Disqus - Latest Comments for jmspool

Re: Is “Jobs to Be Done” too Simplistic?

Jared M. Spool — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 13:45:52 -0000

Right. However, just putting something in the toolbox only does half the job.

If you never explain why a hammer isn't a good way to cut a piece of wood, then will the person grabbing tools out of the toolbox know which one to pick?

Where is that conversation happening?

We're all too happy to add another tool in the toolbox without ever discussing when and how to use it.

Re: Is “Jobs to Be Done” too Simplistic?

Jared M. Spool — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 13:03:59 -0000

I think it’s fair to say that people hire products to do jobs.

I think it's fair to say that sometimes people hire products to do jobs. My airline notifies me that my flight is running late. Did I hire the notification, the app, or even the airline to do that job? What did I fire when that happened? Not every aspect of what people do can be boiled down to choice.

But those jobs are nuanced, varied, and ever changing. The reason we use products today may not be the same reason we used them yesterday.

I think reason is one place JTBD becomes awkward. Context is another. Sheer volume of capability is another (what does someone hire a spreadsheet app for? or a hospital app?).

I think JTBD works until it doesn't. We rarely talk about when it doesn't work. That's the conversation I'm glad we're finally having.

Re: GaP Stories - @parker0phil

Jared M. Spool — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 07:19:40 -0000

Something about the "I can't" clause isn't sitting well with me. It is useful for getting rid of frustration, but I'm wondering if it covers areas where things basically work, but definitely could be improved.

Re: We Still Let Harassers Participate In Our Community

Jared M. Spool — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 20:12:38 -0000

Katie, it's sad that you had to go through this. It was courageous of you to share this story.

The response from the conference organizers was wrong. The speaker's behavior was unprofessional and intolerable.

The conference organizers should have responded firmly, whether they had a Code of Conduct or not. This has nothing to do with the document. It has to do with providing a safe environment on their watch. That's their responsibility no matter what.

If this happened at one of our events, we'd remove the speaker from the program and inform their employer's HR department as to why. (At professional events, everyone is a representative of their organization. Their employer should know how they are being represented.)

Telling you — the victim of harassment — that you could not be present on the day the speaker was there, so that you wouldn't be in the same room, is a foolish response. You did nothing wrong here.

I'm sorry you went through this. Again, thanks for sharing so openly.

Re: http://amandabc.tumblr.com/post/18353297548

Jared M. Spool — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:50:03 -0000

I love seeing him peek thru the lower left.

Re: What Color Should Your Links Be?

Jared M. Spool — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:15:04 -0000

I think it's because we were still putting the finishing touches on it.

Re: What can stop Lean Startup from becoming dogma?

Jared M. Spool — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:05:09 -0000

I think the solution is straightforward: Focus energies on tricks and techniques, not on methodology or dogma. The more you focus on tricks and techniques, the more you develop a "toolbox mentality", which says you can do whatever is necessary to get the job done.

Re: Unicorn: a visual designer with UX chops

Jared M. Spool — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 09:18:44 -0000

I don't think these people are unicorns. I think they do exist. I've met many in my travels.

I do think they are rare. I also think they are extremely valuable to the organizations they work for. (And, in many cases, those organizations don't realize just how valuable they are and end up squandering the value.)

I think the biggest issue is that demand for these folks are growing, but we don't have a good way in our practices to produce them quickly.

As I've said elsewhere, this is an issue of skills. You're looking for people who have a variety of skills and enough experience behind them to get good at those skills.

People show, for the most part, and endless capacity to learn new skills. But time and opportunities are the constraint that prevent folks from getting the practice opportunities.

As a manager, what are you doing to grow the skills of the people on your team? Are you conducting regular assessments of the skills they have, comparing them to the skills you need?

Are you giving the team time, opportunity, and methods for practicing their skills? (I don't mean assigning production level projects. I mean true practicing. Think the way a baseball coach of a pro team gets every player into batting practice every day of every week. What is your team's "batting practice?")

We sit hit and complain that we can't get people who have the skills we need. What are we doing to generate people with those skills?

Jared

Re: Big plane

Jared M. Spool — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:35:38 -0000

747 Jumbo?

Re: Crafting Your Project’s “Vision Quest”: Thoughts on Jared Spool’s “Turning Back to the Future” Presentation

Jared M. Spool — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:25:11 -0000

Hi Mike,

Excellent post.

One quick correction: you've got the vision/envisionment thing reversed. The envisionment (the artifact you'll use to communicate your vision to other team members) is not the end goal. The end goal is the vision (the understanding everyone has about where you're going).

As for your thoughts on the Vision Quest, I think it's an intriguing idea. Having a shared vision of what you're trying to build makes the building process much easier. So, I agree completely with your suggestion that teams should work to produce one. I think it's critical to success, and that's why I dedicated 75 minutes to it at the tour.

We've been researching what makes a successful vision and there are a few things I'd like to add.

First, visions can be localized to a small part of your entire offering. Disney or GE doesn't need a vision for their entire enterprise to work. In fact, something too general isn't likely to guide the specific design decisions necessary. A team at Disney can have a working vision of a portion of their web site, such as an integrated account management capability.

Localized doesn't imply unambitious. The team can still be ambitious by choosing something that's a bit out of reach with today's knowledge, capabilities, and resource.

Localized visions don't need executive support. They just need support at a high enough level to let everyone who is working on the project have access and get behind the vision. In many cases, this can be fairly low level. Remember: The vision is just a way to communicate a shared understanding of where y'all are heading, so that you can tell if each baby step is getting you there.

To that end, I don't think a motivated and inspired team is a pre-requisite. With the right leadership (which isn't the same as management), the vision will inspire and motivate the team. I think it's harder to get inspired without a vision than with one, so I'd focus on building the vision and let the process inspire the troops.

Hope that adds to what you've put here.

Jared

Re: Photo of the day: A Restroom on a Mission

Jared M. Spool — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:10:04 -0000

I don't know what's more amusing: the phrase "most healthful" (why not just "healthy"?) or the double meaning of the phrase "who pass through this station."

Jared

Re: Photo of the day: Do Not Disturb

Jared M. Spool — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:40:25 -0000

This is very common in high-end hotels in Europe and China.

As Mikey said, they are likely to be LEDs which will last 25+ years and eat virtually no energy. The mechanical button is more likely to fail (won't push in or out) before the LED fails.

Re: Revisit Your Site Carefully

Jared M. Spool — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:51:02 -0000

Hi Chris,

It's always good to go back and ask these questions about your design.

One thing I noticed is that you didn't mention who your visitors are and what they want.

You did mention your bounce rate is high, but who are all those people? How many of them are people who should take a call to action? And why would they feel the need to do that?

If you could answer those questions, my guess is you'll have some insight into what changes on your design will get the best results.

Hope that helps,

Jared

Re: Faceted Filtering…in the Real World

Jared M. Spool — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:39:24 -0000

And by "real world", we mean a CGI-enhanced video.

(But I see your point.)

Re: Hotels: Don’t Charge Us For Internet Use

Jared M. Spool — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:43:42 -0000

In one of the great ironies of hotel living, the lower cost brands within the families, such as the Marriott Courtyard and Residence Inn, don't charge for internet, while the full service hotels do.

(And the higher end hotels are charging $15/day.)

I've pretty much decided to get EVDO so I can avoid all of the fees. Once I nuke my TMobile, Boingo, and the 5-10 nights per month I'm paying to hotels, EVDO looks very appealing.

Re: Hiring Top Talent: It’s the Process

Jared M. Spool — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:32:29 -0000

Great post.

You've got some excellent tips on interviewing.

I think, if you want to push your hiring to the next level, you should consider Lou Adler's book, Hire with Your Head. It changed the way we've hired and gotten us some top-notch folks. We recommend it to all of our clients, now.

Jared

Re: Virgin America: How a Bad Website Can Kill Goodwill

Jared M. Spool — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:57:00 -0000

You're absolutely right.

A great experience is all about the entire experience. The in-flight experience can't be separated from the pre-flight experience.

Having systems that restrict otherwise empowered employees can be a fatal flaw. It sounds like the customer service rep wanted to live to Virgin America's promise, but the IT systems he used made that impossible, thus resorting to hacks to work around the restrictions.

Anyone in the enterprise who thinks their work isn't part of the customer experience probably is mistaken.

Jared

Re: Off The Grid

Jared M. Spool — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:42:52 -0000

Probably somebody applying for a temp job. It's rough out there.

Re: 43 Excellent Usability and Interface Design Books

Jared M. Spool — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:51:11 -0000

Nice list!

For the record, I wasn't the author on the Handbook of Usability Testing. Jeff Rubin and Dana Chisnell did all the heavy lifting. I just wrote the foreword.

Jared

Re: Off The Grid

Jared M. Spool — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:24:10 -0000

Dead tree walking?

Re: The $300 Million "Continue" Button

Jared M. Spool — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:15:43 -0000

@Bhupesh: The problem with the "required to be customers" is that the process of designing the site conditions you to certain elements. Because you were there when the design decision were made, you're more likely to tolerate something that "real customers" would find frustrating.

A better approach is to spend time watching real customers approach the site for the first time. That's what we help our clients with and all the best sites do this on a weekly basis.

-- Jared

Re: Tasty, Useful Breadcrumbs

Jared M. Spool — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:48:20 -0000

With all due respect Jared, it’s easy to say it from the sidelines when you don’t have to hear about it every day.

Absolutely. I'm not saying that your problems are easy to solve.

I'm just saying that, when you say that your faculty will complain no matter what your design is, you've got a hard-to-solve political problem.

And the issue with hard-to-solve political problems is that no amount of design solutions will make them go away. You've said it yourself: you could build a perfect web site and they'll still complain.

So, by advocating that you keep breadcrumbs because of faculty complaints, you're essentially fixing the symptom (the design problem) without addressing the actual problem (the political problem), which is exactly how I defined a cop-out.

Cop-outs are necessary when the true solution is too expensive to execute. But that doesn't make them any less of a cop-out.

Re: Tasty, Useful Breadcrumbs

Jared M. Spool — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:01:28 -0000

@karlyn,

With all due respect, compromising on your design because your user community complains regardless is not a design problem. It's a political problem.

And it doesn't make using breadcrumbs any less of a cop-out. You're just copping out because of your political relationship with your users.

The breadcrumbs aren't any more effective for those users, even if they'll complain about them when they are gone.

Good luck with you design efforts.

Re: Tasty, Useful Breadcrumbs

Jared M. Spool — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:10:10 -0000

@Karlyn wrote:

Michael is absolutely right that if you take breadcrumbs (or things of that nature) away you will hear about it. Endlessly. Til the end of time.

What I'm saying is that is a symptom of a bigger problem with the site. Fix the bigger problem and your endless reminder will suddenly stop.

Re: Tasty, Useful Breadcrumbs

Jared M. Spool — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:45:49 -0000

Karlyn wrote:

Now I’m a fan of Jared’s stuff but I also think that he likes to make a lot of black and white pronunciations to play well with the web crowd when reality is really more shares of grey. I was at his talk in Boston at AEA in June when he declared that no one uses the back button and I just sat there and thought “well I do all the time…do I not count?”

I too was at the AEA talk and, for the record, I never said that no one uses the back button.

In fact, I said that we've seen people use the back button thousands of times. What I also said was that, when they use the back button, most of the time -- 82% of the time to be precise -- they do not find the content they are seeking. (I also said that multiple instances of the backbutton continue to reduce the odds dramatically.)

That doesn't sound black-and-white to me. Just sayin'