Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’
Ergonomics 101
Posted on: December 1, 2009
Ergonomics
Ergonomics – the efficiency of work. Can we design work and procedures that are useable? Or somehow does the way we do things create more work, wasted steps, irritation, boredom or fatigue.
Clearly some basic ergonomics is a basic requirement for every manager and geek in this computer world of ours.
Hootsuite
I use Hootsuite as my Twitter interface. I like the white layout. I like my stream in three columns – combined, mentions and dm’s. I like the button to shorten urls. I like the stats.
Over complicating upgrade
But they upgraded recently. Big fail in my opinion. We now have to select a social network for our message. I know they are trying to increase functionality (getting greedy?). The trouble is they left the send button next to the status update.
So we type a message, press send and go on to the next task. Hours later we find an error message saying choose a network. Blah. Why can’t you remember. Why can’t I have a default?
Solve a problem by thinking about what users do
This problem could be solved by moving the send button to the right of the social network choice.
This problem could have been avoided by making changes slowly and waiting for feedback to pick up what does and doesn’t work.
Ruin a good design
This overcomplication has changed a good service into a failing service.
For people looking for an Ergonomics 101 project: do an A B test with the button in two places. Then sell the results!
It’s so cool to see all the pictures in one place. No wonder I feel happy!
- Image via Wikipedia
The 2nd rule 0f the 10 Sun Tzu rules of the Networked World
Make our messages as small as possible.
An example
Once again, this rule is intimidating at first, but we can be assured that if pundits are telling us to do something, then they already know how to do it. So for an example, have a look at the link to BNET that I posted yesterday morning to a handy resource for Prospect Qualification.
Note well how they have worked out a simple decision tree and each step is small enough to do.
The General Idea
This is not a new idea at all. We often break complex jobs into small steps.
We are not, however, making information chunks small for the sake of it. If we do, we are in danger of disemboding information and rendering it unintelligible.
But feed forward and feedback must come in ‘glanceable’ amounts – like the speedometer on our car. The information must arrive at exactly the point that we need it (not at exactly the point Head Office feels like sending it!)
Our Overall Goal
To think in networked terms, I want to reach everyone one of my fans and I want to reach potential fans – the friends of my friends.
So I have to think like Twitter. Not only do I keep my messages under 140 chars, I allow for the RT and keep them even shorter! After all, they are 5 times more likely to be read when they come from a close friend.
The technicalities are easy, it is the substance that counts.
The technicalities can be learned quickly enough. What is harder to work out is when and where people need information.
And the viral potential of the message
Hairdressers are often very good at txting reminders for appointments.
What we need too are messages that will go to the “end of the line.” What are we likely to retweet because we want other people to know that information too?
My local deli for example, could tweet its specials to customers who have requested tweets. That makes it easy for me to retweet and invite someone to lunch.
Hack for the 2nd rule
For each customer group that we have identified in 1a and judged to be a qualified prospect in 1b, we can ask:
- What information do they need from us to organize themselves with people around them?
- What is their purpose when they use my message?
Isn’t that why we love resources so much? They become a lego block in a project of our own.
Recap of the 2nd rule
So we need to go back to the scenarios for defining our fans in 1a and think again. Do we know what our potential customer is trying to achieve?
When we do, communicating is ever so easy.
(And it is so hard, when we try to jump steps. Find time this weekend to work on your scenarios! You can do them in the shower, in a walk in the woods, while waiting for your daughter to finish ballet class!).
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Facebook is “who knows who” in London?
If you want to find someone in the UK, go to Facebook. 1/3 of the country is there and more than 1/2 of our internet users are there. 3/4 of Londoners are there.
Because so many Londoners are on Facebook, it is also London party. Just over a quarter people in the UK live in or close to London, but nearly half of Facebook members are Londoners
Almost everyone who uses Twitter is on Facebook. Its easier to say that 1 out of 7 Twitter users do not use Facebook.
But as 6 out of 7 of their Twitter friends will be on Facebook, they are well connected!
The question is whether you can find the other 2/3 of UK residents through your Facebook network. It would be work a try, wouldn’t it? Can you find and meet anyone of the 61 million people beginning with your Facebook network?
The picture
Twitter & Facebook Users in Users
The numbers
I made the diagram using the online chart maker, Chartle, using the numbers below, some of which I got from Google Adplanner on 2 August 2009 and some of which I got from Wolfram Alpha.
Wooo! social media does work!
Posted on: October 21, 2008
Image via CrunchBase
Abrupt change, relocation and HR/OD/Psychologists
Those of us in the HR/OD/Psych trades know absolutely, for sure, that in the next year, we will be helping many people regain their bearings after abrupt changes brought about by house losses, job losses and relocation. I’ve had some practice at abrupt change because political issues at home have led to relocation first to another country, then to another city, and then again to a third country.
Thank heaven for social media
I arrived in UK 1 year and 5 months ago. You can always spot a migrant. We can tell you how long we have been somewhere in months. This is my third major move and yes, as with all things, we improve with practice.
My last moves were to relatively small places where to all intents and purposes it should have been easy to meet people. You know, walk down the street and shake hands with each one of them. It didn’t work though.
Coming to the UK was quite different. There are 60 million people here. Brits work long hours (50-60 hour weeks) and compute long distances. I commute 5 hours a day. One neighbour makes a 100 mile round trip each day in one direction and another goes the same distance in the other direction. Who has time or energy to say hello? The commute trains are eerily silent as people sag on well worn seats reading their horoscope in freebe newspapers, playing with their ipod, or just sliding into a fatigue induced sleep.
Yet, is has been easier to meet people here. And this is why: social media.
What is social media?
Social media is the read-write, two-way web, like Facebook and Twitter. Social Media is the web we are a little frightened of because we can sit at home and talk to a stranger in a way we might not on that train of exhausted commuters.
So how does it work? In the ordinary world, to meet people I go along to some semi-public event – like the Christmas party hosted by the gym. I have nothing in common with anyone else at the party except that we use the same gym. I hope the gym makes a profit from a party but it is after all a slightly forced and odd social occasion.
Social media has many more applications than Facebook. A very important one for people who are relocated is Yahoo! Events Upcoming. By scanning for events within 100 miles of your home (Brits travel long distances very routinely), you can find events that you are genuinely interested in. You indicate you will be going and you can look down the attendance list and see not only who else is going but where else they are going. In that way, you are able to converge very quickly into groups of people who share your interests.
Moreover, the people who use social media understand networking and are more likely to talk to you and introduce you to people at the event.
My experience
I found the inimitable Chris Hambly, guitarist, rugby player, media camp organizer, online education guru and general connector via Yahoo! Events Upcoming. He kindly referred a journalist to me for an opinion on the media camp he organised, and though my name is spelt wrong, here I am, 17 months after arriving in a new country, quoted in a leading daily! Thanks Chris. Thanks, the Guardian.
Social media and HR/OD/Psychology/Coaching
And remember coaches, of all descriptions, when helping people cope with radical transitions, think social media.
And any one interested in the psychology and sociology of social media, please do contact me. I am also interested in other rapid community building applications which will be important as we deal with the pressures and stresses of the next year to year-and-a-half.
PS The Guardian Link works erratically and often redirects readers to a jobs page. To get to the article follow [Careers Advice] [Life & Work] [and look for the story on Media Camps]
Positive communities are important in learning
I’ve taught in colleges and universities for 25 years. One thing I am reasonably certain about teaching is that a good class has a strong sense of community. It is common sense that a good social atmosphere will be more attractive than a cold, totally clinical atmosphere. There is also a clutch of professional ideas explaining the impact of group norms, collective efficacy, belonging, system boundaries, and so on.
Why, though, do we so much prefer a 500 person auditorium to a pod cast?
What I’ve not been able to put my finger on, until today, is a tight model explaining why communities are so important – why for example we prefer to listen to a lecture in an anonymous 500 person auditorium than on a podcast.
Today my Google Alert flashed up this article on Twittering in Education. A US College Professor set up a class channel on Twitter. Twittering lead to more discussion between students and ultimately to writing a book “online” with completely voluntary help from students as far afield as China.
The post also describes the mechanism.
Meta-cognition & meaning
Conversations lead to community (And v.v. We know it is important to seed a social media channel with conversations.) The conversations lead to ‘meta-cognition’ – talking about the course. And talking about the course helps us understand why and how the course and the material fits into our lives. Greater clarity and shared understandings leads to more community, and more community to better conversations.
Do we get phase states?
Though the article does not say, I suspect that at some stage, the energy moving between conversations, community and meta-cognition (talking about) reaches a tipping point and we see greater levels of learning and action. So we move from the struggling, to the satisfactory, to the spectacular.
I rather suspect that this is a fractal model, such as we see with Happiness. The three characteristics of the class – conversations, community and ‘talking about’ – interplay. When this interplay is healthy, it moves through the broad swathe of emotional space. When we have done well, we celebrate, for example, ultimately ending with someone suggesting we get back to work. When things do not go well, we grieve, ultimately ending with someone suggesting it is time to start living again.
My thoughts on this glittering sunny day in autumn in rural England are to ask:
- are these the three critical variables: conversations, community, and meta-cognition?
- do they interplay with each other in a self-correcting manner going from positive to negative and back again as the need dictates?
- is it right to use a phase state model where we look for the tipping points which take this energy system from the doldrums to OK and then to fantastic?
- do the three variables co-affect each other through a set of Lorenz equations, and if not, how do they inter-relate?
- how can we explore these variables in a field study?
Enough for now. The sun calls. I would love to hear from anyone interested in building communities with or without social media like Twitter.
flowing motion 
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