PinPoint Performance Solutions Blog (Legacy Content)

Usability professionals in the Boise area are in the beginning stages of forming a local Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) chapter.

I had the pleasure of meeting some of these pioneers recently and have volunteered my efforts to help launch the local chapter by coordinating education efforts.  When it is launched, which is only a matter of time, it will play host to a very diverse group of professionals dedicated to improving technology for everyday people and educating the Boise business community on the benefits of usability.

If you are interested in learning more about the local chapter or would like to join, please contact me through the PinPoint Performance Solutions website.  I'll collect all the necessary contact information from interested parties and deliver it to the individuals who are spearheading this effort.

The man who created the Internet sensation, The Last Lecture, has died.

Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science, human computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University. He was also a leader in the field of virtual reality research. When Randy learned that he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006, he took the opportunity to create The Last Lecture as a message to his friends and family to celebrate living and the life he had always dreamed of instead of concentrating on the inevitable result of his disease.

In honor of a man who educated in a field I advocate as a consultant, I present to you Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.

Recently I attended a business networking event where I had the pleasure of meeting a business development director for a staffing agency in Boise.  His job was to create relationships with the area's technology and engineering firms that would place in these companies technical and engineering professionals on short-term and long-term projects as well as on a contract to hire basis.

He lamented how it can be difficult to establish such relationships and place professionals in these companies.  Our conversation reminded me of an article in the Idaho Business Review I read last year about the need for technology professionals to bring more to the table when it comes to seeking jobs in this field.  I mentioned that perhaps this may be a reason as to why he encounters difficulty from time to time.  The article, quoting a couple of the area's more influential technology professionals, suggested that the schools training software and hardware engineers are not doing enough to prepare their graduates for the workforce.  The education is heavily weighted in technical training, but not so much in business and communication training.

The trend we have seen for many years is that these jobs can be and are being outsourced to countries like India and China.  I don't need to go into the reasons or the debate as to why outsourcing is good or bad.  It's simply a fact of life in the today's business climate.  The key to protecting technology jobs in U.S. is for the graduates and current professionals in the field to increase their business acumen and communication skills.

The article explains how the quoted Boise area tech professionals see business and communication skills as a must in order to remain competitive.  From my prospective it's about justifying the means to an end.

Technology, as I've said many times before, is a means to an end.  Technology is what enables people to do their jobs and tasks quickly and efficiently thereby increasing productivity.  It's one thing for a software programmer to create an application that can enable a person to do their job better, but does he or she know why they are creating the application?  What is the business need?  Understanding the need behind the task of developing an application for the programmer will create a different perspective that, I think, will build a more usable product.  Usable products, among their many benefits, create higher returns on investment.

So, if you are one of the people who are the subject of this post, consider bolstering your business accumen along with your communication skills if you feel you are lacking in this area.  You don't have to get an MBA or another BS degree.  Take some classes or read up on current business trends.  By doing this you will do more to protect your career and extend it even further.

The Web 2.0 world we live in has been beneficial in creating a community of users that share their thoughts and opinions on the quality of just about anything ranging from websites, books and music, to services provided by vendors in their local.

The power is in the hands of the end-user and they now have a voice. Even more powerful and more prevalent on the web is the power of groups. A fundamental paradigm has adapted itself online in the world of Web 2.0: People tend to buy, use, do and think the way their peers do. In other words, there is a human need to fit in and be among people much like ourselves that we often follow the trend so as not to be left behind or seen as out of touch.

Ratings are often the means of expression of preference in the Web 2.0 world. It's easily understandable by all. Something rated "1-star" is often deemed as bad while something given an "A" or a "10" is deemed as good or excellent.

If you intend employ a ratings system in the design your software, website or web application be sure to choose a system that is not only understandable, but objective.

The more common system is referred to as a Likert Scale. It's a 5-point scale similar to the following:

1. Strongly disagree
2. Disagree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Agree
5. Strongly agree

Anything more than 5 points tend to muddy the waters of objectivity. The more choices, the less absolute the values will be. For example, in a 10-point scale where I say "1" is bad and "10" is the best, I may interpret "7" to be OK while another person may say "8" is also OK. Well, which is it?

The Likert Scale is the better choice when implementing a rating system, but it does have it's pitfalls. I find the 5-point Likert Scale to lack objectivity when you give the end-user a list of many things to rate. The trend usually produces a traditional bell curve where most of the choices fall under the rating of "3" - neither agree or disagree.

If you want your end-users to commit to a choice, do a 4-point scale such as the following:

1. Strongly disagree
2. Disagree
3. Agree
4. Strongly agree

By removing the middle choice you avoid neutrality and create greater objectivity. Greater objectivity means better usability to the community of users.

Local technology and entrepreneur advocates, Kickstand, is hosting Idavation on May 29th.

You may remember this event under it's old banner, Kickstart. This year, the event will feature keynote speaker Gary Hoover, one of America's greatest entrepreneurs. Perhaps you heard of Hoover's, the world's largest Internet-based provider of information about enterprises? In 2003, Gary Hoover sold his site to Dunn & Bradstreet for $117 million.

In addition Brian Cummings, Executive Director of Technology Commercialization at University of Utah will give the luncheon keynote address. Aside from these great speakers, Idavation also features a number of seminars on technology and business topics throughout the day.

If you wish to attend this event, tickets need to be purchased as soon as possible. I think you will find no other event in the Boise area that has the potential to bring business, technology and innovation together under one roof.

Kickstart is coming this week and the organizers have put together this quick little promotional video.



If you haven't bought your tickets, don't hesitate! Head over to the Kickstart today and purchase them today.

Here's a follow-up to recent post I did on how too much knowledge kills innovation.

Warning: Success Hampers Creativity

The question that emerges from this post at Businesspundit, is really how to reverse the trend since most inventors or developers of products tend to work on refinements of their innovation rather than move on to new projects. It is answered here in this post by another blogger at A List Review.

When I think how too much knowledge or too much success hampers innovation, I often think back to the browser wars between Microsoft's Internet Explorer an Netscape Navigator. After a heated battle for market share, Microsoft's Internet Explorer won out over Netscape Navigator to be come to dominate browser. For years, the browser was stagnate. No refinements. No innovative new features. Nothing to keep users interested. Why innovate when you are king of the mountain? Then came Mozilla Firefox. It features such as tabbed browsing provided a whole new experience for web surfers.

It wasn't until this new browser hit the scene and became very popular (I, being one of many converts) that Microsoft knew it must change its browser in order to remain competitive. You can see now with the new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) that it features tabbed browsing and RSS features that some say rival Firefox.

So here's to knowledge and innovation. Just don't let it go to your head!

Recently we saw the new Apple iPhone unveiled in San Francisco, and although I'm not a user of Apple products, I was quite impressed with what I learned about this new device. No buttons - the interface is entirely touch screen. What intrigues me even more is the display of convergence in this device.

Convergence has always fascinated me. In the last few years I wondered where or when the tipping point will be in consumer electronics where all the many devices we have will merge into one. I think we've found it.

If convergence was at a stand still I imagined the average technophile would have the equivalent of a Batman Utility Belt where he or she would have their cell phone, their PDA, their iPod and maybe a GPS clipped on their person. Not very fashionable and I'm sure Mr. Blackwell would have something to say about it.

Some devices have made honest attempts to converge many technologies into one product. For instance, I have a PDA that I've used for almost three years that I can do many things with such as write and edit documents and spreadsheets. It has wireless capabilities so I can send and receive e-mail and it can hold a whopping 25MB of MP3 files for my listening pleasure! Basically, in one unit I have office applications, an e-mail client and an audio device. This is insignificant compared to iPhone's ability to store 4 to 8 gigabytes worth of audio files, display audio and video and provide a web browser that will shows content as close as possible to what we see on our desktop or laptop displays. And one thing I can't do with my PDA that this new device can - I can't place a call from it.

There's much more to this device than I can report here. CNET has a video review of the product. As you watch the video, pay attention to the number of different technologies they have merged into one. Perhaps you will be as intrigued as I was.