Minimizing the Cost of Change

My current job title suggests I spend my workday improving our site’s user experience. Unfortunately, very little of my time goes here. We’re currently overhauling our code base with a tight deadline fast-approaching. I’m usually working well below the surface of the application. (I’m sure once the refactoring has settled a bit, this will change.) With my brain buried deep in functional code, I find it almost impossible to work on what I want, the way I want.

While doing some Google searches on user experience design techniques, I stumbled on some nifty whiteboard magnets for prototyping called GuiMags and a complementing book called The Unplugged. GuiMags look like the nicest way to prototype something before going to HTML. Labor intensive forms of prototyping don’t seem to add much value, and paper prototyping only works until you’ve changed your mind and have to throw your work in the trash. In addition to the new tool, I found The Unplugged’s premise to resonate with my own feelings on software development: we limit ourselves by the technologies we use. Instead of thinking outside the box, we’re thinking in it. A large part of this thinking inside the box is how we develop software. Whether you adopt a waterfall or agile process, the cost of change is more and more expensive as the product matures. I think most developers have experienced this first-hand. The Unplugged shows how to move changes to the beginning of the software development process so overall cost is minimized.

Check them out.

Did Evite and Facebook Ruin Commitment?

I’ve noticed something interesting over the past decade: commitment to social events has plummeted. When I was young, someone would plan a party or event, send out paper invitations, and get responses from people stating whether or not they were coming. It worked wonderfully. The host knew everyone got the invitation and knew how many people to plan for. It also built a sense of excitement for the get-together as people found out who else was going and speculated on what the day may hold for them.

When Evite became the normal way of sending invitations, people treated them the same as paper ones even though there was a new socially-acceptable response called “Maybe.” People responded with either a “Yes” or “No.” One or two people would say “Maybe” because of some other prior commitment that may not have ended in time. What used to be a “No” was now a viable “Maybe.” However, during the years of Evite’s reign, the “Maybe” population grew. More and more people were responding “Maybe,” not because of prior commitments, but because of subjective reasons. People confessed that they didn’t know whether or not something else might pop-up that day or if they would feel like participating the day-of.

Now that Facebook Events has begun to overthrow Evite, people have become accustomed to using “Maybe” more than “Yes”–especially if the event hasn’t reached its tipping point–the point at which an event gains momentum because of size of the “Yeses.” Often, people don’t even respond but use “Remove from my events” instead. Even the “Yes” and “No” responses aren’t certain–they tend to reflect the invitee’s excitement level about the event rather than his commitment to attend. On several occasions, a “Yes” response meant nothing because the invitee never checked her calendar.

Did Evite and Facebook ruin commitment?

David Allen on Twitter and Cocktail Parties

I recently heard David Allen’s commentary on Twitter. He’s an experimental user and has some good thoughts on its utility. One thing he said particularly stood out to me as a nice heuristic when determining the bounds of my commitments to others and myself:

Am I going to too many cocktail parties this week? Or should I be going to more cocktail parties this week given what I’m doing?

The answer to those two questions, especially the second one, helps one discern whether or not to even go to cocktail parties…period. If you can’t answer “yes, I should be going to more cocktail parties…but for reasons X and Y, I can’t,” it’s time to reevaluate why you’re even going.

Each time a potential commitment arises, ask ”what am I doing in life right now?” If it has changed since the last time you took on such a commitment, reconsider whether or not you should take it on again. If you shouldn’t, don’t.