Vote Up the option to Vote Down

Posted on 11 December, 2011 by Andrew Frayling

I was lucky enough to attend the Social Connections User Group on Friday and an interesting and passionate debate broke out over the issue of “down voting” in IBM Connections.

IBM Connections is a suite of integrated social tools including wikis, blogs, communities, social bookmarking etc. and one of the features it provides is “Ideation Blogs” where users can post ideas and other users can comment and/or show their agreement for an idea by “voting up”, but there is no facility to “vote down” an idea if you strongly disagree with something that is being proposed. Similarly users can show their approval for a comment on an idea by “recommending” it, but there is no facility to “down vote” a comment.

The omission of “down voting” is a deliberate design choice by IBM as their stance is that “down voting” would introduce a negative psychological barrier to user adoption because if someone had their idea voted down they would be reluctant to post other ideas in future. The counter argument was that IBM should provide the facility to allow Connections customers to enable or disable “down voting” as it the customers that know their user bases and will have a better handle than IBM on whether “down voting” would pose a substantial psychological barrier to their users or not.

My personal opinion is that without the ability to “down vote” you get a skewed view of a proposed idea as the only things you can capture are agreement and indifference. If you really like an idea you’lll vote for it, if you think it’s alright you won’t, but if you really disagree with it you have no way of providing quantitative feedback.

What if you’re the person that wants to test the water with an idea that’s quite radical or controversial? You need to be able to capture the negative and the positive as otherwise you could go ahead with something that a huge number of people disagree with because you were unable to get balanced feedback.

Also, and maybe this is a personal thing, I appreciate negative feedback as it makes me re-think my idea and hopefully post something better the next time.

What about you? Where do you stand on “down voting”? Is it a vital feature? Should it be there as an option for customers to enable at their discretion? Or does it pose too much of a threat to user adoption and should never be used?

How To Achieve Real Transparency

Posted on 10 October, 2009 by Andrew Frayling

I keep getting told in work that we have this thing called “transparency” and everyone is open and honest and there is clear communication from the top down. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but we don’t. There are silos, there are Ivory Towers and there are a confusing number of senior management groups with confusing acronyms – SME, ITPB, ITPO, MWE2 ITPB – and people don’t really know these groups’ remits or which group a particular issue should be raised in.

So how do we fix things?

SME (which stands for Senior Management Executive) have taken steps to address some of the issues in sending out regular bulletins of things that have been discussed and actioned at SME meetings. This is a big step forward in addressing some of the confusion around SME, but that’s just one of the groups, what about the others?

So how do we REALLY fix things?

This is where I see E2.0 / Social Business Networking / Call it What You Want making a real difference and adding real value.

We happen to have chosen Lotus Connections as our platform, but you can pretty much substitute any E2.0 platform you like – it’s not about the technology, it’s about the mindshift.

So in our organisation what if:

We had a Community visible to all of Information Services?
We had Wiki defining the remit of each group?
We recorded meeting minutes on the Wiki?
We had Blog post updates from all of the above mentioned groups?
We added project proposals to Files?
We had a Forum for seeding new ideas for projects?
We templated Activities for every task required to move a project through the system?
We used Activities as a light-weight management tool for managing a project that had been approved?
We give it a shot?

Use Case 1

Everyone in Information Services can see projects moving through the system and know at what stage each project is at. It shows that the system works, even if people don’t have projects in the system at the time.

Use Case 2

People understand the remit of each group, what is being discussed where and where they need to raise issues.

Use Case 3

Frank sees that Joe’s project (which Frank didn’t know about) has been rejected, but is important to Frank so Frank contacts Joe to help with getting the project re-submitted.

Use Case 4

Joe sees that Frank’s project (which Joe didn’t know about) has been accepted, but the project impacts on Joe so Joe contacts Frank to ensure project proposal is adjusted to reflect Joe’s team effort.

Use Case 5

Andrew has had a lot of projects rejected, but sees that Mike has had a lot of projects approved. Andrew contacts Mike for advice on how to submit projects.

Use Case 6

Mike has had a lot of projects accepted, but sees that Andrew has had a lot of projects rejected. Some of the projects are of interest to Mike so Mike contacts Andrew to offer advice.

Use Case 7

Bob starts a thread on the Forum to ask if anyone is interested in helping him with a project proposal to reduce storage costs. Andrew responds offering help and invites Paul and Rhys to contribute to the discussion.

Use Case 8

Rebecca is a new employee within Information Services and has never submitted a project proposal before. Rebecca uses the Activity Template for project submissions and has a clear set of steps, tasks, milestones and documents to help her through the process.

Use Case 9

Andrew and Simon have their project approved and use Activities as a light-weight project management tool to share and complete tasks, track milestones and share relevant documents and emails.

The Reality

I know getting the mindshift to do this is not going to be easy, but it has to be worth a shot doesn’t it? We keep talking about business change, so let’s change, let’s do things differently.

The Expansion

This post is specific to Information Services, but I guarantee that the same structures and problems exist with every School or Directorate in Cardiff University – and I bet this solution fits for all of them.

The Conclusion

I honestly think this would work and if you want to see this happen then let me know.

I also accept that I am “politically naive” so if there are stumbling blocks to what I’m proposing then shout – but if you are a CU senior peep then if you shout against this you don’t really believe in transparency

What Am I Not Getting?

Posted on 14 August, 2009 by Andrew Frayling

First blog post in a very long time as I’m normally more of a blog reader than a blog writer, but something has been bugging me lately that I just don’t get – and when I get bugged I normally turn to Twitter, but this needs more than 140 chars

We’re currently in the middle of a programme of work called the Modern Working Environment (MWE) at Cardiff University which is introducing a suite of social networking, collaboration, messaging, business process and integration tools to try and improve the way we work, make people more productive and improve communication and collaboration.

One of the problems we’re facing is that we’ve been getting a lot of feedback recently that people are confused by the number of tools that we’ve released to date as part of MWE and people don’t understand what tool to use for what task. The feedback has even gone as far as suggesting that we should be providing a prescribed matrix of tools versus tasks and that you should always use “tool X” for “task Y” – and this is the bit that’s bugging me as the prescribed approach doesn’t map to any other work or non-work task.

In my mind the chosen tool for any task is based (mainly) on:

* Appropriateness
* Context
* Availability
* Personal Preference
* Group Preference

e.g.

Task – “I need to ask a colleague a question”
Now for this you could visit them at their desk, phone them, email them, send them an instant message or even schedule a meeting, but people instinctively know which is the right tool to use and are easily able to realise when they need to switch tools if they made the wrong choice. E.g. starting what you thought would be a quick instant message exchange that results in one party sending “i’ll phone you”.

Task – “I need to travel somewhere”
Where are you traveling? You could walk, take the bus, take the train, drive, liftshare, cycle, run (if you’re late for a meeting), fly, take a boat, or any combination of these to get to where you need to. Again people know which tool they want to use and will easily switch tools if appropriate, e.g I liftshare or drive to work in the main, but will switch to buses or trains depending on appropriateness and availability of these tools.

Task – “I need to track/report project progress”
What are you reporting? Who are you reporting to? Within INSRV we’re currently tracking and reporting project progress using MS Project, MS Word, MS Powerpoint, MS Excel, Jira, Infra, Confluence and even JPG images. The point is that people know what they want to use, how they want to use it and, again, will switch tools when necessary, e.g. switching from an MS Excel tracked burndown chart to an MS Powerpoint when the information needs to be reported.

Task – “I need to do some DIY”
What are you doing? Knocking down a wall? Building a bookcase? Opening a tin of paint? If you’re opening a tin of paint how many people would use a screwdriver? Is that the designed and advertised use of a screwdriver, no? But is it the most appropriate tool for the job, probably?

Task – “I need to make a reminder note”
What do you use here? Post-it note? Scribble in a notebook? Write on the back of your hand? Add to Notes To Do list? Create a Connections Activity? Record an audio note on your mobile? Add to your Remember The Milk account? People know when and what to use and don’t use the same one tool everytime they carry out this task.

Actually I lied earlier and the real thing that is bugging me are why the above examples are so easy, but people are finding the suite of tools that we’ve released so hard in terms of what to use when?

What makes the above so easy? What makes these MWE tools so hard to understand? What are we doing wrong in not making things easy? What could we do better?

Is it knowledge of how to use the tools? Is it experience of using the tools? Is it that technology will always be horrible and scary to a lot of people?

If you’ve embarked on similar projects have you faced the same challenges? How did you overcome them? Did you overcome them or did your social networking projects die on the vine?

Thanks for reading – my blog posts may get more coherent with a bit more practice at writing