What I'm Reading: Mark Strand

A surprising thing happened to me when I went to the bookstore last week. I found two books of poems that I liked.

Now, this wouldn't seem to be such as surprise -- I like modern poetry. However, in most visits to the bookstore they either stock books I've already read or books I already decided not to read. For example, I love Robert Bly's work, but I have more of his books than the bookstore does. Same goes for Charles Simic. On the other hand, I find the work of May Sarton and Mary Oliver boring and pretentious. (Ditto Stanley Kunitz, Donald Hall, etc.) And as shocking and titillating as Charles Bukowski can be, his poems are pretty shallow. After 2 or 3, the persona starts to grate on me. So I have no need to read or own any of his 20+ volumes that every store seems to make available.

But last week was an exception. I found two books of interest. One is not so surprising: James Tate's The Ghost Soldiers. I've been a fan of Tate's work for a long time, starting with his first book The Lost Pilot. However, I went through a period (or more correctly, he went through a period) that put me off his writing. Starting around Riven Doggeries he published a number of volumes that seemed more interested in poking fun at language (and by extension, the people who use such idioms) than illuminating the small actions and inconsistencies that make up our lives.

Not that every poem has to be instructive or informative. (Frank O'Hara has brilliantly proven that.) But at some point poetry -- serious or not -- has to have some touch points with the readers' lives if it is going to have any lasting impact. And Tate's work of the late 70's and 80's seemed to lose that connection.

But Tate's recent books seem to have brought him back from whatever jag he was on. His work is still irreverent (if not more so) and almost frightening in its ability to switch between the glaringly realistic and clownishly absurd within a single sentence. So finding a new volume of his poems was a pleasure.

The second book was more of a surprise. I read Mark Strand's books many years ago and despite my friends' fascination with his work -- and my own best efforts to like it -- I was put off. In fact, rather than growing on me, his work became more painful and annoying over time. To the point where I haven't read any of his work, except a stray poem here or there, for thirty years.

So I don't know what came over me at the bookstore but I picked up Strand's latest book, Man and Camel, and started leafing through it. Rather than flipping through a couple of pages, grunting disapprovingly and putting it back, as I expected to do, I found myself attracted to the poems I read. Why? They were recognizably Mark Strand poems with his spare, objective writing style. But something was different. Something held my attention, was speaking to me like his previous work never had.

Maybe it was just the one or two poems. Maybe I was in an overly receptive mood and tomorrow I would wake up and recognize the poems for the pretensions they ultimately were. Whatever. I was intrigued enough to take a chance and buy the book.

And a good thing I did. Despite whatever reservations I had, the book turns out to be one of the best books I have read this year.

But how did this happen? What makes this book different than the rest of Strand's works I read before? Did I misjudge the earlier ones?

Unlike Tate, where there was a clear change in style and content, Mark Strand's writing doesn't appear to have changed. Either there was a change in my perception of his work or something more subtle was going on. So when I got Man and Camel home, I not only read it but pulled out his older books and started looking through them to find out what had happened.

It turns out my tastes haven't changed, at least that much. I still have difficulty reading Strand's earlier work, like Reasons for Moving and Darker. At the same time, my suspicions are correct: that earlier writing and his recent book are very, very similar. Which baffled me further.

At first I suspected it was something specific but minute, like a change in verb tense or a switch from second to first person. Because the new poems at least seem more personal:

On a warm night in June
I went to the lake, got on all fours,
and drank like an animal. Two horses
came up beside me to drink as well.
This is amazing, I thought, but who will believe me?

from "Two Horses"

But looking back at his earlier poems, many of them are in the first person as well, like this poem from Reasons for Moving:

A man has been standing
in front of my house
for days. I peek at him
from the living room
window and at night,
unable to sleep,
I shine my flashlight
down on the lawn.
He is always there.

from "The Tunnel"

These poems demonstrate the consistency of Strand's style and tone over time -- a sense that you were reading the diary of a visitor from a strange but parallel universe. But at the same time, these poems hint at the difference.

In Man and Camel, Strand the narrator is not so definitive, not quite so self-assured as before. In "The Tunnel", as in the majority of Strand's earlier work, the actions are absolute, unequivocal, as if the narrator controlled his (or her) own destiny, as bizarre as that might be. Later in the poem he says:

I weep like a schoolgirl
and make obscene gestures
through the window. I
write large suicide notes
and place them so he
can read them easily.
I destroy the living
room furniture to prove
I own nothing of value.

In Man and Camel, the actions are not so definitive, not so much like some magical incantation. But at the same time, they seem more realistic and more humane. Again, from "Two Horses":

The horses eyed me from time to time, snorting
and nodding. I felt the need to respond, so I snorted,too,
but haltingly, as though not really wanting to be heard.
The horses must have sensed that I was holding back.
They moved slightly away...

"From time to time", "as though", "moved slightly away". The language is approximate, like human perception is. And the reaction is equally based on assumption rather than fact; the narrator "felt the need" and the horses "must have sensed".

Now, not all of Strand's new poems are as equivocal as "Two Horses". Many still carry the absolute statements familiar from his early work. But the overwhelming feeling is that there is human frailty involved, even if it is simply the uncertainty of the narrator's own perception. This may be a small point, a tiny point, but it makes a world of difference in the poems themselves.

The absolutism of Strand's early work is what affords the poems their power, a sort of magical aura based on the incantations of the narrator. And it is that power that my friends saw and appreciated. The problem is that if you have any doubt in the narrator's authenticity -- if you don't accept the absolute statement -- the spell is broken and the poem fails and fails badly. It becomes unbelievable. My problem was that I didn't accept many of the narrator's absolutes.

The change I see in Strand's latest work as represented by Man and Camel is the narrator's acceptance of his own fallibility. This not only makes the narrator seem more human and more believable, it makes them more empathetic and powerful as a consequence. The narrator is not me, the reader. Strand's poems still take place in a world apart from reader. But now the narrator could be the reader, if the reader inhabited that world. And that makes all the difference.

The Web Litmus Test

[Editorial Note: At first I was doubtful about posting a concept I developed ten years ago. However, just the other day someone called me looking for a designer/developer. When I suggested doing an architectural design for the site content first, he said "we have all the content. What my boss wants is to make sure the site is flashy and cool." I guess we haven't made that much progress in ten years....]

Web design is a tricky business. there are so many conflicting requirements to consider, as well as rapidly shifting expectations on the part of the users as the web grows and evolves.

On the positive side, there is no shortage of guidelines and recommendations for designing web sites to make them usable and functional. However, despite this guidance, there are still sites that are simply "unusable" at a higher level. Sites that aggravate, annoy, insult, confuse, or simply bore their users. Why?

The fact is that most usability guidelines operate at a rather low, micro level dealing with specific interface artifacts and interactions: the placement of buttons, the arrangement of forms, the structure and consistency of the navigation, etc. These attributes certainly impact the usability of web sites and shouldn't be ignored. But often when a web site fails it fails on a much larger, dramatic scale. It fails because it doesn't offer what the user wants.

It is not possible to provide a simple set of design rules that guarantee a successful web site. There is just too much variation in the intent and purpose of sites to cover all circumstances. But there are a few basic measures -- what I call the web litmus test -- that can fairly consistently tell if a web site design will fail or not. Passing the test does not guarantee success; it only means your site has a chance of succeeding. But fail the test and your site is toast.

As I say, the web litmus test can't be used to design sites -- there is much more skill and experience required to design the site right from the beginning -- and that is where the art and science of information architecture comes in. But the test can be a very quick and useful reality check that anyone can perform for designs before they get implemented or for existing sites planning a redesign.

Seven Characteristics of Human Behavior that Affect Web Design

The problem is often not the design but the site itself -- what the site is doing or trying to achieve. It is not failure to implement, it is a failure of intent. The seeds of failure are planted early and concern the basic impulses that drive the creation of the site from the very beginning.

There are two separate sets of goals that control any web site: the goals of the visitors -- or audience -- and the goals of the owner -- or sponsor -- of the site. Those driving impulses are different for every site, but fall into seven basic categories.


For the visitor, there are only four possible goals:

• Help me find something
• Help me do something
• Help me fix something
• Once I have satisfied all three of the above, entertain me!

As I said, the specifics of what the visitor wants to find, do, or fix are different for each site they visit. (I wouldn't try to buy a vacuum cleaner from www.bmw.com, but figuring out why my current vacuum is making so much noise is a likely goal for a visitor to www.kirby.com.) With the exception of people simply "channel surfing" the web, the goals of all of your visitors fall into one of these four categories.

From the other perspective, the web site owner has only three basic intentions:

• Let me tell you something
• Let me sell you something
• Let me impress you!

These three impulses apply to all websites, even non-commercial web sites. (For non-commercial sites, "sell" can be interpreted figuratively to be an attempt to persuade the visitors to take some action: sign a petition, join an organization, etc.)

Achieving Alignment

It would seem, at first glance that aligning the needs of the owners and the audience should be simple: you want to find something and we want to sell something! Unfortunately, in practice the priorities and order of importance are often askew.

Site owners often focus on their last impulse first: let me impress you. At this point, it is fairly well accepted that elaborate flash intros to web sites are more annoying than effective. However they are still very prevalent.

Similarly, the days of commercial internet sites proudly displaying a photo and message from the CEO as a home page are pretty much over. However, many corporate intranets are still littered with web sites that prominently display a photograph of the manager, an org chart, and list of "news" stories and other managerial announcements. How does this help their employees find, do, or fix anything?

But the real problem is that the web site needs to address all of the visitors' possible needs, not just the one or two that match the owners' goals. Even if you can get past the sponsor's desire to turn impressiveness into a requirement, there is still too often a narrow focus on what the company wants to achieve and not what the users expect.

Note that addressing the needs of the visitors is not the same as solving them. If you are a manufacturer, you don't have to sell online. But you can expect at least some of your site's visitors will be looking to buy your goods, so you better tell them where they can buy your items rather than leaving them to vainly search your site and give up in frustration.


How to Use the Web Litmus Test

So, how do you apply the web litmus test? It is simple. Try this 15 minute experiment:

1. Pick a site on the internet. Any site. (If you have a commercial site on the internet I would suggest not starting with that one. It is hard to be objective the first time.)
2. Take 2 minutes to make a list of the things that site's visitors would want to find, do, or fix.
3. Spend 3 minutes trying to perform each activity from the web site's home page.

The key points to note here are that the web litmus test is in no way a complete analysis of a web site. Its goal is to test the site's main features against the visitors' main goals and nothing more. So don't try to go into too much detail.

Keep it short. 1-3 specific tasks for each of the visitor goals is more than enough. And if you can't complete a task in 3 minutes, you are already spending more time than the majority of visitors would before giving up in disgust.

Again, it is not a test of the entire site. It doesn't matter whether a specific function exists on the site, but whether someone can find it in an acceptable amount of time. This is why you should always start at the home page (as visitors are likely to do).

But the best way to understand the web litmus test is to see it in action, so let's try a few of examples...

Continue to examples of the web litmus test in action

The Web Litmus Test in Action

[Continued from The Web Litmus Test]

The best way to understand the web litmus test is to see it in action, so let's try three examples.


Example #1

Let's start with an example of a site that is known to be good: Amazon.

Amazon is a retail site, so the things visitors want to find are items to buy. Which means they want to find the item, find out more about it, and then buy it. Most of the finding is finding items for sale and most of the doing is buying. (You might want to add comparing items as an activity, but you don't really need to go into that much detail.)

Fixing is equally easy. Most visitors will be trying to fix a purchase gone wrong -- not arrived, wrong item, broken item, need to cancel, need to return, etc.

Starting at the Amazon home page, you will see that finding and doing are well covered. The top of the page includes a set of tabs for browsing goods by department and a search box (which can also be filtered by department). Having found an item, the description includes many different pieces of information to help the visitor assess it's suitability (such as the vendor description, customer reviews, etc.) They even include information of items that other visitors purchased after viewing this item as a form of comparison.

Fixing is also easy on Amazon. It is not the primary activity for the site, so it is less prominent. But to make up for that Amazon provides at least three ways to reach it. Both "My Account" and "Help" on the top control bar provide information on returns, cancellations, and other changes. The most common fixes ("where's my stuff?", "shipping & returns", and "need help?") are also provided on the footer of every page. Barring all else, the help pages have a "Contact us" button.

Note that Amazon provides many, many more functions to support these and over activities. The goal of the litmus test is not to test everything; just the most obvious. And in this case it easily passes the test.

Example #2

On the whole, large retail sites will all pass the web litmus test. As well they should considering the money spent on them. If nothing else, they tend to learn and copy from each other as functions and capabilities prove successful. But smaller sites and non-retail sites are a different story. As our second example, let's look at a site that misses the mark.

Just to set the record straight, I did not pre-select this example. I thought about sites that have interesting usage models and randomly chose the United Nations.

So, why would people visit the United Nations site? What do they want to find, do, or fix? The quick list I came up with was the following:

• Find: find out what the UN does, find out who is in the UN
• Do: visit the UN building in New York, participate in one of their programs
  
• Fix: Contact the UN delegation for your country

(There would be a separate list of activities for people who are in the UN. But my suspicion is that they have a separate intranet for those individuals. So it would not be fair to assess their public website on those functions.)

So let's look for the primary tasks. After selecting a language, there is a home page that covers a number of topics: "development goals", "news centre", "about".... One's first reaction is that the majority of these items are telling -- what the UN wants you to know -- not focused on the visitors' goals. But "about the United Nations" certainly sounds like it might cover our two finding goals. And sure enough, the first three headings on the left are "background information", "main bodies", and "main documents" (including the charter and other documents).

> > >

Unfortunately, the first link under "background information", (labeled Basic Facts About the UN) is an advertisement for a hardcopy book you must purchase. So, trying to find out what the UN is about starting from the home page and following the most meaningful links takes three clicks and leads to an offer to sell you a book. (Note the following links under "background information" do lead to meaningful information, but it is not clear that any but the most persistent visitors will find it.)

Our second finding goal is a little more successful, since the "About..." page also includes a link labeled Member States on the right-hand side. The resulting page is slightly odd since it is labeled "useful tools and documents" and does not mention the member states until halfway down the page (in reference to a press release). However, there is a link close to the top of the left-hand menu that provides a list of UN members. So it takes four clicks, but you do find the information.

> > > >

The site doesn't do nearly as well in the doing. There don't seem to be any links on the first few pages that would help you visit the UN. (In fact, I had to visit the site twice to find the appropriate information.) However, if you are persistent and visit the About the United Nations page and scroll down (it is not visible at first) you will find information on tours of several UN buildings, including the headquarters in New York.

When it comes to participating in UN activities, things get even worse. I did finally find a site that portends to help you "get involved" called UN Works. But by then I was far beyond the three minute limit, on my second visit, and found little more than ways for me to donate money.

Finally, as one might expect from the difficulties just doing, fixing is even more challenging. Although I was able to find a list of member states (during the finding task) the list is static and contains no links! There is no way to find out more or to contact the individual delegations. However, if you back up a page and ignore the body of the text, lower down on the left-hand navigation menu is an option for Permanent Missions > New York > Home Pages. this leads you to a form that lets you select a member state and get redirected to the US mission home page. If you select the United States, their home page does have an option to "contact us".

So it is possible to complete the fixing task, but it takes an unreasonable amount of detective work and far exceeds the 3 minute limit. What is worse, if you give up in frustration (which all but the most ardent visitors are likely to do) and look for a way out, some pages have a Comment link in the left-hand menu. However, rather than provide a way to provide feedback to the UN, the first two links on the comment page focus on feedback for the website only. The last link is for "comments" to a generic email account. But even that is tempered with the warning that "we may not be able to reply individually to all e-mail".

So, in essence, the site fails all aspects of the web litmus test. For sites with so many problems, the test isn't really necessary for uncovering issues. However, it can still be useful if you are trying to fix such a site. Since the number of individual problems can quickly overwhelm any repair work, you can use the test to stay focused on the primary themes and not get distracted. (Being able to see the forest for the trees, so to speak.)

Example #3

The preceding examples demonstrate the extremes. But most sites fall somewhere in the middle. Particularly for small to medium size business sites, the web litmus test can help you quickly identify gaps and dead ends.

As an example, let's look at a business site that is focused on products but not necessarily commerce. For this example, the appliance manufacturer Maytag.

Maytag makes home appliances. I suspect their primary income is generated from third-party sales -- through department stores such as Best Buy and Sears or through local appliance stores. I would further surmise that, like other manufacturers, they do not want to undercut their existing vendor relationships by competing with online sales. However, their website is very ambiguous about this.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's get back to the test.

• What would visitors to the Maytag site want to find? What appliances and models are available, as well as more detailed information about the products.
• What would they want to do? Buy an appliance or compare models.
  
• What would they want to fix? Repair their Maytag appliances or get replacement parts or manuals for said equipment.

Now that we have identified the key activities, let's see how the site fares.

The Maytag website is very handsome. The home page has the obligatory flash animation and focuses on telling you about their latest products. However, this can be forgiven because the site overall is well structured with consistent presentation and navigation, making it easy to move around.

The primary navigation gives you three tabs: Products, Accessories, and Support, which fairly closely map to the visitors' needs to find, do, and fix. However, as attractive as the site is, its looks are deceiving.

Finding Maytag's current products is well supported. The Products tab categorizes the products by location (kitchen and laundry) and then by type. Within each type you can further filter the results by various features (such as color, size, etc.). Selecting a specific model then lets you see details concerning its features, available colors, and so on.

Doing is a little more confused. Maytag's catalog of appliances looks striking like the product catalog from a retail site such as Amazon. They even have the shopping cart and "My Account" in the top left corner. But wait... when you click on a specific model, there is no "Add to Cart" button. So, can I buy an appliance here or not?

Even more confusing, if you click on the Accessories tab, the accessories do have "Add to Cart" buttons. So, do they sell appliances or not?


If you look closely, the controls in the top right contain not only a shopping cart and account, but also a link to a "store locator". This is a common interface element for sites that sell primarily through brick and mortar retail stores. So the site -- as attractive as it is -- confuses the user by presenting contradictory interfaces. Is it online or retail sales?

This often happens because the site's sponsor is well aware they can't sell online but forgets that visitors may not know. There are any number of simple solutions to this dilemma once it has been identified. For example, you can add a "Find a Store" button on the appliance page right where the "Add to Cart" button appears for accessories. This clearly tells the visitor they can buy the item but need to do so through a retail store.

Finally, Maytag has tried to support fixing as well. And in general they are successful. But again, the missing features that the sponsor takes for granted are not apparent to the user and can cause confusion. The Support tab provides access to online copies of the manuals. (Which are also available from the individual product's details page -- well done!) It also provides a FAQ and "Service & Parts".

However, Service & Parts is really only "Service". Despite the name of the link, the page only lets you schedule a service call or find a qualified repairman. There is no way to order parts. So the site only gets 50-70% for addressing our presumed visitors' expected fixing actions.

Again, the solution is simple once the problem is identified. Adding a single sentence on the Service page stating that parts can be ordered through local service franchises (if that is the case) would be sufficient. It is not necessary to do everything the visitor needs, just provide a way to get it done.

What I'm Playing: We Ski

The Wii game console is so popular, everyone is trying to cash in on the fad. They are oodles of games out there, all with chibi-headed cartoon characters and bright colors. Unfortunately, about 90% of those games stink to high heaven. Overly simplistic, boring, repetitive, awful controls... You get the point.

The trouble is trying to find the 10% that are good without having to experience (or buy!) the bad. It's hard, since they all tend to look alike. This is particularly true of the slew of "casual" sports games. Video game reviews can help. But even they can be misleading (since you and the reviewers may have different tastes).

So when you do find a good one, you feel compelled to tell the world. And last night I found one.

I am addicted to skiing games. I don't know why; I've only ever gone skiing twice in my life and I found it difficult, nerve wracking, and exhausting. I am sure I'd get better at it if I did it more. But there is something about the concept of flying down a hill on a couple of sticks (or a board) that really appeals to me.

So I have played a number of skiing games. I prefer the realistic ones (such as 1080°) to the over-the-top tricksters (such as SSX), but I'll take my virtual skiing where I can get it.

Which is why I bought We Ski. It looks like the other cheap ripoff Wii sports titles but this one is different. It really is a good game. Now, we are not talking complex or overly challenging, just lots of fun and plenty to do.

The controls -- using the Wiimote and nunchuk -- are accurate and very intuitive*: thrust down to push off, tilt to turn, rotate outwards to crouch... There are more complex moves (especially aerial tricks) that require additional buttons or twists. But the point is you can get going very quickly.

And once you are going there is plenty to explore. Multiple trails and chair lifts, plenty of variety. You can even ski down from the top of the mountain to the bottom in a single go. In addition to the skiing (and avoiding the other skiers) there are plenty of additional challenges (and unlockables) available if you talk to the people you find on the mountain.

No, there are no olympic level challenges (although one hidden course is quite a beast) -- this is a more relaxed game that lets you go at your own pace. But for a budget title (currently $30), it is packed with more fun than many if not most of the full-priced games out there for the Wii.

So if you are looking for some cheap thrills -- literally -- give it a try. I especially recommend it if you have friends to play it with.

* Footnote: We Ski supports the Wii Fit board, which may be its key marketing point. But I haven't tried that. In fact, when I first heard about the game, that feature put me off it since it sounded too much like a gimmick. But when I heard you could play multiplayer using the Wiimote and nunchuk I was sold.

What I'm Playing: Phantom Hourglass and Dragon Sword

I am currently playing two games on my Nintendo DS -- Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. I didn't intend to play them together. I started Phantom Hourglass after it came out, but got stuck in one of the dungeons. Not seriously stuck, just stuck without sufficient time to work out the solution. (This happens to me a lot -- not having extended amounts of time to dedicate to gaming. As a result, there are certain games I get "stuck" in just because they require an hour or so to make progress and I just can't find the time. But that is fodder for a separate rant.)

So I put Hourglass aside and went back to other games. In the meantime, I picked up Ninja Gaiden and started playing it. Then about a week ago I actually had two free evenings, so I went back to Phantom Hourglass, completed the dungeon and moved on. That same evening, I played more of Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword as well.

What's interesting about playing these games together is that -- if you were to describe them -- they sound almost identical. But the experiences from playing them are almost exact opposites.

Both games are action adventures where your goal is to free a kidnapped female. They both use the stylus almost exclusively. (Dragon Sword allows the use of a button as guard. Otherwise all interactions are with the stylus.) Both are story-driven, largely linear gameplay -- although both give the impression of free roaming -- where you fight a seeming endless supply of enemies, followed by intermittent boss battles. In both games your primary weapon is a sword you swing by slashing with the stylus. In both you also have secondary weapons (shuriken in Dragon Sword and a boomerang to begin with in Hourglass).

So what's the difference? Well, style certainly. But not just style. It's timing as well.

Stylistically Dragon Sword is realistic pseudo-3D. The backgrounds are definitely flat 2D images -- like 1950's painted movie backdrops -- but your character gets to move "around" as if it were a 3D space (forward, backward, left, right, and up and down when appropriate). The character is probably rendered as 2D sprites, but it is rendered in a realistic style that gives the feel of 3D.

Hourglass, on the other hand is real 3D programming in a cartoonish style. Large blocks of bright colors, very little texture mapping, big headed cartoon characters. Even the sounds are bright and cheerful, with lots of major chords and bright tinkling and chiming noises as enemies disappear in a puff of colored smoke.

But it is not just the graphics that create the distinction. Kingdom Hearts (on PS2) is also cartoonish, but doesn't have the same feel as Phantom Hourglass. Much of the difference is in the timing. In Phantom Hourglass, the enemies, although endless, appear in a fairly regular pattern one or two at a time. Except for boss battles, you usually have plenty of time to plan your attack. When there are multiples, they are spread out so you can easily take them out one at a time. It is planned, almost rhythmic in nature.

In comparison, the enemies in Dragon Sword appear in groups. They come at you as a swarm or surround you; there is no taking one out while ignoring the rest. The pace is frantic and intended to raise your adrenaline level at least two notches.

The result is that -- although the storylines are almost identical and the challenges similar in nature -- playing Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is like knocking down a hornets' nest and having to figure out what to do next, while playing Phantom Hourglass is more like popping balloons and seeing if you can do it in the right order to win a prize.

One other distinction between the games is how they handle the hardware limitations. Both games push the limits of the DS hardware: Dragon Sword in its striving for realism and Phantom Hourglass in its use of 3D.

In the boss battles, Dragon Sword really shines -- the realism and details of the characters and their actions, the urgency of the battle while still requiring strategic action -- these are the best parts of the game. The boss characters are also large, fairly filling the screen. However, during the interludes where you wander through woods, caverns, and palaces fighting off hordes of lesser minions, the realism falters. The 2D backgrounds are detailed, but your movement is artificially limited. And much of the detail is lost simply due to the small size of the figures on the screen. This is particularly notable when it comes time to talk to people and the game has to revert to flat cartoon stills of faces to provide "character" to the story.

Hourglass, in the other hand, always stays just within the bounds of what the machine can do. The graphics are fully 3D, but are kept simple not to push the hardware too much. Cut scenes also zoom in and take dramatic camera angles to emphasize the "3D-ness" of the game. but they still manage to get smoke effects and plenty of action onto the screen.

Dragon Sword is an impressive achievement, both as a game and a technical demonstration. However, Hourglass stands out with Mario Kart DS as perhaps the best and most consistently powerful use of the system so far.

Enterprise 2.0, Revisited

Having had yet another fruitless discussion about how important one or another piece of web 2.0 software is to the enterprise, I am even more firmly convinced that social computing -- sometimes referred to as Enterprise 2.0 -- cannot happen inside the corporation without some major changes to processes, practices, and preconceptions. This is not "change management"; this is a deep, fundamental change in beliefs throughout the corporation.

Lots of companies are dabbling in web 2.0. I say "dabbling" not to imply dilettantism, but to reflect the tentative, experimental approach most companies are taking. They implement a bookmarking service here or a company-wide wiki there, a blog or a social networking service as a prototype, and then try to encourage employees to use them. And the results are fairly predictable. There is a moderate level of participation early on and some enthusiastic devotees who preach the gospel of web 2.0 to others. But ultimately, usage tends to stall or even drop off before any critical mass can be achieved.

And let's not fool ourselves; critical mass is essential. Without sufficient numbers of people using these services as part of their day-to-day activities (rather than as a one-time trial separate from "real work") the services will falter. There is no social computing without an active, vibrant society.

What is the alternative? Well, it isn't to assume social computing can brazenly take the place of well-established corporate systems (such as email or intranet web sites). Neither can you run them as two wholly separate systems covering the same function. Your employees simply cannot accept that sort of schizophrenic behavior.

Any company planning to adopt web 2.0 has to first accept two basic facts about corporate life and then take several steps to ensure their web 2.0 efforts are successful. The two basic facts that need to be accepted are:

• A business is not a democracy. It cannot be run by the wisdom of the crowd. You can delegate responsibility, but ultimately management is responsible (legally and financially) and will dictate the direction of the company.
• Employees are individuals and will decide for themselves whether they believe a decision, a direction, or an activity is good or bad. That doesn't mean they won't follow orders (except in extreme cases) but it will significantly impact the performance and effectiveness of any process, to the point of influencing what business efforts succeed and which fail.

The consequence of these realities is that there are at least two social cultures within any corporation: the official organizational manager-employee relationship and the unofficial lunch room culture. Official announcements travel through the first network. Gossip travels through the second network. The first is strictly hierarchical and well defined. The second is dynamic, amorphous, and ever changing.

Both cultures need to exist. They intersect, interact, and influence each other, but neither can survive alone.

So what does this have to do with social computing? Social computing is the physical manifestation of and vehicle for the informal network. Blogs are not hierarchical. Wikis are democratic (or possibly even socialist). They are not an appropriate channel for official management communication -- although they are a very good channel for discussing official communications.

Similarly, the corporate intranet and applications such as the employee directory, expense forms, organizational charts, etc are the representation of the official hierarchical network. The corporate intranet portal is -- at least in part if not in toto -- a controlled communication vehicle of the management structure.

Just as the formal and informal networks must co-exist, the tools, applications, and web sites that support them must co-exist, not compete. What this means is that where the cultures intersect, the tools should intersect as well. So, very pragmatically, the following actions are needed at specific points of intersection:

Search & User-Generated Content:

• The intranet portal is the masthead of the official culture. However, search is the employees' gateway to all knowledge. Unfortunately, in many companies, search and the portal are seen as one (and managed by the same organization). In these cases, search is often restricted to only crawling "official" intranet sites and much user-generated content (such as blogs, wikis, forums, etc) is excluded.
  
• If your social computing efforts are going to succeed, they must be included in the corporate search index. Preferably, search will allow scoping so users can choose whether to search official material or user-generated content or both.
  

Employee Directory & Social Networking:

• The employee directory is usually managed by HR, which is logical since they manage the employees' official status (name, address, job classification, and position in the organizational hierarchy). If the company is also experimenting with social networking, the user-managed profiles will compete with the employee directory.
• The employee directory and any user-generated profiles should be connected. Preferably, this means the employee directory will display both HR maintained and user-managed content as a single page. At worst, the HR-managed directory should include links to the user's personal profile and other personal content (such as blogs and bookmarks). These links should be automated to ensure completeness.

Corporate Intranet Banner & Tagging, Bookmarks, Etc:

• Most large corporate intranets have a standard web banner that gives a consistent look & feel to intranet sites and provides links to common functions such as the portal home page, search, etc.
• If the corporation is experimenting with social tagging, bookmarks, or commentary (ala Digg), these functions should be embedded in the corporate banner. Why? The logic goes like this: the reason for running an internal service is to tag, bookmark, or comment on internal sites. (Otherwise why not use the existing external services?) If the employees have to find a page they want to tag, then have to manually visit the internal service, it is just too much work. They could use logos within the page as you see on internet sites. However, this would require all intranet site owners putting in the appropriate code. An unlikely thing to happen. By having the service accessible from the banner, it is automatically included on all intranet sites and employees are constantly reminded the service(s) exist and tagging becomes a single click activity.

Can social computing activities survive without these actions? Yes. Will they flourish or reach their potential? I'm afraid not.

The Four Paradoxes of KM

Knowledge Management is a big topic. There are different models and approaches for managing knowledge -- any of which can be helpful in establishing goals, a strategy, and tactical initiatives for a corporate KM program. Each model narrows the focus to a subset of the larger problem. Some focus on communities, some focus on capturing tacit knowledge, some emphasize best practices, while others target search and/or structuring knowledge that already exists.

However, whichever approach you take, at some point you will come face to face with one or more of the paradoxes of corporate KM. These are problems without a solution. They trigger intense philosophical debates when they arise and can lead to quite heated, sometimes personal, attacks on one position or another. The professional careers of a number of consultants in the field are based on advocating one side or the other of the debate.

Why? Why must it be one or the other? Why can't there be a middle ground? The reality is that any given KM program has only so much time, money, or attention to spend and must tactically select what problems to attack and how, thereby staking a position on each issue. And when you do, there will be advocates within management, among your professional peers, and in your audience base who will argue -- loudly -- for the alternative.

Be prepared. These issues cannot be resolved by pure logic or persuasion. They must simply be faced as a hazard of the profession.

The four paradoxes of KM are the following:

Tacit vs. Explicit

This is perhaps the oldest of the paradoxes and the most intractable: whether to focus on explicit or tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is information that is written down: project documents, white papers, lessons learned, best practices, etc. Tacit knowledge is all the information your constituents have garnered from experience but still have locked up in their heads.

A focus on explicit knowledge usually leads to an emphasis on search, taxonomy (categorizing the explicit knowledge), and sometimes selection (e.g. qualifying best practices). A focus on tacit knowledge often requires a concentration on establishing and encouraging communities (where tactic knowledge can be shared), story telling, and the technologies and events that support them (forums, blogs, SIGs, face-to-face meetings, etc.). Search is also important, but often focuses on people rather than documents (finding expertise rather than static information).

Local vs. Global

The second paradox concerns the geographic scope of the knowledge sharing. It is relatively easy to establish a community for knowledge sharing within a local area. Sharing involves trust and trust is easier to establish among people who share physical and cultural proximity. A small localized community also has more opportunities for face-to-face meetings that further increases trust and understanding between members. So you frequently see requests to create a local group, forum, wiki, or repository, although the topic at hand is itself universal (such as a Project Management community for the Boston area, say).

However, once a local community is established, either consciously or subconsciously, it creates barriers to those outside of the group. Just the existence of a local group will create an emotional barrier to people not within that area. They do not advertise their activities outside the region and often think their concerns are unique to themselves. In many cases, they even use security mechanisms to restrict access to their local members only.

But for large companies, sharing knowledge locally is not the problem. Making information and problem solutions visible and available across the corporation is the issue. Consequently, these localized efforts actually create barriers to sharing knowledge between regions and organizations.

Global communities are harder to get started. Individuals don't feel as connected and, for multinational companies, different languages can create an additional barrier. So, if there is a local community, employees will tend to expend their energies participating in the local activities and ignoring the global efforts. (There is actually a chicken-and-egg situation that arises, where people will claim, fairly, that there is no benefit in their participating in the global community because it isn't as active as their local group. But the global community cannot thrive until the individuals get involved...)

So, the individuals would prefer and will -- in the absence of any outside influence -- create small, closed, local groups. But from a larger corporate perspective there is a critical need to establish and foster global sharing. And until the global communities are firmly established and prove their worth, there can be continuing and sometimes heated battles over who gets to establish communities and how.

Open vs. Closed

The third paradox focuses on the tension between security and sharing. This paradox is closely related to the issue of global vs. local, but is not restricted to geographic proximity.

The goal of knowledge management is to maximize the value of the corporation's accumulated experience and wisdom by sharing them and applying them wherever possible: i.e. using knowledge as a business asset. But, in business parlance, assets need to be protected against misuse or -- worse -- industrial espionage. This is usually done by restricting access to the assets to only those who need to know. In other words, putting them under lock and key.

This approach may work well for machinery and a few highly confidential business strategy documents, but it does not work well for knowledge. As soon as you restrict access to knowledge you drastically reduce its ability to be applied and consequently its value.

Knowledge is one of the few "renewable" resources in business. In fact, it is not only renewable, it is regenerative, because the more you use it the more knowledge you create.

Unfortunately, there are many urban legends that scare managers and reinforce the urge to secure any but the most innocuous documents against misuse. Stories of a contractor who also works for a competitor, takes documents, gives them to the competitor who then presents the information as their own work and "steals" customers out from under your company. Even within a company, many groups will protect process documents, examples, best practices -- even sales presentations -- against access from anyone but select members of their own subdivision.

This sort of intellectual property hoarding is hard to argue against because it is not based on rational thought; it is based on fear. If you perceive others within your own company as a threat, it will be very hard to establish a culture of sharing and trust. And as the the average time of employment shrinks and changing companies becomes commonplace, even the most trusted employees within your division become potential future threats.

Quantity vs. Quality

Lastly, the fourth paradox struggles with the choice between a few excellent examples and sharing as much knowledge as possible. The argument goes like this:

• On the one side, you should save and share everything so as not to lose any of the valuable knowledge captured in your business documents. Besides, you cannot tell in advance what knowledge will be needed. Users can then search through and decide for themselves what is the most appropriate content.
• On the other side, even if you save only part of the accumulated documents, you don't want your employees wasting their time sifting through piles of unstructured content. The best examples should be reviewed, approved and highlighted to make sure they get the most appropriate content quickly.
  

Note this argument tends to come up most frequently when dealing with explicit knowledge. But it can also apply to tacit knowledge, when you get into discussions about archiving and how long to store forums, blogs or other user-generated content.

In most cases, whenever I have been caught in the middle of this argument, it has been completely hypothetical. The organization having the argument is neither capturing any measureable amount of unqualified content and has no process, criteria, or personnel in place to locate and rate best practices from any other type of knowledge. However, the debate rages on, hindering any further progress in either direction.

But the paradox does not have to be taken to extremes to prove troublesome. Even when a company attempts to take the middle ground -- accepting peer submissions, then reviewing, selecting, and highlighting best examples -- arguments still arise. To begin with, identifying certain samples as high quality and raising their visibility has the natural effect of discouraging contributions from those who and are not selected. If you encourage people to reuse the "approved" entries, you are implicitly discouraging them from using the rest, so why bother submitting? The other common difficulty that arises is disagreements over who (which group or which role) should have the right or has the expertise to make the selection.

Conclusion

I say these paradoxes are unsolvable, but that is only when they are being argued in abstract. Given any specific business situation, there is always a better and a worse approach that will fall to one side or the other of each issue.

When dealing with call centers and help desks, there is a considerable amount of explicit knowledge required. The call agents are not experts; they rely on databases of "answers" to respond to calls. Any issues that are escalated need to be captured into the database to aid future calls.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, when dealing with consultants, there is a certain amount of explicit knowledge -- contract templates, legal boilerplate, even past examples -- but the critical issue is enabling them to share, combine, and reuse their implicit knowledge with each other as they face new challenges each day.

Unfortunately, people tend to see these paradoxes as abstracts, even when facing specific business challenges. So, although it ought to be possible to argue the merits of a knowledge management program based on the specifics of its strategy and alignment with the business situation, you will more than likely be drawn into a philosophical debate over one or more of the paradoxes at some point in the project.

Being an optimistic, you might view it as a positive sign of interest and enthusiasm for KM. Being a pessimist, it might appear purely as unnecessary interference from the uninformed. Either way, it is best to allot extra time in your plans for it because no matter what you do, you are unlikely to be able to avoid the argument.