February 2010 Archives

Just got out of the theater from watching Avatar again. Love that movie. But a thought did occur to me, maybe there was a missed marketing opportunity here? See, before they showed 3D trailers on the screen, they tell the audience to recycle their 3D glasses after the show, which is a mistake in my opinion. You should treat that object like a special memento instead. They should tell you, "save your glasses for the Blu-Ray 3D Edition in Spring." Or "Keep your 3D glasses for a discount off the video game." Or when the movie was out before Christmas, have Sony sponsor the glasses, so when they plug the Blu-Ray edition, it encourages people to buy PS3s in anticipation of watching movies that were meant to be seen in super high-def.

Instead, the labeling on the glasses says "Real D 3D," which is the biggest waste of precious real estate on the most quickly distributed souvenir ever.

Maybe instead of measuring tasks/projects in man-hours, how about mind-calories? For example, 100 mind-calories is equivalent to 1 hour of work that is of the mental intensity that 60 hours of it in a week would make you too tired to do anything outside of it except casual social and leisure pursuits. i.e. The average American white collar worker uses 4,000 mind-calories toward a job that he or she is okay with, and has 2,000 mind-calories left for errands, commuting, and dealing with other stresses. If he or she tries to use more mind-calories, then he starts to get worn out, agitated, and possibly neurotic.

Right now, I've for example, scheduled myself to do 30 hours of work on iPad development a week. This seems totally manageable on the surface, but it really depends on what I'm doing during those 30 hours. If it's something like programming, which is a 150mc/hr activity, then those 30 hours are actually a 45-hour work-week. That's one end of the spectrum. At the other end, let's say, I'm doing mock-ups in Photoshop, which is something really fun, its more like 50mc/hr. And then if I'm doing QA with my friends, I actually gain energy back, and so that's like -20mc/hr.

I think I prefer these kind of units as opposed to man-hours, at least when making plans for my weekly schedule. Sometimes I take on a task that seems harmless enough, and only requires 1 hour of work, but the stress and agitation involved may actually take out 500 mind-calories.

This idea also explains to me why you see perfectly smart college graduates becoming "starving artists" waiting tables while working on their real craft after hours. It's because waiting tables is a mindless activity, maybe 50mc/hr for most people. I always wondered, "why don't these bright kids get some nice-paying marketing job during the day, then work on their hobby in the evenings and weekends?" But this is why. There's no juice left to be creative.

While the media does a lot of hand-wringing about the lack of privacy in our digital lives, the average consumer is increasingly becoming comfortable with letting go. There's no privacy now, inasmuch as your information isn't fully opaque. It's all a spectrum. The question isn't, "Am I exposed?" but rather, "How convenient is it for someone to snoop?"

Which is why I think it's very important for product managers to take the cross-roads of privacy and usability under a microscope. Don't just do blanket privacy controls and think you're done. Think about the nuances and fine-tune the barriers.

I present three cases where privacy is nullified for convenience. In the first case, it's designed appropriately, but in the other two cases, the design destroys the whole experience.

Take for example browser history. I do not clear my browser history, and because I use Firefox, a guest user of my computer could easily type something in the address bar that could auto-complete to something hilarious. However, the odds of that are low enough that I don't worry about it. Since the privacy shortcomings are outweighed by the convenience of having that feature, I—and probably most users—let it go.

On the other hand Google's Chrome Browser by default can not let you turn off the Frequently Visited Sites home page. Even if you set your home page to blank, any time a user opens a new tab, this alternative home page would show your eight most visited sites. And since users commonly open new tabs, this would shove my private sites in a guest user's face with a high probability. And so I had to ditch Chrome. As much as I loved nearly every other thing about Chrome, that one aspect lost me. It was much more exposure than I could tolerate.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that I wish Google asked you for your password again when searching the Web History feature. Web History remembers all the sites you surf on any computer you have the Google Toolbar installed, and then allows you to search the contents of those pages. This would be so profoundly useful to me. I'd be able to ditch my bookmark managers and I wouldn't be frustrated trying to remember some anecdote I vaguely recall a season or two ago. But having that feature always available is a can of worms. See, I'm always signed onto Google, and I'm not willing to give up the "Remember Me" feature, and so a guest user could just open any of my browsers, click on Web History and go to town. If Google just made it so searches would require a password re-entry, it would save the product for me.

The sad thing is I'm sure this is one of their top requested "features" for Web History. But if the product manager is looking at this as a "feature" then they've already failed. It's only a "feature" request if the present lack-of-it means the product is being used less. When in reality it's a "dealbreaker" because it means its not being used at all. The ideal product manager knows which label is appropriate, and by having zero dealbreakers, brings their products to a viable audience.

Theoretically, there's ways for users to mitigate problems with Web History and Chrome. Hell, if I really wanted to, I could switch to a Guest profile any time I wanted to let someone use the computer. But if that's the best response you can think of, then you're thinking like an engineer. In natural settings, a friend is at my house, I have to answer a phone call, he motions, "Hey, can I use your computer?" For a split second, my mind makes a snap comparison between having to interrupt the phone call to log off my computer, being rude by motioning "No," or taking my chances with letting him use the semi-private computing environment I've become accustomed to.

Very interesting start-up, Receivables Exchange just got another $17M in venture capital. They created a marketplace where investors can bid on your account receivables, helping companies to get capital sooner, rather than later. This seems like the kind of innovation that a downturn breeds, as companies need to get creative in the absence of easy credit. (via scqueen)