What Problem Are We Trying To Solve?

I took part in a discussion this morning (participant, not facilitator) with some telecom folks around what will the residential customer “interface” look like in 10-15 years. What will the devices look like and what services will be offered that are most “value add”? After an hour or so of brainstorming, the two ideas that seemed to get distilled out could be summed up as “Personal Exchange Server.” For those who aren’t familiar with Microsoft Exchange, it’s basically a calendaring/messaging platform that companies use to make it easy to book meetings, share documents etc.

The consensus in the room seemed to be that if there was a service out there that could put together all of your events, free/busy time, coordinate friends’/spouse schedules, professional appointments, etc., this service would be a hit.

While it sounds pretty cool, kind of like Exchange meets Facebook, etc. something in that conversation didn’t smell right to me. That sounded like a bunch of techie professional types getting together and transferring their office desires to the home environment. I don’t think we were able to fully separate ourselves from our boardroom and think like the customer.

However, a couple of things kind of “popped” for me from the conversation:

1) How do we effectively recreate and improve upon the “analogue” comfort zone that people have today, but in a digital way? By analogue, I mean things like sticking stuff to the fridge, having a day-timer with pieces of paper sticking out, a corkboard, rifling through a shoebox full of pictures, etc.

I think that multi-touch technology and surface computing could possibly facilitate the best of both worlds. I could see an internet connected fridge surface that had pictures, notes, important phone numbers etc. That would be cool, assuming it doesn’t already exist. Add in RFID technology that will automatically re-order your groceries, and that’s a smart AND personal fridge.

2) Form factors. The office experience is typically an individual exercise with small amounts of pairs/trios/group work and consequently a laptop form factor works well for this. However, often times the activities in the home better suit themselves to a different form factor. Sharing pictures, accessing recipes in the kitchen, accessing music from a central repository are activites that are clunky with the laptop form factor. The digital/networked home communication interface of the future might have to be fundamentally different from what it is today.

But….the one BIG question that I had leaving that meeting was: “WHAT PROBLEM ARE WE TRYING TO SOLVE?”

Any thoughts, dear readers? What are our personal/home lives missing from a communications perspective? I’m not sure “Exchange in the Home” is it.

Looking at the “ins” & “cons”

When designing large collaborative sessions with complex topics it is almost always the case that there is a big variance between the few people who know a lot about the topic and a few who have little to no context and everyone else falls somewhere in between. Sponsors are generally very anxious to do a lot of “education” around the project so that everyone gets up to speed. Usually this results in a desire to do a 3 hour PowerPoint presentation. This makes me cringe. (I don’t understand how the same people who complain about sitting through 3 hour presentations end up with a desire to present one.) I try to explain that people don’t learn well this way and the information will not stick. 

I started reading a book recently that has really helped me hammer my argument home. Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams by Mitchel Resnick of MIT talks about the difference between instructional learning and constructional learning. He argues that by telling people what you think they need to know, the results are mediocre at best. By having people create something on their own (or with small groups), the concepts are much more likely to stick. It’s a learn-by-doing approach.

With the type of work that I’m in, this concept wasn’t new to me, but the fact that I can now summarize the concept in a framework that clients really seem to get, was a valuable insight for me. I think most people know this as well, but with a lack of a better tool than PowerPoint to use for “education”, it seems to be the default. Suggesting the “instructional/constructional” framework to clients seems to introduce the contrast between socratic methods and constructional methods. They suddenly see “the other side”. By giving the other side a name, it’s easier to convince them of the benefits of giving it a try. Like the old saying goes, “A fish doesn’t understand water until it experiences air.”

I’m curious to know if anyone else has had this type of experience; where you don’t necessarily learn a new concept, but learn a new way to express it that seems to have a lot of resonance. Please comment!

Looking at the “ins” & “cons”

When designing large collaborative sessions with complex topics it is almost always the case that there is a big variance between the few people who know a lot about the topic and a few who have little to no context and everyone else falls somewhere in between. Sponsors are generally very anxious to do a lot of “education” around the project so that everyone gets up to speed. Usually this results in a desire to do a 3 hour PowerPoint presentation. This makes me cringe. (I don’t understand how the same people who complain about sitting through 3 hour presentations end up with a desire to present one.) I try to explain that people don’t learn well this way and the information will not stick. 

I started reading a book recently that has really helped me hammer my argument home. Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams by Mitchel Resnick of MIT talks about the difference between instructional learning and constructional learning. He argues that by telling people what you think they need to know, the results are mediocre at best. By having people create something on their own (or with small groups), the concepts are much more likely to stick. It’s a learn-by-doing approach.

With the type of work that I’m in, this concept wasn’t new to me, but the fact that I can now summarize the concept in a framework that clients really seem to get, was a valuable insight for me. I think most people know this as well, but with a lack of a better tool than PowerPoint to use for “education”, it seems to be the default. Suggesting the “instructional/constructional” framework to clients seems to introduce the contrast between socratic methods and constructional methods. They suddenly see “the other side”. By giving the other side a name, it’s easier to convince them of the benefits of giving it a try. Like the old saying goes, “A fish doesn’t understand water until it experiences air.”

I’m curious to know if anyone else has had this type of experience; where you don’t necessarily learn a new concept, but learn a new way to express it that seems to have a lot of resonance. Please comment!

Metronauts Event #1

After much planning, discussion, speculating and sweating, the first face to face Metronauts event took place on Saturday at MaRS. In case you weren’t there, you can absorb all of the fascinating content on the wiki page. Based on the spirit of BarCamp, or the Open Space Technology model, Metronauts is an offline/online community that is committed to using the spirit of the community powered unconference to help inform and shape the Regional Transportation Plan that Metrolinx is responsible for producing.

Check out some pictures from the event.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the idea of Open Space, it’s a cool methodology that simply introduces a question or broad statement to a group of passionate people, and people can volunteer to lead a 1 hour discussion on a topic of their choosing, so each 1 hour time period has a bunch of conversations occurring in parallel. And that’s how the agenda gets set. 

One thing that I found of interest during the planning process with Metrolinx is how they referred to a typical public consultation event as a “formal” consultation and the events that we were proposing as “informal”. However as the day unfolded, I noticed that the jargon seemed to be making a switch to “traditional” vs. “non-traditional”. I like this switch because I personally feel that “informal” seems to connote “less important”, whereas “non-traditional” seems to imply “different” as opposed to better or worse. Hopefully this perceived shift is true, pervasive and sustained.

My hope is that after the community begins to really take off in an online and offline way that there will be additional richness and perspectives offered to the policy makers and planners within Metrolinx and the Regional Transportation Plan will reflect the conversations in some way. Rob MacIsaac, Chair of Metrolinx, made it pretty clear that they won’t be able to integrate every single recommendation.  And of course they can’t. I think the challenge that Metrolinx has is listening to all of the conversations that are occurring and being able to recognize high level themes and trends and being able to shape their plan accordingly.

It seems to have potential for a classic “Wisdom of Crowds” scenario where nobody in the community has the one right answer, but if Metrolinx can pull of the wisdom together and come up with something that is greater than the sum of the conversations, they will have done their job as a (arms length) government agency. (Take a look at “The Scorpion” example in James Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds“.)

All in all, the effort to engage the citizenry in a “solutions” environment rather than an adversarial dynamic is an important shift in how government engages with people.  Here’s hoping today’s “non-traditional” is tomorrow’s tradition.

Brought the bike out

I am not a hardcore cyclist. I don’t ride much in the winter, so I brought the commuter bike out for the first time this spring and couldn’t help but notice the bad potholes on Gladstone Shanly Salem Bloor Rusholme Ossington Harbord Bay James St.

Damn.

Regional Transportation Plan – Muy Importante!

An article in the Toronto Star published today (April 2) suggests that Toronto’s younger commuters are relying less and less on the automobile to commute. A third take transit, 10% walk and 1.5% take a bike. Only 1.5% take a bike? That’s the best way to commute! Cheap, efficient, fast. Way better than walking. And with a bit of trial (and hopefully no error) it’s possible to find quiet routes that lessen your chance of getting drilled by a moving vehicle or a “door prize”. I would think that you’d have to live pretty close to work to walk on a regular basis.

Anyway, the census shows that as people age they are more likely to rely on the car. This is probably due to people getting overweight and creaky as they age as well as the increased  likelihood that they’re living in the suburbs and need a car to get to work. So that’s a snapshot of right now, but what’s the trend?

If the trend is towards the 25-34 year olds staying in the city and raising a family in the city, hopefully the 66% of 25-34 year olds who currently commute will decrease even as kids enter the picture. Living downtown, I often see people cycling around with kiddie trailers.

If the 25-34 year olds still migrate to the ‘burbs, they’ll either have to get a car OR they’ll be relying on public transit because that’s all they’ve known in their working lives. And so this has been my long, circuitous route to saying: JOIN THE METRONAUTS COMMUNITY! There’s a good trend of young people giving up automobiles, but if there isn’t a good regional/provincial infrastructure to support their choices, they’ll be forced into the automobile. That’s not a good thing.

So get involved in the conversation about Metrolinx’s plan, read the green papers, attend a Metronauts event. And tell people about it.