radiant.matrix

I called [KitchenAid] to whine a little bit and to hear why they made a meltable teapot. I counted how many prompts I had to press in order to talk to a human being. It was NINE.

…

The last step was a recording that they were closed and I should call back after 10 am. Click.

…

If you’re not doing this or you are unable to do this, do not answer the phone. There is no middle ground on this discussion. — How to answer the phone, Seth Godin (2008-12-03T10:52CST)

A lot of attention (but probably not really enough…) is given to user-interface (UI) design in software. Far less is paid to UI design for other business processes, as Godin’s colorful story so clearly demonstrates.

The central problem is that businesses are slaves to two masters: the stockholders, who want everything to cost less and make more money so that their stock value goes up; and the customers, without whom the business simply doesn’t exist. Most business processes — even the customer-facing ones — are designed and implemented primarily to make the stockholders happy.

Put another way, when the designers should be asking “how can we serve our customers the best way possible without it costing too much”, they’re asking “how cheaply can we serve our customers without losing too many of them”.

A lot of value can be had by looking at software UI design principles. For example, what if KitchenAid had used the principle of “fail early” — that is, providing an error message as soon as possible when something happens that will prevent success — in their phone system? The interaction might have looked something like this:

• System: Thank you for calling [company], for service in English, press 1 [etc. for other languages].
• Caller: [presses 1]
• System: We regret that we cannot serve you at this time, as our service center is closed. Please try again during our operating hours: [times]. You can also find solutions to common problems, and submit comments or complaints, on our website at [URL].

This interaction provides value to the caller, while taking up a minimum amount of the caller’s time. The caller needs to only make one selection, their preferred language. After this, the “fail early” principle takes effect, letting the caller know that (a)they cannot be helped by phone now, (b)when they can be helped in this matter, (c)they have a possible alternative to get assistance.

Productivity is widely pursued: managers want to measure it, workers want to maximize it, and just about everyone seems to want to talk about it. Productivity-enhancing systems abound, from Frankln-Covey to GTD. Most of the productivity systems I’ve seen focus on getting as many things accomplished as possible.

More accomplishment is good, right? Unfortunately, most productivity systems don’t adequately address the concept of opportunity cost: the notion that if you decide to do task A right now, you’re also deciding not to do task B, C, or D right now.

Productivity, to me, is not about how much you get done, but about how much of the right things you get done. Put another way, productivity should be about managing opportunity costs, not merely about managing time.

Grant over at 43 Folders tells an interesting story about sui ren zhi shi, jie ren zhi li (roughly “borrowing strength”), a Tai Chi Chuan principle that’s based in redirecting the energy of your opponent to your advantage.

My wife, she was just being hounded constantly by our very helpful little bundles of interruptions (ages 5 and 2.5) when it came time to cook a meal. “I wanna help, I wanna help, I wanna help!” they’d say, while grabbing for the good crystal and the razor-keen pizza slicer. I could only keep one of them occupied at a time, before the other would creep into the kitchen and strike up the chorus. “I wanna help!” And it was just as bad when I was doing the food prep and she was running interference. We’re on a bit of a tight schedule (I work some nights), and we all have things we’d rather be doing – like diddling around with Photoshop and blogging software. Nothing was getting done. So, at the end of our collective tether, my wife, who is a genius, decided to let the kids help. — It’s not a bug, it’s kung fu

Grant makes a brief connection between that principle of “borrowing strength” and productivity. And I agree, it is a powerful idea. There’s another, from Taoism (in which Tai Chi Chuan is deeply rooted), known as wu-wei (”non-action”) that I find even more valuable.

Read more »