A friend who coaches football once told me when players say they can’t do something, he repeats what they said and adds the word “yet”. It was something he’d learned studying neuro-linguistic programming. Say these two sentence out loud and see how you feel:

“I can’t do that.”

“I can’t do that yet.”

Over time, players were doing things they hadn’t been able to do previously. They’d internalized the idea that it was only a matter of time before they were capable.

While neuro-linguistic programming may not have full support in the scientific community, it is not the only practice that examines the links between language and the affect it has on people.  Semiotics is the study of signs; the relationships between and amongst signs, the meaning we denote from these signs and the affect it has on us. Words are signs. What is the meaning we derive from words?

While I don’t claim to fully understand semiotics, this much is clear from interacting with people: there’s the definition of a word (or many definitions), then there’s the “meaning” of a word. Each person assigns their own meaning to words based on their experience with it. The actual definition is only one part of that experience.

As a business analyst my job depends on my ability to understand the definition of words and how these definitions may vary in specialized professional contexts. Ask a developer, a librarian and a systems engineer what “interoperability” means and you’ll get three different “definitions”. My success depends on my ability to draw out not just the definition of words, but the “meaning” my clients and colleagues have assigned to these words. We can only move forward once we understand each other.

On a practical level, what I mean is this: I often find myself in the position where my job is to communicate a shared understanding (or draw attention to the lack of a share understanding) as a starting point for change.  So how important is it to understand the meaning of words? What is the impact of words and their assembly into sentences and paragraphs in the process of change?

The words we use matter. The way we place them in a sentence, the words we choose, even the words we think, influence those around us. Sometimes words betray our true thoughts and opinions, even to ourselves. A previous boss gave me the advice to avoid using “us vs. them” language when working with other teams in the organization. Simple advice, yet powerful in practice. Instead of “I’m doing this and you’re doing that”,  ”we” worked on things together.

A dear colleague with whom I worked closely provided  insight into my words. I had a habit of saying “Yes, but…” she told me.  ”The ‘but’ is cancelling out the ‘yes’. All I hear is that you disagree with me.” Whoa! The words I used had the opposite affect of how I intended them; time to change.

Speaking of time to change, a friend brought my attention to the book Heal Your Body by Louise L. Hay. Not yet through the first couple pages, I’m already nodding (my stiff, inflexible neck) to phrases like this:

“Our consistent thinking patterns create our experiences. Therefore, by changing our thinking patterns, we change our experiences.”

I’m going to try the exercise Hay recommends and write down anything I say more than three times this week. She says:

“The way to control your life is to control your choice of thoughts and words. No one thinks in your mind but you.”

I’d like 2012 to be a year of doing things I haven’t been able to do, yet. This is the start down a new path in my life’s journey using words to influence my own behaviour.  For someone who’s success depends on words to influence change, what better place to start than with myself?

Monica's tweet after a day spent at UXCampOttawa 2011. Would she really head into the office at 8pm on a Saturday? I didn't call to find out until Monday.

Monica: The whole day was great but the surprising part for me was the unconference session on getting buy-in for UX in government. Three themes emerged from the session. These were:

1. Get buy-in with stakeholders – You’ll need a senior manager to champion your cause if your department is not yet using a user-centred design process. 
2. Metrics – People like numbers, so tie UX back to improvement. That means you’ll need a system in place to measure and goals that define success.
3. Skunkworks – If you’re starting from the ground up, take on a small test yourself to show the results.  Test something that would be of interest to senior management.  Show the output and the measures. Do something small and prove that it works.

Monica: For us it was just the perfect storm of things – the right people; including a director who was open to suggestions and therefore became a strong proponent for intentional design within our department. Someone new had joined our group from a private sector organization where they’d had a strong process around UX so we built that into our unit. Applications are more complicated than websites because there’s more interactivity so we needed a clear process anyway.

The interaction designers were tasked with the additional responsibility of ensuring Common Look and Feel 2.0 compliance. They designed both usability and accessibility in together; they had to wear both hats.  The benefit of doing it this way is that you end up with higher compliance and usability than if you tried to introduce usability later or separately from accessibility or other requirements.

Monica: We were part of the application development shop. The interaction designers would get requirements from the clients and produce mock-ups to show how the front-end would look. Then they’d pass the mock-ups and requirements to the developers to build a back-end that would make it functional.  The interaction designers remain accountable for making sure the rules are followed on the final product.

You can have a design group that’s separate or integrated; I’ve worked in both scenarios. Personally I think integrated is better because you can build relationships because people get to know each other.

Monica: Start inside your own group. Add an interaction designer and usability person within your own team. Be patient – it takes time to get acceptance and respect within the rest of the organization. Design in accessability and usability at the same time.

UXCampOttawa 2011, an annual volunteer-organized event for User Experience practitioners, fell into the right space between my extremes. I noticed every detail. So did many others, who commented on the – branding, flow, way finding tools and the quality of the speakers. Yesterday, I got to hear it all.

The main auditorium at uOttawa, host of UXCampOttawa (photo by RichLoen)

I also got to see it all. I had a chance to take it all in and really noticed a lot of improvements from last year, as well as things I liked a lot more than some of the other events I’ve been to. Here’s why I thought it was great.

First of all, value to cost was very high. Heck, I drank $40 worth of coffee and that was before I sat down to listen to an inspiring, engaging and informative keynote by Dana Chisnell from Usability Works.

There were just the right mix of people I already know with people I haven’t met yet, many from Ottawa with a few venturing in from afar.

I saw some of the latest trends highlighted, shared my work and learned from other people’s experiences recent or past.

The branding looked gorgeous again this year. And the size & set-up was perfect. Logistics mostly ran smoothly, even though we got off to a late start.

UXCamp podium (photo by booklover_)

The marketing and communications were timely, informative and fun to read. Even the organizers were having fun.

Happy Halloween: Here comes UXCampOttawa (photo by @Corneliux)

Prizes: UX books from Rosenfeld Media arrive in the mail (photo by @Corneliux)

The swag was appropriate to the cost. Environmental degradation was low. Points for local food and compostable cups from Bridgehead. Everyone got a free online workshop courtesy of User Interface Engineering. And a few people won books or t-shirts.

Many unconference sessions looked interesting. It was difficult to choose one.

The Grid (photo by book lover_)

Of course, what I loved best was the community feel.

Community: we couldn't do it without everyone working together (photo by book lover_)

There sure were a lot of superhero powers in that room. I’ll leave you with the question from keynote speaker @danachis –What are we going to do with that?

Campers pondering what to do next in front of the Grid (photo by RichLoen)

Being part of the planning committee last year was so much fun. My respect for my committee colleagues  grew as we came together to organize a community-led event that sold out in less than a week! At the end of that day last November, I was pooped but proud. Proud that a dozen or so people from various sectors, with different goals for the day, put on this successful event on a tiny budget using what little time is left after work, family and all our other commitments had been met.

I hope to see you on November 5th at Ottawa U for another great day talking User Experience with old and new alike. Register now before it sells out again.

]]> http://usability4government.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/uxcampottawa-here-i-come/feed/ 0 Laura UXCampOttawa2011 Logo http://usability4government.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/setting-myself-up-for-failure/ http://usability4government.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/setting-myself-up-for-failure/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:50:46 +0000 Laura http://usability4government.wordpress.com/?p=1493 Continue reading →]]>

It’s hard to talk about failure. I mean – what is failure anyway? I find it very difficult to categorize any experience as a failure. In each “failure” there are tiny successes – a relationship made stronger, a realization, a hard earned lesson. Likewise, in every success there are many smaller failures - harsh words unnecessarily spoken, time or effort wasted.

Being on vacation these last few days, I’ve had time to reflect on my summer, my work, my life. And I’ve been thinking — is it a success? How do I define success?

I’ve come to the conclusion that a successful life is one that is full of failures. Many failures means limits were pushed, lessons were learned (hopefully) and opportunities were taken.

I don’t believe I’ve had enough failure in my life. I have regrets – which can generally be summed up as times that I hurt someone (usually unintentionally…but still…). What I don’t have is a lot of evidence that I have seen a challenge, tried my damnedest, and fallen short. Which lead me to think that maybe I have a tendency to only take on challenges when I know I can succeed. I haven’t yet given myself permission to fail. My ego is getting in the way. I’m too afraid of being embarrassed or what people may say about me to really achieve A-N-Y-thing.

So, that’s my mindset heading back to the office. I am not going to let my beliefs limit my experiences. I am going to strive for bigger and better things. Not only will I give myself permission to fail – I will see doing so as evidence of success. Evidence of a life lived on the edge of my own capabilities. One in which I strive for more than what I know I can do already.

Implementing the toolkit will put you ahead of the curve in three ways – one, everything in the toolkit is compliant to the Web Content and Accessibility Guidelines 2.0  developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  Secondly, you’ll be able to continuously add features to your Web site by implementing the code packages; no need to design and test from scratch.  Finally, the visual design is independent of the code, so, non-government sites can still use the Toolkit and have their site look however they want.  A specific “theme” will be available for government sites to maintain the government-wide common look and feel.

Implementing the Web Experience Toolkit allows you to take advantage of features and plug-ins that have been through a rigourous Quality Assurance process that includes testing and review by accessibility and usability experts.

You can contribute a new sub-project (feature, theme, plug-in or variant) to the Web Experience Toolkit or improve one that’s already there. Every six months updated and new projects are released; first into beta, then into production on the next release.

What are you waiting for? Get WET today.

Why am I doing this? Well, first of all, I had not yet taken this new job that has me working non-stop to get something out the door on a very condensed timeline. When I said yes, I was only thinking about how badly I wanted to get rid of the stack of materials I’ve been saving in a folder on my desk in my home office for at least a year. Maybe that sounds a bit trite; but it’s just one way to motivate myself to pay attention to what’s important, not just urgent.

I’ll be presenting a condensed package of what I’ve learned about measuring and reporting on websites from three federal departments in which I worked. It’s not only about measuring techniques and tools like usability and web analytics, I’m also going to talk about applying results-based management principles through the development of logic models and indicators. Depending on how many people are there from the federal government, I may also talk about reporting mechanisms like the Management Accountability Framework and Departmental Performance Reports. I will definitely have re-usable templates and examples. If this sounds riveting to you (and I know that won’t be true for all of you), consider coming to the training. It’s open to anyone.

Since I am participating in the seminar, you can save $400 by mentioning my name or special code “SPK.” If there’s a lot of interest from my federal colleagues, perhaps I could do an internal talk later in the year. Let me know if you’re interested but can’t make it to the training.

My session is called “Measuring The Performance Of Your Online Services To Better Deliver Your Organization’s Programs And Services” (Crap, did I write that? Don’t let the long title discourage you, it won’t be that boring.)

Get more information or register on the ALI Conferences website.

…(we need to) isolate the need from the solution so the solution can be developed such that all needs are balanced with one another. But because people have so much trouble articulating their needs, it’s hard to identify them all without giving them something to react to.

The author says one danger of providing designs to react to is that people may get attached to it. This is probably true, the other challenges I’ve had using this approach include:

• A tendency to focus on details rather than overall concepts before it’s time to do so (colours, labels, font, placeholder content)
• Receiving demands that don’t fit within a User-Centered Design methodology (“I want it like this; do it that way because I am in charge.”)
• The rumour mill churning based on implications of the draft design.

Even with these challenges, this is my preferred approach to managing web projects (I’ve tried others and failed or had limited success). It helps clarify assumptions and facilitates getting approvals because everyone has a chance to ensure their requirements are met on the way to the final product.

Throughout the consultations on our design project, the project team has maintained ownership of proposing the design solutions, even if it meant going back to the drawing board 2 or 3 times. We’re also including users in the process; now into our second round of user testing, there are at least three more to go to drill deeper into specific tasks.

Another article in the Harvard Business Review about discovery-driven project management also came my way at just the right moment. It was just as I was starting to work on this project. I had a vision for how it could unfold, but I had no idea what would actually happen.

Discovery Driven Planning is an approach to planning high-uncertainty initiatives that accepts the idea that many decisions must be made on the basis of assumptions. The core idea is to plan to the limits of your knowledge, then re-plan when you reach a critical checkpoint. -Rita McGrath

I’ve sometimes been accused of keeping project plans in my head; now here’s the big reveal – when I start a new project, I don’t have it all figured out. I don’t know all the answers. I don’t know what skills will be required from the project members throughout the entire life cycle of the project. I don’t know all the tasks that will be required. I don’t know who exactly is going to do what. All of these factors depend on so many things!

Instead, I set out with a goal to solve a complex problem with solutions that work for everyone – stakeholders, users, business owners. When things get hairy I re-focus on the goal and try to visualize how all the other factors align to it.

I prefer to think of projects as systems in which many moving parts are related. That’s probably why I enjoy mind mapping- the visual seems to reflect my thoughts more logically then a linear project plan, regardless of how many dependencies are mapped. It helps me figure out ways to communicate differently to each person. In a discovery driven approach, I can call on the right person at the right time with a specific task. It’s this “if, than, that…” approach to project management that has allowed me to stay nimble yet proactive in the face of a lot of uncertainty.

As an introvert, spending a lot of my day talking to people is tiring but crucial to increasing everyone’s comfort level.  Spending an hour with someone explaining the context and eco-system of a project helps them move into a space where they can apply their creativity and intelligence to the piece of the problem they’re solving. The end result when people have context and the freedom to explore concepts is always better than what I could have come up with on my own. I’ve been delighted over and over by the artefacts, solutions and products that team members come up with in cases where my only contribution was setting the boundaries and describing the goal.

I guess the trick is getting people to have confidence in me, the project, and the ability to reach our shared goals.  Things can sometimes seem scary along the way, especially to people outside of the process who have a large stake in it. Most of the time it looks like chaos; project plans evolve over time instead of staying static.  Roadblocks and opportunities become apparent only as they come into view. Solutions present themselves in the nick of time, and never quite in the way you would have imagined beforehand.

In the end, I hope the results will speak for themselves. Although realistically, I know I will have to defend every decision taken, both on the project, and on the design. For this reason I haven’t abandoned tradititonal project management practices. I still have to protect against scope creep; meticulously balance the ideal against the practical; and produce change logs and traceability reports.

If I take a step back and look at how different this is from a typical large IT project of any kind, much less in Government, I can see that it’s breaking the traditional model. This is not a project with tons of employees on staff for long periods of time with defined roles, a large budget and a pre-determined project plan.  There are currently about 100 people working from a variety of places across the country. Some of them have spent nearly as much time as I have and others have popped in and out as required. Regardless, their energy and effort has contributed to whatever success we’ve achieved.  I’ll soon be able to reveal the results and let you be the judge.

Here’s a quick list of things this Community has (mostly) done, and you can too, to move  ideas forward together.

1. Document what you’ve got. Start a topic page on GCPEDIA (or whatever space makes sense for you) and have everyone upload their resources – blog posts about the topic, experts to follow on Twitter, documents you’ve created, presentations you’ve done on the topic…everything. You can sort it out into logical grouping after you see what you’ve got.

2. Start a group page on whatever forum is right for your group and allow interested folks to sign-up. Connecting with people you already know is a great start, but you don’t want it to become insular and exclusive. Keep it as transparent as possible. If you’re using GCPEDIA, link your group page and topic page together. Add metadata, category types or other features that will help people find your info when they need it.

3. Have your conversations in your online space instead of by email so newcomers to the topic can learn what you already know and see if it’s of interest / worth their time to join. This also helps avoid repeating old issues when new people join.

4. Rather than complaining, identify the problems common to group members and brainstorm whether there are things that you can do to help solve them. If so, create an Action Plan (if you want to formalize) or allow people to self-organize into smaller groups for real change.

5. Identify the authoritative group/policy/person on your issue. Is it someone’s job or another organizations’ mandate to work on this issue? Offer your time to help work with them. Don’t avoid them, challenge them or go head-to-head if at all avoidable. An ‘us vs. them’ mentality rarely results in problems being solved.

There are lots of great resources on Communities of Practice. Two of my favorite books are linked below.

Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage by Hubert Saint-Onge & Debra Wallace

Cultivating Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, the godfather of CoPs, and Richard Arnold McDermott & William Snyder

…You can also view the video on vimeo. The format was originally delivered in an Ignite style – which is really challenging. I can’t even force myself to admit how long I spent working on this. Overall it was a great experience though.