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I think of Greenpeace as an inherently serious and dedicated group (whether you agree with their tactics or not). If I were Greenpeace, I would WANT to be taken seriously given the cause. SO, I was a bit surprised that they came up with a mascot for their ‘Save the Whales’ campaign that was a bit ‘cartoony’. To top it off they held a ‘Name the Whale’ contest that allowed people to suggest names for the whale and let the public vote on the winner. However, when someone suggested the name “Mr. Splashy Pants“, well, they weren’t too happy.

As a side note – just add ‘Mr.’ (or Mrs.) to the front of something and ‘pants’ to the end, and it’s funny… in a junior high sort of way. Just start calling me ‘Mrs. Bloggy pants’. See? Not, I suspect, what Greenpeace was after.

Of course, to add insult to injury, the name went viral. Votes for Mr. Splashy pants skyrocketed. Then a funny thing happened – Greenpeace started to embrace Mr. Splashy pants. Mr. Splashy pants merchandise cropped up everywhere and people love it! To Greenpeace’s credit, they’re riding the tide (pun intended). However, time will tell how effective this campaign is to their cause.

The moral here is:

1. If you’re going to run a contest, make sure you have some controls in place
2. If you want to be taken seriously, don’t have a cartoon as a mascot
3. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and…
4. Be careful what you fish wish for

Not to be Captain Obvious, but men and women really do shop differently.

The other day, I was listening to ‘the Herd’ on 680 the Fan and Colin Cowherd (the Herd) was going off about airport security and luggage and how he thought it would be SUCH a great idea to have a website where you could buy your clothes online before you left and pick them up on the other side of security when you arrived. Apparently, men have a uniform – khaki pants, blue button-down shirts and loafers. They can just pick out their size and VOILA! Instant outfit. This may work for men, but….

I’ve had several conversations with my husband about this. I can buy him any piece of clothing – pants, dress shirts, shoes, boxers, etc. simply because I know his size. Ah, “would ‘twere that it were” for women. He won’t go NEAR buying women’s clothing. Each type of clothing, each brand, each store has different interpretations of what a size ‘8′ is. Some even under-size to make women feel skinnier. Am I going to buy jeans that SAY they’re size 4 when they’re not really size 4? – heck yeah!

More importantly, men just think differently about shopping. Don’t believe me? It’s well documented…

From misscellania.com

Women go on an expedition. I needed jeans; it took me 6 weeks. Too low at the hips, too tight, too loose in the waist, those can’t be 8’s – they’re too small, too short, too long, TOO AGGRAVATING. To add to my pain, I refuse to shop in department stores – too many choices.

Back to this airport shopping site idea. For men, I can see this working. For women, not so much. I’m wondering if etailers do/should/can market differently to men and women. Should the structure of the ‘women’s’ section of a site be different than the men’s… is it ever? Is it smarter to package outfits (like Rooms-To-Go or Garanimals) for men but provide accessories and upsells for women? I haven’t seen any sites that sell differently to men than women…then again, I don’t shop for clothing online, either. Maybe (cave)men do.

I watched the movie ‘Click‘ last night. Not so much because I was wanting to see it but, rather, because there wasn’t much else on. I found it surprisingly relevant to my line of work and was inspired to write this post. If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this: a stressed out Architect (Adam Sandler) is trying to get ahead at his firm by working hard for his smarmy boss (David Hasselhoff). He gets frustrated one night due to the stress of balancing work and family. He then flips out because he can’t find his TV remote so he sets out to buy a universal model.

The only store open is a Bed, Bath and Beyond where, during his search for said remote controller, he comes across a door marked Beyond (I found this funny in and of itself – never thought about what the ‘beyond’ was). Behind this door is Morty (Christopher Walken) – the resident ‘scientist’ of the ‘Beyond’ department. He shows Mike (Adam) this new ‘universal remote’ and Mike soon discovers that the remote can control everything … EVERY thing. He can turn down the volume of the dog, pause his kids, fast-forward his wife nagging at him. He soon gets caught up in fast forwarding through all of the hassles of life so he can get his work done and get promoted.

AH, but this isn’t what I wanted to talk about. After a while, the remote starts to ‘learn’ Mike’s preferences and reacts automatically to life’s situations. Every time his wife starts yelling – fast forward. Every time he goes to get ready for work – fast forward. He can’t stop it. It’s the way the remote is programmed. So, Mike’s remote was supposedly programmed to be ‘smart’ … to learn his preferences and react automatically thus making his life easier. But what happens is that his life becomes a huge mess. He changes his mind about wanting to fast-forward through things, but the remote can’t unlearn.

This so-called ‘personalization’ or artificial intelligence has been around in various forms for quite some time. There was talk in the 70s about AI. When the internet boomed personalization and customization were the rage. Now Microsoft is coming out with a search engine feature that will try to ascertain what you MEAN when you search the internet by comparing it with items on your desk top. All of this makes the assumption that computers can predict your future behavior by examining your past behavior.

While this theory holds true in many aspects of life, I don’t find that it does in ‘searching’ behavior. At any given time, I may change my mind or focus or may be searching for something I may never search for again. I may have documents on my computer from work that have nothing to do with personal searches. I balk at the thought of someone – something – trying to second guess what my intentions are. It’s like the former coworker of mine who insisted to me that we could tell what our users wanted by looking at what they did via our web logs.

Examining past behavior only tells us what people did, not what they want to do. I simply don’t understand the constant push to try to get computers to do something that, quite frankly, a lot of humans can’t even do. Why should we expect a computer to know what we’re thinking and what we’re going to do? Why would we WANT them to? I certainly don’t. Disagree? Just watch ‘Minority Report’.

There’s a theme in Monty Python movies -a comedic tactic, if you will- to take light of people who say one thing but really do/mean/say another. It really IS quite funny. Those of you familiar with Monty Python and the Holy Grail will find these scenes familiar. Those of you who are not (for shame!), here’s an example of what I mean…

First Scene – Arthur

Guard: Who goes there?

Arthur: It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, Defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England!

Guard: Pull the other one!

Arthur: I am. And this is my trusty servant Patsy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of Knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.

Guard: What, ridden on a horse?

Arthur: Yes.

Guard: You’re using coconuts!

Arthur: What?

Guard: You’ve got two empty halves of coconut and you’re banging ‘em together.

Arthur: So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercia, through —

Guard: Where’d you get the coconuts?

Arthur: We found them.

Guard: Found them? In Mercia?! The coconut’s tropical!

The Black Knight

Arthur: Now stand aside, worthy adversary.

Black Knight: ‘Tis but a scratch.

Arthur: A scratch?! Your arm’s off!

Black Knight: No it isn’t.

Arthur: Well, what’s that then? [Pointing to the knight's arm lying on the ground.]

Black Knight: I’ve had worse.

Burn the Witch!

Bedevere: What makes you think that she is a witch?

Mr Newt: What, she turned me into a newt!

Bedevere: A newt?

[pause]

Mr Newt: I got better.

Bring Our Yer Dead!

Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead. [Hits gong]

Large Man: Here’s one.

Dead Collector: Ninepence.

Old Man: I’m not dead!

Dead Collector: What?

Large Man: Nothing. Here’s your ninepence.

Old Man: I’m not dead!

Dead Collector: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.

Large Man: Yes he is.

Old Man: I’m not!

Dead Collector: He isn’t.

Large Man: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.

Old Man: I’m getting better!

Large Man: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.

Dead Collector: Well, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.

As funny as this is on the big screen, it’s not so funny when it comes to real life. Now, I’m not accusing people of lying, but people do have a penchant for believing that they do one thing, when they really do quite the opposite. For instance, think about how you would ride a skate board or a scooter – do you push with your right or left foot? Do you wear name tags on the right or left side? In what order to you eat the food on your plate at dinner? Think about how many people are in jail because of faulty eye-witness testimony – victims convinced of what/who they saw? What people think and what is actually true are often different things.

This gets me thinking. How should we listen to users? We know we should, but how much should they dictate what we design? The trick, I believe, is to hear not just what they’re saying, but what they’re NOT saying, and how they’re saying it. Basically …. we need to interpret what they’re telling us.

A good book about this is “Are Your Lights On? How to figure out what the problem REALLY is” by Donald Gause and Gerald Weinburg. It covers techniques for how to get at the real problem. It’s such an easy trap to only take your users’ word for what they need or want and design solutions based on that. Think about where Apple would be if they just ‘listened’ to users without really hearing what they were saying … without figuring out the real (right) problem to solve. As Henry Ford is attributed to saying “if I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse”. Or maybe two empty halves of coconuts

Quick! Match the following menu items to the type of food. Your choices are: Burritos, Fajitas, Quesadilla, Salads, Nachos and Tacos. GO!!

• Alfredo Garcia
• Art Vandalay
• Billy Barou
• Close Talker
• Fat Sam
• Homewrecker
• I Said Posse
• Joey Bag of Donuts
• John Coctostan
• Pinky Tuscadero
• Ruprict
• Sherman Klump
• The Full Monty
• The Other Lewinsky
• The Ugly Naked Guy
• Triple Lindy

So, how’d you do?

Beyond the fact that these names say nothing about the food items they represent, I don’t even recognize several of them from American popular culture. Imagine now that you’re a foreigner that has never been exposed to TV.

To be fair, this menu has descriptions of each item categorized by type of food. But the point is that if you were just looking at the name of the item, you’d have no idea. To top it off, you have no frame of reference for Pinky Tuscadero if you’ve never seen Happy Days.

I noticed this the other night when I went to order Chinese food. I was using the menu I pulled off of my mailbox and noticed that they only had the title of the dish. I have to tell you ‘Happy Surprise’ doesn’t sound like something I want to eat. Sticking to what I know – beef with Broccoli, I may have just missed out on a yummy dish.

Same goes for websites. You may think that your product names or site navigation names are cute and ‘hip’ – but do they have meaning? If they are cute and funny, is there some kind of context? Does your audience understand the language you’re using? Be careful what you call things on your site, you don’t want your customers missing out on that ‘Happy Surprise’.