Crossroads Dispatches

Deep Hanging Out

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." -- Marcel Proust

"Don't you feel more alive when you are traveling?" asks Lisa Alpine in a travel writing workshop a few weeks ago. But that feeling is often missing in familiar environments. We are not in a state of heightened awareness. That's because we're no longer perceiving but assuming -- we already think we know what we are seeing. "Everytime you get up in the morning pretend you have never been there."

It's easy to fall into the trap that you know your market particularly if you've worked in the space for a while. When I first moved to Salt Lake City from the flatlands of Florida, the mountains were imposing and in-your-face dramatically beautiful. After a couple of months I barely noticed them. When I would visit Silicon Valley, the energy was palpable. I can easily take it for granted now that I live here.

Part-eavesdropper, part-confidant, Priya Prakash gains insights into other's lives most market researchers would simply overlook. "When designing products or services that don’t yet exist we need to understand the customer, instead of having a technocrat decide from the top down." It's bottoms-up market research.

So I learned a new word for a naturally engaging activity I love to do, especially when I am travelling. Priya spoke about Project Miljul at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2004. Project Miljul was a research grant study on wireless service design for emerging markets.

"Deep hanging out" is based on the idea that the best way to absorb a culture is by being there and participating in daily activities. After a quick Google search I was surprised to find "deep hanging out" was an acceptable methodology for qualitative research used by the likes of BBC (Priya now works at BBC) and Intel, among others.

My engineering background belied my own assumptions about what "formal", "rigorous" research should look like. Although it may appear as if most companies just pick product strategies out of a hat, many larger corporations do spend a huge amount of effort on formal surveys and focus groups. I often feel like an imposter when I naturally want to use anecdotal observation of customer behavior even if there is a definite pattern emerging but not necessarily hard data to back it up.

But innovation is rarely that orderly. It's a messy affair. Especially when you are trying to come up with product categories that don't even exist yet. The real money is made well before there is ever a Gartner or Jupiter or Forrester Report on it. Those reports are intended for the end-users more than for the innovators.

Studies show that 75% of new products fail for lack of a market. After the session, Priya told me that focus groups, surveys, and statistics - the quantitative research - certainly have value after the qualitative research.

Priya video-recorded interviews and captured real glimpses into the lives of street vendors and small business owners in India by spending time with them, seeing through their eyes, and having a "beginner's mind" with no preconceptions about how they should use or not use mobile technology. This type of qualitative research is necessary for the brain-storming phase of product development she says -- when you are still exploring true market needs and before you are entirely sure what the product might be.

I have worked for quite a number of companies where the marketing department, the founder or sometimes, god forbid, the engineers muse about what they think the customer should want. Always avoiding talking to potential customers. And if they do, they ask loaded questions: You would want this product, wouldn't you? Ignoring that humans like to please, and the obvious right answer and thus their response would be somewhere on the spectrum of: "Sure, I guess so" through "Yes".

"Get familiar with the people you are designing for – have a cup of coffee with them - understand their life," Priya suggests. The initial contact should be face-to-face in their environment - in the taxi, at the at florist stand, in their home. Maybe later you can continue the relationship via email or phone for additional feedback and a sounding board.

Priya's presentation is on her blog and weaves interdisciplinary themes. She maps the needs findings based on several contexts: environment (fixed - restaurant, semi-fixed - street booth book vendor, or location based - taxi), pyschological motivation (Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory) and lifestage (influenced by Ptolemy or Shakespeare's seven stages of man and maybe possibly the Hindu's four stages).

Someone asks, "What role does respect play in work you do?" Priya takes a moment to answer: "Respect is empathy – really put yourself in their place."

And empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy separates, empathy connects. Empathy is an attitude of deep interconnectedness with others and both of you are fascinating multi-faceted humans.

Deep hanging out, heightened awareness and perception, empathy. Not a bad way to conduct qualitative market research to uncover the next killer app...or for that matter to spend every moment in your life.

Two Hungers, Two Blogs

"In Africa, they say there are two hungers, the lesser hunger and the greater hunger. The lesser hunger is for the things that sustain life, the goods and services, and the money to pay for them, which we all need. The greater hunger is for an answer to the question "why?", for some understanding of what that life is for."

From "Hungry Spirit, Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World" by Charles Handy.

"Wealth obviously is not the good we seek, for the sole purpose it serves is to provide a means of getting something else." - Aristotle

Money is a variable in the equation called life, but not the answer. So whether you call it a double bottom line, triple bottom line or simply your mission statement - the end goal goes beyond profits. Money is but one form of capital that is used to achieve the purpose by sustaining it with resources.

In that vein, I'll be creating another related blog called Tech Intent (eventually to be hosted at www.techintent.com) that puts the intention, or the end goal, behind the use of technology squarely up front. It will be more technical than I intend to have this Crossroads Dispatches blog be (i.e. more like yesterday's "Of Echo Chambers and Anti-Chambers" post). Specific topics will evolve over time but the general theme is on the technologies and tools that are enhancing people's lives.

Of Echo Chambers and Anti-Chambers

On Monday I was at the Digital Democracy Teach-In (see also Joi Ito's paper on Emergent Democracy). I was interested in the bigger picture beyond the political application. I find it fascinating how one can use systems and technology to build a grassroots advocacy, to mobilize and coordinate supporters, and to spread a message or meme quickly and effectively.

Basically it's marketing, but it's not conventional marketing. There's more...there is an emergent, self-organizing aspect that can't be controlled from a hierarchical "top" but trusts empowered representatives will use their best judgment. All great stuff.

But then I started wandering. Halley Suitt, a panelist and blogger, said she purposefully reads the blogs that disagree with her views, the ones that think the opposite. So she says she reads Andrew Sullivan’s blog each day.

Not being an Andrew Sullivan connoisseur, I went to the site. Found this post which contradicts Halley's comment but she's probably the exception and not the rule:

RED AND BLUE READING: Fascinating graphic of how hermetically sealed we are becoming one from another. We don't even read the same books any more, depending on our blue-red identity. I agree with Jonah that there's nothing wrong with a divided country. It can be fun! But a divided country where both sides don't even talk to one another? That's a little more worrying. One side benefit of my raising gay issues on this blog strikes me as being exactly that conversational clash. I understand why most people avoid it - it's grueling to be in the middle of the vortex. But it's important too. And increasingly rare." - Friday, February 06, 2004, 2:18:53 PM

That's just one divide. Just one instance of taking sides. You can easily come up with tons of examples of dichotomies and dualities...night/day, poor/rich, multinationals/environmentalists, big media/little media, east/west, science/religion, black/white.....

Red and blue. First thing that came to my mind were gang wars. Not the stuff of democracy.

While I sat in the next few sessions I was wondering if social networking, particularly sites like LinkedIn and Orkut just make our strong ties even stronger. (Summary of Mark Granovetter paper: The Strength of Weak Ties) In a sense, making it easier to find more people JUST LIKE US and perhaps inadvertently making us more insular? Does social networking serve to safely and confidently reaffirm the 'identity' we think we are without ever challenging our concepts about ourself and our assumptions and beliefs? Would our brains hurt if they stretched or might we feel uncomfortably uncertain and groundless?

The Dean campaign being the (bloodied?) poster child of the day, I found this post by Clay Shirky entitled "Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign?":

"We know well from past attempts to use social software to organize groups for political change that it is hard, very hard, because participation in online communities often provides a sense of satisfaction that actually dampens a willingness to interact with the real world. When you’re communing with like-minded souls, you feel like you’re accomplishing something by arguing out the smallest details of your perfect future world, while the imperfect and actual world takes no notice, as is its custom.

There are many reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that the pleasures of life online are precisely the way they provide a respite from the vagaries of the real world."

Sounds pretty insular to me.

Of course, it's not inherent to social software itself, because people do this in the real world too.

But can the architecture of today's social software actually amplify this effect?

In another session Cory Doctorow quoting Mitch Kapor said, "Architecture is political." Then Marc Powell from indyvoter.org at another point said, "The political is social.” Thus transitively maybe "architecture is social."

Management consultants (and just plain common sense) tell you to hire a few mavericks to get a fresh perspective. Tom Peters simply calls mavericks "weird people" in his new book. (And, he says hire more women too - wow, what about weird women!). Basically anyone not just like you. Strategic consultants that came up with the scenario planning process for long-range planning (cool tool for futurists) also talk about exposing yourself to a diverse set of people. Peruse magazines and newspapers in totally random fields or topics previously unknown to you once in a while. (Reference: My distant memories of The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz)

From Tom Peters site: If "learning" is more about "good questions" than "correct answers," consider this from Christopher Phillips ... "Questions, questions, questions. They disturb. They provoke. They exhilarate. They intimidate. They make you feel a little bit like you’ve at least temporarily lost your marbles. So much so that at times I’m positive that the ground is shaking and shifting under our feet... (From the book, Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy.)

Besides stretching ourselves, after a while it just gets pretty old preaching to the converted. Who then pat you on the back. And you go to hear their sermons too. It's the so-called echo chamber effect.

Of course, once in a while there is a person in the pulpit who asks, "How do you get people of different persuasions to get together?" Tim O'Reilly asked this of Wes Boyd of MoveOn.org, which tends to be oh, just slightly left of center. O'Reilly was lambasted when he first invited Microsoft to participate at the O'Reilly conferences. (A few more: Anti-Microsoft, pro-Microsoft, anti-Bush, pro-Bush.) Wes says the the reality is that the political arena is an attack-defend game that they need to play too. Conflict is what makes a good story (at least according to media) and the state of democracy is such that it's a broadcast culture.

Conflict. Attack. Defend. These are the good stories?

Then at dinner last night Christopher Allen mentioned how a blog highlighting complaints about Orkut was picked up and rocketed in popularity but a similar follow-up which was more positive didn't register a blip. To which Ross Mayfield commented, "It's not an echo chamber, it's an anti-chamber."

I don't find anti-anything to be very illuminating or instructive. It doesn't tell me whatsoever about what you are FOR. Tell me what you want or what you would do - not what you don't like or wouldn't do.

Do we really need more examples of failure and reactionary barbs? It's not a Pollyanna world, but if social software is really about connections...what is it that we are trying to connect? People JUST LIKE US being divisive and whiny? Probably not.

Referencing complex adaptive systems theory, Wes Boyd said: "Connection creates a more vibrant system. There may be an emerging public mind that's way smarter than any individual, any politician or any journalist."

But are we in danger of emerging many disparate splintered minds where the neural net looks a lot like the red-blue reading graph. Where the left brain and right brain vehemently refuse to even have a dialogue with each other.

"Design is the first signal of human intention." -- William McDonough. (Funny, just realized two of my heroes are architects, see also Bucky Fuller). Everything - architecture, end-results - follows that intention.

Is there an architecture that encourages and highlights the common goals among people, unites more than it divides and opens up a dialogue among disparate groups?

Is there an architecture that allows us to open and stretch our minds, to question our basic assumptions and cherished beliefs just in case we're wrong, to be exposed and connect to new ideas and people?

Is there an architecture that promotes and helps us formulate a vision and plan of what we want to have, what's already successful and working right, what's life-enhancing and positive?

At O'Reilly Etech this week

I'm at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference again this year (I just love this conference).

If you are looking for notes from the conference, check out the conference site and Wiki, especially the Wiki or visit www.windley.com (among others) for complete coverage.

I can get that it really is ALL perception as I read other blogs or media coverage on the conference sessions that discuss the same sessions I'm at from all sorts of angles.

First Online Travelogue

I just added a What I'm Reading Right Now list to the About Me page.

It prompted me to write this post on Size of the World. I picked up the book because it was based on an interesting premise for a journey and purportedly the first online travelogue, Big World. Interesting how things change from 1994. O'Reilly no longer publishes in the travel genre, but back in those heady online media empire days they had a Traveler's Corner site (and then published the popular Traveler's Tales anthology series as well.) The author struggled with phone lines trying to send dispatches in Oaxaca, Mexico. I was just there November 2003 and in the touristed areas you could not just give the cross streets for an Internet cafe -- that would be too ambiguous -- there might be two on the block. Greenwald, still writing, also runs the Ethical Traveler site where he insightfully notes that all travelers are basically freelance ambassadors.

Beliefs Shared and Spread Can Change the World More than Governments Can

Earlier today I was looking for Small is Beautiful at the local library and this other book tucked away with the economics tomes jumped off the bookshelf and I found myself checking it out.

"Hungry Spirit | Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World"
by Charles Handy (an ex-Shell executive and professor at London Business School), 1998, quotes: "I suspect, in fact, that the next great clashes in the world will not be between nation states, or between conflicting economic systems, but between belief systems, which sometimes get called religions (such as Islam), sometimes civilizations (India or China), and sometimes cultures (Western). Beliefs are always personal but they need not be private. Shared and spread they can change the world more than governments can."