7/19/2004
Irrelevancy Makes People Mad
This kind of story makes me really sad. English-speaking Orkut users are apparently up in arms because there are lots of Brazilians on the site, posting lots of stuff in Portuguese and making it difficult for English speakers to find stuff. Everyone has a different opinion about whether this is okay or not, including even Brazilians who think, ‘"The problem is to invade forums with specific languages and write in Portuguese. Brazilians are still learning how to behave in the Net.”
But isn’t the solution really quite simple? Just let people filter by language (Orkut developers, get busy!) and then we won’t have people inciting all this hatred and organizing virtual race riots. (don’t get me started on how upsetting I find it that we North Americans are really this ethnocentric – so irrelevant).
I think it’s great that people all over the world are enjoying the Internet, but yeah, a few filters definitely make it easier to manage a lot of diversity… people should be able to write and read in whatever langauage they choose – that’s the beauty of the Internet, there’s an audience for everything!
7/16/2004
Relevancy is Delightful
This word, ‘delight‘, keeps popping up more and more… It’s a cornerstone of the experience economy… it’s not longer enough to simply provide people stuff – they want to be made happy, too.
That’s what relevancy is all about… anticipating needs (like Dina Mehta describes in this ode to her local grocer), being thoughtful and making people feel like you’re looking out for them. It doesn’t really take much to delight people, except maybe good intentions.
Remember how I said the other day that relevancy is the obvious, simple stuff? Dina apparently agrees:
“What strikes me about these people is they have mastered the art of client delight in small, simple, ways. In ways that are personal, social and responsive beyond the ‘brief’. I am under no illusion that i am the chosen one - i know they do it for all their customers, still i feel special and it makes me so loyal to them - if on the odd day i need to, i’d rather do without, not scream my head off at their inefficiencies, and definitely not turn away from them.”
Don Norman apparently has another take on this… (or so Tom tells me – I missed his recent talk here in New Zealand, dagnabbit!)). Don doesn’t care so much about design and usability anymore – he’s all about having fun these days, or at least that’s what he says when he talks about ‘emotional design’ and why he drives a Porsche rather than the incredibly practical and usable Toyota . His basic needs are met by all sorts of options, so now he expects that little bit extra. Not that design, usability and basic customer service aren’t important anymore – it’s just that they’ve become commodities.
Those organisations that want to differentiate themselves now must also delight us. That’s not too much to ask, is it? After all, even those coffee people understand that I want comfort and inspiration with my latte…
7/6/2004
They Stole My Idea!
Those crafty Starbucks people must have snuck into my brain while I was sleeping and stolen my idea about destination music/drinking stores! I swear I outlined this very idea to my boss at TowerRecords.com a few years ago, after having spent many an hour on listening stations in Tower stores looking for new music ideas (and getting thirsty and wishing I had a place to sit down). Except my idea involved alcoholic beverages, as well (everyone knows people buy more stuff, especially emotionally engaging stuff, when they’re a bit intoxicated!). So either Starbucks should get a liquor license (mmm… Irish coffees!!!) or those big microbrewery places should get into the act.
But maybe Starbucks will figure out the alcohol part on their own… the marketing guy, Howard Schultz, is obviously really smart:
“When I think about the average music-shopping experience, what I would call the sense of romance about music is gone, but when I saw Hear Music that first time, it was clear that they had cracked the code on the sense of discovery that music should have.”
Yes, yes! We all want more music, we just need help finding it! They should get SavageBeast or something, too… we used it at Tower to create a really nifty ‘Discovery Center‘ that let people find new music based on music that they like, refined along any dimension they particularly liked. I can totally see people siting in a bar/café surfing for music with their friends on a Friday night… I’d go right now if I were a bit closer to Santa Monica!
New Zealand Game Developers Conference
This last week I went to the first ever New Zealand Game Developers Conference in
Dunedin, a lovely city on the South Island with gorgeous views and
amazing Victorian architecture. It was a really great conference:
interesting speakers, good food (served in an awesome Harry
Potter-esque dining room), and an incredibly fabulous bag. The t-shirt
was quite good, as well. 
But more importantly, we had Sheri Graner Ray, Ernest Adams, Mario Wynands, and Daniel Sanchez-Crespo, among other really interesting people. It was really cool being at a small enough conference that we actually got to hang out with people (oh, and got to make them play SingStar and EyeToy, too!).
I also met my soon-to-be PhD supervisor, Gareth Schott, and he seems like a very excellent person with really great ideas. While there, we devised a scheme to take a much more interesting approach to the dissemination of my research… I’m very excited about the possibilities, but keeping mum for now!
As for a topic?
Still something about social learning in massively multiplayer game
ennvironments. As soon as my husband gets our new living room PC set
up, I’m going to start my fieldwork, playing City of Heroes for 10-30 hours per week. 
Oh, and one more thing… I also attended a panel including New Zealand’s chief censor, Bill Hastings, who did a remarkably good job explaining why he’s banned a couple of very violent games. I don’t believe in censorship, but I was impressed with how thoughtfully and intelligently he approached the issue… ‘Injurious to public good?’ My jury is still out on this one…
7/5/2004
Who Calls It Information Overload?
Marc Prensky has an interesting take on the whole ‘information overload problem’… He contends, as do I, that the problem is not too much information (or too much choice, as I have written before), but rather a problem with people’s ability to process information. Digital natives have been hard-wired by their interactions with technology, exposure to fast-moving images, and bombardment with heaps of information to handle a lot more than digital immigrants. Unlike their forbears whose lives unfolded at a much more leisurely pace, digital natives have evolved to process lots of stuff in parallel and make decisions quickly. Less information isn’t a solution for them (or for me, sitting somewhere between a native and an immigrant) – they just want better tools for filtering irrelevant information. This is going to be the cry in the future… give me lots of information and choices, and give me tools that help me make all that stuff relevant to my wants and needs.
6/24/2004
I’ll Spend My Time Talking to Whom I Want, Thanks Very Much!
I’m so glad that people are starting to catch onto this whole relevancy idea. I just found this great piece about the ’self-service’ society and how it works to everyone’s benefit:
“For the consumer, the ability to control the timing, method, and manner of a transaction is very attractive – particularly if it saves them time and effort. The attraction for the supplier is that they can off-load all the administrative costs of selling to the consumer and still give a better service.”
They also say:
“We consumers are demanding more and more. We are now looking for companies to serve us the way we want to be served and to sell us the products that we want to buy. The next generation of self-service will deliver the ultimate in market feedback – we won’t just tell vendors what we want, we will take it.”
People always worry that with too much personalization and customization provided by technology, people won’t leave the house and won’t ever talk to anyone – but, please, who enjoys those long conversations with bank tellers, telemarketers and bureaucrats at the DMV? I’m sure they would just as soon not talk to me and I’d just as soon not talk to them… well, not in that context, anyway. So give me some nice self-service apps and I’ll spend the time I save trolling my social networks for interesting people to talk to. Another article referred to a recent study looking at women’s online habits: ‘"for many women, the Internet has allowed them to actually spend more time with their families, according to the report, as it has made routine tasks far less time-consuming.” So see? It’s not all doom and gloom for sociability!
Hey, but when am I going to get ‘portable scanning devices, which permit customers to scan each item as it is picked off the shelf’ and ‘enable immediate purchase’?’. Only problem is, I might miss the nice Kiwi check-out people here in New Zealand who always say, ‘Nice Day?’ to everyone and make it seem like they really care if I’ve had a nice day or not. (one of these days when I’m feeling extra grumpy, I’m afraid I’m going to say, ‘no, I’ve had a crappy day, thanks for asking!’, but fortunately, it hasn’t happened yet!)
6/17/2004
Relevancy is the Obvious, Simple Stuff
I’m so excited to have found another Fast Company write-up about the guy who implemented the 24-hours-a-day check-in policy at the Peninsula Beverly Hills. This is a guy who figured out what his customers really needed, then creatively engineered a way to give it to them. He didn’t do like many hotels that try to be more marketable, obssessing about mostly meaningless stuff like nicer chocolates on their pillows, fluffier towels, or expanded spa services… Instead, he looked at what really mattered to travelers… flexibility… and a soft spot to lay your poor aching body and pounding head after a long day working or traveling, not having to sit in the lobby until your room is ready, being able to shower before spending time in public, and not having to check out at 10 am, when your flight is at 4 (and you only checked in last night at 12:00 am, so it’s a total rip-off). This guy gets a gold star.
But the thing that amazes me is, isn’t this obvious? Why all the accolades for this guy who just did the right thing: being a hospitable host in the hospitality industry? People we don’t pay treat us better than this when we go stay with them…
Been away…
I’ve been to a conference here in New Zealand these last few days… We learned lots of stuff and got to work on developing standards for eLearning… (oh, and I gave a presentation on ‘Education and Industry Sector Collaboration’). So now I’m mulling lots over, but will try to get back on board soon. In the meantime, check out this new gaming blog I just found, Joystiq…
6/8/2004
Yeah, Why Do They Limit Network Effects?
This is a great rant from Rafe Needleman about organization-centric approaches to network communications and social software that limit desirable network effects (the idea that the bigger the network, the better it is)and make the applications irrelevant to many. As Rafe says, “the lack of interconnection is not purely a technical imperative, but rather a business choice. That choice is disrespectful of the consumer and slows down the adoption of new services.”
The closed approach will have to change… Someone will surely come along and figure out a way to aggregate my social networks, then provide applications that allow me to leverage all of them as one cohesive whole. I just wonder how long it will take?
6/7/2004
Frightening, but Surprisingly Relevant
When I first read headlines that McDonalds was offering digital music downloads, I thought it was the stupidest, most desperate thing I’d heard lately. But then I read this article and realized that it’s really quite smart. Get kids thinking that music is a value-added thing, not free, but give it to them for free and get them to access it in a place where they already go. Plus, it benefits everyone… music people get to get more music out there and McDonald’s has a new draw, that is if anyone’s parents let them go anywhere near the Golden Arches anymore…
The process of choice is rather difficult, but it is necessary to choose , and anyway Here we have few themed pictures:
You can specify nuances of operation with at our site. See it in details:
With help of our service you can begin work with . See it on the following pictures:
The qualitative materials connected with themes , presented on our site. Here we have few themed pictures:
You can find analog of at our site. More details in those pictures:
Stream of the information about next themes shows, how much it is important for a society. It becomes more clearly on the pictures:
All secrets of only at our site. Also pictures:
We choose every time. Get acquainted with and make a right step to the future. Pay attention to pictures on this theme:
Do you want to know, how people manage to be?. Simple answers to exciting questions about . See it in details:
Come on to our site and you will find the full information about . Those images will help you to understand:
auto injury lawyer
antique ford truck parts
parts suzuki motorcycle
1950 mercury parts
auto site
jeep j20 body parts
thrifty car rental miami
auto site
auto site
auto site
korenetorpi981
On our portal it is possible to get information about questions you interesting in, for example . More details in those pictures:
Our portal gives the full information on the subjects connected with . See it in details:
Are you often tormented by questions about and ? Learn more from our site. After all, we have evident pictures:
Our site focuses on work with . Pay attention to pictures on this theme:
In our web site you will receive all particulars concerning . Here we have few themed pictures:
We have taken care and have published a lot of information about
Do not be doubt - you have come to the necessary address: here you learn about all and even more!
Do you have questions about ? There are answers on our site!! Let's change! See it in details:
Our site will provide you with all necessary data in sphere of . See it in details:
You will certainly need additional information working with such themes like . Visit our site and you will find that it is necessary for you. More details in those pictures:
Posted by: Bpmhalrqxz | 12/12/2011 at 12:58 AM