Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Chris Baum

Chris Baum — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:29:15 GMT

Hey Christina, this is a great article. We should all be thinking of these issues in our career planning. Why not try out a new path? I think your perspective on this will prove prescient.

Chris Baum — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:56:49 GMT

That’s a great question, Cristos. We definitely think so, but in most organizations it seems easier to place it on the shoulders of one person, much like the coach on a sports team.

At my current startup (of about 30 people), that’s much easier to attempt than, say, at IBM with hundreds, maybe thousands, of people contributing to the execution and operation of a product or service line of business. However, even then, I’d love to see IBM try such a program.

Stories like this one from strategy+business seem to offer promise that larger organizations might start to act more collectively:

http://www.strategy-business.com/press/enewsarticle/enews…

Thanks for the comment!

Chris Baum — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 09:48:16 GMT

Thanks for your comments, Michael and Madonnalisa.

Matt – After part 2 of the article, I believe your question will change slightly. Let’s revisit after that gets posted next week!

Chris Baum — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:51:52 GMT

Hi John,

I like that idea! I would think that it is most likely (at this point) to manifest as a VP/SVP of Product Management that originally came from UX background. That person would do much of what we do as individual product managers – bring insight of how users experience our products into the development of the entire portfolio of products (and, thus, knit together multiple user experiences). Seems like back to the future, no?

One thing we don’t mention here is that the progression through product management could possibly be part of a path to the executive offices. In effect, that would be taking UX to CEO, rather than CXO.

Anyone else have ideas?

Chris Baum — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:27:01 GMT

Knowing a BIT about how the venture capital market works, I think it’s also difficult for designer/entrepreneurs to comprehend “going big” until they feel ready. That’s why 37Signals resonates so well with UXers.

Most VCs want entrepreneurs looking to get big quickly or get bought at a premium within a relatively short time. That’s just how VCs tend to think at this point, as they need to get leverage from their various “hits” to pay for the duds.

I’d like to see how my understanding of the VC markets are/are not accurate, or if new (or just lesser known) funding methods are available or people are thinking about them.

Chris Baum — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:39:01 GMT

Just fyi that we’ve added a footnote to this story more clearly attributing Kevin Cheng’s fantastic “Communicating Concepts through Comics”:http://kevnull.com/creating-concepts-through-comics/ presentations. This story is a case study showing that these ideas work. Nice work, Rebekah, and thanks to Kevin for spreading the good word far and wide. We’re doing our best to help that along.

Chris Baum — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:02:06 GMT

You’re certainly welcome, Manoj. This article was a blast to write, and we hope people will stretch to wherever they desire – be that INTO UX rather than away from it.

Theresa Putkey did make several suggestions in her story about “leveraging technical communication”:http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/using-technical into UX. Check it out!

Chris Baum — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:48:11 GMT

Hi Steve,

That’s EXACTLY it. We’re going to do the iTunes thing very shortly, as these podcasts are only the beginning!

Thanks for helping bridge the gap.

Cheers,
Chris

Chris Baum — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:39:27 GMT

Thanks for the story, Mike. It’s amazing how often some of the simple things are made incredibly difficult. With the multitude examples of simple plugins and scripts, we can solve problems that used to take legions of IT workers to resolve. Anyone who has spent time in an enterprise knows exactly what you mean.

For example, take this passage:

> Using your browser’s “favorites/bookmark” functionality can alleviate the problem, but that still places unnecessary burden on the users to bookmark each website and organize them. Even if the websites are bookmarked well, each time the user has to access a website, he must open his bookmarks, browse, find, and click.

Why not set up a special plugin or script that employees can run that creates/updates the bookmarks for them, and even creates a quick way to access them?

In tandem with your URL keyword solution, you could cover mostly any way that the employees want to access the internal apps. That’s the key. The enterprise solutions are often “one size fits all” or whatever is simplest to implement. The multitude of slight pauses in the enterprise worker’s life dealing with internal applications affects not only their productivity, but their job satisfaction as well. If “management” doesn’t care enough to make their administrative life simple, how does that bode for their actual work?

Chris Baum — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:39:27 GMT

Hi Joe,

Thanks for adding your idea. We review the ideas regularly,* accepting some of them to become articles. A lot of the momentum from idea to article is driven by the community. If your idea is selected, I will contact you personally and explain the process (which is very simple).

Many times, you have to propose multiple ideas before one hits a chord with the community. Rather than a straight-forward review of your product (as it is strange for you to review your own product), how about rethinking your idea as a case study of what happened that encouraged you to build Jumpchart in the first place, or how you built the software using the methods that will underpin it? Such perspectives are valued highly by people who read B&A.

Best,
Chris

*At least once per month with aspirations for more often. :)

Chris Baum — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:23:15 GMT

I think we all try to design with a goal in mind – both for ourselves and for the people using the interface.

Who would like to see a story looking at interfaces that, while well-designed, do not meet the users’ goals, and thus are not terribly effective? There could also be a companion of ones particularly in line with those goals or ones not “well-designed” but that do a good job meeting users goals. Thoughts?

Chris Baum — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:19:15 GMT

Thanks for letting us know Kalle. I’ve just fixed it. Apologies for the bad link!

Chris Baum — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 04:11:02 GMT

Absolutely! One of the most interesting things going on right now is how collaborative software is finally becoming adopted (effectively) within the enterprise. I will contact you with further information shortly.

-Chris

Chris Baum — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:00:08 GMT

We weren’t kidding! If you have some stories about how you misuse things in a beautiful way, put them here!

If you need some inspiration, check out this: http://www.thoughtlessacts.com/

Chris Baum — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:31:40 GMT

Funny thing. I was just reading a Forbes article by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.”)

“Things, it turns out, are all too often discovered by accident—but we don’t see that when we look at history in our rear-view mirrors. The technologies that run the world today (like the Internet, the computer and the laser) are not used in the way intended by those who invented them.”
“You Can’t Predict Who Will Change The World”: by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Forbes.com, 10/15/2007

Maybe this is how we should do our product development!

Article:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/13/nicholas-taleb-predictio…
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable…