It's ridiculous, but true: It's still a problem in the enterprise to share files. Emails get blocked because of attachment-sizes and extensions, network drives are not available for everybody and the administrators are unknown. And even if you managed to put the file on a place where everybody can access it, you still have to tell people where it is. And there is no control – once it's open, you can hardly exclude anybody, you don't see who already downloaded it, and if you have a new version of your file, the trouble starts all over again.
Applied collaboration should allow you to store files, manage access rights, get statistics, control versions – and, most important: tell people where and how they can find it.
If there is then some realtime editing mode and more stuff that allows “true” collaboration on one file – that's a nice add on. even though I think that this perception of collaboration does not focus on it's biggest benefits. Concentrate on information, opportunities and status. Collaboration doesn't mean that others will do your work.
Freitag, 24. Oktober 2008
Applied collaboration - Get in touch
You don't go there and ask people what they are doing, not in the enterprise environment.
But if they write it down – you may be highly interested...
You can do some research without being intrusive, you can talk to people without having to hide your findings, you don't have to feel like a stalker.
And you can present yourself as an expert, you can tell everything you want and you don't have to talk louder than anybody else. You don't even have to care whom you are talking to – of course you should think about your target group, but if your audience today does not understand a thing – maybe your audience tomorrow is perfect.
So an applied collaboration network could be the place to give you information about new people, colleagues you've met for the first time. And it is the place for you to set the tone: How do you want people to perceive you, how do you want to position yourself. - It becomes an important tool to shape and steer your career – more transparent and flexible than MBOs, Performance Contracts or Review Meetings, more tailored to your needs, and more under your control.
It's not only the content that matters, but also the mere activity: do you do something, do you want to achieve something? As an opposite, you can also use networks to hide: If you're not in there, nobody will find you. Whatever that tells about your company...
But if they write it down – you may be highly interested...
You can do some research without being intrusive, you can talk to people without having to hide your findings, you don't have to feel like a stalker.
And you can present yourself as an expert, you can tell everything you want and you don't have to talk louder than anybody else. You don't even have to care whom you are talking to – of course you should think about your target group, but if your audience today does not understand a thing – maybe your audience tomorrow is perfect.
So an applied collaboration network could be the place to give you information about new people, colleagues you've met for the first time. And it is the place for you to set the tone: How do you want people to perceive you, how do you want to position yourself. - It becomes an important tool to shape and steer your career – more transparent and flexible than MBOs, Performance Contracts or Review Meetings, more tailored to your needs, and more under your control.
It's not only the content that matters, but also the mere activity: do you do something, do you want to achieve something? As an opposite, you can also use networks to hide: If you're not in there, nobody will find you. Whatever that tells about your company...
Applied collaboration - The collaborative value of doing nothing
Applied collaboration is extremely valuable, if you're doing nothing. Well, maybe not literally nothing, but not what somebody expects you to do.
As an example: I'm waiting for Patrick to send out meeting minutes, coordinate a workshop and give me more information on the innovation project he's working on. I haven't heard anything for the whole week. So how should I know? Call him? Wait for an email? Or just wait?
Or should I send him an email, asking what he's actually doing, when he will send the meeting minutes and if there is anything new with the innovation stuff? - You know how likely emails are to sound rude, and how easily rumors are spread: Is the innovation project dead? Am I telling Patrick that he does not do his work?
A collaboration network with minimal status-notes could tell me that Patrick was very busy with the innovation project, did not have any time for the meeting minutes, and is dealing with our partner agency to schedule our workshop.
As an example: I'm waiting for Patrick to send out meeting minutes, coordinate a workshop and give me more information on the innovation project he's working on. I haven't heard anything for the whole week. So how should I know? Call him? Wait for an email? Or just wait?
Or should I send him an email, asking what he's actually doing, when he will send the meeting minutes and if there is anything new with the innovation stuff? - You know how likely emails are to sound rude, and how easily rumors are spread: Is the innovation project dead? Am I telling Patrick that he does not do his work?
A collaboration network with minimal status-notes could tell me that Patrick was very busy with the innovation project, did not have any time for the meeting minutes, and is dealing with our partner agency to schedule our workshop.
Applied Collaboration
To agree on the fact, that collaboration is a key feature of new media, is nothing extraordinary.
But what is the use in it?Why should we do it? And how does it related to our specific business?
I use the term applied collaboration as a summary for collaboration, online-socialising and networking in the enterprise.
You can not not collaborate – it' just communication, seen from another perspective. You can only choose between good and bad, productive and not so productive ways to collaborate.
The other choice you have: Your collaboration or anyti-collaboration can be transparent or hidden – but actually that shouldn't bne your choice. You should not have the possibility to hide the fact that you are putting obstacles in someone's way by doing nothing or by spreading rumours – and there should be no need to emphasize all the good things you do.
Social networks, versioning tools, easy ways to join and consult or ask colleagues deliver a solution for you. You don't have to send 20 unrequested status mails per day (“I'm sorry I didn't work on your request yet, but I'm really busy with...”), to request 20 undelivered status mails, or to ask ten people if they know anything about LDAP or FX Swaps in non-EU-CEE-countries.
The network does that for you. A good collaboration network delivers a consistent overview about who people are, what they are doing generally, what they are doing right now, what there experiences are, and where they will be.
Applied collaboration has to deal with
* cooperation
* communication
* information
* planning
* sharing
* hiding
That's pretty obvious? Can you give me some examples, some that really touch real enterprise life? I'll think of some...
But what is the use in it?Why should we do it? And how does it related to our specific business?
I use the term applied collaboration as a summary for collaboration, online-socialising and networking in the enterprise.
You can not not collaborate – it' just communication, seen from another perspective. You can only choose between good and bad, productive and not so productive ways to collaborate.
The other choice you have: Your collaboration or anyti-collaboration can be transparent or hidden – but actually that shouldn't bne your choice. You should not have the possibility to hide the fact that you are putting obstacles in someone's way by doing nothing or by spreading rumours – and there should be no need to emphasize all the good things you do.
Social networks, versioning tools, easy ways to join and consult or ask colleagues deliver a solution for you. You don't have to send 20 unrequested status mails per day (“I'm sorry I didn't work on your request yet, but I'm really busy with...”), to request 20 undelivered status mails, or to ask ten people if they know anything about LDAP or FX Swaps in non-EU-CEE-countries.
The network does that for you. A good collaboration network delivers a consistent overview about who people are, what they are doing generally, what they are doing right now, what there experiences are, and where they will be.
Applied collaboration has to deal with
* cooperation
* communication
* information
* planning
* sharing
* hiding
That's pretty obvious? Can you give me some examples, some that really touch real enterprise life? I'll think of some...
Mittwoch, 22. Oktober 2008
User Experience. One of my favorites
User experience is a thing with a whole lot of facets.
Designer Niko Nyman presented some great ideas in his Web2Expo-speech
* You can add good user experience to software and use that to sell it to your customers.
* You can add good user experience in the experience between the user and the screen.
* You can add good user experience in the processes and interactions you design.
The latter is probably the most intensive, but also the must productive way of using good experience, good vibrations. It takes a lot of creativity and a lot of power to shape these interactions, connect them to the user's offline needs, add that kind of value that allows you to address and solve the most important problems, and to become an important part of the user's life.
Sounds great.
But I think there is even more: In my eyes, the biggest benefit would come from a chain the keeps all three steps together and allows you to have full control.
* Build software (or have developers) that follow(s) the rules of user experience
* Work with designers, who follow, develop and use the rules and elements of user experience.
* Have these two steps prepared in a way so that
* you can reuse them
* you can draw a line from the software to the output and explain how it helps the experience
* you can draw a line back from the interface to the software and explain how it helps to handle that issue easily
* you can prove that your software and your designs follow consistent ideas – and those ideas are based on common problems in the real world.
I like this idea, because
* I like new thoughts and productive ideas
* ideas should be connected to solutions; at least as a guess – visions are not enough
* that shapes a product, that can be offered, discussed and sold
An important prerequisite is, that you can measure user experience. This is where we need new and reliable criteria. What do people consider as a good experience?
* It may be very simple things – even if they are not good for anything
* it may be something very important – even if it's very complicated to achieve
* or it may be something in the middle.
That doesn't answer a lot, but I understand it as a hint: We should probably look for pairs to describe what it's about. Very simple and very important would be great, very simple and a little important would be as good as very important and not so simple or quite simple and quite important.
That requires some more thoughts.
Designer Niko Nyman presented some great ideas in his Web2Expo-speech
* You can add good user experience to software and use that to sell it to your customers.
* You can add good user experience in the experience between the user and the screen.
* You can add good user experience in the processes and interactions you design.
The latter is probably the most intensive, but also the must productive way of using good experience, good vibrations. It takes a lot of creativity and a lot of power to shape these interactions, connect them to the user's offline needs, add that kind of value that allows you to address and solve the most important problems, and to become an important part of the user's life.
Sounds great.
But I think there is even more: In my eyes, the biggest benefit would come from a chain the keeps all three steps together and allows you to have full control.
* Build software (or have developers) that follow(s) the rules of user experience
* Work with designers, who follow, develop and use the rules and elements of user experience.
* Have these two steps prepared in a way so that
* you can reuse them
* you can draw a line from the software to the output and explain how it helps the experience
* you can draw a line back from the interface to the software and explain how it helps to handle that issue easily
* you can prove that your software and your designs follow consistent ideas – and those ideas are based on common problems in the real world.
I like this idea, because
* I like new thoughts and productive ideas
* ideas should be connected to solutions; at least as a guess – visions are not enough
* that shapes a product, that can be offered, discussed and sold
An important prerequisite is, that you can measure user experience. This is where we need new and reliable criteria. What do people consider as a good experience?
* It may be very simple things – even if they are not good for anything
* it may be something very important – even if it's very complicated to achieve
* or it may be something in the middle.
That doesn't answer a lot, but I understand it as a hint: We should probably look for pairs to describe what it's about. Very simple and very important would be great, very simple and a little important would be as good as very important and not so simple or quite simple and quite important.
That requires some more thoughts.
Interaction Audit – test your page and create an objective diagnosis
Josh Williams from Hot Studio had a great speech at Web2Expo on reshaping ebay.
The two outstanding feature were:
he gave a definition of “feel” in “look & feel”
he introduced a well shaped method called Interaction Audit
The feel is an interaction groove - “It can be click-click-click oder clickp-hover-type or click-scroll-type – it does not matter, as long as you don't start to turn a telephone in an airplane cockpit.”
The target of controlling feel is not only to attract the user, but also to make him feel comfortable, so that he can reserve bigger parts of his mental bandwidth for the content of a site instead of it's technology.
In the interaction audit (which aims to check and harmonize the feel), they started with
* defining some example workflows: what do users do, what tasks do they perform on the way.
* that led to a task-activities matrix to find out similar activities in different tasks.
* Detailed descriptions of both were collected in a database
* The number and the number of variations in the interactions are now a criteria o quality (links, tabs, forms, mouseovers etc. - 16 different types of reactions/behaviours after you click on a link, 5 different types of forms ertc.)
* in addition to interaction inconsistencies, also task inconsistencies were analysed
* object inconsistencies as well.
This was a base that could be used to define targets, go through the enterprise universe and clean up.
What makes this so great?
It's all about structuring – shaping and describing a problem is maybe not solving it, but it's a good start to avoid it in the future.
There is no common taxonomy or reusable usecase for that – it's up to us to create the best practices and to find innovative ways and solutions.
As long as you don't forget your goals, there are never to many details – all those small pieces (if kept in a clear structure) will help you understand new problems that will keep arising every day.
The two outstanding feature were:
he gave a definition of “feel” in “look & feel”
he introduced a well shaped method called Interaction Audit
The feel is an interaction groove - “It can be click-click-click oder clickp-hover-type or click-scroll-type – it does not matter, as long as you don't start to turn a telephone in an airplane cockpit.”
The target of controlling feel is not only to attract the user, but also to make him feel comfortable, so that he can reserve bigger parts of his mental bandwidth for the content of a site instead of it's technology.
In the interaction audit (which aims to check and harmonize the feel), they started with
* defining some example workflows: what do users do, what tasks do they perform on the way.
* that led to a task-activities matrix to find out similar activities in different tasks.
* Detailed descriptions of both were collected in a database
* The number and the number of variations in the interactions are now a criteria o quality (links, tabs, forms, mouseovers etc. - 16 different types of reactions/behaviours after you click on a link, 5 different types of forms ertc.)
* in addition to interaction inconsistencies, also task inconsistencies were analysed
* object inconsistencies as well.
This was a base that could be used to define targets, go through the enterprise universe and clean up.
What makes this so great?
It's all about structuring – shaping and describing a problem is maybe not solving it, but it's a good start to avoid it in the future.
There is no common taxonomy or reusable usecase for that – it's up to us to create the best practices and to find innovative ways and solutions.
As long as you don't forget your goals, there are never to many details – all those small pieces (if kept in a clear structure) will help you understand new problems that will keep arising every day.
Multilingual Sites
Andreas Ravn from namics.com just gave an interesting speech at Web2Expo in Berlin.
Some points that are remarkable to me: abbreviations, tag clouds, words without context are specific issues in multilingual environments. It's an additional challenge to actually identify the language.
Good or bad translation affects the author's credibility – that can be your own, if you are centrally talking to an international audience. Or it can be your partner's (and your author is your partner – or maybe even your customer) credibility; that means high responsibility.
It's not only about credibility, it's also about confidence, like and dislike, authority and reputation and respect – especially if you are an international enterprise talking to it's multilingual employees.
I should try to draw a model capturing and illustrating these complexities.
Several approaches to deal with the multilingual challenge are:
* laissez faire: contributors choose their language according to whom they want to talk. That's only feasible if you're working in a very decentralized environment and can afford to loos control.
* common ground: pick one language (eg english, or russian or spanish) and stick to it – the common thing then will be, that it's strange for everybody. It makes a big difference in this concept, if you have native speakers in the community or not; that also makes a big difference between the US and Europe.
One point I want to add, especially from the intranet point of view: Intranets are nowadays always user generated content.
That needs to be respected
* in creating the CMS and other means to create, deliver and manage content
* in talking to the authors and other contributors
* in considering language issues
That adds up to a multidimensional model of influences and dependencies:
who created the content (“professional” author, part-time contributor; headquarter representative, local employee; manager, expert...)
whom does the content address (local – international clientel; mandatory or optional information)
references: other contents (are they translated?), applications; what is the desired output (eg. prepare customer letters – use the correct wording in the local language)
communication clouds: who is talking how about this topic? where do you need a common language (application users and helpdesk, retail sales and customers, sales and controlling etc.) - sometimes translation can be an obstacle in understanding... (what does “preferences” mean in ukrainian? or romanian?’
The main question is actually: What is it we should translate?
Then you can answer the question how to translate, how to handle this process.
Some points that are remarkable to me: abbreviations, tag clouds, words without context are specific issues in multilingual environments. It's an additional challenge to actually identify the language.
Good or bad translation affects the author's credibility – that can be your own, if you are centrally talking to an international audience. Or it can be your partner's (and your author is your partner – or maybe even your customer) credibility; that means high responsibility.
It's not only about credibility, it's also about confidence, like and dislike, authority and reputation and respect – especially if you are an international enterprise talking to it's multilingual employees.
I should try to draw a model capturing and illustrating these complexities.
Several approaches to deal with the multilingual challenge are:
* laissez faire: contributors choose their language according to whom they want to talk. That's only feasible if you're working in a very decentralized environment and can afford to loos control.
* common ground: pick one language (eg english, or russian or spanish) and stick to it – the common thing then will be, that it's strange for everybody. It makes a big difference in this concept, if you have native speakers in the community or not; that also makes a big difference between the US and Europe.
One point I want to add, especially from the intranet point of view: Intranets are nowadays always user generated content.
That needs to be respected
* in creating the CMS and other means to create, deliver and manage content
* in talking to the authors and other contributors
* in considering language issues
That adds up to a multidimensional model of influences and dependencies:
who created the content (“professional” author, part-time contributor; headquarter representative, local employee; manager, expert...)
whom does the content address (local – international clientel; mandatory or optional information)
references: other contents (are they translated?), applications; what is the desired output (eg. prepare customer letters – use the correct wording in the local language)
communication clouds: who is talking how about this topic? where do you need a common language (application users and helpdesk, retail sales and customers, sales and controlling etc.) - sometimes translation can be an obstacle in understanding... (what does “preferences” mean in ukrainian? or romanian?’
The main question is actually: What is it we should translate?
Then you can answer the question how to translate, how to handle this process.
Donnerstag, 16. Oktober 2008
Shaping a poor man's portal
Developing internal media for the banking industry is no fun at the moment, not at all. Medium term investements, even if their benefits are obvious, are cancelled if there is no plainly positive business case for the first year.
That's a common problem for now; so should we get used to it or should we try to wait for better times? One big problem, I guess, is that most of us did probably already wait for a few months or even a year: things have been slowing down before, thorough planning and 100% budget compliant planning were some of the biggest slowdown factors up to now.
So now I'm about to plan a redesign of a ten year old intranet that should not produce any costs, should not require too many emergency workarounds, should be manageable for average-skilled editors and should attempt to satisfy those need, that we identified as the drivers for a 1 Mio € project.
Sounded disgusting in the beginning. Now I think it sounds interesting. There is no other choice anyway.
That's a common problem for now; so should we get used to it or should we try to wait for better times? One big problem, I guess, is that most of us did probably already wait for a few months or even a year: things have been slowing down before, thorough planning and 100% budget compliant planning were some of the biggest slowdown factors up to now.
So now I'm about to plan a redesign of a ten year old intranet that should not produce any costs, should not require too many emergency workarounds, should be manageable for average-skilled editors and should attempt to satisfy those need, that we identified as the drivers for a 1 Mio € project.
Sounded disgusting in the beginning. Now I think it sounds interesting. There is no other choice anyway.
Early adopters – that's not us
Some ten to fifteen years ago when tech- and ebusiness-journalism evolved also in Austria we were frantically writing about new eras, great technologies and killer applications.
Well, the beginning was more moderated; the main topics were curiosity, content and communication.
As business pressure started to rise and advertising customers wanted to sell something (I still believe that they did not know what they wanted to sell, but they tried anyway), we also had to sell something in our stories.
In 1997 Bertelsmann started a digital tv project – we hyped interactive tv, ecommerce merged with soap operas and a revolution on the living room sofas. Nothing happened; just some boring technical tests. In 1999, the 3G-umts-licenses were auctioned in Europe. Telco companies paid tremendous money, we wrote stories on location based services, mobile tv, mobile commerce, mobile dating services and video conferencing. Nothing at all happened. In 2000, Telekom Austria and ORF closed a deal that did not mean anything – just some vague cooperation. And againg, nothing at all happened.
We were doing some more stories, were heavy users of some pilot applications (I especially enjoyed the mobile public toilet finder for London and Paris) and then got bored and went to something new.
Yesterday my wife who does not care at all about technology, told me that she will buy a new n-Generation 3G mobile phone, because she wants to use the gps navigation tool, use the phone as a mobile video camera and because she wants to use the mobile shopping guide features: “It doesnt matter in which city I am, it can always tell me the address of the next drugstore and show me a way with some satellite-pictures.”
I had not spent a thought on these services for years. I'm a heavy user of mobile email, sometimes I'm quickly browsing the mobile web for exchange rates, travel schedules or footballl results, but I don't spend any money in the mobile world.
I've just been making up my story. And it seems to be up to others to live it. - No problem; Im always finding new stories. We just should not forget that what seems like looking back may be a great outlook in the future: Ok, we invented the stuff, we've been there, done that. But others live it. And they tell us, if it works, if what we've made up makes sense.
And it's been a while since she has been asking for the ip-based tv-service of Telekom Austria, which finally had come out in 2006 (without much ORF-participation). Fortunately, it still does not work outside of big cities.
Well, the beginning was more moderated; the main topics were curiosity, content and communication.
As business pressure started to rise and advertising customers wanted to sell something (I still believe that they did not know what they wanted to sell, but they tried anyway), we also had to sell something in our stories.
In 1997 Bertelsmann started a digital tv project – we hyped interactive tv, ecommerce merged with soap operas and a revolution on the living room sofas. Nothing happened; just some boring technical tests. In 1999, the 3G-umts-licenses were auctioned in Europe. Telco companies paid tremendous money, we wrote stories on location based services, mobile tv, mobile commerce, mobile dating services and video conferencing. Nothing at all happened. In 2000, Telekom Austria and ORF closed a deal that did not mean anything – just some vague cooperation. And againg, nothing at all happened.
We were doing some more stories, were heavy users of some pilot applications (I especially enjoyed the mobile public toilet finder for London and Paris) and then got bored and went to something new.
Yesterday my wife who does not care at all about technology, told me that she will buy a new n-Generation 3G mobile phone, because she wants to use the gps navigation tool, use the phone as a mobile video camera and because she wants to use the mobile shopping guide features: “It doesnt matter in which city I am, it can always tell me the address of the next drugstore and show me a way with some satellite-pictures.”
I had not spent a thought on these services for years. I'm a heavy user of mobile email, sometimes I'm quickly browsing the mobile web for exchange rates, travel schedules or footballl results, but I don't spend any money in the mobile world.
I've just been making up my story. And it seems to be up to others to live it. - No problem; Im always finding new stories. We just should not forget that what seems like looking back may be a great outlook in the future: Ok, we invented the stuff, we've been there, done that. But others live it. And they tell us, if it works, if what we've made up makes sense.
And it's been a while since she has been asking for the ip-based tv-service of Telekom Austria, which finally had come out in 2006 (without much ORF-participation). Fortunately, it still does not work outside of big cities.
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