The Pain Papers
8/19/2001
The Pain Papers
Newsletter #5 - August 19, 2001
Copyright (c) 2001 Christopher K. O'Leary
All Rights Reserved
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THOUGHTS
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MEDIA HAVE CONSEQUENCES
As you may know, I am always on the look for Killer Phrases. These are statements
that we or others make that squelch innovation. Some of my favorite Killer
Phrases are...
- Don't rock the boat.
- Come on, be reasonable.
- One person can't make a difference.
I came across one the other day that, while seemingly innocuous, has a lot
to say about why progress does not happen or happens so slowly. The Killer
Phrase is...
"It is a poor carpenter who blames his tools."
To understand why this is a Killer Phrase, you first need to understand the
work of Marshall McLuhan.
Marshall McLuhan is a media theorist whose is most famous for having said...
"The medium is the message."
While there is a great deal of debate about exactly what McLuhan meant when
he said this, I interpret this statement as meaning in part that that media
are not neutral. They have consequences. In other words...
The message that one wishes to convey is inextricably intertwined with and
affected by the medium that is used to convey it.
For example, TV is a one-way, visual medium. It is not an interactive medium
(yelling at your TV doesn't count as interaction, since the sender of the
message cannot hear you).
In contrast, an Internet chat room is a two-way, text-based medium. It is
interactive because people can respond to each others statements. However,
they cannot see each other.
The message "Vote for Al Gore for President" conveyed through a TV
commercial will have a different level of impact and be perceived very
differently than the same message conveyed through an Internet chat room.
The fact that the message is being carried on the TV implicitly says
something about the sender. As a result, it may carry more perceived
authority. Also, the fact that this message, when conveyed through the TV,
cannot be challenged impacts the receiver of the message.
The same statement made in an Internet chat room is likely to be handled
very differently. For one thing, the message cannot be accompanied with
patriotic imagery and music. The recipients of the message can also respond
to the message to the sender within a few moments - and those who disagree
are likely to do so in a much more aggressive manner than they would if they
and the other people were in the same room.
I have seen the consequences of media in my own life. Let me give you a
couple of examples.
First, this newsletter exists because I found that the prior medium that I
used to convey my ideas, the essay, was too heavy-weight. I felt that I had
to get things just right before I could release a new essay. I have now
shifted to this lighter-weight format because it allows me to publish more
information more often.
Second, I love to BBQ. I also moved recently. I have found that I now BBQ
several times a week at my new house while before I was lucky to BBQ several
times a year.
What is the difference?
The difference is that at my old house I had a charcoal BBQ pit while at my
new house I have an in-ground Natural Gas BBQ pit.
The difference in the usability of the two BBQ pits is dramatic. Before, it
would take me an hour to get ready to BBQ, plus I would have to deal with
all of the ash that was left over. Now, it takes me just 1 minute to get
ready to BBQ and it is a clean and easy process - turn the knob and light
the match.
The impact of usability on the frequency with which I use these two tools
(Gas BBQ Pit vs. Charcoal BBQ Pit) should lead to some serious thinking by
anyone (like cell phone companies) whose business depends on frequency of
use.
Think razors and blades.
So what does this have to do with carpenters blaming their tools?
Well, just like TV, Internet chat rooms, essays, newsletters, and BBQ pits
are media, so too are many others tools that we use, including the tools
that we use to create other products and services.
Different tools will alter the way we do the same job, and the use of
different tools can improve the process.
This is controversial point. Some may feel that the carpenter should blame
himself when he fails to hit the nail squarely. He should just pay more
attention to what he is doing.
This attitude is especially prevalent when it comes to carpenters who have
already mastered the conventional hammer.
However, I believe that the inability of the carpenter to hit the nail
squarely on the head says as much about the design of the hammer as it does
about the user.
Perhaps the hammer is not balanced correctly. Perhaps the grip gets slippery
when the user sweats. Maybe it is not as easy to use as another hammer.
The problem with the phrase "It is the poor carpenter who blames his tools"
is that it is most often uttered by people who are apologists for poor
design. These are the people who are most likely to blame the user and not
the designer. You can find a lot of these people in the technology business.
To see this for yourself, run a search on Google for the phrase "poor
carpenter blames tools". You will find many instances of people blaming
users for problems that are actually problems of design.
In contrast to the apologists, and those who believe in blaming the
carpenter, I believe that they key to progress lies in holding your tools
responsible for their actions, blaming them when they let you down, and
using that blaming step as the first in a process of innovation.
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INTERVIEWS
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GEOFF MOORE SPEAKS
I was talking the other day to Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing The Chasm
and a number of other excellent books. He made the following comment that I
thought I should share with you...
"Pain has to be divided into pain I can live with and pain I cannot. The 'I
cannot' variety is what we mean by the phrase 'broken mission-critical
process.' These things create ruptures in the semi-permeable membrane that
guards established market pecking orders from barbarian invasions, because
the customers saddled with them betray the existing castle in order to get
help they cannot get from the incumbent lords. Thus they are key to crossing
the chasm. This makes them key to VC investment, because VCs foresee
chasm-crossing in every category creation effort. Finally, it makes them key
to companies seeking to reinvent themselves out of a bad spot because they
make excellent targets for vertical market focus, which is always the key to
escape."
In addition to containing a great metaphor, this comment makes the points
that all pain is not the same. Different types of pain will lead to
different levels of motivation. The best kind of pain is the pain that cause
people to actively seek out a solution to their problems. Anyone who has
ever sold anything can tell you that this is the easiest sale in the world.
What we should be doing is developing products that address the needs of
people who are actively looking for solutions. This is much less expensive
and much faster than trying to get people to believe that they are feeling
pain or recognize the pain that they may be feeling.
I will explore this topic more in an upcoming newsletter.
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RANTS AND RAVES
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A BRILLIANT AD
Most ads are so bad that when you see a good one, it really stands out. In
this case, the ad is one that is currently running in St. Louis for
Southwestern Bell Internet Services. They are selling their DSL services and
their main competition is the cable modem.
The ad that they have crafted is tightly focused on pointing out and
hammering home the chief pain point of the cable modem - the fact that it is
a shared pipe that degrades as more people in the neighborhood get on line.
The advantage of DSL is that each home gets its own pipe and thus doesn't
experience any performance degradation.
The concept for the ad is simply brilliant in its simplicity.
We are introduced to a family that has a cable modem and has had to
implement some extreme measures to ensure that everyone gets a good
high-speed connection. In this case, each member of the family is assigned a
two-hour slice of time in the middle of the night when the rest of the
neighborhood is asleep.
The commercial opens with the mother waking the daughter at 2AM. The
daughter then gets up and pours herself a cup of coffee and takes over from
the brother.
This is a great ad because it is totally on-message. It is laser-focused on
the chief benefit of DSL vs. cable modems. SWB is also smart enough to run
this same ad with a high frequency so that the message is pounded home -
"With DSL you don't have to worry about performance degradations."
Bravo.
P&G GETS IT (MOSTLY)
I was doing some research today and noticed that, if you go to Procter &
Gamble's Home Page (https://www.pg.com)
you will quickly see that this is a company that gets it. Right in the
middle of the home page is a "Help us Create..." link that takes you to
a page on which they have a number of different tools that they use to gather
feedback from customers on how to improve their existing products.
This is a great example of a company that has recognized the problem of
Insulators and is trying to develop mechanisms to counteract them.
However, before you get the impression that this is the perfect site, let me
point out a few things.
First of all, I have no idea what kind of process sits behind these pages.
Who reads the information that is submitted? What power do they have? Is the
information presented in raw form or is it summarized? Is it even used?
Second, the comment form limits you to 255. I find this annoying because it
keeps me from being able to say what I want to say. It gives me the
impression that they don't want to hear too much from me. In reality, it's
probably a limitation of the way the DB that sits behind the site is
configured. That is the limit for a text field. They didn't want to use a
test blob. However, as a consumer I don't care about that. I want to say
what I want to say.
Third, this part of the site seems fairly PR-ish. There is lots of overly
positive stuff. I feel like they are trying to sell me (or worse convince me
that I am wrong), not get my honest feedback.
That said, this site is still a great first effort and an example of a
company that is doing its best to connect with its customers.
A MISSED OPPORTUNITY
The other day I had an experience that taught me how and why Insulators
exist.
I was trying to call AT&T Wireless to resolve a problem with my cell phone
bill. I had a terrible experience with IVR system and Web site - it's really
badly designed. When I finally reached a live person, I told them of my
problems. What I got was an "Oh, I'm sorry about that." My sense is that the
problem wasn't that she didn't care. I could tell that she did.
The problem was that she couldn't (and didn't) do anything about it.
She had no form on her screen to capture that information. She had nobody to
tell about the problems. She also had the problem that she is not paid to
care about this kind of stuff. The goal of a person in her position is to
get people off of the phone as quickly as possible. She can't afford to
talk.
The sad part is that many companies are replacing even these
minimally-useful people with computers that will care even less.
What smart companies will do is recognize that these systems are, in the
name of cost control and efficiency, building up walls between themselves
and their customers. The goal is to keep the customer at an affordable
distance. Of course, this focus on cost control leads to missed
opportunities.
COOL TOOL
The following ran in the August 15, 2001 issue of David Weinberg's Journal
of the Hyperlinked Organization
(https://www.hyperorg.com/current/current.html). I think it's a great example
of a pain-based tool...
"It's a little thing, but those of us who don't like filling in forms (i.e.,
all mammals) and those of us who don't trust Gator (i.e., all primates) can
avail ourselves of a handy free utility from PC Magazine. FormWhiz
automatically fills in forms on Web pages. It looks at the internal field
names in the source document; if it recognizes one, it fills the field in
with the data you've supplied. You can configure what it counts as a
relevant internal field; for example, you might want to tell it that
whenever it sees "cnumb" used as the internal name of a field, it should
fill in your credit card number. Flexible but also a pain in the tuchus.
FormWhiz has the advantage over Gator of not being just a legal clause away
from uploading your marketing-worthy browsing activity; everything FormWhiz
does it does on your own machine. You can pick up your free copy at..."
https://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,77410,.htm
PAIN AND ECOMMERCE
I received the following from one of my favorite authors, Jakob Nielsen of
https://www.useit.com, the other day. It points how the pain of the user
experience can directly impact the profitability of a Web site...
"User success rates on e-commerce sites are only 56%, and most sites comply
with only a third of documented usability guidelines. Given this, improving
a site's usability can substantially increase both sales and a site's odds
of survival."
https://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010819.html
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PICKS AND PANS
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BUY CELL PHONE INFRASTRUCTURE COMPANIES
Lots of people are extremely down on the market. People are wondering when,
how, and why the market will get going again.
Well, I can tell you that, if my cell phone is any indication, wireless
infrastructure companies still have several generations of growth left. The
problem is that my cell phone barely works, but is still an extremely useful
tool. I will certainly buy another one (and another one and another one) if
it promises better reception (forget PDAs and Internet access).
What I am going to look for is the QOS equivalent of Qualcomm. That is, a
company that can improve the signal quality of cell phones and other
wireless devices. Qualcomm grew by using CDMA to tremendously increase the
carrying capacity of frequencies. This drove down costs for the vendors.
What we need is someone to put the same level of focus on solving the QOS
problems of end users. This will lead to tremendous growth for this company
because, while cell phones are tremendously useful, there still exists a
great amount of pain in the marketplace.
THE POWER OF DIGITAL MEDIA
You heard it here first. I believe that Digital Media is going to be the
thing that drives the resurgence of the PC industry. The thing is that
digital video and digital audio consume tremendous amounts of hard disk
space and processor cycles. This will drive upgrades for years to come. It
also creates opportunities in the high-capacity swappable storage market.
All of this makes the current goings-on in the market rather mystifying. I
believe that Apple is the only company that gets this, but they have too
small of a market share to really start a trend. Microsoft's silence in this
market is deafening. If they had their act together, Dell, Intel, and
Microsoft should be working like mad to improve the Digital Media
(especially video, because of its disk space demands) capabilities of their
systems. They should be buying companies like crazy in order to bundle video
and audio applications with their systems. They should also be working on
the opposite side of the recording companies because what they need is the
proliferation of copying, not its restriction. Think razors and blades,
folks.
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PLUGS
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JOHO
One of my favorite newsletters is David (of the Cluetrain
Manifesto) Weinberg's JOHO. You can sign up for it by going
to...
https://www.hyperorg.com/current/current.html
JAKOB NIELSEN'S ALERTBOX
If you are interested in usability, I highly suggest that you
subscribe to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox. It is full of great
stuff...
https://www.useit.com/alertbox/
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