Category: Work

Bad Hospitality Plus Shadow Labor

Full Disclosure: I’m only able to write this post because I got a parking ticket. Parking is the wrong word, because the ticket was actually for having a temporary registration displayed past its expiration date. Right – the piece of paper indicating that I had a new, paid, registration on the way? There are layers to this situation, but what I really want to discuss is the online bill pay system I used to pay my ticket.

It was pretty straightforward, name, address, ticket number. My ticket number as displayed didn’t work, so I scrolled down and found some instructions. Here are those instructions:

traffic-ticket

I’d imagine you’re going through the same series of emotions that I did: confusion, then suspicion, then despair. Yes, they are passing the work that could be done by ten lines of JavaScript onto their customers. Why format the information using a computer when you can force folks using your product to do it?

This is bad hospitality. It’s also shadow labor, which is a whole different can of worms. Luckily for http://www.parkingticketpayment.com, their customers are unique in that they absolutely must give them their money, regardless of terrible UX and hostile hospitality.

Don’t make your customers do the math. Please.

Level Up 2014: Day One Reflections

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This Wednesday and Thursday (aka today and tomorrow) is the first ever Level Up Conference, a “creative tech conference” put on by my friends and yours, the folks at Mad Glory. I mentioned this crazy week a while back, since it is not just the first ever Level Up, but also the first ever WordCamp Saratoga (on Saturday, tickets still available!)

(Yes, Mad Glory and Sharatoga share a street. Maybe we should start a collaborative project with us and the ever-relevant Hatties Fried Chicken – Phila Phriends? One can dream)

First, let me address how wonderfully this conference has been organized. It does not feel like their first run through: it’s polished, it’s seamless, and it really feels like the Mad Glory team are old pros at this. I’m sure they’re putting out fires backstage silently, but from the perspective of an attendee, it really seems and feels flawless. They even provided umbrellas. Umbrellas!

Second, and this may be because I’m primed with visions of Jodorowsky and fearless positive forward movement, but this first day for me has been all about facing and defeating fear – your own fear as well as the fears of your coworkers and clients. I hope to write some more in-depth pieces on some of the presentations more specifically, but right now, I’m trying to find a bigger sense of synthesis.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect about Level Up – I knew that I had (still have!) tremendous respect for the Mad Glory team, and that whatever the event turned out to be it would be interesting and certainly worth attending, but I didn’t expect the sort of macro, high-level sort of discussions that are taking place. I expected plain lessons on creation and ideation and shipping, but what we’re having are conversations about human psychology and the nature of fear in The Work and the way that we think about ourselves, as well as the way that we think about The Product as a bigger, abstract idea, not just as a piece of finished or unfinished code.

It’s heady stuff, blurring the line between leadership and design and philosophy – but that’s where I live. It’s where we all live, after all, and to be surrounded by folks who share that experience and who are excited to chaw on it is a really excellent experience.

And it’s in Upstate New York. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

 

To This, We Say Yes!

After a few failed attempts, The Doctor and I finally had a chance to watch a movie that I’ve been very excited about for some time: Jodorowsky’s Dune. Here’s the trailer:

 

Besides being a really wonderful documentary about a radical retelling of a story I’ve loved my whole life, it is also an exploration of a sort of genius that seems missing from today’s world: skating on the edge of insanity, blending Continental philosophy with art and literature and comics, finding and delivering meaning in unusual and sometimes delightful places.

I find Alejandro Jodorowsky inspiring for many reasons, not the least of which is his intense lifelong ability to simply ship prolifically – the man has published books, made films, collaborated with artists and scientists – but also his approach to his work, to The Work. He says two things in the documentary about his attempt at filming Dune that have stuck with me.

“Things come, you say yes. Things go away, you say yes.”

Jodorowsky’s approach is ever-progressive – not in a political way necessarily, but in terms of forward momentum. Even when Dune, what could have been a masterpiece, was canned, his response was Yes! If the world is a certain way, you must progress anyway – you must say yes! You must say yes even if you go on to change it. This approach shines positivity and momentum, two things I try to reflect upon and embrace in my own work, and my own thoughts. It encourages action, rather than reaction.

“Why not be ambitious?”

Alejandro is again responding to the documentarian’s questions about the failure of Dune, and even in the face of failure, he shows no regret or remorse. He does not wish that he had held back his ambition, that he had quieted his desires to make a consciousness-altering movie – he instead faces it with defiance and grit: why not be ambitious? Why be on this world if not to make world-changing things?

Jodorowsky’s Dune could have been great, and I do wish that it could have been completed, but the real thing I have taken from the documentary is an inspiration to have a little more Alejandro in my own life – to allow a little madness in around the edges, to allow myself to be ambitious and to grasp for great things, to make and discuss and get a little wild. To this, I say yes!

 

First Happiness Data Project

I’ve successfully harangued a pair of my colleagues (Rachel and Kevin) into getting our feet wet implementing some growth engineering tactics in our larger hospitality strategy. That strategy is, of course, to make WordPress.com customers the happiest customers in the world.

Here’s the 1.0 of the plan:

  1. Each of us will individually analyze the Google Analytics data for http://en.support.wordpress.com/
  2. From that data, we will each find what we see as the three documents with the highest traffic but also the highest bounce rate, indicating lots of views, and lots of departures from that document. The idea here being that these docs will either be the very best (customers problems are solved, and they go to their Dashboard to implement the solution) or the worst (customers simply abandon their search and head to Google. Or Buzzfeed. Probably Buzzfeed.)
  3. Add a pop-up survey to the bottom of each of these high-traffic-high-bounce sites asking general questions about the quality of the doc, feedback, etc. We haven’t sussed out these questions yet.
  4. Let the survey run for a few weeks, being vigilant to any support requests it might gather.
  5. Read the responses & confer with the documentation folks to work on improvements.
  6. Track the docs over time, watch for a change of bounce rate.

For a first dive, I’m hopeful. It will give us a chance to work together as a team, become familiar with the tools at hand (Google Analytics and Qualaroo, in this case), and hopefully iterate into bigger and better things!