Quotes & Links - Thursday

From Blake Ross at BlakeRoss.com

Here’s what I mean: put a digital picture and an instant message window side by side and ask Mom to share the picture. Even though the windows are approximately five pixels apart, sharing them is about as intuitive as a W2 form. It’s actually easier to share a picture sitting on a server in China than it is to share your own stuff. And you want me to gush about podcasting?

I expect more developers would be disgusted, too, if they interacted with Normal Human Beings using software on a regular basis. But the emergence of “usability” as a separate industry only insulates them. When I was at Netscape, we engineers would get reports from the user experience team that read like a chronicle of interplanetary travel: “The mantibulator did not conform to User D4’s expectations. User D4 said it always flippled when she wanted it to flapple, and vice-versa.” The reports would then offer a list of recommendations, such as: “Make the mantibulator flapple.”

From Scott Ginsburg at Hello, my Name is Blog!

You’ve no doubt heard of (and probably practiced) this creativity booster before: take a different route to work, eat at a new restaurant or take an outside break – anything to change your environment. In fact, if you Google the word “creativity,” most of the articles will instruct you to practice some type of displacement technique. They’ll urge you to “stray off the beaten path” because changes in your surroundings will stimulate your senses and enhance your ability to generate new ideas.

But I think Michael Michalko said it best in his famous book on business creativity, Thinkertoys: “Your mind is like vegetation. It flourishes in one soil and droops in another.”

From Don Blowhowiak at Leadership Now

The secret: Marriages that endured had a ratio of positive to negative communication of 5 to 1. That means couples in the relationships that lasted exchanged five times as many positive comments to negative ones in their communication.

What about positive and negative communication patterns at work? Tom Rath of the Gallup Organization and coauthor of How Full Is Your Bucket? — a book about increasing positive emotions in your work and life, points to some relevant organizational research.

Enjoy!