• Clifford Geertz, eminent scholar in cultural anthropology died at 80 yesterday following heart surgery
  We read and discussed his “thick description” essay in our User Research Theory group a few months back; my first and only exposure to his work so far
• Shaping Things explained by Bruce Sterling
  He uses flickr to create a short slideshow with explanatory text that walks the reader/viewer through the concepts behind the book.

Our CCA class just finished a “user experience audit” of BART and found dozens of aspects of the whole experience that are sub-optimal. I’ll add this one (although maybe one of them saw this as well).

Step 1 - remember your stall number.

Too bad this sign is posted in the ticket-buying area of the station, far far away from your car off in the parking lot. It should read Go back to your car, dumbass, and write down the four digit number and then come back here and look at step 2. Their guidance is not presented at a useful point in the process, at all.

Last week I dialed my cell phone with my 4-digit parking code so that I could “remember” it. There’s one machine for buying tickets, and then through the turnstiles is the next machine for paying for parking (”the paid area”). So even if you walk from your car muttering 3214 over and over again, you still have to use a number-heavy interface to select the value of your ticket, enter your ATM password and so on, and that’s likely to wipe out your short-term memory.

But I only learned this from failure. All of which makes this sign so unhelpful.

Appallingly, the ISP that hosts portigal.com pulled our plug around midnight last night when we exceeded our monthly bandwidth. I am spluttering with rage (really; I am wiping down the screen as I type) and frustration. There was no warning. Indeed, when I got a cryptic automatic warning a month ago and inquired about it, there was no help. I guess blog traffic is pushing me over the edge on bandwidth. That means some form of success, and paying the price for it.

I was able to pay more money and get back into my email, blog, website, etc. And now I’m having Stockholm syndrome. Well, no, but the incredible hassle of moving seems beyond my emotional and technological fortitude at this point - now that this is run with WordPress, I suspect that moving is even hairier than before.

Anyway, very little emailed appeared after this 11 hour absence, and at least one person is reporting a bounceback (that’s not what is supposed to happen, of course). Email is back, so if you sent something and it bounced, please resend.

Classy all the way here. Sheesh. Sorry for any inconvenience.

• A campaign in China to offer free hugs to strangers fails to catch on
  Cultural difference stories are always fun. It’s not clear in the story who is behind this campaign, presumably one of those feel-good societies. It’s not the Chinese government, given that the police hauled away some huggers or profferers of hugs
• PAMELA (Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment LAboratory)
  A simulated pedestrian environment to examine “open space” accessibility. Variable layout, materials, color, texture, lighting, moisture, acoustics.

• Malcolm Gladwell - The Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters
  In 2001 I sent Gladwell a fan letter and told him what kind of work I did. In his response, he asked me to pass on leads for stories (a standard response, obviously) and I suggested “prodigies” and “dynasties” as possible topics. Looks like he took my sug

This past Friday was, well, User Research Friday.

Here’s the obligatory shots of backs of heads and a person and a slide. Comments on the whole thing follow the pictures.

I am so appreciative of all the work put in by the folks that organized User Research Friday; the constraints of the (un)conference problem are pretty extreme and they struck the best balance they could, given the effort put in (i.e., it was free, and all done by volunteers, and that’s appropriately going to limit what is being created; this isn’t TED). I’m looking forward to the next one, too.

It continues to be amazing what people can do in terms of throwing together an event with little budget, planning, advance notice, etc. And what goes with these unconventional events is a rethinking of the purpose of such a gathering.

We (and this is the collective we, as participants and organizers of events) are still not there yet; I haven’t seen one of these work to its potential (although the effort/payoff ratio is much better than a big expensive event, too, so part of the problem is common across events in general more than the specific approach; I’m more likely to (constructively) critical because these events are at least trying to rethink the approach). There’s a tension between the different goals that people come to these things with, and the way the event is configured to address those needs: content, discussion, and networking being the biggest ones I can suss out.

The content here was so-so. One presentation was a bald-ass sales pitch, complete with a pre-emptive slide for anyone who might disagree with the value of what was being sold, referred to as “that guy” - no one would want to be “that guy” would they? The ones that always asks those (eye roll) questions? Sheesh. Great to address the FAQs that come up, but no need to be such a dick about it. At least one talk went entirely over my head. Others shared some case studies in an informative and direct fashion.

Sadly much of the content dealt with workarounds for the constraints of business today. No time to go see customers, who are too far away and may be in a situation where we can’t go see them at the time of most relevance. Can we get someone else to go see them? Or can we put a piece of technology in place that can intermediate? In general, these are good solutions to real problems, but I fear I’m watching the field drift into a spot I’m not so crazy about. I realize this reflects the Bay Area/Silicon Valley thing and had I attended EPIC or AWF I wouldn’t be struck by the contrast. Any of our local events that are self-generated in terms of content suffer the same techno-drift (see DCamp, etc.).

Only one presentation was designed to elicit some sort of dialog (not that others presenters should have taken that approach; the format didn’t really support it).

The event offered little in terms of discussion. There are tons of people in the room, so as many questions as possible in the short session length were taken. But any large-number-of-participants event will rarely build into any new conclusion, it’s merely clarification after comment after clarification. There was to be a panel session (and I was asked to be a panelist) but the organizers decided to cut it. I am not sure why. Time? Lack of focus for a topic? Too much content? Of course, I wanted my fifteen minutes, so I felt bad and my perspective on the value of the panel is filtered strongly by my desire to have been involved in the panel. Breaks, if any, between presentations were brief and some folks no doubt were reviewing content with each other, while others were just chatting, queuing, and drinking (yeah, there was free wine and beer and eventually champagne)!

The networking was crammed into that time as well. I enjoyed having a printout of the signups ahead of time so (as an introvert, I guess) I could plan for who I could see that I knew; as well as having other brief chances to meet others.

The post-presentations networking (where more food and booze came out) was a bit disappointing; it was Friday so people left to go to their other lives fairly quickly. I imagined it running later than advertised, but it petered out earlier, so I was a bit bummed on that front.

I was struck by how much focus and interest there was on the presentations themselves; I pictured more hallway chatting going on adjacent to the talks, but we all gravitated towards the talks.

I’ve not been involved in anything more salon-like; smaller, more focused, with some intention to produce some result by the end. I’m not sure I’m ready to organize something myself, but I’m definitely interested in that, as a contrasting experience.

We went to a Halloween costume party yesterday. The invite urged/threatened us to create a costume with an emphasis on recycling, so we put together silly costumes that made use of materials we had around the house. We used a bit of tape and a bit of thread, but it was all stuff that was unused or eventually going into the garbage (as much of it did, today).

Chain taken from an old conference badge. Badge is the reflector from the Ikea “LOCK” light fixture for the headgear, UPC code from empty box of Kong treats.

Found chain with binder rings and shower ring as holster, battery pack with expired batteries and a storage box from wall-mounting hardware.

Guns made from old bathroom faucet valve stems and closet hooks. One screwed right into the other easily.

We took apart an IKEA “Lock” light fixture, and inverted it and stitched it to a baseball cap (with the cap’s button poking through the base’s hole of the same size), then taped the socket upside on top, with the wire connectors as deely-bopper-style endings for the wires.

And the result? Pretty silly!

This is how they display snakes in the “natural history” museum at Big Basin campground. And this is my 3000th picture posted to flickr. About as exciting, I guess, as seeing the numbers on your odometer roll over, but worth sharing here so we can stop for a moment and consider how the extent of the publishing we are able to do with blogs, flickr, podcasting, and so on. That’s a lot of content to share, 3000 pictures. I’m sure some amateur photographers (especially in the days of film) could never create that many images. But this isn’t even about creation - it’s the amount of photos I’ve been able to post in a public medium.
And flickr tells you how many times they’ve been seen. Some pictures end up being very popular. Perhaps a few have never been looked at (although I’d guess it’s very very few; most seem to have been viewed a few times; the older ones, even the less popular ones, have a surprising number of views). Being a publisher, who can create and present content for others to view is a whole other experience. Flickr has given me some structure, even motivation, for being involved in photography. I have some need to act on my pictures, even if that is to simply upload ‘em and title ‘em, and that structure has (for me) increased my enjoyment.

[Ironic, perhaps, that this photo wasn’t actually taken by me, but is still “my” photo.]

Update: 3,000th picture, not so much

From Bizarro. Not side-splitting, but a nice piece of product-meets-culture zeitgeist.

Norm Thompson is an online clothing catalog, where many of the images belie their naively breathless copy.

Another quote from Learning from Las Vegas

The double-hung windows denote their function, but their group connotes domesticity and ordinary meanings.
Denotation indicates specific meaning; connotation suggest general meanings. The same element can have both denotative and connotative meanings, and these many be mutually contradictory.

These are powerful words and I blog this to help myself (and maybe others) keep track of the difference between the two and use them both more effectively.

• urban design project - wayfinding and signage in BART
  Relevant because over the last two weeks our CCA students have done a small “user experience audit” of BART. Last night we saw lots of great pictures and stories, and our colleague and friend Kristian led them through an excellent frameworks exercise to learn how to connect design to research.
  (tags: cca design bart transit)
• Top earning dead celebrity is now Kurt Cobain, number one with a bullet. Elvis, bubbling under at number 2.
  Neil Young’s “Hey Hey My My” was quoted by Cobain in his suicide note (”it’s better to burn out than to fade away”) while elsewhere in the song Neil sang “The King is gone but he’s not forgotten.” Could be a one-hit wonder due to some catalog sales. Presumably Elvis’s estate is more consistently well managed than what Courtney would be doing?

Welcome to Westlake Touchless Car Wash
Although the term “touchless” implies that nothing touches your car, our employees actually do touch your car.

It’s a gorgeous sunny day on the California coast. Halloween seems far off. Thanksgiving even further. Yet today we received our first (of many, no doubt) Crate and Barrel xmas catalog? The grocery store is featuring egg nog (as well as other nogs). I don’t know if I can handle multiple streams of holiday pressures.

• Walmart.com uses personas
  She is a woman in her early 40s, lives in the suburbs and has “several” children. “We call her Nancy,”
  (tags: personas walmart walmart.com)
• From Del.icio.us to WordPress: How to automatically post daily links
  Today is an experiment. I may start using del.icio.us to post daily links, and this site tells me how. Let's see if it works or what unholy hell I will have unleashed on All This ChittahChattah and all who visit
  (tags: blogging wordpress del.icio.us HOWTO)
• Starbucks “infill” - putting stores near other stores
  “In Vancouver, Canada, such planning has meant adding stores on either side of a busy intersection.” - is this continuing or just the famous intersection on Robson that has two of them? That’s years old.
  (tags: starbucks “location location location” retail stores infill expansion)

Charles Frith emailed a question that he hoped I could address here

Is ethnography more suited to shedding light and depth on peoples relationships with some products or services over others? Are there times when it’s completely unnecessary?

That’s a two-parter! I’ll take a shot at this all, but I hope that others will jump in to clarify, correct, disagree, or whatever.

Are there times when ethnography is completely unnecessary?! Absolutely. But your second part is about time and your first part is about category. In terms of time, in terms of the process of developing a product or service, there are different types of research that may be more or less appropriate at different points along that process. There’s no overall answer, for me, it always depends.

For example, who is the organization? What do they know about the category, or the customer, or the channel, or the market, at this point? Is it a new product in a new category, or a redesign of something they’ve been doing before that they are improving? These are all facets of “what do you need to know more about?” I guess.

The best times to do any sort of customer research (and sorry if this is obvious) is when you can take some action with the results. If there are decisions to be made and they need informing by a user/customer perspective, then try to do that research ahead of time.

Depending on how you define ethnography, you may wish to see it only as a discovery process, as something that happens early on to define needs so that you can create solutions to match those needs. But putting solutions - prototypes - back into that conversation as a way to further validate the needs or dive deeper into them is a great way to go. You can read a case study of ours here that relates how an early prototype was taken into homes in order to have a more meaningful discussion about what the needs were and how this product could address those needs. You can always hold back your artifact for some portion of your session; that’s a standard technique we use.

As far as categories of products and services go, I don’t see that as a big dividing line in terms of the usefulness of research (and I’m speaking about research in general, whatever methodology you want to consider, some way of bringing customer perspectives into your design and decision process). I’d point again to the organization and its process as the crucial gating factors.

And

Also, are there precedents for ethnographic research in Asia?

Wow - two opportunities to cite DUX conference papers in one blog post. This PDF uses research in Japan (conducted by us, and by Adobe, over several years) as a template for considering research in global locations.

I think there’s two flavors here: Global companies coming to Asia to understand these markets, and Asian companies doing for their own domestic markets something like ethnography. For the first, absolutely. Japan, China, and India have all been high-profile destinations for user research (and in case anyone wonders, we are very keen to go back and do some more). For the second, I hear more about India, specifically, with an increasing drive by Indian companies to understand how their products and services will be received. A colleague in India does a regular audit of teenager attitudes for MTV India. I don’t know in much more detail the market for this sort of thing in any part of Asia, only the different anecdotes I’ve collected from various Asian colleagues.

Should I also re-plug CultureVenture at this point? For companies looking to get a handle on these other markets, this is our service to drive inspiration through immersion. Facilitated hanging out, if you will?

How’s that Charles? I hope you’ll add some follow up questions in the comments.

Over the last year I was an advisor to the board of The Information Architecture Institute. I’d never served a role like that before and I’m not an IA insider (to say the least) so there was a lot of interesting (and at times frustrating) uphill aspects to it. We worked out a huge amount of communication issues (i.e., what is our role as advisors, how do we communicate with each other, what does your organization do) and it felt like we made some good progress over the term. Ironically, it wasn’t until the last meeting of my term that I even found out that I had a term.

Frankly, it was a bit of an ego-soothing role. I’m an advisor! To the board! So to find out I was not in the gig for life was surprising, especially since that discovery happened only at the moment of termination. It was tied to the end of that board’s tenure and the pending elections of a new board. But the outgoing board (with some overlap with the incoming) polled us for interest in participating further. I said “yes” and that was all I heard until I see the IAI newsletter:

Finally, we’ve invited a superb group of Advisors to help out the Board this year ­ I’ll let next month’s writer fill you in. I can say, though, that with Board and Advisors on four continents, we’re truly an international organization ­ and the timing of our weekly conference calls is getting very tricky

Sigh. I did not make the cut, presumably. Back to being a civilian. Parting is such sweet sorrow?!

Update: 10/29 - received an official email thanking me for my involvement and letting me down easy regarding next year’s set of advisors. Spurred on by this entry, or coincidental? Nice to be thanked, but much classier to be informed personally, directly, ahead of time. Ironic that this is the third such incident in a couple of weeks where people could have done a much better job of telling me what the situation was before I heard it elsewhere. Oversights, usually, but something I’ll try myself to be conscious of.

I’ll be joining over 100 people at this event in SF on Friday. It could be mayhem, although I haven’t seen how large the space is, I’m figuring it’ll be pretty cramped. I’ll be part of a panel session; topics TBD, and I’m looking forward to the conversation and hanging out.

The Sheriff Dept is (.)(.)U! You need Help!!!

Seen on a walk in our neighborhood in Montara. We have no idea what this is about. Another small town mystery!

One of the interesting things about having a small business is the flexibility in how we can work. Our business model is based around a certain type of engagement: typically 6 to 8 weeks of half to 3/4 time, working directly with medium to large number-sized client team. But many other things come up (i.e., two of our last few projects involved direct collaboration with another agency, who had the original client relationship). Sometimes these different ways of working don’t work out, sometimes they are non-starters (like the call I returned a few weeks ago in which my guy had to wrap up the call to claim his court time; had an idea for a new company “but we’re not doing it for money”, and despite my clarity that this wasn’t a fit, was told I would be hearing from the partner, who of course didn’t follow through), but overall, I like the possibility that others can construct (or suggest) scenarios beyond what I may have thought of.

Recently I had a fun and simple gig; spend a day with a team, helping them to synthesize some data; pulling out some key themes and putting some text to it. There was no proposal, no deliverable, it was just a day of thinking, talking, synthesizing, organizing, writing.

Of course, we’re all hoping that it turns into more, either more like that, or more bigger, but as a first step, it was pretty fun. Variety is one of the key benefits of working in a consultancy, and varying the structure of the engagement is one source that I am always learning more about.

A recent BayCHI panel on Designing systems with emergent behavior featured Tim Brown (IDEO), Peter Merholz (Adaptive Path), Larry Cornett (Yahoo), and Joy Mountford (Yahoo), and was moderated by Rashmi Sinha.

My notes are up on Core77

Tim: Contrast that with physical design where you have more chances to test prototypes, with rapidly changing software, it’s too easy to do something new. Seems like a new feature got launched before a design process happened. Maybe they didn’t get to test it a little bit. Not referring to Beta, in videogames they are always testing all the time. It’s part of the design process. He prefers that to the classic Alpha Beta approach

Interesting methodology (and findings) for understanding the factors that influence our eating behaviors at the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell

In an eight-seat lab designed to look like a cozy kitchen, Dr. Wansink offers free lunches in exchange for hard data. He opened the lab at Cornell in April, after he moved it from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he spent eight years conducting experiments in cafeterias, grocery stores and movie theaters.
…
Although people think they make 15 food decisions a day on average, his research shows the number is well over 200. Some are obvious, some are subtle. The bigger the plate, the larger the spoon, the deeper the bag, the more we eat. But sometimes we decide how much to eat based on how much the person next to us is eating, sometimes moderating our intake by more than 20 percent up or down to match our dining companion.
…
Moviegoers in a Chicago suburb were given free stale popcorn, some in medium-size buckets, some in large buckets. What was left in the buckets was weighed at the end of the movie. The people with larger buckets ate 53 percent more than people with smaller buckets. And people didn’t eat the popcorn because they liked it, he said. They were driven by hidden persuaders: the distraction of the movie, the sound of other people eating popcorn and the Pavlovian popcorn trigger that is activated when we step into a movie theater.

Dr. Wansink is particularly proud of his bottomless soup bowl, which he and some undergraduates devised with insulated tubing, plastic dinnerware and a pot of hot tomato soup rigged to keep the bowl about half full. The idea was to test which would make people stop eating: visual cues, or a feeling of fullness.

People using normal soup bowls ate about nine ounces. The typical bottomless soup bowl diner ate 15 ounces. Some of those ate more than a quart, and didn’t stop until the 20-minute experiment was over. When asked to estimate how many calories they had consumed, both groups thought they had eaten about the same amount, and 113 fewer calories on average than they actually had.

A sidebar listing other experiments and results is here (link may expire).

Taken from this list

18. Dice Inspector
What they do: Inspect dice used in casinos for lopsided angles, misspotting and other blemishes that could cause error when the dice are rolled for gambling purposes.

19. Ethnographer
What they do: Research and study single groups of human behavior through fieldwork, observing and questioning participants.

20. Gum Buster
What they do: Remove gum stuck to sidewalks, street benches and other unwanted areas by de-sticking the gum through a steaming process.

[Thanks, JZC]

Quote from Learning from Las Vegas

A driver 30 years ago [written in 1977] could maintain a sense of orientation in space. At the simple crossroad a little sign with an arrow confirmed what was obvious. One knew where one was. When the crossroads becomes a cloverleaf, one must turn right to left…But the driver has no time to ponder paradoxical subtleties within a dangerous, sinuous maze. He or she relies on signs for guidance - enormous signs in vast spaces at high speeds.

Great multicultural example; only in Canada would you see an Asian guy playing bagpipes in front of a Japanese-themed (i.e., Pocky) store.

Organized by IBDNetwork, Under the Radar is a showcase of early-stage innovation. Events feature several companies in one sector presenting to a panel of VC judges. Judges and attendees pick the company most likely to succeed and discuss the future of the presenting companies’ industry sector.

Last night I attended my first such event, hosted by Orange R&D. There were actually 7 companies, and the panel didn’t in fact make any overall picks.

Living and working in Silicon Valley means that I’m not immune from lingo like “burn rate”, “angel-funded”, “series-A”, “[something]-play”, “the eBay of [something]” and beyond, but this was my first formal in-depth exposure to this scene.

The companies shown were podaddies (dynamic video ad network), CastTV (video search), Veodia (enterprise video distribution), Nexage (video on mobile phones), Eyespot (editing/mashing up video on the web), ComVu (mobile video sharing), and OneCast (turnkey venue-based video).

The ideas were all very different and so some just were more easily explained than others, some were better presenters than others. Some were prepared to pitch to investors, others like CastTV were funded using money from their previous startup and there was an interesting comment about not wanting to bother with dealing with investors this time around. Isn’t that a sign of the latest dot-com economy; that companies can do a lot without millions of dollars?

Some folks were slick, some were slick but without merit (the video editing tool that was framed as telling stories since stories are important but offered nothing more than a way to butt clips together and overlay music - that’s not storytelling, sorry).

But the greatest part was the panel - it was a neat form of a crit, really. They asked great questions, shared their own concerns, picked on the weak, challenged the strong, and just emitted so much wisdom and experience (without much attitude) that I was very impressed. I mean, that’s the job of a venture capitalist, to be able to assess new companies based on having seen a million others, but for me to get to see that live and in the flesh was very neat.

There was little discussion of culture, or users; it was mostly about technology and markets, but that’s okay, I learned a bit just being part of it.

A few months ago I was working on a book proposal. The book (about the process of ethnographic research) isn’t happening (at least with that publisher), but I thought I would share an anecdote that I dashed off as the underpinnings of a sample chapter.

—

As we rang the doorbell, my colleague and I unconsciously straightened, preparing ourselves for that all-important first impression, that moment when our research participant would come to the door and size us up. We waited for a moment, looking at each other as we heard footsteps, mustering a smile as the inside door opened.
“Hello,” I offered, “Are you Brian?”

As I began to state the obvious, that we were here for the interview, he grunted, opened the screen door, and as we took hold, he turned around and walked back into the house. We glanced at each other, and stepped into the foyer. What did we know about Brian? Our recruiting screener told us he was 22, lived with his parents, and his brother, and was employed part-time. The rest would be up to us to discover.

It was 7:30 in the morning and we were taking our shoes off in a strange house. Eventually someone beckoned from the kitchen, and we came in. But already we were out of sync. The kitchen was small, with an L-shaped counter, and a small table for dining. The mother was at the end of the L, working with bowls and dishes and burners on the stove. The father was perched against the counter, while Brian, and his younger brother sat at the table. The father was a small man, while the other three were quite large. The room wasn’t intended for the six of us, so we managed to set ourselves up for our interview in the only place we could; at the far end of the counter, at the far end of the table. We wedged ourselves (one behind the other) on small chairs, pulling our knees in, our paraphernalia of notepads, documents, video cameras, tapes, batteries etc. clutched in close. It wasn’t ideal, but we hoped we could make it work.

But then the real challenge became clear – although Brian had agreed for us to meet and do this interview, he was actively disinterested. We were positioned 45 degrees behind him, in his blind spot. With his physical bulk, he managed to loom over his food in a way that eliminated even any peripheral eye contact; somehow this was something a smaller person couldn’t have done. His brother sat across from him, echoing his posture.

We had recruited Brian specifically, but of course, here we were with the entire family. We pressed ahead, explaining our study, and starting in with our planned questions. Since Brian was the person with whom we had the arrangement, we focused our attention on him. He would not respond, beyond one word answers (which sounded more like grunts), and the occasional glance up to his brother, causing them both to giggle.

My colleague and I avoided looking at each other (it may have not been physically possible, given the tight quarters) for fear of displaying our despair at the situation. Sure, we had arranged this interview, but the cues we were receiving were making it clear the arrangement wasn’t worth much. At this point, we had already woke up quite early to do this interview, so there was no point in giving up. If they changed their mind explicitly, they’d let us know, and we’d leave. Meanwhile, what else was there to do but press on? I asked questions, with very little response. I tried the brother, at which point Brian bolted out of the room for a few minutes, without a word. The brother was only slightly more amenable than Brian, mostly interested in make critical comments about his parents (to Brian’s great grunting enjoyment) as much as provide any actual information.

Indeed, the mother and father seemed not to have been warned that we would be coming; although I directed some of the questioning towards the mom, she reacted with pretty serious hostility, informing us (in the context of an answer to a question) that they did not welcome strangers into their house, and (while she was preparing food) highlighted the intimate nature of food preparation as a symbol, and that was even less open to strangers. The message was very clear.

But again, what could we do? Pressing on, until asked to leave, under the explicit agreement we had made, seemed the best approach. We asked our questions, following up on the information they had shared, listening closely, looking for clarification, offering up as much space as we could for them to talk, all in trying to build some flow and dialog. Even though the message was negative, at least the parents were willing to talk to us. And so, the young men faded out of the conversation, and the interview eventually switched over to the parents. Two hours later it turned out that we had completed an excellent interview with them; they each had great stories about our topic area, and revealed a lot of background about their family, about growing up, about their activities, and even their perspectives on what made the United States the country it had become.

Before we left the house, the mother insisted on cooking up some fried bread fresh and hot for us; admonishing us that “no one comes here and doesn’t get food” – reiterating the intimate nature of food she had mentioned at the beginning, but this time as a compliment rather than a shield.

As soon as we left the house, my colleague turned to me and said “I don’t know how you pulled that off; I thought we were done for and would have to leave.” I was very pleased with how the interview turned out, especially because it began at such a low point, but there was little magic to it. I didn’t try to solve the big problem of the complex dynamic we had walked into; I focused (especially at first) on just the next problem; the immediate challenge of what to say next. I was certainly keeping the larger goals in mind of how to cover all the areas we were interested in, but I was focusing my energy as an interviewer on the next thing. And by working at it in small pieces, bit by bit, the dynamic shifted. As interviewers, we had to compartmentalize the social experience of the event – the extreme discomfort and awkwardness of the early part of the interview, and just stick to our jobs. We didn’t handle the situation that differently than any other interview, and it served as a testament to our approach – listening, following up (and showing that we were listening by the way we followed up), building rapport and trust, bit by bit, until there was a great deal of openness and great information.

Years later, it’s obvious that there are better ways to communicate with the participants ahead of time to screen out unwilling participants. For example, the person who is going to be in the field should always speak live to the person they will be visiting before they day of the interview just to get that person-to-person communication started early, so both parties can get a sense of each other and start to feel comfortable (or agree that it’s not a good fit and move on to someone else). But, given the diversity of people, we will always end up interviewing people who are more or less comfortable with the process, and it’s our job to make them comfortable in order to get the information we are interested in. Doing so may make us uncomfortable ourselves, but with practice we must learn to set aside the social dynamics and focus on the question asking and listening that will make the interview a success.

Right.

Looking through an airline magazine last week we found this:

That’s a detail from this full-page ad:

It seems the devolution that this art-project was always telling us about is indeed further along than when they started. It’s one thing to see an aging Steve Perry try to hit the high notes at a casino, but when you’ve got a band that dressed in silly costumes and ironically questioned their own human-ness, the nostalgia-revisionism takes on a whole other set of meanings. Their band picture evokes lameness at first, but then really just seems so perfect.

Tastiest of all is the name of the place where Devo is playing: Moron Go!

We have some time before we can expect to be driving Chinese cars.

Despite growing anxiety that the Chinese would quickly seek to conquer yet another important industry, it now looks as if it will be at least another several years before Chinese automakers start exporting large numbers of cars they both design and make. They had intended to start selling their own brands in the United States as soon as 2007 but have pushed off their plans by a couple of years.

And now, some Chinese auto executives admit, it could be as late as 2020 before they will be ready to take on the world auto market.

That’s not to say that the Chinese will not follow in the footsteps of Japanese automakers, who first sent over chintzy cars that were roundly criticized, only to set new standards for the industry in later years.

Still, despite China’s manufacturing prowess, it is, for now, proving a lot harder than automakers here anticipated to make cars that appeal to Western tastes.

Here’s a story about who these Indian engineers are, or aren’t. Frankly, I was glad to see this article, not for protectionist reasons, but simply to acknowledge that we’ve got dramatically different cultures around work, collaboration, education, success, and everything else, and that’s obviously going to play out in the hiring/working space.

India still produces plenty of engineers, nearly 400,000 a year at last count. But their competence has become the issue.

A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations.

And finally here’s yet another story about Americans working for Indian firms (I last blogged about it here)

For the job seekers, India represents a new kind of ticket. Katrina Anderson, 22, a math major from Manhattan, Kan., accepted the Infosys offer because, she said, it provided the most extensive training of any company that offered her a job.

An added bonus was the chance to travel halfway around the world. “Some people were scared by the India relocation,” she recalled. “But that pretty much sold it for me.”

When she finishes the training in January, Ms. Anderson, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, will return to the United States, to work in the Infosys office in Phoenix.

For the Americans at Infosys, culture shock combines with surprising discoveries. Mr. Craig and Ms. Anderson admitted to having their stereotypes of India quickly upturned. Mr. Craig expected elephants and crowded sidewalks; Ms. Anderson expected stifling heat and women who covered their heads.

The Infosys training center, with its 300 acres of manicured shrubbery, is a far cry from the poverty of much of this country. There is a bowling alley on campus, a state-of-the-art gym, a swimming pool, tennis courts and an auditorium modeled on the Epcot Center.

Mr. Craig, who still calls home nearly every day, says he has made an effort to teach himself a few things about his new, temporary home. He has learned how to conduct himself properly at a Hindu temple. He makes an extra effort to be more courteous. He has learned to ignore the things that rattle him in India — the habit of cutting in line, for instance, or the ease with which a stranger here can ask what he would consider a deeply personal question.

“I definitely feel like a minority here,” he said, sounding surprised at the very possibility.

Ms. Anderson has tried to ignore what she sees as a penchant for staring, especially by men. She has donned Indian clothes in hopes of deflecting attention, only to realize that it has the opposite effect. She has stopped brooding quietly when someone cuts in line. “I say, ‘Excuse me, there’s a line here.’ ”

Relax, information architects and folksonomists, this story won’t stop your quest to crowdsourcingly identify attributes of every virtual and physical artifact. It’s the other kind of tag that’s a problem now.

Tag is now banned from the playground of Willett Elementary School in Attleboro. Touch football, dodgeball and all other unsupervised chasing games have also been taken out of play.
The ban is setting the stage for a schoolyard knock-down-drag-out between parents, some who believe the playground police have gone too far by calling a time out on the time-honored children’s play, and others who feel that it’s about time the whistle was blown on these competitive games.
The rule was championed by second-year principal Gaylene Heppe. She claims the rule is nothing new. It is part of a broader playground rule that has been in effect for five years banning hitting and inappropriate touching.
Willett Elementary School joins a growing list of schools across the country where kindergarten cops have taken aim at classic children’s games, citing the risk of injury and litigation. Cities like Charleston, S.C., tackled touch football, while Spokane, Wash., and Cheyenne, Wyo., ousted good old-fashioned tag from their schools.

At the Blue Horizon Hotel in Vancouver, the soap matches the countertop. Nice touch, I guess.

The Hyatt Wake-Up Call service provides Hyatt guests with the opportunity to wake up to personalized greetings from loved ones back home. For a limited time, you can also receive a celebrity greeting from Christie Brinkley. From the press release the service is designed to help frequent business travelers maintain connection with others while on the road and personalize their stay with the sound of a familiar voice in the morning.

To celebrate the launch, supermodel Christie Brinkley, well known for balancing a hectic travel schedule and life as a mom, recorded two limited-edition wake-up greetings available for download.

The direct mail piece I received today comes with 4 perforated cards that I can give to others so they can record messages for me. I can see this being a hit with families with young children, but it’s going right into the recycling for me.

The mail piece:
Family and friends can easily record wake-up calls for you
By using the enclosed cards, family members and friends can create and schedule personalized Hyatt Wake-Up Calls for your stays. The process is simple.
1. Hand out the attached Hyatt Wake-Up Call cards with unique access codes
2. Remind them when you will be at Hyatt
3. Have them call the phone number or visit the website listed on the card and follow the instructions.
4. Look forward to special wake-up messages via your cell phone

Cell phone? They can’t even integrate this into their wake-up service at the hotel? You actually don’t need this to be tied to your hotel stay to use it? You could prank call a bunch of friends, or have Christie call them. It’s masquerading as a “wake-up call” but in fact, it’s just a recorded message delivery, outside of any hotel interaction.

Lame, lame, lame.

Ms. Dewey is a new search engine making the blogosphere rounds today. You can search, and this character offers you comments, some based on what you search for and others perhaps random. It doesn’t make me think about neat new visions of software interactivity, it seems m