Edge of Chaos

One wouldn’t normally relate Valentine’s Day to the office life of developers, designers, QA people and other guys involved in software development process.  Such qualities as love, compassion, care and empathy do not obviously stand out as prevailing in our work. It’s mostly rough and tough. The word SCRUM is actually derived from rugby, a guys-only sport where the winner is the one who stands tough and pushes hard. As people work to create software, they quite often tend to be unyielding, protective of their opinions; they’re used to pushing, and sarcasm often comes out as closest to ever having any empathic perspective on your colleagues.

Have you ever been in such a situation, as  a designer or as a writer or as a developer that you’re given a task, you work on it all alone, you come out with more and more drafts, and everyone seems to be criticizing your work? It takes stamina and a good deal of emotional stability to be able to withstand sometimes pushy remarks. No, I don’t mean to say that colleagues intentionally want to make you feel resented. All they want is to get work done, and their comments have the sole purpose of helping you complete whatever you’re doing as best as you could. They’re beta-consumers, the first to take a look at what you’ve created, before you shoot your design or a piece of text to the outer world.

Here’s the point.  Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, we’re a company with trust established as one of the signature values. I’m not showing off, just citing the fact. So, a possibility that someone is saying something to hurt another person, is totally left out.  However, even in this healthy environment, and with all the love for the work that people have, the universal laws of  biology have a life of their own. The work is demanding, creative, and even as rewarding as it seems –  your brain and your neurons just get tired. It’s purely physical. People are made of flesh and bone, they’re not made of hardware. With this tiring, people become hypersensitive to the remarks about their work, and may start taking them personally.  One can’t get away with it.  So, I’d like to highlight the need of awareness about this quality of human psyche.

If a colleague is fatigued, stressed out about some work, or if some personal factors add up to the stress, what if we try to feel the challenge that our fellow human is undergoing, and instead of being purely work-focused, give a little bit of personal attention and some help to each other? It’s not that hard really. Sometimes, if someone is stuck with a design draft or something of that kind, instead of giving some remarks on what this person does, wouldn’t it be wise and nice to switch the focus from judging to helping? At the end of the day, it’s not only about helping your colleague. It does contribute to the task at hand. You can save your colleague by dropping in new fresh ideas, or see if there’s any other way to help him or her. If you don’t know how to brighten up the life of someone who spends their days near you in the office space, go ahead and find out. Wipe the dust off of your right brain hemisphere or the heart chakra or whatever other scanners and sensors you could put to test for the other folks . This would also provide a side balancing effect for your own brain, giving it some rest from analytical tasks for a change. Maintaining the culture of compassion in a geeky environment might look like a weird idea, but what your company is worth if it’s not about people? People are the greatest asset, but somehow they’re not usually  treated as such. So, is there any other better day than February 14, 2013, to emphasize the need for human relating, as well as the need to be more loving, compassionate and non-judgemental about others?

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

A while ago we shared some thoughts about software apps as the living systems. This concept opens up a huge space for insights in human-friendly software design.

As software apps evolve over time, they are getting closer and closer to people. The challenge here is diversity of people’s minds. The diversity of contexts in which people live and act. Given the diversity of mental extensions, something more important is always in common. It’s about emotions. Emotions can do a lot more than logical reasoning. Remember Apple fans, buying more of Apple products out of “I just like it”. Emotions are responsible for these just-like-its, when there’s no rational need to cut a $XXX, or even a $XXXX,  hole in someone’s bank account.

We feel very good when a software app tells us, “thanks for taking your time to tell us what you think” (that’s what Skype does). We feel good when a software app cares for us by saving our time with clear instructions, what-to-do’s and error messages. Lame language can be a source of bad mood, it throws people out of their flow, instead of helping. Visuals and words create this interactive landscape together.

Here’s the list of basic human emotional needs:

As I tried to map them to digital experiences, it turned out that software could cater for about 60% of them (what’s your take?).

Let’s see how software does this job.

Mint

Mint is a personal finance tool. They pay much attention to the feelings of safety and security.

“Remember kids, safety first” is a strong emotional caller. The lock with the mint leaf is smoother, but still emotional. The part on bank-level security appeals to logical reasoning.

Next one:

The ban sign says it all. There’s no real $$ here, rest assured, no one will touch your money, including you.

You’re cared about when you see this:

The concept of mint (mint leaf) is very smart. Which association do we usually have with mint? It’s something comforting, soothing, something that makes us free from worries and anxiety. That’s a great emotional token for a personal finance app.

Trello

What I liked right away about Trello, the collaboration tool, is the Husky dog icon. Well, maybe it’s not exactly Husky, but I like those dogs, and for some reason I thought it’s a Husky:

What I liked even more is the message of serving humans. The 500.000 number looks reassuring to a new user.

Trello means business, and cares for your time. You don’t linger even an extra second on their sign-up page:

Speaking of sign-up and login pages, bad captures totally kill good emotions. They make you reload and reload the capture image, and still wouldn’t let you login. You can live with a login capture, as an app usually remembers you. But anyone who has a capture on their sign-up page is committing a slow suicide:

Back to Trello and to their sign-up process. When I see this:

I have a mixed feeling of approval, empathy and regret. Here’s why. I can see that these guys are trying to know my real name, that’s why they have put up a message about the full name length. But I know too well (as we have a sign-up form on our web-site) that if someone wouldn’t want to give their name, they wouldn’t give it, and this note would be of no use.

Their account activation message:

I feel reassured and in control.

As Trello welcomes me, I can see that they have taken one step further in serving humans. They want to guide based on how people evaluate their previous experience with collab tools:

Evernote

The most emotionally insecure app that I’ve tried lately is Evernote. They have a good message on their web-site, but what you see inside the app and during the sign-up is confusing.

First, the elephant logo:

I don’t understand what an elephant has to do with my notes and images put to one place. Maybe it is supposed to be a symbol of everlasting wisdom. But there’s no emotional appeal for the app from my side. Elephants are nice, but they don’t fit in here.

Evernote’s sign-up is severe like a Quaker. Here’s their unhelpful “user name not available” message:

It says nothing to me, accept that the name is not available. No hint on which available mods I can try. I had to mess a bit with figures and underscores, until I got this:

Evernote uses machine language. There’s no feeling that you’re welcome here.  Sometimes it’s the opposite, sign-up forms can be too off-hand. I don’t want to be tapped on the shoulder like that guy, for any single line:

Back to Evernote: it had even more confusion in store as I tried to make the first note. Here’s the screenshot:

The Set URL context action. Which URL? For what? I typed something in there, but when I tried to access the note later – no success.  Then Done and Auto Save on top. Hmm. Why Auto Save when there’s Done there? Which goes first? Should I rely on Auto Save, or should I click Done? Maybe Done is supposed to work when Auto Save is off? Then why keep it there when Auto Save is on? Questions like these rushed through my head, and the app did not offer any answers.

The “Set the note’s location” screen was a bummer. Am I supposed to know the latitude and longitude of my whereabouts in every new location? Maybe they have the auto define location feature somewhere (I can’t imagine that they don’t), but I was not offered this option, and guessing the latitude/longitude is too challenging a task for simply taking a note.

I don’t think I will be using Evernote. It’s too confusing and insecure. Well, they must have more options than taking just notes, as they position themselves as “capture anything- remember everything”, and maybe the other features in Evernote work great, but I don’t care now, as my first emotions about this app were negative.

Ebay

Now let me show you my favourite. What if I forgot password? This piece from Ebay is a beauty:

Sensible display of case sensitivity. I like words and everything about playing on words, so it’s like a candy to me.

We have so many exciting options to make software speak human language. We can do it with visuals and words, as long as we keep this thin line balance, where software approaches people gently. Like a professional English butler.