Tag: quality

The Next Educational Diversion from our normal human behaviour

In my book, I briefly discussed the topic of quality in the world of innovation and automation.

My view was that through the quality revolution in the US and Japan and then other parts of the world, logically back then, someone visualizing the year 2021 might have assumed a world where everyone has quality integrated into their lives. From punctuality to cleanliness, to meeting deadlines and creating high quality products efficiently, and designing efficient processes and having employees adhere to them.

However, general human behaviour and smartphones really did a number on that possibility. Now, a lot of us tend to waste a lot of time mindlessly going down rabbit holes on the web. And how many of us are punctual? We also buy things we don’t need, and spend money we don’t have yet. And our general sense of quality isn’t much to aspire to.

So, what was the upside of the quality revolution, you might ask?
I think it was more of an educational diversion from our normal human behaviour so that we could then get our machines to be efficient instead of us.

And right now, I see something similar happening on the tech development front.

I recently got familiar with the project management software Jira. And user stories. And all I can think is, it isn’t going to be long before AI will handle a good part of all tech development. And we humans would simply have to communicate our tech requirements in a very simple manner to a system that will build it for us.

Tony Stark: Paint it.
Jarvis : Commencing automated assembly. Estimated completion time is five hours.

Imagine something similar with the next website or app you want to build in the coming years.

Creating and Understanding Customer Feedback

A waffles order packaging (doesn’t it look like a Viking head?)

Creating and Understanding Customer Feedback

If you’ve ever ordered waffles online, most likely they’ll come in one of two kinds of packaging. One is clean like in the pic above. The other is where all of them in thin paper holders will be stuffed into a box. Quite messy.

Anyway, say you ordered a few dishes for dinner via a food ordering app from a local restaurant. packaging by the restaurant is horrible. The food has leaked into the outer bag, and slightly onto other food containers below.

However, the food itself is delicious.

Now consider you ordered from another restaurant on another night. Exceptional, airtight and impressive looking packaging.

However, the food tastes somewhere between horrible and just-average.

Now, if both restaurants, or even the food ordering service used a simple rating mechanism, chances are, both restaurants will be oblivious to what customers love and hate about them.

The first restaurant might see a bad rating and think their food sucks. The packaging quality never crossing their mind.

The other restaurant might feel proud with a high rating, assuming it was for their food, while customers struggle to consume it. Or they might think the bad rating was because of some delivery error or delay.

If you are going to take the trouble to capture user feedback, take a little more trouble to capture more detailed feedback. Because vague feedback can sometimes be more dangerous than no feedback.

Without boring the customer, try and split up your service feedback into its components. In the case of the home order, it could be the food quality, packaging quality and service delivery. For a product, it could be the effectiveness of the product (in doing the job), ease of understanding and use (instructions, design simplicity, etc.), and effectiveness of customer service (if it comes to that).

If you own, manage or work at a company, and are grappling with a complex challenge or are in need of innovation for growth, get in touch. More here.

And you might find my book, ‘Design the Future’ interesting. It demystifies the mindset of Design Thinking. Ebook’s on Amazon, and paperbacks at leading online bookstores including Amazon & Flipkart.

Form or Function?

Form or Function? How about Form and Function?

The eternal fight between form and function. Between show and effectiveness. Between being followed by a herd with questionable loyalty, and walking with a small group with unwavering conviction in your vision.

Here’s a fancy looking video by HBX, Harvard‘s online programs platform. Professor Christensen undoubtedly sounds like someone I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to interact with and learn from. But the fact that even the likes of Harvard need movie-like videos to showcase the capabilities of a brilliant mind in order to sell a course, is a reflection of the superficial and attention-deficit times we live in.

Another rather painful habit is the one followed by the likes of Business Insider quite often. Apart from some very interesting articles, they also tend to hype the hell out of some random topic, using a catchy title and snippet. You’re tempted to click on it, only to find some absolutely boring or obvious view or reason about the story behind the title.

I for one, now actively avoid any such catchy but vague sounding snippet or title.

And then there are posts like Seth Godin‘s. No images, which, as per recent social media strategy “gurus”, would be nothing short of criminal. Experts will tell you how a picture is worth a thousand words. How a video would be so much more impactful. And some might even ask you to throw in a quote or two. And not just any quotes, but quotes quoted by..You! (what works better than bragging anyway, right?)

And while it is nothing short of an honour, when someone quotes you; there are few things as ridiculous as quoting yourself. Or asking your friends and industry colleagues to quote you. But that still goes on. So even if some of you can’t stop asking people to quote you, at least refrain from quoting yourself. That’s like walking up to your polling booth during election time, and asking for an option to vote yourself Prime Minister or President.

Coming back to Seth’s posts. They don’t have any images, and at barely 2-4 paragraphs, are far crisper and always impactful. Compare that with some standard blog analytics tools that give a red alert when you haven’t typed in a “minimum 300 words”. His posts are pure gold. They don’t need the crutches of pictures, videos, fancy or titillating titles or quotes or anything else to support them. They simply urge you to reflect, to question, and to improve.

And that’s what is lacking in the world today. We are becoming increasingly about cheaper, attention-grabbing tactics; and lesser about quality, long-term effectiveness.

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Far From Perfect

Far From Perfect

We recently ordered a table for home. A small and fairly simple design, with a Rosewood coloured Melamine polish coating.
However, to make the base stable, the people from the store turned it upside down to chisel a little bit. And this is how the underside looked.

To save a few bucks, the underside was conveniently left unpolished. And this is not a case of just a table. It’s all around us. We have a tendency to avoid the small extra effort by default. Efforts which may not add too much value to the product per se, but which significantly lower the appreciation you would have for the product, when avoided.

When will we Indians realize the importance of quality and perfection?
When will we stop our Jugaad and cutting corners to save those few insignificant bucks.

Steve Jobs learnt a lot about quality and perfection from his father, something that helped build all those magnificent products that people take pride in owning today. His father refused to use poor wood for the back of cabinets they built for home. Or once when a young Steve was helping his father build their garden fence, his father taught him to make the back of the fence as perfect in appearance as the front. Even parts or areas which were not visible, like the back of a cupboard, etc. had to be done perfectly. That reflected love and passion for perfection.

When will we go overboard in our passion for something, so that a marvelous product or service will emerge as a result?

So that we can create something that lasts a lot longer than a quick profit.

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Look forward to your views. And if you liked this one, consider following/subscribing to my blog (top right of the page). You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

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