Powerpoint, bras and twitter art

Just for fun

Artist Johanna Basford asked the twittering world for ideas, and proceeded to incorporate every one in a drawing that could easily become the new wallpaper at Arkham Asylum.

Of course, I tweeted in "Powerpoint and a bra", and the result is in there somewhere. Thanks Johanna!

See if you can spot our contribution among the whales, badgers, monkeys and dinosaurs... here's the report.

Top 10 Reasons why Powerpoint is like a bra

Yes, really.

It drives me crazy when people think of their Powerpoint* slides as their "presentation". Really, truly crunchy-monkey-nut crazy. Today, I was so annoyed at this habit that I tweeted:


The tweet rang bells with a few folks, notably Chris Atherton. Well, I do like to ring bells - so, for the list fetishists among you, here are...

The Top 10 Reasons a Powerpoint Slidedeck is Just Like a Bra.

(You can also have this boring (?) list in Chinese, courtesy of ExcelPro.)

10. It is often used out of habit or insecurity - but there are plenty of situations where it only gets in the way

9. It's possible to send one by mail, but it is empty and lifeless, so why bother?

8. Technical troubles will occur at the most embarassing moments

7. Too much decoration can distract from content

6. It's certainly pretty, but do you really want someone else's design to cover up your uniqueness?

5. People usually try to fit too much inside**

4. People think they need the support, but forget it's a restriction too

3. Given confidence, you will often make a bigger impact without one

2. You can borrow or steal someone else's, but it will never fit like your own

and finally..

1. It may look basically similar, but you should NEVER confuse it with the Real Thing

Folks, Powerpoint isn't the presentation. YOU ARE.

Got any more? Add them in the comments... Oh, and you should follow me on Twitter...

LATEST: Linda Wu at SixMinutes comes back with
32 Reasons a Powerpoint Slidedeck is Nothing Like a Bra.
Thanks Linda!

* Or Keynote, or whatever. I don't care. Slideware. You know.
** Oprah said 8 out of 10 ladies wear the wrong size, usually too small. And what Oprah says...

Customer experience, the jazz way

Lessons for customer experience from a master of voice

Over the last couple of days, I have spent a little time with three exceptional musicians: New York's Refuge Trio, made up of Theo Bleckmann, Gary Versace and John Hollenbeck. I was able to take part in a masterclass vocal workshop with Bleckmann, and several of his statements on singing - like so many showbiz ideas - offer excellent insight for customer experience practitioners.

(We spoke in German, and all this is based on my brief notes, so all quotes are no more than "my best attempt" at capturing the meaning.)


The Master on backstage and frontstage
TB: "When you perform, it can feel like a flat film set. It's like behind me is nothing. But that's not true: the music and the energy is all around me."

In experience design, we often think about frontstage and backstage processes - which is a useful distinction. But the interplay between backstage and frontstage is more complex than just boxes arriving from the storeroom.

Theo's words reminded me that the spaces behind the scenes and in front of the scenes share a common energy - one which customers can sense, and staff can be motivated (or demotivated) by. Remember, the frontstage/backstage boundary is real, but it is permeable to more than just product.


The Master on keeping on track
In one musical exercise, Theo had us hold one note while he played other notes. With notes that were further away, this was easy. But when he played the semitones - the closest possible notes - above and below our note, many of us found ourselves sliding off line.

This common singer's exercise offered parallels to the world of motivation, as is being discussed on Wenovski. Wildly different notes were easy to ignore, but the nearly-the-same notes were pure seduction. Similarly, it's not the grouch in the corner who will demotivate you - he's easy to ignore. Instead, it's the people who do pretty much the right things, but with a little less fire and passion for the customer. Their path - the slightly easier path that looks oh so similar - is the dangerous one, as it tempts us to do just a little less.

It's the same with service design. "All the other companies all do it this way - which is nearly the same. Why don't we?"

Answer: because you need to be exceptional.


The Master on intent
TB: "Know what note you are going to sing before you sing it. Intention is important - otherwise things happen out of fear or habit."

I can think of no greater enemies to good customer experience than fear and habit. Fear can be fear of trying something new, or fear of looking the customer in the eye and making human contact; habit is the innovation-killer of "we always do it this way". And fear and habit together are stagnation and boring or bad service.

Theo's advice here is that intention - knowing what we want to "sing" in advance - is the best weapon against these two.

What "song" do you intend to "sing" to your customers?

Photo by Amanda Stockwell from theobleckmann.com

How to rehearse (or not) a presentation

Best of both worlds

How a stand-up comedian rehearses for both flexibility and confidence.

An over-rehearsed presentation - like an over-rehearsed show - can really stink. It can be so automatic that it loses touch with the audience. It becomes a polished set of actions and words and ceases to be two-way communication, a persuasive dialogue.

On stage, we know that the comic aside - the gag improvised when the scenery collapses or a cellphone in the audience rings - is usually the biggest laugh of the evening. It's because the audience knows it was one-off, one-time, authentic creativity. So should we always improvise?

Usually, no. Bluffing your way through Shakespeare (or a complex presentation) on a wing and a teleprompter will not get you far. You need the confidence to know what happens next, the experience to get you through the technically challenging parts. And that only comes from practice. Lots of practice.

Hmm. So - we are in a quandary. Authentic, spontaneous flexibility, or calm rehearsed confidence? What to do?

The answer is this: you should not rehearse your presentation, you should rehearse your presentations. Plural.

When I'm developing a stand-up routine. I have many of my gag ideas on little index cards which I can add notes to, reshuffle, tear in half, or even eat in frustration. I will stand in a room away from the world (this is embarrassing) and rant my way through the cards. I'll try every line ten different ways. I'll try ten different orders. I'll throw cards away, and dig them out of the bin. I'll try missing out this part, and go off on a stream-of-consciousness tangent expanding that section. I'll even try running the cards backwards - seriously, it can teach you a lot.

After a while, I don't need the cards much, and I can play with my material while jogging, driving, or screaming at the top of my lungs while zooming down the Autobahn on my motorcycle. (If you've ever seen a lunatic doing this, now you know it was me. It feels as mad as a brush, but it's very effective.)*

At the end, I have not just rehearsed one routine - I have rehearsed dozens of routines based on basically the same material.

This stand-up rehearsal technique works for presentations too. Play with the pieces and bang them together until you know every angle.

After a while, you will know what the best order is. You can use it for your test audience. But you will not be tied to that order...

You will have all the confidence you need, because you will have mastered your material. But you will also have the flexibility you need. You will know that there is more than one path through the presentation, and that you can cope with anything.

Most importantly, you will be able to adjust your presentation with confidence to genuinely respond to the audiences signals - making it a real two-way exchange, not some polished performance that could have been done by DVD.

Have fun!

*Actually, a shouted rehearsal is a great technique. I know classical actors who rehearse monologues by shouting them from the beach into the ocean waves. Of course, this works best if you have a Victorian greatcoat and rather wild hair.

Photo of some of my index cards by me.

(This post is based on a comment I made last year on TJ Walker's blog)

Upcoming workshop in Munich

Input please...

I've been talking to the charming folks at EDO, that's Europe's own Experience Design Organisation*, about doing a workshop with them this autumn. I'll be presenting some of my theatrical tools that can be used in service design and customer experience work. It will be hot, fast and will - as always - involve huge quantities of flying chocolate.

Daniel Hunzicker at EDO has had the excellent idea of combining my egg-throwing-antics with input from the magical whizzkids at IDEO Munich, so it is shaping up to be a rather splendid couple of days in the city of beer.

Here's the cool bit - Daniel is asking for input on what might happen at the event, so if you're interested now is the time to go over to EDO and add your suggestions...

Hoping to see you in Munich!

* What do you mean, you're not a member? Go and join, now. You can finish that later.
Bierpic from xrrr at flickr

Cheat the seating for better presentations & parties

Leading the horse to water

If you went your presentations to be effective and your events to rock, you will need to think about where you let your audience sit. Here's why.

Check out the first diagram below - it's the well known scheme of where we ought to sit in a classroom or presentation room. You know - the more front-and-centre you sit, the more information you retain and take home afterwards. Old news.

The second diagram, two paragraphs further down, has no hard research behind it. It's just my own experience from a gazillion shows, classroom lessons and presentations I have given over the years. It shows where people want to sit.

When people come into a presentation, classroom or gala event (let's assume for now they didn't pay for their own tickets), they invariably fill up from the back, and along the aisle. It seems they are looking for a swift exit, or trying to avoid direct contact to whatever is happening at the front. Even the keen ones, unless they are die-hard fans, avoid the front row, preferring the midfield.


Now compare the two rooms - the consequence is obvious. Unless every seat is taken, your audience will tend to sit in the seats where they will benefit least from their presence, and your efforts as a presenter.

And that is only the first downside of this trend.

A successful presentation is all about atmosphere (you are there to shape emotion, remember?). For a good, infectious buzz you need to have your audience up close and bunched together. If they are all spread around the back of the room, you are going to be struggling to reach them.

To avoid wasting both your time and the audience's, borrow these tricks from the hospitality industry.

First, choose a room that is as tight as possible for your predicted numbers. Then, encourage your audience to fill from the front, perhaps by:

- using pleasant soft lighting at the front of the room while the rear rows and outer edges remain dark
- standing at the front of the room, welcoming attendees there and offering them seats
- or, most simply and effectively, reserving the rear rows until the rest of the room is full. *

The result of your audience management will be a better buzz and more effective use of everyone's time - a winner all round.

* the sneakiest way is to simply set up fewer rows of chairs than needed, then fetch "reserve" chairs from another room when it gets to standing room only. Wow, the event was a surprise hit!

Instinct helps you move people

... so stop thinking too hard

Watching the extras to the Bourne films on the train, I came across this piece of advice which every service manager should take to heart.

"Often when you are a director you are trying to free everybody from thinking too hard. Because if you think too hard, you're not instinctive.

The power to move, the power to excite, the power to propel people - is instinctive."

(Paul Greengrass, Director)

As a manager, what can you do to free your people from thinking too hard? Remember, it's easy to make things complicated. Simplicity is dang hard, and freedom is scary.

But you need them both to engage customers and release creativity.

Playful design wins

Game-based approach to architectural design

Here's a fascinating report on a new design methodology thesis by Christopher Totten.

Totten used games as powerful tools in cooperative architechtural design projects. The games had two functions:

A simple, self-designed board game guided the design process in a Cabal-type system: "Three or four player/designers play cooperatively but each have their own piece on the board. Each of these players takes on a different design role .... rolling the die to move around the board and respond to the directions ... to make design changes, draw new cards, lose turns, or run playtests. "

At turns, the actual building design took place in Google SketchUp or Valve's Hammer Level Editor: "Using a game engine such as Hammer allowed players to explore their buildings while they were designing them; since it lacks a traditional "orbit" tool but allows the in-program camera to be moved through the model with game controls; as one would move through a game environment ... "

Mr T. reports three main benefits of this game-based approach:

1 The board game / Cabal system helped circumvent many of the social or group-dynamic problems normally encountered in cooperative work.

2 The video-game design testing encouraged a high degree of focus on the emotions and experience of the building user.

3 Playtesters also reported that their designs were different because they felt they could make more creative moves while in the play environment of the game. Their designs were more complex and stimulating than those produced with more traditional techniques.

So, fewer arguments, higher user-centricity, and more exciting designs... sounds good to me. This is a great example of successfully using the power of play in a complex business environment.

Adam

PS I particularly liked this report on one virtual house: "The playtesters conceived the house as a path of rooms that offered sporadic views to the landscape around the house, leading up to the ultimate reveal of the river on the large porch."

Now, that sounds just like the narrative structure of the next Hollywood blockbuster...

Play house pic by barnabywasson at flickr

Start by cheering up the customer

Starting out right

David Zinger posted a nice overview of his time with impromaster Keith Johnstone. There's a lot worth reading there, but I was especially struck by one side note:

Start by cheering up the audience.

Now, replace "audience" by "customer" (that's one of my favourite hobbies), and we have some powerful medicine. If you set out to start every contact by "cheering up" your customer, you will automatically find yourself:

... being present in the moment.
If you are fully tuned in to the customer's feelings here and now, I promise you will not find yourself thinking about the stack of 27B-6 forms waiting on your desk.

... empathising with the customer's expectations.
A customer comes to you with a particular emotion based on what they think is going to happen next. To cheer them up, you are going to have to read - and beat - that expectation.

... caring about first impressions made by your site, location or appearance.
Everyone knows that first and last impressions are crucial. How do your physical surroundings (colour, light, signage, access) contribute to cheering up the next customer?

... being human.
True smiles can only work over a true person-to-person connection. Humour is the same. Without giving at least a glimpse of the person you are, you are not going to spread cheer. So be yourself - you might enjoy it.!

So, here's a challenge: cheer up some customers as soon as you meet them today.

And here's another: cheer them up even more as they take their leave.

Happy face shot by litanmore at flickr

An actor's guide to presentation technique

My personal top ten

Business people love my presentation coaching. I'm an actor and stand-up comedian, so they find my approach refreshing as well as highly effective. Here, in a nutshell, is what I teach them:

10 Close the laptop
Do not plan your presentation by opening PowerPoint and typing your first bullet! Instead, spend time thinking about your audience. Who are they? What do they want? What do they already believe?

9 Throw out your material
It’s a huge mistake to start by collecting material. Don’t ask yourself what you have, ask yourself what your audience will need. Avoid facts and figures - choose powerful images, human stories and genuine emotion instead. These “soft” options are proven to be more effective than any hard numbers. And cut every word that is not truly useful to your audience.

8 Take what’s left and cut it in half
Yes, in half, at least. You should never speak more than five minutes - three is better - unless the people are coming just to hear you speak or you are a paid professional speaker. (And if you think your presentation is “just five minutes”, it is probably about 12. Time it, you’ll see. ) Finish early - they will love you.

7 Don’t start at the beginning
Comedians, rock musicians and James Bond start their shows with a huge bang, and finish with a bigger one. In between, they present a sequence of highlights, getting more impressive all the time. This “Boom!-wow-wow-wow-BOOM!!” sequence is ideal for your presentation (and for any service process). So start with a really strong point - your second best one - then drop down and build up towards your very best “BOOM!” point at the end. Take questions at the bar.

6 Burn the beamer
Look, people’s eyes are attracted to light - it’s why we stare at the fire, the telly, the ocean - so if you use PowerPoint you are distracting from the real presentation - which is not your ruddy slides, it is you. Ask yourself: would Martin Luther King or JFK have benefited from bullet points? (Er.. no pun intended. Well spotted, Ms Pollard!)
(If you have a huge room, you might need a beamer. But use it to project live video of yourself, or for powerful images. Avoid wordy slides and lists - if your slide has more than seven words on it, you are in big trouble. And switch it off as often as you can. Hey, try the “B” key!)

5 Set yourself on fire
This is incredibly important - we look at light, so the brightest object in the room must be you. Get a spotlight on you, and get every other light in the room dimmed or switched off - including the beamer. Insist on this.

4 Don’t read
Never, ever, ever read your presentation. It sounds unnatural, and people need to see your eyes to trust you. Keyword cards are ok, but you won’t need to look at them because you have rehearsed so well. You were planning to rehearse (with a test audience) weren’t you? How much is the time of all the people in the audience worth?

-13 Do something crazy
Do something to surprise your audience. Give them a reason to remember you. For example - don’t hand out business cards, but print your number on bundles of €5 notes and throw them at the audience.

2 Get carried away
This is the big one. I don’t care how you slouch, how you stutter, how badly you dress and how much you fidget with your hands - if you truly, utterly believe what you say, you will convince people. Be yourself and let your passion show. (And if you don’t feel passionate about what you are presenting, please go home and stop wasting our time.)

1 Cancel the presentation
Presentations are there to persuade - not inform. Use them to move emotions, and sway decisions. If you just want to inform, then e-mails, articles, web based training, workshops or personal discussions are proven to be better. Too many presentations are information orgies. So cancel them, and do some work instead.

Magic lantern shot from Magic Lantern Show at flickr.
Article previously published in German in the FrankenPower magazine.

Book your own presentation coaching here.
You should follow me on Twitter here.

Using elevators to impress

Giving captive audiences a lift...

Elevators (or "lifts", if you're a BritSpeaker like me) are massively underused resources. Even in these days of fitness awareness, if your building has a people-lifter it will see a lot of use. And people in elevators are a captive audience.

So why not show how cool you are by entertaining them, like in this wonderful elevator artwork by Marcello Brambilla for the Standard Hotel in New York?

- tell a story.

Change the scenery and boost innovation

Move the meeting to the Holodeck...

Want a cheap and easy way to boost the effectivity of your creative sessions (and in fact any meeting)? Just change the scenery.

My collegue Markus and I felt like a change for our brainstorming session this week, so we headed across the street and into the park where the local town have provided this brilliant performance/meditation/party/picnic/being space.

A pen, a pad of Post-its, and our meeting room was ready. There were no chairs, so we kept thinking on our feet. We weren't alone - but chatting to other space-users kept the mood light and the ideas flowing fast. In the end, our latest plans for world domination benefited from the presence of a couple of bikers, a theology student, two old ladies, and a dog.

Changing your physical surroundings is once of the best ways to increase the output of creative sessions. So take your crew out of that dang meeting room and hit the cafés, museums, parks and rooftops. You'll see the benefits fast, I promise.

And perhaps your people might even look forward to the next meeting...

Pics by Adam's ancient Motorola phone

UX > CX > HX?

Which way next?

Once, there was UX, or user experience. An emphasis on how the user interacted with your product.

Then we zoomed out to CX, or customer experience. Looking at the customer's entire interaction with both the product and the company - from using the product to reading the ad to calling support to paying the bill.

What's next? HX, or human experience?

Considering the interaction between the company (and all it's agents, whether "working" or not) with all the humans it interacts with - whether "customers" or not?

It will be fun finding out.

Whither weather vane pic from Greg Hefner at flickr.

Never give in...

If you love what you do, somebody else will love it too...

Winston Churchill gave a famously short speech to schoolboys, where he said:

"Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."

If you believe in what you do, and love doing it, he is right. Here's proof:


I love the way that the dancer directly appeals to the crowd at the start, but is ignored.

The more he just gets down to doing his thing, the more interesting he becomes. And he just never, never, never, never gives up - until his energy is finally irresistible.

Everyone can be a star - if you let them

Mark Hurst put me on to this terrific wedding video. It's great fun, but it can also teach us something...



Presumably nobody in this clip is a professional performer, but they all give amazing performances. Why?

* Because they are doing something that feels new.
* Because they are allowed to play around while doing it, which makes it fun.
* Because the only pressure on them to "get it right", is their desire to do a good job for their friends.

LOCKDOWN Projects are onto a winner here. They took an oversubscribed service (wedding videos) and shook it up with a great idea. Then they made the idea work by trusting average people to be stars.

What could your workplace learn from that?

PS I hope Brian and Eileen's marriage is as good a party as their wedding was, and I hope that LOCKDOWN get rich and famous rather fast.
I have a feeling they will.

If you liked this, try...

Affinity blog group

I've been fiddling with the jolly knobs at Google Analytics, and have worked out that the readers referred by these five blogs spend longest on my site, look at the most pages, and bounce least often.

In other words, if you enjoy this blog, you'll almost certainly enjoy these:

The Customer's Shoes
Pow! Right Between the Eyes!
Design for Service
Fortify Your Oasis
Humor that Works*

The list includes several of my own favourites - if you want more, look for the feed of my own regular blog reading about halfway down the right-hand bar... just after the chicken.

* A newish blog, which can slant the Google stats, but certainly recommended.
Group hug pic by fridgeuk at Flickr.

Staging one consistent customer story

Watching from the wings

Before a show or presentation, you will usually find me waaaay up in the lighting rig, hanging precariously from a gantry and peering at the top of the audience's heads. This is not just to hype myself up (although it is very focussing), or convince myself that my hairline is receding slower than many. Instead, I am trying to feel the vibe, and predict how the show will need to be tonight.

In his book The Invisible Actor, master actor Oida Yoshi (called Yoshi Oida in the West) says:

"Too often actors sit in their dressing rooms or the green room, listening to the tannoy for their cues. Once they hear the stage manager call their names, they go up into the wings, ready to make their entrance. [This] is completely unhelpful in terms of good storytelling. There is only one story being told by a team of actors; not ten different stories being told by ten actors. Therefore, you need to be there in the wings from the very beginning, in order to see how other actors are telling the story".

Anyone staging a customer experience is faced by the very same problem. And remember, the "actors" in a customer experience are not just the staff, but also the customers. So ask yourself:

• What opportunity do my staff have to see how "the story" of our daily business is going, enabling them to start in with the appropriate energy and preparation?

• What opportunity do my staff have to learn how "the story" of this particular customer's encounter with us is going, helping them to take over with the appropriate energy and preparation?

And even:

• How do I let my customer see how far along we are in his "story"? Does he have the feeling af a beginning, a middle and an end? Or, better yet, a hook, exposition, climax and resolution?

Stage wings pic from pimpampum at flickr

Freedom of Speech

The limits of scripting interaction

A lot of customer encounter design is talking about the words we say. It's very important to consider the influence our words can have. But as every actor can tell you, it's equally important to remember that not every line works from every person. A script needs to be shaped by the person delivering it.

Also, tight scripts lead to rigid thinking, discouraging the flexibility which can make or break a customer experience.

As Barry Schwartz puts it in his TED talk on wisdom.

"We know why these scripts are there. We don't trust the judgment of [employees] enough to let them loose on their own. Scripts like these are insurance policies against disaster.

And they prevent disaster. But what they ensure is mediocrity."

So: give your people a verbal toolset, not a rigid script. It's not just about showing trust, it will actually work better.

Read more on this theme here.

Speech bubble pic from Illustir at flickr

Ten Commandments of Experience Design

Remember...

1. Thou Shalt Offer Something Unique; or thou Shalt Offer Something in a Unique Way.

2. Thou Shalt ask thy Customer what he Expects, and then Give him More.

3. Thou Shalt ask thyself, "What Tale am I Telling, and How Should it be Shaped to Move my Customer?"

4. Thou Shalt Show thy Personality and thy Passion.

5. Thou Shalt Allow thy Magnificent People to Be Themselves and Use Their Own Words.

6. Thou Shalt Give thy Magnificent People free Opportunity and Safe Space to Play Around with What they Do.

7. Thou Shalt Reward Storytellers, for They Are thy Guides.

8. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be thou Vulnerable. Use thine Ears.

9. Thou Shalt Not Do What thou Didst Yesterday. Today's Customer is Different.

10. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Emotion is Good.

(Inspired by the brilliant TED Commandments, via Presentation Zen)
Chisel pic from Tamaki at flickr

For German readers

Hitting the news stands

The first of my "Fool's Corner" columns for the German business magazine FrankenPower is now in print.

If you can read German, you might like to take a look. Contact me for a copy by post, or download the complete magazine as a PDF here.