Tumbls from Casey

As the CHI deadline is approaching, I'm doing alot of #selfiestation analysis, which I'm calling #faceresearch. My first finding (that sadly won't make it into the CHI paper):

I saw the most *amazing* tweet from Mashable today!!! It read (there has to be a better way for me to include a tweet here??):

World's politest protest slams Pinterest for using 'dirty' Amazon http://on.mash.to/1nhRGt4

Seriously. Read the article. You know I've been on this (ridiculous?) polite-ness kick lately. :) A polite *protest* that involves CUPCAKES?!?! Are you kidding me?! This is the best thing in the world. Please please please let us start resolving all world conflicts with politely inflicting desserts (with a message) upon people!!!

Maybe I need to join this Greenpeace thing... I like how they go about making shit happen. ;)

Link to mashable's tweet: for immediate RT-ing / favorite-ing!!! 

Given that my last tumbl was a 3-part one about how to make the idea-world a more polite place (like Canada!!!), I've been thinking alot about politeness lately. ;)

So when I saw this one twitter, it struck me as clever design with politeness built-in! I'm so impressed!!

[Part 3 of 3]

[Go back to Part 2: Idea-Etiquette Tips For the Idea-Giver]

[Or back to Part 1: Thoughts on Etiquette around Idea Giving/Pitching & Receiving]

I'm not an expert idea-receiver, by any means. Again, probably the only ones who have lots of on-the-job training in this area are VC's and executives. Maybe we should get some of them to help by contributing their own etiquette tips! In the meantime, here's some simple things that I've found can help. It also can generally help to remember that the idea-giver is a human being, you should try to add goodness to the world, and that the idea is literally the idea-giver's baby. :)

1.What does the idea-giver seem to want from me? And am I in an "open" enough mindset to be receiving ideas right now? Nobody said all the idea-givers follow any idea-giving etiquette either (sigh). So they may not tell you what they're hoping to get from you. But, generally they're sending out enough signals where you can figure this out. You could also just ask... It really can't be underestimated how helpful it is just knowing what the person wants. For example, they may just need you to be an idea-cheerleader today. You should also be mindful of your idea-receiving mindset right now - and whether you may not be open to giving this person what they need. As an engineer, I can't tell you how many times I've had people start burbling feature after feature at me, that I should add to whatever project I was on at the time. And, for an engineer who is currently heads-down-fixing-XYZ-bug, this is pure and total hell. We'd probably rather die to escape your idea at that point. Maybe I should have just told the person that I couldn't handle receiving ideas at that particular moment? That I would get back to them when I was in a more open, receiving mindset? I can tell you it has been fabulous receiving ideas for a project that is currently in a good state. I'm gonna try to more actively put this one into action - I'll let you know how it goes.

2.How much would I personally be willing to invest in this idea? Nothing at all is a perfectly fine answer, hehe. But think about it. The person may be asking for money or your time, and I know, you think you're so busy or poor, you don't have any to give. But maybe you're willing to invest just a tiny bit to get them connected to the next person? Maybe not, that's ok. There's only 24 hours in a day & only so much money in the world. However, I have found that these things tend to magically appear out of thin air, where they didn't otherwise exist beforehand, if you are presented with something you're personally willing to invest in, so keep that in mind. :) Also keep in mind that *refining* or *adding to* their idea is a kind of investment (of your time / effort). It may start to happen so quickly that you skip ahead, but I encourage you to be patient and read #3 first, which aims at helping you be polite in this situation.

3.What feedback should I give to the idea-giver? You know your answer to the last question? Great. Now, be careful! Don't say that shit outloud without thinking it thru first! This is probably how we lose friends and make enemies. I think your feedback should fall into the broad categories of "will support" or "will not support [at this time]," rather than "positive" or "negative." I suggest that because, again, remember that this idea is the idea-givers baby? I think it is socially acceptable to say you're not gonna put somebody's kid thru college, but, calling him ugly? Not so much... I would recommend politely stating whatever your answer to #2 was. If your answer to #2 fell into the "will support" category, is this consistent with the kind of support the idea-giver was asking for, according to your assessment of #1? If it isn't, I'm pretty sure you should get some kind of handshake from the idea-giver that you giving this type of support is ok before rushing forward with the details of that support, etc. I figure this is especially important in the case where you want to build upon their idea / refine it / turn it into your own awesome baby. If the giver wasn't open to that and you start doing it, things are probably going to go badly. :\ But, if they accept your new offer, or if you agreed to their original offer: yay-you-guys! You have a successful idea-marriage! If they didn't accept your new offer, or if you decided that you were going to go with the "will not support" version, I think you guys should both just agree to peacefully let it go. That you'll *just be friends* rather than prolong this *idea-date* and force the relationship to work. I say this because I've seen it *so-obviously-bad* from both angles: idea-givers who are chasing a particular idea-receiver like a sad puppy even though the idea-receiver is so *obviously* uninterested (in giving funding, time, support, etc), and from idea-receivers who blindly push unwelcome support back on an idea-giver that doesn't want it (i.e. "I heard your idea - here's 50 ways to change it!!!!!!"). And, then, there's ugly divorces... Like I said above, an idea-receiver needs to be *particularly* careful about not giving negative criticism in the case of a "not support" decision. Well, they don't have to, but it will probably end badly if they do. You attack an idea-giver's baby? They will most likely *cut you*, dude! And then hate you afterwards too. One form of criticism that you should be mindful about, because I think not everybody thinks this thru completely, is any criticism that you (Person X) are about to give that starts like "I like it, but (Person Y) won't..." I'm totally guilty of doing this myself in the past. :( And I didn't realize how much I sucked for it until now. Did I need to be the one who said that? Why couldn't I *just* say "I like it!"? Why didn't I let Person Y speak for themself?!?!?! There is one and only one example I can think of where I would make the same decision in terms of saying something that started like this. It was an instance where I thought the idea-giver would be embarassed by / get in trouble when Person Y saw it. In that case, I think a more reasonable set of steps would have been to 1.make sure I was alone with the idea-giver 2.make sure to express that concern for their embarrassment / punishment in a factual, non-emotional way and 3.soften this with general praise for what I did love about their beautiful baby (and offer icecream or something too).

[Part 2 of 3]

[Go back to Part 1: Thoughts on Etiquette around Idea Giving/Pitching & Receiving]

All the onus is on you, baby! You'll notice that I'm suggesting many more tips around idea-etiquette for the idea-giver than an idea-receiver! But, it is *your* idea, after all.

On *Having* an idea: seriously, that's great! congratulations! I'm proud of you! Having an idea feels really good. Atleast, I hope it felt good. Because you need to have more. Many more. I've read research that the higher the raw volume of ideas that you have, the higher the percentage of good ideas is. Makes sense to me! You probably get better at unconsciously understanding what a "promising" idea (let's refrain from "good" & "bad") looks like - one most likely to succeed in this harsh world - and start generating more of them. So, go at it, generate more ideas. Trust me, this will also be the critical factor to you remaining happy in the ideation process. If you have more than one idea, you are less likely to be so personally invested in any single idea that you are mortally wounded the moment someone bashes one of your prized ideas. Of course, we all have our favorite children though. ;)

On *Sharing* an idea: ok, you've had tons of babies, given the advice above. Now you believe it is time to send one of them out into the world. I propose asking yourself some questions:

1. How personally invested am I in this idea? Would I be willing to stay up for days straight working non-stop to make it happen? Or do I just think it is a good one and would like to see it happen somehow, even if not done by me? I think this is important for you to consciously think about beforehand. Because when you share an idea, people are going to pick up on various signals about how invested in your own idea you are - whether you've thought about it or not. Also, it is important to understand whether you are interested in being personally involved in the idea as it comes to fruition. If you aren't - and that's fine (i.e. you're suggesting Starbucks add a new drink to the menu or something) - you need to understand that you're going to have to limit how disappointed you are legally allowed to be if nothing ends up happening with the idea. It is just life. Also, "credit" may eventually be associated with something. 99% of the time, this is associated with the result of an idea coming to fruition, not the idea itself. There are some pithy quotes about this and about how much effort each of these things takes, hehe. So, it is fine if you don't want to be part of the fruition-part of the idea, but, again, you'll need to limit your expectations about "credit" then.

2. Am I sure this is the right time to share the idea? Have I really done all that I could/should for my baby to give it the best chance to survive in the world? I've found that there are times you may need to sit on an idea for a while longer (heh, like an egg, heh!), give it more time to develop in your own brain. And then there are other times you have a violent, guttural urge to get it out there *NOW*. So both situations are fine. But it is important to know you've done all you can for it in that moment when you're sharing it. I gotta tell you, idea-receivers are not always polite (hence me begging for reform around the etiquette in this area!). They are 99% likely not to care about the idea as much as you do. And, they're probably not as visionary about it as you are either (again, they probably don't care as much as you do, so don't want to put in the effort to envision where it could go). From what I can tell, very few idea-receivers will have any idea what to do upon receiving a pure "idea." I think probably only VC's and executives have trained their ability for this, but I've also found there are some moments when idea-receivers are just in a particularly "open" mind-frame and willing to receive your idea (good luck finding these!). Most times, the general idea-receiving community is gonna need more than that. Give them something physical that they can't ignore, something they can see or feel or play with. For example, I'm pretty certain if I had told more than a small handful of close friends that I was building the #selfiestation, people would have said it was a *terrible* waste of time. But there is something that is very hard to ignore once you get caught up in the act of seeing people sharing their faces & start sharing your own. Now, I understand you're busy. You may not have the time to "realize" your idea in some form. Or you just may not be that personally invested in it (see above). But, again, it is important to know that ahead of sharing, because then you can limit your disappointment if it doesn't end up succeeding. Also, you should be mindful about whether now is the right time to share your idea with any particular idea-receiver! This could be as simple as asking "are you busy?" and waiting for an answer before jumping to "I have an idea for you to hear!"

3. What am I hoping for by telling this particular person about this particular idea? Figuring out what you expect / want from the other person saves a lot of time in the ideation-process. For example, if you just need some positive encouragement from a friend to ramp up your own enthusiasm so you'll be able to continue working on it in your basement (which you'll do either way), that is very very different from hoping that they'll give you money to work on it, which is very very different from hoping THEY'LL work on it. Because, however busy you think you are, they think they are *way* busier. So this is the hardest outcome of all to achieve. Knowing *that* going in will limit your disappointment if you fail. Also, if you know what you want, you can also tell them this before sharing or give them that feedback if the sharing session doesn't seem to be going in the direction that you want it to be going in (ex: they start trying to change the subject and tell you their amazing ideas instead). Also know if one of the things you're *not* looking for from this person is feedback / improvements on the original idea. That will enable you to shut that shit down as soon as it starts happening, if you don't want it to! :) Though, you *may* consider being open to it and/or exploring why you wouldn't be.

4. How can I make this idea more personally appealing for this particular person? How can I make them feel that they co-own the idea with me - i.e. it is now their baby too? This is pretty tricky. I'm still exploring this. But I think what I'm finding is that if you can't come up with *something*, you may have picked the wrong person to tell. Luckily, you still have the option of picking a different person to share with!

5. What's my fallback plan for when this sharing-shit doesn't work? :p It is pretty likely some shit is going to go downnnnnn in your sharing-session. Probably because the idea-receiver isn't following any kind of idea-receiving etiquette (whether from here or otherwise)... So what's the new plan, Stan? If you still believe you made the right decision to share (given the answers to all of the above), just pick a different person! Although, I'm starting to find this blogging thing useful in that it frees you up from putting too much on sharing with one particular person. But it is in no way a replacement to me reaching out to individuals through other means. Be ready to invoke this plan if the receiver doesn't support your idea (hopefully they do that following some general etiquette, such as below, but you can't be sure of it). Also be ready to invoke this plan if the receiver doesn't indicate, in some reasonable amount of time, whether he / she will support the idea. Though it is probably best not to start a countdown or share that ticking clock with the receiver if you do. ;)

[Part 1 of 3]

With the wild ride around the #selfiestation (both how it came to exist & how it evolved), I've been eyeball-deep in the "ideation"-process lately. :) I've noticed some things that worked well & some that didn't, both from the angle of someone receiving ideas about my newly-created "baby" from others & from the angle of someone giving/pitching an idea to others. I thought I'd share some of those. I'm not saying they're the end-all be-all list for "idea etiquette" or even that you should use them - though I am going to be making a conscious effort to use my own tips going forward. I'm also sure I'll need to make changes to the list as time goes on. Or smart people like you will add suggestions for additional etiquette. I'm also breaking this up into 3 posts to make it more digestible (aka I couldn't get the whole package down to a reasonable size...). First, here's some general ideas about the ideation-process & idea-etiquette:

I believe there are two groups of people in the ideation process: idea givers/pitchers and idea receivers. At some moment in time, the idea giver has been magically imbued with a great thought from the idea-giving gods. Due to some reason (I'll go over a couple examples in the tips for idea-givers), at another moment in time, the idea-giver shares this idea with an idea-receiver.

Sometimes this process happens in something called a "brainstorm," with 2 or more people present. Personally, I believe that is a very specialized situation in which the ideation process occurs. I actually *love* running brainstorms - I ordered (& read, mostly) a bunch of books on ideation & brainstorming, especially from Ideo, back in the early days of my IBM career (yay to IBM for buying books for me!). If you put me in a room with people for an hour, I'm willing to bet $20 that I can *drag* a couple dozen ideas out of them. Likely, you will also hate me during that process... I tend to run brainstorms like an over-zealous dictator. :) But I do it out of love. Because I've seen sooooo many people brainstorm and then leave the process completely unsatisfied with the results or feeling frustrated or having to put in massive amounts of work afterwards to organize the chaos that came out of that brainstorm. So, needless to say, I believe brainstorms are a kind of very constrained, almost artificial environment, in which the ideation process takes place. For the idea-etiquette I'm proposing, I'm thinking about the *real world*. Where some guy in a basement has an idea, makes a startup, and gets VC funding or gets bought by Google. Or, an IBMer has an idea and works to get it adopted inside the company. Etc etc etc.

The etiquette I'm proposing may seem really long and/or complicated, but it is all just common sense. I've made tons of mistakes in various instances of the ideation-process I've participated in. I've probably offended some and made enemies of others. And occasionally I've been part of ideation-sessions that were simple and perfect and even beautiful. So that got me thinking about it like an etiquette lesson that idea-givers & idea-receives alike may need to learn. Remember, "please" and "thank you" seems like this overly complicated thing until someone teaches you (a Canadian at work claims some adult Americans still haven't learned this lesson, hehe), and then it just becomes habit. And if we all start adopting *some* idea-etiquette, maybe all idea-transactions will become happy things, even if they don't all get committed (heh, database joke!). Then the whole idea-world could be more like the polite & happy place that I imagine Canada to be! Remember, this is just my list. And I hope you'll be inspired by it - whether to try to follow these tips or to create your own set of etiquette around the ideation-process or even just to be more mindful if you find yourself in an idea-situation!

I built a #selfiestation a couple weeks ago and deployed it in our IBM Research lab in Cambridge, MA.

*Ridiculously simple* concept: a kiosk setup that helps people do what they already want to do / are doing with their cellphones: take pictures of themselves (aka a selfie).

Turns out, I learned a ton about how to develop for kiosk setups ( have new-found respect for artists who have no choice but to carry onward & work with the current state of kiosk technology for their installations)! But, more importantly, I learned that simple pictures of human faces are POWERFUL things. :) I guess as an HCI researcher, I knew there was value - like in the UI pattern around including the avatar of the content-creator next to the content he/she's creating. But I was vastly underestimating the power of these little guys...The #selfiestation set up in Cambridge has gotten an *incredible* amount of traffic & total selfies taken!  And so much more has happened!! But, this is all I can publicly say for now - IBMers can see my internal blog for more (that was cruel to the rest of you, I know, I'm sorry. :) ). 

My first tumbl was going to be about the #selfiestation. But, it turns out, I was completely *delighted* by the tumblr signup process and thought, instead, I would first take the time to recognize that amazing-ness. :) (yay to whatever dude coded that up!)

The signup process was quick & painless, which I give them credit for. As an HCI researcher, I even understood why they were forcing me to follow 3 other users before I could proceed to the next step (though as a user I searched around for a "next" button hidden at the bottom of the page. But none of these things made the UX around signup really *delightful*, that's a pretty tall order by itself.

However, when I got to the last part (where they ask your age), I did my typical thing of typing in '60.' That's my standard I-object-to-this-question answer. I know they are probably doing this with *good* intentions, under-age teens and all that. But I get a bit peeved when sites ask for more than just a checkbox to certify you aren't underage (a la when I tried to find a recipe using Malibu rum). 

Turns out, the most miraculous thing happened when I typed in '60.' The text changed to '60 years young.' I immediately was like OMG - THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE OLD PEOPLE FEEL GOOD! THAT'S SO CUTE! So I started playing! '50 years young' '40 years young' '30 years young' '20 years old.' Hmmm! They also are trying to understand the psychology of 20-yr-olds! Fascinating!  Through testing, it turns out they believe what you want to hear changes with the big 3-0. :)

I will leave it unsaid whether or not I'm scared by them believing that *I* might have a nagging feeling like my best years were behind me when I hit 30... After all, I still have 3.5 good years left to do enough to earn a place as a Tech Review Top 35 Innovator under 35!!! If I miss that, then I'm officially allowed to start getting depressed about the limits of age on my life! Not before.