Skilful Minds is written by Larry Irons. It focuses on a range of topics related to experience design and management of products and services. 
How Not to Build a Customer Community
I’ve discussed the importance of customer communities to innovation, customer experience, and customer dialogue as an antidote to self-orientation by companies. David Weinberger recently posted about the Community 2.0 conference, pointing out the Starbucks suggestion box as a good example of customer community. David also pointed approvingly to the arms-length participation of Tivo in the independent forum, TivoCommunity.com, speaking to the point that communities of customers often form on their own. Coincidentally, I received an email recently soliciting me to join a community of Best Buy customers. I’m not an especially enthusiastic customer of Best Buy, but since CompUSA closed its doors in If you are selected to join the online community, you will discuss and share opinions on a variety of topics, react to questions posed by Best Buy and provide insight into your lifestyle. In addition, you will build rewarding friendships with other members, and receive periodic rewards in exchange for your participation. This is a unique opportunity for you to share your thoughts and ideas with Best Buy – only about three hundred people will be chosen. To see if you qualify, please click on the link below to complete a 10-minute questionnaire. The email solicitation sparked my curiosity and I clicked on the links to check out the survey it requires you to complete before learning whether you qualify. At the end of a lengthy sequence of questions, I learned that I just don’t fit into their community plans. Probably because I didn’t answer all the questions, such as what is your family income and other fairly personal items. It seems obvious to me that Best Buy doesn’t really want a community. Rather, they are selecting people for the equivalent of an online focus group representing one marketing segment. I’d suggest Best Buy rethink its strategy. Copyright © 2008 by Larry R. Irons
Collective Tags, Collaborative Tags, the Long Tail, and Enterprise 2.0
Thomas Vander Wal recently offered an interesting discussion of how collective understanding and collaborative understanding differ, and why those differences are significant to social software, specifically in relation to folksonomy. Thomas’ concern is that many observers, and he points to the Wikipedia entry for folksonomy specifically, conflate collective understanding and collaborative understanding when considering folksonomy. He notes that, even though the two terms are similar, their differences manifest as distinct capabilities in social software.
…the term folksonomy was coined to separate tagging done in a
collective manner (each individual's contribution is held separate
and collected or aggregated to build a fuller understanding, as the
tagging is done by and from the individual reading the media for
their own retrieval and is also share out with others). Collaborative
tagging does take place and there is a need for it in certain situations,
but it is not folksonomy.
First, Thomas makes a key point that remains unspoken when many people write about social software. Drawing from an earlier post by Jyri Engestrom, he points out that social software is largely about how people connect to objects to create sociality, i.e. social relationships. Jyri notes that the definition of a social network as a map of the relationships between individuals is the crux of a significant misunderstanding, since it is really a map of connections between individuals and objects of sociality. Skilful Minds noted something similar about the way museums use folksonomy.
Thomas builds nicely on Jyri’s point by indicating that, in the instance of collectives, individuals connect with an object by voicing or annotating their own individual take on it, by tagging it with their own characterizations. Collecting and aggregating those tagged connections results in folksonomy. However, the value of a collective understanding resulting from tags for urls in del.icio.us, for example, does not derive from its coherence around a common perspective. Rather, as Thomas notes,
The deep and rich value in tagging from a folksonomy perspective
is created in the collective structure of tagging with the individual
voices held separate around the understanding of the individual. The
ability for anybody and everybody to tag and annotate and object and
have their perspective captured is a very strong value for each individual
who has hopes of refinding the object in their own perspective and
context, as well as having others whom have similar understanding
find the same object.
Alternatively, Thomas points out that collaborative understanding focuses on establishing a consensus point of view. In the collaborative approach, individuals aim to develop a common understanding that captures many perspectives. Thomas observes that wikis provide an example of the social objects resulting from collaborative social software. In addition, in his point of view, reaching a collaborative understanding flattens the depth of our relationship to the social object considered. I’d suggest a different adjective than flatten myself, something more like thickens. Let me try to explain why.
As I understand Thomas’ point, the properties of tags resulting from individuals attempting to keep track of a social object on the Web that they want to find again provides more information value to a folksonomy, and to those individuals, than the properties of tags done by you or me with someone else's tagging in mind relative to the same object. It is more this is what I think about that than it is this is what I think about that compared to what you think about that. I’d suggest one of the ways to think about the distinctions Thomas has in mind is to consider them in terms of the distribution of ideas, or concepts, about the value of objects to both types of understanding, collective and collaborative.
The value of a collective understanding, such as folksonomy, is that it aggregates across what Chris Anderson calls The Long Tail with little to no bias towards the tall end, what Chris refers to as the short head, since people are not second guessing their concept of the object they tag; they aren’t “fitting” their tag to the understandings of others, or how others value the object. Now, admittedly, I am applying Chris’ approach in a slightly different way, but I think the use makes sense. For example, when I view Max Beckman’s Theater and offer to help others find it, the tags I offer come from my own sense of the value of the terms I would describe it with, rather than reviewing what others thought about Theater before I tag the object.
Alternatively, collaborative understanding, where the person doing the tagging does so while keeping the fit of their tags to the tags of others in mind, biases the aggregation process towards the short head of the long tail in relation to the value of the idea or concept of the object. For that reason, I’d suggest that collaborative understanding thickens rather than flattens the depth of our relationship to an object, i.e. its sociality.
The importance of the distinction, as Thomas clearly sees, is in its overall relationship and use by organizations, especially those attempting to implement Enterprise 2.0. I tend to view the issues involved along the lines offered in Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius, that successful innovative organizations develop ways of selecting good improvisations and spreading them throughout the organization. Supporting both collective understanding of objects and collaborative understanding of objects in the networks supported by social software is one way to accomplish the knowledge management task outlined by Sawyer.
First published 4/30/2008
Copyright © 2008 by Larry R. Irons
Onboarding, Social Capital, and Wikis
All organizations face a similar challenge when new employees come onboard. The new employee needs to learn the ins and outs of the organization. HR typically provides them an orientation packet and a point of contact for information. Their team, or department, management gives them an overview of their job and, if they are lucky, walks them around to introduce them to their co-workers and provides any virtual introductions, i.e. email announcements, needed to other members of the organization. However, providing new employees with access to the information needed to understand how to do their work is always a daunting challenge. Referring them to policies and procedures, whether manuals or online, remains the most common first step. Sometimes the new employee even receives on-the-job-training for a few days. Making the first few days of a new employee’s orientation smoother and making the curve of their time to performance steeper are challenges requiring ongoing innovation in the management of human capital, but also social capital. Commentators, no doubt, use the concept of social capital in many ways. However, the concept of people valuing their connections to others is a key feature common to most uses. It is not a far step to contend that onboarding involves developing social capital between new employees and other employees in the organization. The challenge is not amenable to a top-down solution alone with a focus solely on the human capital of the new employee. Several companies sell onboarding systems, with most focusing on top-down management of information about the human capital of individual employees. Stewart Mader recently offered a clever analogy to the airline’s boarding process, arguing that onboarding employees in organizations is a task that Wikis can help solve. He noted: The term ‘onboarding’ got me thinking that the process of getting new employees up to speed is remarkably similar to boarding an airplane. You, the passenger, are the new employee, and the airline is the organization. They need to get you - and everyone else - on the plane, in your seat, baggage stowed, seatbelt buckled, and ready for takeoff. Only then can the flight commence. The airline needs to communicate a certain amount of information to you and all the other passengers to get everyone working together toward the same goal: taking off on time. In the same vein, your organization needs to communicate a certain amount of information to new employees to get everyone working together toward the same goal: meeting the organization’s goals. Stewart observes that the situation requires the sort of individual and group communication that a wiki enables. Wikis allow employees to share the kind of information new employees really need. People who actually practice processes and procedures can offer descriptions of how they do them, from filling out paperwork to understanding the most recent marketing strategy. Meanwhile, over at Personal InfoCloud, Thomas Vander Wal, points out that Stewart’s analogy for the usefulness of wikis works equally well when considering mergers and other transitions in organizations. One large pain point in mergers and other transitions is the cultural change that brings new terms, new processes, new workflow, and disruption to patterns of understanding that became natural to the people in the organization. The ability to map what something was called and the way it was done to what it is now called and the new processes and flows is essential to success. For all their potential, developing cultural practices that encourage the sort of information creation and sharing that wikis make possible is a significant challenge relating back to that tricky concept of social capital. The challenge merits more conversation by those considering the use of Web 2.0 for enterprise concerns like onboarding.
ISO and User Experience
Tom Stewart indicates that the International Standards Organization (ISO) recently “decided to use the term user experience in the new version of ISO 13407 (which will be called ISO 9241-210 to bring it into line with other usability standards).” He is in a position to know, since Tom serves as Chair of the sub-committee of ISO responsible for the revision of ISO 13407 - the International Standard for Human Centred Design. The change might not seem significant at first glance, but its importance is easy to miss. Tom notes that one of the reasons for incorporating the term officially into the ISO standard lies in the fact that user experience is much closer to a description of what ISO means by usability than the simpler notion of “ease of use.” Stewart sums up the rationale behind the change succinctly: Easy is good but it is not enough. Focusing on ‘easy’ tends to marginalise it. In today’s competitive times, I can see an IT project manager saying “we would have liked to make the new billing system a bit easier but we really didn’t have time and we did not want to delay it”. I can see a hard pressed business manager saying “ok, it would have been nice but we didn’t want to wait”. However, if you use the ISO 9241-11 definition then the picture changes. Can you honestly imagine the project manager saying (out loud) “We know the system is not going to work but we wanted to be able to tick the ‘delivered on time’ box”? And can you imagine the customer saying, “Ok, it would have been nice if it had worked but we’d rather pay for a failed system than take a bit longer getting it right”? No, of course you can’t! Similarly, the ISO concept of usability allows aesthetic issues to be addressed, if they are important to the user. The change to the ISO standard ought to put to rest any continuing debate about whether a focus on user experience incorporates usability and subsumes it in a larger set of design and development practices. Focusing on the user experience, rather than usability per se, leads those interested in design and use to consider more than the product or service offering and the people using it. Usability and ergonomics typically apply to the physical user interface and interaction processes. Neither the traditional, experimental approach, nor the more recent “discount usability” approach, popularized by Nielson, deals effectively with engaging the user experience to learn about needs, wants, and beliefs. The goals of customers using products -- their needs, wants, and beliefs -- are of paramount concern for businesses that aim to gain efficiencies in product and service design and development, while selling products and services that work for users in pleasing ways. The ease of use of a product or service doesn’t matter if it goes unused. Thanks to Putting People First for the link to Tom’s post.
Leading the Business-Centered Learning Experience
Claire Schooley of Forrester authored a report this month, Learning Director: Are You Ready for your New Role?, that merits attention by everyone interested in how to manage the learning experience in any organization, but especially in corporate organizations selling products and services. Schooley’s major point leverages a key issue in the measurement of the learning experience’s effectiveness in organizations. She contends that the most significant challenge to current learning leadership in organizations is for the learning executive to take a holistic approach to employee training, rather than a course-centric approach. In doing so, Schooley contends, the following question is of key importance: “What are the critical areas of investment in people? Answering this question requires opening direct communication channels with top company executives to understand the business strategy and road map and then to align and create appropriate formal and informal employee learning experiences that support the road map.” Ever since Kirkpatrick formulated the four levels of measurement for gauging the effectiveness of training, the Holy Grail for the overall approach is Level 4 measurement. Measuring satisfaction with the learning experience, or reaction (Level 1), measuring knowledge gain, or learning (Level 2), and measuring increased performance, or behavior change (Level 3), though certainly challenging, were never considered as daunting as gauging the impact on the objectives of the organization (Level 4), or demonstrating a return on investment. For example, a 2007 e-Learning Guild survey on measurement practices reported that only 20% of the 900 respondents were able to do the type of learning measurement they want to do. Moreover, only 10.9% of Guild members reported collecting data that showed their measurement approach provides very high value to their organizations. It is not a stretch to contend that Level 4 measurement is as much about organizational learning and change management as it is about individual learning. In the e-Learning Guild survey on measurement practices, Roy Pollock characterizes this situation as the “Catch-22” for training and development. He notes that, “assessment of on-the-job application and results is as much or more an assessment of the transfer climate…as it is of the quality of the instruction” (p. 167). At least part of this basic and fundamental challenge lies in the failure of learning leadership to make business acumen an integral part of its management focus, and a component of all employees’ career development. Consider that the e-Learning Guild measurement survey showed that only 68.7% of respondents reported meeting with business line managers/stakeholders to define success criteria for learning projects. Schooley’s report offers a set of guidelines for learning leaders to use in aligning their resources with organizational strategy, even though she doesn’t mention the Level 4 measurement challenge. Schooley’s report offers insight into this quandary and outlines the leadership functions within the learning experience that require a deep understanding of the business supported. In other words, it is just not sufficient for leaders who manage the learning process in organizations to focus on measuring learning outcomes that remain course-centered. Meaningful learning outcomes are business-centered and require that level of measurement to remain relevant to the organization’s objectives.
Collaborating with Twitter: More than social networking?
I've started using Twitter lately. Not because I just learned about it. I've known about it for some time, but didn't need the added social networking juice it provides. For those of you who don't know about Twitter though, you can see a good overview in Lee Lefever's "Twitter in Plain English" (Thanks to SoulSoup2.0 for pointing out the video.)
Engagement and Curiosity
Johnnie Moore offers an interesting insight into the way curiosity and playfulness lead to engagement and learning. The insight comes from a story told by Donald Winnicott on how mothers and babies relate.
He [Winnicott] noticed that if a mother placed a spatula near the child, and waited, it was very likely the child would become curious about this new object and play with it. If, however, the mother tried to get the child to play with the spatula, the child was likely either to reluctantly play along, developing a passive kind of engagement. Alternatively, the child would react against this intrusion and become healthily defensive. ...For myself, I'd like to experiment a lot more with the careful placing of spatulas than shoving them in people's faces and expecting them to play.
OLED Solar Powered Lighting
Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology promises to disrupt design and production of a range of devices as applications using it move into the commercial market. Cell phones, monitors, laptops and televisions are close to availability for consumers. Lighting is one of those application areas with a lot of promise, but in a more distant timeframe. Charlie White over at DVICE points to a recent concept design that uses nanotech with photovoltaics to make windows using OLEDs. It is worth a look.