In my last post, I discussed how mLevel can quickly assess product knowledge across a large enterprise retail sales organization. As I described, this is often seen as an impossible task simply because of the lack of tools to do the job, namely highly structured learning content and very detailed performance results – both of which are foundational components of the mLevel casual learning platform. The second – and some might say the “bigger” – challenge is actually getting a large organization to fully participate in such an initiative. At mLevel, we distinguish between both near-term participation AND long-term engagement, and we have features that drive both types.

Driving near-term participation

The first step is to get employees to participate. You can’t expect any long-term engagement – or results – if no one participates. Near-term participation to any initiative is opposed by some pretty powerful forces. First, people are generally resistant to any change, so asking someone to do something different from what they normally do is usually met with low enthusiasm. Then, even if people intend to participate, they can get sidetracked by the work required by their “real” job. Finally, even if they are able to make it past these two hurdles, they may not adequately know what to do or how to do it.

While you may be able to address the 3^rd point through better communication around the initiative, it’s virtually impossible to remove the first two barriers. At mLevel we say, “If you can’t beat them, join them!”

Well, we don’t really say that, but we recognize that change management isn’t the answer. Instead, we want to compel people to want to participate. mLevel does this in a few ways:

1. Make it fun. mLevel uses real games to simultaneously teach and assess knowledge. The games are designed and built by real game designers and developers to be fast, fun and engaging, with rich graphics and sound (if desired). And, you can play them at work!
2. Make it easy. mLevel games are designed to be easy to understand and play. Most use game mechanics that are universal and familiar to even the least gamer-like players out there.
3. Make it competitive. Our customers confirm our own testing and experience that mLevel really gets the competitive juices flowing. First, people naturally want to improve their performance i.e. their scores, which results in additional plays. mLevel provides detailed performance metrics, like score and time and number of pauses, and an easy way to play again to attempt to improve against all of these measures. Second, many people naturally want to compete against their friends and co-workers. mLevel’s leaderboard shows how each player stacks up against others in the organization. The mLevel Game Challenges feature allows players to directly challenge other players, or simply brag about their high scores.

Driving long-term engagement

Now that employees are “in the door” and playing mLevel, the next step is to ensure long-term engagement – how do you keep employees playing AND learning after the novelty of this fun, new thing has worn off? We believe that the key here is to emphasize the learning objective over simply “playing a game.” The goal in mLevel isn’t to get the highest score (though initially that may be what people are focused on), it’s to master the information. mLevel is organized around missions. Customers can create any number of missions, focused around any number of topics, and accessible by any mix of individuals and groups. Missions consist of several games, each focused on a progressively more challenging level of learning, and players have to master one before moving on to the next. Missions also include achievements – real-world demonstrations of acquired knowledge, such as teaching a fellow employee about what you’ve learned, successfully selling the new product, or any number of other examples. Players accumulate points across a mission’s games and achievements, and when they cross 1000 total points, they have completed the mission and achieved mastery or “m” level. What happens when everyone’s achieved mLevel? Well, you create new missions to further challenge your employees.

Measuring engagement

One of the side benefits of mLevel, beyond the learning and the assessment of knowledge, is the assessment of the level of engagement of your employees on specific initiatives. While certainly not a scientific measurement, seeing how many people play, how frequently they play, etc. can provide at least some insight into how interested employees are in particular programs. For example, if you launch an mLevel mission around specific product training that isn’t highly adopted, it may indicate that employees feel that they are knowledgeable enough about that product, particularly if their performance in the games supports that conclusion. The bigger picture is that perhaps your employees just aren’t as engaged at the company level as you might think. Either way, these are additional data points to consider when making designing learning and other programs.

We know the success of the mLevel casual learning platform, like many or most initiatives, is largely dependent on getting employees to initially participate, and then keeping them engaged for the long haul. We are continually adding new features to support these objectives, while staying true to our goal of changing enterprise learning.

Learn. Better.

What is a Test Case?

In software testing, a test case is an ordered sequence of inputs with conditions and variables that determine whether a piece of an application is functioning properly.  In functional testing, test cases are used to test the application’s interface and determine how an application and the user interact.  You could think of test cases for functional testing as similar to unit tests for code.

Test cases usually include the following:

• Title
• Description
• Sequence of steps to execute
• Expected result
• Actual result
• Pass/Fail

What’s the Value of a Test Case?

Part of the value in test cases is the process of writing them.  The activity of thinking about and writing down test cases can bring some realizations to the table that help improve your product before testing even begins.  But test cases also help us ensure we’re not forgetting to test key, frequently used components.  They bring a sense of control to the testing process.  Today I’ll be discussing 5 tips on how to write better test cases.

1.  Imagine Yourself as the End-User

Before you begin writing your test cases, you need to identify what your testing approach will cover.  The most important stakeholder is the end user, as they are the ones who will be using the product.  Ask yourself: What features will they be using most frequently?  What is the start-to-end flow of a real use case?  By putting yourself in the shoes of the end-user, your test cases will provide better coverage, and lead to more successful testing.

2.  Organization and Thoroughness is Key

If a feature’s behavior is dependent on inputs, include those inputs in the test case. The same idea can be applied for screen designs.  If your test case requires reviewing a design asset, include the asset in the test case.  Don’t leave the tester to hunt for this pertinent information.  It’s also important to consider the order of test cases, as some cases are dependent on others.  Keeping your test cases organized and thorough ensures the testing process goes as efficiently as possible.  There are plenty of tools available to help you organize and manage test cases.  Our tool of choice is TestLodge, a simple yet elegant test case management solution.

3.  Revise Regularly

We live in a world of constant change.  Technology changes.  Features change.  Designs change.  Test cases are prone to change and require periodic revisions.  By keeping your test cases updated in parallel with product requirements, your test cases will continue to serve as a valuable asset through each release cycle.

4.  Ask Questions, Contribute Feedback and Make Suggestions

As you write your test cases, don’t be afraid to ask questions, challenge decisions, contribute feedback and make suggestions.  Testing is all about bringing quality to the product.  It’s often the tester who really uses the product for the first time.  The ability to analyze and solve problems is essential.

5.  Test Your Test Cases

The job isn’t done once you’ve written your last test case.  Check your work by doing a dry run from start to finish.  Review all test cases with the mind of the tester.  If a screen is supposed to look a certain way, did you include the screen in the test case?  If a test case requires logging in, have you included the login credentials?  Are the test steps you’ve written clearly understandable?   You’ll be surprised what you can find by dry-running your test cases.

Conclusion

Test cases can be a valuable asset to software development teams.  They are one of the many ingredients in building quality products.  By writing and consistently revisiting test cases, your testing team will be on the same page and be able to track and better organize your testing processes.

The final part of my series on Design Considerations When Building Cross Platform Applications has finally come with one of the most critical components that’s commonly underestimated and/or ignored until the end of the software development lifecycle (SDLC): security. In fact, a common misperception of application security is skewed to either the server or application side of the platform rather than looking at the entire platform and securing everything. There are three core components to keep in mind when building out a mobile application and platform: authentication (including authorization), communication and data. The natural thought for a developer is to be concerned with the authentication component because that’s the area the user sees via a login page, but I’m going to outline why the other areas of security may cause more pain in the evolution of the application in the long run.

Authentication and Authorization

By default, any technical or non-technical user realizes that some magic occurs when an application is started and he/she has to enter credentials to inform the app who the user is and what he/she can do or see within the application. This component consists of authenticating a user (making sure the identity represented by the username and password is confirmed to be an active user) and authorization.  Authentication can take on many variations depending on the type of application being built and the types of systems that may need to be integrated.  For example, in the most common scenario, a user can use a username and password on a simple login screen.  Upon sending that data back to a server, the platform will validate the user and provide a valid/ invalid reply to inform the application that the user can or cannot use the application.  Unfortunately when working in the enterprise space, that is WAY too simple.  Users not only need to be validated, but they also need to be given roles which inform the application which parts of the application can be used by this user and to what extent. Identity protocols like WS-Federation and SAML can provide a means by which this information can be sent to the application directly via a claim. Of course, with this approach comes additional complexity in the implementation that includes setting up a trust from the application to the identity provider and potentially redirecting a user to a separate web page to login before he/she can use the app.   Because our focus is on mobile applications, the launching of a web page outside or inside the application can have a detrimental effect to the user’s experience.

Authorization comes into play when data is returned back to the application in the form of roles or claims.  In many cases this level of detail is embedded within a token sent from the auth server.  Authorization is the mechanism used by applications and services to determine what a user can do within the context of the application. Some common scenarios mirror the privileges commonly found on a file system: read-only, read-write and full access. Some applications will introduce additional types of roles to provide levels of privilege based on the type of user accessing the application.  For instance, there are cases where a company may provide an administration console to manage users and components within a system. There would likely be several types of roles available to the company hosting the application as well as to the external customers of the application.  Internally, there would be SuperAdmin, Admin and ReadOnly roles provided to various people for a variety of reasons dictated by the business. Then on the external side, there may only be two simple roles of Admin and User that may or may not map directly to the roles utilized for the internal users.

Communication

The second area of security that is often overlooked while building applications is how information is transmitted to and from the application. In most cases, a simple mechanism of using SSL to protect the data being transmitted can be sufficient as it conceals the data being sent to and from the server.  However there are cases where additional measures may be required to ensure that the message being sent to the server is valid and from the appropriate sending party. One example would be submitting data to a server that reflects a user’s performance metrics. With a common browser and some basic technical acumen, a user can alter the message being sent to the server to enhance their scores or submit a false score for another user. This can be overcome by several mechanisms depending on the how much of a concern this issue may be.  One mechanism that can be put in place involves adding a key to the message that is time-based and built using an algorithm only known to the server accepting the messages and the application sending them.  While this does provide some level of security in the transmission of the data, a user could still figure out the algorithm and modify the messages anyway. The next method would be to encrypt data using a shared private key on the server and the application. This is a method that seems a lot like the prior method, but adds a level of complexity as it will be much more difficult for the average user to hack. There are other approaches that can go to deeper levels of encryption, callbacks and other methods, but for the purpose of this post I have only laid out a couple.

Data

Lastly, data security is a huge issue when dealing with all types of applications, but it’s even more important in the mobile space where users may be able to bring their own devices into a corporate environment. Applications commonly use local storage on a device to maintain a level of stateful information that can be accessed in the app at various points during use. In most cases, there is a basic level of security that can be applied to that data by using built-in encryption mechanisms provided by the mobile operating systems (OS). While this is a decent approach, there may be instances where a device falls into the wrong hands and a hacker can get the data off of the device using common development tools. As a result, a new industry is booming around mobile device management (MDM) to control the software installed on devices and the data that may be stored on the devices. These tools act as the “traffic cops” that have the ability to manage the installation and uninstallation of software by pushing information to the devices to perform actions such as install, uninstall or disable. In some corporations, an MDM is required for a user to connect to any system within the corporate network. This is a the primary reason that the Blackberry was dominant in enterprise mobility for years because of the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) that provided a middle man in all data requests to/from the device. The MDM takes over the functionality for the BES on iOS, Android and in some cases, Windows Phone devices. It allows IT to control any interaction with their corporate controlled devices.

In the end, it’s necessary to think of security when building mobile applications because there are many ways hackers can deem your application vulnerable at any point of interaction. I have outlined several different areas that can be secured while building out the applications, but there are always ways to dig deeper when it comes to security. One of the biggest tradeoffs when building a secure application is to determine what level of security is really required. A development team can spend more time building hurdles for a hacker than actually building out functionality in the application, leaving a secure, but useless application. As an architect and lead developer it has been important for me to create a balance that makes our applications both secure, user-friendly and useful to the end user. In the case of Connections and mLevel, we have been able to apply these standards and provide secure mobile applications that can be used safely in the enterprise space.

I’m from the generation that only received a cell phone so that my parents could pick me up from the mall or movies with the least amount of trouble. Less than 10 years later my generation now has a mobile dependency so severe a good portion of my day is impacted by my smartphone – from alarm clock to bus schedules to keeping up with friends across the country. That’s the beauty of smartphones and their wide range of apps – they can enhance your life by interacting with your interests.

But at what point does quantity surpass quality? In 2011, an average of 701 apps were launched daily, but what makes them stick around? What can hold a millennial’s interest before they need to check into Whole Foods, because if you didn’t know, the fifth check-in gets you a free slice of pizza. Here are some tips:

1. Don’t bug me. When it comes to notifications, there’s a fine line between being helpful and incredibly annoying. Social apps that are letting me know about my posts being liked or friends interacting with me – that I find helpful. If the main purpose of the app is to interact with friends, of course I want to know what’s happening. But if my apps are constantly trying to get my attention, and even worse won’t let me turn the notifications off, they get on the “To Be Deleted List” very quickly.

2. Share Cautiously. Maybe I have a few guilty pleasure apps that I don’t necessarily want the world to know I’m constantly using (it’s not my fault Panda Jam is addicting). When an app doesn’t clarify when it is sharing data, and worse, if it does so without asking first – it’s pretty frustrating. No one likes to see a ton of spam on his or her Facebook newsfeed, and I don’t want to add to the insanity by letting my friends see how many baby pandas I rescued at 9pm on a Friday night.

3. Please Work. One of my favorite apps – 8tracks – I constantly use to listen to music. I understand that when I’m underground on a train, it’s going to have trouble loading music. But when the app is constantly freezing or crashing, it gets pretty aggravating. Since I do work with mobile apps I start to wonder, do they even test their product before their releases? I mean, the app only has 4 main functions and when the “play music” function keeps failing, I feel like it should have spent a bit more time in the workshop.

4. Minimal Ads. I get it – free apps need to make money, and a few ads placed throughout offers a great solution. But I think we all share the same feelings towards Facebook’s new ad explosion – it’s annoying. I don’t mind clicking through a few ads in order to use an app – or having a small banner at the top of the screen letting me know I have the option to meet singles in my area. But when every transition is filled with a full-page ad or worse, a video, it gets old fast. Please be smart about ads, mobile gods, because they can ruin the experience quickly.

I’m hoping right about now you’re thinking, “Yes, someone gets it!” but I’m assuming there is also a chance you might be thinking, “Man, this generation is whiney.” I’ll just go with a mix of both – right & whiney. The smartphone world seems to be advancing so rapidly that by the time I get this post finished, we will be on the iPhone 7. With this progression comes the swift growth of the technology of apps, making it incredibly important that an app has the originality to stick around longer than a few weeks. (cough, draw something, cough). We’ve come a long way from texting in our book bag in high school and tweeting behind a textbook in college. We are taking our smartphones with us wherever we go, and I truly believe the above four criticisms are the biggest downfalls of apps.  Now if you’ll excuse me, my Uber cab is here, thanks to yet another incredibly helpful smartphone application that I’m hoping will stick around for a few more months.

Gaming and analytics are two very hot technology topics right now. You can’t read too many articles or blogs on technology innovations and trends these days without stumbling over a discussion on how gaming is going to transform how people learn. Or how access to massive data sets and continuously evolving business intelligence tools can provide insights for businesses about their customers, prospects and employees. Wouldn’t it be great if we could leverage these two domains of interest and innovation together? We think so, and that’s our passion and vision as we develop the mLEVEL platform. In today’s post, I’ll talk about the gaming trend and what we’ve done with it, and in my next post I’ll discuss our take on analytics.

“I don’t want to learn, but I would love to play“

Whether you are a K-12 student, a retail store associate, or an executive in a Fortune 500 company, you typically share a common view about learning or training.  People really don’t want to, or necessarily benefit from, sitting down for hours at a time to learn new information. But if they could play a game in 90-180 seconds, they’d be more likely to engage in that form of learning throughout the week. Add in the competitive element of playing with and challenging peers, and it’s even more fun.

We call this “casual learning,” and it’s the basis for our user experience in mLEVEL. We challenge ourselves on a daily basis to build fast, fun and simple games that will engage people with content in a way that they’ll actually enjoy.

“We looked into building games, but it’s really expensive and time-consuming…”

Based on they way most people and companies have approached gaming to date, it can be a very expensive and resource-intensive effort. There are a ton of great examples of games available online or in the various app stores that companies have developed. However most of these games are built so that the technology and design of the game is inextricably tied to the content. In the corporate world of training if you build a game on negotiation or the sales process, you can’t use that same game for product training, marketing promotions, process change, new hire orientation, corporate communications on strategic initiatives, etc.

Many of these corporate games support the content that they are trying to teach, so the game is structured to highlight the nuances of that content. This approach makes sense, but it isn’t very scalable if you need the games to work across multiple topics and disciplines in an efficient and cost-effective way.  Furthermore, if you want a game to be about your own company’s proprietary content, it becomes too expensive to justify. With this approach of tying game content to the game logic, you can really only benefit from using the game for one initiative or topic.

With mLEVEL, we’ve developed a way to leverage a sophisticated set of cloud applications and infrastructure to store a Knowledge Base of information. That Knowledge Base feeds a series of game templates designed to align with Bloom’s Taxonomy (a classification of learning objectives). We see numerous benefits to this approach, including the ability to deploy cost-effective games quickly.

You start by populating the Knowledge Base with information that you want individuals to learn. You don’t have to think about the format of the questions – you just focus on the content that needs to be shared or taught. That structured content then feeds the various game templates that we’ve developed based on the learning progression of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Content is presented to the players in various formats and using different games to ensure true mastery of the information, not just memorization of the questions and answers. And you only enter the content once – that single Knowledge Base feeds the content into the various game templates that exist today and those that we will build in the future.

“Maybe gaming will work for us”

Companies now have the ability to deploy games on a variety of topics in a cost-effective and timely way. In my next post, I’ll speak more about how adding access to extensive game play data for performance and knowledge insights makes mLEVEL even more appealing. We’re so excited to share more about it.

There are not many things in life in which I can call myself an expert, but when it comes to start-ups I think I have experienced most, if not all scenarios. Whether it was the boot strapped company with three guys in a garage and no cash or the angel/venture-funded company in true office space, I have seen it all. Which leads me to the subject of this blog post. Do you have what it takes to be in a start-up?

Start-ups are different that is for sure, and those who succeed in them are cut from a different cloth than people who work in corporate America or established companies. Why is that you ask? I wish there was a simple answer, but to be honest there is not. I have seen senior executives who have had star-studded careers enter the world of a start-up and fall flat on their faces.  It is not uncommon for me to walk into a meeting and hear from the person across the table how jealous they are that I get to work in the start-up world and how every day is a new adventure. I often sit back and think, does that person really know what they are asking for? Do they have what it takes to be in a start-up?

So instead of just thinking it I decided to blog about it and layout the key traits/characteristics you need to have in order to succeed in a start-up.

1)   Check your Ego at the door! Whatever your title was before you joined the start-up and no matter what your business card says, at start-ups it just doesn’t matter. The support systems and infrastructure of your past life don’t exist and everyone needs to be self-sufficient, so while the founder may have given you the VP title, they may as well called you the janitor because hierarchies go right out the window in a start-up.

2)   Keep your glass half-full instead of half-empty. No, I am not referring to your soft drink or coffee mug but your attitude. Life at a start-up requires you to be positive. While not every day will present a challenge, it is important to remember that you are building something from scratch that is going to try your patience no matter how great a product or solution you offer.

3)   Don’t be afraid of failure. If you have never worked in a start-up before, there is a natural fear of failure on your shoulders. When you walk into a start-up, you have to be prepared to face that fear head-on and embrace failure as your teacher. You make assumptions all the time in the start-up world based upon your experiences in the past or your gut instinct, and I promise you will fail as much as you succeed, so embrace it as there is not better way to improve!

4)   Perfection doesn’t exist. This is a tough one for most folks to swallow, but as the world continues to demand instant information and instant access, seeking perfection can be to the detriment of an employee who works in a start-up. I am not saying go out tomorrow and put out a shoddy product or forget to spell check, but the reality is most start-ups are being built or designed based upon assumptions and in reality, how many of those are perfect? I suggest when you walk in the door instead of seeking perfection, you seek collaboration on imperfect ideas and work with your teammates or advisors to get them as close to perfect as possible, and then learn from your mistakes. (See point above)

5)   Go all in. Finally, be prepared to go all-in and no, this does not refer to your poker hand. Entrepreneurs who tend to have an unhealthy work-life balance run start-ups, and if they are good, they also have a relentless desire to succeed. They will expect of you what they expect of themselves, and that is undying commitment and passion to their company. When you are not at work, they will be working, and while they may not say it out loud it is often implied that you should be working as well. If you are not prepared to attempt to meet them at this bar (and no, that is not the local watering hole), take a pause before joining the company as the perceived lack of dedication will rear its head no matter how much effort you think you’re putting in.

So in summary, while I am sure there are many more traits about what it takes to succeed in a start-up, the points above will hopefully help you decide if it is right for you. Being part of building a company, division or product from nothing can be one of the most rewarding experiences you can have, but it can also be one of the most frustrating and challenging ones if you don’t have the right attitude or mindset.

Michael Scott, manager of the Scranton, PA paper company Dunder Mifflin in the fictional TV show The Office, would often herd the entire staff into the conference room for an impromptu meeting. He might use a big easel with markers, act out a scenario as if he were an actor in a play or ask for audience participation in some embarrassing conversation that may somehow be loosely related to the main topic. All efforts seemed to elicit such feelings as boredom, amusement, incredulousness and various states of engagement from the staff. Did The Office employees ever take away great insights from these meetings? Was this manager effective at teaching his staff important lessons or procedures? Probably not. The unique Michael Scott technique is one that can’t easily be replicated in corporate America, and that’s probably a good thing.

So what is the right way to go about teaching employees something new? I have been involved in a number of corporate training techniques, yet was never fully satisfied with how any of them worked.

• There is something to be said for in-person training (as long as Michael Scott’s methods aren’t your model). Being able to discuss a topic, ask questions and hear other colleague’s questions in a group “classroom” setting can help employees process new learning material. Some people will thrive in this setting, while others won’t, simply because everyone learns in different ways. Also if attendees don’t have the opportunity to immediately apply what they’ve learned, it is often lost within a few days or weeks.
• E-learning courses may seem like a great idea, but I can say with authority that it’s rare for an employee to find or make the time to sit at their desk and take a training course unless it is required. And if it is required, you still have the issue of how employees put what they’ve learned into action. If employees aren’t able to apply it and start using it, the information generally gets lost.
• One-on-one on-the-job training can be effective – an experienced employee sits next to a junior employee and walks them through every nuance of a job. The junior employee may take notes and be able to ask the more experienced employee questions. The training is tailored to his specific needs, and a lot is learned. How does the junior employee ask questions after training is over? What if the more experienced employee has left the company? Since the training was in-person, there often isn’t an effective way to reference the information learned after the session is complete.
• Training manuals can be great to read and have as tangible reference material to look something up, but do employees really read them? Is this an engaging way to share information? Are employees wasting time looking up details in the manual when they should know the information on the fly?

Each training approach I experienced seemed to be missing some important element, no matter the approach. I knew Michael Scott didn’t have the answer, but who did?

Well I believe that our company has created a new solution that fills this void in corporate learning. mLEVEL is the first casual learning platform for the enterprise designed using games to help employees master virtually any information. mLEVEL complements existing corporate learning and training programs by reinforcing key concepts learned in a classroom setting or found in a training manual. Playing the games is fun, no matter the content. Competing with colleagues keeps employees engaged, well beyond the first game play. Real-world achievements within the mission structure get employees applying knowledge in a business setting. Essentially mLEVEL provides the perfect companion to corporate training by reinforcing the lessons with a fun, quick, accessible way to learn and retain information.

Even Michael Scott may have imparted better business lessons to his staff if he could have ended his conference room sessions by rolling out an mLEVEL mission to incorporate a spirit of competition, real-world achievements and a way to reference the newly presented material.

A powerful feature of mLEVEL is the ability to quickly assess knowledge across an entire organization. One of our retail customers chose mLEVEL specifically for its ability to assess what their people know – and don’t know – so that they can inform leadership about correlations between sales and product knowledge, and adjust learning programs to focus on problem areas. In a matter of minutes (mLEVEL games typically take less than 3 minutes to complete) the Learning and Development organization can see not only what products people know and don’t know, but what about those products people may need help with.

Structured content leads to deeper analysis

This type of performance analysis is possible due to the very structured approach to mLEVEL topic content and additional metadata about that content. The traditional approach of writing out questions, while in some ways is easy for content creation, does not lend itself well to data analysis. The immediately available performance data is primarily how people answered each question, i.e. did they answer the questions correctly or incorrectly. Subsequent, manual analysis is required to get to insights about the answers.

mLEVEL topic content is structured using an object-oriented approach, and appropriate questions are automatically generated based on the specific content and the game being played. This structure allows us to get beyond whether a question was answered correctly to understanding what the question was really about. From there, deep analysis of performance data is possible:

• The rate that questions about a specific concept, product, or item are answered correctly/incorrectly
• The rate that questions about a specific attribute about a concept, product, or item are answered correctly/incorrectly
• The rate that associations are made between question content and commonly selected answers, whether correct or incorrect

With this data in hand, you can quickly adjust mLEVEL topic content and question styles, or broader organizational learning programs, to address any knowledge gaps.

Driving individual improvement

While much of this performance analysis data can and will be used to address organizational learning concerns, another key benefit of mLEVEL is its ability to identify knowledge gaps for individual learners. The same data discussed above is available at an individual level to be used to guide employees towards areas that they are struggling with or where they need more exposure to information. In the future, mLEVEL will automatically adjust the focus of questions to be on the areas where an individual learner needs to improve.

Of course, this is all predicated on large-scale usage and adoption. Tune in next time to learn more about how mLEVEL drives near-term participation and long-term engagement!

Learn. Better.

Every leader fits into one of the below communication types. Which one are you? Which one is the most effective?  This post explains each communication type, identifies the most effective type, and explains a simple matrix to help you become a stronger leader through communication.

Let’s first identify the four styles of communication:

• Passive
• Aggressive
• Passive Aggressive
• Assertive

Below is a simple description of the communication types with a short example, so read the types and find out which one you are. And please be honest with yourself, otherwise this exercise will be pointless and you won’t improve your leadership communication or your team’s productivity and morale.

Passive Communicator: The passive communicator may not always tell you the truth or be straightforward with you.  He can be afraid of confrontation and will more likely make a slight comment meant as a joke but in reality has truth behind it. He cares too much about hurting your feelings or getting you upset to be too honest with you.

Example: Suppose an employee, Tom, comes in late to work regularly.  Instead of the manager, Sally, asking Tom to be on time every day, she might just make a joke such as, “Good morning Tom, did you end up on the slow train again? Ha ha.”

Aggressive Communicator: This type of communicator can be downright mean and doesn’t care about an employee’s feelings. He typically yells or makes degrading comments.

Example: Same scenario as above, except this time Sally might yell at Tom, “What the heck Tom, you’re late again! You better be on time for the next 6 months or I’m going to fire you and replace you with a monkey, who can probably be on time AND do your job better.”

Passive Aggressive Communicator: This type of communicator is typically afraid of confrontation but can also be mean spirited.  Due to a fear of confrontation he will say mean or degrading things behind others’ backs instead of talking directly to the person.  He also often keeps frustrations to himself, until one day they explode and he starts yelling at others in an aggressive way.

Example: Same scenario as above, except before Tom arrives to work Sally might complain to every body, “Geez, Tom is late again. Why can’t he make it to work like everybody else? I may just have to fire him soon.”  But the moment Tom arrives, Sally says, “Good morning Tom,” and after Tom replies that he’s sorry for being late, Sally says, “Don’t worry about it, I totally understand.”

Assertive Communicator: This type of communicator will be straightforward and honest with others but also very respectful of their feelings. He will address issues immediately in a way that explains why it’s important to the business and to their co-workers.

Example: The same scenario as above, except this is only the third time Tom is late in two weeks.  Sally asks Tom, in private, to join him for a meeting to discuss his tardiness.  The assertive manager says, “Tom, I understand it can be difficult to make the train sometimes, but since we have customers calling starting at 8am, we really need you to make it in by 8am.  It creates more work for others and it could hurt the service we promise our customers when you’re consistently late.  I understand the rare occasion, but this cannot happen on a regular basis.  I know you have a lot going on in the mornings, but hopefully you can make some adjustments.  If this continues to be a problem, I’ll have to write you up.  Thanks Tom.”

The Assertive Communicator Rules!

The best communication style for a leader, and anybody in general, is the assertive communicator.  The assertive communicator is doing what’s in the best interest of the company and the employee, making sure his team resolves issues quickly and ensures behavior changes take place.  If a manager is not happy with the job someone is doing, it’s best if the employee gets the feedback to make those changes, even if it’s difficult to take that feedback. The last thing any employee should ever experience is being fired and never understanding why. This usually happens when a manager is too afraid to have the difficult conversations along the way.

A simple tool to think about when communicating with your team is the matrix below.

If you’re a passive leader, just think to yourself, “This is a situation where I need to have a difficult conversation and I need to muster a bit of courage.” If you’re a passive communicator, you’re naturally considerate and things will turn out great the majority of the time.

If you’re an aggressive communicator, just think to yourself, “I need to be more considerate of my team’s feelings; I don’t want them getting demotivated or leaving the organization.”

If you’re a passive aggressive communicator, just think about the negativity you might project and how that has a negative impact on the team and the perception people have of you. In the end you want others to change their behavior, and the only way that’s going to happen is if you have the courage to communicate honestly with them and express some consideration for their feelings.

By following the simple rules of the matrix below, you can become a more effective leader through assertive communication.  Your team will be more productive, morale will be higher, and people will respect working with you.

As a manager and a leader, one of the biggest challenges for your department or team is making sure that you and your team are communicating effectively.  There are many aspects to effective communication amongst teams, but one simple rule can easily address one of the most common types of miscommunication – when co-workers don’t completely understand each other – that causes a loss of productivity and creates frustration.

As an employee, have you ever been in a meeting with your manager as she is explaining a project to you and you’re not exactly sure what she is talking about? Yet you leave the meeting hoping you’ll figure it out or ask somebody what she meant?

As an employee, have you ever been in a meeting with your manager and felt you had a good grasp of what she wanted, left the meeting and did exactly what she said, but after completion she explained you got it wrong?

As a manager, have you ever explained a project to one of your employees and they go off and do something different then what you explained?

As a manager, have you ever seen confusion on an employee’s face when explaining a project yet continue without asking them if there is something they don’t understand?

This happens all too often in the business world, and it not only hurts productivity, it causes much frustration amongst both parties, leading to dissention within a team.

So the million-dollar question is:

If a manager is explaining a project to an employee (or anybody for that matter), whose responsibility is it to make sure what is being communicated is completely understood?

Is it 50% the manager’s responsibility and 50% the employee’s responsibility?

Is it 80% the manager’s responsibility and 20% the employee’s responsibility?

Is it 20% the manager’s responsibility and 80% the employee’s responsibility?

This is actually a trick question; it’s 100% the manager’s responsibility AND 100% the employee’s responsibility: 100%/100% Communication.

That means that if a manager is explaining a project to an employee, it is 100% her responsibility to make sure that the employee understands what she is trying to explain. She should get into the habit of asking at the end of each conversation, “Just to make sure we’re both on the same page, can you please explain what I’m expecting and what you’re going to do?”

On the flip side, if an employee is listening to a manager explain a project, and that employee has any confusion as to what is being said, he needs to speak up and ask the manager to explain it more clearly.  Or at the end of the conversation the employee should get in the habit of saying, “Just to recap and to make sure I understand correctly, this is what you expect and what I’m going to do.”

By teaching your team this simple rule of 100%/100% Communication, you can improve productivity, lower frustration and start on your path to having a team that’s much more effective through clear communication.

User Experience Thursday (UXT) is happening this Thursday in Chicago, and I am excited to announce that the event has SOLD OUT! This full-day event is designed specifically for talented Chicago UX Professionals to share, learn and network in a casual and informative environment, sponsored by User Interface Engineering and Vitamin T. To join the waiting list, please visit www.uxthursday.com.

Jared Spool from User Interface Engineering will kick off the day sharing valuable research and insights on the effect mobile has with the user experience, while Stephen Anderson will wrap the day with an entertaining and informative talk on how micro-moments make huge impacts with user experience. In between the keynotes, I’ll present a session on Designing Mobile Apps for the Enterprise that will showcase SuperConnect‘s own Connections and mLevel apps, along with other sessions from some of Chicago’s leading UX professionals.

Take a peek at the agenda below — and hopefully we’ll see you on Thursday! And for those that are interested but couldn’t attend the event in Chicago, I will be posting the slides and notes from my session here on our SuperConnect blog in the coming weeks. Stay tuned…

Agenda

9:45 am
Keynote: Mobile & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm
Jared Spool, User Interface Engineering

11:00 am 
Simplifying Massive Changes with a Live Style Guide
Mark Meeker, Orbitz

11:30 am 
The Touchable Desktop – When Responsive Won’t Fly
Will Hacker, Cars.com

Noon
Designing Mobile Apps for Enterprise Use 
Jeff Steffgen, SuperConnect

1:30 pm 
Researching With A Team That’s New To Research
Russ Unger, GE Capital

2:00 pm 
Redesigning The Redesign Process 
Shay Howe

2:30 pm 
Walgreens Photo Goes Beyond MultiChannel 
John Yesko, Walgreens

3:15 pm 
Keynote: Micromoments: Tiny Interactions With Big Payoffs
Stephen P. Anderson, PoetPainter, LLC

My 4 year old son was anxiously waiting for me when I arrived home a couple weeks ago. He was bursting at the seams with pride and excitement about having learned how to wash and dry his hands all by himself.

As I thought about it for a while, that pride and excitement in learning something new is pretty universal. We all take pride in acquiring a new skill or learning how to do something we didn’t know how to do before. It’s just human nature.

One of the great things the Internet has brought us is an amazing new way to learn from others. YouTube is filled with videos teaching people how to do new things.  Want to learn how to re-tile your bathroom?  There’s a video for that.  Want to learn how to play piano?  There are videos for that as well. There are also seemingly endless how-to sites on the web teaching everything from building a doll house to math to medicine.  My wife proudly tells our friends that she has a medical degree from the University of WebMD.

The power of this medium is just beginning to be realized.  Imagine the ability to tap into the hundreds or thousands or even millions of experts worldwide.  Imagine being able to quickly, easily, and entertainingly learn new skills while being supported by experts.

A new paradigm of learning and personal development is not that far off.  Learning that is accessed when you need it and how you want it is available to everyone. Leveraging mobility to let you access information where you want and when you want.  Leveraging the latest learning paradigms such as learning games, competition, and multi-media to make them effective, engaging, and impactful.  Leveraging social networks to share information and get real-time help from others.

What do you want to learn today?

A colleague recently asked me about using gamification as a way to promote learning.  The question was inspired by Bunchball founder Rajat Paharia’s response to a recent Gartner report that predicts that, by 2014, 80% of gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design.  My colleague asked:

“Curious on whether you agree (with the response)…seems like a standard motivation POV vs. learning.”

It was an important realization, one that many don’t always understand – that gamification is not learning. As Mr. Paharia points out in his response, the problem is that there is so much misunderstanding and misconception about what actually is gamification.

Over the last 12 months, gamification has risen to extraordinary heights, seen by many as the solution to virtually any and all business problems. “Award points or an achievement badge, and display a leaderboard,” the thinking goes, “and people will be motivated to follow the process and do the work.”  This mindset naturally has been embraced by Learning & Development organizations, looking to modernize (at least) their current approaches to enterprise training and education.  And, why not?

Using Mr. Paharia’s definition, gamification is “the process of taking something that already exists – that has some core, intrinsic value – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty.”  In fact, as my friend suggested, gamification is solely about motivating desired behaviors.  This works well, for the most part, in the consumer space, where consumers find real value from the behaviors they’ve been motivated to perform.  Participation in a mileage rewards program, for example, has real benefits for frequent travelers.

The same can’t be said of gamification when it is applied in a corporate environment. Employees generally don’t perceive value in performing the tasks where gamification has been designed as a motivational tool.  Entering sales activities in the CRM system, completing a performance review on time or watching a training video may all be important to the business, but are rarely seen as valuable – or as high-priority – to the employee.  Gamification may drive greater participation in the near-term, especially by fostering perceived competition between co-workers, but will not lead to lasting change because the “core, intrinsic value” is missing.  While an employee may be motivated to click the link to watch that training video to get the badge or score additional points and move up the leaderboard, she likely won’t care so much about paying attention and really learning something.

In the long run, especially for mentally complex and challenging activities (such as learning), people are not motivated by rewards and incentives.  Instead, the most effective motivators are autonomy, mastery, and meaning. MLevel, a casual learning platform, embodies these concepts by allowing people to learn when and where they want, and giving people a learning objective of achieving mastery of the necessary information.  The product leverages games – real games – to create a fun and engaging learning environment, and uses many gamification techniques to drive initial participation, it’s the focus on the “core, intrinsic value” of learning that leads to long-term engagement that is the ultimate goal.

It is clear that smartphones are changing the way we live, as the access to information and people has never been easier.  The question is: does it matter whether you have an iPhone, Android device, Windows phone 8 or Blackberry?  Well, from my point of view, it certainly does – especially as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon takes hold in corporations across the world.  You should consider the following elements when making your smartphone choice:

1)   What is your company’s strategy on mobile applications? Companies today are working feverishly to deliver applications to your phone in order to allow you to be more productive. If your company already has apps available, make sure to review what phones they are designed to work with as it will make your life easier, and isn’t that why you bought the smartphone in the first place?

2)   Does your company use a mobile device management solution? Not all phones are created equal. In the future phones will allow you to create multiple profiles on each device based upon login, and if your company requires you to install a mobile device management solution on your phone, you may want to consider getting one where that is in the roadmap. Why learn a new operating system if you don’t have to?

3)   Does your company allow you to access email, calendar, etc. remotely? If the answer is no, it likely means you are a ways away from getting apps or other tools to make your day better. This means buy whichever phone you like. Oh, and maybe consider looking for a new job, as your company might not be around for much longer.

4)   Do you want to be able to do work on your phone? If the answer is no, then get whatever device you want but make sure you think it through since switching devices later can be costly and accessories don’t match up for each device. If the answer is yes, take a moment to think through what you want to do. Is it all about app usage or accessing Excel, Word or PowerPoint?  If the latter, clearly Win8 is the way to go. But if it is all about apps, see point #1 and check with your IT team on platforms they plan to support in the immediate future.

5)   Are you willing to carry a personal device as well as a work one? I see this everyday in corporate America and it makes me giggle, but hey if you want to do it, have at it. If it was me, I would just live with the work phone as who wants to carry the extra weight around?

6)   Are you a gamer?  If you play Xbox and love it, get a Windows device, as the integration of these two platforms is world class. I don’t have an Xbox, but I have seen how this works, and it is awesomesauce!

Remember this is one man’s point of view and I am sure there are many others, but I spend everyday talking about mobility in the workplace and it is clear that the smartphone you choose matters!

Since I started this blog series a couple months back, the landscape in mobile applications has changed quite a bit, but the design considerations remain constant with regards to data.  In this post, my fourth of the series on Design Considerations When Building Cross Platform Applications, I will focus on the many faces of data transmission and storage with regards to mobile applications.  At SuperConnect, our applications focus on enterprise customers where typically large amounts of data required to power even the simplest of applications. The story about the evolution of our initial data design over a year ago to where our application is today is a long and winding road, but a great learning experience that needs to be shared.

To start, here’s a little background about our first production application, Connections, an enterprise directory that focuses on getting people in touch with their colleagues.  The core features of the app come from the strength of our underlying back-end platform (e.g. server infrastructure, services, databases and security). That being said, much of what makes the system work with mobile applications requires some of the platform’s power to be transferred to mobile devices. A key-differentiating feature of our application relies on the ability to provide the user with nearly the same experience when disconnected as when connected to a Wi-Fi or cellular network.  This feature was a carry-over from a prior version of the application called Cards that was built as a sales tool and side project for our sister-company Slalom Consulting.  In the Cards version of the application, the size of the data set was fairly small when first developed because the contact list consisted of approximately 900 people with 25-30 data fields that needed to reside on the device.  With Connections, our first customer was one where the contact list would be comprised of nearly 40,000 people with about 50 data fields that needed to be pulled form Active Directory on a nightly basis.  Due to the significant increase in data required on the devices, our development team had to evaluate several methods to transfer data to and store data on the mobile devices.

Legacy (“Cards”) Solution

While writing the original mobile directory application Cards, the developers opted to create a mechanism that utilized an HTTP Handler mechanism to transmit data down to the devices.  The data was requested from a web server and the handler would send the required data down to the device as needed in XML format.  Upon initial launch and successful login, the full data set was requested to populate a database on the mobile device using the standard built-in data protocols (e.g. CoreData for iOS and SQLite for Android).  Because this process was performed on a background thread, the application would load with no issue and the user would see the initial contact list populate as the data arrived.  For subsequent launches, the application would only request the data that had been updated since the last time the user had launched the application (and synced).

With Connections, we started development with a similar pattern as described for Cards with a couple exceptions:  to use SQLite natively on all devices and store data in a tall table, rather than normalized.  The intent of using SQLite on all devices was to allow us to reuse some of the same logic in database operations across all of the devices. (NOTE:  This becomes our saving grace later.)   Additionally, we ran several performance tests with small (250) to very large (1,000,000) contacts to determine the structure of our database using tall tables for efficiency.  Very soon after we started to implement the solution, we quickly realized with the amount of data we were storing on the devices that the handler / web service method of synching data to the devices was not going to work.  The initial load of a 40,000 contact data set took nearly thirty minutes to download before the application would actually be usable.

Split Data Strategy

The next approach we decided to take was to split up the sync of the data into several methods.  First, we would request the base data (e.g. First Name, Last Name, Display Name, Office Location, Mobile Phone Number and Email Address) required to get the application up and running quickly enough for the user to access the key information about the contacts. This initial request would occur whenever a user would launch the application — before he/she could use the application to ensure the contact list was in sync with the system-of-record (Active Directory).  Second, we would load the secondary information (Birthday, Hire Date, Client List, etc.) on a background thread while the user was using the application.   While this solution would get the app to the point where users would be able to use the it more quickly than the original approach, it still required quite a few data requests to the server (depending on our paging logic) and a fairly large amount of data being transferred over the wire.  As a result, a new issue reared its head with disrupted syncs. We were able to determine where the application was in the actual retrieval of data, but it allowed for a few scenarios where the data could become out of sync while performing the sync process due to slow or dropped connections during the process.

Server-Generated Databases

Due to the issues with multiple requests to pull all of the data to the devices, we decided to attempt to generate the SQLite databases on the server and push the entire database down to the device as part of a single request from Windows Azure Blob Storage. The database required to perform this task would contain all of the data related to the customer’s contact list as well as all of the data required to configure / customize the application on the user’s devices.  In the case of the larger customer list, we were able to get a compressed database down to the device in about seven (7) minutes which was a significant improvement over the initial approach using service calls, but was still not an acceptable approach for a user being blocked from using the application for this length of time.  Thereafter, we had to iterate through the solution to continue to cut time out of this initial launch of the app.  Some of the questions we asked ourselves were (a) do we really need all of this data on the device, and (b) is there a way to generate parts of the database and merge them when they get to the application?  As a result, we were able to cut our initial database down from 400Mb to under 100Mb (decompressed).  We also realized it would make sense to evaluate the structure of our data and the methods we were using to push the data to the devices.  We took several steps to make this process more efficient:

1. Split our databases into two:  One DB provides the contact data that would be synched regularly. The other DB, which would probably be updated infrequently, contains any configuration information used to set up the application on the user’s device.
2. Change our compression / decompression methods:  Initially we used gzip for compression as it is more of a standard in web data transfer, but we found that if we used 7zip we would get better compression.  The difference in our first large customer’s contact DB was about 10x.  The 100Mb DB actually compressed down to 16Mb using 7zip.
3. Include what we need:  We removed excess data from the databases that were being sent to the device.  In general, customers tend to send more data than the application needs so they have options in how the user interface is configured within the app.  We used a combination of the data fields provided and the configuration setup in our administration console to trim out data that was not actually used within the app.

Back to the Drawing Board

At this point, we had cut down our transmission rate significantly and the footprint on the user’s device had been limited, but problems still remained.  First, we found that the performance of our search on the SQLite DB on the device was awful:  45 seconds to search for “Joe” on a system of 40,000 contacts where about forty results should be returned.  As a result, we had to figure out a method where we could make the search more efficient to make the application usable.  The clear solution would be to implement a full-text search index on the DB, but with it came more problems.  We had to update our services that build the DB to generate the full-text search indices on the server before the DB was compressed, so we don’t have to perform this indexing on each user’s device.  Initially, we attempted to do this indexing on the device, but found that the process drained the device’s battery and would not provide the ideal user experience.  In addition, to help improve the efficiency of querying we upgraded to the most recent version of the SQLite library and include it within our application.  While this does require more upkeep, we are able to control all aspects of our data access in our app.

Overall, the process to get to the production version of Connections has been a great learning experience in how to design mobile applications that require large amounts of data. The transition from doing a part-by-part download of data to downloading an entire database was a big change in our original architecture, but it has led to a very solid application on Android and iOS with a Windows Phone 8 version coming soon.

Stay tuned for my next post on Design Considerations, where I’ll dive into the Design Considerations for security for mobile applications.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining Jared Spool, Stephen Anderson and a bunch of really great local UX professionals to present at User Experience Thursday (UXT) in Chicago on January 24th. UXT is a “casual conference” where UX, research and design folks from the Chicagoland area are meeting to discuss the various UX methodologies they are using in their current projects.

In particular, my talk track will be focused on Designing Mobile Apps for Enterprise Use. I’ll be discussing some of the unique challenges that I’ve faced over the past few years while designing mobile enterprise SaaS solutions (here at SuperConnect, and at my previous gig), along with leading-edge trends that we’ve successfully used in this space. Here’s a sneak peek…

Making mobility work for the enterprise

Designing solutions to accommodate the latest capabilities and new demands of mobile enterprise systems takes innovative thinking and a bit of forethought. Finding and accessing information in an enterprise ecosystem can often be a huge challenge for employees, due to the very definition of the enterprise – a large, geographically decentralized and distributed environment that contains various functionalities across many business units. Making matters worse, these disparate business units often hold a large amount of authority and power in their separate — and often significant — infrastructures.

Smart Enterprises are now recognizing these issues and are using mobility solutions to completely redefine how employees collaborate, contribute and find information at work. During my upcoming UXT session, I’ll show some real-life examples of design challenges and discuss other considerations that we typically encounter in mobile enterprise software, which may include:

• Performance – front-end, back-end and network
• Data Storage – local v. cloud
• Connectivity Modes – Wifi, cellular and offline
• Security & User Identification – network authentication, governance of users and compliance rules based on user roles
• Platform Choices – native v. HTML 5 v. hybrid
• Branding – incorporating corporate logos and colors in a SaaS model

If you are interested in attending, you can register at http://uxthursday.eventbrite.com. Early registration ends January 10^th. I’ll post a recap after the event, for those not in the Chicago area. Oh, and thanks to my buddy Tim Forman over at Vitamin T for hooking me up with Jared Spool and the UXT guys!

UXT Chicago Event Details

Join your UX peers in Chicago on January 24, 2013 for a brand new event – UX Thursday. Register as many people as you want by January 10 for $79.00. After January 10, the price goes up to $109.

It’s a full-day event designed specifically for the most talented Chicago UX Professionals. We’re dedicating the program to the newest, most interesting UX work happening right in your backyard.

• Registration and breakfast: 9:00 am -9:45 am
• Conference: 9:45 am – 4:00 pm
• Networking reception: 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The MCHC Conference Center

222 South Riverside Plaza, 19th Floor

Chicago, IL.

I’ll admit – I have been a Mac user for over a decade. I will probably always use an Apple computer, however over this last year I have considered trading in my iPhone for something a little “fresher.”

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on the design for SuperConnect’s Connections app on Windows Phone 8, and let me tell you, it has been a really awesome experience. We’re about halfway through the first development phase, and I, like many, cannot wait to see the finished product. After all the research I’ve done, I am realizing that there are some really cool things happening up in Seattle. It’s possible that the Windows phone will be my choice come December 12, when my contract is up.

What is so attractive about the Windows 8 phone?
Microsoft has been trying to redefine their image to be more modern over the last few years, gone are the days of silly gradients and over complex icons. They’ve really simplified the UI to be what you need and not what you don’t. Simply put, it just looks slick and new. Just from looking at the overall UI, I believe the commercials that frame it as a better, faster tool. And well, Maps works…very well…and even offline.

The different features that catch my eye are these:

Motion aka “live tiles”
The live tiles are what set this OS apart from their competition. The term ‘live tiles’ refers to the information on the home screens that is in constant motion, serving up information accessible without having to launch the app. This way, you can see the weather, the latest Facebook post and the latest news all from your homepage. It also refers to how you can resize these different squares and rectangles to truly customize the interactions you have with your phone.

Swiping
Horizontal swiping is a main navigational element in Windows 8, and this way of loading the information makes the experience seem a lot snappier.

Modern Typography
Microsoft is using the font Segoe, a humanist typeface family, which was designed by Steve Matteson. The font is being used throughout Microsoft from all their software to their advertising. It is even also part of their corporate logo. The font is simple, thin and very modern.

Flat Color
Flat color is being used on the squares and rectangles that make up the live tiles. The color is customizable through the settings page. You can also customize the background to be either black or white. This way you can tell your phone from the crowd right away – no more will you be walking away with someone else’s phone.

Charms
Microsoft is recommending specific icons for designers to use, and also defining a place for them. This will make it faster for a user to understand the different apps they download.

Strict Grid
Last but certainly not least, this is the piece that holds it all together. Without the strict grid, apps lack consistency and quickly lose their luster.

This all sounds great but are there even any apps yet??
In the first month Windows 8 app store had already grown to 20,000 apps. They are growing at a rate of 500 per day! The issue is that many of these apps are free. Even though this is great for the consumer, the people developing these apps don’t get paid out as easily which means there is not as great of an incentive to develop on this platform.

Either way, if the store keeps growing at the same rate there could be 40,000 apps by the end of the year, which means the Windows 8 app store is growing at a faster rate than Apple or Android at their conception.

Summing it up

The Windows 8 phone’s UI reminds me a lot of design school. Its ultra modern and minimalistic style is influenced straight from the history books. It embodies the same principles that Bauhaus International Style and Swiss Design do: Content is King. That is why it is so attractive to me. My biggest concern is losing the apps I am used to with the iPhone, but at the rate which apps are being developed I am less concerned with this. Apple, beware…Microsoft has caught my eye!

Designing across multiple platforms can be tricky business, but in the case of mobile applications it can often become a designer’s worst nightmare. Supporting cutting edge high-resolution tablet screens in tandem with ancient, and much smaller, legacy phone screen sizes can severely increase the amount of design work. This extra work can include the need to create various layouts for target screen sizes (both for phones and tablets), dealing with proportion and scaling issues across multiple native platforms, along with all of the unique assets required for the many screen resolutions and densities across iOS, Android, Windows and other devices.

At SuperConnect, we are developing our mLevel app in the Unity gaming platform, allowing us to maintain one code-base with the ability to publish and deploy the app to multiple platforms and devices. This inspired me to research some popular smartphones and tablets to capture some basic data such as screen resolution, aspect ratio and market share to create a baseline layout size. I then created a graphic that is essentially a visual “map” overlaying some popular screen resolutions, which proved very helpful in determining a baseline screen size for our adaptive layouts. In the spirit of communal design, I’m sharing this data in the following infographic in hopes that others will find it useful as a reference resource.

Outlined below is a list of screen resolutions for popular phones within each platform, along with brief explanations of how these respective platforms handle image scaling within their native applications. Let’s take a quick look at the basic ins-and-outs of screen layout challenges for each platform:

iOS Devices

Apple makes designing for iOS devices relatively easy, with a consistent screen aspect ratio of 4:3 for all iPads and 3:2 for all phones besides the newer iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 will simply letterbox older apps that don’t support views for the longer screen, or if your app’s code supports the newer phone it can take full advantage of the longer screen size.

Here are the current iOS devices and their respective screen resolutions:

• 320 x 480 – iPhone 3GS and prior
• 640 x 960 – iPhone 4, iPhone 4S (retina display)
• 640 x 1136 – iPhone 5 (retina display)
• 1024 x 768 – iPad, iPad 2, iPad mini
• 2048 x 1536 – iPad 3, iPad 4 (retina display)

iOS Image Scaling

For iOS devices with retina displays, you’ll need to include a high-resolution version of your graphic that is twice as big as the normal version (if normal is 100%, then retina is 200%), and add a suffix of “@2x” at the end of the file name – but before the file extension (i.e. filename@2x.png). Make sure you place this @2x image into the same directory as your normal image so that retina devices can auto-detect the @2x images and simply replace them in the UI (assuming your developers have coded the app correctly).

Android Devices

Google has made the Android OS an open platform, which means that they have no control over the screen sizes on devices that are running on Android. While this is conducive for manufacturers, it typically means additional work from a designer’s perspective. You’ll need to consider how your layout will scale across the many different screen ratios for these devices. In addition, some devices only support certain versions of the Android OS, which translates into the need to determine which UI features may not be supported in older versions, or the fact that newer devices may not have hard keys for home, back, menu and/or search (so make sure to include a way to search within the viewable UI). Also, it’s important to make sure that your developer specifies the layout dimensions using density-independent pixels (dp units) to ensure that the system scales appropriately for the current screen density. Using pixels (px units) will result in your layout views becoming physically larger on a low density screen (since it has less pixels per inch) and smaller on a high density screen (since it has more pixels per inch).

Here are a few of the more popular screen resolutions for Android devices:

• 480 x 800– Desire, Droid Incredible, Epic Touch
• 480 x 854 – Droid Bionic
• 540 x 960 – Droid Bionic, Droid RAZR
• 800 x 1200 – Galaxy Note
• 720 x 1280 – Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S III
• 600 x 1024 – Galaxy Tab 7”, Kindle Fire
• 780 x 1280 – Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab 10”, Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 7
• 1600 x 2560 – Nexus 10

Android Image Scaling

Since Android devices come in all different sizes, sporting many different screen sizes (both physical screen size and screen density), you’ll likely have to design image assets in 4 different sizes: LDPI (low resolution), MDPI (normal/medium resolution), HDPI (high resolution) and XHDPI (extra high resolution for tablets).

I typically start with the normal size in a vector drawing program (I use Adobe Illustrator) and scale up/down accordingly as follows: using MDPI as your baseline of 100%, then LDPI = 75%, HDPI = 150%, and XHDPI = 200%. Note that if you’ve already created iOS assets, MDPI will equate to the normal iOS image, and XDPI will equate to the retina (@2x) version of the image – so you can reuse those images for Android MDPI and XHDPI, slightly cutting down on the amount of images that you’ll need to output. You’ll need to place all of these respective image variations in separate directories within the drawable resources named LDPI, MDPI, HDPI and XHDPI in order for them to be properly detected by the OS, making sure to keep the filename exactly the same for each variation (i.e. filename.png). Note that you should only use letters A-Z and numbers 0-9 and underscores in your file names, as dashes and other characters are not authorized in Android image file names.

Windows Devices
The newest player in the mobile space is Windows Phone 8/Windows 8, which takes a completely different approach to handling app layouts across a variety of devices and resolutions. Rather than re-inventing proprietary layout controls, Windows 8 uses built-in support for standards-based adaptive layout techniques such as XAML and the CSS3 grid, featuring flexible box and multicolumn layouts that can be used to easily define the layouts of the Windows 8 UI.

While iOS and Android use very similar UI controls and navigation paradigms, Windows 8 is a totally different world of clickable tiles and sliding panoramics, so you’ll likely spend a fair amount of time rethinking your app layout designs to fit within these new UI patterns.

Here are a few of the latest Windows 8 devices and screen resolutions that we’ve decided to target:

• 480 x 800 – Lumia 900
• 768 x 1280 – Lumia 920
• 1366 x 768 – Surface
• 1920 x 1080 – Surface Pro

Windows 8 Image Scaling
The Windows 8 platform uses 3 predictable scale percentages that are optimized for real devices in the ecosystem. Baseline images with no scaling (100%) are geared for tablets with a resolution of 1366×768, the 140% scale is optimized for 1920×1080 HD tablets and the 180% scale is used for quad-XGA tablets at 2560×1440 – each ensuring that the layouts have content that is the same physical size on the screen and the same layout across each target screen size. Additionally, the Windows 8 platform also natively supports vector graphics such as SVG or XAML that will seamlessly scale graphics without blurring or pixilation.

Automatic resource loading allows developers to save three versions of images with a naming convention (corresponding to the respective scale percentages of 100%, 140% and 180%) that will detect screen size and automatically load the proper version of the image. You can use a simple naming convention such as filename-file100.png, filename-file140.png and filename-180.png and place the various files into the same directory in order for the system to properly detect and display them.

Conclusion

So what’s the ideal baseline for designing a mobile layout across multi-platform devices? Using the screen resolutions mentioned above produced an average (mean) screen size of roughly 778 x 1250, which contains an aspect ratio of 16:10. However, the most frequently occurring (mode) screen aspect ratio within this data set is actually 16:9. This shows that mobile screen dimensions are generally trending toward higher pixel resolutions within a longer width (just look at the newest iPhone), ideal for widescreen movie playback and game play. Ultimately, we chose to use a more standard screen resolution of 800 x 1280 that was very close to the mean screen size.

As you can see, developing native apps across multiple platforms can be quite challenging. But with some forethought – and a bit of strategic and tactical planning – you can ensure that your mobile app layouts will translate correctly across a vast array of devices and platforms.

In part 2, I’ll discuss how we’ve approached using an adaptive layout within the Unity platform (with an 800 x 1280 screen size as a baseline) along with some of our challenges in scaling and displaying the app in different screen dimensions. Stay tuned…

I’m lucky enough to be one of the developers at SuperConnect working on a greenfield software project.  For me brand new projects are one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences a software developer can endure. New projects always introduce a pressure to “get something working.” With this pressure it is very easy to introduce decisions that can haunt a project for the rest of its lifetime.  Over time these rushed decisions can introduce technical debt which will grow and eventually make a project impossible to maintain and simply painful for new developers to join.  Technical debt inevitably adds time and cost to every future change and addition.  These “bad decisions” will also ripple throughout future decisions if not realized and fixed. The SOLID principles provide “guidelines” for combating bad design; the hard part is not understanding these principles but actually applying them to real world projects and ever-changing requirements.

Good software designs let software evolve naturally; the open/closed principal states “software should be open to extension but closed to modification.”  This means that if the software product team comes up with a new feature idea, then a good design should find it easy to incorporate by writing new code.  If product comes up with a change to existing functionally, then a good design should find it easy to incorporate with new code but will require existing code to change, maybe a lot. It’s important to understand that when requirements change, it’s OK to rewrite code. Having to rewrite code doesn’t mean your design has failed, it simply means your design has changed.  Technical debt often incurs when building atop of your project when you actually need to reorganize and rewrite existing code.

Often developers combat the open/closed problem by introducing  software abstractions. Even Wikipedia says that software abstractions can help keep your application stay open to extension. Being open is great because it means developers can implement whatever the product team wants, and for a low cost without sweeping impacts. What is not often discussed is the downside of premature abstractions.  When working on new projects it can be very tempting to over-engineer in order to “be ready” for what may come next.  The important part of that statement is what may come next…if you don’t know it’s not necessary. Early abstractions simply introduce complexity. Complexity is a software developer’s worst nightmare, it makes it harder to understand how changes to one part of your system affect other parts. Complexity adds cost to change and new projects change more frequently, therefore that cost is incurred more often.

Let us recap the requirements of the new project design laid out.  It should be easy to add new features and change the way existing features work. A common technique for providing a flexible software project is to introduce abstractions to limit the impact of change across the system. On the other hand abstractions introduce complexity which make projects harder to design and build. Catch-22, anyone?

Luckily greenfield development has another huge advantage, it means the developer gets to choose what frameworks they develop their project atop.  The abstractions necessary to build robust and well designed software already live in the frameworks, so all the developers have to do is understand how to use the framework and try their best to not reinvent the wheel.  I’ll say it again because it’s so important and is the goal of this post:

… look to the framework with which you are building your application for the necessary abstractions during the early stages of development.

Some may be hesitant to depend so heavily upon single framework or a suite of frameworks, but the truth is that these framework were designed to solve a majority of the problems for new projects. When a project grows big enough to require additional abstractions, you’ll also have a better idea of how to implement it since you’ll understand the existing frameworks limitations and existing extension points.

Being a Microsoft shop we get to use the newest and most powerful web technologies available. That includes windows azure with asp.net, mvc w/ razor, jquery, and entity framework.  All of these frameworks provide structure and abstractions to design more than 80% of any ideas product can come up with.  A developer’s time is better spent understanding these frameworks and using them to their advantage as opposed to building complexity atop of a plenty flexible system. All too often I have written code only to find out that the framework exposes better solutions to the problem I need to solve.

A few tips for starting new “enterprise” projects. First and foremost, don’t abstract away the power of the framework. Provide abstractions where you need testable code or have confidence in a product design decision. Appreciate, understand, and most importantly use the existing abstraction and extension points provided in the framework you’re using.  Have confidence in your team and provide training if people are exploiting the framework; don’t waste time trying to write abstractions to simplify other developers’ jobs.

I’ve included an example of creating a twitter bootstrap suite of HtmlHelpers to greatly simplify the markup required for creating CRUD webpages. The cool part is that by taking advantage of Microsoft’s existing abstractions including HtmlHelper and WebViewPage, we can write a pretty tiny bit of code which doesn’t introduce additional abstractions. Also this code doesn’t require drastic changes to our existing code base to make the switch. We don’t have to go back and change a bunch of stuff to make it work with our new design.

The twitter bootstrap example is hosted on github https://github.com/SuperConnect/TwitterBootstrapHtmlHelper

The best way to validate design and requirement decisions with your users is via usability testing. The general idea is to gather feedback on early concepts, understand workflows & user pain points and allow designers and product managers to document findings and create/maintain personas, roles and system workflows.

Agile methodology lends itself extremely well for iterative usability testing. In this article I’ll review my own team’s process for how we plan to integrate usability testing into our product development cycle.

Test Subjects

As a general rule, the best test subjects are real product users, but it is better to test anyone rather than not to test at all. We’ve created 3 tiers of participants:

• Tier 1: Customers/Partners – Ideally, we only test real users from our customers and partners in the field. We are establishing a charter customer program to make real users readily available for such testing.

• Tier 2: Recruited Participants – When needed, we may supplement our testing with recruited participants – either paid, gifted or volunteer.

• Tier 3: Internal Employees – As a last resort if no other participants are available, we’ll test our ideas on Sales, Marketing, Business Development, and/or any other customer-facing groups. This approach still provides valuable feedback and validation, but we need to keep in mind that results may be slightly skewed.

Planning, Preparation and Facilitation

To prepare for the test, our design team collaborates closely with product management to define the usability tasks to test and the interview questions concerning value. We try to concentrate on the key tasks that users will do most of the time.

How we test users is determined by multiple factors, including what type of test environments are needed (i.e., Web v. Mobile), as well as when and where we are testing. Over the years I’ve tested in-house, remotely (using a video conferencing tool like Adobe Connect, JoinMe or Skype) and on-site at a customer’s office. The latter is usually the best case since you can get a feel for the user’s actual workspace limitations, workflows and peer interactions – but it is not always possible, so take what you can get.

We also consult with our product team to decide the most efficient approach, based on the available time and resources needed to:

• Create a wireframe or build an interactive prototype
• Present working code in a test environment
• Use card sorting, paper prototypes and/or taxonomy studies.

When conducting the test, it’s important to make sure to provide the user with a proper orientation to the environment and ask for permission to record. It also helps to mention that that they won’t be hurting your feelings by giving an honest opinion, and to continually remind them to “think aloud” to provide feedback and context. Watch what they do, and observe both verbal and non-verbal clues about why they fail or become confused.

The testing environment and equipment (laptop, phone, tablet, software) may vary, depending on the product type (desktop v. mobile), but should be a quiet, closed space that can minimally accommodate a tester, a facilitator and a note taker. Recording audio and video is highly recommended; using cameras to capture both screen and the user’s face provides emotion and context to any issues that arise. A laptop equipped with a webcam and screen recording software is ideal — I typically use Silverback on a MacBook Pro for this. Remember that face-to-face testing is ideal, but any testing is better than no testing.

When to Test

Our recommendation is to test users early and often, during all phases of the product lifecycle. This includes:

Conceptual/Prototyping Stages – This happens earlier in the project, during the requirements/planning stage (iteration -1, no code or design specifications). Try to recruit 8-10 testers to participate in 45-60 minute individual sessions covering multiple features or a new application. It’s critical to get input from existing customers for validation and understanding real workflows via wireframes and/or an interactive prototype. This type of testing usually requires a detailed script and covers a new product or multiple user stories. In the past, I’ve successfully used Flash, HTML, Axure and PowerPoint to create mid-to-high fidelity interactive prototypes. I’ve found that the choice of tool is less important than its ability to simulate an experience that mimics the desired end product, or that it can be delivered within the chosen test platform – and you absolutely must be able to work efficiently with the tool.

Development Stages – During product development, testing is done during each sprint. Note that the duration of the sprint isn’t important, as long as at least one round of testing is conducted per sprint. Usability testing is much lighter and informal during this stage, so try to recruit about 5 participants for 15-30 minute individual sessions that focus on a specific feature. You’ll be able to quickly spot trends and patterns in usage, which will allow you to iterate on your design during the sprint, if needed. Tests can either use live code (from a QA environment) or a quick wireframe/mockup if testing items for a future sprint. Allocate a set amount of hours for usability testing activity in the sprint backlog – to be burned down – making sure that all UT activities (planning, testing and analysis) fit within your time estimate.

After testing is completed, we generate a Usability Observation List that will be shared with the team (via verbal review at scrum, and entered into our wiki within JIRA). Product Management will prioritize these results into one of two categories: Bugs or Enhancement Requests. Bugs are entered into the tracking system (we use JIRA, but TFS, or even something as simple as Excel works as well) and should be fixed before the end of the sprint. See figure 1 for a visual representation of our process.

Post Launch – After your product is launched, be sure to have an internal retrospect with the product/feature team to discuss what was successful versus what was a problem and consider how to streamline and improve your UT process. In the past, I’ve used surveys, email discussions, message boards and field-testing to gather feedback from end-users. It’s also helpful to have the product team speak directly with external product champions about adoption rates and to ensure reference-ability for marketing and future UT sessions. Lastly, but most importantly, reach out to your charter customers to follow up on the end results now that they are using features in their daily workflows.

Final Deliverables

Our deliverables vary depending on what type of testing has been done. For conceptual testing, deliverables typically include a Summary & Recommendations document that may include a deep dive to identify what the core root causes were for failures based on actual observations, conversations and concrete recommendations to improve the user experience. Recommendations are categorized into Urgent, Important or Nice-to-Have to help the product team accurately prioritize, and the overall scores, statistics and notes are presented.  This document is uploaded into the wiki, along with any audio/video recordings to be archived for reference. If you have the resources to convert the recordings into a transcript, it can be quite helpful for easily searching and quickly scanning.

Deliverables during sprint testing usually include the Usability Observation List that quickly identifies the points of failure and provides recommendations to improve the user experience. These findings are communicated in the daily scrum and uploaded to the wiki for future reference (along with any audio/video recordings).

Finally, the post-launch deliverables can include a retrospect meeting, updating the feature enhancement list based on customer feedback, and identifying reference-able customers. This last deliverable can lead to highlighting a customer in a case study, or inviting interested customers to participate in future UT sessions.

Conclusion

As you can see, user testing is an invaluable part of the agile methodology that can help you better understand your customer’s needs and make your products and apps more useful to users. No matter how or when you test, you’ll reap many benefits such as early problem detection, increased user satisfaction, reduced support costs and increased efficiency for users. And you’ll constantly be amazed by the innovative ideas for enhancements and new features that come directly from your customers.

The bottom line is that if you are developing in agile, then you should be incorporating some form of usability testing into your iterative process. It does not need to be a formal or expensive process – it just needs to capture user feedback in some way so that you can ensure a usable product. As Admiral Grace Hopper once said, “One accurate measurement is worth more than a thousand expert opinions.”

I was fortunate enough to att­end the first ever UserConf last week in San Francisco.  What is UserConf?  In their own words, UserConf is “the conference about keeping your customers (happy).”  UserConf is not your typical customer service conference though; it is about how to make products better by weaving in great, scalable customer service, with insights gained from understanding your users.

Richard White, CEO of UserVoice, kicked things off with a great introduction focusing on the changes happening in the world of Customer Support.  The­ Internet has spawned a generation of businesses around self-service, where customers are able to solve smaller issues themselves and seek help from support agents when more complex issues arise.  Customer support is not going away, it’s simply evolving and actually remains the most important element to a business.  A survey conducted by UserVoice found the #1 reason for customer attrition is poor customer service.  The #2 reason? Poor product quality.  Quality support is key.  Support teams need to adapt to this change and better understand their customer’s expectations when help is needed.

Hosted by UserVoice and Cosupport, UserConf was packed full of top-notch speakers delivering valuable content, including Kevin Hale from Wufoo, Chase Clemons from 37signals, Jessica Semaan from AirBnB, and much more.  Here are my top 5 take-aways from the conference:

1.  Have a plan in place

When something really bad happens (like a major service outage or a security issue for example), have a plan in place to deal with the issue at hand.  Mathew Patterson from Campaign Monitor discussed the idea of the Service Recovery Paradox; where a product failure ultimately results in increased customer loyalty and satisfaction.  To produce these results, you must be prepared, take action, and follow up.  Read more on this here.

2.  Manage expectations

We’ve all heard this one.  It’s important to manage expectations in any relationship.  Aware of upcoming downtime?  Make sure your customers know about it.  Know that an issue may take longer to resolve than expected?  Let them know.  Be transparent; your customers will appreciate it.

3.  Have everyone try support

This one surprised me, and what surprised me more is that four of the nine speakers brought this up in their individual presentations.  The concept is rather simple though: Creators = Supporters.  Placing the product team in front of support will improve your product overall because engineers will engineer to reduce support.  On a rotation basis, try letting developers answer support tickets.

4.  Try new things

The world of technology is changing every day.  New tools are constantly being developed.  In support, the most common tools are Email, Phone, and FAQs.  But there’s more out there than that, including Live Chat tools, online meeting spaces, social media, and more.  Chase Clemons of 37signals suggests in-person support sessions as a valuable way of providing help, trust, and building relationships with your customers.  Read more on this here.

5.  Love your job

Finally, love your job.  If you’re not passionate about helping people and solving problems, your customers will know.  If you love your job, you can love your customers, and customer support is all about keeping those relationships positive.

Not all of these strategies are ideal for every team.  At SuperConnect, we’ll be taking measures to implement some of the above ideas and we look forward to providing you with the best support possible moving forward.

On a final note, UserConf was a well-organized conference hosted by passionate, fun, experienced and successful people.  Check them out here, and I hope to see you at UserConf next year!

In this third post of my blog series about Design Considerations When Building Cross Platform Applications, I’m focusing on one of the most complex areas of design: Application Architecture.  When a company or developer sets out to create a new application, whether mobile, desktop or web, many approaches can be taken to get things moving.  More often than not, developers have a tendency to overlook the long-term goals and expectations of the application and wind up “painting themselves into a corner.”  At SuperConnect, our technical leaders have been tasked with the challenge of being able to build applications that will run on almost all imaginable platforms:  Android, iOS, mobile web browsers, etc.  Additionally, we have had to deal with aspects of architectural design that is not usually faced by development teams when building for a single enterprise:  customization and brand-ability of each enterprise’s subscribed version of our applications. The area of customization is invisible from the cosmetic design of the application and the end user’s experience. The real challenge sits on the back end of the systems that drive our applications.

When our architects began to design for a myriad of products for many different enterprise needs on nearly all possible platforms, it was easy to think that a “build it once, deploy it anywhere” approach might suit us best.  While I have done research on many of those platforms and even implemented a couple of them (on small scale projects), they too provide their own challenges. Whether it is a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) like PhoneGap, MonoTouch or Appcellerator or a mobile web solution based in HTML5, the challenges seem to remain the same: the user interaction and design are still handled in many different ways behind the scenes unless the same exact application design is applied to all platforms.  Developers still need to be able to handle the nuisances of each native device while developing in a single development environment (IDE).  I do agree that being able to use that single IDE and programming language does provide some benefit, but in my opinion nearly every good-to-great developer that I have worked with can work in many different IDEs and with many languages.  The single codebase that it provides is another positive, but under the covers, it winds up being a mess of “spaghetti code” due to different branches for the various targeted platforms within the same codebase.  In the end, we chose to go native for our Connections application because we wanted a user to get a native feel on each device.  I believe strongly that the majority of the work of the application should be done on the back end, and that decisions must be made to try and minimize the amount of logic that has to be re-invented on each platform.  I like to follow a model where the majority of the “work,” approximately 70%, should be performed on the servers, 15% should be similar across platforms (e.g. writing queries, database schemas, etc.), and the last 15% should be truly native to provide the user with an experience that is expected on his/her particular device.

In addition to the need to handle cross-platform applications, our requirements were complicated by the additional need to provide a customer with the ability to customize the user’s experience within the features we provide in our application.   Specifically, a customer is able to customize logos and colors throughout the application to make it feel like an enterprise solution that was created for their specific company.  All of this metadata is handled on the server and sent to the devices to tell the applications how to skin the user’s experience.  One example of how quickly this can be changed is shown in the images below where our designers came up with a themed design that was applied by simply changing the logo and a couple of colors in our admin panel for the Slalom LLC instance of Connections.

Standard Theme	Halloween Theme

The customer also has the ability to tailor the application to meet the data requirements of the organization.  Based on our experience working with companies in different industries on the consulting side, we knew that the data stored and maintained for each company will vary based on the specific needs of the business.  For instance, in the case of a consulting company like Slalom Consulting, the data the end user may want to see is very different (e.g. clients, colleges, projects, etc.) than a construction or labor organization where the user may be more interested in a contact’s specialties or recent certifications.  We have designed our application backend using Microsoft Azure to provide a flexible interface for an administrator to customize how the data is pushed from a customer’s environment into the SuperConnect Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for delivery and consumption within our mobile applications.  (Note:  In my next entry, I will detail out more information about how we are able to move data from our customer’s environment to the SuperConnect platform to the mobile applications.)  Our service layer provides the devices with the metadata about how to display the data on the device as well as what actions can be taken on such data items.  For example, in the case of the Slalom Consulting example, a consultant may have several contact methods available on their contact profile within Connections.  The administrator can specify how these data fields can be handled on the device by informing the application (via metadata) if the data field is one that can be mapped, called, texted, emailed, etc.  The application can use the metadata to take the appropriate action in a native-manner to utilize a streamlined user experience.

Overall, our application’s design strength lies in the application architecture by the way we have set up our back end service and data layers to handle the requirements of the applications and our customers.  We have tried to push any complicated business logic off of the devices and back up to the service layer to keep our systems flexible in case these areas need to change.  One of our most-used features within Connections, a calendar and scheduling component, is driven fully by backend services and logic with the applications simply showing the user that he/she can take action.  This logic has evolved through several revisions since we have been in BETA and none of the end users have ever noticed a change.  Lastly, we have utilized this same area to manage our security (authentication / authorization) in a way where we can make changes to our security methodology without changing our applications. With the ever-changing world of application security, this provides us with a way to grow as the security requirements of our customers change.

Stay tuned for my next post on Design Considerations, where I’ll speak to data flow and volume.

The title of this blog post is a Bob Costas quote. We all dream of one day being a superstar and rising to the challenge, but what we often don’t realize is that with success comes the responsibility of accepting failure. What does that mean? Here’s an example.

Michael Jordan could easily be described as the greatest player ever to step on the basketball court. He has broken virtually every record in the game, made millionaires of his teammates and generated over $10 billion for the economy. In the late 90’s he had an opportunity to send his team to the NBA finals on the final shot of the game, but he was tripped by a defender and did not get the call. Instead of blaming the referees for the loss, he took it squarely on his shoulders and said, “I failed my teammates, our fans and the city of Chicago.”

Jordan’s statement is an example of a superstar accepting blame. It is easy to blame others, but it is more difficult for us to accept that failure as our own. The first step towards being a leader or a superstar is accepting responsibility for your actions. Jordan truly could not control the referee decision; he did not say “I cannot believe I did not get the call, those guys were all over me and the refs suck.” Instead he chose to accept responsibility for his actions and came back to fight another day.  That next day his team came back to win Game 7 and earned the spot to play in the NBA finals.

Every day of our lives we are presented with opportunities to succeed or fail, and we make a decision in those moments. Once the decision is made, we cannot set back time; however we can be responsible for those decisions, not only to ourselves but also to our colleagues. It is what happens after that decision that is most important. Some of us choose to blame others; leaders and superstars take responsibility for their actions.

The questions that a leader/superstar should ask are: What did we learn? How can we correct what we did? The leader/superstar should not say, “He told me he was going to do it” or “Well I didn’t work on it directly so I don’t know”. These answers are reserved for average people.

Easy enough for me to write this advice, but how do you do it in real life? The first step is to ask yourself a question: Do I want to be a leader/superstar? If you answer yes, then you are accepting a great responsibility. It means that you are responsible for the success and failure of others. To be a leader or a superstar does not mean that you are great at what you do. As a matter of fact some of the most brilliant and talented people you know are not great leaders and never become superstars. A great leader or superstar wants to be in charge and understands what that means. When you say to someone, “I’ve got that,” it implies exactly that. It means you understand what the other person expects and you are going to deliver it. This does not mean that you must do it alone; a great leader/superstar knows how to work with others, knows when to ask and when to demand. The leader/superstar also understands that if it is not done when it is supposed to be, it is his fault. A leader/superstar seeks to grow from each failure rather than bury it in the sand.

A leader/superstar seeks to teach his team how to succeed and learn from failures. He doesn’t reprimand. He eliminates the barriers that prevent his team from succeeding. He also tries what others have done before him before re-inventing the wheel. It may seem important to buy something new or start with a white sheet of paper, but in reality it is easier to work with what is in place and adjust it versus throw it all away. A leader/superstar recognizes that in order to earn respect from peers, he must demonstrate success within their system. People do not follow because you possess a title, drive a nice car or wear nice clothes; they follow those who have demonstrated success and assisted others while achieving their own. All of us who seek to be leaders/superstars should receive joy from our team’s successes. And sometimes that includes accepting responsibility for missteps by the team in order to achieve a greater goal and be a true leader.

Being a leader is an ongoing journey for me personally. Over the years I have experienced what I would define as a true measure of success as a leader. On several occasions employees who are still working with me and those who have worked with me in the past have called me to say, “You taught me something that will improve my life, not only in the workplace but at home as well.” These moments mean more to me than any sale, and for those of you who know how much I like to win a sale, that is saying something. I think it goes to show how important being a leader is to me.

In summary there is no set plan or manuscript to follow to reach your dreams. Recognize that great learning comes from each failure, but only if you acknowledge the shortcoming, accept responsibility and move forward to be the leader/superstar that you strive to be. Every day we are presented with opportunities to be a superstar or a leader, and those who truly want it reach out and grab it!

CONNECTIONS MAKES SENSE

SuperConnect is helping employees take the concept of connecting to the next level with our mobile employee directory app, Connections. Connections is built for businesses, supporting small companies with less than 100 employees up to the largest corporations with over 50,000 employees, in a scalable and secure environment.

TOP 10 REASONS CONNECTIONS MAKES SENSE

1. On the go and need to reach a colleague immediately to solve a problem? Connections will give you the tools to call, text or email them anytime and anywhere from your preferred mobile device.
2. Need to schedule a meeting with a colleague this week? Let Connections show you when you’re both available and schedule that meeting from your phone.
3. Can’t reach a colleague but need someone on his or her team who can help? Connections SmartSchedule shows a person’s manager and team members you can contact when you need assistance immediately.
4. Do you prefer people email you instead of call? Use the SmartConnect feature to indicate to colleagues how you prefer to be contacted in specific work situations.
5. Wondering if some of your colleagues are available right now for a quick meeting? Connections shows your colleagues’ availability based on their Microsoft Office Calendar.
6. Curious who works on a specific account or has a specific specialization? Connections SmartSearch tool lets you search for various criteria – all based on what’s important and relevant in your company.
7. Don’t have Internet access but need your boss’s phone number? Connections works offline to look up user profiles.
8. Need to map an address of a colleague’s office so you don’t get lost? No worries, Connections can list addresses and maps with directions.
9. Need to contact a group of people quickly? Connections lets you create favorites to look up at the click of a button.
10. Need a secure directory for your employees to use on the go? Connections is safe and secure, using the newest secure processes and technology to protect your company’s data.

CONNECTIONS ALSO MAKES DOLLARS:

Some of the biggest companies in the world make their money on one simple concept, connecting people. The evolution and growth of the human race was built around people connecting. Thousands of years ago people used horses and donkeys to meet in person and transport goods for sale and barter. Soon ships were built so people could travel across the seas to meet and buy and sell goods. In the United States, the Pony Express became a source of how people connected via mail. Soon Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, allowing people to connect without having to travel.

This communications background gave way to some of the biggest companies in the world today: telecommunications and Internet companies. As computers started becoming commonplace, Microsoft’s staple enterprise tool, Outlook, and other email platforms accelerated the growth of those companies. ‘You’ve got mail’ was the staple tagline, and the AOL email platform helped accelerate AOL and grow Internet adoption worldwide. Now mobile phones are accelerating the growth of companies like Apple and Samsung, capitalizing on the world wanting to connect anytime and anywhere.

Facebook has grown to over 800 million users making billions of dollars a year simply by connecting people to numerous users at once. Twitter is an even simpler social platform connecting users with only 140 characters at a time. The companies listed here are some of the biggest companies on the planet. Why? Because of the extraordinary value in the ability to connect humans to one another. Mobile is the future of the Internet, the phone, the computer, and real person-to-person connections. Connections by SuperConnect is an enterprise platform to facilitate these real-life connections, so download the app for your company today and see why the world needs it, starting with you and your own coworkers.

Android users: Connections is available on Google Play.

iOS users: Connections is pending review in the App Store.

I’ve been in and around mobile for over a decade.  During that whole time everyone has said that “mobile applications need to be different.”  We’ve all said “you can’t just take a desktop application and put it on a mobile device”.  I couldn’t agree more.

Mobile IS different than desktop.  People use mobile devices in short spurts.  You have a couple minutes and you’re looking to turn to your device to make a quick call, check posts, check mail, send a quick note, or just be entertained.  That’s not the paradigm of desktop at all.

We’re seeing whole new solutions specifically designed for the mobile paradigm in consumer apps. Think about Twitter.  Short, quick updates perfectly designed for mobile devices.  Other examples include Instagram, Words with Friends, and even Angry Birds.

So why is mobile in the enterprise still stuck in the approach of just shrinking down existing desktop apps to fit on a mobile screen? Mobile for the enterprise is dominated by retreads of sales force tools, time entry tools, and performance management tools that are just shrunken versions of their desktop counterparts.

Take annual reviews for instance.  Not only is the concept of an annual review flawed, but how valuable can year-old feedback be? And who wants to create an annual review on a mobile device in the first place?  With mobile, why can’t we use Twitter-like messages to provide real-time feedback instantly?  Imagine leaving a meeting and having your device know that you were meeting with someone that you might want to provide feedback on, and then giving you the chance to provide a quick piece of feedback that is received and acted on immediately.

That is not only designing applications for the mobile paradigm, but changing the way things are done to take advantage of mobile.  This change is the key.  We need to reconsider HOW things are done to leverage the new paradigm of mobile, and THEN use mobile to make it possible.

SuperConnect is dedicated to looking at all the things we do at work on a regular basis and focusing on how they could be better taking advantage of new capabilities in mobility, social media, gamification and other advances.  We plan to change enterprises for the better. Work. Better.

The law firm directory has been around in some format since, well, law firms began! Early firm directories were printed and given to all lawyers and staff, and placed in every conference room and anywhere there was a phone. With technology came the online firm directory, usually custom built or built on a CRM solution like InterAction, both having a database backend. Then, as law firms started building intranets, the firm directory was the first application to find its way onto these internal portals. Now, firm directory information is found throughout the portal, as well as many law firm public-facing websites.

In its simplest form, the firm directory provides a quick and easy way to find phone numbers and other contact information for everyone in the firm. In some of the more advanced examples, the firm directory can be used for expertise, location, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. More important is that survey after survey of lawyers has shown that the firm directory has been and continues to be the most commonly used application of a firm’s intranet. Finding and connecting with colleagues in the firm remains crucial to productivity and performance.

Connections for Legal is optimized specifically to extend firm directory content to the mobile devices lawyers and staff use on a daily basis. It includes rich profiles of contact and biographical information with a powerful search capability to make it easy to find experience and expertise – or simply a phone number. Using the SmartConnect feature will automatically determine the best contact method, based on calendar availability, behavioral presence and personal preference. And, for those instances where the person you want to connect with is unavailable, SmartSchedule allows you to quickly schedule a meeting, defaulting to the first available time slot on both calendars. Connections for Legal also integrates with SharePoint and other sources of firm directory content, using Active Directory (and other) authentication methods.

For more information, please check out the Connections for Legal product overview and contact us today!

Connections for Legal. Connect. Better.

We have all read about the growth of tablets in the workplace and the pending battle of dominance securing market share.  Strategy Analytics  posted that 25 million tablets were shipped worldwide during the second quarter of 2012.  Apple still leads the group with 68.3% and Android picking up 29.3% market share.  Although the numbers are impressive in regards to growth, I see less and less articles on how to empower employees with tablets.

Tablets provide easy and convenient access to email and the web, but there are many stories about the difficulty of gaining access to corporate systems and information.  There is no precedent for the correct method of accessing corporate information on a tablet device, so many organizations refer to PC-based authentication.  VPN clients, rights management servers and other directory access protocols are forced many times to the tablet via mobile device management (MDM) tools.  Although this might fulfill the IT policies, it many times slows down the experience for the user.  The additional challenge is that often you’re dealing with C-level officers, board members and sales people that historically don’t want to limit their experience with the device.  This usually means they will take their personal tablet outside the purview of the corporate IT department and its policies, creating the potential to put corporate networks and highly sensitive corporate documents and employee information at risk. IT departments work hard to lock down tablets, mobile access to corporate networks/documents, all the technical aspects practiced with employees and contractors.  When you add the potential of corporate political bumps that can come from high-powered, busy executives with varying technical skill levels and interests, you have a recipe for conflict between mobile workers that just want to “do their job” and corporate IT needing to fulfill security policies.

There is no silver bullet to fix the issue, but there are some fundamental ways to help secure data to tablet devices and enhance user adoption.  The first concept would be to build access to company information through dedicated applications.  Access to corporate directory data seems harmless until a disgruntled employee decides to look up the CEO’s mobile number and publish it on Craigslist.org.  Flexible access policies set through a cloud-based management platform would be an improved approach.  Enlist organizations that build mobile applications as a focus, allowing them to help with fulfilling security policies.  PC’s have had years of experience to react to security issues such as hackers or malware.   Your corporate IT team probably doesn’t have the internal skills to address the problem specific to mobile devices.

The second consideration is to start the download process of an application from a trusted source, ideally a company’s own customizable app store.  Android does not have the ability to stop people from putting malware apps in the store.  Train your employees to go to one spot to get all corporate applications, also helping to keep builds current and patches consistent.

A third idea would be to build or provide the corporate applications that employees want to use.  This sounds silly, but if users feel like corporate applications are slow and lack functionality, they will simply not use them and find work-arounds.  Educating employees about data security and intrusion can help with prevention, but at the end of the day the apps must have a look-and-feel that people want to use.  Workflow approval apps, corporate directory apps, mobile CRM, training and enterprise gamification apps might all “work” perfectly providing corporate data, however if they don’t perform well and look wonderful, people won’t use them.  Enterprises need to understand that employees aren’t comparing corporate mobile user interface (UI) to corporate portals, but instead to apps like Angry Birds and Facebook.  Ensure your employees use your approved and secure apps to access work by investing in UX/UI or work with a partner who focuses in that area.

In summary, my hope is that enterprise IT and other businesses begin to focus on enabling employees to leverage their mobile devices to their full extent, making work better and easier while simultaneously conquering security concerns.  A mobile device becomes great when it helps users do their job better.  Finding the perfect mix between IT policy and feature benefit will be the challenge as new devices hit the market later this year.

How to achieve results by asking yourself one question

Years ago a CEO of mine required every manager in the company, from the front lines up to the executive suite, to read a business book called Managing by Influence by Kenneth Schatz. Like most business books, it’s based on one core philosophy, then sliced and diced in numerous ways to create a full book.  This usually ends up making some books a tedious read, and this one is no different.  It actually took me three tries to finally finish it, but it was well worth it. The entire book is really based on one core philosophy, the question of influence.

What did I do, or not do, to make this happen, or not happen?

Other variations include:

• What do I need to do to achieve the outcome I desire?
• What could I have done differently to achieve the outcome I desire?

Asking a variation of this question before or after projects will help you achieve the results you want and make you and your teams more productive.

HOW TO GET THE RESULTS YOU WANT:

Before you start a project, ask yourself; what do I need to do to achieve the outcome I desire?

Think through all the things you should do to make sure you get exactly what you want.  If you’re assigning a complicated project to an employee that has to be completed next week, list the things that will help you get what you want.  Thinking it through ahead of time, you might come up with the following:

• Meet with employee for 30 minutes
• Explain the project
• Explain the deadline
• Explain the priority within other projects they might be working on
• Ask them to repeat what you’ve told them to ensure it was communicated and understood
• Ask them to email you a recap of what you expect and when
• Schedule another meeting mid-way through the project to see where they are, answer questions, and confirm they are on track.

Asking this question ahead of time will help ensure you get exactly what you want. On the flip side, you can always ask the question afterwards if you didn’t get what you wanted, to help you fix the issue and learn for next time.

WHEN YOU DIDN’T GET THE RESULTS YOU WANTED:

Asking the question afterwards doesn’t just help you learn, it also minimizes any frustration you might have as you realize you could have done a better job up front.

Suppose you’re a sales leader and you hire a new sales manager. After the first week you notice the new hire doesn’t wear suits, he wears sport coats sans the tie.  As the leader you want your team to wear suits, so you casually mention something like, “Do you own ANY suits?”  Your new hire responds with, “Well, I have one but it doesn’t fit me anymore.”  Then at the next meeting you attend with a client, the new hire continues to wear a sport coat sans the tie.  It’s very easy to get frustrated and wonder why your new hire isn’t wearing a suit, especially since you brought it to his attention.  By using the questions of influence, you can minimize your frustration and make the proper changes to get the results you want and learn what you need to do next time.

What could I have done differently to achieve the outcome I desired?

Things you could have done:

• You could have expressed in the interview that you expect all your team members to wear suits, as that’s the professional culture you want represented to clients.
• Instead of a passive comment such as “Do you own ANY suits?”, you could have been assertive, as a leader should be, and said, “Hey Tom, you look great in your sport coat and I’m sure most of our customers don’t mind, but as an organization we like to present ourselves in suits to let the customer know we really mean business.  Can you please wear suits with ties to all client meetings?”

Looking back there are a few things you could have done differently to achieve the results you wanted instead of getting frustrated and possibly having a customer wonder about the professionalism of your company.

Occasionally you may have done everything possible and still didn’t get the results you wanted, but at least you will know you covered all the bases. Maybe it’s time for a drastic change, and that new hire just might not be the right fit for your organization.

If you can remember this one question, and ask it before every big situation you are about to enter, or after any situation where you didn’t get the results you wanted, it can change your attitude and help you achieve results that will save you frustration and time and make you a more productive, better leader.  Unfortunately the book has been out of print for years, but you can still find it used on Amazon. With or without reading the book, asking that one question will put you on the right path towards achieving better results.

In this second post of my blog series about Design Considerations When Building Cross Platform Applications, I’m focusing on what most people typically consider the only design consideration:  Visual Design and User Experience.  Usually when a product company is beginning to plan out a new product, the team goes through phases during which they start to innovate and scrutinize the idea, followed quickly by a design and/or prototype phase.  This period is the starting point because it is really what helps the product managers – and in the long run the customers – visualize the product’s potential and how a user may use it. Some of the factors that are taken into account during this time period are the overall cosmetic design (including product consistency, simplicity and customization) and user interaction flow. While the designer begins to dig into the idea to put some parameters around the product, he must consider the company’s logos and colors as well as its current and future product suite.  It is very important that each application delivered by the product company has a similar look to it so the user feels that consistency across all products in the suite.

In my experience at SuperConnect thus far, this approach rings true.  We began our company with one designer and have been lucky enough to work with several others over our short lifespan.  The result was initially a collection of various design approaches starting with a more web-centric design on a mobile device and evolving to the very clean and concise design we now use in our products.  We see the consistency that a full-time designer and thought leader can provide to a suite of products that are meant to drive enterprise mobility.  The catch, as there is always a catch, is that while our products may reflect the comprehensive and hard work of our team, customers still want to make their mark when deploying applications to the enterprise. To help our customers use SuperConnect products in a way that will accommodate and enhance their own brands, we have taken the approach of the 80/20 rule.  We’ve built strict templates within our applications that guide the customer’s administrators to follow our designer’s ideas and plans, but still provide a bit of customization.  One example lies in our Connections application where we provide a unique look at the employee directory by allowing the customer to specify what data is displayed in the application.  Our design provides an interface where the administrator can customize which data fields are displayed within different areas of the application based on specific templates that were defined by the designers.  In the end, our design remains intact because we don’t allow the customization of font (color, size or type), the layout of the fields themselves or the locations of images within the app.  However we do allow the administrator to choose which data field should be displayed in the various locations on those templates.  (See image below for a layout example.)

The application field customization is clearly defined within our online interface, but the mystery, or special sauce if you will, lies in how we can provide such a mechanism and port it across the Android, iOS and Mobile Web (mWeb) platforms.  We created an architectural approach to provide all of the necessary data to the rendering engine on each of the platforms to display the user interface elements that the administrator has defined for their organization’s roll out of Connections.  Our design uses a simple grid-like mapping to span across all devices, but it can be applied in a native-like manner.  In Android and iOS, we use the respective interface designers to provide generic rows and columns to define how the interface could be laid out.  For mWeb, we use a combination of <DIV> tags and CSS to render the optimal design for the various mobile web browsers on the market today.  Our application then utilizes a set of metadata tables to define where data fields will reside within those grids based on how the administrator has mapped data fields to application fields, and then to the user interface templates.

One of the key takeaways that came from how we defined the solution for user interface customization was limiting it to very specific parameters.  We could have chosen to allow administrators to define the styles, colors, fonts, etc. of all data elements in the application, but doing so could negatively impact the average user’s opinion of Connections, and potentially of the full SuperConnect product suite, if the design doesn’t appeal to him. In the end, the visual design of an application is likely to draw a user back to the application time and time again.  Our goal is to provide the customer a bit of their own branded look and feel while not losing the appealing elements created through our designers’ hard work.   If an end-user were to dislike our applications due to the design, he may be less likely to come back and use them again in the future.  Because our application may not be viewed as “critical” as it doesn’t provide services like banking, trading or health care where users often stick with a product out of necessity, we must have an experience that the user wants to keep coming back to.  After all, a user at one of our customers today may be a decision maker at a future potential customer.

Stay tuned for my next post on Design Considerations where I’ll talk about application architecture.

Gartner Group defines gamification as “the use of game mechanics in nonentertainment environments to change user behavior and drive engagement” such as innovation, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change. About a year ago, I read an article in which the following statement appeared, “Gartner predicts that by 2014, more than 70 percent of global 2,000 organizations will have at least one ‘gamified’ application.”

When I first saw this prediction, I thought, “No way.”  However, as I’ve been traveling the Central and Eastern United States meeting with prospective clients to promote our new SuperConnect products (one product is a gamified learning product called mLevel, available December 2012), I’ve started to realize that this is actually going to happen.  Why?  What do I base this on?  Well for starters, in the past 56 business days since joining SuperConnect, I’ve been on 28 different planes to 12 different cities meeting with over 40 different companies, and over 80 unique individual leaders within each of the companies.  It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, but definitely an exhilarating ride that has provided insight into some of the challenges facing many companies across all industries and geographies.  In particular, one common theme I see over and over again that I think all of us can relate to on a personal level is how the fast pace of our world today is faster than ever before.  One thing is certain: whether a company is selling products or providing a service, the industry is changing so rapidly that employees struggle to keep up.

In my opinion, traditional training is not keeping pace with the world that we live in now. I’ve realized that companies are going to have to change the way we engage with our employees, especially the way we train.  As employees, we are constantly being bombarded with information from emails, text messages, phone calls, portal messages, Facebook, LinkedIN, etc., while simultaneously learning to be comfortable in the world of “apps.”  Who doesn’t check Facebook for a few minutes between meetings, or check out LinkedIN when you get to work in the morning, or play Angry Birds while the kids are watching a cartoon you’ve seen 50 times? I know I’m guilty.  The traditional model of weekly training once a year, while it likely won’t go away, just isn’t enough to keep up.  The concept of filling in the gap by sending out static PDF documents or emails that we hope our employees read won’t suffice any longer either.  As consumerization of IT further infiltrates the workplace, we need to figure out ways to engage with employees, and for that reason, along with the overwhelming response I’ve seen to our gamified learning product, I believe that gamification will actually be making its way into the workplace as Gartner has predicted — specifically in the Learning/Training/Education space.

Gamification. Certainly one of the most popular current technology trends – if not the most popular. More and more companies like the “3 B’s” (Badgeville, Bunchball, and BigDoor) are starting up and getting significant funding, all with the mission of making applications that are not games more game-like. It’s about using game mechanics, like scoring systems, leaderboards and badges, to motivate people to do things that they are otherwise unmotivated about. Foursquare wouldn’t be very interesting if it was just an application that allowed you to record where you are right now. Earning points relative to your friends’ points, the badges and the chance to become mayor incentivize people to play.

A relatively long-time staple in consumer mobile apps, gamification is moving into the enterprise for things like driving usage of CRM systems, completing time/expense reports and employee training. In these scenarios, gamification is used to get people to change their behaviors – to do something – or to make people more aware of their performance relative to peers. What’s missing is any focus on actual performance improvement – how to help employees work better. At SuperConnect, we think that games – real games – are the answer. This “enterprise gaming” will blend gamification concepts with fun and engaging gameplay to drive performance improvements in a wide array of job functions and tasks. Learning is a great example. Where gamification will incentivize people to take that online training course, there’s no way to ensure that they’ve actually learned anything or that they’ll retain the information. With “gamified learning,” scoring systems and leaderboards will continue to motivate, but the usage of actual games will teach with better retention than traditional methods.

SuperConnect is currently building a gamified learning platform. It will be flexible enough to allow organizations to train their people on virtually any topic through a handful of quick, fun and engaging games. It’s cloud-based and mobile, so employees can play and learn virtually anywhere. There will be much more to come about this innovative product, but you can learn about its beginnings by reading our white paper “Gamification Meets the Cloud with Mobile Training.” Enjoy!

In this day and age of growing technology options, consumers continue to find new ways to use the technology they have access to. It all began years ago when people were able to use a laptop, then extended with the ability to have a “wired” wireless connection, and even further with the ability to use a wireless connection via a wireless device. Consumers are using mobile devices to do simple things like communication (phone calls, emails, text messages, etc.) and complex actions like presenting or creating collateral. Enter the role of companies like SuperConnect to create applications to further expand the abilities of mobile computing to enable each and every person in the enterprise to be more effective in all that they do each day. As we start build out our suite of applications, we continue to run into areas where we need to consider areas of design complexity in our day-to-day development. Over the coming weeks in this blog, I will start to address some of these areas of complexity we have had to face while coming up with our first few products.

Recently I spoke in front of a mobile user group on the topic of “Design Considerations When Building Cross Platform Mobile Apps.” As I prepared for this discussion, I dug deep into my experiences in mobility as well as software development to think of as many areas as I could where we could have designed our solution more effectively to create a superior product. There were a few topics that really bubbled to the top as I laid out how to describe the approach that our team at SuperConnect has begun to develop while we build superior enterprise products.

First, when development shops start to think about design, generally it is tied with the Visual Design and User Experience, as that is where a “designer” is typically involved. While this is a critical area for every product, it is not the only type of design. With the first in this series of posts, I will address what design means from a mobile product development perspective and focus on a few mistakes companies and product owners tend to make.

Next is the very overused view of Application Architecture as a component of design. In reality, App Arch is really a different form of design that is typically driven by technologists and the issues facing the development team as they proceed into the development lifecycle.  My own view is that the Application Architecture tends to hinge on the ideas of the Visual Design where in many cases there should a balance on both sides. In the second post, I will outline several areas where our product team has had to balance the extremes of Application Architecture (Design) with the Visual Design as we built out our first product, Connections.

The third component of design consideration while building a mobile application is around the data and how data is transferred to and from the mobile devices. When designing a data strategy for mobile devices, there are several key considerations that result from the variety of devices out there. In my third installment, I will look at a few of the major issues that caused us to make design changes at the eleventh hour in order to ensure that Connections is the best product we can provide.

Last and probably most important is the design of a security strategy that will provide for protected data and user access to sensitive corporate systems. Because our applications will be integrated with critical corporate infrastructure and systems, it is imperative for our technology team to design a security plan that is not only compatible with, but also integrates nicely with the security policies defined by most large corporations. In the final entry of this series, I will dive into some of the major security issues we had to address while we built our solution to integrate with one of the largest healthcare companies in North America.

Overall, when designing for mobile applications many of the same considerations must be made as when designing applications for the desktop computer or the web, but in the mobile space, while it may seem to be a smaller scale, that cannot be further from the truth.  The mobile space brings many new dimensions to design that I will address in this series of posts.  Stay tuned!

I love my iPhone and I use it throughout the day to update my to-do list, stay on top of my email, capture notes and reminders, read documents and most importantly, manage my calendar.

The iPhone’s calendar continues to improve with every major release of iOS, but as someone who frequently relies on his mobile device to schedule meetings with coworkers, it still falls short. If I’m running out the door and realize I need to find a time to meet with someone, there is no way for me to determine if that person is free or busy at any given time.

For the 65% of business worldwide that use Microsoft Exchange for email and calendaring, the ability to find a common, free time across a number of meeting attendees is a crucial feature that is supported by Outlook for Windows and Mac as well as Apple’s iCal but has yet to make its way to the phone.

This is why we built Scheduler. Scheduler is an iPhone app designed to fill this gap, acting as the perfect companion to the existing iPhone Calendar app. It has been designed from the ground up to allow you to quickly find an open meeting time for you and any number of your coworkers.

Scheduler works with your existing Exchange environment, all you have to do is sign-in. No additional software or IT department involvement necessary. Scheduler communicates directly with your company’s Exchange server securely through Microsoft’s standard APIs.

I believe Scheduler is the missing link for business users who rely on their iPhone for managing their calendar throughout the day, and anyone who tries it will immediately see the benefit this app provides. Please tell us what you think of Scheduler in the comments below.

Scheduler is available on the App Store.

Unless you are hidden under a rock somewhere, you’ve probably heard about this new craze sweeping the nation called gamification. Companies, financial institutions, educators and religious leaders are all looking to participate, but one has to wonder why. To me, a simple-minded fellow, the answer is crystal clear: life is just one big game and we all play in it whether we like it or not.

Let me dig in a bit and explain why. At an early age, our parents set the stage for the games to begin by enrolling us in sports, school and after-school activities. While we may not cognitively understand it yet, the competition has already begun. Our parents play by campaigning to get the best teachers, coaches, etc., which unless we are blind, has to rub off on us. We get into our classrooms, fields or dance floors and the competition for teacher, coach or instructor attention is front and center. While no one is keeping score, there is clearly a winner and a loser even if you don’t take a trophy home or see your name on the leaderboard. From there the intensity just ratchets up.

We leave our elementary school years behind and head to middle school, where we begin to compete to be in the “cool” club. Unsure of what that means, all we understand is those kids seem to get all the attention, make friends easily and never have to worry about sitting alone in the lunchroom. We don’t know it yet, but the stage is being set for your high school experience and the competition for your own self-confidence is at stake.  In high school, a new competition takes place as the tone of our game instructors (aka teachers and parents) changes as they harp on us to get good grades and participate in extracurricular activities so we can get into college and continue playing the game at the highest level. There aren’t ribbons, trophies or badges handed out, just acceptance or lack thereof into the schools of our choosing.

At this point in our lives, the game changes for good as we become the player and the coach. Our instructors and parents move to the background as we are on our own to make choices and suffer the consequences of our actions/moves in the game. Whether you head to college, take a job or join the army, the competition and the playing field have grown exponentially, and it is not entirely up to you to determine your fate. While I realize not everyone is provided with the same tools or game pieces, there is no doubt that the game is on and this time it’s for real.  You are now viewed as an adult, though still young, and the moves you make in the game of life are at your sole discretion.

So you’re probably reading this and asking, “When is he going to tie this back to gamification?” I am not a scientist, doctor or for that matter a scholar, but I do have an opinion. Gamification is taking off because we all like playing, competing and winning. We are taught, even if it is subliminal at a young age, that life requires you to play if you want to enjoy its benefits. We hand our kids ribbons for whatever place they finish in these days. We have graduations from pre-k and up rewarding them for making it to the next level. We are the game creators and players, and that is why gamification is a trend that will likely become commonplace. People don’t like to be bored; they want to be engaged and challenged, and gamification allows that to happen on a daily basis in all aspects of life if the “games” are designed correctly.

To find out more about the gamification trend, there are some great folks you can follow, like Gabe Zichermann, and conferences you can explore, like the GSummit, where you can learn more about how to engage your teams in the game of life.

It’s important to consider the best method for delivering your message to the person you’re communicating with. There’s a right way to utilize enterprise social networking and a wrong way. Knowing how people wish to be contacted is essential for effectively conveying your message and eliciting the response you want.

The vast array of communication tools coupled with personal preferences creates a dilemma about how to communicate most effectively. Systems have started to create simple indicators on availability; tools today can look into your Outlook schedule and gauge your availability based on your calendar. Although these indicators of “red” or “green” do give insight into calendar availability, there is an inherent problem with these system-generated cues. Active Directory service or IM status don’t consider the human element of how people prefer to be contacted.

There is a huge need for system-generated presence, but it doesn’t reveal the whole picture of how people actually want to be contacted. For example, you might be on your normal Monday status call as a listening participant, but not actively contributing content. Many people multitask during conference calls to take care of other pressing business needs. Although your ears are actively engaged in the conference call, your fingers are available to chat or email.

Behavioral presence is the combination of system-generated presence and desired contact preferences. Your message will often dictate the most effective way to connect with someone. In-person meetings, texts, IMs, or emails are all valid mediums to communicate your message. Regardless of which you choose, consider variables like the timing of your message and the communication preferences of the person you’re contacting. Many times the outcome of a conversation is more about how you present your message than the message itself.

Tools today are getting smarter. They can track the most contacted person in your address book and even provide historic trends on the subject you communicate about most. The first step in creating a behavioral presence model is taking system-generated availability and combining it with a platform that gives people choices about how they prefer to be contacted. There needs to be an emphasis not only on the ease of stipulating your preferences, but also on access to these stated preferences. Your tools should be a perfect marriage of systems and human intervention. The flexibility of the tool should support the ever-changing attitudes of your employees and not be dependent on just your calendar. It may never be perfect, but it might eliminate some of those uncomfortable email exchanges with your boss.

Regardless of how many tools or resources you use to keep in touch, people are still people and will communicate the way they prefer to. Learning how to best use today’s tools will not only help you maximize the impact of your message but also help you foster better relationships with the people you’re in contact with each day. When looking at what method of communication to use, you must first determine the types of tools you use from day to day and how you use them. For example, when considering the best way to communicate on both mobile and tablet devices, it’s best to understand how these devices are traditionally utilized. Desktops and laptops are traditionally optimized as production devices, as most individuals produce the majority of digital content using keyboards and 13–15” displays for creating everything from Microsoft Word documents to Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. Though these devices are being increasingly used to view media through services such as Netflix and Hulu, the convergence of TVs and digital displays have kept traditional computers largely in the information production and consumption space.

Tablet devices can be optimized as display extensions to laptops and are increasingly used as consumption devices for business intelligence data, PowerPoint content, and personal Information. Though a number of third-party companies are producing keyboards for these devices to make them more functional as a laptop replacement, most are either too underpowered or limited in features, such as USB ports, to truly replace a laptop/desktop.

Mobile devices are primarily utilized as interaction devices, being used for everything from remote controls to mobile wallets. Interactions are primarily focused around engaging with individuals (e.g., exchanging personal information) and interacting with environments (e.g., barcode scanners). This has led to a number of innovative changes in corporations, extending the interactive capabilities of a device by leveraging its ports to enable functions like credit-card swiping. With the increasing interest around mobile payments, additions such as NFC chips will continue to increase the amount of interactivity that a mobile phone is capable of.

After you understand how to utilize the tools at hand, the next step is to set them up to interact the way you want. When planning to build a service or website, it’s essential to focus on tying that application to a service layer rather than directly to the data source. Having a service layer will help you de-emphasize the specific technology required to provide data to and from the mobile service, and help streamline development and maintenance. As mobile web technology continues to evolve, it will also make it easier to migrate towards a more web-centric approach, avoiding any technology/device-specific solutions that have to be maintained long after they’re relevant. This is probably the most essential focus toward future-proofing your mobile solution, as it will provide the foundation for building technology-agnostic solutions down the road.

The key to effective communication isn’t about which medium you use to communicate, but the manner and convenience of the services you’re using. Simply having IM and using IM isn’t enough, because your colleague could be out of reach during a critical phase of an engagement. Having flexibility built into the methods you use is as important for business continuity as understanding the most effective method to reach out to someone based on the type of material you have to communicate. When planning to engage someone, consider all the factors at play and how your enterprise might better capitalize on opportunities, leveraging multiple methods to meet the needs of each and every employee in your company.

Throughout my lifetime I often heard the phrase “If he only had more experience,” used by everyone from senior executives to coaches and GM’s who run major league sports franchises. The question is: what is experience worth and is it always valuable?

Let’s first take a look at how you garner experience. No matter what we do as people each and every day, we build up experience. As a baby, we build all kinds of new experiences like eating solid food, meeting new people, learning how to use the potty, etc. And we know for sure that in most cases, babies attempt to apply these experiences as soon as they master them. Babies are great examples of what experience can teach us as without it, how would they ever evolve and grow up?

This begs yet another question: is all experience equal? I don’t believe so due to the diversity of individuals and how each can experience things differently. My belief is that experience is only valuable if you are paying attention while it happens to you for the first, second, third time and beyond. Today in sports we often see a rookie make an impact whereas in the past, that occurrence was less frequent. So what has changed? Have the players gotten worse? Are the experiences that the athlete goes through today different from yesterday? I think yes and no. Today’s athletes are provided with tools and techniques that were not readily available ten years ago. The technology explosion has enabled today’s athlete to leverage the Internet, film and social media to help drive quicker adoption of techniques and schemes, thereby spring boarding them to success at a faster pace than their predecessors.  But the exposure to these tools is not the only answer; if it were, everyone would be making an impact instead of the few who do. The ability to comprehend and then execute upon what one sees and experiences is truly what makes one athlete succeed at a faster rate while others lag behind.

In the traditional business world we treat new hires much like a professional sports team treats a rookie. While we don’t haze them by hanging them from a hanger or shoving them in a locker, we do limit what they are exposed to since few people really want to train the new guy. A company will often keep talented individuals in menial roles even though they suspect the new hire is fully capable of tackling more because it just seems easier.  I guess I should not be surprised since corporations are starting to look and operate like the government, rewarding people for just being there a.k.a. their experience versus their actual performance.

Everyone has been exposed to that young leader who shot up the corporate ranks or that entrepreneur who looks like he/she could still be in grade school. Our general reaction is that of surprise and jealousy with comments like “I wonder who let them in the lucky sperm club?” But I believe it was likely their experience that propelled them on the path to success.  You may be thinking, “Experience!!!  How can they have experience and be so young?” Like with our rookie example, everyone gains experience, but it is those who can evaluate, absorb and then apply the positives and negatives of each event who springboard to success the fastest.  For example, if two people read the same article, it is highly unlikely that they both take away the same set of information. The reality is that while the words are the same, each brain will interpret the information differently and each individual may or may not choose to apply it. If two people go to movie, listen to a sermon or go through an exercise routine, the outcomes on the surface may look the same, but the application of the experiences is not.

So is experience overrated? I am not sure that I have the right to say whether or not this is the case, but from this man’s point of view I say YES! I think people who can quickly apply their learning and experiences and turn them into action are the most likely to succeed. Give me someone who is willing to fail, learn and then apply over someone who watches, waits and wallows in self pity while others pass them by. Age is just a chronological representation of a person and not who we are or what we are capable of achieving.

Gamification. What is it? A trendy word in the enterprise space, a word that is catching on with executives like social media did in the not-so-distant past, as in, “We need to be doing gamification.” Wiktionary defines it simply as “n. Use of gameplay mechanics for non-game applications.” Non-game applications dabbling with gamification are growing in number and variety: corporations, environmental and government organizations, schools, celebrities, brands.

I was fortunate to attend the Gamification Summit in San Francisco last week. GSummit (as it is called) brought an extraordinarily diverse array of presenters. Attendees were able to take in a large amount of content due to a format regulating 20-minute presentations and five minutes of Q&A. The days sped by with tons of great talks by teachers, game designers, psychologists, a hip-hop star, enterprise managers, CEOs, scientists, game companies, etc. There are so many angles to consider. I didn’t expect the depth of psychological research. I was wowed by how gamification has advanced science. In awe of a sixth grade math teacher who has turned life around for his school and his students by playing Monopoly with them before school (“Monopoly Mornings”) and during class. Inspired by an individual gamifying his own life for personal improvement and a CEO encouraging better health through fitness for all. It all makes me want to run out and gamify my household chores, job, personal life, fitness routine, you name it.

But I pause and think, and because of my own professional history and interests, I can’t help but compare the gamification trend with the social media trend that started earlier and is still going strong. (And I’m not the first to do so – a quick Internet search yields results about the gamification of social media, gamification as a social media trend itself, gamification at social media week, and more.) Is every brand in the world selling more product and doing more business because they have a Facebook page or a Twitter account? No. Was implementing social media the solution to all business problems? No. Now that “everyone” is doing it, do businesses and brands have to raise the bar to see success? Yes. As it was and is for social media, so it shall be for gamification. Businesses and brands can’t just start gamifying everything and expect to see amazing results. As with anything done well, a lot of thoughtful planning and consideration must occur before applying game mechanics to a previously existing routine, knowledge-set, etc.

This is good news. Gamifying something just to do it likely won’t bring about success. Nicole Lazzaro, Producer of XEO Design, spoke at the summit about the importance of fun and the different kinds of fun to consider when designing a game experience. Fun is a critical element of any game. But it isn’t the only critical element; when we’re looking to gamify work tasks or information, the people playing the game must care about the game. They’ve got to be excited to learn the new information, motivated to care about the results and how they stack up against colleagues. There must be an element of passion. If the player isn’t passionate, then who cares? The game may be entertaining and even fun for a little while, but then what? From corporate to scientific to educational applications, any successful gamification effort will tap into the passions of the players so that they care about the results on top of having some fun along the way.

So much lately is focused on team and group productivity.  Microsoft’s fastest selling software ever is SharePoint, which is aimed at team spaces and group collaboration.  There is a lot of press recently about “social media,” “crowd sourcing,” and other group-related paradigms. A vast majority of the related innovation is around this type of technology as well.

I fully support these efforts and feel they are very important not only in a consumer sense, but also for the impact on productivity that enterprises can achieve.  In fact, I firmly believe that we are just scratching the surface on how these new paradigms can impact the enterprise.

However, it feels that in chasing productivity enhancements through the group, we are losing focus on the productivity of the individual.  In order to achieve true impact on enterprise productivity specifically, we need to be focusing on both group and personal productivity. This is becoming more and more important. Recent research is proving that the work styles we are adopting as individuals in the information age are NOT increasing productivity.  Take, for example, the notion of multi-tasking.  We now have information coming at us from all over the place.  It’s not uncommon to be creating a presentation while talking on the phone and monitoring email all while maintaining multiple instant message conversations and tracking posts from Twitter and other social media sites.

Our productivity must have skyrocketed since we’re on top of so much at once, right? Wrong!  There have been numerous reports from medical journals to Harvard Business Review articles with facts clearly showing this perception is false.  The BBC reported on one such study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found that, “workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”

Imagine the negative impact on productivity if your whole organization was high on marijuana.  Now imagine the productivity improvements if they all stopped, or even if half of them stopped.  This is just one example showing how a focus on individual productivity could have huge impact on overall enterprise productivity.

SuperConnect is committed to “Integrated Productivity,” focusing on solutions that address group and individual productivity.  If you want to see real, measurable improvements in your organization, just throwing “enterprise collaboration” or “social computing” tools at your employees won’t get you there. Only an integrated approach will truly deliver real impact on productivity.

Even with best-in-class line of business applications and solid disaster recovery plans, systems go down. IT service outages cause internal havoc and affect vendor/client relationships. Although SLA’s will support rapid recovery of systems, many times the biggest issue is “recovering” from the hit in terms of trust with your client. System downtime or the perception of downtime creates cracks in the foundation of client relationships. So what is the mortar that can help fix the cracks? Many are looking at the mobile enterprise.

 
An effective rescue of client confidence is the ability to provide mobile data to your field service teams. Giving client-side support teams the ability to find the needed subject matter expert or the clients’ Accounts Payable individual at their fingertips (even when billing and CRM systems are down) shows agility and true perseverance towards client success. Murphy’s Law dictates that clients will call when there is a telephony hiccup in your customer service call center. Or they will want more information about their invoice from your billing system. At that point, a level of panic sets in for the client and the next call will be escalating the issue to someone they know.

 
Your best client relationship custodians are many times sitting onsite with your clients. Their success aligns with the success of their client. Many times they live in the same neighborhood and have kids in the same schools. Business discussions bleed over into little league games and PTA meetings. These impromptu settings provide one of the best opportunities to differentiate your company’s responsiveness ability to service the client. When clients want information, they don’t care about server maintenance or outage windows or your inability to access that information right now. What they want is answers and a sense of security and trust that “their” information and support is not in jeopardy.

 
Mobile line-of-business applications are developed every day. Mobile apps can provide access to key corporate data so people on-the-go can be effective and productive. Successful conversations are a combination of key data points and perfect timing. It’s okay to tell the client, “Let me get back to you,” but when that line is used too often it gives an impression of ineffectiveness and interruption to solving the client need. Eliminating delay in answering a client request is a strategic method to build customer loyalty. In most cases, the information is not hard to access from a PC, but add the variable of being at a client site or neighborhood soccer field, and it becomes more challenging. Mobile tools that give your users the power to see into corporate systems distinguish an organization from the pack. The speed to resolution of a client request is just as important as having a great product or service.

 
We all try to build the best products or services. Parity in the marketplace is an inevitable force given enough time for your competitors to catch up. Even if your solution is great today, we should always be looking at how to couple that great solution with great service…a dynamic duo of client success.

 
*Posted originally on the Slalom Blog.

On the train the other night I noticed a woman using her iPhone to shop for a dress. She was browsing through dresses on Amazon and various other online women’s clothing stores. I also noticed a guy – several people, actually – streaming various videos from YouTube to their respective mobile devices. And of course, there were a lot of people keeping up-to-date with their social networks, all via their mobile devices – their iPhones, iPads, Droids, and so on. I suppose this isn’t all that surprising considering projections that show mobile Internet access bypassing desktop usage within the next year or two. A recent study reported that over half of all Internet searches are being performed on mobile devices. The fact is that more and more people are choosing to use their phones and tablets as their primary means to browse and shop and socialize and access Internet-based content.

It is equally not surprising, though interesting, that corporations are lagging behind this trend. With the exception of email and calendar, accessing a company’s network of systems, applications and databases requires employees to use on-premise PCs, though increasingly through remote VPN connections. To view a document, to see details about a customer order, to simply find a colleague’s phone number, for most organizations can only be performed while sitting at one’s desk. People are carrying around so much computing power – much of which they pay for themselves – that could be leveraged for work-related activities, especially by information workers and mobile professionals such as consultants, salespeople, and the like.

The first big problem that companies faced was having internal systems that were disconnected, difficult to use, and/or simply inaccessible to many or most employees. This has largely been solved by portal platforms that bring together this disparate content and deliver it via web pages in ways that are useful and contextual. SharePoint is a great example of such a portal, and given that it has been Microsoft’s fastest selling product in history validates that there was a problem in need of solving.

The bigger problem now is that these portal platforms, SharePoint included, were not designed with mobile access in mind. Sure, there are some ways of delivering SharePoint content to a mobile device, but with browser incompatibility and other issues, the experience is far less than compelling. I’m sorry, but you’re just not going to get a dynamic, data rich, highly interactive web part to work well (or at all) on mobile Safari! Instead, a new mobile-oriented platform is required. One that can deliver the information and collaboration capabilities that employees need, while addressing core IT issues of security, scalability, and disaster recovery.

On the platform-side this is cloud-based, with a robust integration and application-building framework, along with a facility for managing authentication and synchronization with the variety of devices being used. On the device-side, this a collection of apps – much like the composite applications built for and found in corporate portals – that are designed to bring together an organization’s information in meaningful ways, when are where it’s needed. Boom…a mobile portal (at least a conceptual one).

Connections by SuperConnect is the first commercial application designed and built for this new mobile paradigm. Using Connections, employees can quickly and easily discover and connect with relevant colleagues within their own company, building critical relationships. The SuperConnect platform supports secure integration with a variety of internal systems and data sources, a flexible application configuration capability, and rich analytics to see how the app is being used. Our vision with Connections – and future SuperConnect products – is to give workforces the ability to interact with their company’s systems, to collaborate with co-workers, and perform important tasks from anywhere using any device. Look for us on a train near you!

Think about where you are in your career today and how you ended up there.  Was there a key person in your life who introduced you to somebody to help get a job?  Did you have a mentor who worked with you and helped you get promoted?  If your personality played a key role, is your personality a result of your mother or father?  Do you get your sense of humor from a best friend you grew up with?  Are your business values due to the culture of the people at an organization where you worked?  Where you are in your career has as much to do with your relationships as it does with your education, and knowing that you can steer your career to a better place.

We read about people using websites like LinkedIn to form connections and help find jobs, but in reality the only people truly vouching for you or lending you a helping hand are true friends, people with whom you have real relationships, not just one of 500+ LinkedIn acquaintances. And it’s not just about connections helping you get a job. The people who truly will spend time with you, teaching and coaching you as a mentor, are the ones who value their personal relationship with you. The key to your career path isn’t just asking for someone to introduce you to a company or manager – that’s just the first step. It’s the real relationship you build beyond that introduction that will change your career and your life.

I worked at a sales-driven organization that had 800 sales reps, from inside sales reps dialing for dollars who made $50K per year to outside sales reps with multiple clients making $350K per year.  There were 700 of those low-paid inside sales reps and 100 of those high-paid outside sales reps. The interesting thing was each of those 700 inside sales reps had high hopes of moving up to the high paying outside sales role by working hard and getting promoted.  The only problem was that very few of those 100 outside sales reps roles opened each year, and when they did there were hundreds of people vying for those coveted roles.  What was more interesting was that it wasn’t always the top reps who were promoted; most of the time it was the reps who performed decently but also had an existing relationship with the hiring manager.  One prime example was the customer service rep who worked very closely with a top sales manager’s team and impressed that manager enough to be hired as a sales assistant.  The new sales assistant then fostered his relationship with that hiring manager, worked hard and was promoted to outside sales rep.  He went from making $35K per year as a customer service rep to making over $350K per year in less than three years.  He also became a top rep in the company because that relationship wasn’t just about having fun with the boss, it was a mentoring relationship.  He was a friend with the boss, but when they went to lunch or played golf on the weekend, they also talked about work, sales, and customers. That customer service rep leap-frogged hundreds of inside sales reps wanting that same job, not because he started at the bottom of the totem pole in sales and worked his way up, but because he formed a great relationship with the sales manager on that team and then worked his tail off to learn and make sales.

I have many examples of the exact same type of career advancement and it has worked essentially the same way each time.

• Form a friendship with someone above your pay scale who is smart and matches your personality.
• Impress the person with your hard work and willingness to learn.
• Continue fostering both the personal and professional relationship.

That person will likely help you advance your career because you are now someone they know and trust.

I want to share with you the same advice I gave many of those inside sales reps wanting to move up the chain: it’s not always how hard you work, it’s how hard you work AND your ability to form the right relationships.  The best thing you can do for your career, whether it’s changing careers, changing departments or moving up in your current department, is to find somebody who is connected and hopefully smarter than you, and begin forming a relationship on a personal and professional basis.  This means identifying a person who can help you learn, who has a similar personality to you so that you can bond on a personal basis, and who is well connected to help make those introductions or give you great referrals.  This takes work and planning, and the first few people you identify may not be the right ‘fit,’ but when you do connect with that person and form that relationship, your life and career can improve.  This path is mutually beneficial: you will have formed a solid friendship with someone you can learn from, and that person will find fulfillment and satisfaction in helping you accelerate your career.

As a child growing up I often remember hearing the phrase “It’s not what you know but who you know.”  I am quite confident that the individual who originally made this statement had no idea about the Internet, social networking or mobile technology, but that message has never rung more true and been easier to capitalize on than today. Let’s take a moment to breakdown a few examples.

Imagine you are a pending college graduate about to begin your job search. Back in the day you were lucky if your school had a job fair or if your family knew a few business owners. Today you just fire up your computer, type some keywords into your favorite search engine and voila! the connection process has begun. No matter what you are searching for – companies, job titles, specific people – you get results within seconds that enable you to take the next step to connect. The ability to research and identify the ideal job prospect has never been better, and to top it off, social networking sites like LinkedIn provide you with detailed information on how to get introduced or directly connect, bridging the gap from stranger to job candidate.

I find this transformation in the information age truly amazing, but what’s even crazier is that enterprises and the individuals within them don’t understand the value of their connections. I have had the luxury of attending many meetings in my life and what makes me laugh is when a senior executive walks in the room and introduces himself to his colleagues in the same manner he introduces himself to me. I find it ironic that a company values the outsider as much as the insider. How else do you explain the fact that a leader in the company has a similar relationship with me as with his colleagues?

As organizations begin yet another technology chase to create “The Social Enterprise” and deal with the consumerization of IT, I wonder if they will recognize the value of the people within their own four walls. I often hear statements like “If I could just get our people to collaborate better or share information, we would grow or deliver so much faster.” A typical reaction is to build a new portal or launch Chatter, Jive or some other social solution where technology will clearly fix the problem, but what most leaders forget is that people only truly share with those people whom they know or have relationships with. Companies today need to do a better job of bringing those relationships to life and creating personal connections.

The model is out there as social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. have figured out how to get friends, family, associates and even strangers who have similar interests or needs to share and connect regularly around what is going on in their lives or around the world. The key to opening that door resides right in front of them. All they have to do is stop and think, “Why do I share information with others? Do I call, phone or text a stranger?”  While that may happen from time to time, I doubt most folks spend their days sharing information with people they hardly know. They share information with people who have similar interests, whose face shows up when the phone rings or name comes across when they text. They are no longer strangers but now connected individuals and that is what companies must strive to do: gain value from personal connections that are created at work. They want their employees to no longer see each other as text lines in a directory but faces that they see and say hello to in the office, lunch line or meeting room. The value of creating deeper, more personalized connections between employees, partners and vendors is the greatest untapped asset in the enterprise. The companies who figure out how to best enable their employees to truly connect with their teammates will be the ones we read about in our preferred news sources of today and the future.