Category Archive
for: ‘Stories’

Extreme Customer Development – A true story

Posted Nov 24 2010 by Amir in Business, Design, Stories

Dina’s foot hit the curb, and her body jolted forward. The cane fell off her hand, and she felt her palms and knees hitting the hot sidewalk. The fall reminded her of her days at elementary school, but her body was now much older to take it gracefully. It was painful. And despite the fact that it was early afternoon, it was pitch black. Her mind hated the paradox, but she knew that if she needed to survive, she’d better adjust to her new situation. Everything sounded much louder: car honking on the street she just ran across, voices of pedestrians, and footsteps on the sidewalk she just fell on. How would she ever get used to this?

UX advice from XKCD

Posted Aug 4 2010 by Amir in Design, Stories, blog, featured

Lean Interactive Requirements – The End of Specification Documents

Posted Jul 28 2010 by Amir in Design, Prototyping, Stories

One of my most dreaded tasks as a program manager has been writing product specifications. It seemed unintuitive that, after brainstorming and discovering the details of the user interface and interaction, the best way to describe it all would be screenshots and endless pages of pre-conditions, action, post-condition, edge cases, etc…

I wasn’t surprised that developers didn’t like reading them. Spec review meetings used to feel like one of the scenes from office space – and I didn’t even have my red stapler.

The Elephant in the Dark: A Story

Posted Mar 3 2010 by Amir in Stories

Once upon a time, there existed a village that was completely inhabited by blind people.

One day, an elephant came to the village.

Since none of them had ever seen an elephant before, they all gathered around the animal to figure out how it looked like.

The eagle who lived as a chicken

Posted Nov 4 2009 by Amir in All, Stories, featured

One day a young eagle fell off the nest and was picked up by a farmer. The farmer was kind enough to bring the small bird to his barnyard so that it doesn’t perish. The young eagle found a good home with the chicken and grew up believing he is a chicken. He waited for the farmer to bring food, he quacked when a chicken laid an egg, and he enjoyed running around and sitting in a hole in the ground on sunny days. Life was good and comfortable, and the eagle’s wildest adventure was to run under the fence with his friends to that cliff where they looked at the mountains and wondered what lied on their other side. Read More

The Day Death Spared Me

Posted Oct 29 2009 by Amir in All, Stories, featured

Based on a true story

Traffic on the freeway slowed down to a halt that Friday evening. Everyone was coming from the same direction and going to the same destination. After a long sunny week, clouds were starting to gather, looking down at the streets in sarcasm, and preparing the town for another rainy weekend.

He stops his car few inches away from the one ahead of him. He glances at the infinite line of cars that disappears in the horizon and realizes that the week won’t let go that easily. He turns on the radio in search for some distraction from this moment. The same songs that were playing last week are playing again. He turns it off and glances up at the sky. Read More

The monkey trap

Posted Oct 24 2009 by Amir in All, Stories, featured

There is a popular method used in the East to capture monkeys. The hunters place a bunch of bananas in a bowl with a narrow opening at the top, and they fix the bowl somewhere in the jungle. A monkey passes by and notices the smell of banana coming from the bowl. He inserts his small arm through the narrow hole, grabs a banana and pulls his hand out. But the hole in the bowl is too narrow for his fist holding banana to pass through. The monkey tries pulling harder but he only hurts his wrist against the sharp edges of the bowl. In the meantime the hunters are approaching slowly and confidently. They see the monkey struggling frantically and they smile at the sight they’ve witnessed hundreds of times before. The monkey is holding on to the banana so hard that it’s impossible for him to realize that it is the one thing that is standing between him and his own freedom. Read More

The catch

Posted Jun 23 2009 by Amir in All, Stories, featured

Two young MBA couple graduated and landed great jobs in California. They realized that they had some time before their job starting date, so they flew to California a couple of weeks earlier and enjoyed spending their days on the beach.

One day, the Devil walked by and saw them, so he approached them and said: "Hey. I see that you are enjoying your time here. I have a proposal for you:

I will offer you everything you ever dreamt about: fame, success, money and prosperity for as long as you and everyone of your descendant shall live. In return, I need you to offer me one thing: your soul."

The couple looked at each in bewilderment, then looked back to the Devil and asked: "What’s the catch?"

The circus elephant

Posted Jun 16 2009 by Amir in All, Stories, featured

When I was a kid, my school used to host a circus every summer. In the morning, I would sneak behind the circus tent and watch the animals being fed and trained. That was one of my greatest joys.

I remember looking at the elephants, and noticing something that fascinated me and kept me wondering for a while: knowing how powerful an elephant is, I was surprised to see a thin rope tying the elephant’s leg to a pole, and that the elephant never tried to escape even though it wouldn’t take any effort for it to cut the rope and walk away.

After a while, I gave up guessing and went to ask one of the trainers. He smiled and said:”It wasn’t always a rope, you know. When the elephant is young, we put a hard chain around its leg so that whenever the elephant pulls, it would feel the resistance of the strong chain and know that how far it can go.”.

“When the elephant grows up”, he continued, “there is no need for the chain anymore. We just put a thin rope around its leg and the elephant stops pulling whenever it feels that rope. The elephant doesn’t know anymore that the chain is gone, and that the rope tying it to the pole can be easily broken as soon as it decides to walk away. The only limitation that elephant has, is in its own mind.”

“For the elephant,” the trainer said, “all that it knows is the memory of the old chain, and the slight feeling of resistance from the thin rope… The elephant doesn’t know the difference. “

Finding a way around constraints

Posted Jun 2 2009 by Amir in All, Business, Stories

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,

I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.

Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Pop,

Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.

Love,

Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.

That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Pop,

Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.

Love you,

Vinnie

Is your product a “hot chick”?

Posted Jun 12 2008 by Amir in All, Business, Design, Stories, featured

Back when I was a research assistant at the Human Computer Interaction Lab in Maryland, a very interesting study was carried by Kent Norman on the acts of rage against computers. Kent surveyed people and asked them to “vent” their feelings and frustrations with their computers and software. The results showed that people screamed, swore, hit, and even killed their machines out of frustration and anger. For a full flavor of the acts of violence, follow the link to the full study below.

What was particularly interesting to me was the difference in opinions between Mac users and Windows users: Windows users blamed Microsoft for anything that goes wrong with their PC, even when it’s not Microsoft’s fault. On the other hand, Mac users forgave Apple even when it’s Apple’s fault. Back then, I wasn’t a Mac user (I’ve been a faithful PC user until Vista came out), so I grabbed a friend of mine who owned a Mac and asked him: “What’s so special about the Mac that makes you more forgiving?”.

“You know when you are driving back home through the rush hour traffic, after a long day at work, and your car suddenly gets rear ended by another driver. You stop your car, you go down and you’re ready to yell and fight with the other driver. And the other person gets off the car, and it’s this really hot chick, beautiful, well dressed, smiling at you with innocence and kindly apologizing. You can’t help but to smile back, tell her that it’s no big deal, get back in your car and drive back home. It may actually put you in a good mood that such a beautiful person has been nice to you today. That’s how I feel about my Mac!”

This person’s answer revealed to me the importance of a product’s look and behavior to users. It may even eclipse in importance its ability to function properly, or give users all what they need. We are mostly emotional creatures, and we like those who treat us well. Next time your product displays an error message, make sure it smiles, it apologizes, and qualifies as a hot chick.

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