Archive for August, 2011
The Falkirk Wheel
05
Aug
The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift located in Scotland, UK, connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, opened in 2002. It is named after the nearby town of Falkirk which is in central Scotland. The two canals were previously connected by a series of 11 locks, but by the 1930s these had fallen into disuse, were filled in and the land built upon. (Wikipedia)
$300 Million Button: making customers create logins to buy cost etailer $300M/year
05
Aug
"The $300 Million Button," Jared Spool's 2009 article on usability and ecommerce design, is remarkable in that it a) articulates something that anyone who shops widely online already knows; b) is advice that would make a lot of money for sites if they adopted it; c) has been part of the literature for at least two and a half years; d) is roundly ignored.
Spool is recounting the story of an unnamed large ecommerce retailer who had one of those forms that made you register before you could buy anything, and to remember your login and password before you could shop there again. Removing this form, and allowing the option of saving your details with a login and password at the end of the transaction, increased the retailer's sales by $300,000,000 in the first year.
From a commerce perspective, the Internet's glory is reduced search costs for customers. When I was making my office coffee table, I decided I wanted to source some brightly colored anodized aluminum bolts, nuts and washers. I'd never bought these before, but I assumed they existed, and I was right -- a couple searches showed me that they existed and were sold to motorcycle modders. I found a site that supplied them, and ordered sixteen of each, plus some spares. It was the first time in 39-some years I'd needed brightly colored bolts, and it may very well be that long again before I need any more.
So while this specialist bolt retailer is visible to motorcyle hobbyists and can compete for their repeat business with other specialists, they're also tapping into a market to whom they were entirely invisible until the net came along. Periodically, someone like me is going to drop in and spend some money on a one-off basis, and make windfall cash for them. There are a lot of people who, at some time in their lives, want to buy some specialized component or good. Before the Internet came along, we'd likely have just got the non-specialized equivalent. But because of the Internet, businesses all over the world are getting sales from the unlikeliest of corners. And what's more, some of those one-time only customers might discover that they actually really enjoy whatever the specialist thing is, and come back for more. It's win-win.
But the fastest way to alienate those customers and scare away that free money is to make its owner establish a relationship with you before s/he can make a purchase. In the case of the company that sold me my bolts, I was required to create a login and password, and I still get a fortnightly newsletter full of information I don't care to know about bolts (I checked all the opt-out bits, but either I missed one or they just don't pay attention to it).
Spool's research showed that a substantial portion of ecommerce users are even more sick of this stuff than I am -- $300 million/year's worth, in fact. And what's more, of the repeat customers who might have benefited from the faster checkout afforded by creating an account, 45 percent had multiple accounts in the system because they'd forgotten their logins, lost access to the email accounts they'd used, and signed up again with a new address.
Repeat customers weren't any happier. Except for a very few who remembered their login information, most stumbled on the form. They couldn't remember the email address or password they used. Remembering which email address they registered with was problematic - many had multiple email addresses or had changed them over the years.The $300 Million Button (via Beth Pratt)When a shopper couldn't remember the email address and password, they'd attempt at guessing what it could be multiple times. These guesses rarely succeeded. Some would eventually ask the site to send the password to their email address, which is a problem if you can't remember which email address you initially registered with.
(Later, we did an analysis of the retailer's database, only to discover 45% of all customers had multiple registrations in the system, some as many as 10. We also analyzed how many people requested passwords, to find out it reached about 160,000 per day. 75% of these people never tried to complete the purchase once requested.)
The form, intended to make shopping easier, turned out to only help a small percentage of the customers who encountered it. (Even many of those customers weren't helped, since it took just as much effort to update any incorrect information, such as changed addresses or new credit cards.) Instead, the form just prevented sales - a lot of sales.
How to Take a Gorgeous Photo Like This on a Perfect Summer Night [How To]
05
Aug
Why You’ll Only Have to Wait Half as Long for the Materials of the Future [Government]
05
Aug
What Will Be the Business Skills of the Future?
05
Aug
In a partnership with the University of Phoenix the Institute for the Future has produced a new report titled Future Work Skills 2020. You may be weary of the University of Phoenix, but I can vouch for the IFTF. However, I have mixed feelings about the report. It identifies the key driving factors changing the workplace, but the actual skills section leaves something to be desired.
This report is probably best for college students or mid-career workers thinking about making a change but haven't looked deeply into the matter yet.
Sponsor
Six drivers of change:
- Extreme longevity - Increasing global lifespans change the nature of careers and learning.
- Rise of smart machines and systems - Workplace automation nudges human workers out of rote, repetitive tasks.
- Computational world - Massive increases in sensors and processing power make the world a programmable system.
- New media ecology - New communication tools require new media literacies beyond text.
- Superstructured organizations - Social technologies drive new forms of production and value creation.
- Globally connected world - Increased global interconnectivity puts diversity and adaptability at the center of organizational operations.
Some of these are more obvious than others, and futurists have been talking about most of these issues for decades now. However, they are indeed some of the most important drivers of the workplace and both students and workers should be be thinking about how these trends will effect them.
I'm more disappointed with the skills the report highlights. As a result of these drivers, the report suggests the following as key skills in the future workforce:
- Sense-making - The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed.
- Social intelligence - Ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired intentions
- Novel and adaptive thinking - Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based.
- Cross-cultural competency - Ability to operate in different cultural settings.
- Computational thinking - Ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning.
- New-media literacy - Ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communications.
- Transdisciplinarity - Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.
- Design mindset - Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes.
- Cognitive load management - Ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques.
- Virtual collaboration - Ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team.
Almost all of these map well to established workplace terms, such as:
- Analytical thinking
- People skills
- Outside the box thinking
- Cultural sensitivity
- Quantitative reasoning
- Social media skills
- Polyglot
- Design thinking
- Personal productivity
Only that last one, virtual collaboration, seem genuinely new. However, I do think some of these skills, although not new, are becoming more important. In particularly the desire for people with multidisciplinary background, sometimes called "t-shaped," is increasing as technologies converge. For example, the job market is starting to demand programmers with design skills, designers with programming skills, IT operations staff with business knowledge and marketers with a strong knowledge of information technology skills. We also covered how data center workers need to train across disciplines thanks to virtualization and cloud technologies.
See also:our readers' take on what the workplace of the future will look like.
DiscussWhat Will Be the Business Skills of the Future?
05
Aug
In a partnership with the University of Phoenix the Institute for the Future has produced a new report titled Future Work Skills 2020. You may be weary of the University of Phoenix, but I can vouch for the IFTF. However, I have mixed feelings about the report. It identifies the key driving factors changing the workplace, but the actual skills section leaves something to be desired.
This report is probably best for college students or mid-career workers thinking about making a change but haven't looked deeply into the matter yet.
Sponsor
Six drivers of change:
- Extreme longevity - Increasing global lifespans change the nature of careers and learning.
- Rise of smart machines and systems - Workplace automation nudges human workers out of rote, repetitive tasks.
- Computational world - Massive increases in sensors and processing power make the world a programmable system.
- New media ecology - New communication tools require new media literacies beyond text.
- Superstructured organizations - Social technologies drive new forms of production and value creation.
- Globally connected world - Increased global interconnectivity puts diversity and adaptability at the center of organizational operations.
Some of these are more obvious than others, and futurists have been talking about most of these issues for decades now. However, they are indeed some of the most important drivers of the workplace and both students and workers should be be thinking about how these trends will effect them.
I'm more disappointed with the skills the report highlights. As a result of these drivers, the report suggests the following as key skills in the future workforce:
- Sense-making - The ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed.
- Social intelligence - Ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired intentions
- Novel and adaptive thinking - Proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based.
- Cross-cultural competency - Ability to operate in different cultural settings.
- Computational thinking - Ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning.
- New-media literacy - Ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communications.
- Transdisciplinarity - Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.
- Design mindset - Ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes.
- Cognitive load management - Ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques.
- Virtual collaboration - Ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team.
Almost all of these map well to established workplace terms, such as:
- Analytical thinking
- People skills
- Outside the box thinking
- Cultural sensitivity
- Quantitative reasoning
- Social media skills
- Polyglot
- Design thinking
- Personal productivity
Only that last one, virtual collaboration, seem genuinely new. However, I do think some of these skills, although not new, are becoming more important. In particularly the desire for people with multidisciplinary background, sometimes called "t-shaped," is increasing as technologies converge. For example, the job market is starting to demand programmers with design skills, designers with programming skills, IT operations staff with business knowledge and marketers with a strong knowledge of information technology skills. We also covered how data center workers need to train across disciplines thanks to virtualization and cloud technologies.
See also:our readers' take on what the workplace of the future will look like.
DiscussCosmos will hit the air once again!
05
Aug
Carl Sagan revolutionized popular astronomy with his book and TV show "Cosmos", which had an audience of hundreds of millions of people. We’ve learned a lot about our Universe since then, and we’re overdue for a modern version of Sagan’s show. So I’m pleased to find out that Neil Tyson will be hosting a revamped and updated version of "Cosmos"!
He’s working with Ann Druyan (Sagan’s widow and herself a science popularizer), Steve Soter (who also worked on the original show), and Seth MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy". I know, that may sound weird, but MacFarlane is a big science fan, a friend of Neil’s, and commonly puts a lot of science into his shows.
The new show is being created by National Geographic and Fox, and will air on the latter in prime time. To circumvent the expected comments on this, note that Fox News is separate from Fox TV, so the irony is there but perhaps not as strong as you might think.
I’m looking forward to this new show. "Cosmos" had a profound effect on hundreds of millions of people, but times have changed. I’ll be curious ...
Adventures in tea-party cognitive dissonance
05
Aug
THIS (gated, sorry) was the most amazing thing I read today. It's a couple of weeks old, but bear with me here. It comes from a post by Judson Phillips, the Tennessee lawyer who heads Tea Party Nation, a far-right pressure group, objecting to prospective defence cuts proposed by the administration, which he refers to as "the Party of Treason". Rather than downsizing from 11 to 9 carrier task forces, Mr Phillips says, we should be building even more aircraft carriers:
If we decided to build a couple of new carriers, thousands of workers would be hired for the shipyards.  Thousands of employees would be hired for the steel mills that would provide the steel for the hull and various sub contractors would hire thousands.  Do you know what that means?
It means they would receive paychecks and go out and spend that money.  That would help a recovery.  That is a shovel ready project!
Increasing spending for the military does a couple of things.  It not only not only stimulates the economy, it protects our nation.  That is a better investment than say spending money on teaching Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly.
Now, an aircraft carrier costs about $9 billion. The prospect of someone in the government trying to design a programme that could spend $9 billion teaching Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly fills me with limitless mirth and joy. I think to succeed in spending that kind of money, you'd basically have to stage the programme inside a brand-new purpose-built aircraft carrier.
But what's amazing here, obviously, is that Mr Phillips is justifying building aircraft carriers because government spending creates jobs and stimulates the economy. And he's right about that! But it seems that there are no other things the government spends money on, apart from defence, that Mr Phillips believes can stimulate the economy. He appears to believe that while government spending on aircraft carriers leads to workers getting hired, spending their paychecks, and helping the recovery, government spending on highways, high-speed rail, education, and health care does not. Meanwhile, Mr Phillips also believes, as he argued in a Washington Post op-ed last week, that the government shouldn't borrow any more money, because that's leading us to economic ruin, like Greece. And he believes that the government shouldn't raise taxes, because that kills jobs. So where is the money supposed to come from? We're left with one possibility: Mr Phillips believes that we should build more aircraft carriers to stimulate the economy, and fund it by cutting other government spending programmes. But obviously when you cut other government spending programmes, the people who were working for those programmes lose their jobs, stop receiving paychecks, and stop spending money, which harms the recovery. And then there's the question of how many $2.6m prostitute-safe-drinking programmes you can find to cut. You need 3,500 of them to fund your $9 billion aircraft carrier.
The tea-party movement has spent the past year arguing that stimulus doesn't work and cannot, by nature, create more jobs or economic activity. The idea that a major tea-party figure can turn around and make a bog-standard argument for defence spending on Keynesian grounds testifies to a startling capacity for cognitive dissonance. I'm impressed. And just to make it clear: I believe that it is absolutely worthwhile to explore whether Chinese prostitutes would be less likely to contract HIV if they learned some techniques and habits to avoid becoming drunk in encounters with clients, and I have every confidence that the money for the programme Mr Phillips attacks was awarded in a proper merit-based fashion.
Darth Vader Goes to Disneyland
05
Aug
To promote the newly-opened Star Tours at Disneyland, Darth Vader himself came to check it out. The problem? It wasn’t quiiiiite ready. What’s a Sith Lord to do? Explore the park, obviously.
You can also see lots of sweet extended cuts:
Darth at the Sword in the Stone
Darth watches a parade
Darth on the tea cups
Darth walks through Sleeping Beauty Castle
Darth at a dance party
Sobrino House by A4 Estudio
05
Aug
A4 Estudio designed the Sobrino House in Mendoza, Argentina.
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Facing a complex project where the house is also a workplace, we proposed an organized level where all the living uses and human relations are possible: relax, shelter, contemplation and work.
In a topographic operation, all the family activities converges in a common volume that lands on the highest level of the ground and rises 2.5 m from the lowest part. This operation proposes the entry to the house underneath all these activities, stripping at this point the natural slope. Square floor plan, perimeter activities program in relation to the best sunshine light and views, and the circulations related to a central patio that strips the natural slope of the site, structure an eccentric and dens spatiality, where the path ways became the heart of the house. At the top of the house, a system of inverted beams and concrete tensors hold the corbels, exposing the structure as part of the identity of the house.
In this way, a family life in an elevated and intimate plan that supports different uses and senses is possible.
Visit the A4 Estudio website – here.
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