Pecha Kucha Vancouver Vol. 7 from Dorian Taylor on Vimeo.

http://uxmag.com/articles/the-psychologists-view-of-ux-design

Creating software products is an interesting process. The best products that I have created have been because everyone is passionate about the end result and everyone envolved has a strong opinion. This might sound like a hellish torture to put ones self through because there are generally disagreements that need to get vetted through confrontation. However, there are many reasons that I feel it creates a better product.

1. Too many of the right type of cooks is a good thing

When you get a bunch of smart people together to make something who all have strong opinions can be very frustrating. Everyone sees things differently and thinks that their perspectives are correct. This can create a highly charged situation where ideas live and die by their ability to be justified. What kind of cooks are best for this type of scenario? The types of cooks who can defend their ideas but know when an idea makes more sense than theirs, even if its defense can’t be articulated better than yours. You want the types of ‘cooks’ who understand that at the end of the day everyone is there to create something cool and just want to be heard. Disagreements can’t be taken personally and emotions must be maintained with in reasonable bounds.

2. Disagreements make a product better

Disagreeing with a feature, solution, or design is a great thing that only makes the end product better. It makes the end product better because it forces one to justify it’s existence in the software. If it’s reasoning isn’t obvious or can’t be justified then most likely the feature or solution doesn’t work.

3. Everyone should be passionate about what they are doing

Anything you are working on, if you want it to be great, you should be passionate about. When people are passionate about the products that they are working on, they will have opinions. Opinions generally mean that there has been some thought put into how something should manifest itself. You want people who have put thought into solutions because thats where answers come from. If someone doesn’t care about what they are working on and are indifferent about a decision, it’s not good for the product and doesn’t help make progress. Compare that to asking someone how something should work and getting an opinionated answer backed up by their reasoning.

4. Selling your justifications and solutions go hand in hand

The average Joe would not realize how much sales goes into creating a product. You have to sell everyone your working with on the feature set, the architecture, the design, the colors, the interaction methods, the list goes on and on. In most cases the ability for one to sell their peers on an approach is what separates someone who’s ideas get implemented vs someone who’s ideas get shot down.

5. Consensus building with your opinion

Building consensus can be tough to accomplish. It’s a pain when you have a successful approach and are unable to correctly articulate why it’s better with out saying, “thats just my opinion”. You can’t build consensus with opinions period. Everyone has opinions and opinions matter as much as Bill Clintons thoughts on Particle Physics. Dont’ ever say, “thats just my opinion” if you ever want to build consensus. You need to justify your reasoning and say, “this way is better because of X, Y, and Z”.

Consistency
Clarity
Continuity
Communication
Consideration
Compassion

I was thinking about what the next generation of technologist is going to look like. Not in terms of physical attributes, but in terms of behavior and thought. How are they going to act in a way that differentiates them from the herd. What truly makes them different in a world where education and intelligence is not as hard to come by?

To me what makes the Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Steve Jobs (Apple) different from the average CEO is a vision of the future. It seems that today trying to find someone who is Creative and Intelligent is an easy task. Trying to find someone Creative, Intelligent and Passionate is a little harder but not impossible. When you add Vision to the mix of personality traits is when the differentiation happens.

Vision of the future is something that man kind has always been after. There have been mystics, shaman and many figures across time and culture that have claimed to see the future. While I am a skeptic of humans ability to foresee the future, I do think that there are people who’s brains work in a different manor. I believe that there are people who have an understanding and intuition of behavior that can be pretty accurate.

I have found through out my career that there are a lot of Passionate, Creative and Intelligent people who cannot seem to figure out where to apply themselves. They need a leader with the plan that they are unable to create for themselves. Once a leader comes a long with a plan for the the Passionate, Creative, and Intelligent people find a successful way to apply themselves. When a leader comes along and can say, “we are at point A, we need to go to point B”, navigating to point B is an easier task. Its finding a good B that takes the vision.

I feel in the future that technology companies will continually need to hire Visionary leaders in their upper ranks to compete. They will need a plan for the future that is crafted by someone who has an idea of how that future might shape up. Companies with out a vision of the future will flounder because they won’t be able to produce parts of the foundation that society will need.

My advice is look for the people with the intuitive compass who have an understanding and ability to articulate their vision of the future.

I think that a lot of companies like to say that their product is “innovative” because currently it is a marketing buzz word. Green has gone the way of the wooly mammoth and now marketeers trying to make their products seem more appealing by trying to tell the world that their products are Innovative. So I was in the shower thinking about companies that brand themselves as “innovative” and my mind quickly floated into defining what Innovation is and what it is not. Then I started thinking about the relationship between Innovation and Invention, and how it relates to Evolution in a product state. I then drew a model on the shower door that ended being a pretty effective way to visualize how I saw the states of various products. I wanted to come up with a visual model that would help articulate how a business could actually be innovative.

The Kris Davis Model for Product State:

At first glance this may or may not make a whole lot of sense, so let me start off by defining my vocabulary so we can see it from the same level.

Axis Definition:

• Investment is defined as a companies time and resources.
• Risk is defined as the potential for the loss of time, money and or image.
• Research & Development defines the type of focus that the investment must have.

State Definition:

• Stagnant defines a product that receives no enhancements or features as time progresses.
• Evolution defines the natural growth of a product driven by customer requests, internal ideas, market conditions or parody of competitor products.
• Innovation defines the name of products or product features that meet the needs of customers that they didn’t know they had and that have not come from natural product evolution. Innovation is easy to explain because everyone understands it’s value.
• Invention occurs when a product or product feature is brought into existence from “thin air”. A problem is solved that is made from a seemingly non-logical association.

Market Potential in this case, is the measurement of receptivity. People tend to have a low receptivity to products that have not changed at all since their inception. In contrast to Inventive products where the light bulb goes off in peoples minds and they can instantly see that there is huge value in a product.

Where do I think that the typical company resides? I think that most of the companies out there are simply in the standard evolutionary state. Their products and features are driven by: customer requests, competitor features or market demands. I don’t think that any good business can live in the stagnant arena for too long. However, I also don’t feel that many have a grasp on the reality of creating products that are innovative. Innovative products are a little more risky than what a company is used to. It takes time and resources put into research and development and is riskier; although there is a higher reward for getting it right.

I am going to be continually developing this model, so if anyone reading this has an idea of what can be improved in it, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

All organizations big and small will all come to a point in which a very complex problem will arise. These problems can range from logistical challenges to operational challenges to technological challenges. There hasn’t been one company that I have worked for that did not face an overwhelmingly complex issue. However, I feel that human nature doing what human nature does attempts to deal with complex issues in the wrong way.

It has been my experience that when faced with a problem people tend to handle complex issues in an oddly similar manor. First the human logically says, “I can’t figure this out, Freddy is pretty smart, I will get him and we can figure this out together”. This snowball effect happens until there is a room filled with bright individuals all working to solve the same complex issue. A solution is proposed then shot down, someone in the right corner of the room says something that seems smart that gets appended to by someone in the left corner of the room. After some rounds if iteration, a solution starts to come together. At the next meeting, the conversation continues and the solution gets more complex but seems to solve the problem. Until all the smart people either get tired of thinking or an agreed upon solution is arrived.

What is wrong with this? You may be thinking that this is a good way to solve the problem. Get a bunch of smart people in a room and hammer it out, it is totally logical. The problem is that the method of solution is group thought.

Group thought presents many challenges. At first it seems like a great way to solve problems but looking beyond the surface some nasty human behaviors surface. There are several truths behind a lot of the way that people act and think.

1. No one likes to be wrong

2. No one likes to get blamed

3. People tend to be adverse to changing the status quo

When you get a lot of people in the room all solving the same problem, what happens is that everyone in the room tend to see the situation in the light of the loudest speaker. And responsibility is distributed across everyone; there for no is looks dumb or gets blamed for the decision. With these facts of human nature working to distract from the complex problem, group thinking tends to not be an effective way of arriving at a solution. Not to mention they are expensive for companies to pay people to sit in a room thinking.

If getting smart people in a room causes more harm than good in solving a complex problem, what ever is a person to do? I have several steps that I recommend to solve the illusion of complexity.

1. Re-frame the problem – Take the problem and think of various ways to re-frame the problem. What this does is allows the issue to be seen from different viewpoints that could potentially shed light and lead one in the correct direction for solving this issue.

2. Look for a metaphor already in existence – For me it is very helpful to find metaphors in existence that mimic the nature of the problem. Looking for metaphors and analyzing the metaphor is a great way of helping to put the issue into another context (re-framing).

3. Draw it out -Being visual creatures, complex issues are always better when presented in a visual way. Through flow charts, graphs, scenarios, ect; one can look for relationships with in the situation that can shed light on what the heart of the issue is.

4. Dissect the problem – The illusion of complexity comes from context and size. While the first 3 steps deal with changing and manipulating the context of an issue, dissecting the problem deals with reducing the size of a complex problem. Taking a big problem and making it small is an art form in and of itself. Analyzing a problem in a smaller world then figuring out how those smaller solutions interact at the holistic level is a great exercise that can yield a great solution.

5. Simplify the solution – At first your solution might resemble a redwood tree. Large and overly complex, but you know what, it solves the problem. So now it is time to simplify your solution and make it more effective at fixing the heart of the problem.

6. Simplify the solution - Simplify again, push and push to find the most elegant solution.

7. Simplify the solution – One more reduction and your redwood should resemble a toothpick. The smallest, least complicated, and most simple solutions are always the most effective.

Complexity is an illusion, the illusion is a matter of context and size.