Daisy Duke

A childhood fan of the Dukes of Hazzard, I can now enjoy it as an adult. Especially this frankly fantastic video ("These Boots Are Made For Walkin'") from Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke.

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You can now post comments on the blog without logging in ... there's a rhyme in there somewhere.

Idioms, Idiosyncrasies and more Service Failures

ome days you have nothing to say other days you have plenty to say… today is fortunately the latter.

Came across this site this morning whilst trying to determine where we got the phrase “How d’you like them apples” … didn’t give me the answer (we can assume American origin though) but it’s still an entertaining trawl through some of our bizarre idioms.

Secondly, why is it that I continue to measure temperature in two different ways during the year? When I watch the forecast during the winter I want to know how close to ‘0’ it is, but in the summer I want to know how close to ‘100’ it is, despite these being on different scales. The spring and autumn are clearly a difficult time for me, temperature wise. I don’t know whether to think in terms of Celsius or Fahrenheit and invariably can’t rationalise it in my head. In the past year I’ve tried to be disciplined and stick to Celsius but then the forecasters in the summer always say, “that’s .. in Fahrenheit” which makes me think that everyone does it. It is surely borne out of our tendency to make things simple and linear. For instance 0(ºC) represents cold much better than 32(ºF) and 100(ºF) represents hot much better than 37.78(ºC).

Have been thinking of getting a Digital Camera to play with and three stand out to me: Fuji S5500, Canon A520 and Nikon 5900. I’ve been really impressed with DPReview (despite being an American site) for their reviews and WarehouseExpress for their range and prices – though their website is a shambles …. They need to radically simplify their menu structure and devote more room to products and less to site ‘furniture’, margins and white-space.

Talking of which, try looking for Adult Education classes in language in Ipswich via the council website – absolutely shocking. I gave up. Now, I consider myself to be a power-user of the web, having experienced all manner of sites, navigation systems, information architecture and the like but it amazes me that a governmental site that should be so easy to navigate – especially when looking for educational resources (imagine the educationally-poor resident looking through the site at a local library).

Finally, another adventure with ‘one’ railway this morning. Vandals damaged signal equipment between Diss and Norwich so we were chucked off the train at Stowmarket to wait for buses … that were busy on the school run … 45 minutes later we all filed back on to the platform to catch a train to Norwich … delayed by a good one and a half hours. Can’t blame ‘one’ for the vandalism but can blame them for inept and almost silent handling of the issue. If buses aren’t going to run, get people in taxis and pay for it. That’s what exceptional customer service and ‘going the extra mile’ is about and that’s what the rail industry needs to start doing. Talking of which, still had no response to my email to their customer service department about the fire on the train earlier in the week.

Everything Bad Is Good For You

Not known for its journalistic insight, Metro nevertheless resounds each morning with the sort of easily digestible trivia normally reserved for the likes of Heat, Now, Closer etc. This is an effective way to spend a 45 minute journey, one can almost get cover to cover in the time it takes my train to drag its sorry weight north to Norwich. This morning, however, something other than yet another picture of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes caught my eye … a 60 second interview with Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good For You".

60 seconds has always been a bit of an understatement, it’s clearly nothing like a 60 second interview. Whatever ends up in the printed copy is expanded upon online too. Which gives you, dear blog aficionado, the opportunity to read what Steven had to say. It’s quite interesting. His basic premise is that the increased use of video games and the increase of complicated plotlines in TV drama is indicative and instrumental in the rise of IQ amongst Western populations. He cites the intellectual differences between Dallas and The Sopranos (to which I’d add 24 vs. The A-Team) and the video games of the 80s (PacMan) compared to those of today, (e.g. Halo). Clearly, today’s games and TV shows are more complicated and Johnson’s reasons (interwoven plotlines, multitasking etc. etc.) on the surface appear rather interesting. I do want to read the book myself before I comment further but I do have some concerns with his theory.

For example, the undeniable complexity of the Shakespearean dénouement was enjoyed by wide audiences in the sixteenth century (and even wider audiences since), there’s been substantial plotline complexity in popular novels for centuries but no-one’s made this link before … is Johnson suggesting that the birth of TV/video games first brought about an intellectual slump (70s & 80s) as people switched from reading to watching and playing? Presumably the last twenty years has seen this rise? I think Johnson could be focussing too much on his own generation and comparing it to today’s instead of looking for a pattern across a broader time frame. How can he be sure it’s TV and video games and not the wholesale improvement in Western educational standards? Sure, playing video games may improve systematic intelligence (as typified in the male brain) but are these at the expense of emotional intelligence (as typified in the female brain) Does this correlate with rise of autism – the consequence of the ‘extreme male brain’ [c.f. Sacha Baron-Cohen]. Is the reverse true of watching TV or are we still storing up untold problems with a decline in social interaction? I shall order the book and make more informed judgement.

On to lighter things. Metro today also tells us of Mark McGowan, an artist apparently, who intends to pour 15 million litres of water down the drain over the course of a year (by leaving a tap running) to raise the issue of water wastage. As the poisonous Mail reader might exclaim: “World’s gone mad I tell you.” However, never fear, it appears the local water company are trying to put a tap-ban on him. So, point made I presume Mark? For the record, Mark’s the Grade A idiot that pushed a monkey nut along the road in protest at student poverty and, a couple of months ago, told everyone he’d keyed cars for an art project only to retract that statement when challenged by Police.

Innovation Capture

At work we've been thinking about capturing creative energy and innovation from our front-line staff. I read this article and it made me think in simple terms, is a pad and paper enough for capturing innovation? What do we do with it once it's captured? what if all the suggestions are rubbish and who are we to decide that they are rubbish?

My idea, not exactly a bombshell, is to develop a think-pad ... effectively a re-writable mouse pad that's formed of sheets of 80gsm paper and glue-bound so that you can tear them off when full. If you put just enough prompts on there then hopefully people fill them in during the day. If you formalise the process with a reporting line (every evening a line manager collects up the top-sheets and reviews them in the next day's ten-minute meeting) then the ideas get an audience. As long as this feedback is owned and acted upon then momentum is maintained huh? It even regains some valuable desk 'real estate' ... linking in with the 5S guide to visual management.

Are there any fatal flaws in this plan?

Walsh Western, Dell and the Dodgy Delivery

When I got my Dell Inspiron laptop a couple of years ago I had a nightmare with the courier service who actually delivered it. I always thought it was Walsh Western. This is simply down to the fact that it's Walsh Western whose site Dell direct you to to track your order. From the page they send you to you can see minute by minute reports as to where the package is, how many boxes it contains etc. Naturally you assume Walsh Western are thus 'responsible' for your thousand(s) pound PC. Wrong, it's actually just a logistics company that get the PC from Ireland to the UK courier hubs. From there a local carrier delivers it, so when things go wrong, customers are contacting WW and moaning and yet it's another carrier who are screwing things up. Surely this reflects badly on WW and Dell? If you Google for Walsh Western and Dell you get all manner of blogs with negative comments, not good.

The reason I raise this is because my Dad's awaiting his delivery of a new Dell XPS Gen 5 tomorrow evening and my bad experience two years ago has meant he's now trying to find out who the courier is to ensure they're on the ball. I shall update y'all tomorrow with what happens.

.....

Off to the Isles of Scilly next week (don't call it the Scilly Isles) where I've been a few times in the past. Keep checking the webcam (really just a daily photo) to see what the weather's doing. Am hoping to take the laptop and digital camera too, doubt I'll be uploading whilst there but hope to have a good set of pictures to show on return.

.....

Fire on one railway

On the 08:09 service from Ipswich to Norwich this morning I was lucky enough to experience a fire in the carriage I was sitting in.

Just North of Diss (the penultimate stop) I noticed smoke leaking from a vent in the middle of the carriage. A brief nod and the words ‘is that smoke?’ from a fellow passenger prompted me to bound up the train (I was in the carriage next to the buffet car – [in Norfolk dialect the buffy car]) to summon the guard who was part way through a tabloid in his guard’s office. The pair of us trawled through the carriages, hampered by the slow retracting doors and arrived back to find every passenger still sat there amongst what was now thick noxious smoke. He evacuated the carriage – to the adjacent one – and proceeded to attempt to turn something off. Within 5 minutes we were in Norwich and a fellow passenger indicated to me that the carriage was now ‘foggy’, it was more than that, it was filled with smoke so much so that you couldn’t see the other end of it.

I find it incredible that one continue to operate this ageing rolling stock and that such basic procedures such as a carriage fire are dealt with in a seemingly ad-hoc way. As Virgin roll-out their Pendolino trains across their service (though they do have their problems ), we’re stuck with their cast-offs. Back in the early part of the year, with the new livery being phased in, we were told to expect refurbished trains on the inter city line. This morning, a small fire could have gutted one of the carriages for them. Once it got to Norwich they should have shunted it to one side and let it burn.

What’s even more disturbing though is the passenger apathy. Anyone would think a fire to be a serious event. Not so the seasoned commuter, so used to train failures and train company ineptitude it’s now classed as all part of the experience. For my £200+ per month I’d expect more too but I’m not prepared to inhale smoke for 20 minutes just because it’s not worth making a fuss over.

Optimax, An Appraisal

I don’t have a great car (though I do long for one) but nevertheless treat the one I’ve got with respect. Respect in terms of fuel means a regular diet of Shell Optimax. Many of my friends and colleagues assume that I’ve been suckered by the Ferrari-orientated marketing hype and that my 10 year old Volkswagen with its ageing 1.6litre lump will not benefit from this premium fuel. But this is where they’re wrong. Being a bit of a geek, I monitor my fuel consumption with religious zeal. The average cost of Optimax for me over the last year has been about 90p. On average a tank takes me 307.77 miles at 38.39 MPG, an average cost per mile of 11p. Compare this to combination of Esso Super and BP Ultimate (90p, 220 miles at 35.29 MPG, 12p per mile). At 12k miles per annum that’s £120 saved, not to mention the hidden benefits of reduced engine wear. When I hear Novas, Micras and Corsas tearing round the Ipswich one-way system with their exhausts popping and grumbling I can’t help but smile to think of their tanks filled with inferior supermarket fuel (84p, 294.20 miles at 38.09 MPG, 10p per mile). Honest John’s column in the Sunday Telegraph and his website generally shows a dislike for cheap supermarket grade (RON 95) fuel. Optimax gives noticeably more power too. Now, as a premier Optimax customer I get a swanky loyalty card and even more Airmiles. Lovely. By the way I’ve got the Lotus Exige Optimax Card if anyone needs it …

Sony MicroVault

Have been using the Sony Micro Vault since an impulse purchase in PC World. I always swore I’d never shop in there as the prices are inflated and the service clumsy but I can’t fault the product. Here’s a cheaper way of getting one:



and the Sony Japan site has all the tech specs. The other pen drives I looked at were bulky and made by non-descript manufacturers – I wanted something that would be sleek, robust and would have an element of high-end support (such as downloadable tools) hence I got a 256Mb version. They also do mini ones, ones with fingerprint recognition and ones with 2Gb capacity. The floppy disk is dead! Fortunately my company has enabled the USB port on our XP machines making this workable … I suspect that once they realise people are able to use corporate bandwidth to download direct on to these drives they’ll restrict it, but for the time being I carry all my work in my pocket and the whole thing is fully encrypted. Wonderful. Gets passed that old nugget of emailing work home only to find the mail server collapsed after you left and there’s nothing waiting for you when you get in.

Where in the world?

I’m not sure how I feel about PC World. This is a bit like the Tescoisation of Britain. I’m happy to have the benefit of a giant PC warehouse to browse on a slow Saturday afternoon dreaming of Macs, 23” displays, a fully integrated wireless home and gigantic leather office chairs … however it dislike the sheer brazen ‘we know all about PCs’ approach. Maybe this is deeply rooted in people with an IT-bent (myself included). When the tech support guy (typified so wonderfully in ‘The Office’) comes to call he’s invariably a he, is aloof (or painfully peculiar) and labourers over a problem that clearly would take him 2 minutes on his own PC. In PC World the staff are probably recruited from those ‘passionate about PCs’ and their remit is to tell the average Joe what £300 box they need and why. And then cross-sell them a printer, scanner, digital camera and laptop bag (for a desktop). For anyone with slightly more knowledge who’s probably got a Dell on their desk, because they saw it had acres more performance, the store is patronising and over-marketed. And that’s rich coming from Dell customers like myself who probably see 287 Dell adverts in their paper every day and another 456 on TV that evening. I think it’s because the temptation is always to provide the ‘we recommend’ or ‘PC World know best’ approach to service. That said, if you dodge the staff, spend a good time browsing their enviable product ranges and decide for yourself you’ll probably be happy. At least you didn’t have to wait-in for a delivery off the web that never arrived. Within minutes you’ve bought, are out of the store and are on the ring road. Just like Tescos.

Genealogical Update

Thanks to Glen Gibbard, Su Floyd and Celia Renshaw the mystery of the Tingewick, Padbury and Buckingham Nelsons is becoming clearer. My increasing interest in this stuff (and my creative eye) is pushing me toward learning Copperplate calligraphy, not for any reason other than I’ve got ropey 20th Century middle-English round-hand handwriting. Was considering learning it the Victorian way with hours of moribund practise in a poorly lit room with nothing but bread and water. ‘Method calligraphy’ now there’s a googlewhack.

Usability books

I've been asked to recommend some usability books .. so here's a link to Amazon's .Web Usability Literature section. While you're at it ... take a look at my wishlist

Reflections on Hatton Garden

Spent Saturday ring shopping in Hatton Garden ... some experience ... won't share details of our recommendations just yet. Suffice to say amongst the gems (pun intended) there are some horrendous shops. full of 'bling', fronted by hedgehog-haired sales-boys and black-jacketed door staff. rings are plucked from behind crushed velvet curtains amongst silk flowers and acres of faux-marble. Despite today's reports about the decline in our high streets, there's something to be said for regional shopping. That said, the more 'bespoke' services offered on Hatton Garden are worth looking in to ...

Two other interesting developments this weekend (aside from telling all her family about the wedding) ... got Ben Folds new album Songs For Silverman and discovered (through an occassional dabble in to genealogy) that relatives of mine who met in the late 19th Century in London actually had common ancestry in the small village of Padbury in Buckinghamshire. Nothing like a bit of home-counties incest to brighten a weekend. Haven't listened to Mr. Folds yet but, if colleagues are to be believed, I shouldn't be disappointed.

Lean mean service machine

Work wise we’ve been thinking about a few things recently regarding the transfer of the ever popular Lean methodology to the service industry. This philosophy suggests a pared-down approach to an organisation’s systems and processes, introducing efficiencies such as geographical proximity of process (moving things closer together) standardisation, eliminating repetition and loop-backs, regular tempo, workload balancing, complexity segregation and finally, the communication of performance results.

Now, this all seems a bit clinical to me. We’re in the business of creating an exceptional customer experience. This seems to produce an efficient customer experience, but are they the same thing? Consider another Lean objective in the workplace, 5S Visual Management. The principal here is very noble – back to basics. The aim is to produce a workplace that is organised, clear of clutter and is focussed on delivering cost reductions, elimination of waste and errors, standardised and inspires pride in the working environment. Great. But what sort of interactions will this encourage? Robotic, teutonic, monotone ruthlessly efficient customer contact that provides nothing but the task required in as few steps as possible. Whilst this may be ok for some transactions, other requiring more care (e.g. an insurance claim) will require an element of care and interaction. I’m all for making the athlete run harder, faster and for longer – but don’t strip them of their humility, their passion, their desire and their personality. Think of it like the barmaid that never talks to you but serves a pint in 1 minute flat or the undertaker that dispatches your relative to the crematorium with only the perfunctory conversations of where, how and when?

Contact centres where we focus on efficiency measures such as talk time, referral time, abandonment rate, call volume etc. etc. become terrible places to work – like battery hen farms and veal crates. The customers hate it – they know they’re the umpteenth call that person’s had that morning and they’ll get service to match, the advisors hate it – they get penalised for taking time and making sure the customer is fully satisfied at their pace, and the managers hate it – they’re chasing an ever-distant horizon as morale worsens and performance drops. Now, I’m not suggesting that playschool is the answer either. These are nothing more than giant 'Big Brother'-style glasshouses out on ring-roads populated with 500 18-30s all in neon chairs, jeans, t-shirts and having foam parties when they make a sale … I’m thinking more of civilised populations in British towns and cities that are proud to work somewhere where the customer is the focus of their attention and the company understand that everything that surrounds them is there to support the staff and their customer. The organisations that get this right are few and far between…

Which leaves us with efficiency again. Does this work on the web? Do people want an interactive experience when they’re browsing? If so, do they want one when they’re shopping, banking or tracking down some IT support? The same can be said of television – some people thought efficient, pared-down news was the thing we’re all craving: cue 60 Seconds on BBC3 or Five’s news updates … the televisual equivalent of an Aero bar … there’s something to it, but not very much. And finally, to take you back to earlier debates … I bet if you asked the man on the street the following questions:

1. Would you like a news show on TV that was just 60 seconds but contained all the day’s headlines including sports, entertainment and weather?
2. Would you like your insurance company to process your policy in one call, without having to explain anything?
3. Would you like your pint served in your local every time under a minute and at perfect temperature?

We’d end up with news in 60 seconds, a robotic barman and a battery hen administering our car insurance. Progress eh?

Engaged

Since I last wrote, the blog’s reached a slightly wider audience … directors and managers where I work have been ‘made aware’ so to new readers ‘hi’ … also since I last wrote I have got engaged. Proposing on the banks of the Ouse in York, where we both went to university. That bank holiday weekend we stayed at the cracking recently refurbished Guy Fawkes Hotel and had two decent meals at Plunketts and Ask. Also took a trip out around the Dales, spending a very pleasant sunny afternoon in Kettlewell (site of previous mountain biking adventures for me … but that’s another story).

Lotus flowers in the East

It appears Lotus are moving the production of their, as yet unrevealed, Espirit replacement to the Proton plant in Malaysia. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the Lotus Elise, having test-driven one (an early series one example) from Motorway Sports a couple of years ago. Fortunately the Elise, buoyed by the success of their 'federalised' Toyota engine, is to remain a Norfolk built car. In fact, the plant at Hethel will expand to cope with demand and it is, in part, a result of this that there is no more room to include their new project. Undoubtebly the replacement will be designed and developed on the track and roads around Hethel and, in essence, it will be born of British DNA, even if it was reared in infancy in the far East. I guess we have to be pragmatic and say that the Eastern economies are better placed to produce this car in a lean, efficient way that will ensure the model provides as much value for money as it can. However it is with some regret that we find we are unable, in this country, to provide a home for higher-volume motor manufacturing - even though we do the extreme stuff with celebrated professionalism (Mclaren, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce ... variously designed, engineered and hand crafted in Britain).

For my part, the dream of owning a 111R inches closer day by day and I'm quite sure that, whilst I jealously survey the pristine Type 25 example parked on my walk-home along Neptune Quay in Ipswich each evening, my time will come to enjoy the roads of East Anglia at the wheel of one of its most famous products.

NEWMU

Keep meaning to post this ... next door to the chaps at Creative Sponge is a fantastic little cafe called Cafe Mu. Been going there since late winter for takeaway Americanos on my walk to work, great personal service, exceptional coffee. Recomend it to everyone in Norwich. There, job done.

* - it's part of the complex around the Museum of Contemporary Art by the way...

Loyalty = Growth doesn't it?

Loyalty = Growth, doesn't it?

Reichheld and his chums in the HBS press espouse the role of loyalty and, more specifically, evangelical referrals as key indicators for growth. I loved this idea, I still do, but I'm beginning to worry that it's not all it's cracked up to be.

To start with, I can see the benefit of a two question satisfaction survey ("Was your experience with us ... exceptional, good, ok, poor, very poor" & "Would you recommend us to others") in terms of the likelihood of faster and more abundant responses but struggle to see the raw benefit of a one-question survey (focusing on referral). My problem is that both of these don't produce anything usable. It produces a headline on the customer's experience but the provides nothing to identify what the problems, solutions or potential innovations are. It might present the patient's symptoms but goes nowhere close to providing diagnosis or curative suggestions .

In a sense (see 'Do Customer's Know best?') it's not for customers to self diagnose, but we can't do this for them if we don't even ask them what's wrong. Well, we might find out by some later ad-hoc research in to the matter but isn't that what the two-question survey was supposed to avoid, a costly 'customer insight' bill? The trouble is we tend to strive towards over-simplification, the 'less is more' approach pervades.

It might be great to walk in to the board room and present the facts that improving top-box satisfaction leads to x% increase in referrals and therefore x% growth, but the first question is going to be "and how do we do that then, what's wrong with us at the moment?" (ok, technically that's two questions, y'see we all do it and it's difficult not to.)

I just want to cite one example, Apple Computers. I bet they could point to genuinely high
top-box scores for satisfaction, they could point to high scores for customer loyalty (people love the iPod and are committed to it) and even high rates of customer referral. How many iPod owners have been overheard telling friends and family that they simply must buy this amazing gadget? Countless. The issue here is then why do Apple only occupy 2% of the $180bn
market for PCs? Why is it that their growth is such that they're not making ground on the likes of Dell, Microsoft, IBM and HP? Reichheld himself acknowledges that referral is a weak growth predictor in the information technology sector but explains this away with a belief that he simply surveyed the wrong people and that senior management choose systems ahead of
employees. Whilst this may be true I'm not sure it gets to the heart of the matter in Apple's case. And there's the rub. I don't honestly know all the reasons why Apple isn't more successful given the emotional satisfaction that people have for its products and the high levels of referral they clearly experience. The same is true of Alfa Romeo, a product so universally liked and placed into a niche by its enthusiastic owners that they even have a name, Alfisti. But by not exploring the customer experience beyond the headlines as Reichheld and chums espouse,
companies would simply believe that a single question survey will help them to grow.

[Possible digression ahead...] In my opinion the reason Apple and Alfa are not the major players in their respective market places centres around rational customer satisfaction, the objective facts are that Apple Macs are expensive and not universally compatible. Outside of the satisfaction sphere, they have suffered at the hands of some catastrophic management decisions not to build upon their innovative momentum to produce a range of products that have mass-market appeal (their competitors churn out boxes at an astonishing rate). Even with the iPod Apple failed to anticipate demand and supply lagged woefully behind. Returning to satisfaction, their iTunes package is adored by its enthusiastic users for its efficient simplicity, but delve deeper - beyond the satisfaction scores - and the shop is poorly stocked, leaving the burgeoning MP3 market to mop-up the wayward customer searching for an elusive tune and wider compatability, they're stunting their own growth (q.v this article). In terms of Alfa Romeo,
they're prone to reliability problems and are expensive. But, before we make another assumption, cost isn't the common factor, look at Linux - technically a superior product to Windows (so I'm told) it's also free, recommended by all who use it and accessible. But it still occupies a smaller personal consumer market share, why, because Windows is ubiquitous, universally accepted and standardised, it's populist and it's marketed aggressively in the way only paid-for products can be. There are many other reasons I'm sure but yet again, asking one or two questions about satisfaction/loyalty/referral will not reveal the answers and will not allow executives to accurately predict and amend growth without first considering the external environment (c.f. 'Burke-Litwin' model of organisational performance and change).

Did I answer the question?

Do users/customers know best?

This has been one that's puzzled me for a long time. I remember a JN Alertbox ("Are Users Stupid" http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010204.html and "Don't listen to users" http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010805.html ) that warned against accepting everything a user suggested and I'm mindful of much of the management-world's concern around suggestion boxes - principally that they generate an awful lot of noise and resentment for very little innovative gain. In essence this boils down to a human trait that we (generally speaking) don't like to hear that someone knows better, that we haven't acknowledged a problem and that, when we believe we're right, that we struggle to accept alternative viewpoints. As usability practitioners and advocates of a customer-centric philosophy are we biting off more than we can chew by attempting to please all of the people all of the time? How do we strike the balance between integrating user-feedback with our own objective (oft empirical) understanding of what works and what doesn't? Customers and users seem to be more able at telling us what they don't like in preference to what they do like, and consequently it's much easier to eliminate and reduce than it is to innovate. When customers do tell us what they want we can often find ourselves (metaphorically) furrowing our brows with the thought "I really don't think that's going to work". Should we be giving in to this thought and applying our own usability spin on it or should we accept the users comments un-appended and without question?

I suppose the answer lies in that old chestnut, 'a bit of both'. Whilst listening to users and customers is useful, actually observing how they behave is absolutely critical. Someone may say they find a site easy to navigate because they are satisfied in the expectation they will need to explore but you may observe them taking a significant amount of time to perform basic tasks. Implication: Make the navigation process more straightforward and you take the user from being satisfied to being impressed. Users may well express satisfaction with a site simply because it looks good (what is beautiful is usable), before they make an assessment on usability. They may over-rationalise their behaviour, assume mistakes are their own ("silly me, I didn't see that link") and play to what they think you want to hear. Is a customer invited to a focus group and plied with refreshments really going to recall their true experience?

All this has come to a head in my mind because we're talking about adopting a suggestion-box scheme (albeit an intranet-based one) here at work to capture employees thoughts about improving the customer experience. I remain cynical. I still think that there's a need for leaders to be leaders and for experts to be expert. The effect of sorting and evaluating the most credible suggestions will be highly resource-intensive, it'll be subjective, it'll create resentment in those whose ideas were rejected and there will be an exponential drop-off in submissions as people feel disheartened that their idea was not taken up. There are ways, of course, to combat this through constructive feedback on suggestions, championing of successful suggestions and other incentivisation but the potential for noise, in my mind, outweighs the potential benefit. The role of consultants in this case must be to see the wider picture, can front-line staff see the processes behind their experiences - do they need to see them to know whether or not they're broken or indeed changeable?

Ultimately I'm starting to feel that pure customer-centricity or user-centricity is not enough and that taking second-person (user) perspective is worthless. The hardest challenge for me will be to ensure that, when in third person perspective I given enough credence to users and metrics alike, performing the role of mediator to ensure that, ultimately the user/customer-experience is the winner.

DigiGuide, keyboard failure and usability updates

If I receive another copy of that rotten Jacquie Lawson cottage christmas card I think I'll go mad. Decided at the weekend to clean my Dell Inspiron laptop keyboard. Mistake, now have a broken keyboard and am desperately scouring eBay for one - screws included as I was a bit over enthusiastic in getting it out. Mental note, leave to the professionals.

Updated my DigiGuide [http://getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=4235] subscription today too. At £9 a year it's fantastic value for a piece of software I use on a daily basis, click the link above to get a copy.

Also in the past few weeks I've started building a few slideshows in Windows Movie Maker. That's been a revelation too. Very handy little program (if a touch unstable) and I've made a successful personal addition to a christmas present in no time.

Before Christmas - and depending on how my laptop fares - I'm planning on uploading all the recent banter surrounding the banner blindess debate [see previous blog] which extended on to the london-usability and uk-usability mailing lists. This has fed in to our design brief and is - in part at least - helping drive the concept development with our selected agency. Furthermore, I'm going to get round to posting screen grabs of various usability practitioners' desktops - do we practise what we preach?

Final tip is to use url shortening service TinyURL! [http://tinyurl.com] - helps to avoid all those irritating .jsp, .asp and php addresses that wrap and break in emails.

More soon.