September, 2018 | Roger Swannell

Methods for working together

Roger on 29/09/2018

A few years almost every meeting I went to was face-to-face with only a few phones as rare exceptions. This year it feels like at least half my meetings are group Skype calls. Although the technology isn’t always perfect being able to work with someone who isn’t in the same place has meant we’ve been able to get more things done more quickly.

So whereas before we only had one method for working together, now we have two. I think we need more. We need more clearly defined methods of working together that make it easier to people to know what is expected of them

Workshops

Workshops follow a step by step approach to achieve a clear output. They need to stick to the structure, e.g. Design Sprint, and not vere off track. They are all about action and production, if by the end of the workshop the group hasn’t actually produced something useable (not just useful) then the workshop was a waste of time. They might involve blank sheets of paper, wipeboards and post it notes.

Discussion

Discussions are more informal and less structured. They are about collective information gathering. Everyone talks freely about the topic, sharing their experiences, knowledge and opinions. They require strong leadership and good listening skills from everyone, but they are great for uncovering stuff and getting it all in the same space. The output of a discussion should be shared understanding.

Interview

Interviews are likely to be one to one or two to one. They are about getting answers. They require that the person holding the interview comes prepared with questions that they want answers to. The person being interviewed brings their knowledge and tries to frame it as answers not discussion points. The output of an interview should be documented specific answers to questions.

So far, all of these are synchronous methods, that is they require everyone to be working at the same time but I think we need some asynchronous methods too that enable people to still work together when they can’t be together at the same time. We all work asynchronously most of the time, but this is about trying to formalise some methods for asynchronous collaboration.

Review

Reviews require a number of people to read a document, consider it in light of their knowledge, assumptions and experience, and then feedback comments, questions and any concerns. Reviews are best conducted by people on their own at a time they can concentrate and not be distracted. The output from a review should be the collated feedback from however many people were involved into a single source.

Weeknotes 112

Roger on 28/09/2018

What happened this week…

Reviewed stock errors in Midas for correction before migration into AX.
Discussed product ranges with the Giftware and Cards B&M Teams.
Submitted changes to the BHF insurance policy to cover selling defibrillators.
Wrote content for defibrillator web pages.
Spoke to a Blood Pressure Monitor supplier.
New Crafts products went live on the Online Shop.
Worked with the L2B team to improve the customer experience of ordering travel tickets.
Booked a ticket for The Pharmacy Show.
Tested downloadable products and donation upsells on the Online Shop.
Met with the Danish Heart Foundation to discuss ecommerce.
Met with our agency to discuss the Central Ordering site.
Discussed cutover and stock take for RMSP.
Went to a Thinking Differently About Innovation talk.
Provided Christmas content for the BHF monthly and heart matters email newsletter.
Reviewed the Phase 1 & 2 Sales IDD.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

User research with businesses that own a defibrillator.
Writing a guide to writing a business case for defibrillators.
Trying to get Google Analytics working correctly.
Discussing the Stock Adjustments Interface and processing conflicts.
Attending sports kit supplier presentations.
Refining NDN user journeys.
Increasing advertising campaigns.
Discussing a solution for accepting pre-orders.
Documenting RMSP Phase 1 Ecommerce processes.
Experimenting with Christmas Takeover page designs.
Discussing dotmailer with the Email Marketing Team.
Writing our half year performance analysis.
Adding lots of travel tickets to the Online Shop.

Interesting stat of the week…

Comparing the last week with the same time last year, the percentage of users on mobile devices has increased 14.2% from 37.9% to 49.4%.

In the not to distant future…

Thinking about A/B testing on the Online Shop.

Thinking differently about innovation

Roger on 27/09/2018

I went to an interesting talk with Twitter and Good Innovation about how to think differently about innovation. They mentioned some really good ideas such as creating “yes-and” environments where no one is allowed to shut down ideas by saying “no” or “but” but instead has to build on ideas.

I think understanding ‘innovation’ as a thing within an organisation can be started by looking for parallels, e.g. learning. Learning is something that is valued by an organisation, so they set up Learning & Development Team who arrange formal training opportunities such as funding college courses, webinars, mentoring, job-shadowing, etc. All of these are important because different people need different opportunities in order to learn. But what this also does is communicate to people that learning is valued by the organisation, which then encourages them to learn by reading a book, listening to a podcast, or talking to a colleague. Learning only happens at work when people can see that the organisation values learning and provides some opportunities, but it’s the communicating that it is valued that is the important part. And that doesn’t happen because a few emails are sent to people, it happens when people can see that an organisation walks the walk rather than just talking the talk.

Innovation can be thought of in a similar way. There needs to be a formal programme for innovation that has dedicated people, budget, strategic mandate, etc., and it needs to deliver innovations, but equally important is that as part of embedding innovative thinking and practices across the organisation it doesn’t isolate itself from the rest of the organisation so much that people think only the innovations team can be innovative. So a part of their work should be encouraging, finding and supporting innovation across the organisation.

Innovation can and should happen in all parts of and at all levels of an organisation, but just like learning, it requires formal programmes and informal opportunities and practices, all of which are valued by the organisation and so valued by people.

ATBA-UK AGM 2018

Roger on 22/09/2018

Today was the Annual General Meeting for ATBA-UK, the national governing body for mountainboarding in the UK.

After 8 years on the management team, I, along with everyone else on the team resigned. I’ve had an amazing time, and learned so much about running an organisation staffed entirely by remote volunteers. We put on lots of mountainboard competitions, trained lots of new instructors, and tried all kinds of things to get people into mountainboarding and riding more. I’ll miss all of those things, miss the amazing places I visited, but most of all I’ll miss all the awesome people I met.

What does the future hold for ATBA-UK? We want to do everything we can to ensure that ATBA-UK can continue to work on its mission of supporting the growth of mountainboarding in the UK so we’re looking to appoint new directors who will take control of ATBA-UK, and to set up a licensing business model whereby licences can be granted use the intellectual property of the ATBA-UK. This means that other organisations and individuals can apply to the ATBA-UK to run competitions, deliver instructor training, or anything that the directors deem to be achieving the aim of the ATBA-UK. This new business model means that the ATBA-UK can continue without the need for management team and decentralises the ATBA-UK’s resources to the community. It puts the future of mountainboarding in the hands of the community.

Weeknotes 111

Roger on 21/09/2018

What happened this week…

Listed Christmas cards on the Facebook Shop.
Worked on fixing issues with Google Analytics.
Discussed strategy and scope of the BiG on Ebay project.
Tested new functionality for Magento 2.
Started working on Christmas card marketing on the main website.
Discussed provisional timings for interfaces between AX and MDA.
Started looking at how to use the Ecommerce Time Tracker data to plan future activities.
Reviewed stock levels and analysed sales.
Worked on product information for defibrillators on the Online Shop.
Secured a place in the November email newsletter for Christmas cards.
Wrote content for the defibrillator web pages for selling to communities.
Met with the Stewardship Team to discuss using Freshdesk.
Discussed content planning and user journeys for the NDN.
Contacted a Blood Pressure Monitor supplier to discuss selling their products.
Helped with a Six Sigma Green Belt project to improve logistics at CSC.
Learned about advertising on LinkedIn.
Started selling King Of Hearts Ball Tickets for the Northern Ireland Community Fundraising Team.
Set up the defibrillator product range on Midas.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

Launching the Christmas Pin Badge range.
Discussing ecommerce with the Danish Heart Foundation.
Setting up the new crafts range on the Online Shop.
Going to a talk about thinking differently about innovation.
Completing defibrillator content for communities wanting to buy.
Clearing old stock as part of the tidy-up ahead of going live with AX.
Discussing the requirements for the new Central Ordering website with our Magento agency.
Meeting with the Giftware and Cards B&M Teams.
Discussing Blood Pressure Monitors with a new supplier.

Interesting stat of the week…

Comparing Sept ‘18 so far to the same period last year, the organic traffic to the Online Shop increased 243%. Traffic for the search term ‘British Heart Foundation Furniture’ increased 2,150%

In the not too distant future….

Christmas cards home page take over.

Optimising for production

Roger on 21/09/2018

There’s nothing wrong with meetings. They have their place. Meetings are fine for talking about things but meetings aren’t the right format for producing things. If the expected outcome of getting a group of people together is to produce something then a workshop is a better format. An assumption for meetings should be that no production will be attempted in the meeting. The discussion will most likely generate the need for work to be done but it should be done outside the meeting.

Why are meetings so bad for production? Meetings are usually for a short period of time, an hour say, and may be at regular intervals, maybe weakly or monthly. So, that’s two things that make meetings bad for production; such a small amount of time to work in, and such a large amount of time between the sessions. Meetings are like trying to write a book by writing one sentence a week. Obviously it’s going to take ages. Writing a chapter in one go will get the book written far more quickly, but that requires a workshop.

Five questions to direct an ecommerce strategy

Roger on 15/09/2018

Who is the customer?

Start with the customer. Whether you have well defined personas or use See, Think, Do, Care to understand your total addressable market, understanding who is your customer is always the first question to answer. Not even Amazon can sell anything to anyone.

What do they want that you can give them?

What products are those customers looking for? What products do you have or want to develop? Some products are essentials, some more desirables. Some products are bought every day for a lower price, some are bought once in a life time at a high price. There is no gain in trying to provide something that those customers don’t want.

Where do they go to get it?

People looking for a brand-new top-of-the-range Ferrari don’t look on eBay, they go to showrooms. People looking for a sandwich go to their local supermarket or sandwich shop, they don’t go to a builders merchant. Customer’s already have assumptions and expectations about what they can get where. Are you going to go where the customers are or try to disrupt that and take somewhere else?

Why would they want to get it from you?

What’s your USP, what differentiates you from your competitors, what is going to make those customers come to you rather than go somewhere else? Is it your superior quality products, is it your customer service, is it the image a customer creates when using your products?

When can you give it to them?

Do you have existing products they can get now, or do you need to develop something? Are you going to provide an MVP in one month or a finished thing in two years?

Weeknotes 110

Roger on 14/09/2018

What happened this week…

Wrote content for defibrillator web pages.
Discussed project scoping and strategy for new goods on Ebay.
Wrote some training for Freshdesk.
Began looking for suppliers for more medical devices.Reviewed the ITT for events clothing suppliers.
Updated the Selling Defibs dashboard.
Reported to the Selling Defibs Project Team.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

Testing downloadable products and the user experience.
Discussing how to handle not being able to accept orders for a month.
Working on defibrillator webpage content.
Reviewing the project scope for listing new goods on Ebay.
Planning a defibrillator photo shoot.Discussing Interface timings.Writing defibrillator FAQ’s.
Visiting CSC to talk about Customer Services, Freshdesk and the new Central Ordering site.
Update the Proof Of Concept document for the Central Ordering site.

Interesting stat of the week…

Comparing the first two weeks of September this year to last year, the Average Time of Page has increased 99%. And there are only 102 days till Christmas.

In the not too distant future….

Discussing the proposition for a B2B products and services website.

Selsey

Roger on 09/09/2018

BHF Shop Bot

Roger on 08/09/2018

I wanted to build a shopping Chatbot for the British Heart Foundation.

Charity shops run on three engines; stock donations, volunteer helpers, and customers to buy things. So I wanted the bot to be able to offer something for all three aspects

Find a shop

The ‘Find a shop’ flow is about helping the user find a shop nearby to donate unwanted items to.

The bot asks for the users location and then queries the Google Places API for places that match the preset search term of “British Heart Foundation”. The results are displayed to the user as a set of three cards showing the nearest three BHF shops.

It relies on the information in Google Places being correct, which it isn’t always, and interestingly, the Google Places API only returns results of places that are open, which may work well if you’re looking for a place to eat right now but if you search for charity shops on a Saturday evening you get no results. If I was doing it again I’d want to host the shops location and opening times somewhere like a Google Sheet so that the bot can provide more useful info about which shops are nearby, their opening times and what kinds of things they want to be donated.

Another useful feature might be using Google Maps to show the route from the user to the shop they select.

Search our eBay store

The ‘Search our eBay store’ is about allowing the user to find out if the BHF eBay store has any of what they are looking for, and it was the most complicated and fun to build.

As it is a simple search it relies on the user knowing what they are looking for (which I think most people using eBay do). It doesn’t provide any kind of recommendations.

The eBay API’s are very comprehensive and there are multiple API’s available to accomplish different things. I used the ‘’ API as I could specify that only results for the British Heart Foundation store are returned.

The first part of the flow is about finding out what the user wants to search for and calling the API to return matching items.

The data that comes back includes a count of how many results there are. We can use this later but for now it’s useful to tell the user how many items we’ve got matching the search term to set their expectations about how helpful the next few steps will be in them finding what they are looking for.

Sometimes there are no matches to the search term and so the count is 0. This gives us something specific to filter on and means we can ask the user if they want to search again. If they say no then the flow ends there.

If there five or fewer results then the item name, image, and url on eBay are displayed in a set of cards. I chose to limit the number of cards to five to reduce the amount of sideways scrolling the user has to do. If there are more than five results (and we know this because of the count we used earlier) then the bot asks if the user would like to see more results. If they say yes then another set of five cards is displayed. This is repeated again meaning the maximum number is items that the user sees in the flow is fifteen, but there is no reason it couldn’t be expanded to continue to show as many items as there are in the search results.

Unfortunately the API specifies that only 140px thumbnail images are available, which means they don’t look great when displayed at a larger size (like when using messenger.com on a laptop).

I haven’t looked at the other ebay API’s but maybe the next step is to look at allowing the user to login to their eBay account and bid on an item.

Talk to a person

The ‘Talk to a person’ flow is essentially a simple ‘Contact Us’ form (but I couldn’t call it ‘contact us’ as from the user’s point of view they have already contacted us by engaging with the bot.

It asks the user what their query is about, what they’d like to say, and their email address. Using the Freshdesk API, these details are used to create a ticket in Freshdesk.

Asking what the query is about is a way to automate the triaging of the ticket in Freshdesk. It’s a little annoying having to collect the email address when you already have a means of communicating with the user but it’s required for creating a ticket in Freshdesk and gives a way for the customer service agent to reply to the user. I might look into the Freshdesk API a bit more and see if it’s possible to pull the replies into the chat.

As a first iteration it works ok, and it was a good distraction on a Saturday night.