How to be a better writer

Original post:  Nov 17, 2014

No matter how well you think you write, there are always ways that you can improve. Whether it's reports or e-mail, we are likely to receive tremendous amounts of the information that we need in our lives through the written word. This article covers some important tips from Steven Pinker. Here is an introduction to him from the article:

Steven is a cognitive scientist and linguist at Harvard. He’s also on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.

Steven was recently ranked as one of the top 100 most eminent psychologists of the modern era.

His latest book is The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. And it’s great.

I think the most important lesson is to take the time to incorporate these rules into a system that can help you convey your message to your target audience as quickly and efficiently as possible. Transferring ideas to others can often be one of the hardest things we attempt to do on a regular basis! Do your best to make that task as effective as you can.

Here is a quick summary of the article:

1. Be visual and conversational. Be concrete, make your reader see and stop trying to impress.
2. Beware “the curse of knowledge.” Have someone read your work and tell you if it makes sense. Your own brain cannot be trusted.
3. Don’t bury the lead. Clarity beats suspense. If they don’t know what it’s about they can’t follow along.
4. You don’t have to play by the rules, but try. If you play it straight 99% of the time, that 1% will really shine.
5. Read Read Read. The English language is too complex to learn from one book. Never stop learning.
6. Good writing means revising. Never hit “send” or “print” without reviewing your work — preferably multiple times.

Here is the link to the full article:  How To Be A Better Writer: 6 Tips From Harvard’s Steven Pinker

Common mythconceptions

Original post:  Nov 14, 2014

I found an interesting infographic that helps deconstruct conventional wisdom in areas where the perception is clearly not the reality. It's titled "Common Mythconceptions".

My personal favorites are the ones about salted water and alcohol. I also found the fact that the Viking horn image really started with a costume designer to be fascinating!

You'll have to click on the link (in the title above or below) to see them all.

Common Mythconceptions - World's Most Contagious Falsehoods | Information Is Beautiful

Here is a clipped image:

It's not you, it's me

Original post:  Nov 11, 2014

Have you ever wondered why no one seems to know how special you are? Or that you have amazing, wonderful talents? If so, have you considered why this might be?

So many times, we're guilty of overlooking what is right in front of us. In this distracted world filled with all manner of spectacles fighting for our attention, we may sometimes miss the very things we are actually looking for.

We may often find ourselves wishing for someone to give us an opportunity to showcase our skills. If we could get that one big break, we might finally achieve that breakthrough we've been waiting for. Unfortunately for us, life isn't often like that. In order for us to shine, we're going to have to set up our own stage. It may be frightening. It may be outside of our comfort zone. It will certainly be difficult. Regardless of the challenge, it may be the only way for others to recognize the incredible gifts that you have to share.

We've been working to plan an extended leadership team meeting for Information Services. There is an incredible amount of talent within our organization. Part of our challenge is that we are so busy fighting the crisis of the day that we don't get a chance to witness the amazing work happening within our own department! One of the main goals of the event is to give due credit to the teams that have labored so diligently and performed so much over the past year.

It isn't every day that a new star is born. Perhaps it will happen before we know it!

Changing your destiny

Original post:  Oct 28, 2014

Do you believe in destiny?

Are our lives really within our control or are we given the mere illusion of free will?

I don't pretend to know the answer. There are times when it seems as if you will end up with a certain conclusion no matter how hard you try. At other points, we may feel that something we've done has actually helped to reshape our future.

There is a great deal of uncertainty ahead of us. Despite all of our best efforts, there will only be so much that we can do to impact what will happen to us. What matters most will be our response to any new circumstances.

There is more than one way to read the sign above. The simpler version is that there are some who refuse to accept that the world around them is changing. They may know that something isn't right, but they may not want to get confirmation that something is wrong. To me, denial is a coping mechanism, not a solid strategy.

A second reading might be as a commitment to persist in the face of difficult odds. I'm sure there are other interpretations.

Which path will you follow?

On my flight to Baltimore, I listened to "The Dance" by Garth Brooks. There is a line that struck me as appropriate:

"Our lives are better left to chance

I could have missed the pain

But I'd have had to miss the dance..."

Putting things into perspective

Original post:  Oct 22, 2014

Fear is a powerful emotion. Once unleashed, it can overwhelm our rational side and become an all-consuming beast. Today's headlines scream out warnings about potential dangers. Much of it is aimed at grabbing your attention to earn more advertising revenue. There are even some who hope to profit off our insecurities. Witness the story of a scavenger who claimed the "ebola.com" URL and wants to sell it now for $150,000!     Entrepreneur tries to sell Ebola.com for $150,000 - Telegraph

We often lack objective evidence that will help us keep some of these potential threats in perspective. This article from Vox actually ranks a number of different threats to Americans. It is interesting to see the comparison of the threats that are hyped on the nightly news compared against actual results from other "everyday" occurrences that are, in fact, much more deadly. To give just one example pulled from the article, ebola has only sickened a handful of people and resulted in one high-profile death. By contrast, a severe flu epidemic in 2004 killed 48,000! Despite the disparity, the level of alarm was far less. Some of it may be due to the lesser effects of 24 hour news networks and social media back then. Much of it is due to the relative unknowns about ebola which make it much harder to comprehend.

One other example is the fact that about 40,000 Americans are seriously injured by falling furniture in their own homes! Cases of "tip-over" caused a little less than 30 deaths last year. That makes it a much more serious threat than ebola!

Here is a link to the full article:  Threats to Americans, ranked (by actual threat instead of media hype) - Vox

I never thought of it that way....

Original post:  Oct 20, 2014

National Journal had an interesting article about how you can motivate people to be more healthy. It is commonly known that soda contains a great deal of added sugar. It is also known that it isn't really healthy. Unfortunately, most people don't respond to the standard pitches about the amount of sugar contained in a soda. One study decided to take a different tack.

Instead of calorie counts or sugar amounts, it also listed how much exercise it would take to work off a single bottle of soda.

Here's the conclusion of the article:

"Our results showed that providing information in the form of miles of walking to burn off a 20 ounce bottle of soda or fruit juice had a modest, but significant, effect on reducing the number of calories compared with other relative information in the form of minutes of running or teaspoons of sugar," the researchers state in their conclusion. The teens made significantly fewer soda and sports-drink purchases, more water purchases, and more purchases that didn't include any beverage at all. So the kids were either making a healthier decision, or opting out of buying a soda when they saw the sign.

While the walking sign was most effective, across all the interventions, average calories purchased fell from 149 calories during the baseline period to 121 calories during the period the signs were posted. And the effect persisted to a significant degree even six weeks after the signs were removed from the stores.

Numbers without context are just that—numbers. To show how those numbers translate into our lives is an entirely different task, but potentially much more useful.

Here is the link to the full article:  One Simple Trick to Get Teens to Drink Less Soda - NationalJournal.com

The power of prediction

Original post:  Oct 16, 2014

Carnac the Great was a skit that Johnny Carson used to perform regularly on the show. He would deliver the punch line first and then open the envelope to reveal the question. In that era, people who could predict the future were limited to carnivals and fortune telling booths. Today, we are inching closer to something like it.

We already see glimpses of this. Google is getting very good at autofill. It's uncanny how often it can "predict" what you are looking for through whatever algorithm they use to sift through the billions of previous searches to find others similar to yours. While it isn't perfect, it does seem to learn quickly. Witness how quickly today's hot topic becomes yesterday's fad (Gangnam style, anyone?). Google seems to be able to keep up rapidly whether you are searching for information on e-books or ebola.

In the same way, retailers are now attempting to duplicate the feat. The sales cycle seems to get shorter and shorter. People's tastes change rapidly. Think of how quickly the markets appear overnight for accessories to the latest hot gadget and then die off just as rapidly as we move to the next favorite. Case designers for smartphones have to come up with new tools and dies every six months just to match the crazy number of designs.

Predictive analytics is one potential way to stay ahead of the curve. From "Apparel" magazine, here is an excerpt from Melanie Nuce at GS1 US on how it works:

Gaining a Glimpse into the Future

Instead of simply analyzing sales, predictive analytics provide retailers with a glimpse into the future and an opportunity to identify patterns that lead to effective and highly personalized customer engagement strategies. Many retail and social commerce experts believe that predictive analytics are what make big data useful in a retail environment. As opposed to descriptive analytics, which measure what has already happened, predictive analytics apply statistical modeling and data mining to study recent and historical data, allowing for more accurate forecasting.

Every day consumers are willingly offering up pools of potential product data from a multitude of sources. Today it is common for consumers to share valuable, individualized opinions and purchasing habits via social media, product reviews, wish lists and online purchase histories; and they look to each other as influencers. Further, according to a 2013 survey from Dimensional Research, 90 percent of respondents claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews. Earlier this year, Amazon revealed its plans for predictive shipping, in which they scan consumer-generated information to synthesize it with a sophisticated algorithm in order to optimize their fulfillment strategies.

She goes on to reveal her opinion on what is needed to capitalize on these trends:

Retailers and brand owners cultivating a predictive analytics strategy need to commit to at least two focus areas. First, they need to attain highly accurate inventory visibility to know which product will move in which channel to anticipate future trend shifts. The second focus should be on achieving industry-agreed upon best practices for sharing consumer data.

For both of these requirements there must be more collaboration and communication between trading partners — which will be more valuable than ever before. Retailers and brand owners using a standards-based framework can enable the real-time visibility needed to tap into rich information sources and effectively leverage more customer-centric strategies.

Our challenge is to try to find some way to adapt these retail-style trends to the healthcare industry. We've got to find some way to replicate these data sources and gain control over our inventory to match this level of performance in the future to meet our ambitious targets.

To learn more, here is the link to the full article:  Predictive Analytics and the Agile Supply Chain | News | Apparel Magazine(AM)

This is why we write things down

Original post:  Oct 15, 2014

Nina Pham is a nurse in Texas who recently contracted Ebola after treating a patient. She was wearing full personal protective gear and knew that she was treating a highly infectious patient with the disease. How could she have been so careless?

It turns out that while there are specific procedures for treating these patients, it isn't always so easy to follow the protocols exactly. It is very complicated. There are also many sections where the directions are ambiguous or unclear. Here is an example from the actual CDC document:

Each of the five sections actually has a more detailed longer section with step-by-step instructions. There are specific instructions for what to do if your hands are contaminated, but nothing about what happens if some contamination infects another part of the body. There are also two examples shown for removing personal protective equipment with no preference stated for one over the other.

An article in Vox quotes CDC director Tom Frieden acknowledging the difficulty in following the protocol:

"The care of Ebola can be done safely but it's hard to do it safely," Frieden said in his Sunday press conference. "Even an innocent slip-up can result in contamination."

There is a 49 slide PowerPoint which gives more detail. It is only a slice of what is available:

These presentations are summaries of a longer, more official set of guidance, the 2007 Guidelines for Isolation Precautions: Preventing Transmission of Infectious Agents in Healthcare Settings.

This 225-page document (145 pages without footnotes) is arguably the United States' most comprehensive guide to wearing protective health care equipment. One section, on page 52, talks about the challenges of finding the right mask:

Since procedure/isolation masks are not regulated by the FDA, there may be more variability in quality and performance than with  surgical masks. Masks come in various shapes (e.g., molded and non-molded), sizes, filtration efficiency, and method of attachment (e.g., ties, elastic, ear loops). Healthcare facilities may find that different types of masks are needed to meet individual healthcare personnel needs.

How does a hospital choose the right mask after reading that paragraph?

The article closes with a few quotes from Atul Gawande, one of the leading proponents of checklists:

Protocols can be incredibly powerful and important documents in healthcare. Atul Gawande has written extensively about the importance of checklists, and how a simple set of guidelines can go a long way. In one experiment he writes about, intensive care units who followed checklists decreased infections rates by one third in just three months.

"It's true of cardiac care, stroke treatment, H.I.V. treatment, and surgery of all kinds," Gawande writes. "It's also true of diagnosis, whether one is trying to identify cancer or infection or a heart attack. All have steps that are worth putting on a checklist and testing in routine care."

It is undeniably good that the CDC has a checklist for how to put on the protective gear needed to treat Ebola patients. It's less good, however, that the protocol is difficult to follow and leaves space for human decisionmaking — and thus space for dangerous human error.

Here is the link to the full article:  How does an American nurse contract Ebola? With directions like these. - Vox

Pyrrhic victories

Original post:  Oct 7, 2014

Thank you, Wikipedia.

In November 2013, GTAT technologies excitedly announced a contract with Apple to supply sapphire for screens and lenses. Rumors started to fly about the use of this pricey product for the full displays on the iPhone 6. When the new products were announced, it turns out that sapphire would be used primarily for lenses and for the face of the smaller Apple Watch. Yesterday, GTAT technologies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

How did this company go from the penthouse to the doghouse so quickly?

This article from Mac Observer gives some insight:  Apple Sapphire Partner's Bankruptcy Shows It's Hard to Be an Apple Supplier - The Mac Observer

That's because Apple leverages it's massive cash hoard and huge orders to extract the very best terms that it can. Those terms often leave companies unpaid for many months, borrowing money to pay their corporate bills while they wait, and operating on razor thin margins the whole time. Apple also has incredibly exacting specifications that can leave companies on the hook for any problems.

....

Now, imagine this scenario: GT produces a lot of sapphire material for Apple; its terms with Apple dictate that Apple doesn't pay until sometime after Apple accepts delivery; those terms also allow Apple to choose when it accepts delivery; Apple's plans—say, for the Apple Watch—change due to software or some reason unrelated to sapphire; those terms also specify that GT cannot sell the material to anyone else.

That's a recipe for bankruptcy if ever there was one, and it's not only in the realm of possibility, I believe it is in the realm of likelihood.

These are the risks that go along with supplying the most profitable company on the planet. The flip side is the potential for large profits and dealing with a company that itself is not likely to go under.

No, you first

Original post:  Oct 6, 2014

In many of the fields that I work in, collaboration is a necessity. Some of these projects, like the UDI Program, are internal. Others, like GHX or GS1, are external. In each of these cases, there is the challenge of trying to get personnel or organizations with vested interests in the status quo to take actions which may run counter to their short-term interests. Even if it is in pursuit of a shared long-term goal, it can often be difficult to get anyone to look past the standard question of "what's in it for me?".

In today's USA Today, the Money section has a lengthy article on Apple Pay.

Apple is in that same quandry with Apple Pay. This ambitious proposal attempts to allow for the use of mobile devices to authorize payment at the point of sale. There have been previous attempts to do just this before in other industries. There are many places in Europe that allow users to use their cellphones to make payments. Google Wallet was another attempt that has not yet succeeded in any meaningful way.

In this case, Apple may have a chance to succeed where others have not. They have established a large network of retail outlets that are willing to accept their network and authorize the payments. This is a very costly effort, since the retailers will either have to retrofit or purchase special terminals that will work with the Apple devices that now use the Near Field Communications (NFC) protocol. It will also force interested users to upgrade to the latest iPhone 6 or 6 plus in order to take advantage of these efforts.

One potential advantage Apple may have in this effort is the recent focus on card security. Major breaches at Target, TJ Maxx, and Home Depot are accelerating a push towards more secure forms of commerce like the chip and pin credit cards.

Competitors are already starting to worry about this new threat. This may mean that this attempt finally makes this method of payment viable. Here is a link to an article discussing how PayPal is trying to adapt:

Apple Pay is such a big deal that eBay already has had to change strategy – Quartz

Where do you find the time?

Original post:  Oct 1, 2014

We all know people who are incredibly busy. Ironically, it seems that many of those same people still find time to squeeze in another task. This article from the Advisory Board interviews a few superstars and asks them "How do you do it all?"

There were four recommendations these individuals made that the author picks out to highlight:

  

Austin: "I don’t drive on my commute. I walk and take the train. Walking (up to 6 miles per day) replaces what would otherwise be time spent at a gym or similar. During my commute, I catch up on news and, yes, some entertainment by podcast (at 2x speed—people speak too slowly). I read and take care of email on the train."

Tyler: "Do the most important things first in the day and don’t let anybody stop you. Estimate 'most important' using a zero discount rate. Don’t make exceptions. The hours from 7 to 12 are your time to build for the future before the world descends on you."

Austin: "I ignore most office and institutional politics, skip every possible meeting, and don’t pay close attention at all times in most of those I attend. (These habits can be potentially dangerous. I have some protective workarounds, which rely on the skills, interests, and good will of others. Gains from trade.)"

Tyler: "Don’t feel you have to finish a book or movie if you don’t want to."

One of the Advisory Board executive directors, Allison Shimooka, gives her top six productivity tips:

1. Know yourself and understand your role—what value do you bring to play? Focus your effort and attention there.

2. When you are asked to do something, before automatically saying yes, ask questions to scope the yes. Determine if the person asking really needs you to do it, and if so, do you need to do an A+ job or if giving 80% effort is sufficient.

3. Determine which of your own projects need to be A+, and which ones where a solid B will be fine.

4. Scope, scope, scope your role.

5. When working in partnership, or when people are asking you do things, establish a relationship of trust. That will allow you to push back, and rescope the project if necessary.

6. Never procrastinate. It never pays off.

What are your best tips?

Here is the link to the full article:  'How do you do it all?' Secrets from super-efficient people | The Advisory Board Daily Briefing

The limits of focus groups

Original post:  Sep 30, 2014

Marketing teams constantly discuss the need to obtain the "voice of the customer." There are many cases where the best products are the result of talking to real customers and asking them what they want out of a product. It's a time-tested method that generally provides solid results. There are, however, limits to what focus groups can tell you. In the words of Steve Jobs at Apple, "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

Now that the Apple Watch has been released, it will be interesting to see how it is received in the marketplace. While Apple products like the iPhone and iPad are now iconic, they were not given warm welcomes at their debuts.

When the iPhone came out, here was analysis by the market research company Universal McCann:

"The simple truth," said Tom Smith, the author of the iPhone-damning report, is that "convergence [an all-in-one device] is a compromise driven by financial limitations, not aspiration. In the markets where multiple devices are affordable, the vast majority would prefer that to one device fits all."

Only about 35% of those polled thought they needed "one portable device to fulfill all my needs". They couldn't imagine a future that had never existed before

A few weeks after that was written, the tide began to turn. Initial users of the iPhone had a positive experience and the rest is history. Ironically, the process would repeat itself again with the launch of the iPad.

Now comes the Apple Watch. Derek Thompson of the Atlantic writes:

Today, there are lots of people saying "I have no idea how I could buy a $300 smartwatch with no battery life when I have an iPhone already." They are telling the truth. They really can't imagine owning a smart watch.

But the moral of the story is that it doesn't matter that they're telling the truth. A smart watch that syncs with Apple's ecosystem and makes payments over the Internet and opens the door to technology that brings healthcare to wearables on a massive scale doesn't exist yet. Apple just invented it. Our projections of a piece of technology that's just been invented don't matter compared to the factors that actually drive adoption, like widely read reviews and the user experience of your colleagues, friends, and family. The success of Apple Watch is in their hands.

Here is the link to his full article:  Why Would Anybody Buy an Apple Watch? - The Atlantic

One for the thumb

Original post:  Sep 29, 2014

Now that Apple has finally relented to the phablet craze, it seems that the relentless march towards increasingly large phones is showing no signs of turning back. Not only are phones growing in size, their usage is increasing as well. Here is one chart from a recent article in Quartz showing the browsing share of larger and smaller phones:

With all of that increased usage, mobile design will have to adapt accordingly.

From the article, there is a study on how people use their larger phones:

This assumption comes from a study that mobile expert Steve Hoober conducted with 1,333 people early last year. He discovered that people held their phones in the following ways:

• One handed: 49%;
• cradled: 36%;
• two handed: 15%.

  Handedness figures were also instructive: 

• Right thumb on the screen:  67%;
• left thumb on the screen: 33%.

Hoober notes that left-handedness figures in the population are around 10%. So the observed higher rate of left-handed use could be correlated with people doing other things at the same time—smoking, riding a bike, drinking coffee, eating currywurst and so on.

Here is an interesting heat map from later in the article. It displays the progression of the average user's ability to use their left thumbs in a one-handed mode to reach various areas of the screen. As you can clearly see, there are significant programming challenges if you have an app or website that involves a user in one-handed mode!

Here is the link to the full article:  How to design for thumbs in the era of huge screens – Quartz