You are now free to move about the country

Original post: Apr 28, 2015

In this new era of travel, it seems that baggage fees have pushed a lot of people to drag half their houses onto the plane. I think we've all seen the person with the overstuffed rollerboard and at least two additional bags struggle to squeeze down the aisle.

Boeing has taken this newer phenomenon into account. In the latest redesign for the 737, it incorporated a new design that will allow for up to six rollerboards to fit into the overhead space. Since the 737 is a workhorse that is frequently used on routes around the world, more and more of us should have less of an issue with the spacehogs on the flights--even if we don't all have elite frequent flyer status.

The key is that the new bins will hang lower so that bags can be stored on the short vertical axis. Lower bins will also be easier to load.

Now if only they can do something about the width of the seats....

Here is the link to the full article:  http://qz.com/385423/boeings-new-overhead-bins-will-hold-50-more-bags/

Powering our way to the future

Original post:  Feb 11, 2015

In preparation for one of the storms (we've had so many recently I've lost count), I went to buy a few batteries as backups for my flashlights. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea. There were no "C" or "D" cells to be found anywhere. Fortunately, we never lost power and I never had to find out whether or not I had enough energy.

Batteries light up our world in so many ways. Without the invention of the lithium-ion battery, it is doubtful that the smartphone revolution would ever have occurred. It's difficult to imagine how

it could have happened if you had to cart around monstrosities more like the phones on the left side of this picture. Many of them relied on lesser technologies like zinc-carbon or nickel-cadmium.

You may not know who invented this amazing lithium battery technology. Truthfully, I didn't know it either until I read this article.

The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery at the age of 57 has an idea for a new one at 92 – Quartz

Our lives would be very different without the work of one man.

Unlike the transistor, the lithium-ion battery has not won a Nobel Prize. But many people think it should. The lithium-ion battery gave the transistor reach. Without it, we would not have smartphones, tablets or laptops, including the device you are reading at this very moment. There would be no Apple. No Samsung. No Tesla.

In 1980, Goodenough, a whip-smart physicist then aged 57, invented lithium-ion’s nervous system. His brainchild was the cobalt-oxide cathode, the single most important component of every lithium-ion battery. From Mogadishu to Pago Pago, from Antarctica to Greenland, and all lands in between, Goodenough’s cathode is contained in almost every portable electronic device ever sold. Others have tried to improve on the cobalt-oxide cathode, but all have failed.

Goodenough does not feel that his work is complete. He is now 92, but still works everyday in his lab in Austin, TX. If he succeeds, he could revolutionize our world yet again.

But Goodenough seems most passionate about ending his career with a last, big invention. He is trying, of course, to make a super-battery, one that will make electric cars truly competitive with combustion, and also economically store wind and solar power.

But the path he has chosen involves one of the toughest problems in battery science, which is how to make an anode out of pure lithium or sodium metal. If it can be done, the resulting battery would have 60% more energy than current lithium-ion cells. That would instantly catapult electric cars into a new head-to-head race with combustion. Over the years, numerous scientists have tried and failed—it was lithium metal, for instance, that kept setting Stan Whittingham’s lab on fire at Exxon in the 1970s.

It's a difficult problem, but I am glad that someone is working on it. For all our sake, I hope someone succeeds.

Don't bother leaving a message at the tone

Original post:  Jan 6, 2015

It seems that no one listens to voice mail anymore.

I think it started with the texting revolution. All at once, there was a communication vehicle that was immediate and demanded your attention. With the advent of ubiquitous cellphones, we now expect the person we are trying to reach to pick up immediately.

This article from Quartz gives further evidence of the decline of voice mail:

Many young people will agree that voicemail—once essential in business and personal communications—has in just a few years become basically irrelevant and actually quite annoying. So Coca-Cola’s November memo announcing that it would disconnect landline voicemails at its headquarters comes as a vindication for those trying to convince the last holdouts among families, friends, and colleagues that voicemail is an exceedingly bad way to get in touch.

The company is specifically getting rid of old-school voicemail lines, the ones where you have to listen or skip through previous messages to get to the latest. The cost savings from the move aren’t huge—less than $100,000, according to Coke—but there’s an efficiency benefit. Usage was declining, and the company wanted increase productivity. (Meanwhile, Coke will cut 1,000 to 2,000 jobs globally after Christmas, the Wall Street Journal reports.(paywall))

The new standard outgoing message asks the caller to try again later or use an “alternative method” to get in touch. People who had a critical need for voicemail were given the option to keep it, but a mere 6% of employees did, according to Bloomberg.

Voicemail is among the least efficient ways to get in touch with somebody in the age of with smartphones, email push notifications, and texting. A backlog of accumulated voicemail now feels like a daunting task to work through. And it’s often assumed that if the message is truly important, the person will call back or email. Office-based systems in particular require jumping through hoops, passwords, registration and so on, steps that busy people try to avoid.

Part of the problem with voicemail is its format: Conventional voicemail etiquette seem almost designed to stretch out a conversation and omit important information. First there’s a greeting; then the description of who’s calling and of when exactly the call was made (despite that information being provided in the playback and probably the phone’s screen too); followed by a long-winded description of whatever prompted the call; only to end with a request for a call back, often with little context for why.

There are still times when a phone call is the best way to communicate. But if a person doesn’t pick up her phone, it’s probably for a reason that would also prevent her checking voicemail—a meeting, perhaps. But chances are, she has probably mastered the art of the under-the-table text message.

More proof that no one wants or listens to your voicemails – Quartz

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

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

But what does it do?

Original post:  Oct 8, 2013

Innovation is the buzzword of the moment. Everyone is chasing after that elusive target. If you are like me, you may have a hard time describing what it might be. I think many of us have simply decided that "we'll know it when we see it."

We do like to hold up companies like Apple and 3M as paragons of innovation. They surely are. Yet, their success may not be due to the fact that they have innovative products. There are, in fact, many companies who have innovative products. Some of them are actually quite well known. Unfortunately for these companies, what is not as well known is why you might need to purchase or use their inventions.

This article from Quartz titled "The Simple Reason Products Fail:  Customers Don't Understand What They Do" attempts to explain. Here are the opening paragraphs:

The Holy Grail for innovators often is not simply to win in an existing market, but also to create an entirely new product category. But doing so raises a critical question for the entrepreneur: How do you get potential customers and investors to understand what it is you are doing?

It’s harder than it sounds. Consumers make sense of unfamiliar products by mapping them onto categories of things they already understand. So when Apple comes out with its iPhone 6, for example, it’s pretty easy for customers to understand that it’s a lot like the previous iterations. But genuinely novel products don’t fit neatly into one category or another. Indeed, their novelty stems from the very fact that the ideas and technologies that came together to create the new concept existed previously in domains or categories that were thought to be entirely distinct.

The article goes on to discuss Samsung's attempt to market their upcoming phablets (the giant phones that also have characteristics of small tablet devices). Samsung seems to have had some success in creating this new market. The article compares that success to a high-profile launch that was not nearly so successful.  

Why did one fail where one seems to be succeeding? According to the article:

Much of the reason for this is that it has been hard for consumers to make sense of what exactly a Segway is. This challenge is immediately apparent on the company webpage where they describe their device as “a leader in personal, green transportation,” and “as a leader in the emerging small electric vehicle (SeV) space.” This seems a bit like claiming to be a leader in a category with no followers.

One tactic innovators and marketers often use to help potential consumers understand the value of their new innovation is the analogy. In other words, they try to explain the new product by helping the customer map it to an existing product or set of products they already clearly understand. In Segway’s case, Kamen tried to convey the promise of the product through analogy by claiming in 2001 that it would do for city dwellers what “Henry Ford did in the last century for rural America.”....

But these analogies fell flat. Yes, it is clear he believed the product would make walking a distance obsolete. But what exactly is the device? In the end, consumers simply could not comprehend the characteristics that made this the radical innovation it was. Put more simply: they didn’t “get” it.

There are more examples at this full link to the article:  http://qz.com/132070/the-simple-reason-products-fail-consumers-dont-understand-what-they-do/