I’ve been having trouble even starting to write about this topic because it’s such an interesting topic and something I’ve learned quite a bit about over the years — and continue to grow and learn about as I take on new teams!
As I’ve advanced in my career, I’ve gone from feeling like I need to learn every new technology or programming language (and getting overwhelmed and feeling inferior by the impossible feat) to realizing it’s impossible to know everything well. In the spirit of ruthless prioritization, I have to prioritize what it is I choose to know deeply (where I get in the weeds) and what I choose to only know at a surface level (usually relying on or deferring to the expertise of someone else who is in the weeds).
This approach to staying on the surface works really well when you can to defer to a colleague who you respect as an expert on their work (e.g. I understand we use XYZ technology but for any additional detail, talk to my colleague Jane in Engineering). And often times, a colleague will see this for what it is: trust that you will mind your own business because they’ve got their area under control!
It gets much more difficult when you need to do this with people who might report directly into you. Stay at surface and don’t know enough about their work? You seem out of touch (and isn’t it their job to “manage up” anyway?). Get in the weeds about everything they are working on? Now you are the dreaded micro-manager.
So how do you decide when to go deeper? There are tactics I’ve employed over the years that can help.
Many years into my career in software development, I was introduced to the concept of “agility” and specifically leveraging the “scrum” methodology. We were trained up over the course of a couple of days which included silly activities to prove a point like making paper boats. I learned about 2 week sprints, sprint ceremonies (like sprint planning, daily stand-up and retrospectives), and best practices around estimation.
At the time, I was on a very lean team responsible for operating a platform that was licensed to a competitor for what I understood was a large sum of money. Our product was important to the bottom-line so consistently delivering value was the name of the game. I enjoyed the structure that sprinting offered and the constant tangible value delivery to our customer appealed to the dopamine receptors in my brain that get excited when I check something off my “to do” list.
During that time, I also learned about the “agile manifesto” and that there was a real career path for people like me who enjoyed solving human-centered problems. And since then, I’ve worked with a number of different large enterprises that employ various flavors of agile.
I’ve previously written about dark patterns because, on their face, they represent an ethical problem in technology. Just because you can make it difficult for a customer to close a pop-up, for example, doesn’t mean you should. And, as we know now, technologists do not take an oath to behave ethically (quite the opposite with the proliferation of the ethos “move fast and break shit”) and the government has neglected to regulate.
Over the summer, I was complaining to a colleague about my love/hate relationship with fitness trackers. I fell in love with the Fitbit for a few years but I found their trackers didn’t really last. That’s something I’m less inclined to be okay with given how much more I pay attention now to where my waste goes. And, the other factor important for me is a tracker that fits nicely under my boxing gloves — something that sometimes wrist-based trackers aren’t always great at.
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On the surface, I was excited so naturally I ordered it immediately. The price point ($199.99) made it not so expensive that it seemed unattainable but definitely pricey enough so that I had some expectations about it being moderately good going in. After using it for a couple of months now, I can walk you through the good, the bad and my closing thoughts on whether it’s a good buy or not. Continue reading “A Fitness Tracker for Lightweights: the Motiv Ring”
I was scrolling through Twitter today when a Tweet by someone I don’t follow about a topic I’m privileged not to be intimately familiar with happened to catch my eye:
So you know all those emoji and punctuation marks in your Twitter names get read aloud by screen readers, right? If it takes me longer to hear your Twitter name than to read your tweet? I scroll right on by. Please remember this when adding lots of emoji to things. Thanks.
I say I’m privileged because, while I joke about being blind because I’ve been wearing glasses since 2nd grade, I’m not actually impaired. I’ve never had to experience this wild and wonderful thing we call the internet without the gift of sight. And, throughout my career as a web developer, accessibility was often an after-thought.
The other day, my husband decided to share a trailer for the latest Gran Turismo game that was unveiled for the Playstation console at the latest E3 events. I remember playing Gran Turismo games with my little brother way back when on the original first Playstation! I also really enjoy, now as an adult with a driver’s license, having the opportunity to drive high performance cars from time to time; though, most of the time, I’m rolling around in a compact car with good fuel economy thanks to Zipcar. All that said, we watched the trailer together and were in awe of the beautiful graphics that made sleek sports cars look even sleeker.
However, while the game graphics look fantastic, I noticed a small omission in the trailer I watched. Let me explain.
At about 45 seconds into the video, multiple world flags appear circling the globe with some text overlayed that says “Driving is for Everyone.” I thought that was cute and chuckled softly to myself. Yes, driving should be for everyone because, personally, I find it fun and convenient for getting across this giant country we live in.
By about 2 and a half minutes in, they start presenting images about live tournaments they’ll be running regularly. I think to myself, “How the hell are they going to manage that?” but I’m sure they’ve figured out some way to automate it so that people can play in these tournaments online and it works fairly seamlessly.
At 3 minutes in, the screen now reads “Open to all ages, anyone can enjoy” but all the faces I see feverishly playing the new game are men. Eight seconds later and I think I’ve spotted ONE woman deep in the background at this tournament event they are showing footage from. Another six seconds go by and I see a crowd of people clapping for the game, not sure if they are fans or journalists but it is fairly clear that they are also ALL men. By 3 minutes and 38 seconds into the video, it is still a sausage fest with a group of male victors celebrating.
Seriously, how great is it to be a television fan? What used to be relegated to HBO and Showtime (and sometimes Starz) has now been extended to all methods of consumption. There are great long-running shows that first aired on cable like the dramatic Mad Men and the often ridiculous It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Then there have been amazing shows on Netflix like the addictive House of Cards and the adorable Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. And don’t get me started on all the programming on network television! Shows like Flash and New Girl come to mind immediately, but there are many others.
And, on top of all the great programming that has been developed, we have more ways to watch than ever. Netflix and chill is a thing because pretty much everyone has Netflix. And since a lot of people have Amazon Prime membership, Amazon Prime Video is also a thing (it doesn’t hurt that they have the entire HBO back catalog — now I can watch Six Feet Under and The Wire!). Finally, there’s also Hulu which amazingly has carved out a niche for itself with original series content as well.
With so much great stuff to watch, it’s often hard to find the time. What can make it even harder is if you are part of a couple that co-watches. My husband and I typically try to watch shows together because we enjoy talking about them when we aren’t watching them, but also because it’s another way to spend time together. And you know that co-watching is a real cultural phenomenon when even the New York Times devoted some space to it, touching on how it impacts real relationships.
And, while I fully acknowledge this is a total first-world problem, co-watching can be really challenging! My husband, Anthony, and I want to watch things together but sometimes I’m at Muay Thai class late or he’s off covering a soccer game. The reality is that because we are two fiercely independent people, our schedules don’t always line up. We don’t always watch the same things, but when we do, it can be something that we literally need to schedule on our calendars to ensure we can watch together.
But, this can put a strain on a relationship and cause a partner to stray — and watch TV shows without their partner (instead of patiently waiting for a co-watching opportunity). I’ve often said that Anthony has “cheated on me” with a particular program that we wanted to co-watch. Like most things in this day and age, thankfully, there’s an app for that!
Right now the temperature is starting to warm up in New York. However, it’s inevitable: winter will be here again before we know it.
#winteriscoming
And every winter, I’m freezing to death because at some point in time I wore the wrong shoes. Like that time I was going to Philadelphia and needed a headphone splitter so my husband and I could co-watch a movie on the bus ride down. I spent the better part of an hour searching for one while the snow came down around me. All I found was that my boots had sprung a leak and that apparently the only place to buy dry socks in TriBeCa is at the Equinox where you will spend too much money for them (do rich people not need socks?!).
I don’t think I’ve written here explicitly about Zipcar but, if I did, you’d think it was a paid advertisement. I can’t say enough good things about them and I’m a huge advocate for car sharing (though, if someone invented teleporting, I’d have to switch my stance…). I get regular email communications from them and fairly recently, they sent over a discount code for a hotel booking through an iPhone app called “Hotel Tonight.”
Perhaps I’m atypical or maybe this is how I fit into the millennial sterotype, but I don’t always book hotels. On at least a couple of occasions, I’ve gone with the AirBnB-type rental in lieu of a hotel and have been very happy. Additionally, when I do book hotels, I don’t have a ton of brand affinity. Generally, I try to stay at nicer hotels but tend to find better deals at boutique hotels so I don’t necessarily have Hilton points or anything like that I’m trying to rack up.
That said, Anthony and I were planning for a very abbreviated trip to Boston for my birthday and we were in the market for a hotel room. I had briefly looked at the AirBnB market and the pickings were pretty slim. On a whim, I decided to download the Hotel Tonight app. I think what immediately impressed me about this app is how streamlined it was to use. Many apps push you to create an account before you even start using the app. I typically dislike this approach because it’s really a cheap way to gain users — you can say you have 1 million users but if most of them signed up once and then didn’t continue to use your app later, what value was it to have those folks signed up?
Want to try out this app? Use my promo code “JGALLARDO42” and you can get $25 off your first booking.
I wanted to use my promo code so, prior to booking, I went to the tab that looks like one for profile information and loaded in all my pertinent information, including the promo code. Once the code is loaded into your account, it will be applied to your reservation at checkout. You don’t have to do anything extra to apply it which is nice.
Really clear error messaging when you don’t have a signal. And look! No “hamburger”!
Additionally, another point to note is that you don’t have a “hamburger” menu here that hides a whole bunch of options you couldn’t figure out how to fit into your app. The options presented make it clear what Hotel Tonight is trying to do: get you to book with their hotel partners AND refer friends to Hotel Tonight to drive their download/membership/engagement numbers higher. Also, the error conditions — when you dont have wireless or cell signal, for example — are really well done.
One of the really neat things about this app is that you can track hotel prices for a given location over a certain period of time in which you want to book and Hotel Tonight will notify you if the prices have gone down. This was actually very helpful to me as I thought I had missed out on a deal but the next day received a notication that the prices were lower and, sure enough, the original hotel I wanted to book was available again.
All you have to do is authenticate with your thumb!
The absolute best part of this app, however, is the integration with Apple Pay. Paying for your hotel is incredibly easy. After hitting the “Book Now” button on a listing, there is nothing left for you to enter. Because I’ve already entered all my information, the only thing left to do is pay. From the confirmation screen, I can see the dates I’m signing up for and the full price I’ll be charged. Simply authenticating with my thumbprint is the last step and confirms that I am authorized to make this purchase.
Expedia’s app has an accelerometer controlled door tag and really poor error messages…
In what has lately been a very busy time for me, I’ve found that apps that make my life easier have truly been vital. Hotel Tonight will definitely fall into that category and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again in the future. Competitors such as Expedia, for example, often do too much or try too hard to sell add ons/gimmicks rather than focusing on the right customer experience to make the act of booking travel less of an ordeal.
The New York Yankees are well-known in the baseball world for having many many championships. While I’m a much bigger fan of the other baseball team in the city (the New York Mets), I still end up finding myself at Yankee Stadium often enough. Ah, the things we do for love!
That said, on our most recent trip to Yankee Stadium we were approached by a young lady offering us the opportunity to take our photograph. This seems to happen a lot at most sports venues and, if you are with a large group, it’s nice to have someone else take a group shot — even if you do have to go retrieve it later and pay a boatload of money for it. Though the woman who took our photo was very nice, she handed us a poorly designed business card sized piece of paper for us to use in order to retrieve our photo.
I’ve done this before but I was surprised to find that, of all the stadiums at which I’ve done this, the Yankees have the absolute worst fan photo user interface. Let me explain…
The business card instructs me to go to a specific website and that my photo code is XYZ (for example). When I arrive on the website, it isn’t immediately clear to me where my photo code comes into play. I click on “Baseball Fan Photos” instead of “Soccer Fan Photos” — that much is clear.
Which game did we go to again?
Then, once I’m in the baseball area, all I see are various dates of games. Again, it’s still not immediately clear where I’m supposed to enter my photo code. Also, I’ve had this card sitting at the bottom of my purse for a few weeks now — without going back to my calendar, it’s really hard for me to remember the date of the game I went to. However, that’s exactly the exercise the New York Yankees expect you to embark upon when selecting your photos.
Now which of these cryptic folders should I open?
I went back to my calendar and found out when I went to the game. It was a Sunday in mid-July so I found it. At this point, it now shows me a list of numbers appended by “NY” — I see “09NY” and notice that this matches my photo code. Again, I still don’t have a way of entering my code and quickly retrieving the photos from this particular day.
Searching gets you nowhere…
Nonetheless, I decide to click on “09NY” and see what happens. At this point, over 300 pictures load in a thumbnail view. I’m still not clear on whether I can search but I do see a “Search” button so I click on that to see if maybe I can enter the rest of my photo code to get directly to our photo. Sadly, when I attempt to do that, all I get is a black overlay over the page, but no interface or anything appears via which I can search.
Given that I still can’t search, I decide that I’ll just browse. The one thing they did get right in this user interface is that they use lazy loading rather than having me click through 10 pages of content. I continue scrolling until I find my photo code number. Once I find it, I’m severely disappointed — the people in this photo are not me and my friends! Not even close to being us. And I have absolutely no way of finding the photo I was trying to find.
Who are these people?!
This UI is so severely broken and such a negative touchpoint for an organization that is such an established brand. The New York Yankees may want to consider partnering with a better vendor to do this work in order to maintain the kind of on-the-field dominance they exhibit in their off-the-field interactions with their fans.
