Category Archives: Management

Addendum to “Getting More From Analysis” by Lewandoswki and Dilworth

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UX Magazine published Getting More From Analysis by Jared Lewandowski and John Dilworth on Dec 16, 2010. The authors provide a  summary of analysis as part of three design activities:

  1. Analysis
  2. Synthesis
  3. Evaluation

Diagramming these activities

They also provide some models for conceiving of these three activities, from linear to finally advising on a traditional equally-weighted 3-circle Venn diagram.

I like the thinking, and the clear reclassifying of design as including all of these activities, as opposed to only synthesis. However, their Venn diagram leaves direction out of the picture. I like this approach better.

Design as Venn diagram of Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation, with clockwise arrows.

This model simply adds the arrows to what Lewandowski and Dilworth provided. It’s simple, but serves to organize the concepts.

Working together isn’t always simple

In addition, the authors recommend involving analysts in synthesis activities, and designers and developers in analysis activities. This, I agree, is good advice, but they didn’t provide any techniques to help you actually pull this off.

Analysis, synthesis, and evaluation each require different types of thinking, and a person specialized in, say, analysis may end up stepping on the toes of the people specialized in synthesis. The result may be a stunted synthesis activity, shut down because an analyst broke down the problem again before a designer or developer had a real chance to synthesize the ideas into various solutions.

To avoid these types of problems, creating intentional design (be they analysis, synthesis, or evaluation) sessions is important.

Setting up design facilitation sessions

I’ve been listening lately to some lectures by Professor Michael Roberto, and in them he’s advised what he calls the 4-Cs of encouraging real ideas in a debate. Roberto is focused on strategic decision making, but I think we can learn from this advice and apply similar thinking to how to set up design facilitation sessions.

  1. Composition – of group, who should be invited
  2. Context – Atmosphere, shared norms, ground rules, location
  3. Communication – How will we discuss and exchange views? E.g., subgroups, devil’s advocates.
  4. Control the process – Will I as leader be in the room? Do I ask for a packaged solution or do I ask to see a debate.

You might think this is over-thinking it all. Just put the people in the same room and have them discuss the design, and good things should happen right? Maybe. But why gamble? Even 10 minutes of planning a design session based on these 4-Cs could turn a waste of time into a breakthrough design session.

How to seek and destroy organizational silos

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sketch an evil silo

Fear the Evil Silo!

After I was put in charge of a newly created user experience department, a young professional gravely warned me about silos.

He had argued against the new department because it would just create another silo in the company.

The passion of the warning gave the impression that this silo threat was real, imminent, and inescapable in anything but a flat organization.

Beware all ye who manage departments! Dread the ghoul of business quagmire: silo! ;-)

The warning was overzealous. The fear of silos is a bad reason to force an organization’s structure into any particular shape. No, instead shape the organization to promote sustainable excellence in performance for the whole business.

That said, for all you suffering from silophobia, let me tell you how to spot silos and what to do when you find them.

How do you spot a silo? Watch for the symptoms.

I found this description after a quick web search for organizational silos. (It’s a nice short read on silos, so go on and read the whole article.)

“The symptoms of the silo effect are easy to recognize: lack of cooperation, internal competition and breakdown in communication. The result is that one division gets pitted against another – head office against operations, one department against another.”
Marcel Côté, A matter of trust and respect, CA Magazine, March 2002.

As Marcel says, the symptoms are:

  • lack of cooperation
  • internal competition
  • breakdown in communication

Doesn’t that sound like squabbling children? Interdepartmental gossip may be another symptom.

Okay, let’s say you spot a breakdown in communication between departments. Do you have a silo? Don’t jump to conclusions. Maybe you just have poor communicators. Relax. You may not have a silo on your hands.

Now, if you do see all these symptoms, you have a problem, no matter what you call it.

The question is, what can you do about it?

How to solve a silo problem

Let’s say you manage an IT department and you have just spotted a silo in that other department, Communications.

Look out! You’re standing in your own silo peering out. Good job, you have just spotted two silos. Now what?

Now you do a gut check. Ask yourself if you have felt competition against Communications. Have you been looking out for own department at Communication’s expense? Think about your budget and your own maneuvering. When you think about your department’s plans, do you consistently consider how to keep the people over in Communications in the loop?

The key to tearing down silos is to go out of your way to help other departments.

(Fortunately for me, this is natural to user experience. We help other departments, like product development, marketing, and sales, do their work better.)

So, your next step is to go over to Communications and find out how you can help them the most. And then do it. Yeah, even spend a little of your own budget on the solution. And don’t begrudge it. Earn gratitude.

What will happen is that you will start strengthening relationships between the people in your department and the other department. With that will come respect, collaboration, and better communication.

Oh, and if you consistently help that other department, eventually they’ll get the idea and return the favor.

The idea is simple. Business silos exist when departments look out for their own interests instead of the whole business’s best interests. The solution is to get back in touch with the main objective of the company and help each other out in pursuit of that goal. Bingo.

In short, grow up and play nicely together.

P.S.—Or take this ITIL expert’s advice and admit that silos are a good thing and systematically work to strengthen them.

My 2.5 days in San Francisco: MX 2010

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Red stone church near green trees, surrounded by skyscrapers.

View from top of Yerbe Buena Gardens, San Francisco, March 2010.

Saturday PM: Sunshine!

I actually began to sweat under my blazer from the warm sun shining brightly through the window.

I had arrived in San Francisco a little early on Saturday, dropped my suitcase off at the Intercontinental Hotel, and walked around the corner to a sandwich shop for a bite to eat and to get online. As I draped my coat over the back of the chair, I decided I really like San Francisco. It’s the sun, I admit it. Oh, and I had already noted that the two billboards I noticed on the taxi from the airport were pure tech: one for an enterprise search system and another for PGP. Billboards talking to me? Amazing.

After settling in at the hotel, I had dinner with my old colleague Chris Burley and his girfriend at a nice Italian restaurant. Chris is awesome. I love talking with him because he has such passion for what he does, which currently is to help lead efforts like urban farming in the Bay area.

Sunday AM: 3 good things

The next morning I woke early due to the time zone difference, and I had three excellent experiences:

  1. In the aching fog of caffeine deprivation, had the best cup of coffee of my life, thanks to the Blue Bottle Café. (I admit, I ordered a second cup to go.)
  2. Paused in the Yerbe Buena Gardens where some elderly practiced tai chi and parents snapped photos as their little children hid behind a waterfall. I stood on a bridge and watched the morning sun ripple on the glass of San Francisco skyscrapers.
  3. Crashed a church service at a music venue called Mezzanine put on by a group that calls itself IKON. I was the oldest person there, amidst a crowd of art school students. We sang, we listened to a teaching from the Word, we had communion. It was good.

Sunday PM: MX day 1

Sunday afternoon saw the start of the 2010 MX Conference.

MX2010 is largely focused on managing user experience and less on the tactical end of UX practice, and there were some thought-provoking presentations from people who have been managing user experience for a number of years, in a number of different types of companies. Off the top of my head, presenters represented firms in financial industries (Vanguard), publishing (Harvard Business Review), retail sporting goods, and online media (Youtube).

The series of talks was fantastic, and was kicked off with a keynote by Jared Spool in which he shared insights like that Gallup’s Customer Engagement (CE11) metric has high correlation to the quality of user experience. Spool’s keynote actually turned out to predict some themes that carried throughout the many presentations. Among them were the importance of establishing a vision for user experience and that experience ultimately must be addressed well across multiple channels (web, mobile, physical space, etc.).

Spool talked about three core attributes necessary for great user experience: Vision, Feedback, and Culture. He posed three questions that UX managers should ask.

  1. VISION: Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design 5 years from now?
  2. FEEDBACK: In the last six weeks have you spent more than two hours watching someone use your design or a competitor’s design?
  3. CULTURE: In the last six weeks have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?

After the conference reception, I wound down the evening by taking a walk around a few blocks and ending at a nearby bar. I ate a burger and watched the Academy Awards for a while. Back at the hotel I watched the end of a Clint Eastwood Western flick and fell asleep.

Monday AM+PM: MX day 2

I woke at 4 in the morning. I checked analytics, email, and my usual RSS feeds. I stretched, washed, dressed, and still had time to kill. I read a few chapters in The Shack, a book Adam gave me last week.

I chatted throughout the day with Haakon, a usability specialist attending from the design company Tarantell in Norway, and as he sipped his coffee, I decided to not mention my mere three hour time difference.

The rest of the day was another series of excellent presentations. Themes: customer (more than user) experience, vision that guides the business, new models for working in the network, UX leadership stories from Youtube, customer experience in renovation of thinking at Harvard Business Review Online, understanding the holistic customer, data-driven design decisions (and when not to rely on data for design decisions), experience design as business strategy, and operating as a chief experience officer in your company.

It was great to hear first-hand the stories from these user experience leaders. Now, for what to do with it all when returning to the office.

Tomorrow and then

Tomorrow morning I fly back to Michigan, and need to get my head back into product owner and user experience work. But I also need to hold onto the ideas from this conference, and shift into actively leading user (or is that customer) experience work at Covenant Eyes.