Archive for October, 2008
Posted by Stuart on 24 October 2008
Tags: | Development, IA, Project Management
I managed to get sight of a proposal from a competitor last week for a piece of development work that we eventually won and was suprised that they were advocating a waterfall style approach with a pretty comprehensive up-front requirements gathering and specification writing stage. Now whatever you may feel about the pros and cons of Agile, surely nobody really still believes that months of requirements gathering and specification writing is the most cost-effective way to build a web site?
The process of gathering requirements and system design is always thought of as a pretty linear process. The theory goes that as you gather more and more requirements you are better equipped to organise them and create the perfect system. Basically the relationship between understanding and time is one-to-one. A bit like the graph below.
Linear requirements process
If this was the case then it would make sense to spend the necessary time gaining a complete understanding of the system. Not only is each quanta of time (let’s say a day) worth the same, if you spend enough of them you will eventually get to a state of perfect understanding which will allow you to go off and employ a team of developers to build the perfect system without any further thought.
Now everybody knows that this doesn’t actually work in practice and however much effort you spend designing a system there will always be things that for whatever reason don’t quite work in the real world. Not everyone is quite so keen to admit that the theory is flawed so normally the blame is put on the implementation of the process:
“We really must make sure our design is more comprehensive next time.”
In reality the process of gathering requirements and system design is not linear. There’s normally a pretty steep curve at the beginning of the process as you get an idea of the core requirements and this tends to level off the more time that is spent. Arguably you never really get complete understanding and you can certainly never design the perfect system.
I think the curve looks a bit like this one:
Actual requirements process
So, there comes a point where it’s not really worth gathering any more requirements or spending any more effort designing the system as each day that is spent brings less and less extra knowledge.
Common sense tells you that you should stop trying to increase understanding at a point when the curve starts to level off and start building something.
When to start building
The trick is knowing how long it’s going to take to reach that point, recognising that you’ve got there and knowing what to do next…
Posted by Global Beach on 23 October 2008
Tags: Add new tag, Customer insight | Customer insight
Today I learnt that 5% of Mercedes drivers have 2 or more Tattoos. Well 5% of the 450 people in the UK they surveyed anyway.
How do I know this?
Lucky me, Mercedes have targeted me as a prospect. Which means I get a personalised piece of DM through the post aimed at getting me to visited http://site.iammercedes-benz.co.uk, a site that tells me facts about Mercedes drivers.
39% have blue eyes, so what…
Whilst there are some nice graphics and a few interesting ways of displaying survey data, I don’t get why this information is relevant to me as a prospect customer.
As well as displaying lifestyle data, the site does make an attempt to convey something about their cars, but unfortunately gets very dull by telling me about peoples average millage or preferred paint colour.
In my mind Mercedes have missed a trick. Firstly, this is still very much a one-way monologue from Mercedes. The site doesn’t encourage two-way dialogue, or try to establish anything about me the prospect.
Secondly, this would have been a great opportunity for Mercedes Drivers to express how they FEEL, not just what the ARE.
A great example of this is www.wefeelfine.org/
We Feel Fine automatically scans blog posts for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. It then presents the information back in really interesting and exciting ways, that make you want to explore the information and why people feel the way they do.
The other big advantage with this site is it updates automatically every ten minutes. It saves between 15,000 and 20,000 feelings per day rather than relying on static survey data that has a limited shelf life.
I guess the only problem with that approach is Mercedes being confident that their drivers FEEL good about driving a Mercedes.
Posted by Global Beach on 20 October 2008
Tags: | GPS, Geo-Tagging, Technology
“You don’t really know where you are, and are looking for a good place to eat. You pull out your laptop, fire up Firefox, and go to your favorite review site. It automatically deduces your location, and serves up some delicious suggestions a couple blocks away and plots directions there.”
Last week Mozilla Labs announced Geode, a geolocation add-on to Firefox 3.
Geode gives the ability for websites to gain access to your location without the use of GPS. Instead it uses Skyhook’s Loki technology, which uses WiFi to determine your location within a second and with an accuracy of about 10-20 meters. Whist this won’t work in remote areas, it does however have a big advantage over GPS. It works inside buildings! No longer do you have to be outside to get location based services.
The example at azarask.in/local/ found 522 Fulham road straight away without me doing anything, so clearly it works.
Whilst finding restaurants does have its uses, I’m sure we’ll start to see some better applications of the technology soon.
Let me know if you find any.
