Abbott and Costello on team communication

I was talking with a colleague recently about the February UX Group meeting on guerrilla usability, and how one of my strategies has always been to try to work closely with developers and understand their concerns. She reminded me of a meeting that I had once called to reinforce the strong connection between a UX team and a development team.

When I worked at Platform Computing the user experience team had a pretty good relationship with various development teams. Nevertheless, issues occasionally arose where it wasn’t at all clear what the nature of the problem was, and further discussion only muddied the water. When that happened, one of the UX team would smile and interject with the apparent non sequitur “third base”. It was a bit of shorthand we used for a situation where communication just isn’t happening and folks are getting frustrated. Sometimes communication problems can make it seem like people or teams aren’t aligned, when really they’re just misunderstanding each other. Explanations to the developers as to what we meant by “third base”, though, weren’t any clearer!

I decided to share more clearly the source of the “third base” comment with the development team that we worked with most often. I called a meeting with our two teams and showed a video clip of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s famous Who’s On First comedy routine. (Here’s a version of it on YouTube.) None of the development team members had seen it previously, probably because the routine is many decades old and that whole team was made up of Chinese-Canadians who hadn’t been exposed to that corner of American culture. As it turns out, they all loved it, and remarked that the kind of wordplay on display has parallels in Chinese comedy. Watching the video together reminded us all that mis-communication is natural, and that we can work to overcome it while having fun building products together.

Perils of a gestural UI

The iPhone was Apple’s first product that leapt completely into the world of gestural interface; it was later followed by the similar iPod Touch. The recent iPad looks to build upon the success of those products. While the iPhone isn’t perfect, as I’ve written previously, it’s a wonderful product for me.

The company’s gestural endeavours aren’t confined to new product categories. Apple has also built multi-touch gestural trackpads into various models of MacBook. I’ve never made a lot use of the extended capabilities in the trackpads — I found two-fingered scrolling to be pretty awkward (though rotation is fine for me).

While I hadn’t previously tried to analyze my response, I recently took a closer look and figured out what has thrown me about scrolling using the trackpad. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that gesture. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Let me explain.

On the iPhone, dragging my finger on the display causes what’s visible on the screen to move in the direction that my finger is moving. A good example of this is seen in Safari, the iPhone’s web browser. If a web page doesn’t fit on the screen I can put my finger on the screen, drag it across the screen, and the web page moves with my finger. It’s as if the page were sitting on a table and I put a finger on the page to move it across the table in a particular direction. If I move my finger towards me, the page moves towards me — scrolling “up” on the screen. If I move my finger away from me, the page moves away from me — scrolling “down” on the screen.

The trackpad on my MacBook is different. Using Safari as an example again, when viewing a web page the entire page may not appear within the browser window. I can scroll the page in a few ways. I can use the cursor to move the scroll bar, or I can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move the scroll bar. The key in both these cases is that I’m controlling the scroll bar, which in turn scrolls the page. A third way to scroll the page is via two-finger scrolling on the trackpad. Here is where things get interesting.  If I move my fingers towards me, the page moves away from me — scrolling “down” on the screen. If I move my fingers away from me, the page moves towards me — scrolling “up” on the screen. These behaviours are the opposite of what’s happening on iPhone. The reason is that two-fingered trackpad scrolling is linked to moving the scroll bars rather than moving the page directly.

Moving back and forth between iPhone and Mac made it easier for me to finally identify the source of my trackpad scrolling discomfort.

This really feels like a collision between the historically dominant interaction paradigm as found in Mac OS X and Windows, and a new gestural paradigm as seen on iPhone. For me, when I’m gesturing to scroll I’m moving the page, not the UI control. iPhone supports that model. The MacBook trackpad doesn’t. The question I have is, how many more of these collisions will appear as Apple continues to build on its gestural UI (and, of course, as other companies add their own twists).

Ignite Waterloo 2 was a mid-week treat

Ignite Waterloo hosted another great evening of talks last night. It was the second local event, but this time it was part of the much larger Global Ignite Week. The Waterloo speakers presented talks on a diverse range of topics, and the large audience was engaged, and engaging, throughout the night. It’s great fun to help organize this event.

Highlights for me included Alex Matan’s accordion workout, Erica Waugh’s directions on how to drive in a roundabout, Jeff Henry’s practical advice on working with politicians, and Sunshine Chen’s storytelling story. My favourite, though, as Brenan Lowler’s talk on Geocaching. It wasn’t so much for the topic, but for his passion and for the aplomb that he showed when confronted with slides that didn’t seem to be displaying all his pictures. He made it into a fun thing and demonstrated that, in the end, a successful talk is about the speaker, not the technology.

Finally, the Lego building competition was also a fine succes, though I missed much of it as I was working the door while the competition was on. At the end of the night, though, while helping to clean up I was able to take the accompanying picture of one of the contest entries after it had been returned to the large bin of Lego pieces. Pretty cool entry!

After the split, what’s next?

Having left Primal Fusion, I’ve been giving some thought to what’s next. At the moment, I’m really in discovery mode — thinking about possibilities, talking to friends and colleagues, and generally trying to keep an open mind. It’s a liberating state to be in, as is the beginning of any new adventure, though it’s obviously not without its moments of uncertainty.

Having said that, I’m still pretty committed to living and working in the Waterloo area. There’s a great technology and startup community here with a lot of thoughtful, engaged, and passionate people who share their knowledge and experience through a variety of activities. And, Waterloo is also a fine place to live — as I’ve written previously, there are many reasons why my family and I enjoy living here.

Which brings me to what feels like quite an odd request.

I’d like to hear from anyone who would like to share any ideas on how I might think about what’s next. Let’s get together for coffee, or talk at a community event, or exchange email or tweets, whatever. I’m always impressed by the depth of knowledge, the wisdom, and the generosity of spirit that I’ve encountered in people in our community, and I want to find out whether its possible to tap into that at this stage in my adventure. It’s not quite crowd-sourcing a next career move; it’s more like seeing what I might learn by opening up the thinking process. For that matter, I’m also happy to share my own thoughts with anyone who has their own career questions and would like to chat.

For context, I hope that it’s clear from my various posts on this blog what my interests, skills, and experiences are (user experience, software products, startups, etc.).

Beyond this blog, I write in much shorter bursts on Twitter as @primalmark; reading my tweets there may or may provide more clarity! Connect with me there, or send me an email. My email address is my first name [at] connollydesign [dot] com.

Primal Fission

It’s been about a year since I started writing this blog. Many of the posts in that time have been about my experience at Primal Fusion. This post is one of those, but it’s a significant one as I’m now no longer with the company. From fusion to fission, so to speak.

Working at Primal Fusion has been a great experience. I was able to work on challenging projects and did so with with smart and devoted people, many of whom are still with the company.

I’d like to extend my thanks to Bob Barlow-Busch, who brought me to Primal Fusion, and to Shane O’Neil, who gave me a team to run. It was wonderful to work with them both. I’d also like to say thanks to my team, working with whom has been a great gift and a privilege for me. I learned something from each of them, and as a team we did great things. I’m proud of what we accomplished and will miss working with them all. If you’re reading this, guys, thanks for everything. Finally, thanks to all the other Primates who have made the Primal Fusion what it is and made my time there so meaningful.

Best of luck to all of you.

March roars in like a lion with Ignite Waterloo 2

Last week’s TEDxWaterloo event will be a hard act to follow, as it was a resounding success enjoyed by all.

Nevertheless, this week sees the second Ignite Waterloo event happening on Wednesday at the Children’s Museum. The first event was held last November and a fine time was had by all. The upcoming second event promises to be every bit as engaging and thought-provoking. I’m looking forward to the talks and the conversations.

Prior to Ignite Waterloo, the March edition of StartupDrinksWaterloo in happening on Tuesday night at McMullan’s in Waterloo. I’ve managed to attend every edition except the inaugural one, and have enjoyed them all.  I’m once again looking forward to the beer and conversations!

TEDxWaterloo knocks it out of the park

Wow! That was amazing!

TEDxWaterloo, on Thursday February 25, was even better than my already high hopes for it had led me to expect. The ambience at the Gig Theatre was great, the speakers were inspiring and the conversations I had were a treat. While the topics and styles for the talks were diverse they all related, even if loosely, to the overall theme of the event, Tomorrow Started Yesterday. While I got something out of each talk, highlights for me included Terry O’Reilly’s musings on friction, Paul Saltzman’s highly personal yet somehow epic reflections on life, Caroline Disler’s dissection of the foundations of what we call Western Civilization, and Madhur Anand’s exploration of the meaning of green.

Conversations were great too. I ended up chatting a fair amount with a student from the university of Waterloo about Bruce Springsteen, of all things. He’s a huge a fan, and said that he had never really met another fan before. I never expected to be weighing the merits of the 1978 Cleveland Agora show at TEDxWaterloo, but that’s the magic of the encounters that the event facilitates!

There were a few glitches, including a late start due to technical problems with getting the streaming video working and a crowded food area during the first break. These, for me, felt minor and in no way diminished the overall experience of the event. My only regret is that I didn’t make it to the after-party.

I left the theatre energized, enthused, and engaged. Congratulations, and thanks, to the folks who put this on. Outstanding!

Finally, I’ll leave Amy Krouse Rosenthal with the last word or, more precisely, the last seven words to wrap up this report:

Make the most of your time here.