In one of my other courses we are experimenting with A/B testing on our own designs. The syllabus introduced this Wired article in which the strengths and weaknesses of the method are discussed. Just as the assigned chapters for this course the article builds on the Optimizely founder, Dan Siroker’s revelation during the Obama 2008 campaign, but it also takes a critical perspective and highlights some of the potential downsides of A/B testing. I especially think the method’s bias towards incremental improvement and its lack of lessons are worth bringing into our discussion on Friday.
All posts by Ronnie Jakobsen
“How Great Leaders Inspire Action”
When I got the “Inspire Someone” task I didn’t exactly know any inspiration techniques so I researched a bit to find one. I came across a guy called Simon Sinek who did the third most watched TEDx talk of all time entitled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”. It quickly caught my interest as he claimed to have the answer for the question we are continuously dealing with in class. Why is it that someone is able to achieve extraordinary performance, when others are not?
He explains how successful leaders and companies all think, act, and communicate in the same way, by focusing on why the company exists rather than what it does or how it does it. He applies his theory on the cases of Apple, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Wright Brothers – an approach very similar to the one we use in class. He is convinced that companies and leaders who think, act, and communicate according to a strong belief are the ones who succeed.
Although Sinek’s theory doesn’t seem to be grounded in much research it gave me a good tool to accomplish the task. I decided to try it out on my Designing Mobile Experiences the next day. Our group work choosing one of three “it” screens for the app we’re designing. An “it” screen is the most important screen for demonstrating the user experience. Its purpose is to make people “get it”. This was initially proving to be difficult because different team members each had different ideas about what information it should contain and how it should look.
I chose to carry out the inspiration task implicitly because explaining my actions and preaching about inspirational techniques wouldn’t have felt natural in the situation. My inspirational tactic was instead to lead our discussion in the direction of discussing why our app exists instead of discussing how it works or what it does. This actually seemed to work well as it made us take a step back to focus on pursuing our overarching goal: “making it safer to bike.” We ended up agreeing on an “it” screen, essentially by answering the question: “Why should we choose this screen?” “Because it demonstrates how we can make it safer to bike!”
I even found Sinek’s approach applicable when analysing the “Queen of Versailles” speech in the “Pep Talk” task. Although the speaker seems to be a bit of a swindler he follows Sinek’s pattern for inspiring people which seems to be working. He begins with asking why: why do they work? To save lives! How do they save lives? They sell vacations. What kind of vacations do they sell? They sell time-shares. I definitely think Sinek’s TEDx talk is worth a watch when trying to uncover what makes some people able to achieve extraordinary results. Maybe we can discuss the relevancy and validity of his theory in class when we reach the “Behavioral Change” or “Move People” week.
“Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work”
Our discussion today made me think of an article I read during my undergraduate degree at Copenhagen Business School. In his article “Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work” from 1993 Alfie Kohn makes some of the critical points about rewards very clear. I think his stand on the issue is best illustrated by a couple of direct quotes:
“… rewards succeed at securing one thing only: temporary compliance.”
“They do not create an enduring commitment to any value or action.”
“Everyone is pressuring the system for individual gain. No one is improving the system for collective gain.”
“The number one casualty of rewards is creativity. As the late John Condry put it, rewards are the “enemies of exploration.””
I feel convinced that there is some truth to his standpoints although they tend to be a bit extreme and portray the issue as in a black and white manner. No matter what I definitely think it’s a piece worth taking into account when discussing the effects of incentives.
Jakob Nielsen
Although usability is is a fairly new and narrow field I think the achievements of Jakob Nielsen can be characterized as extraordinary. He has been proclaimed the king of usability and is the number one person to be cited when UIs on all platforms are to be criticized. It recently struck me that he possesses some of the traits we have been discussing in class so far, and I think that his uncompromising attitude about simple and light weight web design can be compared to that of Jiro’s. His work and advice are all focused on doing less, not more.
Read more about Jakob Nielsen here, and have a look at one of his ruthless reviews when he criticizes iOS 7 here.