Why? Well the answer there is pretty obvious but I’ll explain anyway. First it’s not Windows 8. Windows 8 has Metro and Metro works on Windows 8 but they’re very different beasts regardless of what you might believe.

One is an interface, the other is an operating system. Is the simplest way I can get that across. But even more than an interface it’s a design philosophy and when used right it works well. When it doesn’t… Well you know that story.

Some of the app developers for it seem to be doing well and others well, “struggle” is the best way to put it nicely.

At the core of Metro is (regardless of any hype you’re hearing) not streamlined interfaces, or ‘user discovery’ or anything like that… it’s really t the same thing that’s supposed to be at the core of any good interface, and that’s the user.  Metro, simply has made tremendous strides at actually making the user the core, the center – the Sun, if you will, of all functionality decisions. 

This, is as opposed to other attempts which put the user as some kind of planetary body that orbits around the functionality the operating system decided they needed if that user had to perform a function a specific way if they wanted to accomplish a task. 

Yes, I’m being harsh and overly dramatic here but it frankly, it needs to be said because it is true.  That;’s always the trade off in development and design and anyone who says it’s not has either never considered this – or never observed that it is the actual reality and is deluding themselves into believing that isn’t what they do.

For all the time we’ve put in making our interfaces easier and easier for users to use, the users themselves became more and more saavy with technology demanding more and more from it and to be honest, creating divides in OS design.  Mac vs. PC vs. Linux OS design philosophies really underline this.  Mac user philosophy was to simplify and beautify even if it meant proprietary actions, hardware and reduced functionality (or forcing you… And yes, you really were / are forced, to use the OS the way Steve Jobs wanted you to.  “You” were not the choice for the user centered design, Steve  Jobs was – look it up.).   It’s not just Apple, but I have always snickered quietly whenever I read some Apple user talking about a product saying, “It feels like it was designed for me…”.  No, it was Designed for Steve Jobs.  He personally approved the design, the fact that he was a human – was your blessing.  It also means it wasn’t designed for all humans… just one. Once again, be glad he was a benevolent tyrant, but a tyrant none the less, it was his design, his view of how things should work – or it didn’t get made. 

But in honesty and appreciation to the Apple design the reason why it’s always been considered the closest (of IT hardware) to the best UI is because to be honest, Steve was human.  He was busy, he didn’t want to have a lot of options.  He just wanted the damn thing to work.  He wanted to be able to find things.  He, he, he – the design centered around human – user – needs.  It unfortunately centered around human needs for a specific hardware and platform that didn’t translate across things well because it was around his needs and the needs of Apples existing hardware choices that were already in place.

Windows/PC and Linux OS’s, and even the more recent iPad and Android OS’s have all had a tendency to do this so it always seems to be the user vs. the functionality the user wanted as seen through the lens of the hardware platform it’s on.

I’m not going to say that Metro doesn’t, all interfaces do that. 

What Metro did do, and does appear to do, is because its needed to function on multiple platforms it’s allegiances to a single hardware interface do not appear to be as closely adhered as a model as it’s allegiance to the one common denominator of all of the platforms it is expected to perform on… and that common denominator the user.

So it’s not a question of “Oooh those rascally people at Redmond are sooo smart…”, or maybe they are – but I suspect it’s really just a question of dumb luck.  The common denominator that we’ve always had tying our hands in User Experience design is the hardware we design it for.  It’s kind of hard to soar with awesome designs for humans… when you’re married to machine requirements as your primary starting point. 

It’s always true.  Windows, iOS, Android, Linux flavors of all kinds, we always had a mouse or a track pad huh?  Even when we didn’t have a mouse… like with a Cellphone we didn’t get great OS’s for the Cellphones… until we gave it a mouse in the form of a touch screen huh?  Think about it … we tied our designs not to the users, but the users to singular hardware design limitations. 

Seriously.  Don’t tell me about iPhones or iPads… the iPad interface was designed for a tablet based structure.   It’s pretty obvious in how it functions.  Android OS’s interfaces are designed for Portable (read CellPhone or Cell-Puter) styled devices.  Kindle… ditto.  Windows 7?  Laptops… OS interfaces always – always –  reflect their hardware.  Until Metro.

Metro, breaks these rules in a couple ways.  It’s not designed for a specific hardware.  It’s meant to work on multiple hardware platforms that have very different specifications for interaction, but the interface has to operate the same (or similarly enough to be comfortable for the user to discover and access and use).  It’s an interface that’s broken free of it’s hardware limitations.

Metro wasn’t designed to work specifically with an Operating System either.  It’s not dependant on a specific set of kernel code, so it’s also an interface broken free of it’s operating system code.  And that’ makes it a very different beast from a design perspective.  I don’t have to read up on it – this is obvious.  Once you remove those two harnesses from UI and UX… you have a lot of room to play.

Metro… and I’m going to openly say, I don’t know this for a fact at all.  Facts wise – I know no more about Metro than you or anyone else on the internet does.  I have no affliation with anyone on the Metro design teams, have never met them, and frankly have done very little reading on the hows and whys – just on the guidelines themselves … and done so on purpose.  I don’t want to know.  Iwant to see how it’s to be implmented and experience my own limitations as I work with it.   This is the ultimate freedom in UX design… to not be encumbered by the views of those who envisioned it.  Just do your own work with it.   (I will later, probably read up on every bit of design philosophy I can on it.  But for now I want to understand the design philosophy without prompting or spoilers!)

So all of this – is my observation, as someone who’s studied interfaces for two decades.  My observation is that Metro … does not tie it’s philosophy to hardware or an operating system. But we know that from what it’s being used on – and the fact that all the devices used have different hardware and operating systems.  So I can pretty safely make all of these claims, and the claim that it is unique in this regard. 

Yes, I know originally it was generated from the Zune experience.  But the Zune interface – named Metro – is not the current metro interface.  They share elements – but that’s it.  The core has now gone beyond that.  And this is why I encourage people to study up on it, and really study the very minimal differences because they’re not really minimal…  they’re somewhat large and very telling. 

So go out on the web.  Look at the designs for the Windows 8 Store Apps, look at the Xbox Live experience currently, look at the Zune Marketplace and the Windows Phone Apps Market place and look at the apps for each.  Look at the Apps which are being made for the Windows 7 phones, and see how and why and look at the guidelines.  You’ll see what I’m saying.

Go download the Metro interface guidelines off of MSDN.  Metro… isn’t tied to a single hardware.  It’s meant to be something that flows across all of these forms of hardware and operating systems. 

The only way to do that… is to create an interface who’s core – the thing that’s the most recurring element, the common denominator of it – is the user, not the hardware or operating system.

That’s the basis of all UI understanding.  Use the same common denominator – as often as possible to make it easier for the user.  When you were handed a laptop for the first time, if you are an average PC user – it took you between 39 seconds to a minute and a half… to figure out how to power it on.  Most of the more common symbols of today’s tech – completely eluded you for weeks, often months. 

Now you don’t give them a second thought.  @ is Email right?  #tag is … you get the idea.  It’s #obvious right??  Point is, you learned those, but you did it gradually so you now just naturally associate those icons, those actions, those user interface interactions – - which, yes, were trained into you – - as natural behaviors.  So they are “how those things work”.

Truth is that’s not ‘how those things work’ – in each case those were design decisions, and they were incorporated not at the users convience but based on the best common element – common denominator of the hardware or mechanism which we now associate them with.  The human element was incorporated not as the core, but as the core… around the hardware/existing interface structure or process – which was/is the true experience for them.

But the current Metro ideology isn’t as tied to a Zune, or Xbox or Cellphone or Tablet or Laptop or Desktop – although it has an entire UX story for each of them … It is built around the only core common denominator available to all of those hardware platforms… the user.  Design trade offs were made, not for a specific hardware, but to enable the hardware to provide a similar functionality to the user regardless of which hardware the user is experiencing it on.  (See the difference there? – The cart is now after the horse, not before it as it generally is with such things.)

The idea is that the experience needs to work on as many of these hardware and operating systems as possible, so the common denominator, as I mentioned – has to be the only thing that actually is going to be on each of them… the user.

Once again, I have no idea if that was the actual design philosophy… but it certainly does appear that it was taken into account seriously if you look at this objectively. 

So for those who are looking at Metro and saying, “Not sure if that’s the direction I want to go… it’s really all about the tablet experience…” or “It’s really all about the Zune/Cellphone experience…”  you’re going to be very sorry.

Why?  Because I want you to consider what happened when Windows 3.1 came out.  What happened to every application.    They all suddenly needed mice and mouse clicks.    Terminals and terminal interfaces?  Died that day.

Metro is going to be a bit like that.  Where we design not with the OS as the core – but the user.  So it can work on a Desktop, or a Tablet, or a Cellphone, or a Xbox.  Now consider the fact that it also is not an OS as I said.  It’s an Interface Philosophy Design… it’s not tied to an OS. 

It’s tied to an experience.  So you design it once – and that same Interface works and acts the same under other OS systems, heck code it right and you can reuse the code you created for the Windows version for other OS systems saving you cost on design, as well as development. 

And THAT… is why you need to pay attention to Metro. 

If you don’t know what a Metro Interface is, then you’re probably living under a rock or your not familiar with what everyone else keeps calling them “Windows 8” Interfaces, which, is kind of right – but not.  Metro applies to a number of interfaces, like Zunes and Windows Phone 7, and yes… Windows 8. 

But you really shouldn’t fall into the mind trap of thinking that because there are similarities it’s the same thing.  Especially if you’re designing an app.  Metro is more a set of guidelines to apply, to allow your app to work on several platforms better.

It’s also a bit of a way to design your app better regardless of the platform because at it’s core Metro has one design philosophy… make it easier for the user.  Along with the philosophy comes the accepted paradigm that less is more, and don’t put things in there you don’t need.

So if you’re designing a web site, you need to start not with graphics or content… but an understanding of “What is it that my user wants to do?” – and just as importantly “What does my app do?”.

Most apps – be they web pages or desktop tools or whatever… have basically one central purpose or theme.  One thing they need to do more than anything else to be useful to someone.  If it’s a web page – there’s a specific message or purpose to it, like “I want to show off my…” [business] [self] [cookies]… whatever that is… that’s the purpose of the web page.  That’s what people are going to come there for, and that’s all they really want to know about.

You can have sub-sections, but those sub-sections should have to do with the main topic.  Because once again, that’s all they really want to know about.

A lot of web sites, even for businesses – are these very cluttered content messages.  “We’re a [law firm] [bakery] [comic shop] [car dealer] [pump manufacturer] …’ and then there’s the stuff that differentiates them from everyone else… “with a [heart] [location] [experience] [drive] [cat] that makes us different.” because that’s what all good marketing tells you you need to do… be different.

And you can… you just… can’t be wordy.  You need to really refine your differences, condense what your business means to people.  And understand what that means.  Most businesses, small businesses never really have to do this because it’s pretty organic for them.  They’re small and they know their customers well and what a customer wants.

What they don’t often know – is what their customer wants when they get to their web page.  So for that… they need to understand that what a customer wants, and what a customer wants when they ‘walk through the web door’ may be completely different understandings. 

Web sites were traditionally a cross between a brochure and a store front in the early days of the web.  As people became more web savvy they became more like a searchable index of goods and services.  Some are very good at this (Amazon), some are not… (think any website you cursed because you couldn’t find what you were looking for…).

So for most people – they’re used to one experience on the web, or the other, or a combination of those two.  That’s not a metro interface.  You can make a metro interface that does that… but it’s not going to end well because it won’t do what a metro interface is really good at which is allowing the user to do what they expect to do – and do it quickly.

All the flickable, clickable screens in the world that slide, glide, tile and shift… will not change the fact that the user had to flick 6 times, click twice and then flick back 4 times to get where they were… to make a purchase.  If the user’s fingers are tired and they get lost in the shuffling screens you will not be accomplishing your goal.

So know your goal.  Know what it is your user wants to do – and what it is you want them to do.  Then, and only then, can you really build a metro interface.  This is because to really be effective you need something that a user can see – and go “Hey!  that’s what I was looking for!” and go “Click”, or as close to that experience as you can make as possible. 

If you look at most web sites – print the page out, and then with a red marker click all the links on it.  You’ll be amazed at how many there are.  How many of those are there so users can find other things?  How many are there because users “might want to find…” or “we have some users who…” type links?  I call these ‘fractional links” because they serve to fracture the users  by intention and send them to specific sections.  This isn’t a bad thing, it serves to categorize them and make it easier.

But… a more skillful approach would be to consider each of your primary “fractions” as needing a site specific to that need.  So – a master Metro Interface, which serves to send the user to specific Metro sub-sites based on that need, as sub site which can be linked by the user directly, and allows them efficient access to their specific need.  You really aren’t changing things much from a work flow perspective – just from the user perspective. 

In some cases, a web site may have links which… frankly aren’t used, or are only used by a small sub set of users.  Look at your web traffic.  Look to where your customers go to, what’s the ‘final destinations’ for them?  Your top 3 or top 6 should be on the page.

Everything else should be clean, clear and understood.  No big “NEW” or “SALE!” blinkies (yess those still exist)… no funky scrollers that appear like a Times Square billboard that say “…ast day of sale!  Hurry or you’ll miss this once and a l…”.  No menu bars which have drop downs on drop downs.  No “Search” box. 

What??? No Search?  No Ads?  But… But… But…

Search you can probably get away with, by having a tile for that… because it’s a high traffic need item, and then use the other tiles or click/flick items as primaries that only have as much information as is needed for the customer to find what they need to do.

Don’t explain – don’t get contentish, that’s for the part of the site the user is going to.  If you have to explain to a user what it is they’re about to click on… you probably failed in the Metro Interface.  Updates to the tiles should be handled with very minimal content types.  A “+1” or something akin to that to show there’s new items for them in this area.

So… why if the Metro Interface is so basic is it the rage?  Because it works.

It’s very simple.  People like simple.  But to make something simple, it often needs to be very complicated to allow that.  The complication comes in understanding the needs of the user.  What are they looking for?  How quick can I get it to them?

That…is the beauty of the metro interface for the web.  If you can do it – do it.  But first know your customer, or your efforts to make it simple will make users go “huh?” and that’s what you want to avoid.

Which is a pretty common complaint of people that have to write spreadsheets to generate reports that need to go out to several people.  Sure, you can just send them an email by copy and pasting everything into the email, but if you’ve automated the report – it’s kind of a workflow breaker to stop, copy, paste, send.

What’s annoying is that if you say have a spreadsheet like this one with all the nice pretty charts in it and databars and Color Icons and all that…

And you use a macro to send out a report for it.. it looks like it’s all messed up and missing stuff … And you expected it to look like …

The hows and whys of this are both complicated and simple.  The bottom line is that if you’re using the ActiveSheet.Paste. ActiveSheet.PasteSpecial methods to paste your copied ranges into an email… it’s… not gonna work.  now, I know, I know… you can use “Paste(Chart)”. But that’s not a really good way to grab a large range and send it in an email if you have to specify each area over and over. 

Now you ‘could’ use…

ActiveSheet.Pictures.Paste.Select, and you can even do the Link:= with it if you want to get fancy.  You will find that this will work, but it’s a lot of effort.  So … the question is how on earth does it work when you just do a copy and paste between Excel and Outlook? 

Simple.  They don’t use any of those.  They use the MailEnvelope..  Seriously.  That’s what it’s called.  Worksheet.Office.Core.MsoEnvelope – aka – Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.Worksheet.MailEnvelope, or to it’s friends (and we’re now friends) Worksheet.MailEnvelope.

There’s a very detailed explanation of both methods with sample code, that to be honest is better than the samples on MSDN over at: http://www.rondebruin.nl/mail/folder3/mailenvelope.htm which I recommend highly.

Ron covers his preferences – and for the most part I do agree that MailEnvelope is not my weapon of choice for all things.  But for reports of this type… yeah.  It is. 

Alot of frankly cluttered web designs filled to the gills with unnecessary buttons features and content. It seems that just because someone has an advertisement or click thru generator they feel they have to use it.

A rule of thumb that seems to be overlooked is that less is more. Instead of asking how long it takes to download a site, most designers seemed to be designing them based more on which App can generate click revenue gets into a site.

We see contextual bloat, visual bloat – they’re hella hard on the eyes to track and locate what we’re looking for. Frankly, it’s killing them.

sigh… I do miss the old days :’(

Now that the Christmas season is over, there’s always the big rush to look back to what’s been and forward to what will be.  It’s the high tech version of a Christmas Carol where the ghosts of Technology Past and Technology Future snub the Ghost of Technology Present and go clubbing with out him.

I for one, particularly despise this season because its like the pictures you see of concept cars from auto manufacturers of those cool cars that look like something from the future… that… never actually ever get built. It’s a classic game of bait-and-switch and I would like to think that science and technology are above all that.

They aren’t.  But I’d like to think that. It would be nice if those writing about things like particle colliders wouldn’t just use the words “God Particle” like the discovery of it will allow us to turn out endless fish and loaves of bread, cure disease, walk on water. (Hint… it doesn’t do any of these.)  It would be nice, if just once, technology could be presented with a little more scientific coolness about what it does do… here… in the now… instead of what it might, maybe, one day – possibly – could – do in the future.

We live in a techno-society culture where our future is revered, our past has become sacred and immutable, and the existence that occurs in-between … is well… like the God Particle, a flickering state of nothing that decays too quickly to be seen or even acknowledged.  (Didn’t know that?  Well, yes that is what it actually is – look it up.)  We miss out on the great things that happen every day in science and technology in our media thirst to jump to what’s next.  It’s a shame because a lot of really great science happened this year.

There was the HPTN 052 trials.  Didn’t hear about them?  Oh, well they just showed that HIV could be combatted using drugs as effectively as condoms, spelling the beginning of the end for HIV.

“Anti-retroviral drugs reduced risk of heterosexual transmission to partners by 96% ”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/hiv-trial-breakthough-2011-anti-retroviral-drugs-reduced-risk-heterosexual-transmission-partners-96-article-1.997231#ixzz1hlJiO8Fa

And then there was DRACO.  You uh… probably didn’t see much about it on the news.  It’s just a drug that kills 15 viruses – probably a boat load more we don’t know about.  It’s a little drug that’s scary close to Star Trek levels of medicine.  This includes rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.

That’s right… you saw that correctly, it KILLS the common cold and over a dozen more lethal viruses.  No biggee there.  Nothing to write home to mom about.  Certainly nothing to make the 5 o’clock news.

Then there was Hanny’s Voorwerp.  (You also read that correctly.  It’s Dutch.  Don’t smirk!)  Nobody – except for people who wanted to make fun of the name – gave it much talk or even a second thought.  It wasn’t anything big, unless you consider actually seeing the formation of stars – real live stars – and solar systems – to be big.  We’re not talking some NASA animations.  We’re talking the real McCoy.  Stars so newborn they still have that new star smell from where the quasar smacked the black hole matter. 

Yeah… nothing going on in the present that’s worth talking about in technology and science… go on back to those stories about how Steve Jobs was a visionary (rolls eyes) and how next year you’ll have that flying car (which once again isn’t going to happen) or how in 5 years you’ll be able to live forever.

I’ll stick around here in the present for a while, mull over what we’re doing, enjoy the thrill of the now.  The future will be there tomorrow.

If your being told by management “You’re going skydiving.”, the first thing you’re going to want is a parachute.  Unless of course things dictate that parachutes are not allowed… in which case it’s just a very cool backpack that serves no purpose, and the whole process of packing it, carrying it, etc., is just something that gets in the way. 

There are, to my knowledge,  only two ways to survive skydiving without a parachute… the first is planning, the second, is insane luck. 

Planning, Planning, Planning… it’s all in the planning…

And you may, quote me on that.  In fact, make that your mantra.  Just wander the halls mumbling “Planning, Planning, Planning…” – it won’t solve your problems but it will get you on Youtube, and that’s always fun right?

Now, what will solve your problem is getting details and planning.  The first thing you need to do in any planning, is get information.  “Can I even survive skydiving without a parachute?”, and “If I can, and even if I can’t… what are my options and what are my next steps.”.  So – plan, define options, and know what’s coming – even if it’s the ground at high speed. 

Options and Context are your wings…

If you have options, and you understand the context of the problem – odds are you will locate solutions you didn’t know you had.

A classic example of this is one I had tossed out at me in an interview yesterday.  The question was framed as a ‘no-win’ scenario.  You have the project defined, and you’re already over booked.  You’ve got 4 features, you’ve got 35 bug fixes, and you have 3 week test cycles with 5 weeks to ship – and management says, “New Feature MUST get into this release.”.  

You cannot change, resources, you cannot move or slip your ship date, all of the features are promised and Pri 1’s so can’t cut them… what do you do?

Well first thing – don’t panic.  Second thing, determine the priority on this “new feature”, next look for ways to improve efficiency to use the resources I have, and then – ask myself if my team really needs to be the one that actually creates it – maybe I can license it, maybe someone else has solved the problem for me.

No one ever said the feature HAD to come from me.  Granted, and this is something I felt was arguable – I am adding resources effectively by doing this.  But it’s an example of reviewing the problem – and checking if it can’t be solved any other way within the context – can it be solved outside the context?  What variable is the best one to change? 

Was this trip really necessary???

What are my real options?  If this is not the first question asked when an unreasonable request (like jumping out of a plane without a parachute) is asked of us… you have serious problems which require medical attention.  Really. 

I sometimes think people need to tattoo this on their forehead so they’ll never forget it… There are NO obvious or stupid questions!!  Asking if you really have to do something – and finding out WHY you really have to do it is always acceptable.  If you don’t know why you’re in this position – then you need to find out, because you can’t determine the context of the problem – until you know the context of your own environment.  Maybe you find out that the plane isn’t actually leaving the ground – or that you’re skydiving in one of those wind tunnels – and a parachute isn’t needed.  Find out context, discover the problem, ask questions, and discover your options.

Now, I’m not going to go all rosey picture here… sometimes, you will discover that you have none.  No Options.  It’s  a real plane.  It’s really at 10,000 feet, and you really are jumping without a parachute, glider wings, air bags… heck they just handed you a cinder block and pushed.   There is NO way out of this one. 

Which brings us to…

Sometimes… bad things happen to good projects…

Really – they do, you’re not imagining it when it happens to you, bad things – sometimes really bad things, happen.  Sometimes, you are, effectively Ordered to jump out of a plane – with no parachute.  I have done this several times (not literally – just metaphorically in the sense of project management).  It’s not fun, but it does happen.  Be prepared for it.   Plan for it.  Part of that plan… will be what you plan on doing – after you fail. 

You will need a response.  You will need forward steps from that point.  Make that a part of your plan.  Maybe you can’t win this one, but you can do it with professionalism.  Own it.  Make it yours.  Don’t lay blame, don’t point fingers.  You were responsible for the project.  Doesn’t matter what happened when it failed, people frankly will care less about that – than they will about how you handle it. 

If you want to be a leader.  You have to lead.  Leaders own things, that includes failures.  So be willing to support the findings of your root cause, and be willing to accept responsibility for the project failure.  If you’re the PM – make no mistake, you owned that.  Why it self destructed, or the fact that it was doomed from the moment they handed it to you – will not matter.  YOU own it. 

So own your failures with the same pride you would your successes.  Don’t stand around moping – provide the next steps from there, and move on.

If you do this, often, most people will never remember your failed projects – because they’ll only remember that you had next steps.  To them – and most people – it may even look like you just saved it.  Really.  I’ve seen it happen many times.  The only way you can do that – is if you plan for it.  Know what you options are – even if it’s hitting the ground, and provide the next steps. 

Occasionally, we all get something that there is no way around, over, under, or through.  Like the Skydiver approaching the ground without a chute – if they haven’t planned for this event – then all they can do is curl up in a ball, hope for a miracle, but expect dirt at 180 mph (give or take) followed by crunch and a splut kind of noise.  If they’re really lucky… it’s over quickly.

So the question is – do you want to know you’re about to die and there’s nothing you can do about it early?  Or just before you hit?  Or not at all?

Studies actually show, believe it or not – that people react, and handle bad news early best.  In fact, they tend to add to the bearer of the news’ credibility rating, making them more likely to trust that person in the future.  That, by the way is sort of the ‘good news on bad news’ studies because they also show, that bad news – can be as damaging psychologically as a full blown psychological disorder and people (sometimes within minutes of receiving the news) go through pretty much the same stages as people being told they are dying. 

They will need to move through these stages – before they can move on.  Which, is another reason why you need to tell them as soon as you are sure and have your facts.  They can’t move on with their projects – until they’ve gone through that.  Really – sounds silly doesn’t it?  But studies show it’s actually true within minutes of hearing a project has failed people who are stake holders often go through… Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. 

Be prepared for that – it’s coming.  You may, ironically, when you first realize that you’re going to die… err… crash …err fail – go through these as well.  But most certainly all the stakeholders will, there will be Denial, there will be Anger, there will be Bargaining, and finally Depression and Acceptance.  Once you’ve seen all five of these – you know the worst is over and it’s time to move on. 

In fact, people will WANT to move on.  So, know what the next steps are so you can give them one.   

Studies – btw – also show that if you know your about to experience pain (physical or emotional) that you actually feel it less if you know precisely what’s going to happen and how bad.  So, don’t sugar coat – be honest, not brutal, and tell the truth to everyone as soon as you’re sure of your facts.  Present facts, not speculation – and you’re actually doing them a kindness as well as increasing your credibility with them. 

Surviving the fall is easy.  Just get up and walk – not away from the project – but to your next steps.  This is very very important.  Because in reality it is the only 100% method I’ve ever had that actually works every time to survive skydiving without a parachute.

Never walk away from where you land.  Have a plan, and walk to where you want to go. 

That’s my thoughts on it.  They were the last thing that went through my head… never mind… bad joke.

But some thoughts did occur to me.  The first is, we’re playing this battle all wrong.  We’re doing it on their playing field.  Secondly, we’re not playing it logistically smart… by doing what we’d do in a real intelligence war.  We’d identify the targets, and those we couldn’t co-opt for our uses, we’d eliminate (elimination does not mean kill – in case you’re wondering).

What we’re doing right now (based on the article which I suspect is off) – is a sort of wait for the attack and patch the hole game. 

A more intelligent play, would be to pay for projects in countries using actual technology companies – and literally hire them away from their “day” jobs by giving them legitimate and rewarding work we need done.  This would work in the case of EU and similar hack attack locations.

Locations like China, will require a lot more effort because those countries really ARE building cyber armies and cyber soldiers.  I have some thoughts on that as well… but those are…  [message redacted]   …and of course I’m kidding… no really, I’m kidding.

We are, here in the states, trapped in a desperate economy with all businesses trying to fight for a greater share of a rapidly dwindling market.  From cell phones to fruits and grains, the fight to create and sell products the world wants has become a tedious and somewhat endless display of copying whatever is selling at the moment and the truly innovative products are seemingly fewer and farther between.

In the late 1990’s Bill Gates stood before a packed CES trade show and declared the age of the web browser was dead and the future was the tablet PC.  The reception he received was, to say the least, less enthusiastic than that of ten years later.  Which is when Steve Jobs, unveiled the iPad to the world, gave pretty much the same speech and the world has proceeded to snap them up like candy. 

Bill Gates and Microsoft in 2000, clearly were the innovators. They were a decade ahead of the planet and the thumping that they received from the market is largely why they seemingly are, in all irony, late to the Tablet party – even though they created them 10 years before the iPad was even a twinkling in the eye of Steve Jobs.  You can argue the interface on the iPad is easier to use and all kinds of things… But the fact is, in 2000 we just weren’t ready for Tablet PC’s.  No one had a need.

Microsoft was thinking outside the box. They just never asked first … “Why do we have a box?", “Who needs a box?” and “What the heck is a box anyway???”.  This the is the difference between something that is innovative… and innovation.  Innovation, is bringing together what is needed – when and where it’s needed, not just coming up with the product first. 

Its that synchronicity between demand for something new, and having something new.  Which is harder to achieve than you might think, and in a zen like irony – easier than people might think.  The trick… is to stop thinking and start observing. 

The core of user experience is not placing a product in the hands of the user and saying, “Show us how you’d use this.”.  It’s spending time with the user and seeing what they do, how they do it, and then designing something based on that.  This is what is missing from much of our businesses today.  We are so busy creating a product, we aren’t asking if anyone out there uses it – or if they need something completely different from what it is we make.

I see everyone from Google to Apple these days looking at “the future”.  What I don’t see, are boots on the ground just … people watching.  The next great product, will not be an iPad, or a new Search system for the Internet.  It won’t be an operating system.  It’s not going to be a cell phone or mobile computing experience, or a nano-molecular vaccine against cold sores.

It might be… clothing that is self cleaning.  It might be an app that connects all your banking needs with your shopping in an easier to use form than we’ve seen today.  It might be a self cleaning coffee mug.  It might be any one of a thousand things but the one thing I assure you it will not be… is a box.  So thinking outside it?  Waste of your time.  If you started the thought process by even acknowledging that you have a box, you’re already behind the game.

We now live in a global economy, where 75% of your potential customers are only partially literate.  So, all that cool wording on your packaging to describe the features?  That was most likely something that could have been handled better by large pictures of people clearly using the features – which wouldn’t require translation.  We live in a global world where most of your newest customers live in countries where getting to the bank?  Really hard to do, and probably neither safe, or effective since many of the banks there close due to panics regularly.  (Really they do. You think our financial issues are bad?  Just wait till you see what it’s like in the 3rd world.)

The “box” has no meaning in the global space.  It’s only purpose is often as a method of short term housing.  Where $100 USD is an upper middle class months salary.  That’s the reality.   That is the market that we need very much to be addressing.  Because that’s the 3 billion extra customers that we’re looking for.  And they often can’t read.  And they often do not own cars, and sharing housing with 2 –3 other families isn’t uncommon.  This is the global economy ‘box’ you need to think outside of – it’s not a pretty box. It is the fastest growing market on the planet.

If you have a scrap yard in Atlanta or Wyoming or North / South Dakota with old truck or car parts you can’t sell? Guess what?? Here’s your market… here’s your box… fill it with the stuff this market needs. Food, clean water, power, cheap and affordable shelter, tv’s and entertainment. The trick is not to come out with the next super awesome $500- $2400 computer. It’s to come up with a decent disposable $100 computer that has internet.

It’s not to offer a $50-100 pair of designer blue jeans. It’s to offer a designer label pair of inexpensive $5-10 pair of jeans.  It’s all about reaching that market – and that markets needs.  In ‘our world’, our ‘box’ the idea of a cell phone which has 2 SIM chips built into it that let you use 1 phone with 2 different carriers has no purpose.  But in the world without a box – these sell like hotcakes.  Better to sell 5,000 of something at $5 than to sell fifty of them at $250 – that’s the reality.

The world without a box is the largest potential customer base out there.  The world without a box that sits in an almost dystopian world torn from a William Gibson novel were it cross-bred with the Grapes of Wrath.  Technology coexists with poverty.  And poverty – is changing so rapidly, that in 5-15 years they will be nearly up to our standard of living, up to our ‘box’.  But even then – their cultural, their personal, professional and daily needs, will not match up. 

If we are not considering this brave strange new world that culturally is vastly different from what we perceive it to be.  When we learn to market to that very large and very much willing to buy segment, when we begin to innovate for that segment… we are tapping into a market which right now, seemingly has nothing but sheer raw numbers.  Not hundreds of thousands of customers or millions of customers, but billions of customers.

When we stop trying to live within the confines of a box, and think outside it for solutions… and instead remove the box and think of just straight solutions to problems we can see, hear feel, touch taste and understand – we develop the greatest products that will have ever existed.

You just download the template – copy it to your webserver (and you can test it out by just loading the web page like you would any other).  There’s two ways to edit the content on these… the first is with a web page editing software program.  There’s lots of these, and you can, even edit an HTML web page in Microsoft Word.

But a cool trick if you’re not web savy… is to just edit it in Outlook.  Here’s how… load the page up in your web browser, and select the entire web page (Ctrl+A). Open up a new email in Outlook, and then in the body – press Ctrl+V or Paste to past the HTML content directly into the email.

Then edit the text as you normally would.  When you’re done – instead of pressing “Send” – click on “File” and “Save As” and save the email as msg or template of your own to your desktop or somewhere you can find it when you need it.  Then, whenever you want to send out an Email newsletter, or whatever – just double click on it to open it in Outlook, edit the content and click “Send”.  This simple trick will work for a lot of these templates.  

Now, as I mentioned last time, to really make this work right, you need a web server to serve up the web page’s images if you’re using images, and almost all of these emails use images.  The reason for this is that even though the images appear in the email – they’re actually pulled from the web server and don’t exist in the email at all.  (This is why you get emails that you have to request the images for .

So if you don’t have a web site you really need one.  They’re great for a dozen uses, email templates like this, personal resumes, download links you can send out to people for small files.  And price isn’t really something to be scared of because… once again there’s dozens of free web hosts out there. 

And if you want your own domain name, it’s also pretty cheap.  There’s really no excuse.  For less than a couple of pizzas, you can get your own domain name and your own website – and the on going cost is (for me) around $6.00 a month.  Really – there’s no excuse for a job hunter not to have one.

That’s my rant… and my tip … you don’t need me, or someone else to design you a web page for this kind of thing.  You just need to a bit of elbow grease and you can do it yourself.  Mind you if you DO want someone like me to design one… we charge bout $300-$1500 a pop for this kind of thing.   Yeah, that’s actually what that often costs.  Granted when we do it… we add some bells and whistles and a few tricks here and there. 

But for most people?  The tip above will create a very professional email you can use over and over.

But it occurred to me that I’ve never actually talked about how to create a report – and auto generate the email output from this.  This is a real time saver trick if you have to do regular status reports and you’re pulling the information from several sources because you can just create it in Excel, click a button… and have it pull data from an external source and then … wallah – instant status report for 30, 50 or 500 people, and it looks good every time.

First, you need to have something to autogenerate or autopopulate the HTML into Outlook with.  You can do this from Excel, or any number of progams using a macro. There are dozens of these around, but this is probably one of the more useful ones I’ve found.  In it, you’ll find the code to create an Outlook Email and attach files to it. 

The code that I’ve been using on my JobHunter program – cheats a bit, as it already knows the email it’s replying to, so I can actually pull who I need to reply to and other information directly off the jobHunter form and input it into my emails, and this I do by creating ‘tags’ like HTML tags that I embed in my email.   But you can do this with any Macro, so don’t feel like you need to create some advanced program or Outlook addin to do this. 

Something simple like a Excel macro will do just fine.  Since the code for one, is very similar to the other I’ll show you the code I’m currently using to generate the email you’re seeing here.  Keep in mind, this code is part of a Outlook Add-In, so it’s hooking into functionality you don’t have access to.  But the basics of this code can be used on any Macro since it’s pretty much VBA code.

        Dim oMail As Outlook.MailItem
        Dim oFSO
        Dim oFS
        Dim newApp As New Outlook.Application
        Dim sText As String
        Dim sFname As String = Left(tb_recName.Text, InStr(1, tb_recName.Text, " "))
        If newApp.Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count Then
            If TypeOf newApp.Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1) Is Outlook.MailItem Then
                oMail = newApp.Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Reply
                oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
                oFS = oFSO.OpenTextFile("C:\Users\Robert\Documents\hello_new.html")

                sText = oFS.readall
                'Here we get rid of those nasty extra characters that are in the HTML file
                sText = sText.Replace("", "")
                sText = sText.Replace("’", "'")
                If sFname IsNot "" Then
                    sText = sText.Replace("<replytoname>", Trim(sFname))
                Else
                    sText = sText.Replace("<replytoname>", "")
                End If
                oMail.To = tb_recEmail.Text
                oMail.Attachments.Add("C:\Users\Robert\Documents\RobertAJakobson.doc", Outlook.OlAttachmentType.olByValue, 0, "RobertAJakobson Resume")

                oMail.HTMLBody = sText & vbCr & oMail.HTMLBody
                oMail.Display()
            End If
            End If

Now, notice that the HTML file is brought in as text, and like any text, I can then use replace, either as with VB.net code, or the more common Replace("my text string", "what I’m trying to find", "thing I’m trying to replace")  which is what you’d use in VBA with Macros. 

You might also notice that I’m also using the .Attachments.Add to add my resume to the document (although you could add any file that you want to attach using this trick.

The end result is a visually appealing email. 

Now, it’s not like there aren’t some downsides to these kind of emails.  For one thing, the images need to be stored on a web server somewhere.  When I design these, I do so with an HTML editor – for this I use Microsoft Expression Blend and I create the email first on a web server and view the web page from that server.  So even though I may save the HTML file onto my hard drive for the script… I make sure all the links in it – are pointed to the web server’s image directory.

The reason why this is needed is because if the images can be seen via the internet, then you can see them from your email.  Image pointers which point to your hard drive – viewers of the email can’t access because they have no access to your hard drive.

Another trick which makes the pages load vaster is to eliminate images completely and just use CSS or clean typography.  By eliminating images, there’s no load time.  And with a bit of careful planning it’s more than possible to make visually appealing emails without images.

The email shown here (left) has no images.  Even the gradient text, is done with some crafty use of coloring with the FONT tag in HTML.  Play around with things, you can do some amazing things and make yourself look very impressive.