Bad Design

Things are designed for their beauty, their cost, their useability and sometimes just for fun.  It is surprising how often we come across things that seem badly designed given the possibility for greatness in design.

At my work we have all struggled to use our very beautiful entry doors.  They are polished and shiny with hidden hinges.  They are completely symetrical, so that from either side of the door, the door appears the same.  So we are all pushing and pulling when we should be pulling and pushing.  I expect some designer won an award for the doors, but it wouldn't be a useability award.  Here they are:



My co-worker tackled the challenging doors with an office labeler and some discretely placed hints that have so far not been disturbed by the interior design police.



Sometimes the ingenious methods people come up with to deal with bad design are as enjoyable as good design would be.  How many cents did it take to solve the design problem. 5?

In this next photo, can you spot the problem with the card swipe instructions here:



Thats right, the diagram adjacent to the cardswipe indicates that the magnetic strip needs to be on the left...  BUT in the digital image on the right, the orange screen clearly displays the magnetic strip on the right.   Left? or Right?  Well I assumed the hardware was more closely tied to the diagram attached to it and believed the diagram.  "wrong!"  It was the digital image on the orange screen that got it right.

Now how many thousands of dollars go into deploying something like a gas pump, and how many people reviewed the design etc. before it got to me the customer.  (And how many thousands of people a year have to re-swipe their card because of this bad design?)

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did, I'll post more as I find them, so be sure to check back.

Cheers,
Greg.

Observations on Mexican Transportation

For those of you who know my passions, you will recognize the sparkle in my eyes since traffic is the topic.

I couldn't believe my eyes as we left the Cancun International Airport.  A divided highway with overhead lights on the median.  Not only in the city , but in the country stretching for many kilometers.  The highway was well marked, well signed, well maintained and in most ways as safe as any other north American Highway.

 

[caption id="attachment_503" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Good Highway in Mexico South of Cancun"][/caption]

 

Illuminated LEDs embedded in the roadway guided vehicles to merge.  it was impressive even if this tourist highway was not typical of highways elsewhere in mexico.

This highway was a "1/2 freeway" not Interstate standards, but pretty close.

The highway was limited access, had some at grade crossings as well as overpasses.  Also seperating it from freeway standard was the provision of the uturn "retournos" where traffic could exit the fast lane, turn around and enter the opposite fast lane.  The roadways in mexico often use metal speedbumps embeeded at different interfals where traffic is expected to stop for a police check or an at grade intersection.

 

[caption id="attachment_505" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mexican Police checkpoint"][/caption]

 

I noticed other modes of transportations in cities.  Playa del Carmen had more scooters than I'm used to.  and more bicycles.  Playa had dedicated bidirectional bicycle lanes seperated from traffic by a curb.  Practical tricycles pedalled by union tricyclests carry many local deliveries.  

Taxis (Playa is a tourist area) are plentiful as well as busses and collectivos.  The taxis were similar to anywhere else except for the reputation that Mexican taxi drivers have for being daring.  Taxis are not metered there, so negotiate your price before you get it and pay when you get there. 

The busses are like the greyhound or charger coaches seen in Canada and USA.  Plush seats, airconditioning, TVs, curtains (some seatbelts).  Taking a 20 minute ride between towns cost only $1.80 which is a bargain considering a similar trip would cost $5-15 in Canada.  It seems that those busses run very regularly.  Hourly or every 15 minutes.  In Canada you are lucky to get 1/2 a dozen busses in a day.  So as a Canadian I can't help feel like we are being ripped off here.  A poorer country like Mexico can make nice regular cheap bus service an option? (Maybe everybody owning a car up here has made that a difficult challenge for the operators here?) I wonder what I'm missing here?

Mexico has something special I haven't seen elsewhere in North america.  Collectivos are 15 passenger vans that operate somewhere between bus and taxi.  Heading down the freeway they will pick up people who need a lift as long as there is room left.  When full, the collectivo will travel at alarming speeds to get you to your destination and it becomes more like a taxi at that point, leaving main roads to drop you at your destination.

 

[caption id="attachment_504" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Collectivo"][/caption]

 

Those are the neat observations I made about Mexican transportation.  Thanks for listening, I'm glad I could share some of the things that impressed and surprised me.

Peace
Greg.

We need to Plan and Build Roads Better

I love the freeway.  I get on it, I drive as far as I want and I get off.  It isn't like some of the other roads we have around here.  You know the ones where you stop every block or two because there is a single car pulling out of some mini-mall.  In fact there are some pretty hillarious roads around here.  One of them is the "Langley Bypass".  Historically most of the vehicle traffic going through Langley travelled on Fraser Highway, which was 1 lane in each direction with businesses down both sides of the street (the typical downtown for a small town).  People on Fraser Highway were stopping at stored, looking for parking, backing out of parking spots and basically making this road a very poor choice for anything other than shopping.  A plan was designed to bypass langley (appropriate name).  As a provincial highway it connected Fraser Highway to itself, bypassing the city as well as connecting to glover road 200th street, the route to the ferries.  With 2 lanes in either direction, it moved traffic quite well.   At first.  Then the township decided to allow zoning all along the bypass for shopping.  3 starbucks, countless restaurants, RV dealerships, audio video stores, and of course we will need some traffic lights to let the shoppers in and out.  So rather than this area being a "bypass" to allow through traffic to flow efficiently, it became a traffic magnet attracting more vehicles, and disrupting the flow of the traffic.

What happened?  The planners forgot what they were doing.  They forgot the purpose of the road.  To "bypass" Langley.

Often there will be a visionary who will present a great idea like a "bypass road" if it remains true to its vision it works well. BUT somebody always wants to make plans work for their own interests.  The land owners won't make as much money selling farmland as they would selling land with potential for "retail development"... so they lobby government to change the zoning.  If the city / municipality doesn't have a zoning plan (or doesn't stick to the plan) "good luck".  If we could stay "on vision" we would have roads that performed their designed function well, instead of doing a mediocre job of many contradictory functions. 

Freeways work so very well because they are "limited access" (You can only get on or off at certain points), because they have no "at level" intersections (meaning the traffic can carry on at speed despite the presence of other roads crossing), and they are built to a very consistent standard (meaning the road is predictable in signage and design).   Can you imagine if Freeways started having pedestrian crosswalks installed? or if a business was forced to have their driveway onto the freeway?  It's the wrong road for those purposes.

We need to classify our roads, and we need to build them to meet their function, and protect them from those who would dilute their function.

From my limited experience I'm familiear with the following types of roads;

• Residential


• Collectors


• Non-Commercial Arterial


• Commercial Arterial


• Limited Access


• Highways


• Service

You look for a Residential street when you are ready to buy your first house and you are ready to settle down and have children, you want to avoid a "busy street".  You are essentially choosing to avoid living on a "collector" or "arterial" road.  A road fit for the purpose of living on.

Collector roads have more traffic and bring folks in from residential areas to the higher speed roads that actually go someplace.

Non-commercial Arterial roads are urban roads that act as the main routes for carrying traffic through a city.  Their focus is on the efficient flow of traffic through a city.  If you want to go somewhere quickly get on a non-commercial arterial road.

Commercial arterial roads provide easy access to businesses, with mini malls, mom and pop shops, big box stores and any number of opportunities to stop your car and spend your money.  The flow of traffic is less efficient because of the abundant access to businesses.  If you want to buy something get on a commercial arterial road. 

Limited access roads  such as free-ways, seriously limit where traffic can get on or off, which makes for very efficient travel on these roads.  This is why the freeway moves so well, there is little turbulence from new traffic entering, and in this case, no interference to the flow of traffic caused by traffic lights.  I remember a number of years ago, the embarassment that was expressed in North Vancouver, that they had the only traffic light on the transcanada highway. (It isn't true, there are traffic lights along the highway in towns like Golden BC or Revelstoke BC, but perhaps North Van was the last in a developed urban area.

Highways allow for travelling further, without significant business or residential access, but they often do allow more access to collector roads. 

Service roads provide a unique function with highways.  Where highways come into town (like in Rocky Mountain House AB) "service roads" are employed to provide access to businesses such that the function of the highway isn't impaired by the business access.  Its a smart idea.

Understanding why Business Frontage is only of benefit sometimes

When a motorist wants to get from point A to point B in a timely manner, Business frontage or access on the streets the motorist drives on, has no advantage for the motorist or the business owner.  For the business owner, he is NOT a potential customer.  For the motorist, the buesiness access just slows things down by congesting traffic and introducing more traffic lights where he needs to wait on his trip.  So a word of wisdom to the cities and municipalities that consider introducing commercial development on non-commercial arterial roads. Don't. The old fashioned idea that business frontage is good for property value and taxes does not hold on these roads.  It is a compromise of the road's primary purpose which is to move traffic efficiently.  That thinking only holds when you are considering a commercial arterial road.  In Abbotsford, there is an commercial arterial road called "South Fraser Way" which has shopping malls and auto centres, and strip malls, and car dealerships, and it is a place where people go to buy things.  Maclure is a non-commercial arterial road in Abbotsford which stretches almost the entire length of the city, with almost no commercial at all.  It is limited access (every 1/2 mile or so, rather than every block) and it is 2 lanes with a median.  It is the most efficient road in Abbotsford for travelling across town and a testament to the prior city leaders who had the vision for a road with no drive-ways.

The different types of roads above look different.  residential and collector are likely to have sidewalks, arterial might, but limited access, highways and service are unlikely to have sidewalks.  Speed limits are different too.  A commercial arterial road should have lower speed limits than a non-commercial arterial road that is limited access.

I see anomolies.  Perhaps someone is working on our behalf to keep things simple, but in our cities, a standard speed limit of 50 Km/h applies unless it is otherwise posted.  South Fraser way is a major 2-3 laned commercial road with a speed limit of 50, and my small dead end residential road full of young families with children has no posted limit meaning that it's limit is also 50. This does not make sense.  Perhaps there should be a sliding scale based on road classification;

• Residential 40 KM/H


• Collector 50  KM/H


• Non-Commercial Arterial 60  KM/H


• Limited Access 70-100  KM/H

Now I'll introduce you to a radical idea of which I am quite an advocate... Ready?   Roads are for driving on.  They exist only to move people from place to place.  They are not for parking or any other purpose.  They are to provide space for people to move from one location to the next.  With the context of this truly revolutionary idea the next points will fall into line.

The idea of allowing car parking on roads is silly.  Regardless of what has happened in the past, why do we need to build roads 4 lanes wide just because somebody decided to leave their car "out" on the street?  We see car parking on some commercial. arterial and collector roads as well as  residential. The idea that people view this as a right rather than a privilege, that people don’t consider whether they have space to park a car before they buy one is bizarre.  Since the roads are built with your tax dollars, and you are forced to go work to earn that money I think this should be a point that is dear to you. In progressive countries like Japan, you need to prove that you have room to park your vehicle before you are allowed to purchase one. (Smart)

In Canada we have very wide lanes.  Our lanes are much wider than our vehicles.  Most vehicles will have an extra 1-2 meters of space beside them in their lane.  Its hard to estimate exact distances while driving on the freeway, and no I'm not walking out there with a tape measure.  We also (at least in the lower mainland of BC) have this annoying habit of making roads wide enough for 2 lanes and then not putting lane markings on them. So where you could safely have people passing each other allowing for a smoother flow of traffic, you have this ambiguity.

Or there might be times where you want to restrict people from passing to make a safer stretch of road, or where you could have a bike lane that is then swept clean where bikes would be safe to travel with less interference from cars. Often there is just a single lane and then there are 2 lanes, with no sign or warning. the dotted lines come out of nowhere, making the road and the traffic on the road unpredictable and therefore less safe. Plus if you need to increase the capacity of a road, a can of paint is a pretty cheap way to improve your road’s carrying capacity.

So this post feels like a plane circling in the air looking for a place to land, and I think it will have to be a work in progress.  It holds some examples of the need for design, but isn't really a comprehensive treatment... yet.  

Share your ideas in the comments below.

Greg.

 

 

10 Strategies for choosing a Secure Password You Can Remember

Having seen my fair share of "bad passwords" and understanding that for many IT departments password resets can account for 20-30% of all calls, it seems there is the need for a post on this topic that might help people choose good passwords they can remember.  

 

[caption id="attachment_449" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="(flickr credit: ferran.pons)"][/caption]

There are two very different perspectives

From the IT side of things, generally the focus seems to be  on security, so this results in policies that;

• make users change their password every 30-60 days


• require more complex combinations of; UPPERCASE letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.


• lock out your account if you get your password wrong a few times in a row (ever left caps lock on?) 

On the user side of things, generally the focus is on the utility of being able to log in so that you can get your work done.  This focus leads towards;

• Folks who have forgotten their passwords using others' accounts so they can get their work done.


• Passwords on post-it notes by their monitors


• Users re-using passwords between systems to reduce the number of passwords they need to remember


• People picking "easy" passwords to help remember them.

So it is easy to see how either side could view the other with disbelief.  The IT group shaking their head at people choosing poor passwords and showing disregard for security.  The users shaking their head at an IT group that appears to care more about complicating passwords than helping them perform their daily tasks.  It doesn't have to be contentious, there is hope.  More and more, users are becoming educated about the importance of good security practices, and security professionals are realizing that the best security is the kind that works for users rather than against them.

What makes a password good?

Put simply, anything you can do to make your password difficult to figure out is good.  So if your password is really long, and composed of many types of characters, it becomes very difficult to "guess".  If your password is short, a real word found in the dictionary, or something an attacker would know about you, then you make it easier for someone to guess your password.  But having a "good" password is only part of the challenge.  The best password in the world does you little good if you can't remember it.  Locking out all the would-be hackers is only part of the equation, making sure the account is accessible by the right person is the other.

[caption id="attachment_448" align="aligncenter" width="208" caption="(flickr credit: guspim)"][/caption]

10 Strategies for choosing a secure password you can remember

So here are some strategies for picking a strong memorable password.  Read through them all, and pick 1 or 2 that will work for you.

1. Plan ahead

Have a strategy for picking passwords that you can use across many systems.  That way when you go to a new system that asks you to pick a password, you can appyly your strategy rather than having to wrack your brain for a new password.

2. Take your time

Taking 60 seconds to think about a great password you will remember, rather than typing the first thing that pops into your brain will pay dividends.  Apply your strategy pick something you will be happy with.

The next 3 get you to try not thinking in terms of a pass-word.

3. Think in terms of a pass-phrase.  

It could be a line from a song, a poem, a story, anything, but of course you will modify it by adding punctuation, truncating the sentence or swapping in a word you like better like;

• "The dish ran away with the poon"  


• "I'm dreaming of a white Xmas"


• "AllIwantforChristmasismy2frontteeth!"  


• "Thyme4Golf!"


• "4getaboutit!"


• "NowwhatwasmypasswordCharlie?"

4. Think in terms of a pattern.  

A very popular pattern is to apply a prefix, a root, and a suffix to your passwords.  here is my version of "the pattern" 

• The prefix modifies the root, so you might want to relate it to what it is your are logging into.  If you logged into a system for email, you might use "email" or "Email" or "e-mail" or "E-mail" as a prefix.  


• A good choice for the root is a non-dictionary / non-name word like "selebrait (yes exactly, it isn't in a dictionary)


• The suffix is something you add to your pattern to add the required "non-letter" characters so that your password is "complex" enough.  Lets choose "$4".


• For email your password might be "emailselebrait$4";  for AOL it might be "aolselebrait$4", for gmail it might be "gmailselebrait$4" etc...

5. Think in terms of a simple puzzle.  

Where am I, who am I, what kind of login is this could yield unique results. for every login while requiring only a little bit of mental gymnastics.  For a gmail login it might be "gmailGregWebmail"

6. Anticipate being asked to change your password.

So if you have picked out a fabulously strong password that you can remember well, don't let the "prompt to change your password" cause you stress, build a "counter" into your password which you can simply increment.  It might look like;

• "Sallysellsseashells!1", "Sallysellsseashells!2", "Sallysellsseashells!3"

which is a reasonably complex password you could remember and which would allow you to "survive" the password change without having to think of a new password.  Note, lots of password systems won't let you simply tack on a number (too easy).  So I recommend you resort to one of two ninja password moves I've come to appreciate.  The first is to us a numeric increment, but not on the end;

• "Sallysells1seashells!", "Sallysells2seashells!", "Sallysells3seashells!" 

Or you could use something other than number to increment.  If you held down "SHIFT" while pressing the numbers 1-9 you would see "!@#$%^&*(",  so using our Sally example again it might look like this;

• "Sallysellsseashells!!", "Sallysellsseashells!@", "Sallysellsseashells!#" 

Or you could substitute letters for numbers along the lines of A=1 B=2 OR Q=1 W=2 E=3 (look at your keyboard to understand why I'm choosing those letters. 

7. Use your muscle memory.  

What do the following 4 passwords have in common?

• ajskdlf;


• quwieorp


• zmx,c.v/


• 17283940

OK, that last one should have given it away.  The fingers type the same sequence in a different row of the keyboard.  by mixing up the rows and columns on your keyboard you could easily come up with dozens of "muscle memory passwords" that feel the same to your fingers but would leave a potential hacker scratchign his head.  NOTE: Left to right rows of keys like "qwerty" and "asdfg" are REALLY bad passwords.

8. Test your password strength.

Not sure if you picked something strong enough?  You could always try typing it into the Microsoft password checker; http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx  Don't worry, if you are a bit paranoid like me you won't like the idea of typing your password into a webpage.  Microsoft assures you; The password is checked and validated on your computer, but is not sent over the Internet.

9. (Guys only) Write all your passwords down on paper in your wallet.

We are talking about the wallet that never leaves your front pocket.  If you lose your wallet, treat your passwords like your credit cards and get them all changed.  (Ladies, nothing personal here but the purse left slung over a chair in your office is nowhere near as safe as the wallet located in a guys pocket.)  Guys, if you don't trust the people living in your house this might be a poor choice.

10. Use password safe software

Password safe software can hold all of your passwords.  These tools use a master password to encrypt all of your passwords.  If it fell into the wrong hands it is useless to the bad guys, but in your hands, it can help you not only remember passwords, but also usernames, URLs for logging in and other details you record with the entry in a searchable "password database".  I recommend KeePass which I've discussed previously.

Hopefully these 10 strategies for choosing a secure password you can remember will lower your password stress, raise the strength of your passwords, and save you some time chatting with the nice guys at your company's IT support desk.

Cheers,

Greg.

Crying Wolf in Traffic

When we cry wolf in traffic, we desensitize drivers to real dangers and real warnings and reduce the overall safety of traffic.

Growing up I was told a fable about a bored little shepherd boy who "cried wolf" to amuse himself.  The townsfolk responded quickly, coming to the boys aid only to learn there was no wolf.  Several times he played this game and each time the townsfolk rushed to the field to defend boy and sheep.  At last a time came when there was a wolf, but no willing townsfolk to answer the boy's cries.  For the little boy who cried wolf, was the threat real? not at first.   There was no wolf, until he had consumed the good will of the townsfolk.

Crying Wolf in construction zones

We see the same principle of crying wolf applied in traffic warning signs located at construction zones.  Now I'll start by stating that being cautious around construction workers and  construction zones is important.  Where it gets silly is when the warnings stop protecting workers and instead start desensitizing people and effectively teaching them that the signs don't mean what they say.

[caption id="attachment_354" align="aligncenter" width="240" caption="Construction Zone Warning Fines Double"][/caption]

 At 3 AM in the middle of the night on the weekend when there are no construction workers around, the construction speed zone sign applies just as much as it does in the middle of the weekday when workers are just feet away from the roadway.  So when there is no obstacle or risk to workers, the signage causes motorists who would normally drive 110 KM/H must slow to 80 KM/H although the road may be clear, safe and intact.  Do you think the public can continue to take the warning signs seriously?  I suggest to you that we are not doing these workers the justice of making the construction zone safer during work hours because we wear on the patience of motorists with unreasonable demands. One such work zone is on the Transcanada highway near Abbotsford which has been in place for about a year, while a freeway improvement was being made.  A year of reduced speeds?  (where full speed still seems safe)  It is silly to stretch our warnings to cover too much time.

We also do a disservice to these workers by exagerating the area where speed must be reduced. Often in BC, 1-2 KM before the construction zone, there are signs telling drivers to drop their speed by 30 KM (20 below the limit since the limits in BC seem to be arbitrarily about 10KM/h too low and most drivers compensate.)  So you drive for 2 KM at that speed limit until the “real” construction zone begins.  As you drive slower, everybody is piled up on your bumpers because nobody else is willing to obey the ridiculous speed reduction.   If I drive at the reduced speed, before, during and after the construction, I impede the flow of the other drivers who (reasonably) are not slowing.  Likely I'm contributing to an increase in their frustration and that makes the roadway less safe, not more safe. Most drivers know that the sign isn't to be taken seriously, even though there is an accompanying sign saying that "traffic fines double in a work zone", and another flashing sign warning that "speed limits are strictly enforced" (which they aren't) It is another lying sign. I know they are not enforced, it is another rule with no teeth. The police are never there when I go by, pulling over the entire freeway to give it a ticket. STOP LYING!

So too many of these warnings exagerate the danger in area and time. A reasonable person looks at these warnings and they disregard them  as silly.  I’ve watched ambulance drivers, truck-drivers, Police officers and normal commuters all ignore the “STRICTLY ENFORCED CONSTRUCTION SPEED ZONE” and drive 110 KM/H through the 80 KM/H.  In fact the other day there was a whole freeway of us driving at 110KM/h in an 80 zone, nobody flinching or looking guilty, nobody checking nervously for police officers. These freeway commuters have been completely desensitized to the speed limit signs and just don’t believe them anymore because the signs are not reasonble.  I imagine that they must be set by some beaureucrat who has never seen how wide and straight and flat this highway is, or how little construction there really is out here, who is out of touch with reality. One of the signs I saw today was a bright orange diamond shaped construction sign, saying “warning no lane markings!”. I drove past that sign on a road that bore, probably the finest lane markings I’ve ever seen, crisp and clear and bright, not confusing in the least. I drove for kilometer after kilometer after kilometer over these new lane markings. It doesn’t make sense that thousands of dollars would be spent on painting the markings on the lanes, only to leave up the warning signs.  The irrelevant sign clearly needed to come down the night the lane markings were painted. Construction signs in particular tend to be irrelevant in this area. “Sign Management” does that have to become part of the project manager’s job? Is it already? It doesn’t make sense to start saying something unless we know when to stop.  It doesn't make sense to overstate the danger.  Just looking at how people drive indicates how ineffective the signs are. (and should be if they are unreasonable).

Crying wolf in school zones
Here is another example. All summer long I see school zone signs warning motorists to slow to 30 KM/H. but I know that school zones are only in effect on school days, but school days are not during the summer unless “summer school” is in session. But how would a member of the public who did not have a child in summer school know which schools had a summer school running and which didn’t? A law abiding citizen who wants to stay on the right side of the law would have to drive 30 KM/H through every school zone year round just in case a summer school was in session. The same problem extends for the rest of the school year when there are professional development days when the students are not in school. The average commuter has no way of knowing that this is a day when the school zones are not in effect, whereas the 16 year old driver who gets the day off would know this and would drive 50KM/H through the school zone. This is a case of special knowledge.  Not enough information is available for the driver to make an appropriate decision. The people have to obey a warning, that really doesn’t apply, they have to drive 30 KM/H just in case the school zone is in effect. How simple it would be to make the principal of the school (who could certainly delegate this) responsible for covering the signs on days when no school is in session. Issue the principal some heavy burlap sacks with zippers he could use, or make the sign hinged, so it could be locked open or closed.

Another traffic oddity I’ve seen in school zones is those “extra” bright yellow little plastic bag signs handed out by the auto insurance companies, which are posted in school zones as children head back to school. Saying “Drive Carefully” “School Zone”. The problem is not with handing these out or setting them up when school is back in session in September, those are great ideas, the problem comes when they get left up all year long and they mean nothing, or even worse, when the school principal and all the teachers have grown so incredibly numb to these signs, that when the school breaks for summer holidays and there are no children at the school, they continue to leave the signs up throughout the summer, only to replace them with new signs when the students actually return to school in the fall.  (You can't make this stuff up!)

Crying wolf at the local Thrift store.

Now not related to traffic I saw something similar the other day in a Christian thrift shop here in Abbotsford. There was a sign there warning about the security camera that was recording people and that shoplifters would be prosecuted.  As I looked around at the $0.30 teacups and other discarded items that had been donated. I thought this was ridiculous, who would prosecute anyone for stealing such low value items? Then I looked carefully at the camera, and sure enough it was one of those fake cameras you can purchase at a novelty store with some silly name l ike “view all” or “sky eye” or something. Cheaply composed from plastic. The sign was an attempt to scare people to do the right thing. There was no means of enforcing it, and it was a Lie! “DON’T STEAL OR WE WILL VIDEO TAPE YOU”, well you aren’t going to video tape me, so don’t make that threat.  How about you just say “Don’t steal”. In the case of a Christian thrift shop perhaps the sign should have read; “If you need something just take it” since that would fit more with Christian charity and giving to someone who is in need.

We need to be asking ourselves these questions; "Is the warning reasonable?", "Is the threat real?".

Conclusion

When I ask you to do something for me and you do it because you honestly believe you are helping me, I’m relying on your good will to meet a need. Now if I keep asking you and you keep helping me because you believe it is benefiting me, this is good, we have a healthy relationship and there is trust. Now if you find out that I’m asking you to do something I don’t really need, but I’m just amused by watching you serve me, or I’m too lazy to stop you when I don’t really need your help, then you will get tired of helping me, and rightly so. This is what is taking place on the freeway. The whole “enforcement side of things” would not be necessary at all if we could ensure that we are not abusing the good will of people.

Thanks for reading, maybe you will find yourself in a position to offer an unreasonable heavy handed warning and you can instead offer something more reasonable.  Maybe you put up construction signs.  The point is that you can make changes to improve the world we live in.  This is about improving things for all of us, because we’re all in this together.

Thanks,
Greg. 

Quality through continual refinement

In improving Quality, continual improvement through the practice of incremental refinement is a powerful approach.

For example, as I drive home I have a route that works quite well. It is the most direct path between two points or the fastest path between two points. As I go along I start to notice things. Hey, people are turning off here, I wonder why or hey, Google disagrees with me and thinks it knows it better route. (Google maps that is, Google doesn’t talk to me yet…) Or hey, I wonder where that road goes it comes out at an intersection and looks busier than the road I took previously. Through experience we don’t become experts at driving down new roads but we become experts driving down the roads that we know. So with each opportunity to observe a contrary point of view each opportunity to experience the effect of plans. We are in a position to improve and to do better.

I believe in continual refinement. Let’s draft a document, present it to some other knowledgeable people and have them critique it. Then lets present it to our customers and have them shoot it full of holes. After each critique and review, we see problems and we fix them, so it becomes better and better and better until we have a really good document. The alternative is to try and get things perfect before we benefit from the insight and correction we might be offered. Producing PERFECT work is the realm of those who fear that the customer will discover they are not perfect.  In producing PERFECT work (which is really just unreviewed work) Those doing the writing will tend to overthink second guess and overcorrect the work in the hopes that it will not fail, this extra “dilligence” will result in an increased cost that may or may not pay off in acceptance by the customer.

So, let’s put it out so the customers can test it.  Every time the work encounters a problem, we hear about it and we’re able to improve our documentation. Things that we anticipated would be a problem, are not.  However those that we never would have anticipated become problems. We let our customers help us achieve quality through continual and repeated refinement.

In the case of a business process that is being refined, where incremental change is possible (and it isn’t always) staff experience less disruption, maintain more productivity and generally experience less stress caused by change.

Some customers I worked with had been drafting some webpages which would represent their department and department’s initiatives.  They had these pages in draft form for 3 years, during which time, none of their customers could read the information they had been thoughtfully compiling.  The information by that point, ironically was out of date and would require updating.  Their desire to get the information absolutely perfect had effectively removed the entire benefit of compiling the information in the first place.

Often in the IT environment where I work, we wrestle with the need for information that should be documeted, but which has not been. Even if we had partial information, outdated information, or incorrect information that would be preferable to NO INFORMATION.  At least partial information gives you a place to start. A contact, a server name, a vendor’s 1800 number.  So I am through my experience a fan of work that is created imperfect, and then refined as opportunity presents itself. 

Well, this document has been sitting in draft for a while, so I’m going to kick it out there.  Maybe though it it incomplete, it will be of some benefit.  Let me know what you think, and I’ll improve it as we go.

Automation is not always an improvement

“I’d go crazy listening to that all day” my coworker said today. She was referring to the repetitive recording that was being ’spoken’ by an electronic motion detecting device at the door to the Sushi shop where we were sitting and consuming sushi. Yes, I added, there is an example of something that doesn’t need to be automated.

Someone who is greeted feels good because you took the time and effort to greet them to extend them courtesy and respect. So greeting is good. The greeting itself may have some value, but it is significantly less value than the reasons or attitude behind the greeting. But, some bright guy thought, hey all this greeting is a lot of work, I need some help, I’ll build a machine to concentrate on making the customers feel good, so I can go on with whatever I’m doing. So you walk in and the machine (decorated as a cat or some such friendly apparition) says “Hello”, and when you leave it says “Welcome” or “Hello”. I tried to determine if the greeting was directional (one greeting upon arrival and a different greeting upon departure), but it wasn’t. In fact if you had thought that the initial greeting was cute, leaving reminded you that it was a ‘dumb’ machine that didn’t care whether you were coming or going never mind pretending that it cared about honouring guests with a suitable greeting. So you can imagine that by the time guests finished sitting on the patio next to this, they were quite clear that their “greeting” was only one of hundreds that day, not special, not meaningful, not even cute.

You like cute? fine, like cute. Go cuddle with your kittens and shake the dust off of your crocheted poodle toilet paper roll cover. Cute has its place, but it needs to stay clear of annoying in my opinion. I think there is an important lesson here that we have the opportunity to grasp. Automating something doesn’t necessarily make it better, particularly if it undermines the very reason for undertaking the activity in the first place.

Thanks for reading.
Greg. 

When I’m not solving problems and thinking about my world, I’m working at improving the Liberty Workorder Management System from Greentree Software which has been cutting our customers manufacturing costs since 2002. We automated the parts that made sense (math) and left the customer the flexibility to make their own decisions about how they work with their data. For example, there is no interface with your accounting system, allowing you to keep the two seperate, relying on clear accessible reporting to provide your staff with the production management and costing information they need without handcuffing you to a 10,000 pound gorilla who will kill you if you make a mistake. No, we don’t like accounting software we use very much either. Liberty is available now to be deployed within your organization. We support the configuration and deployment of our system from start to finish so you can be up and running sooner with the benefits of a work order management system that can help your sales staff quote more effectively. Visit the GreenTree Software website to learn more., we’ll take good care of you.

<re-posted from www.greentreesoftware.ca/blog>

Better versus Perfect, a pattern of change.

I’ve observed a pattern that I want to share with you. It seems important because it is common, and it affects how we view the world around us. Whether we are opposed to change or embrace it. Whether we feel that a change is “enough” or “over the top”.

Now I’m only interested in addressing change that moves us from an undesirable state to a better state. And I’m only interested in addressing change that is intentional, requiring the will of people to accept it and successfully make a change. There is this principle at work, that people tend to look to a perfect state, and if they can’t achieve that perfect state, then they won’t even attempt to improve things at all.

I’ll apologize, this article has been delayed because I’ve been bogged down with examples and keep missing the essence of what I’m trying to capture for you. I see the process like a bell curve. At first we are blithely continuing on doing something harmful. Then there is information introduced that leads us to believe that what we are doing may not be all good and perfect. We resist the idea, we like the status quo, some early adopters start shifting away from harmful activity. Following this there is a less harmful activity offered, and it becomes more popular/accessible to do things the new way, but the new way is still causing harm. Eventually the information, the education and the innovation continue, and people are moved from doing lots of harm, to doing less harm, to doing no harm, to actually reversing the process and undoing harm (repairing cumulative damage from prior activity).

We saw this with the hole in the ozone layer. We were using CFCs and other chemicals that actually caused a depletion of high altitude ozone, which showed up most obviously at the South Pole. Through education about what was going on, we as a global community were able to see harm, see the cause of the harm, make changes to reduce the harm, eliminate the harm and even remedy the harm.

Or take smoking. 50 years ago in North America it was passed off as “sophisticated”, healthy, normal, fashionable, and social. Education about the effects of smoking has been difficult to absorb. People didn’t want to give up their sophistication, their habit, the social aspects of smoking, or their FREEDOM!!! Please someone get me a flag. Even the cigarette companies started “reducing harm” they added filters, bigger filters, reduced tar etc in an attempt to make their products less harmful or decrease the perception of their harm. (How could breathing a carcinogen be bad for me? I breathed it through a paper filter.) Now we have people quitting, and their lungs by wonderful design are actually recovering with the risk of nasty diseases cut by as much as half 1 year after quitting. (We aren’t out of the woods with smoking yet are we?)

Education, publication, and dissemination of information come first. These make qualitative judgements on our actions “smoking may cause cancer” -> “smoking causes cancer” -> “Second hand smoke hurts your children you horrible person”. Now Judgement is a loaded word so lets use the relatively neutral word “evaluation”. An evaluation of a course of action is that it is not beneficial. This is judgement or discernment, or discrimination in the classic sense, but in our North American culture where discriminating shoppers sound horrible and where judging someone’s actions sounds intolerant, we are better off with retaining the idea of evaluating something sans baggage. Nobody likes to have their actions evaluated, and find that the evaluation requires them to change how they are living. But Education and evaluation create an opportunity for change. They show us the door, walking through it is up to us. This education and evaluation is not enough to continue on this pattern of change for the better. There needs to be will as well.

By this point in your life, you are familiar with the resistance of people to change how they do things. Big industry didn’t develop a conscience, they were forced to pollute less by legislation. Very few smokers successfully quit the first time they hear about health risks. There are always explanations for why we don’t change including. It can’t be done, it is hard, it is costly, it is inconvenient, it would hurt the economy, the alternatives aren’t much better, I was born this way, this is my right, and I don’t want to.

Will is essential in making a change. Without will the opportunity to change is merely academic. An interesting theory to be tossed around at the dinner table and then forgotten. The will to improve must stand strong in the face of an entrenched status quo, and in the face of active resistance and even counter-information.

e.g. “The link between human activity and global warming has not been proven” says the senator from the United States who received the majority of his campaign contributions from oil companies… 

Where there is a will, there is a way.  This way can be made easier through innovation (legislation, technology breakthroughs, new mindsets).

Now wanting to do no harm, or receive no harm is worthy, but it takes something more to pull people beyond the point where they stop hurting themselves or their children.  There needs to be a real self-lessness, or a real love that takes place in order to move into the healing phase.  The accountants won’t push us there because they are terrified of the costs of doing more than is required.  The lawyers were satisfied the moment we stopped harming, and are terrified that our attempts to heal could go wrong and cost us dearly. Its the lovers who need to lead this charge.  The idealistic dreamers turned world changers who move beyond “hurting others less” to “not hurting others” to “healing others”.

Lets test out this pattern with a real life example that is bound to have some people plugging their ears and singing “lalala I can’t hear you”.

Our cars consume gasoline that is refined from non-renewable fossil fuels. They produce exhaust that is deadly poison. (If you were to fill a room with exhaust and breath it for a short period of time you would die.) It is a scientific fact that there are a finite number of years of fossil fuels left on earth (http://www.energybulletin.net/659.html), and only a fraction of those fuels can be extracted at reasonable expense. So essentially by driving a gasoline powered car, I’m ensuring that humans consume what little fossil fuels the earth has left. Now the ideal state would be that my vehicle is powered by something plentiful (water) and produces no pollution (clean air). Then I could drive my car with impunity knowing I’m doing no harm (in terms of fuel consumption and air pollution). However, GM, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Chrysler, Mazda and others have not started selling cars that don’t consume fossil fuels or pollute the air. So today at reasonable cost I can’t have the perfect car.

My desire to leap to “perfect” is what makes this change impossible. Were I willing to purchase a car that gets gas mileage / kilometerage? that was twice as good, I could effectively cut my pollution in half, and effectively cut in half my consumption of fossil fuels. Were I able to commute to work with 2 other people, I would effectively cut the pollution from my driving by 2/3 for the days we carpooled. Were I to do both, I could cut my pollution to 1/6 of previous levels. That is a hugely significant change.

Sometimes what blinds us to the possibility of improvement is our insistence on having our cake and eating it too. People think of the 2 weeks a year they spend on summer vacation and insist on purchasing an SUV with lots of “cargo capacity”, which they proceed to drive to work the other 50 weeks a year. (effectively a big empty metal balloon). There is an un-willingness to “sacrifice” (drive an efficient subcompact car), so the improvement in gas mileage becomes negative. I don’t want to carpool with people as that would put constraints on my “lifestyle”, versus I can carpool 1 day per week.  We tell ourselves stories, that are eerily similar to the stories the marketeers tell us, to justify our reluctance to improve and change.

I see incremental change as the best hope of reaching an ideal state. It is slower in terms of total change, but it is easier in terms of disruption, it is easier in terms of economics (consumer and producer).  It is easier in terms of social change and behavioural improvement.  It is far easier to plan a trip to the neighbours than it is to plan a trip to Grandma’s house, but if the neighbour’s house is on the way to Grandma’s house, then the journey in the right direction has already begun.

Do you see places where this pattern of better versus perfect emerges?