Ship and fail … often

As I wrote in my post Insulate Yourself  I want to explain a little bit more some of the items in the Invent More post, quoting Seth Godin.

Today we talk about feedback. Yes feedback.

Someone once told me

“communication is what the listener does”

meaning that when you communicate, it’s not THEM that are not able to understand you. Sorry: it’s you that are not able to communicate properly in that context with that person. Or at least the only thing that you can do to have a better communication is changing how YOU communicate and not the brain of the receiver

The same concept can be applied to what you do, your task, your activity.

The two senteces that I’ve selceted from Seth’s post are:

Ship & Fail often

Today we talk about feedback. Yes feedback .. the only stuff that’s able to tell you if  what you do, think, act is … what you do, think, act. Because I’ve to tell you that the real reality is what others (+ you) see on your behaviors, is what they do with what you ship, is what they get.

Shipping and looking at the result (usually failures) is the only way you can get feedback. This is useful with yourself because you can see and feel progress (so stimulating feedback for you). This is useful for your ‘job’ because you can learn from what you have done (feedback = learning).

The “often” is also very important: failing often means you ship often. Ship often  means that you ship continuously a small set of stuff.  Small set = possibility to continuously check your path … as you do with the steering wheel while driving: continuous small correction (failures) to get a great final result And small set = small possibility of making big mistakes.

I’d love to get your feedback about this topic!

PierG

p.s. This is true for your personal day-by-day activities … we are not (only) talking about software or work

Sweet memories

Sweet memories of Passo Sella between Val Gardena and Val di Fassa

PierG

Expose yourself to what you don’t understand

As I wrote in my post Insulate Yourself  I want to explain a little bit more the item in the Invent More post, quoting Seth Godin.

Today we talk about: “Expose yourself to art you don’t yet understand”.
The two key factors in this sentence are ‘art’ and ‘understand’.

‘Art’ has to deal with the right side of the brain. Our culture is based on making us exploit the left part of our brain: the analytic side, the one who deals with language, with tasks, with checklists, with homework, with tests, … For some of us it’s an easy trip (the left-brained ones), for some it’s tougher (the right-brained).

To have a better balance we should start exploiting more the right side of our brain: the more visual side, the more intuitive and holistic one.

Also the ‘understand’ side int he sentence has a similar meaning:

• we are usually frightened by what we don’t know. Fear of change comes from here. That’s why you better face the unknown;
• it’s not guaranteed that you can solve problems using the same info, patterns, context that generate them. That’s why you better face the unknown.

So this simple action “expose yourself to art you don’t yet understand” to me is a small step that can make you start the process of exploring  alternatives with the final goal to enrich you, your family, your life.

Happy hunting,

PierG

Insulate yourself

Insulate yourself from anonymous angry people

That’s the first item in the list of reccomendation that I wrote in the Invent More post, quoting Seth Godin.

Talking with friends I understood that this list is  not completely clear, so I’ll try to explain a little bit starting from: “Insulate yourself from anonymous angry people”.

We tend to act in a way to comply with what others expect from us. That’s natural and that’s why context is so important: to be in harmony with an existing context we modify our behaviour.

To be better, to be happier, we need to get in touch with, to by surrounded by people that can give us motivation, focus, energy or whatever ‘better’ or ‘happy’ means to you. And we need a context of people that are meaningful for us and our lives.

As who’s around us has an influence on our behavior, let’s start physically insulating ourselves from anonymous angry people!

PierG

 

Getting Things Done

No way, I have to finish this year of blogging quoting again Seth Godin.

My last quote for this year is The reason productivity improvements don’t work:

Until you quiet the resistance and commit to actually shipping things that matter, all the productivity tips in the world aren’t going to make a real difference. And, it turns out, once you do make the commitment, the productivity tips aren’t that needed.

You don’t need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment.

Have a great 2012!

PierG

On UX and race car engines

Courtesy of me'nthedogs, Some Rights Reserved

You know, engines for race cars are very important: they give you power and speed to win races.

But have you ever driven a car on ice? No matter how soft on the pedal you are, it seems that all that power causes a lot of troubles … so you end up spinning around

That’s the same concept for race cars: if you have the most powerful engine but it is un-drivable you end up losing races maybe not being able to accelerate out of corners due to the high amount of wheelspin.

I think you have a similar effect with user interfaces of our applications: you may have the most powerful software to solve a specific problem but if your user experience sucks … your app sucks and sorry but you are going to lose: as easy as that.

PierG

The year of loosing

Courtesy of Lauri Väin, Some Rights Reserved

This year I’ve lost many things: some gave good consequences, some not.

I’ve lost 13kgs and this is good: I’m now in a better shape and my cholesterol is better!

Unfortunately I’ve lost some valuable colleagues: Andrea, Ilias, Sauro, Chris, Marco … and this is not good at all especially because for some of them I should have done more.

I’ve lost a championship and some self-confidence.

I’ve lost a (small J ) part of what prevents me to do what I like without destroying my sense of duty.

I’ve lost my son’s Christmas party at school for an Organizational Network Analysis and I feel guilty.

So .. god things and bad things.

Let next year be the year of gaining!

PierG

Invent more!

Nice post from Seth Godin author of some books like Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Or Poke the box called Isolate yourself.

I paste here the post …

Insulate yourself from anonymous angry people
Expose yourself to art you don’t yet understand
Precisely measure the results that are important to you
Stay blind to the metrics that don’t matter
Fail often
Ship
Lead, don’t manage so much
Seek out uncomfortable situations
Make an impact on the people who matter to you
Be better at your baseline skills than anyone else
Copyedit less, invent more
Give more speeches
Ignore unsolicited advice

… and my personal translation in Italian.

Isolati dalle persone inutili che sono sempre incavolate
Esponiti all’arte che non capisci e non conosci
Misura in modo preciso solo i risultati che sono importanti per TE
Ignora le metriche che non ti interessano
Fallisci spesso
Rilascia, consegna qualcosa
Ispira, non gestire troppo
Fai la differenza per le persone a cui tieni
Sii il migliore di tutti nelle tue competenze fondamentali
Pensa meno ai dettagli, crea più cose nuove
Parla di più davanti ad un pubblico
Ignora i consigli non richiesti

Inspiring?
PierG

Usability Testing

Interesting demo / short training today of a usability test lab.

There was a camera behind me …

.. an eye tracking system looking at my eyes …

.. an app recording what I was doing with the software and something registering if I have a brain J.

Interesting experience (and yes, I have a brain )

PierG

New Google App for iPad

I’m really impressed by the new UI of the Google App for iPad: polished, essential, nice …
Here are some screenshots:

PierG