Blogging Everywhere! (Not) Enough Already?

Hi, I’m Russ and I’m a blogger.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one–or if I’m talking about you. Or you.

Like many people, I enjoy blogging. Like many more people, I learned a long time ago that blogging–and blogging well in particular–requires a certain degree of commitment and effort. Putting a bunch of jumbled thoughts or ideas into words that are easy enough to digest and interesting enough to get through can be pretty challenging. Ask any of those folks over on the right side of the page (and then see when the last time any of them updated their blogs, too!) and I’ll bet that they’ll tell you that they started out with a lot to say and that they saw blogging as something slightly different than what it is for them today.  I bet that they’ll tell you that blogging just happens to be a labor of love for them, as well–but that it also offers up rewards, too.  More than one blogger has had a prospective employer contact them with piqued interest based upon a posting or perspective.

Not me, mind you, but it does happen.

For quite awhile, the blogging scene was really becoming the bandwagon to get on. People still have blogs–but maybe now it’s called your MySpace Blog / Page or your FaceBook Notes or what have you. Those are more for the hobbyists, I suspect. People need to be able to whip out that poetry and prose as it strikes them during the work day, right?

And there are more Professional Blogs, which is where I’d classify places like TechCrunch and others–they serve a broader purpose than to just ramble on about your new kitten or what you had for lunch with Jeffers and Kimmers and whatnot. Your favorite newspaper will likely have a blogging section with plenty of spirited conversations and commentary to support it. Some (me) would argue that the UserGlue UserBlog is a professional blog–because I try to keep this topical and you’ll probably never hear me mention my wife, my children nor my pets here. Probably; there’s a baby coming and I’m suspecting I may be uber-proud and feel the need to post an announcement or something. Just saying.

A lot of people that I know enjoy blogging for themselves–they feel good about it. They feel as if they’re contributing. Some even feel as if their personal blogs, whatever way that happens, help them to stay in touch with their friends and family without calling everyone, say every time they have a near-perfect bowling game.

My friend Wil uses his blog in many different ways–it’s a way to hone his craft as a writer (sometimes providing content for books that we release under Monolith Press), keep his friends, family and fan base up-to-date on what he’s doing and it’s a good way to provide information to his consumers who want to know where he will be appearing, what he will be performing in and any new product that may be for sale. All in one tidy place. Well, all in one place, at least.

I blog here. I blog personally on a different site. And now, that place that I call “work” when I’m not dividing my time between UserGlue, family and school, has a blog for people to get involved in, if they so desire. No one is forcing my hand on anything, but I’ve been made aware that the mechanism exists, “if I’d like to participate”.

I think it’s a great idea and it can help foster a community and culture among your peers–help you take a look at how other people see things, what they find important and what they notice in their work lives. I think it’s the right approach to take to NOT force anyone to joining your club of bloggers, but at the same time, I feel you should try to be involved in opportunities like this as they arise.

The problem is, where does all the content come from? Personally, I try to contribute here and on mailing lists (such as the IAI mailing list and I try to do my best to be an effective editor at Boxes and Arrows and I even try to provide insightful responses to questions at LinkedIn. That’s a lot for a guy who also has to author 4 papers every 2 weeks for Business Administration courses and has a pretty full load at work, as well.

Is it okay to provide duplicated content? Is it wrong to actively not participate? Should someone try to provide topics for people to respond to in order to help foster the community of the bloggers?

Where does it begin or end?

NotchUp Vs. GrandCentral: Design By, Uh, Someone Else’s Design?

I don’t like NotchUp’s Terms of Service–I think I’ve made that clear. I don’t think I’m malicious about this, but I do think it is important that people be made aware of what they’re getting into.

Now, however, I’m beginning to truly dislike NotchUp, in general.

Since writing my post “NotchUp Privacy Down“, I’ve been Googling through the web to find out what people are thinking out in the rest of the world.

In my cyber-adventures, as it were, I’ve seen a lot of mentions about how NotchUp and GrandCentral seem to share the same graphical design.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

GrandCentral:

NotchUp:

I checked out GrandCentral.com’s History section, and they started their company in 2005. I’d say that gives them the benefit of the doubt. Granted, they may have purchased the site from a template company and NotchUp may have done the same, but it seems unlikely.

I’m sure this is beyond my capabilities to prove anything, but I’ll let the screen shots do the talking. I can tell you that when I did a comparison of the sites on 2 different layers in Photoshop, they were same width from the left and right borders–which very much appear to be the exact same drop shadow border. The backgrounds in their content areas appear to be pretty similar as well.

Sure, site rip-offs happen all the time. Hey, we couldn’t stop Vanilla Ice from working Queen’s “Under Pressure” into “Ice Ice Baby”, we’re certainly not going to stop people from “designing” the alleged same web site, right?

Ponder away.

To me, it just tells more of the story that is NotchUp. The level of trust that I have for them is far less than it was, well, when I received the invitation from a trusted friend.

————————

Sadly, it seems most people are more interested in the “How can I make money” aspect instead of the “Totally free isn’t just about cash” perspective that I seem to take. Christian Crumlish was cool enough to mention a posting that I sent out to the Information Architecture Institute’s mailing list–to the point that he even apologized to folks that he’d sent invites to.

People are starting to notice, and I think that’s a good thing. Hey, as long as I’m spending a moment talking about things, it was pretty cool that the NotchUp question on LinkedIn actually had a link to the posting I wrote–even before I had a chance to point it out.

I’m hopeful that people will slow down, take a deep breath and make wise decisions about their personal information.

I’ll leave you with a final thought:

How would you feel if LinkedIn suddenly changed their Terms of Service and/or Privacy Policy to match that of NotchUp?

NotchUp, Privacy Down

Lately, I’ve seen a few discussions in regards to various forms of social/business networking, etc. I’ve also received a few invites to join NotchUp, which appears to be the new kid on the block, and I started to enter into their process since I was invited to the “Beta” by a couple of known and trusted colleagues.

In part of checking them out, I do what I always do whenever I see checkbox that says that I agree to someone’s terms of use–I read their terms of use.

From the start, NotchUp’s terms of use doesn’t read like the other places I trust. In fact, it reads like something familiar. It reads like something from a company I worked for many years ago that tried to sign people up for a job site only to in turn sell their information to companies. I’m sure you’ve seen several of these, some of them are akin to College Scholarships “just for signing up for free magazine subscriptions”.

Since my spider-sense was tingling, I knew I needed to read on–so I did:

9. NotchUp reserves the right to offer third party services and products to You based on the preferences that You identify in your registration and at any time thereafter; such offers may be made by NotchUp or by third parties.

That’s right: NotchUp can sell your information to third parties.

Full disclosure here: I did not get through the rest of their registration because, frankly, I don’t like to agree to Terms of Use before I get to see just what my privacy settings can be. They do offer up such a tab in their settings, but it is disabled and not viewable.

10. Without limiting any of the other disclaimers of warranty set forth in these Terms, NotchUp does not provide or make any representation as to the quality or nature of any of the third party products or services purchased through NotchUp.com or any other NotchUp Site, or any other representation, warranty or guaranty. Any such undertaking, representation, warranty or guaranty would be furnished solely by the provider of such third party products or services, under the terms agreed to by the provider.

This basically says that once you’re on someone else’s email list (after they’ve sold your information), they no longer take any ownership of how it is used. Think about that one. It can translate loosely to this:

Once we sell your information, it’s out of our hands. If you change your privacy settings with us, we’ll follow that setting, but if someone we’ve sold your list to sells that list or does not allow you to remove yourself from it, etc. etc. we’re not responsible. There would be a lot of hurdles to overcome to find out just where in the heck your name has ended up.

Not only that:

18. You understand and acknowledge that you have no ownership rights in your NotchUp account (“NotchUp Account”), and that if you cancel your NotchUp Account, all your account information from NotchUp, including resumes, profiles, cover letters, network contacts, saved jobs, questionnaires and email mailing lists, will be marked as deleted in NotchUp’s databases and will be removed from any public area of the NotchUp Sites. Information may continue to be available for some period of time because of delays in propagating such deletion through NotchUp’s web servers. In addition, third parties may retain cached copies of your Information.

“Marked as deleted” - got that? Not removed, but flagged as deleted and no longer publicly displayed. They’ll still have it, still own it. Those third parties may retained “cached copies” of your information–which means that they’ve got a snapshot view from a specific purchase point and they may continue to use the list from a specific date or merge it with a new list, etc.

19. Your email and other data that you submit as part of the resume will be made available to our recruiters and employers. NotchUp.com doesn’t have any control over how that data would be used. If you don’t want any such data to be displayed your only remedy is not to post any resume.

At least this is pretty black and white. But, of course, since the purpose of NotchUp is to connect employers and candidates, it sure seems pretty useless to have a profile without a resume, right? At least the listed this right up top and not 2/3s of the way down on their Terms of Use page.

Oh. Wait.

I should also mention that the only way you can find out about their privacy policy and terms of use is currently, at the time of this writing, by attempting to sign-up and following the link.

They do a fine job of telling you how safe and secure their site is. You have to read between the lines to understand just how little they’re actually offering you. My gut feeling was that they want you to feel that your information is secure and you can control how the other users of the site can view you–which is great. But what about the people who buy lists from them?

There is the potential to give up a lot of your rights to your resume and personal information, in my opinion. I’m posting this as caution to folks here—this site feels like a bandwagon with a “generate a mailing list” approach to it. I’ve worked for those companies in the past and the end result seems to be me feeling as if I need to create a new email account and trying desperately to remove my personal information from, well, just about everywhere.

Maybe it sounds a bit overly-concerned, and I’ll accept that. I’ll also say that I’ve been the victim of identity theft more than once in the past and it’s not fun having to deal with it. Since NotchUp takes ownership of your information and sells it to who knows who, you really are just exposing yourself without any real means of controlling how that works. And NotchUp isn’t on the hook for anything.

LinkedIn, for what it’s worth, takes its approach this way:

• We will never rent or sell your personally identifiable information to third parties for marketing purposes
• We will never share your contact information with another user, without your consent.
• Any sensitive information that you provide will be secured with all industry standard protocols and technology

That’s pretty nice of them, and I think that’s what we’d all prefer.

Interestingly enough, NotchUp allows you to “instantaneously import your LinkedIn profile into NotchUp to use as your NotchUp profile.” That means that all that privacy protection you get at LinkedIn could be gone within moments. In essence, they’re taking advantage of our lack-of-desire to fill out yet another profile form, using technology to ease that pain, and then potentially reaping the rowards of selling that data.

Likewise, Facebook says this (and we all know they’ve faced some scrutiny):

Facebook follows two core principles:
1. You should have control over your personal information.
Facebook helps you share information with your friends and people around you. You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the My Privacy page.
2. You should have access to the information others want to share.
There is an increasing amount of information available out there, and you may want to know what relates to you, your friends, and people around you. We want to help you easily get that information.

It’s easy to jump on the proverbial bandwagon when it comes to social networking—or even professional networking. We all have a couple of things about any site or application that we wish were improved–even the ones we’ve worked on the design for. It makes it easy for a company to come out with an updated approach to something we already find some benefit in using. Unfortunately, it’s just as easy for these companies to throw out a privacy policy that is easy to ignored—and then your privacy could be as well.

I urge you all to proceed with caution and I urge you to take the time to read—very carefully—the terms and conditions, privacy policies, histories and about us sections of any websites you consider joining. NotchUp’s next-to-last statement kind of summarizes what’s happening on their site:

The only winners in all of this are job boards and headhunters.

That’s right, they summarize by saying the above, but the truth is in what they do NOT tell you:

They’ve created a new winner if enough people sign up: NotchUp.

Falling Down

There is not much on this earth that will make you realize just how little you know about the elevator that you stand in everyday than a very large, obnoxious noise followed by an abrupt jerking motion. I was the bottom of the shaft when this happened to me yesterday and I loosely recall erratically looking all over the elevator for the “stop falling” or “emergency brake” button. Once the elevator came to rest and the door opened, I moved toward an area that I thought would be safe (inside the elevator) still and looked cautiously around the car before catching my breath and stepping out.

I wonder, would anyone really recall that they should put their air mask on themselves first prior to helping the elderly or small children on an airplane in a disaster mode? Would you know where your flotation device is?

Does life require more quizzes, or have we settled on the success and failure rates in our world? Or now, more than ever, do we really need to focus on making everyday objects more usable?

Resume Writing Stinks (Part 1 In A Most Likely On-Going Series)

Without really trying all that hard, I’ve managed to put together a really sound plan for myself for 2008. Barring a lot of the details, it involves getting a BS in Business Administration (online), going for the CUA (Certified Usability Analyst from Human Factors), attending IDEA in Chicago and possibly another conference or two. Oh, and having a second child.

Through all of this planning and reflection, one thing that bubbled up to the top was that, well, my resume kind of looks like crap. Not just the run of the mill sort of crap, but the type of crap that, when I look at it–and even worse, when I’ve seen it on someone else’s desk with a staple trying to hold the many pages of it together–I can only cringe.  While I am not actively pursuing new career opportunities, it does not mean that I should rest on my laurels.  In fact, this is probably the best time that I can imagine putting a new resume together–when I don’t feel the pressure of being in the hot seat to find different employment for one reason or another.

I thought it would be a good idea to hire an outside consultant to work with me toward achieving this goal, but had some trepidation. Thanks to a previous and somewhat costly experience in the past. I wanted to get other opinions on the subject, because that experience led me to the crap resume that I have today. That resume does a fantastic job of showing up in nearly everyone’s keyword searches across the board–”pipe designer” being the most recent oddity, so I decided to ask a different group of people for referrals this time around.

As a member of the IA Institute, I have access to the IAI Members Mailing List and I sent out a note explaining my situation and my goals. I was hoping that some of my peers in the field might have some insight as to identifying a professional Resume Magic Maker.

I was wrong.

About identifying a professional resume writer, at least.

And the end result of being wrong is not something that I am all displeased about.

The overall theme of the responses was that relying on someone else to author your resume seems to be a bad idea. I couldn’t disagree with that less given my previous experience with a recommended professional. I was only provided with a resume that I eventually had to rewrite (and maybe it was just the timing of it all, but the difference in the “paid for” versus “authored-by-Russ” versions was substantial enough just from the contacts made to me via the job boards alone).

Olga Howard was one of the first to respond, and apparently I had missed out on a UXnet panel and workshop in DC about the issue. (The Boxes and Arrows article “Getting Hired - What Employers Really Want” is here, also by Olga)

The problem with resumes was identified pretty clearly, and it rings true to part of the problem I see–and what I was lazily hoping someone else could help me with:

There are two main reasons why Information Architects and their potential employers may not find the right match: 1) the terms used by the IA and the employer sometimes mean different things 2) the IAs’ resumes and portfolios may not sufficiently explain what the IA was doing, or there are not enough samples of work—wireframes, taxonomies etc. So employers cannot easily determine whether the IA is a good fit for the team.

This clearly describes part of the hell that comes with authoring a resume. So many terms with so many different meanings to so many people–and how can I overlook any of them if I want my resume to look good and get noticed?

Oy.

Dilemma-ville… Population: Russ.

It was also pointed out that people apparently share another problem with me: They’ve also got too much crap in their resume. I look at my resume from time to time and notice small disconnects with consistency in message, style and presentation. The part that gets to me the most are the areas of content where I really, truly feel like I have not articulated what my role and accomplishments were within the organization. Not everyone understands that Personas, Content Maps, Site Maps, Wireframes, etc. aren’t simply documents thrown together, but instead they are the work product that comes from vast amounts of researching, reviewing, revising and that other stuff that really makes the difference: critical thinking.

The next paragraph really put things into perspective for me:

After the panel discussion, while we were reviewing each other’s resumes, several people suggested that we ruthlessly pare the content in our resumes. Start with everything we think needs to be in the resume, and then remove what is not imperative. Then, what does remain will be rewritten to stand on its own. Like magic you’ll end up with the perfect resume. This will most definitely help you keep the resume weight down to 3 megs.

I claim to my friends and family that I desire less clutter in my life. I strive to throw out 1 more shirt in my closet because I really won’t wear it–even if it is in great shape and has a slimming effect on me. Less is more, by gosh, and we all strive to figure out how to place 10 lbs. of “stuff” into a 5 lb. bag on a daily basis in our projects.

The resume project is no different, and though I fought diligently against taking the time to manage this project myself, it has become very clear to me that this is exactly how I have to adjust my thinking if I want to work to be done correctly.

Jonathan Lane chimed in with some outstanding advice that he has picked-up from a recent layoff experience. In summary, the advice is simple, sound and it’s going to be pure hell to try and fit my career–several contract gigs included–into the set of “rules” that Jonathan picked up from Lee Hecht Harrison.

1. No more than two pages. Period.
2. List your education last.
3. Don’t spend too long describing your job role in each position.
4. List your accomplishments.

These instruction are simple enough. Simple enough to read, that is.

When you’ve worked half a dozen contracts that all have had varying shades of IA/UXD this task starts to feel daunting. I know I’m not the only person in the world who has a resume with full time and contract experience on it, and I’m pretty sure that a 6pt font won’t be too acceptable, either. Meeting this challenge is going to require a little flexibility on the rules and a lot of effort on my part to pare things down and still keep it all meaningful to an audience that will take meaning from different keywords.

The ever-generous Peter Boersma shared his online resume with us–an act that scares the bejezus out of me. (Peter was also kind enough to sign-off on his email letting us all know that he’d *never* use a resume-writing service–another point that, while I believe it was good natured, I took to heart) Mark Schraad pointed out that part of my hesitation around publicly posted resumes comes from wanting a degree of control over the interviewing situations that I may get into:

Just like marketing a product (which is exactly what you are doing with job interviews and resumes) YOU want to control the flow of information - and if possible the conversation. You want to develop a relationship and have the opportunity to add dialog as needed to make ‘the sale’. You also want to have the opportunity to say, ‘this is not the right fit’.

Bingo! That was a big part of what I was feeling (all of the “someone’s going to steal my identity…again” stuff aside, of course), and he did a much better job of articulating many of my internal emotions about it all.

Mark also brought up a point that totally makes this resume writing experience head down a completely new path–and a greater level of “stink” for me:

…there is a solid strategy for three different resumes. The first you might hand to someone on the occasion of meeting them (outside of the interview), the second you would send them upon application (this is the 2-3 pager) and possibly the longer, more indepth version that you take with you on the interview.

I only wanted to write 1 resume, dammit. Right after I formally (finally?) launched UserGlue, the website, my friend and recruiter Anotei Baatz mentioned to me that I would get more interest if I had an online version of my resume and portfolio (and Olga supported this, but my feelings are more in tune with Mark Schraad’s on the topic). I’m not exactly trying to land new business at this point in time, but I saw the validity in the requests. I started to find the best way to describe some of the work and some of the companies that I’ve worked for without exactly creating a brand new stinking resume. I took the easy way out and just sort of fluffed enough bulleted items on a couple of pages in order to get content live. I’m not saying this is correct, but it is what it is, and will need to be re-addressed when I get through this resume re-writing exercise that I’m getting mixed-up in.

Now, however, I see the value in this line of thinking, but I am not certain that 3 is the magic number. This will be determined eventually, and I believe that the best approach on this is to look at it from your own perspective of how many ways you need to present yourself in a resume-like format.

Theresa Putkey brought up that it’s the personality more often than the resume that gets you the job–and she is absolutely correct. However, it’s that resume–or at least one of the 3 or so that you decide to create–that opens the door. Right now, my resume could most likely open a door, and if you set the stack of papers down next to the corner, it could probably hold the door open during a good sized wind storm.

Michael Micheletti made the point that the excessive statistics may cause more harm than good if you aren’t taking care in how you present them. It’s one thing to mention that your efforts ultimately effected the end result, but quite another if you’re making claims of “Improved usability by XX%”. I’ve been on enough interviews and conducted enough to know that these types of claims are the ones that can get you into hot water with the wrong type of personality on the other end of the desk–and one untimely misstep and you can be instantly dead in the water. As Michael says:

Because we all know that 43.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Except for mine, which happen to be 100% factual and accurate, most of the time. Right. Stick to the day job. I know, I know.

Through a bit more online digging–particularly through Olga Howard’s already existing efforts, I found a few more resources that I think are good starting points. Livia Labate has a great article, “What I Want To See In A Resume” that provides a lot of insight and additional considerations. Her online sample resume provides a really great kick-off for what that I would consider to be the resume that you would most want to put up on a job board (and now that I’m categorizing resumes, will 3 be enough? Insert Tootsie Roll Lollipop “Licks to the center” joke here):

First Last
123 Name St City, ST (000) 000-0000
first.last@firstlast.com | http://firstlast.com/portfolio

Month YY to Month YY: My Title, Company Name, Location – Two or three sentences describing responsibilities go here.
 Your favorite, proudest accomplishment goes here
 Your second greatest accomplishment goes here
 Your third relevant accomplishment goes here

Repeat for as many relevant jobs as you want to show.

Degree Title, YYY, Institution
Degree Title, YYY, Institution

I’m not going to get all worked-up over the presentation layer just yet–start with a simple, basic font. I really just want to be able to easily cut and paste this one into the various job boards that I use, and I will most likely want to have this one saved as a text resume as well, so I can easily cut and paste it into some other company’s far-too-involved application site.

This will be the first resume that I need to create. This is the resume that it should all evolve from. This is the resume that I will want to test with my peer group, revise and then spend a little bit of time cleaning it up, making it pretty and formatted and PDF-able. I’ll want to add a little personality, perhaps just in the layout so that it is memorable enough to be easy to find in a stack of resumes on a desk–even if it has a 3rd party’s logo and contact information stamped on the top of it.

And that is the place that I plan on starting for the next Resume of Russ. I owe a debt of gratitude to the IAI members that participated in the discussion and to those who contacted me off-list offering their support in one fashion or another. Active participation has some pretty nice benefits, and if you are at all interested in learning more about the IA/UXD space, you really cannot go wrong with the IA Institute as a great starting place–even if you just sit back and lurk on the email list for awhile. The experience and resources are vast, and the willingness to assist another member is invaluable.

My next step is to tear down my current resume and get it right down to the barebones version that I need to start with in order to make my next resume(s) the right kind of resume(s).

More on that later, I suspect.

Small Steps to Save Small Moments

Alternately titled: Holiday Potty

For those of you who don’t read Boxes and Arrows, I am an editor there, and the staff submitted some of our experiences for intended and unintended uses. This is mine, for intended uses, and it should be published for the new year. Enjoy!

As a Chicago Suburbanite, it is inevitable that my family will visit the German Christmas Market at Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago. There’s also a pretty good chance that I’ll be walking around that little village-like setting drinking from a mini-boot mug of hot spiced wine or Dinkle’s hot chocolate, momentarily transported to that tiny village.

As the father of a four year old, it is also inevitable that my daughter will find the least opportune moment to have to go to the restroom. Since my wife is 30-some-odd weeks pregnant, that generally means that there isn’t even a chance to roshambo to see who the fortunate one is that gets to accompany the mostly-adorable child to the facilities to take care of this business.

Don’t get me wrong–I can handle Daddy-duty just fine and can deftly change a diaper or wipe a nose with my sleeve on a moment’s notice, but sometimes it can be fun make a sport out of it.

After perusing the various overseas goodies from a variety of the shops, getting our pictures taken with the giant tree and with Mr. Claus, my daughter determined that it was time. THE time.

I felt a brief moment of pure, unadulterated terror as I was considering my options, until I felt a tug on my gloved hand and heard, “Daddy, I’ve really got to goooooo!”. My focus wasted no time returning and we headed out in the direction of the restrooms that people within earshot were kind enough to point to as they showed knowing smiles.

The dread set in as I realized that the “restroom” at Daley Plaza was nothing more than a plastic teal Port-A-Potty. The last I had checked, Port-A-Potties aren’t exactly made for more than one person, yet alone 1.5 people in full-on winter garb. The terror was returning as visions of shuffling around clothing while trying to get my daughter into position.

We rounded the corner and were met with the surprisingly pleasant view of a couple of tents, each surrounding its own Port-A-Potties on one side and a table on the other. There was a sturdy glass door right in the middle that resembled the type of door you would expect to see if you were looking at the entrance of any retail store from the street. We quickly entered the tent, placed the coats, etc. on the table and the rest is pretty uninteresting, and I am sure you’re thankful for that.

However, somewhere out there in a planning committee is a person who, when placing squares on a layout plan for Daley Plaza, considered that the freezing cold was not the ideal place to use a Port-A-Potty. That UX genius on a committee somewhere may a small–but very significant–change that kept our pre-holiday festivies…

Festive!

How Comcast VOIP Penalizes The Majority

I was one of the first to adopt Comcast’s VOIP when it came to my area. (If it would have been a midnight event at Best Buy, I would have stood in line for it–that’s just the kind of geek I am). For the most part, I do not notice that I have VOIP instead of a traditional telephone service, which, ultimately plays into Comcast’s favor. There are times, like when the cable service goes out that you realize that in order to call to report the problem, well, you have to use your mobile phone, but that is also a known risk.

There are also great benefits–like a voicemail system that is kind enough to send you an email and that allows you to access your messages online. Since the Comcast system will only store my password for 24 hours and I don’t feel like Im able to navigate their system quicly enough, I mostly dial-in to listen to my messages.

About 6 months ago, Comcast upgraded their voicemail services.

Upgraded?

Okay, let me rephrase: They upgraded their voicemail system.

The degraded their VUI (Voice User Interface) for the voicemail system, in my humble opinion.

Wikipedia has blessed me with some information that I’ve found useful:

Although the United States currently has no official language, English has long been the de facto national language. Government agencies in most states and at the federal level can commonly be contacted in Spanish. Many states such as California require legislated notices and official documents to be printed in Spanish alongside English and other commonly used languages.

And:

The United States does not have an official language, but English is spoken by about 82% of the population as a native language. The variety of English spoken in the United States is known as American English; together with Canadian English it makes up the group of dialects known as North American English. 96% of the population of the U.S. speaks English well. On May 18, 2006, the Senate voted on an amendment to an immigration reform bill that would declare English the national language of the United States. The immigration reform bill itself, S. 2611, was passed in the Senate on May 25, 2006, and now has to go back to the House of Representatives in conference to make sure amendments are agreed upon.

The Spanish language is the second-most common language in the country, spoken by almost 30 million people (or 12% of the population) in 2005.

Here are my key points to Comcast:

1. I live in the United States
2. American English is the most spoken language in the country

That said, the Comcast Voicemail system previously worked as follows:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system (otherwise listen to bizarre message that allows you to enter in a phone number and leave a message for someone on the system–huh? The voicemail number is not a publicly known number)
3. Press your phone number
4. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you (learned by trial and error, thank you very much)
5. Press your password
6. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
7. Enter voicemail system, do voicemail-related things

Upon implementation of the “system upgrade”, something broke. Much like the blasted soda machine in my office, I still get tripped up by this change.

The change has caused a slight-looking shift (see bolded text below) in the way the voicemail system now works:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘1′ if you wish to hear your prompts in English, ‘2′ if you wish to hear your prompts in Spanish (Pressing anything else ie ‘#’ results in you listening to the English/Spanish message all over again)
3. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system
4. The rest is the same

This seems minor, right? Simply adjust my thinking, unlearn what I’ve already been using for over a year, realize that there is an extra button press and accept that Comcast is attempting to serve a broader customer base. The thought itself is not problematic. The implementation is. To me. And possibly to those whom I assume are in the majority of their user base.

I do not take issue with that, but I would not expect to check voicemail in France and have to identify myself as a French speaker EVERY TIME. On the contrary, I would expect to listen until I heard something in English and then press the corresponding number that would allow me to listen in my language. If France had more than one primary launguage–like Canada (see the humor?)–, then I would expect to be able to choose my primary language in my voicemail set-up, including the option to select my language at each login. For Comcast, this does not happen–although I am allowed to set my languages in my Administrative options. You’ve probably guessed it: My language preferences are all set to English.

Still, I am an English-speaking American, and I am in America. For whatever reason (okay, for statistical reasons, even), I feel as my language should be in the majority. I feel that spoken prompts of a VUI should be in English automatically and I should not have to listen to a prompt that forces me to select the option to hear prompts in English. Instead, I should be able to quickly bypass the system and get right to my voicemail, which is all that I care about to begin with. Comcast, you may have fixed something that was not even remotely broken.

However, that 1 extra keypress repeatedly frustrates me and repeatedly trips me up and more frequently than I’d care to admit, causes me to redial voicemail and try again. Or wait until I get to computer and login and listen to an audio file.

In my mind, the system should work like this:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system
3. Press your phone number
4. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
5. Press your password
6. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
7. Enter voicemail system, do voicemail-related things

Does that seem at all familiar? It should–it’s the same system that was previously in place. Before the system upgrade.

I wonder if this change was tested on an appropriate sampling of their user base? I’ve got a hunch it probably was not.

Perhaps a better enhancement to the system would be to perform an overhaul that could be used across all of Comcast, so there is a familiarity whenever you need to call in to one of their phone numbers. By gosh, even better would be the notion that there could be some VUI globals, well, globally.

Beloved Apple hung up on me today because I tried to hit ‘0′ to get a human and find out store hours, instead of just listening to their pre-recorded information. I think it may have been a ‘5′ that would have let me do that, but I was impatient and instead, I received a friendly “Good bye”. Somewhere in the world, someone is chuckling that the VUI was unforgiving and that I was too impatient. To a degree, that almost seemed rather Steve Jobs-ish, eh?

Regardless, the United States is a melting pot, and I’ll happily admit that. The Spanish language is ever-increasing in usage and there is a large population that needs to be served in voice systems. In fact, if nothing else, this emphasizes to me that a function needs to be dedicated on systems to change back and forth between languages.

Example:

1. 1-6 - used for standard “options” (each is task-specific, otherwise, by the time you listen to 9 or 10 options, you’ve spaced-out and missed the one you needed or invariably someone has distracted you and you randomly push a button anyway)
2. 7 - paginate backward through options
3. 8 - swap language (English / Spanish)
4. 9 - paginate forward through options
5. * - system help
6. 0 - Operator
7. # - “Enter” or “Finished submitting” or a bypass for when a system offers the option of your account, phone number, etc.

Maybe I’m not exactly breaking new ground with my frustration points here. I doubt that I’ve come up with a world-class solution at this point, but I don’t think I’ve met a person who enjoys any of the VUI systems in place today. It may be time for an overhaul.

And don’t get me started on the systems that force you to be conversational with them.

The Failings of Facebook, Etc.

Like a lot of people, I’ve got a Facebook account. I even check it with some frequency (thanks to that BlackBerry application that allows me to check for any status updates when I’ve got some spare moments) and update it with some regularity. But I wonder, just how honest is this?

Quite a few years ago, perhaps around 2000-ish, I started writing a personal blog. In my mind, that was well before blogging was big. I used a fun little nickname (which also fails, once everyone knows who you are) and I ranted and raved about whatever I’d chose. I had enough insight to be careful not to name names, but for the most part, nothing was off-limits on my blog.

For awhile.

Shameless self-promotion took over as readership increased (and perhaps those things fed each other). There was an addiction (and it probably took me until right now to admit that) to getting those updates about comments or various other interactions on the site. I checked-in frequently, often refreshing stats on advertising and readership. I enjoyed being in the fishbowl–and knowing people were watching me. In fact, I went out of my way to try and find humorous (juvenile, immature) antics to write about for the sake of maintaining an image I was trying to portray.

In retrospect, it was definitely an interesting experience, and I’m glad that one is behind me and I’ve turned the corner on that chapter of life.

That is an experience that, I think, makes me a bit wiser now. MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and the others all draw you in and they play on your desire to know about the updates of your various connection types, or your own desire to share what it is that you happen to be doing at this moment. It is intriguing and sometimes a little exciting to get caught up in their experience.

They certainly hope that you do. There’s big money in it for them.

But, what’s in it for you? I think a lot of people do not entirely realize what some of the ramifications of being a bit too flip in online communities can be. Ask anyone who has had to write a few personas in their day and I’m guessing that, like me, they’ll tell you that they utilize these social networking sites to do a little bit of background research. I bet that they’ll also tell you that at times they’re shocked at what people are willing to display to the general public about their habits and preferences.

I am a pretty caffeinated person, but I am fairly laid back when it comes to online content. I can laugh with the best of them when I’ve got my Russ hat on. However, if I were wearing a hiring manager hat and Googling your name to see what the professional behind the resume looks like on line, well, my take on your professionalism may shift a little bit if you are not practicing a bit of discretion.

Think about that. For those of you who work in a client-services industry, do you ever use LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc. to get a view into the client or the vendor? Most likely. I’ll admit that I do. I think it’s a bit of human nature to find out just how qualified someone that you are working with–I’ve seen it done at previous employers, and with negative results for other people. Perception was shifted based upon information that was readily found online in some public forum.

And therein lies a big enough problem. Still, this is not the biggest problem that I see with the social networking sites.

The biggest problem that I see is one that involves how you interact with your friends, peers and acquaintances that you allow yourself to be connected to.

First and foremost, have you ever declined an online connection with someone on one of the social networking sites? I once had someone–a co-worker–tell me NO on LinkedIn and I did not even want to see him in passing in the hallway anymore. Awkward, thy name is Social Networking Rejection.

Have you ever accepted a connection with someone that you work with–but that you are not really social with? For example, my current boss and I are connected on Facebook. We don’t go catch a movie together or go and grab a beer together, but I think he’s a good guy and I would not work for him if I felt otherwise. That said, the instant that the connection was accepted, I noticed that I began to lightly filter things that I posted. The more that other people from work were added, the more that I noticed I became less flip and more cautious about how I would allow myself to be perceived on Facebook. I’m older, and I like to think a bit wiser, and I feel comfortable enough in my skin that it really is a lot easier to be “me” online these days, but I do not think that a lot of people are at that point–at least after reviewing over a hundred various Facebook profiles.

However, by virtue of a professional relationship, it may be wise–if not necessary–to apply a filter to your publicly available social networking information. Perhaps it is best to just maintain a private profile that does not allow itself to be easily found or added. Of course, what does that say about you? Are you too private? Are you hiding something? I think that seems silly, but I also think that history should show us that we can all be silly from time to tome.

Likewise, if I would no have allowed my boss to be my friend on Facebook, what would that say about me? I ask this regardless of what it should say–when it comes to feelings and impressions, most times what should be done gets thrown out the window. If I would have rejected his offer of friendship, would I have look like an anti-social jerkwad? Do I look like one because I don’t have a large number of friends as it is?

This is where I see the biggest failing of Facebook, etc.

Just last week, a friend of mine posted a status update that she had the just been on one of the worst interviews of her professional career. There is no way on earth that I could post that on my Facebook status. Instead, I would need to find the right way to get ahold of my closest friends and let them know what was going on–perhaps IM, email or a call on the cellphone (while driving). If one of your connections is an acquaintance and not a friend, could you broadcast a status update about a gathering that the friend was not invited to and risk hurting their feelings or having them invite themselves? There is a breakdown that starts to happen as you allow yourself to become the equivalent of “online popular”. Eventually, you may find yourself censoring yourself.

Ultimately, you return a very personal method of communication with your inner circle. That may be an instant message, an email to a small group or even 1-to-1 conversations via telephone or in-person when it comes to truly personal or sensitive matters.

FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace–you name it. These have become a personality promotion tool for yourself. These are tools that allow you to promote yourself in the way that you want people to see you, but ultimately not the person you really are. There is a famous quote out there that loosely states:

“I am not who I think I am, I am not who you think I am, but I am who I think you think I am.”

These tools are here to help us all take that the whatever Nth level we desire. However, the internet has a memory, and we need to remember that. Google caches pages. There are archive sites with previous information stored, and even those brief snapshots could be just enough to cost any of us something important to us tomorrow from a lapse in judgment or discretion.

This also serves as a notice to users: When you eventually do tire of your social networking flavor of the week and move on, you may want to consider revisiting your existing profiles and do a bit of house cleaning.

The realization of this, or the impact of this may not be immediate. It may take quite awhile to even recognize that it is starting to happen, and when it does, the shine will start to fade a little on the shiny new toy, no matter how many new tools, applications or vampire/werewolf attacks you may endure (I ignore those faster than you can send them, just in case you are curious). Eventually, you may move on to the next big thing–until everyone else finds you and you begin to feel that you may be censoring yourself again. And then it’s on to the next next thing. I made a nice Venn Diagram to help illustrate how this particular point may play out in the future:

The Usability of a Soda Machine

I like to think that I’m a trainable monkey; I feel like I can pick up most things, particularly those that interest me, in a fair-to-fast amount of time. However, without fail, I will walk to the company soda machine, insert my coins for that Diet Mountain Dew that looks like an ideal thirst quencher.

There is generally a 50% chance that I will end up with said beverage, of course.

And, of course, I press the Diet Mountain Dew button firmly, staring at it to look for that little orange light (that I still think should be somewhere on its face to let me know that a circuit has been connected, that my beverage is about to be dispensed) and hold on to a moment of hope that my thirst is about to be quenched.

50% of the time, I hear a familiar buzz and humm, a shifting of some hardware and a chucking sound as a delicious Diet Mountain Dew makes its delicious way through some cold, dark tunnel, past that little cold-stopping flap and safely into the basket that someone has placed a couple of folded over paper towels into, allowing our delicious beverage treats to come to rest safely and without harm.

The other 50% of the time generally results in me feeling fairly ridiculous.

When I press the button firmly, still staring at it for that little orange light…

Nothing happens. Well, nothing on the button.

SOLD OUT, at the rapid pace of about 1 second per letter, scrolls right to left across the LED display that normally tells me the proper amount of coinage to insert for a tasty beverage treat. Without fail, I press Diet Mountain Dew again, perhaps several times as if I’m impatiently waiting for an elevator and thinking that pressing the button repeatedly makes the elevator show up. If I have my wits about me or if someone else is in the room with me, I will quickly shift gears and press a secondary choice–either that tantalizing Gatorade in a 12 oz can or one of those mini little bottles of water.

Without fail–and even though I’ve been using this machine for nearly a year now–I continue to press the dispense button, even though the machine will not allow any other actions to occur until all of the letters of SOLD OUT have scrolled completely across the LED.

The flaw here is simple, and one that has no real impact on the vending machine creator; my money is in the machine and I’m going to buy something (most likely). I’m going to press another button, even if I have to wait another 10 seconds to find out just how empty the machine is. I will most likely return the next day and will most likely repeat this until my situation changes.

However, everyday, I’m going to sit and think about this soda machine and how foolish I feel for repeating the same mistakes. Everyday I’m going to add a little bit more loathing–until I begin to consider that a 12 oz Diet Mountain Dew that I should be able to get instantly has lost some of its lustre. Maybe, instead, the $5 coffee (Chicago proper has a tax of about 10.25%, I believe) gets my attention–or the <competitor brand> vitamin watery drink gets my attention, as does the elevator ride down, the walk around the building and the return, which costs me (and possibly my employer) all of that time.

Perhaps the real cost is to the employer, or the place in which vending machines are placed–with the exception of small town hotels; the vending machines there are often times the only dinner a late worker can get. The initial cost of the beverage is insignificant. The cost to my ego and pride is minor, but has sort of a cascading effect as I eventually get fed up (with myself?) and take my business (sometimes) elsewhere. I certainly do not reward my employer with the return of an extra 15ish minutes tacked on to my normal departure time.

Anyway, this diatribe should be wrapped up with a simple solution:

When a type of beverage is empty–hell, if it’s at X left–show us on the outside. I’d love to know when a machine is at capacity. The odds would seem high to me that the beverages are possibly warm since the machine was potentially refilled recently. When that number gets lower, I may be convinced to purchase two to ensure that I can have enough beverage to get me through a giant, spicy burrito. When that number is at zero–you guessed it–I’m going to go for my second choice, my third choice, or the phone to call the person responsible for calling the soda-machine-filler-person. Even better–add a wifi card in the machine, let it on the wifi network and have it send a nice little message when the machine reaches a certain level of dispensed beverages and the soda-machine-filler-person can get an SMS, email or some other nice little notification.

And me, well, I get to not dwell on this topic any longer, at the very least.

So, Just What Exactly Is “Community”, Anyway?

I kind of hate those informational pieces that start out with a definition, but somehow, it really makes sense to start out this way. 

Wikipedia says this:

A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

I’ll do a little dissecting here–A community is a group of people (users, members) that come together in a single location (website) and have some similar beliefs, values, goals, etc.

A bunch of people who have something in common and go to a single location to do something about it.

People, with [some] shared thing(s) who frequent a same location and interact.

Wow, I think I got it.  And to think, I’ve been working in community for a few years now and have yet to actually force myself to come up with something pretty earth-shatteringly basic.

Awesome!  We’ve got the hard part–the definition that seems to make a lot of sense and seems to be pretty basic–down.

Now what?

Well, now we have to figure out exactly who those users are (demo/ehtnographics), what the thing(s) are that they share/have in common, and how they want/need to interact.

And the answer, from this Information Architect’s perspective is a pretty standard one:

It depends.

And that makes this the point where everyone should start to roll up their sleeves, dig in their heels and truly try to figure out, well, as much as can be figured out.

It’s also where I’m going to stop for this post, because a lot has been accomplished on getting into the depths of defining your community–we’ve come to a common agreement on what, exactly, community is, as a whole.  Not what “our” community is for this effort (project), but we’ve got a good starting point.  We’ve got our first slide in the PowerPoint presentation that we’ve got to give to the client tomorrow morning at 9am, which really doesn’t help you much if this is my first post and you just happened to find it, well, now.

It’s also a pretty good point because this is really where it can start to get complicated.  I’ve worked with building a variety of online communities, so we should know that online is going to be the focus.  For the intents of what I’ll be talking about, I’ll most likely focus on what I’ve worked on in the past–but I’m always looking for something more, something different and untried and that always exists, even if it is pure speculation. 

I’m sure there will be plenty of that, too.