A Growing Self Awareness of Technology Overload

A Word Cloud  Explaining How I feel

     This holiday season I am really overloaded by technology, so much so it's making my head hurt and I feel both annoyed, confused and conflicted by the media messaging coming at me from all directions.  I see and feel all the beautiful images and implied lifestyle of ultmate media experience.  I see families sitting in contemporary styled living rooms watching large flatscreens, heads bent down looking at tablets, laptops.  All together they appear it seems, but in actuality so far apart from one another.  I don't buy what I'm seeing in the advertising because I'm living in a media overload nightmare.  I think it's a tip of a proverbial socio-cultural iceberg. 
     I'm surrounded by screens of various sizes and shapes.  I'm uncomfortable seeing so many friends and family uncontrollably it seems bent over tablets, itouches, laptops vaguely interacting with one another, not making clear eye, mumbling answers to questions down to the screen but not across the room to the person asking the question.  If this is togetherness and family time why does my skin crawl ever so little sometimes when I look across to see a loved one head down on a screen, body in place, mind and focus elsewhere.
     I can't be the only one feeling a little weird about this can I?  I know all of this great cool tech at least in the commercials, web and multi-media advertising has us all living in a super happy fantasy world of better lives etc.  But is it really making us better people?  Do we know how to do things like basic communication, like....talking to one another?  I know that after a long day working on my architectural work surrounded by screens at my desk, where I frequently post strategic updates to my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, flitting around doing work related research I feel a bit scattered. 
     In the last year or so, have you tried reading a newspaper article or picked up a magazine and tried reading an indepth piece, quickly realizing you can't because you're still scanning the pages like they were on a screen and you can't settle down to actually read like you used to.  I have.  Often.  I feel all of this tech and my unwitting behavior with it has led me to a self-created attention deficit disorder.   
     Backing up a little, let's set some context. In our home bookshelves we have an old children's book from the 1950's or so espousing the glamourous miracles of the technology then called television.  Looking at its simple colored illustrations showing how the technology worked, explaining the complex and mysterious ideas of programs of various kinds being beamed over airwaves into people's living rooms seems quaint today.  Often books like this or Norman Rockwell paintings depict entire family's sitting around a living room, a barber shop, restuarant or bar looking at a single TV or listening to a radio.  
  

Seven Secrets of Exceptional Customer Service

While at VtSBDC training with Carrie Gendreau, seminar leader.
(This is just a series of cryptic notes...not a long form post fyi....)

Treat everyone as a guest, seek to connect, pay attention, listen hard

Be ready to help your guest, be ready, be prepared the moment the walk in the door.

It is important to keep and clarify expectations in the process of serving them.

Every single time, how we look, our first impression matters most. However take care not to pre judge or not to be preconceived.

The details matter. It is always about the details. Caring for details show we see the big picture and get it.

4 Ways we have contact with our guests

1. How we look
2, What we do
3. What we say
4. How we say it

Have immediate rapor and connection with your guests.

Say please and thank you at all times.

Develop an attitude of gratitude.

Never put down the competition.

Catch people doing things right and celebrate success.

It's all about what I can do for you, not what I can't.

Engage directly with guests somehow with your interactions. "Welcome to Moe's".

Show genuine interest by listening and show you're listening. Do so by possibly repeating back what you thought you heard. It shows you care and you are focused on them.

Say their name back to them. Of course we need to know their name.

Exceed our guests' expectations, (quotes on walls of restrooms stalls)

Rules of Customer Service:
1. Customer is always right. 2. Go back to number 1.

How can I exceed my customer's expectations?

See our guest's complaints as gifts and learning oppourtunities.

- Handle the challenge first, then the solution or reason.
- Show empathy
- Find a solution
- Offer a gift , coupon

Does your organization have a customer service mission statement and process which all buy-in to and follow? Whether a small services based business like mine, Arocordis Design, a larger retail or manufacturing entity, having a playbook and service ethos is critical.

Design Thinking is Infectious

Design thinking is a state of mindfulness. Why? This is because so many issues or layers come together when considered during the act of seeking solution. It is a complex one involving synthesis and Ideation.

Ideation? This is the doing of design. Ideation involves making and devising possible solutions, alternatives satisfying the design challenges faced. Picture a big bright blue funnel. You empty the ideas into it and they swirl together forming a new unknown solution. What do you think?

Reviewing "A Foreign Country" by Charles Cumming

     I usually write about design, innovation and many things green but I'd like a timeout for this short post about a spy thriller I read recently.  It's named Foreign Country by Charles Cumming, a youngish UK author with a reputation comparing him to a John LeCarre or Grahmn Greene. My advance copy came to me via Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont as a thank you for helping them consider some design options for their children's area help desk.  They shared a thank you book in the spy thriller genre with me from their advance copy stack and Foreign Country the one I selected from it didn't disappoint.
     The fast pacing, twisted filled plot, middle age ennui of Kell, the protagonist and ultimately the design of the book with its flashbacks and disconnected happenings at first all added up at the end to a superlative redemptive finish.  Visually the books design and structure echoed spiraling strands at the outer ends of happenings to the major characters intertwining tighter and tighter closer to the heart of story and its heart-pumping ending.

     Here's an excerpt from Cumming's book website which sets the stage:


.....from Chapter 4, A Foreign Country


"Six weeks before she is due to take up her position as the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene vanishes without a trace. "


 "Her disappearance is the gravest crisis MI6 has faced for more than a decade. There has been no ransom demand, no word from foreign intelligence services, no hint of a defection.

Should news of Levene’s disappearance leak out, the consequences would be catastrophic.  But for disgraced MI6 officer Thomas Kell, the crisis offers a chance for redemption.  He is approached by his former employers and ordered to find her.

Kell’s search takes him first to France, then North Africa, where he discovers an extraordinary secret hidden deep in Levene's past.  It is a secret that could fatally compromise Britain’s national security – and for which Kell himself could pay with his life."

      The first chapter opens with a vicious double murder in Tunis of a vacationing just retired French couple.     It moves on to establish the situation of Thomas Kell, how he was ousted from the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) better known as the British M16, taking the fall for a joint intelligence operation with the Americans gone bad eight months earlier.  Adding to Kell's middle aged angst was his crumbling sexless marriage.  This sets the tone for the lonely double life of a spy who knows no true identity, only cynical allegiance to long ago ideals and long time friends in the service who at any moment are capable of turning on him.  But in the end, Kell misses the action of a life of spy craft and would do anything to return to it while seeking to redeem himself in the eyes of his peers and get back in the 'game'. 

     A Foreign Country is about Kell's journey searching for his friend Amelia Levene the new soon to be first ever female Chief of M16, while ultimately leading to him rediscovering his courage, faithfulness and true character.  My advance copy said it was going onsale August 2012 but apparently it's already for sale in the UK.  If you're looking for summer read to take to the beach or on a plane do be careful.  Once you pick it up you won't want to put it down.  Look for it in August in US booksellers near you! 

     Let me know what you think?  I think this story could easily be made into film.  James Bond watch out! Thomas Kell is the seasoned hero of our age for readers like me to identify with and champion.  I know I always wanted to be a spy down deep inside and with A Foreign Country I find myself a little closer. 

Small Steps to an Energy Independent World, Montpelier's Electric Vehicle Charging Station

All-Electric Vehicle Charging Station in Montpelier, VT

     Yesterday while downtown in Montpelier, I walked behind City Hall and literally ran into something I've never seen before and which given April 22nd and Earth Day is just around the corner it's definitely worth sharing. It's also just another reason why I think Montpelier is the best place to live in Vermont. We do stuff.  Seriously good stuff.  

     In February, the City and Green Mountain Power teamed up to install a free solar powered electric vehicle charging station behind city hall.  It's the third one for GMP so far, with one installed in South Burlington and Colchester.  Last week I pumped over $4.00/ gallon gas into my cars for the second time in my life, the last being in 2008.  I read yesterday how hybrids and all electric vehicles had there best month ever in the Burlington Free Press and here as described in the March 2012 Hybrid Dashboard.  I believe it.  While the current percentage of the total vehicle sales pie is small at 3.5% or so it's a rapidly growing segment of the market fed by high prices at the gas pumps.  

Sound and Light Sketch, Biophilia and Birds Calling

     This morning walking our five month old puppy I stopped for a minute or two recording the sounds and images of beautiful pond which is part of Montpelier, Vermont's North Branch Nature Center preserve area.  While I'm not a birder and a wildlife ecologist I do appreciate the sounds and sights of nature.   This is another part of bringing nature near to you who are far away from it.  And for those of you viewing this from other parts of the world, climates etc., this might just be a treat!

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Biophilia and Nature Near, The Sounds and Sight of a Stream

     I share this video made recently while walking the hills around Montpelier with our new puppy and family members.  This is for those of you near and far who appreciate the sounds of nature and especially this one of spring time in Vermont.  I believe in the importance of embracing nature in design, especially well defined by the word biophilia. 

     Championed by noted biologist E.O. Wilson, it means "an innate and genetically determined affinity of human beings with the natural world." Oxford Online Dictionary.  Too often natural elements such as the sounds of water, the oxygenated aroma's of plant and the texture of river stones, other natural materials are absent from our daily experience inside our homes, workplaces, where we shop and worship.  

     Much of my work as an architect and workplace designer involves bringing the natural back into the everyday experience inside.  What better antidote to the cacophony of cell phones, sirens, sounds of everyday cosmopolitan life than soothing sounds of water, smells of plants and textures of materials. Where possible I believe it intrinsically valuable to creating a sense of well being to include water features and ample  plantings into interior environments.  So many of us spend the majority of our lives inside these days working long weeks whether at the office or as mobile untethered workers at home, coworking spaces, libraries, coffee houses etc.  

     Smart business people who want to create welcoming environments for work, play, shopping, learning, worship would do well to bring nature near. 

      

An Open Letter to Google's Project Glass and Google [x]

Prototype Headwear via Google's Project Glass

Dear Project Glass and Google [x];

     This is very interesting but be prepared for unintended consequences in regards to our day to day experience with the glass wear computing technology.  It's already difficult to talk with people gazing into their smart phones, tablets, iPads etc. and carry on a focused conversation of any kind.  With such heads up glass displays imagine talking with someone who has one?  I would only think this would be more distracting.  Even if they're there in front of you are they really "There"? Maybe halfway there?  Or just kinda "There".
     I can imagine someone asking a question in the live and the answer popping up on the screen in front of someone's eyes.  Or they ask it out loud to the "device" they're wearing in mid conversation and then they "know it" with out really "thinking" and using their own experience any more or for that matter "understanding" the content.
     We're  just stepping that much closer to being intelligent machines rather and moving away from our humanness.  Our intrinsic value at that point lies in the questions we can ask and be able to critically think and reflect about and use the information before us on the heads up screen. It's a slippery slope where being clear about why and how this technology can better humankind trumps developing the cool next killer intelligent eye wear.
     Project Glass please take care and focus on answering these larger questions and show us by your field research how these glasses can help further our abilities to communicate and understand one another, solve tough world problems such war, poverty, famine, climate change etc...
     A next step is implanting chips into our heads where we just "think" our questions, answers and impulses with our minds. And then at that point we have truly crossed a line into being adaptive human machines.  Talking could become more optional.
     That said, with all of these caveats your developments are exciting but please take care and think this through completely as you can before releasing it on to our world.  If you need help tackling these difficult questions feel free to seek me out.  It's really important stuff.

Thanks, Steve