Change Conversations

Jan 23, 2012

Round about 2000, I stumbled across a software project that restored my will to live. The MAME project was developing software that made it possible to run old arcade and console games on any platform — in simple terms, I could download their free software and run old arcade games on my PC. I grew up on these games, and had been very saddened by their disappearance over the previous years.

Of course, as with most things, the situation wasn’t as simple as downloading and installing some software — for one thing, MAME provided the emulation software to make all this possible, but not the games themselves. Finding games (and games with proper licensing) proved to be a challenge. But by far the bigger challenge was with the physical interface between software and user.

Arcade games came equipped with a dizzying array of joysticks, buttons, and flywheels, and in many ways the games were designed with particular physical interfaces in mind. Try playing Tempest without a heavily weighted flywheel, and you’ll be sorely disappointed in the results.

Try playing Robotron with a keyboard instead of two joysticks, and you’ll be cursing at the computer screen in no time.

I speak from experience.

The solution — one I never undertook myself — is to build a control panel for your MAME emulator. If the computer keyboard and mouse don’t provide you with a good enough interface, build your own! Lots of people have done it. Check out this homemade rig:

The Right Interface

The lesson I take from this is simply that sometimes the right interface can, regardless of all of the wonderful features of a piece of software, hardware, or website, be the difference between a great user experience and a terrible user experience. While simple, I do believe that it is an oft-overlooked bit of wisdom.

Your website might hold the secrets to eternal life and happiness, but if users have to click more than two or three times to get to that information, your site will quickly be dead to them. If you’re building a new website, don’t rely on yourself to see if the paths to your information are good ones. Get people who aren’t familiar with the site to browse through it and see how they manage.

Your software might be the most useful programs in the world, but if it’s not also one of the most useable, you’ll have a difficult time selling copies of it. Again, good interface design and testing are paramount here.

Your hardware might do incredible things, but if no one can figure out how to use it, no one is going to buy it. Design and test!

Brilliant Interfaces I Have Known

iOS: Obviously, one of the great revolutionary interface schemes of the past decade or eight has been the operating system for the iPhone — iOS and its touch/swipe/tap interface. Scrolling by swiping, opening by tapping, selecting by touching, all has made the iPhone one of the great utilitarian and fun computer devices of all time.

Scrivener: Have you ever tried to use a word processing program to write a book? I have, and it’s not fun. Programs like Word and OpenOffice are good at handling one or two documents of a few pages each, but anything more and it’s an organizational nightmare. Luckily, I found Scrivener — an amazing piece of software that is built with the author and researcher in mind. It allows you to organize all of your research, drag and drop images from other sources, and provides you with a virtual corkboard that makes visualizing your project a breeze. When you’re done, you can export to Microsoft Word so that the poor suckers who don’t have Scrivener can see what you’ve done.

The Hand Blender: Tired of hauling out your huge, unwieldy blender, filling it with food, running it, and pouring it into a bowl? Break out your handy (literally) Cuisinart Hand Blender, and just bring the blender right to the bowl. Brilliant!

Jan 9, 2012

I recently attended an workshop to learn how to use software I was unfamiliar with, but which integrates with tools I use daily. The workshop was informative and told me all I needed to know to get started using the program. However I was quite surprised by comments from other participants, many of whom were small business owners. Hardly anyone was familiar with the most popular social media tools!

It’s Not About You

I found myself thinking: ‘Come on people, do you live under a rock?’  I heard a few people say, “I don’t like Facebook.” Well in the words of Erik Qualman, “We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”  There are plenty of aspects that people don’t like about their jobs, but it’s part of the job description and it is obviously beneficial for the business, so we do it. You don’t have to personally like Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms, but you certainly should be using them to your advantage.

Image via Wikipedia

Powerful Examples

This prompted me to share a few of what I think are the best videos that illustrate the power of the Internet and various social media outlets.

King Arthurs Flour

First up is the Google television commercial featuring King Arthurs Flour, “a 220-year-old startup in Vermont.”  For me this video illustrates the power of the Internet.  A small business in Vermont is able to connect with millions of people around the world, and communicate through a variety of vehicles.  The Internet gives them the platform to get their name out there, using Vermont business sense and new technology King Arthur’s Flour has grown enormously and continues to do so.  They are able to communicate cross-culturally, in a variety of languages, through videos, and articles, and much more.  That’s certainly something to say for Vermont small businesses as well as the Internet and tools used to promote it.  Ahhh, the power of the Internet! 

Social Media Revolution 2011

Let’s move on to some videos that show you the value of adding and using social media tools to your brand.  First up is Social Media Revolution 2011, which will give you an idea of the continuous growth of social media throughout the world.  There are some pretty amazing statistics so be sure to take a look.

Every 60 Seconds on The Web

Now take a look at this video, it is fascinating!  Some stats include: 98,000 tweets and 320+ new twitter accounts, 695,000 Facebook status updates, and 600+ new videos uploaded to YouTube, PER MINUTE.  That’s insane.

My point in sharing these videos with you is to demonstrate the power of these tools and how many people are using them. If you personally don’t like or understand social media, look for ways that it can benefit your business, talk with those who do, or get some training. It is becoming a huge part of the job description for all of us, so take advantage of these new tools before you get too far behind; which as we all know, isn’t very hard.