anyone else can decide to come along later and tag your images as offensive, too. Presumably, this could render you ‘unsafe’, as well.

I give them credit for making the whole scheme usable on their site, but the underlying logic is flawed. I would need a chart to graph the *numerous* ways this could potentially get under people’s skin. Indeed, this is a no-win for Flickr.

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = …

In short, the ‘unsafe’ label is digital McCarthyism. You are expected to tell on yourself; the company is watching to make sure you do; if your neighbor tells on you, you tell on your neighbor. As a result of their new policy, Flickr not only has to expend a lot of time and energy policing images, but they also have to settle disputes about abuse and mislabeling.

Folksonomies are like markets: built from self-interest and choice. Flickr doesn’t seem to understand this. Now, you are compelled to tag your images, not to help yourself, but because Flickr has made it your job. Congratulations, you’re at work!

Moreover, everyone’s standard of decency is different—how could this arrangement possibly work? It’s just inviting acrimony into the community. If you own a website and you must censor, I recommend doing so monolithically. Blame China. Never trust your community standards to an anonymous social network. Flickr needs to read some John Gabriel.

Worst of all is that this arrangement isn’t even necessary. I will get to that in a bit.

My Yahoo Profile Says I’m 129 Years Old

The ‘unsafe’ label itself is a bad idea for so many reasons. First of all, Flickr is rendering a negative judgment upon the user. Never a good idea. Why is there a need to get personal? They’re just asking for trouble. Tag the photos, not the user.

Why is the label a big deal? When you share your graduation photos with your grandma, try explaining to her why your account is ‘unsafe’. To get rid of the label, how many photos do you have to fix? What did people find offensive? How are you ever going to remove the taint? Unclean!

In practice, it isn’t even good censorship, just Yahoo covering their backsides. So people have to show proof of age to see your photos, like that’s going to stop anybody. Everybody knows the information on profiles is garbage. They’ve protected no one. All they’ve done with the censor-tag is show kids where the good stuff is kept.

As far as I’m concerned, the only self-censorship a user should have to perform is deciding whether or not to upload something. It’s the only thing that works. It’s the only thing that is fair to everyone. Once something is on the web – even if it’s filtered, tagged, locked away, or whatever—nobody can claim to have control over it. Flickr should know better than to promise as much.

I’m sorry, but if you haven’t figured this out yet, let me lay it down for you: If you surf the internet, you must resign yourself to the fact that you are going to see some f*@!ed up s#!!. Daily.

Tag it. Tag it Good.

Worse, Flickr already has a working solution, they just don’t know it (or they really want me to make my chart). They should ask for more descriptions in tags, not judgments. Properly implemented, this is a better way to filter questionable content. Flickr doesn’t need a ‘censor this’ tag. They should use the ones they’ve already got. Do you find [body part n] offensive? Okay, no [body part n] pics for you. What about “kittens”? Okay, let’s look at some kittens.

Flickr does not need to take it upon themselves (or ask their users) to be the moral authority. What they need to do is allow users to filter what they see based on neutral content tags, while encouraging the community to add descriptive tags and ensure their accuracy. The quality of the database (and thus, filtering) would improve and it would prevent things from getting personal. It’s not a perfect solution, certainly. But if Flickr wants to keep things transparent with its community, it’s as close to a win-win as it gets in this touchy area.

Not to give any more attention to the pretty girl at the party (and since Nick was relatively complementary to them yesterday), but what were they thinking? Every single developer I know is mystified by Apple’s lack of an API for the iPhone. As gorgeous as it is, even at the lower price point, I won’t consider buying one – at least until I see the Google phone, which won’t be half as pretty, but will surely have an easy-to-implement API.

Hacked Anyway

Perhaps the most standard objection to an API-less system is that it will be hacked anyway, which has been proven time and time again. Nothing will stop a sixteen year old, hyped on new-fashioned energy drinks, from having their way with your device. The guy who is going to take down the entire AT&T network when he turns all the iPhones into voice-spam spewing zombies is going to do it anyway. The rest of the development community (any device’s biggest fans and earliest adopters) is incidentally criminalized, which doesn’t breed goodwill. Don’t taint your relationship with your biggest product evangelists.

Giving in to a Better Experience

So, what’s a better business strategy given the inevitability of the hack? There’s only one course of action (you probably guessed it from the title of this post). You must accede and provide an API.

Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization provides this bit of wisdom (albeit about the problem of homelessness, but perfectly applicable here):

Engineers can’t afford to fail as consistently as politicians and bureaucrats, so they prefer accidence to resistance (as I do). For example, they know that no structure can be made rigid enough to resist an earthquake. So, rather than defy the earthquake’s power by building rigid structures, they accede to it by building flexible ones. To accede is not merely to give in but rather to give in while drawing near; one may accede not only to an argument but to a throne. Thus the earthquake-proof building survives not by defeating the earthquake’s power but by acknowledging it – by drawing it in and dealing with it.

With your newly minted API in tow, you can court the developer community (again, arguably the single most powerful voice in determining the success of your device, aka the earthquake), working closely with them to make sure all the crazy things they want to do are done in a way acceptable to you.

In this way, you avoid getting lumped into the defective-by-design category (and if you can name me one def-by-design product that has succeeded long term, I’ll buy you a cherry soda).

You also get billed as a people-friendly company. People really do fall in love with companies, but love is fickle, and will fade if corporate interest seems to trump consumer satisfaction.

Free Killer Applications

Most importantly, the most popular applications, indeed probably the application that tips people’s wallets over the edge, will come from outside developers.

I have faith in Apple. It’s quite likely AT&T killed an API advocated by Apple (pure speculation here). But if Apple or AT&T ever doubted, look at Facebook. The time, attention, and money devoted to their API are far beyond my meager imagination. Of course, only a small percentage of these applications will be worth anything, but the time and attention paid to Facebook in the process are invaluable and one of the major reasons Facebook is the fastest expanding social application. I can’t even imagine what iPhone sales would have looked like with an API on day 1, but I hope to find out on day 101.

For my inaugural post, I’d like to talk about the significance of something which I feel was overlooked in last week’s announcement of the new iPods– the completion of the switch from Apple’s signature double-shot plastic to aluminum cases.

Why do I blog this?

At Go flight!, I specialize in the parts of our projects that people are most likely to see: graphics, product housing, packaging, etc. As a designer, at a minimum, I can be expected to fulfill the functional requirements of a product and make it look good, but I submit that a well-designed surface can deliver much more.

To illustrate this, I’d like to talk you through what Apple has done with their new product housing, to illustrate how a change in material addresses not only how their product looks, but a range of other design issues, as well.

Recapping Apple’s new rollout: aside from the iPhone/iTouch form factors, the latest updated models included a newly-squarish nano and the original iPod rebranded as ‘Classic’. What’s missing from all of these models? Plastic bodies. In fact, aside from the MacBooks (which are next up for a redesign– mark my words), there is very little plastic to be found on any of Apple’s products these days. Even their website has gone aluminum:

Image Credit: FFFFound! via: swissmiss.

It’s hard not to catch the switch; Gizmondo certainly did. But no one is asking “why?”.

The most obvious thought is that this is part of a new branding strategy, and that is certainly true. Apple has made a conscious choice to move away from the once-innovative uses of plastic that previously defined their products. And why shouldn’t they? Look who is using a double-shot process these days: Nintendo (the DS), Sony (the new PSP slim), and Microsoft (the Zune). There are plenty of other examples out there, but these are big companies with big design budgets and all they can think to do is copy the iPod. Apple had to distance itself not only from direct competitors but from competing aesthetics that chip away at its brand.

Welcome to the Metal Age

So aside from changing their looks, what does the switch to aluminum accomplish for Apple? A few things:

A greener Apple. Apple has been taken to task recently for its less-than-green practices, so I’m surprised that they didn’t tout the reduced environmental impact of aluminum. As a metal, it is much easier to recycle and less toxic than polycarbonate/ABS (i.e. it’s not made out of oil and chemicals). Stretching a bit further, it uses less material overall and weighs less, so it may take less energy to ship (if nothing else, it cuts Apple’s costs). I’d estimate that it takes about the same amount of energy to produce, however. Of course iPods are still filled with toxic components, but on the outside (you know, the side people care about), they’re a little more earth friendly.

Thinner is More. Apple likes to tout how thin each new version of the iPod is compared to its predecessor, and it’s a good tactic. Even when you’re getting the same technology as before, a thinner form factor can make you feel like you’re somehow getting more. Nowadays people expect each version to be a little lighter and thinner. Apple may have been up against a wall, because plastic can only get so thin before it gets brittle. Moreover, Apple’s signature look uses two layers, so the best they can do is double the minimum. Hence, I believe, the switch. Metal can deliver the same performance at thinner gauges than plastic. Anodizing raises the surface somewhat, but it’s negligible. In the end, for at least one generation, Apple can keep up its shrink streak. I’m going to assume that they can’t shave off much more material and are going to count on smaller components to slim down the iPod into the foreseeable future. That, or release new form factors that can’t be compared as easily.

Metal = Quality. iPods have a reputation for accumulating scratches. Of course, the stainless steel back essentially accentuates them, but people don’t want to see them all over the front of the case. Anodized aluminum is more resistant to wear and scratches than plastic, so it may cut down on visible signs of iPod aging. It dents, but doesn’t shatter. It’s got to feel more solid, too. It doesn’t stain as easily or discolor over time like plastic can. Finally, metal makes them look tougher, and that’s just badass.

Cracking the Surface

I haven’t seen anyone else out there scrutinizing the aluminum cases; mostly because Apple didn’t break anything by making the switch. This is critical. While the outside appearance of Apple’s products has changed, the performance of the new aluminum designs compromises nothing and, in fact, keeps the brand moving forward in more subtle ways.

So you see, surfaces can be deep. The best design is never superficial. Customers can often see right through it, and, more importantly, it’s a missed opportunity to do more.

The New York Times posted a downright thought-provoking technology-related article yesterday. John Schwartz’s Who needs hackers? touches a topic succinctly encapsulated by ex-Bell Labs network-head Peter G. Neumann, now principal scientist at SRI International: “We don’t need hackers to break the systems because they’re falling apart by themselves.”

This thing is full of memorable insights, including this post’s titular sentiment (from the mouth of Andreas M. Antonopoulos), who also notes that, “on the scale we [attempt to anticipate failure in increasingly complex computer systems], it’s more like forecasting weather.”

Former NASA software engineer, John B. Garman notes, in reference to the famous 1981 NASA shuttle-launch bug, “it is complexity of design and process that got us (and Murphy’s Law!). Complexity in the sense that we, the ‘software industry,’ are still naïve and forge into large systems such as this with too little computer, budget, schedule and definition of the software code.”

The best answer, Dr. Neumann says, is to build computers that are secure and stable from the start. A system with fewer flaws also deters hackers, he said. “If you design the thing right in the first place, you can make it reliable, secure, fault tolerant and human safe,” he said. “The technology is there to do this right if anybody wanted to take the effort.”

My personal belief is that this sentiment - in a perfect world - applies not only to, say, global telephony and ICBM guidance systems, but also to your next web application or five-Class desktop app. If nothing else, this article is full of “nine out of ten dentists agree” expert ammunition for the next time you get into a scheduling fight with your management or your client.