Human Factors

When it’s raining in Wellington, people just get wet. They usually don’t bother using an umbrella, the strong winds would probably destroy them within a short time anyway. In other parts of New Zealand and in Germany (well, probably in most countries of the world, but I know for NZ and Germany for sure) people use umbrellas. And when they go into a shop or a supermarket, they try to get rid of some of the raindrops on it by waving it around and getting other people wet. Inside then the umbrellas drip on the floor, building up slippery puddles of rain water which can cause people to fall. Not to speak of wet pants, when people accidentally touch their legs with the umbrella.

The Japanese have a different system for dealing with wet umbrellas. To keep the water outside when the weather is crappy, all shops have a plastic cover dispenser for umbrellas at their entrance. You put your umbrella in from the top and when you take it out towards the front it’s covered in a condom like wrapper. This is how the shop floors stay dry and people don’t slip. And you don’t need to fear that anyone will get you completely wet when they wave their umbrella around in order to get it dry before they enter the shop. Awesome idea!

It would be great to see a more reusable solution, using a plastic cover once and then throwing it into the rubbish bin doesn’t sound right to me. But it’s a start and certainly limits some risks associated with wet floors.

But when you want to go to a museum or a restaurant, you’re usually not keen to carry your umbrella around, regardless if it’s placed in a cover or not. That’s why such places often have a lockable umbrella holder at the entrance of the building. Put the head of the umbrella in, close the lock, remove the metal plate to lock and your umbrella will be waiting securely locked up until you return. That’s how Tokyo stays nice clean and tidy even in nasty weather conditions.

I have just returned from a short holiday in Tokyo. I had already heard about the impressively high level of service people usually experience in Japan, and now that I’ve been there I can only confirm, that being a customer in Japan feels absolutely great.

I can only talk for the Tokyo region, since I didn’t travel anywhere outside of the big city, but I assume it’s the same anywhere in Japan – whatever you do, wherever you go, whoever you encounter: people are always nice and go the extra mile to fulfil the wishes you didn’t even know you had. There was the shower head in our hotel for example, which had a little leak. Not a big problem and I certainly wouldn’t have complained about it, but when we used the shower again the next morning, it had been fixed. Without us saying a word. Not only had the cleaning staff seen the problem, they had even organised the repair. Great service!

There were lots of little things where I though “Wow, that’s great, I didn’t really expect this”, but one of the best things happened to us at Junkudo. Junkudo is a huge book store in Ikebukuro, one of the must-see parts of Tokyo. The store has nine stories, with level nine hosting foreign books. Since neither Kai nor I speak Japanese, we went straight up to the top floor to look for a book we had seen advertised in a newspaper. When we couldn’t find it, I approached the information desk and asked for it. Luckily I had the newspaper clipping with me, so it was easy for the person I asked to look it up in their computer and locate it within the shop. For some reason they had it one level below, and they sent me down to get it from there. Now, in both Germany and New Zealand “Go to level xyz” means that you have to find the item you’re looking for at that location for yourself. At Junkudo it meant, that someone on level eight was informed via phone that we were looking for the book, and while we took the escalator down, which probably took us less than two minutes, this person grabbed the book and placed it at the information desk for us. When we arrived to ask for it again, it was already waiting for us. Great service, again!

I got really excited about the high level of service, and when we met a friend for lunch at our last day in Tokyo I got an explanation as to why the Japanese are so service oriented. It has to do with the custom of “omotenashi”, the atmosphere of hospitality and welcome. It’s the thought of creating a nice, welcoming experience for guests – with an attention to details – that got transferred into the whole service industry. It’s a great custom and it certainly makes Japan a great experience for visitors.

… even if you hold a monopoly.

That’s all I have to say after my experience with ShopCity, who seem to be the only ones selling filters for our Mitsubishi heat pump in New Zealand. At least they were the only ones who were easy enough to find when we needed to replace the filters. We tried to order online, but we were able to put only one filter into the shopping cart, we needed two. So we assumed they were out of stock and used the online form, asking to get notified as soon as new stock arrived.

Two-and-a-half working days later we got a response, telling us that the filters had to be ordered by contacting customer support via phone. No further explanation if they were really out of stock or why else it would only be possible to order a single filter instead of two. Since I had no other choice, I called the phone number they had provided. First of all I was given various options on how to get to the person I needed to talk to, luckily customer service/ sales was the second option. I pressed 2 and got into a waiting line where I was told my call was important to them. They told me 5 times before I finally had someone on the phone. When I said I wanted to place an order, I was put on hold again. This time with radio running in the background; some kind of quiz show where the host had two callers on the line and there were competing in whatever discipline. Then my call was answered and I was asked if I held an account with them. No? Then I would have to use the website to order. Grrrrr.

Luckily the lady on the phone picked up my mood and was happy to let me order via phone after I had told her my story. She took my details and put me on hold while my credit card details were being processed. This time I had to listen to radio advertisement, ironically advertisement for a heat pump. Apparently my payment got through and I was promised the filters will be delivered tomorrow. We will see…

It would have been so easy to make this a more pleasant experience:

• If your customers can only order a limited amount your product, tell them the reason why. In this case a simple message that they’ve been out of stock and what the options in this case were, would have been great.
• If you expect customers to call you, please give them a positive experience. Telling them how important their call is doesn’t do the trick, if they have to listen to this multiple times while being transferred again and again. Also forcing them to listen to radio is not a good choice, at least not if the radio station isn’t playing music.
• If you have a sales department never ever let them start a conversations with “you should order from our website”. There will always be a reason why your customer is calling instead of using the online shop. They might have tried the online shop without success, or they might feel more comfortable ordering on the phone. Whatever the reason is, please don’t question their choice.

I guess in this case it’s really a matter of holding the monopoly. If I didn’t have to order with them, I wouldn’t even have called. I would have tried the next online shop. But knowing that owners of Mitsubishi heat pumps have no other choice, apparently makes ShopCity a bit careless about the customer experience. They will buy anyway, because no one else has what they need.

Update: The new filters really arrived the next day – at least one thing they were good at.

Open Government New Zealand 2010 – This was the title of an “un-conference” I attended yesterday. It was an event organised by Microsoft, which got me a little confused in the beginning. New Zealand, and Wellington in particular, has a crowd of really good and active people in the Open Government movement – there has been a barcamp last year and great work is underway to make Government data available and usable to the public. Having attended a couple of barcamps and being one of the organisers of Wellington’s Flashcamp (which is technically not really an “un-conference”) I have a pretty clear idea what such an event should look like: an open invitation to contribute and discuss, an exchange of knowledge and experience, and at the end of the day a list of ideas, visions, action points as outcome of the day. All of that in a relaxed environment, with piles of butcher paper, post-its, black-red-green-blue markers and lots of coffee. When I first saw the website for yesterday’s event, it was pretty clear that this wasn’t what the organisers had in mind. Registration was subject to confirmation by the organiser, most parts of the “un-conference” seemed to be pre-organised and opportunity to contribute was limited – also you had to put some effort into proposing a topic or voting on a topic someone else had proposed.

And still I wanted to go. I had missed the first barcamp, but I think it’s important to get involved in the topic. I know that within some Government departments there is no awareness of the need to open up to the public. Neither when it comes to making collected data available for reuse, nor when it comes to changing the way Government communicates from broadcasting messages to getting into real conversations with members of the public. And since this promised to be different from what I know and from how I would run such an event, I was keen to go. My “application” for registration was accepted and there I was.

Funny enough one of the big confusions of the day was which hashtag to use for Twitter. This should have been a no-brainer, since the event’s website displayed a Twitter feed hashtagged with #opengovnz, from my point of view this would have determined which one to use. But since this was pretty close to the previous barcamp’s #opengovtnz it led to some confusion and in the end we had a vote. Strangely enough the choice was between #opengov2010 and #opengovt2010 – I have no idea where these eventually came from, but others were happy to raise their hands in favour of one or the other and finally #opengovt2010 was used.

I don’t want to get too much into detail for the main parts of the conference, others (including Brenda Wallace and Colin Jackson) have done that already. But I’m keen to share some of my observations/things I’ve learnt. They are in no particular order, just a random collections of thoughts:

• FYI.org.nz can be used to make Official Information Act requests
• IRD has built an online consultation forum that can be reused by other Government agencies (I hope they are all aware of this, and not individually building their own online consultation tools)
• Sometimes people are being asked in job interviews to provide their potential employer with access to their personal Facebook account (WTF???)
• Over time, silly things we said online won’t matter anymore, because either everyone else will have sent some drunk Facebook status updates as well, or because they won’t be found in the flood of personal information
• Politicians receive a lot of useless comments on Facebook
• Blocking staff access to social online networks isn’t a good idea
• Government agencies should trust their employees and reward positive online interaction with the public
• It’s time to replace “If you build it they will come” with “If you open it, they will build it”
• Useful + Usable = Used

My personal conclusion: it was actually a good event, if you let go of the idea that this was an un-conference. Those who were there are interested in change and improvement. Not sure if those working for Government agencies will go back and discuss, and if they do, I hope they’ll get listened to. But a seed is planted and over time we might see more openness in Government. If those who attended yesterday could ally with those already working on it, both sides could probably benefit.

The Adobe CS5 Roadshow visited Wellington yesterday, and Mike McHugh, Andrew Spaulding and Paul Burnett from Adobe Australia spent a whole day on stage – entertaining the crowd with all the new and amazing features in CS5. Apparently reaction from the people was not what these guys are used to – usually they’ll get a lot of “Oooooh”s and “Aaaaaah”s when presenting – but Wellingtonians are a little bit more reserved. My personal feeling is, that because in Wellington a lot of people work for government, many of the attendees won’t get an upgrade to their current software anytime soon. They can only dream of all the new features that could make their lives easier and increase productivity, it’s simply not their reality. I was sitting next to three ladies, who have just recently been upgraded from CS2 to CS4, and would in theory be entitled to a free upgrade to CS5 by Adobe – but “impact assessments” required by the organisation’s IT department would take a long time and are apparently rather expensive, so they simply won’t be upgraded.

But apart from the crowd being a bit quiet, it was a great show.

After the roadshow Mike, Andrew and Paul joined the Wellington Creative Suite User Group for a very special meeting. Adobe New Zealand sponsored an enormous cake to celebrate the release of CS5, and all attendees got some further insight into the new features. A software raffle at the end of the meeting saw one lucky user group member walk away with a brand new copy of a Premium Suite license.

What a great day – big thanks to Mike, Andrew and Paul again, and to all the other Adobe people, who made the roadshow and the user group meeting a highlight!

I’ve just returned from Sydney, where I attended my favorite conference – webDU. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the conference in general here – others (such as Dale Fraser or Michael Plank) have done that in great way already. But I thought I’d quickly share my main personal take-aways from some of the sessions. Since most of the attendees were hardcore developers, I guess I’ll have a different view on some of the topics covered. Here are my thoughts about selected events/sessions:

Software Requirements without Tears by Robin Hillard

Define your requirements by asking the right questions. A mini-manual to get those requirements right before starting the design/development. Robin finished his presentations with a little quiz, and I teamed up with a friendly chap next to me. Although I paid attention during the talk, we really sucked at identifying some requirements. Certainly something I need to follow up on.

Usability: Thinking about the user, not for them by Richard Turner-Jones

Richard was around when I had the second-scariest experience of my life. Only 3 people witnessed me freaking out on the horrible ferris wheel at Disneyland during the conference party at MAX in Anaheim a couple of years ago. Surely I had to attend his session, especially since it wasn’t solely development focussed. The main take-away for me was the link to www.guimagnets.com for some sort of a prototyping on a fridge (or whiteboard), which I wasn’t aware of before. The talk covered some of the basics only, which was ok since it was advertised for general audience and it was my own choice to still go there…

Wireframes – From Screen Concepts to User Interaction by Mia Horrigan

Mia presented a case study and shared her experience with a project that went wrong in several areas, and she explained how she brought it back on track. I always appreciate a speaker’s personal experience – you can read about the theory behind a topic in books, blogs and magazines. But if someone tells me “That’s what I did and that’s why it worked or didn’t work”, that’s when it gets useful for me.

The Hotness of Agile Software Development by Matthew Hodgson

My favorite of webDU. I fell in love with Matt’s presentation style at last year’s webDU, and he didn’t disappoint me this year either. Unfortunately he gave some insight into how his team works, and that totally made me want to work for them. Look for yourself.

The Mobile User Experience by Rod Farmer

I now have a deep respect for all the designers/developers out there, who manage to deliver a consistent user experience across different mobile platforms, screen sizes, networks, carriers, etc, etc, etc.

The Value of a Ruber Chicken: better team development through shame… and tools by Tim Buntel

Tim just recently moved to Sydney from the US, and it was great so see that he and his family seem to have fully adjusted to life in the southern hemisphere. His talks are always fun and enjoyable – it doesn’t really matter what he’s talking about. I would probably even go and listen to him speaking even if it was about some alien hardcore coding language, but this time I was lucky and I learnt more about different approaches of version control.

After a Round Table session with some of the key speakers (highly entertaining, but no women on the panel) sadly the conference came to an end. On the day after the conference, us Adobe user group managers from New Zealand and Australia held a mini UGM summit (including a surf lesson), and in the evening I interviewed Peter Bell (which is available on createordie.de or interpreted by a robot via Google Translate). The legendary Aftershow-Party at Deamon HQ brought the whole conference experience to an end.

The slogan of the conference is”Like a Rock Concert for Geeks”, and I can totally relate to this statement. And for me it was a “Beach Party with Friends” as well!

* Photos from the webdu2010 Flickr stream

There will be another Flash Platform Code Camp in Wellington later this year. On Saturday, 4 September 2010 it is time again for the community event from and for Developers and Designers – organised by the Flash Platform User Group New Zealand with lots of support from the Creative Suite User Group Wellington.

We’re moving into a new venue (Natcoll Design Technology in Wellington’s CBD) that allows us to cater for more attendees and we’re going to have 2 parallel tracks this year! If you haven’t been at Flash Platform Code Camp 2009 have a look at the agenda and presentations from last year to get started!

Come along and learn about Adobe’s Flash Platform and creative tools for building Rich Internet Applications: Flash, Flex, AIR, Flash Catalyst, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash Builder, BlazeDS, LiveCycle DS, LiveCycle Designer and lots more. This is also a place to meet and greet, share cool stuff, try out new technologies and code together with other like-minded people.

Make sure you follow @fpcodecampnz on Twitter for further updates and registration notification.