Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis
A nice story from the NY times on a Kenyan product called Ushahidi. This is an informant mapping tool and works like this: anybody on the ground can call a cell number and and point out a location, it could be of a rape or a terrorist hideout, and all of this information is aggregated and represented on a map. If there are many pointers to a particular location, troops can be called in to look. Brilliant stuff.
“When the Haitian earthquake struck, Ushahidi went again into action. An emergency texting number was advertised via radio. Ushahidi received thousands of messages reporting trapped victims. They were translated by a diffuse army of Haitian-Americans in the United States and plotted on a ‘crisis map.’ From a situation room at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, outside Boston, Ushahidi volunteers instant-messaged with the United States Coast Guard in Haiti, telling them where to search. When the Chilean earthquake struck, Ushahidi deployed again.”
interesting Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 15, 2010
Personal pronouns: It’s okay to own your web copy
Wonderful post from Brain Traffic on using personal pronouns in your web copy. I do agree, at times, it can be difficult to sell this in some organisations, but I also agree, it may be just a matter of adopting or getting comfortable with a style.
Using personal pronouns may sound like a simple, common-sense web writing best practice. Speaking directly to users with the word “you” is something most companies get on board with easily enough. But those same clients often ask us to avoid self-referential pronouns like “we,” “our,” and “us” in their web copy.
web content Add tag Permalink | Friday, March 12, 2010
15 Desktop & Online Wireframing tools
“Like most things today, the world of interaction design moves quickly. Although a pen and notebook may suffice when it comes to simply jotting down ideas, planning a series of website screens can sometimes demand additional precision and cohesion. This is where today’s wireframing tools come in.”
prototyping Add tag Permalink | Friday, March 12, 2010
Filenaming Conventions and Knowledge Sharing
Patrick has posted an article on file naming conventions. Good. Now I don’t have to hunt for them every time!
knowledge management, intranets Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Ethnography of Design: A Series
New series on Ethnography by Catapult Design:
This post is the first in a weekly series called “The Ethnography of Design” about the relationship between anthropology and design and how the ethnographer’s toolkit can be applied to build more effective world-changing, problem-solving products and systems. Each post in the series will be paired with – and will explore – a video or article that highlights an innovative design solution or product that has taken into account (successfully or unsuccessfully – and why) ethnographic research methods and human-centered design thinking frameworks.
research, ethnography Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Making teaching stick
After reading Switch (highly recommended) by Dan and Chip Heath I headed to their website to get more resources. I was pleasantly surprised by the range of resources they have there. From a short summary of the book to how-to guides on using the principles in different settings. The one that caught my eye was Teaching that Sticks, a resource from their previous book, Made to Stick. It is a wonderful article-length read that gives a handful of strategies that you can try immediately, such as using the unexpected to create focus and interest.
instructional design, school Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 08, 2010
2010 Intranet Innovation Awards are open for entries
The 2010 Intranet Innovation Awards are open for entries. Entries close on Friday 23.
I like this award. It highlights how teams are thinking of making their intranets useful and productive. It starts a discussion on ideas and themes. I met some of the winners at the KM World conference in San Jose last November and I could clearly see their enthusiasm and determination in making their intranets work. I walked away with more than a few ideas to try out.
intranets Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 08, 2010
Designing collections for the web
Designing collections for the web - my new article over at PebbleRoad. The idea of the article came up when the team was discussing how best to leverage and surface homogeneous information. We were doing a redesign of a hospital website and found out that patients wanted to be connected with getting care in many different ways - by clinic, by doctor, by diseases and conditions etc. This idea let us to investigate collections, first as used by libraries, and then modified and as used by social media. This article compiles our experimentation and learning on the subject.
“A collection is a list of homogeneous items. A collection on the web can be as simple as a blog (a list of posts) to as complex as a library collection (multiple lists of different library materials). Collections are an integral part of many websites, but not all collections are designed with ease-of-use and ease-of-retrieval in mind. In this article, I’ll cover some theory and give practical advice on designing online collections for the websites and intranets.”
information architecture, intranets, interface, social media Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 01, 2010
Streams of Content, Limited Attention
An interesting take by Danah Boyd on how the information streams that we are living in (blogs, tweets, facebook, buzz, etc.) need some change in order to be relevant. The main argument here is that it is difficult to direct attention to something in a stream. And if we do manage to do that, it is difficult to hold on to it. I feel the same way when living in the stream of blogs and tweets. At times I long for the slow pace of a book. If only I could control the pace of my stream….
“To be relevant today requires understanding context, popularity, and reputation. In the broadcast era, we assumed the disseminator organized information because they were a destination. In a networked era, there will be no destination, but rather a network of content and people. We cannot assume that content will be organized around topics or that people will want to consume content organized as such. We’re already seeing this in streams-based media consumption. When consuming information through social media tools, people consume social gossip alongside productive content, news alongside status updates. Right now, it’s one big mess. But the key is not going to be to create distinct destinations organized around topics, but to find ways in which content can be surfaced in context, regardless of where it resides.”
social media Add tag Permalink | Friday, February 26, 2010
Primary 1 math paper - cruel usabilty problems
I came back from work today to find my 6-year-old daughter in a bad mood. She was upset because Mommy told her that she got low marks in a math test! Surprised? Yes, in Singapore, reality hits early! I find it surreal that tests are given so early but I’m going along with it to see how all this works. So I’m biased over here. But that is not why I’m writing this post. I decided to write this post after what happened next.
I picked up the math paper and it took me a while to figure out how to do the sums. I’m pretty sure it will take you a while too. Here is part of the math paper.
Were you confused? I was. The instructions are too complex and there are just too many distractions on the page. The sums are numbered, the options are numbered and then the answers too are numbers! And did you find the “brackets”? They are on the right hand side, a trick I guess to test the range of the eyes!
See my daughter’s first answer in the brackets. Now see her second answer. Do you blame her for putting in the right answer in the bracket? Read the instruction, which number do I put in the bracket? The option number or the correct answer?
The point of this test I gather is to help the student better ‘see’ math in abstract and concrete terms. That’s fine, but where does trickery come in to play?
So, I took a shot at redesigning the paper and this is what I came up with in 5 minutes.
I gave the same paper to my grumpy daughter and asked her to try the sums out. She looked at the paper and knew exactly what to do. She had a smile across her face. That is when I decided that I should share my concerns with the world.
We live in a scary world where 6-year olds are asked to do such math sums. The least we can do is to motivate and encourage them to take on this challenge. Giving badly designed papers to these kids is such a cruel thing to do. So, if you come across papers like these then please do something about it.
school Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Smashing Silos
Evan Rosen, author of The Culture of Collaboration, writes about his 5 ways to bust silo mentality at work:
- Eliminate Needless Formality and Hierarchy (easy access)
- Provide One-Click Access to Entire Organization (easy access to everyone)
- Design Dedicated Physical Spaces for Collaboration
- Adopt Common Systems and Processes (standard platform)
- Establish Cross-Functional Mentoring
collaboration Add tag Permalink | Monday, February 08, 2010
Content strategy is a plan
“The most important thing to understand is this: Content strategy isn’t a bunch of tactics. It’s a plan.”
“It’s a well-founded plan, fueled by your business objectives and user goals. An achievable plan, created with your current business reality, content assets, and limited resources in mind. A future plan, for what’s going to happen to your content once you send it off into the world. And, most importantly, a profitable plan, where your measures of success ultimately have impact on your organization’s bottom line.”
content strategy Add tag Permalink | Saturday, January 30, 2010
Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One
A good read on how storytelling can unite the different aspects of the user experience such as brining different perspectives together, defining the goal or defining the user (personas). However, there is another benefit that the article briefly touches upon and that is defining the journey (scenarios). It’s one thing to define a user, but a whole different perspective when you chart out the journey of this user accomplishing goals and tasks.
storytelling, design thinking, personas Add tag Permalink | Saturday, January 30, 2010
Lessig Calls Google Book Settlement A “Path To Insanity”
Interesting post on Lawrence Lessig’s views on the Google book deal.
“By breaking up books into different licensable parts, Lessig fears that we are going to encounter the same problem with books that we do today with film. He gives the example of documentary films which are sometimes nearly impossible to restore or preserve in digital form because the rights to every song and clip of archive footage need to be cleared again. This is an artifact of the types of licensing contracts that became the norm for film, where each constituent part of a work carries its own copyrights into perpetuity, making it more difficult down the road to update into digital form or pass along as a piece of shared culture. Up until now, books for the most part are treated as one single work.”
interesting Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, January 27, 2010
A Better Way to Manage Knowledge
John Hagel and John Seely Brown talk about Creation Spaces - “places where individuals and teams interact and collaborate within a broader learning ecology so that performance accelerates.” They go on to discuss how these spaces are different from the traditional KM systems: “Knowledge management traditionally has focused on capturing knowledge that already exists within the firm — its systems rarely extend beyond the boundaries of the enterprise. Creation spaces instead focus on mobilizing and focusing participants across all institutional boundaries.”
knowledge management Add tag Permalink | Monday, January 25, 2010
Fantastic Information Architecture and Data Visualization Resources
From Noupe. Good starting points to get more on IA and infographics. (via Infodesign)
infographics, information architecture Add tag Permalink | Friday, January 15, 2010
Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge
When will this infection catch on worldwide? These are the small pockets of hope that we have left. Brilliant stuff Kiran!
school, education Add tag Permalink | Thursday, January 14, 2010
Use Better Tools to Be a Better Student in 2010
A wonderful list of shortcuts and techniques to help out with common tasks.
productivity Add tag Permalink | Saturday, January 09, 2010
Web project team roles
Kristina Halvorson has put up an interesting diagram that shows how the different roles in a we project team relate to one another.
information architecture, content strategy, web content Add tag Permalink | Saturday, January 09, 2010
Atul Gawande’s ‘Checklist’ For Surgery Success
Brilliant article by NPR on Atul Gawande’s new book, The Checklist Manifesto. Gawande has written an entire book on how checklist and other reminders help in complex situations. Here is a good quote:
There was about 80 percent who thought that this was something they wanted to continue to use. But 20 percent remained strongly against it. They said, ‘This is a waste of my time, I don’t think it makes any difference.’ And then we asked them, ‘If you were to have an operation, would you want the checklist?’ Ninety-four percent wanted the checklist.”
I’m waiting to read Gawande’s new book but right now I’m in the middle of another book that talks about the same checklist culture from a very different angle. This book titled Streetlights and Shadows and is written by the brilliant Gary Klein. Both Klein and Gawande are my favourite authors. I’ve read all their previous books. So, this is interesting for me to see how their worlds collide. In his book, Klein spends an entire chapter debunking the use of checklists in complex scenarios. His idea is that checklists are wonderful in well-structured and predictive environments and do not work that well in ill-structured and unpredictable environments.
Here’s the question I want answered when I start reading Gawande’s book: are the checklists just for mechanical tasks or are they for complex procedures? The surgical safety checklist mentioned in the article looks quite general. Maybe that is the point: even the ‘general’ stuff in surgery can lead to a life or death situation.
knowledge management, decision-making, expertise Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, January 06, 2010
The culture of collaboration and what it means for your intranet
I’ve written a new article at PebbleRoad, The culture of collaboration and what it means for your intranet.
Here’s my punch line: the adoption or participation you’re going to get on your intranet is directly related to the culture of collaboration that exists in the organisation. Having the right collaboration technology does play a part, but only as a sidekick to the culture of collaboration.
intranets, collaboration Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, December 22, 2009
2-5-1 Storytelling
Robert Swanwick writes about Lt Col Karuna Ramanathan of the Singapore Armed Forces and his 2-5-1 strategy of storytelling and conducting an after-action-review.
2
- Who you are
- Summary of your experience
5 fingers
- Little finger – what parts of the effort did not get enough attention
- Ring finger – What relationships were formed, what you learned about relationship building
- Middle finger – what you disliked, what/who made you frustrated
- Pointer finger – what you would do better next time around, what you want to tell those who were “in charge” about what they could do better
- Thumb (up) – what went well. What was good.
1
- the most important takeaway from the effort
via @DavidGurteen
knowledge management, storytelling Add tag Permalink | Friday, December 18, 2009
Working less
Nicely said by Mark Shead:
We can be much more productive by focusing on doing the right things instead of focusing on doing more things. What this means, exactly, is very dependent on your particular set of circumstances, your personality, and what you are trying to accomplish, but many people will benefit by trying to spend less time doing and more time thinking.
[Via Michael Sampson]
productivity Add tag Permalink | Monday, December 14, 2009
Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen: Part One Overview of Business Drivers and Components
Bill Ives: This is the first in a six part series on Booz Allen’s award winning implementation of Enterprise 2.0.
“To meet these challenges, Booz Allen developed and implemented Hello, a suite of web-based enterprise tools designed to strengthen collaboration, connectivity, and communication across geographical and cultural barriers. It was created from vision to launch in under 6 months leveraging a blend of Open Source, COTS, and custom-developed products. Since August 2008, more than 80% of the firm has logged into Hello and more than 53% of the firm has contributed original content. There are more than 4,000 individual searches a day.”
intranets, social media Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Get ready for intranet 3.0! it’s coming, it’s real and it will change the way we work
I like how the intranet conversations are shaping up these days. It’s all about thinking ahead. James started it with this article on future scenarios. Now we have Sarah Bates on Intranet 3.0. I hope this is a start of something new and a push that will take intranets into the next level of business integration.
“If anything, intranets are driving services forward at such a great pace that, post-recession, the organization that emerges will be fitter, leaner and more adaptable. Prior to the downturn, the rate of development was already intense, but market conditions have caused a new wave of intranet acceleration to arrive.”