Outside Innovation

How NOT to Provide Documentation

Most of the world has become Apple fans, even those who don't use Apple products. I thought about that last night, as I unpacked and provisioned my new Blackberry sent overnight from Verizon Wireless when my old phone died. (No, I can't get decent AT&T service, so I can't use an iPhone, the Android isn't available in a dual-mode GSM version from Verizon, and I am a Crackberry addict). As I pulled all the doodads out of the Blackberry box, and dived into the manual in order to just learn how to put the battery in, get the device activated, and begin to figure out how to use it, I find myself muttering, "this sure isn't from Apple." Apple would have provided a simpler box of goodies and a one-page set of pictures and instructions that would show me the 4 steps I needed to take. Verizon and Blackberry expect me to wade thru the manual and figure out what's in the box. The good news is that I am very happy with my new Blackberry Bold.

The bad news is that very few companies have figured out how to provide "get started" instructions or assembly instructions for the things we need in our lives. Apple does a good, but not perfect job. Their "getting started" documentation is great. But I have still been confused by what they take for granted when I try to use their devices.

The current trend in documentation is to provide picture-rich instructions that are universally understandable no matter what language you speak. This is great in theory. Graphics are attractive and accessible. They save a lot of money and time by preventing needless (and often bad) translations. But as you'll note from reading Ronni Marshak's article, there's a problem with illustration-only instructions. Many of us are verbal, not graphical people. A set of complicated illustrations can be very confusing. Case in point, my husband and I spent 5 hours last Saturday assembling very well made and affordable bunk beds. But the other Amazon reviewers claim to have spent only 2 hours! We had to redo a number of things because there were no words or symbols explaining what you needed to pay particular attention to in doing the assembly. So we had to retrace our steps a couple of times. My brother loves video instructions. But he, too, complained bitterly when he and a buddy were trying to assemble his Endless Pool (indoor swimming lane) and the assembly instructions were in the form of a video. Imagine that you're doing a plumbing job and you need to climb out of the enclosure and go rewatch that section of the video. (I guess that's what iPads are for, but I don't think you'd want to risk the potential damage by using it during your home fix-it project.) How do YOU like your instructions?? And how do you test them before you ship products to customers?

See Ronni's perspective:

Use Your Words
Although Pictorial Instructions Avoid Localization Issues, Some of Us Don't Respond Well to Diagrams
By Ronni T. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, August 19, 2010

Give Customer Experience Leaders Authority as well as Responsibility

By Ronni Marshak
SVP and Sr. Consultant/Analyst, Patricia Seybold Group

In Part 3 of the Customers.com Handbook, What Roles You'll Need to Implement Your Customers.com Strategy, Patty stresses the importance of making sure that the role (or roles) that lead the customer experience charge has clout in your organization. Her suggestions for a new customer-centric organizational structure include:

1. Put Your Top Execs in Charge of Customer Experience Governance

2. Give Customer Segment Owners P&L Responsibility

3. Nurture Customer Communities by Customer Segment

4. Drive Company-wide Priorities based on Customer-critical Issues ACROSS Segments

Sound advice. But many organizations have already put people and projects in place that don’t necessarily follow these guidelines.

In our experience with client projects, the most successful co-design and customer innovation initiatives always have high-level executive support. But in those projects that die on the vine (before even getting started) or get stalled after a promising start, the person given the mandate to improve the customer experience is lower down on the corporate totem pole, and doesn't have the unfailing support of the powers that be.

Customer-Centric Initiatives that Never Happen

Getting a customer experience initiative off the ground requires proper scoping of the project and defining valued deliverables, all of which requires deep and thoughtful listening to the sponsor's requirements and ultimate goals. However, a well conceived project doesn't necessarily get approved. This is especially true when the sponsor is below the VP level and isn't responsible for a line of business with the associated P&L. Typically, someone at the C level recognizes that the company should be doing some customer experience programs, and puts the onus on a VP level exec to figure out how to make that happen. The VP looks for someone to take ownership, and often turns to someone at mid level in marketing, who either doesn’t have other specific responsibilities but is a good worker, or someone who has a lot of responsibilities, but makes things happen.

Unfortunately, by the time this customer-experience program leader gathers all the information on what type of project can be done and can be successful, the senior executive has moved on to other priorities and is loath to commit any significant budget to the initiative.

IT Musical Chairs

High tech musical chairs seem more and more irrelevant to me. So Intel is buying McAfee in order to provide firmware security between our mobile devices and the data that sits in the data centers within the clouds we access using our mobile devices. Intel is aligning with both Nokia and Google Android to gain a foothold in the smartphone market. HP and Dell are squabbling over who will pay more for 3Par (a data storage company), while both firms teeter on the brink of irrelevancy. (Google doesn't buy servers from Dell or HP, they build their own.) Nobody really cares what Microsoft does anymore. But every time Google or Apple sneezes, we all notice. In the information technology field, Google and Apple are now the center of the universe. Everything they do matters. Every other company is either aligned with one or both of them or competing with one or both of them. Those who are aligned (Intel+Google) will benefit, at least temporarily. They may get cannibalized over time. Those who are competing (Microsoft vs. Google, Microsoft vs. Apple, Oracle vs. Google, Adobe vs. Apple, etc.) are doomed. We've seen this cycle before. Once upon a time (maybe before you were born), IBM was the center of the IT universe. Later, it was Microsoft. Then Google. Now Apple. Who’s next?

Crowdsourcing to the Rescue (again) in Pakistan Floods

The floods in Pakistan are not over. They have moved from the north of the country to the south, impacting the lives of 15 million people, displacing 3.5 million, killing over 1400, and injecting a huge risk of water-borne disease and starvation into an already at risk population in a politically charged part of the world. Here are the most current statistics:

While world leaders are pledging aid and politicians and bureaucrats are issuing dire warnings and trying to cope, the worlds’ relief organizations have already sprung into action, including, of course, those that are already on the ground in the affected districts (which as you can see from this map is now most of the country).

Source: MapAction & OCHA - OneResponse Pakistan

As soon as I hear about a disaster—particularly one that affects millions of people and is being under-reported by the US media—I head to twitter (via TweetDeck) to set up a search filter in order to monitor the pulse and to hone in on the best and most insightful on the ground reporting. (Use hashtags #Pakistan and #pkflood or #pkfloods to set up your own filter.) Twitter filtering quickly landed me at several authoritative sites designed to aggregate information, including the Live Updates section of the SA Relief site – originally set up in 2005 to coordinate relief in South East Asia -- and the Floods 2010 page on the Pakistan Crisis Wiki, and the amazingly informative OneResponse Pakistan humanitarian Web Portal which is the “official” UN-sponsored site for coordinating humanitarian relief efforts by “clusters” of expertise, as well as Google’s Crisis Response page, set up to aggregate information, and Wikipedia’s as usual, excellent and quickly evolving coverage.

In addition to providing background on the monsoon conditions that have caused the higher than normal flooding, and up-to-date weather reports, the Wikipedia article did a good job of framing the controversy over the apparent slow response of the international community to the Pakistani flood crisis:

Criticism of response

The Pakistani government was blamed for sluggish and disorganized response to the floods.^[138] The perceived disorganized and insufficient response led to instances of riots, with attacks and looting of aid convoys by hunger-stricken people.^[139] The lack of a unified government response allowed Islamic groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-e-Islami to supply aid with minimal resistance.^[140][141] President Asif Ali Zardari was also criticized for going ahead with visits to meet leaders in Britain and France at a time when his nation was facing catastrophe.^[142][143] In Sindh, the ruling Pakistan People's Party ministers were accused of using their influence to direct flood waters off their crops while risking densely populated areas.^[144]

The United Nations criticized the international community for responding slowly, despite the ferocity and magnitude of disaster. As of 9 August, only $45 million in aid had been committed, which is far less than usual for a natural disaster of this scale.^[145] In an analysis of the response to the disaster, The Guardian said that there was a dire need of relief goods in the immediate aftermath of the floods. It quoted the UN's humanitarian affairs co-ordination office, saying that "[s]ix million [of the 14 million affected] are children and 3 million women of child-bearing age. This is a higher figure than in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami."^[146]

China and India were initially criticized for their slow response to Pakistan's calls for aid.^[147]. It was described by The Diplomat as "aloof and blind to the tragedy affecting Pakistan."^[148][149] On 13 August, India offered to provide around $5 million in aid, as well as official condolences.^[150][151] Pakistan did not accept the offer.^{[152][153][154]} as of August 19.^[155]

An analysis by AP's correspondent, Nahal Toosi, suggested that a number of factors account for the inadequate international response, namely the low death toll, the protracted unfolding of the extent of the catastrophe, the lack of celebrity involvement, the impression that the government is not focused on the event, and a certain donor fatigue, perhaps more so as Pakistan has been receiving support before.^[156]

British Prime Minister David Cameron was accused by Pakistan of hampering international aid efforts after he claimed that Pakistan was responsible for promoting terrorism.^[157][158]

Some potential donors doubt that funds will reach victims of the flood, but will rather be diverted to terrorist groups such as the Taliban, despite a significant amount of the aid effort being directed by the United Nations.^[159]

The good news is that because of this controversy, funding has picked up over the past few days. Here is the update as of August 19, 2010:

Source: PakReport.org

Tapping into Crowdsourced Incident Reports

Wanting to know what was actually happening on the ground, I also immediately hooked into Ushahidi—having discovered this really useful grass roots open source crisis management platform during the early weeks of the hurricane-crisis in Haiti. Sure enough, there’s a Pakistan Floods Ushahidi site, PakReport.org.

 

Crowdsourcing: Amazon’s Kindle Commercial Contest

Once again, Amazon is running a “Design your own Kindle Commercial” contest. The deadline to submit a single video with original soundtrack and footage is August 29th. You have to be a resident of the U.S. to enter this contest. The winner will receive a $15,000 Amazon gift card and the four runners up $2,500 gift cards. These kinds of contests seem to provide great opportunities for under-recognized professionals to strut their stuff, although I’m sure that the submissions include a lot of good amateur ones as well. Last year's submission helped the careers of the winning producer-director team, the team who wrote and recorded the music, and the team who did the actual video.

Here's the winning submission from last year's contest:

 

Last year’s winners, Angela Kohler and Ithyle Griffiths produced and directed the winning video, using a stop motion video approach that won them not only the first prize, but the opportunity to produce two more videos for Amazon.