Category Archives: Politics

Endless distraction with the new

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A timely thought piece… well I read the first paragraph, but had to check Facebook…

“We are in great haste,” wrote Thoreau in 1854, “to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” And today, we are in great haste to celebrate something going viral, but seem completely unconcerned whether the thing that went viral added one iota of anything good…

From an article by Arianna Huffington in the Guardian. “Virality uber Alles: what the fetishisation of social media is costing us all”

Analytics is not the answer

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A CEO I know has finally come round to the idea that endlessly changing things and adding new features is not the way forward – Hazaar! He now thinks that analytics will provide all the answers. As the company hops from the frying pan of whimsical change into the hellish fire of stats I have been arguing for user testing to be thrown into the mix. This is an uphill struggle.

The CEO threw up the idea of analytics identifying the cancer that we can chop out. I suggested that, pushing the analogy further, if analytics was the x-ray that identified the cancer then user testing is equivalent of talking to the patient.

It will be interesting to see if this patient survives.

Victoria runner

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On my way to work I paused at the W.H. Smiths (newsagents), in Victoria Station, browsing the magazines I was weighing up whether to buy Mobile Home monthly or Performance Bike – the kind of dilemma that often faces a chap of a certain age. As I crouched over magazine rack I saw a member of staff stop a man a few metres outside the shop, on the station concourse. She asked him if he had anything in his bag that he hadn’t paid for. The middle aged man that was smartly dressed- like a commuter, perhaps a business man – said no. The shop lady ask to look in his bag. The man suddenly bolted.

It was like a gazelle that had caught sight of a lion. His demeanour switched in a split second from calm consumer to fleeing prey.

The shop woman turned shouted “Brian” and ran after the shoplifter. A second later a young man – presumably Brian – ran out of the shop and joined the pursuit. I was hoping to see what happened. If cornered how would he respond? Kicking out with his powerful hooves or play dead. I put the Mobile Home monthly back in the rack and wondered towards the tube.