The Insights are Endless

Every site visit brings with it the opportunity to learn some insight into the reality of what it means to teach,  what it means to teach the faith, or what it means to serve those tasked with that great mission. 

Each time I have had the privilege to observe parish faith formation sessions,  a catholic high school religion class, or a third grade classroom, I find myself amazed time and again at what I encounter in these moments.

Sometimes I glean just as many insights personally as I do professionally and I can’t believe I am allowed to have this experience as PART of my job.

I have the opportunity to learn about what tasks they are trying to accomplish and what tools teachers need in order to accomplish their tasks but I also see the commitment teachers and catechists have to teaching the young people in front of them.  I’m surprised by the patience and sacrifice they have in the presence of these energetic and lively students. I am in awe of the amazing way they guide and develop the hearts and minds of these young people entrusted to their care.  I am struck by the witness of these men and women and their willingness to light the way for those at an earlier place on the path. 

I am humbled in the presence of these people.  

The visits we’ve had this year--and those we will continue to have--will continue to bring us insights,  professional insights that will help to guide:  the conversation, further insight and the improvement and/or innovation of resources for those we seek to serve.  

These visits may also be insightful, inspiring or generative to us personally.

Either way, the insights are endless.

What is one insight you've gleaned in this year of visits, learning and listening? Share below, so we can learn from one another.

To read John Vitek’s insight from a recent site visit, click here:    http://themindfulheart.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/kindness-heals/

Is UCD the Answer to Every Company Question?

Every company, if it is trying to move forward, innovate, increase efficiency or improve effectiveness, will, at some point, take different routes in search of the achievement of these goals.

Saint Mary's Press is no different.

Anytime a company begins a new venture, whether it's a new process, a new direction or a new initiative, it is usually accompanied by a fresh amount of energy and zeal.

Saint Mary's Press is no different.

In the last 9 months we've begun to incorporate different processes related to user-centered design (UCD), a new method of bringing our customers more concretely into the process of creation and development. In those 9 months, there has been excitement and energy, wonderment, confusion, resistance...all normal things in the sphere of attempting new things and trying to move forward.

And then we have the stage that comes after a few months of incorporating a new process, right? Somewhere along the road come the big questions: How long will this last? When will we move on to the next big idea? Why is UCD talked about so much? Will it really solve all of our company problems?

"Is UCD the Answer to Every Company Question"

No single process-no matter what it is-can solve every company question. However, the processes of UCD are certainly helping us with one question. It is helping us answer the question at the center of all we do, the question about the customer---the fact that we need to know the customer—and not just know the customer, but know the discreet and essential user tasks for which they desire extraordinary solutions. Not only is it helping us know the customer, it is helping us to develop the skills to know the customer at a level we’ve never experienced.

In the 11 years I have been a part of Saint Mary’s Press we've explored a number of different ways to get to know and understand the customer, who they are, what they want. We've looked at different ways of understanding the customer including print surveys, e-mail surveys, focus groups, interviews, research projects, public surveys etc. But no method, no process that we've engaged in seemed to help us unravel the puzzle of understanding the customer in the way it was answered as we’ve combined these tried and true methods with user-centered design and the skills we first learned at Texas Tech’s CertifiedUser Experience Professional Program.

“One of the best professional development courses I've taken. I've never left a class feeling so competent to immediately apply what I learned with such a clear path and concrete set of tools.” – Heather

“I've been a web developer for almost 15 years, and during that time I've taken quite a few courses. None were as valuable in helping me to create better websites than the CUEP program. We learned not only how to identify problems that users were encountering with our existing websites, but also how to incorporate user experience testing into our design process. This saves valuable time, helps to avoid the frustration having to overhaul problems that could have been prevented, and ultimately produces a much more successful website. Thank you so much!”– Niall

From others outside of Saint Mary’s Press that have taken the course:

“The course was very engaging! We hit the ground running and since we actually practiced what we talked about, I feel like I can apply it immediately in the workplace.” – KaNisa

“This is a very good hands-on course for practical usability testing that can save a company time and money in design and development.” –Jared

“I highly recommend this course, it will change the way you look at product development forever.” –Ryan

I offer these quotes to illustrate the possibilities present in learning these skills and processes.

Internally, the skills and methods we learned in Texas and have continued to learn about user-centered design have given us the piece to a puzzle that had been missing. In my 11 years here, I had never experienced the same clarity with regard to listening to customers, understanding them, interpreting their needs or even including them, that I experience with UCD. It is this reality that I find so exciting and seek to share with others on a daily basis.

At the center of our mission is the willingness to serve the poor, to serve the young and to serve those who serve the young. To the extent that our customer remains at the center of all we do, we will need a way to stay connected to the customer. To the extent that user-centered design and any other process helps us to stay connected to our customer and to the reality of those we serve, it will continue to live within our walls.

So, we will continue to utilize the skills and invite the wisdom that user-centered processes propose. We will continue to use these methods and others we’ve learned and allow them to influence what we do, because they  help us to know how to 1) listen 2) understand 3) interpret 4) engage in dialogue and 5) include those who remain at the center of our mission.

We do it for those who work with the young people and we do it for the kids.


Note: quotes taken from the CUEP website at http://www.uxcertification.com/testimonials.htm

The 3 Yard Challenge and the LIC Textbooks

You still have 10 more creative days to 3 Yard Challenge Day (i.e.  December 14) 

Our Living in Christ series is built on a pedagogy that says that deeper learning and understanding comes as students are engaged in the learning process, as they enter into the learning through carrying out different types of activities or projects based around what they are trying to learn. Learning by doing helps them commit the learning to memory in a different way.

The idea of this exercise is that by engaging in the exercize we commit the reality of incremental innovation to our memory in a different way; we move from thinking and talking about 3 yards to actually creating a representation of incremental innovation that can serve as a future and constant reminders to us going forward.

3 Yards

Think about what you could hang up in your area  that would help to convey the concept of 3 yards.  On a football field this is done with spray paint and grass.  But it can be as simple as three little candy bars on a piece of paper or three bold lines in a rectangle as pictured above, something than can remind you or me, that we move forward step by step.  

Don't overthink the exercise, it really is just that simple.....find one way to convey 3 yards or 3 steps in a progression.  Do this exersize by yourself or with a team member or two.  

Come up with your approach to conveying "3 yards" by December 14. (For off site employees, just submit a photo of your "3 yards" to hsutton@smp.org and your model will be part of the challenge.)

A visiting guest will determine the top 3 winners. The winner of the top model of conveying "3 yards" will receive a gift card to the local restaurant of their choice.



Just for fun--A little holiday video of St Nick in the Big Apple.....this is a short video showing LIVE coverage from the Macy's day parade. It's quite amazing to see in person if you ever get the chance. Right before the video started, everyone was chanting "SANTA, SANTA, SANTA."  You'd think he was a rock star. 

"A Bad Website is like a Grumpy Salesperson."

Jakob Nielsen says in his quote (featured on the site last week) which is also the title of this post that "A Bad Website is like a Grumpy Salesperson".  

Interesting.

We would all probably agree that the actual words of the quote probably speak more to the type of experience we DO NOT want people to have when they interact with anything Saint Mary's Press. So, you may wonder why the quote is on the site and why I went so far as to write a whole post on it? 

Sharing a couple positive interactions with colleagues may help to illustrate how I came to understand the truth of this quote. 

As you know the 24/7 customer service phone travels with a few different people. One day, many weeks ago, I e-mailed Joanie (our customer care manager) asking if she could take the 24/7 customer service phone for me one weekend when I had to attend a class. She was under no obligation to take it and I could have understood her not wanting to take it--she's already on call on lot. But-

She e-mailed back, “I’d be delighted to.”

Not long after that, I had another experience where I asked Rosa a question. 

She also replied, “I’d be delighted to…”.  

Wow!  What an unexpected response. My interactions with Joanie and Rosa have always been good, but this particular response surprised me (especially in the midst of attending to other e-mails that day). The response was surprising and unexpected.  And nice. Both times, the response made me stop and think, "Really?".

Although I knew our customer care team uses this phrase on the phone with customers I wondered if maybe this was a new part of the brand experience they were adding to e-mail.  Their response made the interaction seem even easier.

Not long after these two experiences, I ran across the quote about the grumpy salesperson and immediately thought, "If bad websites are like grumpy salespeople, then good websites must be like Joanie and Rosa --delighted to help people.  

I considered again my response to that interaction, the surprise and unexpectedness, the sense of "ease" just because they were delighted to help me.  Upon reflection, I realized that this experience of surprise at their delight in assisting me- is similar to that feeling of surprise when a website is really easy to use or intuitive...it's like the system itself is saying, "I'm delighted to help you".  So I turned Jakob Nielsen's quote around:

"A Good Website is like a Salesperson Who is Delighted to Help you" 

So I wondered further, "Are all of our websites like a salesperson who is delighted to help people? 

"What if all of our websites and products, processes and services conveyed through their ease of use that they were delighted to help people?  How would the site or book or service look? How different would the customer's satisfaction level be?

It's something to think about…

*Note: my thanks to Joanie and Rosa for giving me permission to share these accounts.

3 Yards: The Power of Incremental Innovation

In a recent post,  Paul Casper talked about iteration and what that looks like.  He said:

"To get 10 yards in 4 downs, you only need to average 2.5. Sustain the drive for the long haul. Small incremental changes add up to big changes. Continual improvement is essential."

This idea of incremental innovation, of moving 2.5 or 3 yards at a time is quite interesting and it is a piece from our class in Texas that initially challenged me-in a good way. It challenged me because I was sitting in class thinking, "If I know there are 20 things wrong with this product,why wouldn't I want to change them all?"

Often times, we equate success with the big end goal, in terms of getting a touchdown, or hitting a home run.  We want our product to be a huge win right out of the gate, even if the product is being released as revision. Who doesn't? The concept of moving only three yards is a challenging one because we want to fix everything. All or nothing right? We want to fix it so its working perfectly.

Remember the phrase from Voltaire that John shared --when was it--a year ago?

Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

What is hard to fathom sometimes is that we don't have to change 20 things --or everything that could be changed--on a product to make that product more usable for our customers.  Sometimes, it's a matter of making what we would consider "small" incremental changes- that can make the most difference --and have the most far reaching effect on a customer's experience of a website or a book or a service. Three yards, three yards......

What does "3 yards" look like? The specific "3 yards" we move each time is going to be dependant on who our customers are and what they are trying to do, i.e. what the key tasks are that our customers are trying to complete and what's keeping them from quickly and easily completing those tasks. Do we know what those tasks are?  (If not, some discovery work might be in order.)

Example 1: In a book where navigation is a key task and yet seems to be posing a challenge for young kids, it might mean adding colored tabs to the side of the book or coloring the index section a different color to make it possible for them to see "IMMEDIATELY" where they need to go.

Example 2: On a website that customers go to specifically to find certain types of information--strengthening the search functionality or the way the content is tagged on the site could significantly increase a customer's satisfaction of a website experience.

When we are clear on what tasks our customers are trying to complete, we can then choose which pieces to fix based on that task.

Three yards is a challenge, but it's a challenge I would issue to all of us.  What does 3 yards mean for this project we are working on? What can we fix NOW to make this a better experience for our customers--to make it more usable NOW? This is one of the things I always appreciated about Paul Casper. For those of us working regularly with the online learning environment, he was like that driver who would re-align us when our conversation would start veering us off the 3 yard road toward fixing the 20 things.  He would say, "We know we can't fix everything right now, what is the next 3 yards? Let's get to the next 3 yards."

What do you think is the best/most creative/most effective way to illustrate or convey 3 yards?

Take the "3 yard" Challenge

Come up with your approach to conveying "3 yards" by December 1. (For off site employees, just submit a photo of your "3 yards" to hsutton@smp.org and your model will be part of the challenge.)

A visiting guest will determine the top 3 winners. The winner of the top model of conveying "3 yards" will receive a gift card to the local restaurant of their choice.

The Difference Between Market Research and Usability Research

Have you ever had that experience where you go someplace thinking you know something, only to come back realizing you were kind of clueless?  Well, I had that experience when I (and two colleagues) went to Texas in February to attend the Certified User Experience Professional Class .

The professor starting by saying, "Let's begin talking about usability by talking about what it's not."  Even though I thought I had a good hunch of what it was, my mind went completely blank.  I listened as Niall (one of my new favorite people called coders whose responsibilities pretty much eluded me before this course--and, let's be honest, often still does) rattled off about 7 different things that usability wasn't (while I started checking my binder cover to make sure I was even in the right room). It was during that first discussion when I learned  one of the many world changing pieces of wisdom I was going to come to delight in--

 Usability research is not the same as market research.  

1. Traditional marketing research methods often gleans some information ABOUT the customer and often comes through what the customer tells us.
2. Usability research, on the other hand is aimed at uncovering how something is USED, the behavior and motivations of the customer and gleans this by looking at a holistic view of the customers experience (so not just what the customer tells us, but also by watching what they do).  It's almost like a "360 view" of the customers experience.

As we've begun doing site visits, we're learning about the different tasks that are part of the teachers and students process of using our materials. This research is aimed at usability---trying to understand how they are trying to use our resources.

The research project John talked about in our meeting this morning was about market research where we are asking the customer about different types of information such as what product they use, a particular decision they made ---BUT HERE's THE KEY---not necessarily about how they are trying to use a resource. 

While we could have asked that question, here is where we would need to determine, based on what we are trying to learn, what methods do we need to look at employing---market research methods or usability methods?

So, now, as project teams or any team begins to talk about learning from the customer, our starting point can be a little different based on what we've learned.  We can ask, "Are we trying to learn information ABOUT the customer or insight into BEHAVIOR and what the customer is trying to accomplish?".  Both usability research methods and traditional marketing methods are valid and give us ways to discover great information.

The key is understanding what kind of information we are after. 


For more information, check out this link for a fabulous contrast between market research and usability research: 
 http://ripul.blogspot.com/2008/06/market-research-vs-usability-testing.html

Do-Discover-Iterate: Wisdom and Insight from Professor Paul Casper

The idea for this post began almost 2 months ago as Paul Casper was preparing to begin his new vocation as a teacher. As someone who has enjoyed collaborating with him and learning from him as we've navigated the usability and user-centered design front,  I asked him, "What are your parting words to us Paul on usability?" 

Read Paul's 5 pieces of wisdom and insight here: http://pcasper.com/2011/10/21/do-discover-iterate/