flights

I might expand this into a larger article at some point, but for now it’s just something I decided to cobble together for a quick post. Thinking about data visualization was a big part of my job at Scout Labs, and this represents my palette for expressing data in picture form.

	Since color consists of three factors (hue, value and saturation), it’s three for the price of one from a data visualization standpoint. Hue can communicate difference, but value and saturation can communicate other dimensions - like degree of difference. Color is tricky though. You have to be careful to accommodate colorblind people and black and white printing.
	Size is good for expressing one dimension of difference between things. It suggests something quantitative. If precision matters, then it’s safer to vary size along just one axis (e.g. length). Studies show that people are bad at judging area and angles. They can tell when one line is roughly twice as long as another, but they’re wildly off when they try to guess the exact difference in area between, say, two adjacent circles or two sections of a pie chart.
	Shape is a good way of creating very basic distinctions between things - or classes of things. It works well, for example, in scatter diagrams and other visualizations that plot data in two- or three-dimensional space.
	Decoration is good when you want to make an item or a small subset of items stand out from a larger set. Decoration can be more or less subtle, so I like to use it to represent variation as opposed to difference.
	For position to mean anything, it helps to have stable reference points - like x and y axes (i.e. a grid). Meaning is expressed by the position of objects relative to each other of course, but more importantly it’s expressed in the position of objects relative to the axes.
	Motion can be a powerful way to add directional nuance around things like trends, or to wrap in concepts like velocity, but the biggest drawback, obviously, is that motion isn’t possible on paper and needs to be translated into something else.

Obviously these aren’t mutually exclusive. People are capable of grokking a number of concepts from a single visualization, so I usually combine dimensions from the palette. Sometimes I combine things just for efficiency - to get more out of each pixel so to speak. More often, I combine things when I feel like they make sense together.

For example, I might use hue to represent positive or negative sentiment in a product review, saturation or value to represent the intensity of the sentiment, and size to represent the reach of the source.

Please indulge a moment of self-pity…

I know a designer’s job isn’t rocket science, but that doesn’t mean everyone is qualified to make design decisions. Unfortunately for me, that doesn’t ever seem to stop people.

Why do they call these things “circulars?” The word makes me think of my mom, clipping coupons from the Sunday paper for the weekly trip to the Shop-N-Bag.

Anyway, this one came in the mail from Target. I usually toss these things right into the recycling bin, but I thought it was pretty clever.

I used to love flip books as a kid. I even made one once, as a Christmas present for my younger brother - a mix-n-match sports thing where, for example, you could put a football player’s head on a baseball middle and a pair of hockey legs.

Anyway, kudos to Target for having fun with something so everyday. You actually got me to look at all the coupons as I played with different face combinations.

Lots and lots of people have passed this video around, but it puts a giant, ridiculous grin on my face everytime I watch it. This guy is my new hero.

Matt is a 31-year-old guy from Connecticut who was inspired one day during his travels to do his signature silly dance for the camera and upload it to the website he was using to keep his family up-to-date on his wherabouts.

Anyway, what started on a whim in one country, he decided to repeat around the world…

Well, you could say it caught a wave (over 10 million views as of today), and a year or so later, Stride Gum approached him about sponsoring a sequel, on their dime - which was a no-brainer for Matt…

Don’t ask me why, but I was looking at Sean Hannity’s website today. OK, I was looking for a video clip of his recent interview with Shelby Steele that I learned about via Digg or reddit or something. Anyway, once I was there, I found myself clicking around out of sheer amazement.

Right away, I was assaulted by an orgy of red, white and blue that makes Stephen Colbert’s set look sedate. This is the obligatory patriotic pose. When you stand in front of the American flag, you must look proudly into the distance and display the underside of your chin. It also helps to have a second shot of yourself behind you, representing that “over-reaching” quality we want from our government.

Anyway, after I absorbed the full weight of Hannity’s patriotism, I tried searching for “Shelby Steele” and came up with nothing…

I was delighted to see, however, that I can share this page of zero search results with a friend. And I can search for Shelby Steele in the Yellow Pages. Do people still use the Yellow Pages?

Undeterred, I tried searching for Obama…

Nothing. Hmm… An example of “fair and balanced” reporting? How about a search for Clinton…

OK, could be the same thing. How about a couple of searches more in line with Hannity’s views…

Wow! How about another…

So, clearly pure incompetence. Maybe it has something to do with the way every word you search for is transformed into a “Sean Hannity Keyword.”

I want to keep clicking! By far the best thing I found on Sean Hannity’s website was this…

This has to be a joke. It needs to be a joke. But there’s no way Hannity is that funny, so I can only conclude that it’s real. I’m completely hooked at this point, especially when I see…

I love this. Watch out ladies, he’s “ready for it.” He’s actually armed and ready for it, if you look at the picture. Don’t take your eyes off your drink if you’re around this guy, because he’s bound to slip you a rohypnol.  I can’t stop myself from clicking into his profile…

Who would have guessed motor racing and wrestling? I mean, the guy has a high school education. But wait, there’s more…

Wait, twenty-seven? Didn’t your personal information say you were 31?

This dude can’t be real. I’m almost sure he’s fake… but he is the “featured” profile, which either says something about Hannity’s audience (if he’s real) or his ability to run a website (if he’s fake).

I wish I had time to see more, and say more, but it’s midnight, and I’m procrastinating. I have a couple more hours of work left before I can go to bed, so I’ll just leave it here.

Back in my agency life, clients were always asking us to create “viral” campaigns that would get the attention of the digital youth. Our inside joke was that there was a simple three part formula…

• Create a MySpace profile
• Enlist the Black Eyed Peas (they were especially hot at that time)
• Put some videos on YouTube

Then… POOF! it spreads like wildfire.

Now, reading the pitches from the current lot of would-be gurus, it seems things haven’t changed very much.

The basic pieces of a social marketing campaign today seem to be…

• Create a profile/group on MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/Jaiku
• Launch a blog advertising campaign
• Create a contest that has some viral hooks

This formula is attractive because none of these things necessarily requires much effort on the part of the company. It might get kudos from the Madison Avenue crowd and a few marketing pundits, impressed by your “revolutionary” foray into the frightening universe of social media, but the long term rewards from real people will be thin and fleeting unless you do a little more.

Give something good away.

I’m personally tired of the whole contest thing. Too many big companies think it’s good idea to create some kind of cheesy campaign where, for example, they entice people to make their own commercials for you or slog through a ridiculous scavenger hunt for the chance at a big prize. This doesn’t count as a giveaway because contests like this demand payment (manual labor and/or creativity) in exchange for nothing but a chance at a reward.

Instead, what I’m talking about is not all that different from the old concept of a loss-leader. You take a loss on something that will attract people to you, and then you try to deepen the relationship with those people and persuade them to (or simply hope they will) buy more stuff. What if Microsoft simply gave away the Xbox for free, knowing that such a move would push their console market share way past the PlayStation? Could the resulting increase in game sales make up for the cost of such a move?

I’m sure Microsoft has already run the numbers on this, so I won’t fantasize about getting a free Xbox, but there are plenty of giveaway ideas that cost almost nothing.

A lot of companies have quite a bit of capital in the form of information. Become the expert. Make your company’s blog the go-to source. Tell secrets. Teach people something cool or valuable. Enable. Entertain.

I was reminiscing with my colleagues yesterday about the dawn of the ATM machine. We were remembering how, when banks first started to install them, they all used to charge you a small fee for the convenience of using it - whether you belonged to the bank or not. Thankfully, banks abandoned this practice, although many will still charge you for using an “out-of-network” ATM.

When I was in Singapore doing some consulting for Singapore Airlines, they weren’t really down with the whole e-ticket thing. Labor is cheap in Southeast Asia, so travel agents are still the main outlet for sales of airline tickets. One of our initiatives with Singapore Airlines was to expand their e-ticketing capabilities, and we had to repeatedly push back on their desire to demand a convenience fee.

We poked fun at notoriously-stingy Singapore Airlines about this behind their backs. It all seems so archaic, but I still occasionally run into service fees here and there - like when I buy baseball game tickets online, as I did today.

So let’s get this straight… I’m making things more convenient for you, so you want to charge me a fee.

Actually, I suppose it’s more convenient for both of us, which is apparently a problem. So your fee is designed to counter-balance this dangerous increase in net convenience?

Just like the “patriot” act, this “convenience” thing isn’t fooling anyone. Let’s come up with a better name for your fee.

How about simply, an INconvenience fee? Maybe a We’re Sorry fee? Sucka fee?

I can barely remember now, but before the age of MapQuest (and, subsequently, Google Maps), if I needed to go somewhere I’d never been to before, I rarely planned my route. If, for example, I wanted to go to a furniture store in a suburb on the other side of town, my process went something like this…

1. Get in the car and start driving in the general direction of my destination.
2. Once in the general vicinity of the destination, consult a map or get exact directions from a knowledgeable human.

This makes perfect sense to certain kinds of people, but various of my friends and past significant others found it absolutely maddening. How can a person get in a car and start driving if they don’t know exactly where to go?

I was thinking about this today in the context of product development. Recently, I wrote about the value of “process,” and I think this makes for a pretty good analogy.

The Web is a very forgiving platform in the sense that building things for it is very easy, and making changes is often trivial. It’s all just pixels and code. I love this because it allows for experiments and mistakes. It encourages mistakes, because you can learn and adjust so quickly.

I have no problem putting something imperfect into the hands of the crowd and then watching it to see how and where it falls short - within reason. If the breaking of something will result in loss of life, or a lot of money, I’m very very careful of course, but such situations are rare.

I have no “brand” to protect - or, rather, a willingness to experiment is consistent with my “brand” - so this is easy for me.

What’s really difficult sometimes, though, is to get clients and stakeholders to feel comfortable with things unfinished and imperfect. Companies are understandably careful about everything they unveil that has their mark on it. When careful goes too far, however, one pitfall is a culture of fear, where people are afraid to make mistakes or deviate from what is safe and known and familiar. This is the same kind of culture where people are unwilling to deliver bad news to the boss.

Not to venture too far into another analogy, but I once had a music teacher say to me, “if you’re going to make a mistake, make it loud.”

I love this philosophy, but to make it work for a company or a client requires certain controls. Some options are…

• Brand it with beta. This is a popular Web 2.0 approach. Just put a “beta” badge on it, and people will know it’s a work-in-progress.
• Launch a laboratory. Google and Digg have pretty nifty public ones.
• Encourage your employees. There’s no encouragement like time and money. Google, again, is the obvious example. They famously encourage their employees to use 20% of their time to work on side projects. Some of these - like Gmail - have become key parts of Google’s portfolio.
• Limit exposure. Create a panel of people with whom you can share your wild ideas and works-in-progress. Or do live A-B testing, where the experimental stuff is only put in front of people who meet certain criteria.

That’s four ideas, and there are certainly lots more, so get in the car and start driving. Make loud mistakes.

March Madness is here, and my productivity is already suffering (case in point: here I am blogging about March Madness in the middle of my workday). I’ve started working on my bracket and looking around the Internetz for a little help. I don’t know whether to trust the wisdom of crowds, the experts or my own careful analysis. There are resources on the web to support each of these strategies, and I thought I’d write up a quick survey…

Crowdsourcing your picks

Yahoo Sports has a new application called the “Team Ranker” that’s sort of like a Hot-or-Not for the various matchups. One risk in this strategy is that the rankings might be dominated by people who know nothing about college basketball and make their picks more or less at random. Fanboys might be a problem too. Duke, for example, has a lot of haters, so no matter how viable a contender they might be, I would worry about people expressing their desires (e.g. for Duke to lose) instead of their predictions in some cases. Finally, the tournament seeds and rankings are driven - in a way - by the collective opinions of a crowd, so even if Yahoo’s Team Ranker is dominated by true college basketball aficionados, I would expect the results to follow the seeds.

Turning to the Experts

I’ve done well with this strategy in past tournaments, but taken as a whole, the experts tend to follow the seedings, so you still have to use your gut to a certain extent. The other challenge is that the expert commentary you can find is pretty disjointed. There are a lot of bits and pieces out there - separate breakdowns by region and conference, lots of hypothetical head-to-head matchups, etc., and it’s difficult to synthesize it into any kind of cohesive set of picks. That said, the free resources I tend to look at are the obvious ones:

• CBS Sportsline
• ESPN
• Sports Illustrated
• The Sporting News
• College Hoops Net

DIY Analysis

Today I found a pretty nifty online tool called Bracket Brains for analyzing all the tournament matchups. If you pay them $15, you can save any analysis you do, and you get a bunch of other features, but you can also get a lot of utility out of it for free. It incorporates a Hot-or-Not style picker like the Yahoo Team Ranker, but it provides a whole range of parameters you can tinker with to help you make your picks.

You can adjust how you think various slices of things like recent performance, strength of schedule and Vegas spread will factor in to the matchup. You can look at similar matchups from past tournaments (based on the parameters you set). You can even view a map showing the distance traveled by each team to the game venue. As you tinker with all these parameters, you can watch the projected outcome of the matchup in question change in real time.

The guys at 37 Signals have a list of what they call “red flag” words that often come up in business communications and can get teams into trouble. Words like “only” and “can’t” (as in, it should only take you a day to add this feature, and we can’t ship the product without it) lead down rat holes of feature creep and finger pointing.

For me, one of those red flags is “what if…”

What ifs are the sparks that ultimately generate every interesting, fresh, unconventional idea. They are the stuff of all the brainstorm sessions and experiments that characterize the really exciting parts of the product development process. What ifs produce ideas, and ideas are easy, so when a team is in the slog of getting things done, it’s hard not to get way ahead of them with lots of big and interesting ideas. You start to anticipate every possible scenario and edge case. You think about ways your product might tap into new markets before you’ve even addressed its core market.

Ideas are also impatient. They pile up behind the older ideas, and they push and they push until a few get through. And then a few more, and a few more, and while you may have started with something simple, you now risk ending up with this:

(Click thumbnail to enlarge. Photo courtesy John Maeda)

On the other hand, what ifs can be part of a sanity check. Asking “what if…” can be like hitting the pause button, allowing you to step back, size things up and gauge whether they’re on track. What ifs can also help you subtract and simplify. It’s a great exercise to look at your ideas and ask, “what if we got rid of…” and “what if it just…”

I think the “It’s about time” clock is a great example of this kind of thinking:

These guys asked themselves how many people really need precision around what time it is and effectively said, “what if clocks only told you what you need to know - in plain English?”

This isn’t to say that thinking small is always better than thinking big. Each has its place, but either way, “what if…” is a phrase to look out for in business communications. When you hear it, make sure it’s leading you in the right direction.