Send This To Every Web Developer You Know! Now!

I ran across this amazing usability study of how “inline validation” helps visitors complete your web forms more easily and with a better experience from Luke Wroblewski at “A List Apart”.
(For those of you among the non-technical, it just means that as you type in your answer the software gives you feedback on whether or not it can accept that answer, or you have to say something else — rather than waiting until you answer all 25 questions and hit “submit” at the bottom.)
I’ve long railed at my developers to do this, and they keep whining about how hard it is and that they don’t want to do it.  Now I’ve got the ammunition.  Ha!
validation

How Long A Towel Do You Give Your Customers?

We were driving on the freeway yesterday, and had to make a pit stop.  After I filled up the gas tank, I headed inside to do my business — and of course stopped to wash my hands.  Don’t want to get any Pig Flu, ya know.  When clean, I turned to find a paper towel and this is what I saw.
It was one of those “automatic dispensers” that you wave your hand in front of, and a little light comes on and it gives towelsyou the length of towel that the store owner thinks is appropriate to completely dry your hands.  In most cases, I get just about enough for two fingers.  I wave my hand again, but nothing more comes out until I tear the little strip off and wait for five seconds.
Then another little strip arrives.  And another.  I eventually have three tiny little towels, and end up with damp hands.
Now one way to look at this is that the store owner is trying to save our environment, one roll of cheap towels at a time.  Another is that he thinks that most folks will give up, and exit without using much in the way of towels.  That probably saves him a buck or two a day, I suppose.
But this dispenser was different!  I actually got a meaningful length of towel, and my hands were dry when I was done.
It got me thinking about how we treat our customers (or your learners) in our interactions — and how long a “towel” we provide for them in each interaction. And the feelings that are engendered in the process.
Do you strive to cut out every possible extra in the process, and just provide the bare bones?  Are you charging extra for shipping, handling, talking to a real person?  Do your customers find that once they’ve agreed to purchase that they’ve just begun to pay — and find an ever-growing list of additional charges?
Airlines, car rental and hotel companies are becoming experts at this.  A $250 airplane ticket will cost me about $350 – $400 by the time I pay taxes, luggage charges, for in-flight food, and some air to breathe.  Rental cars see things like gasoline, insurance, GPS, and racks as extra.  Not to mention chains in Denver.
And hotels?  Don’t get me started!  Want wi-fi?  Peanuts? A robe?
Yes, I know that your competitors are offering a lower price, because they cut off all the extras — but I wonder if you might just tell your customers that you’re not going to sell them something they can’t really use.  Rather than doling out tiny little strips of towels.

It's A Shame To Waste A Good Solution — Let's Fix Education, Too!

With all this talk about fixing healthcare, I’m convinced that if we’ve got a good solution it’s a shame to waste it on just one problem.  So I propose that we take the ideas and apply them to fixing education as well.  Here’s my plan:
schoolREQUIRE EVERYONE TO BE EDUCATED
Many people have chosen not to participate in education, or (if they participate) not to succeed.  Education is a responsibility, not a right — so I propose that we levy a fine of $2500 per year on everyone who doesn’t graduate from High School.  Doesn’t matter what their reasons are, the government knows best.  We don’t want these uneducated people turning up at the Reference Desks of our Public Libraries when they need information, do we?
GREEDY HIGHER EDUCATION COMPANIES
I propose that we immediately limit the salary of tenured faculty at Harvard, MIT and Yale to no more than $50,000 per year.  The knowledge they are imparting can be found in any textbook, and (in most cases) the students aren’t really learning it anyway.  Tests with “placebo knowledge” at the University Of Phoenix Online have shown that an advanced degree of any kind is pretty much accepted nowadays.  And don’t get me started on those greedy TextBook monopolists — just rearranging common words in the English language and then selling the results for cash!
OFFERING A PUBLIC OPTION
Yes, private education works well — the Catholics have been doing it for years, along with many others.  But I think we need to have a government-run option for education, because it would work better and cost less.  (What’s that?  We’ve tried it already?  And it sucks?)  Well, maybe we should appoint a panel of people who’ve never taught to come up with an answer, then.
LEARNING DEATH PANELS
At some point, we need to face the painful truth that there are learners who are unable to learn anything more.  We keep lecturing them over, and over, and over — but they just don’t get it.  Our PowerPoint slides get more and more detailed, our e-learning has larger and larger “next” buttons, and our ropes courses are hung from the largest trees we can find.  I propose that anyone in the “bottom 25%” of an assessment (like Einstein, Lincoln, and Edison) should be barred from any further access to learning so the resources can be better used on making more lectures.
INCREASED MONEY FOR EDUCATION
Right now, there are some states that don’t even spend 50% of their budget on education!  Hard to believe, isn’t it?  So I propose an immediate Federal Mandate that all states raise the total percentage of their budget to 200%, which would mean a big increase in money for schools.  (At least I think it would.  I didn’t do too well in math.)  If that doesn’t work, we’ll increase it to 400%.
EXCLUSIONS FOR PRE-EXISTING LEARNING
We’ve simply got to find a way to help people who’ve already learned something (like brain surgery or jet piloting) at home, and don’t want to take the time to attend school.  I propose that if you can correctly spell three of the terms used in the discipline, and can point to a picture of the uniform that you would wear — we give you a “trial” certification to go ahead and give it a shot.  Much like in our government, it isn’t really important if you’ve actually DONE something before we put you in charge of it, right?
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If you agree with my plan, just go to the site below to sign on to my petition and we’ll get started:
www.CantTellThisIsAParody.com

Letter To My Soon-To-Be-Ex Client: "It's Not You, It's Me"

I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.  A losing cause.  Or a sinking ship.  And sometimes that ends up getting me in trouble.
A few months ago, you called me asking if I knew anyone who could teach some in-person classes for your Nameless State Economic Agency.  You said you were skilling people up to get good jobs in a tech support environment, something I know a little bit about.  You said you had someone who was going to develop all the curriculum, and it was nearly complete.  And all you needed was someone to stand there and talk.
itsnotyou“How about me?”  You laughed, nervously, and said you probably couldn’t afford me.  (You were right.  Your rate was about 1/3 of what I would have quoted.)  But things have been slow, and it was only a tw0-week commitment, and sounded easy-squeesy.  Plus, I LOVE teaching in the classroom and hadn’t had the chance to do any ILT in years.
Fast-forward to three days before the first class.  Still no learning objectives, only a few disjointed PowerPoint slides, no test questions at all.  Ooopsie!
I sucked it up and made it work.  I built a wiki (paid for it myself) on my own time.  I built a “chat” function on my personal site.  I helped your SME write meaningful test questions. I found an amazing technical resource on LinkedIn and got her to do a video chat with your class.  I made up troubleshooting demos and role-play scenarios on the fly.  I pretty much taught my ass off for two weeks.
Of the 50 people in your class, 45 got hired.  (The other five I rated “Do Not Hire”.) The instructor reviews were mostly “walked on water, rarely gets feet wet”.  The representatives of the client that sat in were writing things like “incredible instructor” on their little note pads.
(I did get dinged by a couple of students for cursing.  You try moving from the West Coast to the Bible Belt and see what happens to you.)
In my postmortem review, I told you that if you could come up with a little money I’d be glad to re-design the course for you, based on what I saw.  I quoted 40 hours at your tiny rate — far less time than it would really take, but I know you are a very low-budget group.  And I wanted you to succeed in the future, with the next 600 trainees.  Whether I taught or not.
We had that “client” meeting in the big conference room, with a tiny TV screen where nobody could see my slides.  You said they loved the facilitative model I used, and didn’t want a bunch of  PPT slides with a brain dump of facts to memorize.  The students demanded more troubleshooting training, more role playing, more interaction.
I carefully outlined the course — including role-plays, scenarios, a class wiki, a “chat” discussion group, and lots of discussion and group building of knowledge.  Then I walked you through it over the phone and online, step-by-step, explaining each and every activity.  You approved it.
Off I went.  I designed a thing of beauty.  Twenty-four perfect modules, carefully connected to build technical skills rather than rote memorization.  Limited PowerPoint slides. Lots of “have the students use the scenario in their small group, and report back” type stuff.
I completed “Week One” and you loved it.  The client had some little changes they wanted on Week Two, so I slipped those in and handed it off.  That’s when our honeymoon ended.
“It seems a little light,” you said.  “Needs more meat and potatoes.”
No woman was ever more mortally wounded by hearing from her intended that he “wanted to see other people.”
I gently asked exactly what “more” you’d like.  I explained that in a “facilitative” model like this, much of the time in the second week of the class was spent in troubleshooting practice and role plays.  Students were designing their own scenarios, trading with other groups, solving them — and then reporting back to the class.  The facilitator would then help them “process” the learning.
(The snarky bastard in me wanted to offer to script out exactly what 25 students were to say out loud in each and every role play, but I pushed him firmly back down into the dungeon.)
That’s when the romance went out of our relationship.  When I realized that it had all been a sham, and we’d never grow old together like in the movies. You said those words that made me cry:
“Well, 99-95% of our instructors are not at that level of facilitating, anyway.”
Uh huh.  So how do you think that’s gonna work out for ya, then? If these guys just want to stand in front and lecture, and I give them a one-hour module that pretty much says “have the students do an hour of role-play and process the results”?
Yes, there were some harsh words said.  Some crockery broken. We eventually agreed to disagree, and I asked you for a list of what you wanted me to change.  And I did every single thing.
Now I’m sitting on the couch in the light of the television, eating Rocky Road out of the box with a spoon and watching Oprah with the sound off.  Trying to understand what happened between us.  How could the perfect client have changed so much?  Were there warning signs that I missed?  When my friends laughed about you at parties, should I have listened?
My wife, a very smart woman, listened to my story.  And she suggested that maybe I should have just given more instructions in the “Facilitator Manual”.  Instead of saying “use this scenario and do a role play to process with these points” — the kind of guidance that I’d like — I should have done more.  Given more.  Cared more.
I should have said:

  • Get some #2 pencils
  • Sharpen them to a point
  • Get 25 3×5 cards, no lines
  • Write your name at the top
  • Write the scenario
  • List only three answers, no more and no less
  • Hand them to the left
  • Rank them in order of relevance
  • Post to the board with gold stars

Well, I’m paraphrasing.  My darling pretty much said I should include more “how to facilitate” instructions in the “Facilitator Guide” so that the 95% I didn’t know about would be able to do it.
(Snarky me at this point suggested if I was hiring carpenters for a remodel, I wouldn’t hire one who only knew how to use a hammer on a framing job.  If he couldn’t operate a nail gun, there wouldn’t be instructions on that in the blueprints.)
But I do have to admit that she has a point.  Facilitative Learning is a whole different box of rocks for your traditional technical trainer.  No longer the “sage on the stage”, you’re actually helping the learners build their own knowledge.  It’s messy, it takes longer, and it’s much harder work.
But we do it because it beats the PANTS off of your boring old PPT lectures!
So I guess you’re moving on, and that’s probably best.  It was fun while it lasted, we had some laughs, and I’m sure the two of you (your PowerPoints and You) will be quite happy together.
Me — I’ve got my eye on this cute little Second Life learning simulation…






Top 10 Reasons I Like Making Top 10 Lists

My friend @MarkHeartofBiz wants to know why people like to make “Top Ten” lists.  What better way to answer him?
mob-top-ten-list-icon10.  I can be an irascible old man without having to endure the numbing cold of the Ed Sullivan Theatre every day.
9.  Pretty much anything can be shoved into the format, even a Chappaquiddick joke.  (Won’t hear THAT on Letterman, you betcha!)
8.  People really, really like bullets if they’re not coming at them from the end of a Glock.  I read that on CopyBlogger, I think.
7.  Making a list implies that you’ve got some kind of authority or knowledge.  God knows why people think that, but they do.
6.  Like anything rythmic, people get caught up in it.  Ask the Catholic Church.  Or Amway.
5.  Once you reach the half-way point, it’s all downhill from there.  I’m 54, and I can state that as an incontrovertible fact.
4.  Only one sentence per paragraph!  WOOT!
3.  Two words:  Two Words!
2.  In most cases, people are only going to look at #1 and #2 to see if their favorite is there — and that will decide whether or not they agree with your list.  So the rest is pretty much filler.
…and the #1 reason I like making Top Ten Lists:
1.  When people link to them, there’s a chance someone will buy Thesis and I’ll get a tiny little affiliate commission.
UPDATE: Apparently the spell-checker in WordPress can’t spell “irascible” any better than I can. Or there’s a parallel universe where the “s” is completely optional.

Seth Godin On The Tribes We Lead

I’m always telling people about Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” — but I doubt that they go to the trouble of finding, buying, and reading it.  Now you can just watch him talk at TED about it:

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.

seth

Amazing Content Twix To Gain Traffic

If you’ve got a web page, or a blog, or an AOL site for your collection of Fonzie memorabilia — you’d like to have more traffic.  Here are three simple Twix to improve your content and make those traffic stats shoot right off the charts.

twixIf you’re wondering whether or not I can properly spell “tricks” — fear not.  I’m headed for a meeting of the Social Media Club in Greenville, SC tomorrow morning.  And I’ll be handing out business cards with a little “Twix” bar attached, as I tell people about this post.
Clever, huh?  An amazing play on words (being as I’m a “content guy”) that gets all those people to go and read my blog, because of the guilt they’ll feel after eating that free candy.  Just consider this an “Extwa Twix” for you to use — at no charge.

Twix #1:  Bribe Them
Offer your readers something they actually want — the answer to a question, the solution to a problem, or a way to solve pain.  Don’t just give them a link to an interesting site and some quotes from it, explain clearly why it will make their life better.  Tell them how they’ll lose weight the moment they get there — or how their sex life will improve just from spending time there.
Twix #2:  Speak Their Language
Make sure that you’re using words that the audience might enter in a search tool to find information.  You’ll get more hits from a headline that says “How To Escape A Shark” than one that says “Current Research On Techniques Of Decampment From The Vicinity Of Large Hungry Ocean Dwellers”.  (Headline #2 is perfectly appropriate if writing for an audience of Ph.D. candidates or Nigerian Finance Ministers.)
Twix #3:  Use Key Words In Your Links
If you’re linking to other web sites (a good thing) be sure that your actual hot links contain the key words that people search for:
BAD: …and you can find how to tie your shoes right here.
GOOD: …and you can find how to tie your shoes right here.
Search engines give you additional points for links that contain “hot” words.
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OK — ready to get that content into shape?  Leave me a comment, and I’ll send you an empty wrapper from a Twix bar that I ate in your name.

Turns Out That Great Content Grows Your "Google Authority"!

It’s always nice to hear that you’ve been barking up the right tree.  And now I’ve got proof — or “woof” — of that, from Chris Garrett, in a great post about how content improves your Google Authority.
High on the list of “negative influencers”:

“Thin or Spammy Content – Duplicate, scraped or feed content, or spammy gibberish is likely to get marked down. As you would expect, Google is aiming to promote the highest quality. They will use human checks, algorithms and watch the behaviour of their customers to see if what they are delivering meets expectations.”

Of course, there are other important issues — like links, traffic, and what your site looks like in general.  But you’ve got that covered already — right?

Using WordPress As A Content Management System

I’m a happy WordPress user for several blogs, but one of the best-kept secrets about this software is that it does so much more than just blogging. I ran across a great article on how you can also use it as a Content Management System (CMS) that opens up a whole new world of ideas:

WordPress is often thought of as little more than a blogging platform. But it’s capable of so much more. Through a little customization and the use of plugins, WordPress can easily be transformed into a full-featured content management system. Here are more than 25 sites who have done just that (and done it well).
This is the second article in the four-part series, “The Comprehensive Guide for a Powerful CMS using WordPress“.


UGSMAG

UGSMAG is a Canadian hip hop magazine. The home page is laid out in a grid, with featured articles along the left two columns and news on the right. The color scheme and design choices reflect the young, independent audience they attract. The lack of a category list (other than the top nav, which simply lists “News,” “Features,” and “Interviews”) and archives lend the page to looking more like a traditional news or magazine website than a blog.
usmag
Subtle changes to individual article pages, such as removing the category labels, the use of a drop cap initial character, and moving the date from it’s usual blog-centric location under the title to the upper-right hand corner of the page all also contribute to the site looking more like a magazine and less like your standard blog.

Read more…

Are You "Testing" The Temperature In Your House?

People on Twitter often notice that I’ve got some creds in the “eddication” area, and ask me questions about how to fix the schools down here in South Carolina. We’re currently about 56th out of the 50 states in terms of quality of education, so there’s a lot of talk going on. And they’re usually looking for some kind of quick-fix — bigger budgets, smaller class sizes, charter schools, magic beans — rather than any kind of basic systemic change.
The one thing most everyone down here can agree on is that “testing” is unfair.  Students here fail miserably at the No Child Left Behind testing, and the program is reviled.  So one of the ways I try to talk with people about education is to ask them about their HVAC system.

“Do you have air conditioning and heating in your house?  Good!  Now, does your thermostat wait until the end of the day to measure whether it’s too hot or cold, and then decide which one to turn on?  It doesn’t, does it?  It’s constantly assessing the temperature all the time, based on the limits that you set. And as soon as the temperature gets outside those limits, something happens…”

hot-sun-thermometerThat’s how learning happens in the best systems.  We create “goals” (temperature limits) and constantly keep making “assessments” (measurements) of how we’re doing in reaching those goals.  So there’s no real surprise at 10PM each night — we know already whether it’s been hot or cold, and we’ve taken action to change what we’re doing based on that.
A Charter School is probably going to be more successful than our traditional public schools for just that reason.  They begin with a clear set of goals — or educational objectives — and will be scrutinized closely by folks who’d like to see them succeed.  And, more importantly, by folks who’d like to see them fail.  So they’ll be doing lots of assessment along the way, rather than waiting for that “test” at the end of the year.
I suspect that you’ll see many of them succeed for just that reason.