Picture My World

Remember that post about Shula taking a bottle? We have since learned that babies may accept bottles early on and then suddenly stop. Shula is one of those babies. We tried giving her a bottle every day for a week with no luck. She’ll gum it and play with it but she won’t suck it. This has thrown us for a bit of a loop and put off my wife’s return to her master’s program.

One friend said we need to give her the bottle when Ema isn’t in the house. If she’s around the incentive isn’t strong enough. It’s on our list, but we haven’t tried it yet.

Not a lot of time to write, but here’s a picture of a very hot cat.

Shula’s just turned 3 months old and is doing all sorts of cool things. She can play with a toy with both hands. She just started to roll over half-way to the left. I think she’s discovered her feet. Her kick-start gym no longer freaks her out.

All of this means more independence is coming for her soon. And that means more independence for us!

Today, the product management group agreed to add usability as an official consideration for all new projects and all projects about to go to beta. There was no real challenge to the idea which makes today a little bitter-sweet. I’d prefer to have to fight a little harder for this.

I suspect that the fight is to come. I now have to inform the product group leaders (in charge of budgets and staffing) to allocate resources in what turns out to be overhead positions. If there’s going to be resistance, this will be the time. However, with the COO and President on side, it will be short lived.

My next challenge is figuring out the best way of training and managing this group. There will only be one, maybe two, usability people per group (to start, anyway) and I do not want them wallowing in a vacuum. I also think it’s best to get usability engineers to facilitate each other’s tests to keep an air of objectivity.

Leaf

One of the comments from this post on The Trixie Update is depressing. I can’t link to it directly, so I’ll quote the whole thing here:

This one has really has me thinking. Baby definitely makes marriage harder. But it’s usually moms complaining about it (not that you were complaining). The first couple of months after Sophie was born I found myself having an irrational and deep hatred of my spouse. It was freaking me out and then, when I was at a “mommy’s group” of a bunch of Park Slope yuppies I didn’t know at all, I had a Tourettes-like outburst, demanding to know: “Does everyone here hate their husband, ever since the baby came?” Everyone nodded politely and resumed coversation. I felt much better. As time wore on, the irrational hatred waned. The weird thing about the dynamic is that it’s a triangle b/c both parents love baby so much, more than anyone in the world, more than each other, so even when you’re not liking spouse, baby brings it back to love. Or trap, if you prefer. Of this love triangle, I used to believe that one of the things that keeps unhappy parents together is that w/o the other parent, there’d be no one to share all of the cute, inimitable things baby does – that no one else would want to wallow in how cute everything baby does is. Alas, TTU has proved me wrong – other people are perfectly willing to induldge. So, I guesss what I’m really saying is that a great blog could replace a spouse. Is that what I’m saying? I don’t think so, but it was a fun statemetn to make.
Hannah

(My emphasis.)

It’s depressing that this woman and a room-full of other new mothers feel this way about their husbands. Sadly, it’s probably the mens’ fault for not supporting their wives enough during the first couple of months. These first months are the toughest on whoever is the primary care giver since the baby needs almost constant attention. Without sufficient help, a new mother can barely take care of herself and that breeds all kinds of bad feelings.

Fathers! You need to adjust to the new reality. If you thought you treated your wife well before the baby, you still need to crank it up a notch!

Our marriage has been fortified by our little girl. I feel my wife and I are working together better than ever due the focus she brings to our lives. We’re now a family — not two individuals — and we need to look out for each other. If that involves spending more time at home and less time with friends for now, then so be it. I know that life will balance itself out later.

Siwash Rock at Stanely Park.

Cities are noisy. I didn’t realize it until I started walking around at night with a sleeping baby. What I had thought was quiet really wasn’t anymore. Holding the baby sensitizes you so that each passing car (~100 dB) sounds like a jet plane at takeoff (also ~100 dB). Add on car alarms, loud people, and the occasional low-flying helicopter, and you’ve got enough background noise to drive you crazy if you choose to pay attention.

It makes me want to move out to the country.

The amazing thing is that very little of this kafuffle ever wakes the baby.

As I mentioned below, I’m trying to grow a group dedicated to doing usability work at my company. This seems like a subject worthy of blogging about and I promise not to give away any company secrets.

I spoke with our COO a few months ago and he’s been helping me push usability out into the rest of the company. After a meeting with various group leaders, I’m now in the middle of attempting to have our product development process officially modified to incorporate usability as a key component in a product plan. The proposal is currently under review by the company’s product managers and today I received the most challenging question to date (and one I ask myself). Someone asked me why we need to change the development process. Why can’t we just evangelize and incorporate it into product development without making it another hoop to jump through?

Indeed. This is the approach I’ve been trying for almost a year with some success, but not a lot. I call this the “grassroots” approach to spreading usability. The problem I’ve hit and the reason I’m trying the top-down approach as well is that existing teams are not prepared to dedicate a person to usability. Schedules are so tight (or optimistic) and teams are maxed out and can’t take on another task — besides, they’ve made it this far without usability.

I hope that “forcing” projects to look at usability requirements will get them to budget for usability. I also hope that, as a result, I will be given the head count to grow a small team that can build specialized usability skills and help a number of projects. I still come back to today’s question, though, and wonder if I could have been successful if I only pursued the grassroots strategy. From what I’ve read, the answer is no, but I wonder.

Stay tuned.

There’s some PBS documentary on Iraq on. I am just catching the end, but it seems very left-wing. Anyway, some reporters are interviewing a medium sized crowd and one man vows that they will fight the Americans if they do not get their freedom. “We want full freedom!” he yells. This just after some other people were complaining about the ongoing fighting and wishing for a return to Saddam’s rule when at least things were quiet (for them, anyway!).

Freedom is tough. I wonder how much freedom this gentleman wants and who he wants it for. Right now, one could argue that the country as a whole is more free than ever before. It’s so free that its verging on anarchy.

He probably doesn’t want that kind of freedom, though. I’m sure he wants the freedom from being shot or robbed. The freedom to send his kids to school. The freedom to feel safe.

Under Saddam, he was safe so he sees his current situation and figures he’s worse off if this is what “freedom” is. However, I’m not sure this man knows what freedom is. He probably never knew it during his lifetime and he doesn’t recognize it now. He can’t see past today and see the future where all the people that wish to take his new freedom away are gone.

For all the Americans’ mistakes, they are trying to help this man get his full freedom. My advice: Be patient and sit tight, or help fight for your freedom — just make sure you’re fighting the right people.

Learn to type 1 handed or maybe buy one of these. (No, I don’t have one…)

One of the truly amazing things about raising a child is witnessing them develop so many basic behaviours. Over the last few weeks, Shula’s been learning to trust. It’s easiest to see when it comes to feeding time. As a newborn, Shula would cry when hungry and nothing could stop her except a nipple in the mouth (or a finger, but that didn’t last long if she were really hungry). Now, at 2.5 months, her cry has changed to a distinct “I’m hungry” signal and she’s started to learn that we can understand the message.

When we “get it”, she stops fussing and patiently waits a hand-off to Ema (that’s Hebrew for “mom” and pronounced “ee-mah”). She anticipates meal time and trusts us to do the right thing. If we screw up, she lets us know by crying as if she just received word the world was ending. This usually happens when ema is already holding Shula and she gives subtle hunger signs. If Ema attempts to hand her off or do something else first, the big cry hits.

It always hurts at least a little bit when your baby cries, but it’s worse when you know you’re to blame. (Although, sometimes those little tricksters are incredibly subtle…) As bad as it gets, though, every crisis has a happy ending with a well-fed baby and relieved mother.

I feel the urge to blog something, but I’m afraid I’m too tired to write anything meaningful. Let’s see what happens, though.

Work is really picking up. In addition to my usual usability work, I’m trying to get the rest of my company to adopt more usability and user-centered design practices. I am one person doing this work in a company of around 4000 people, so it’s about time I got some help! (Besides me there is one other person focusing on usability for one small group.)

I’ve been getting some excellent feedback from project engineers I’ve worked with in the last year and a half and that helps adoption, but I’ve learned that you also need to get buy-in from the top. Only from the top can you change the company’s high level processes that control important items like budgets and head count. Luckily, our COO knew the importance of usability before I could get more than a sentence or two into my “pitch”. So, I have a senior executive on board willing to jump in when necessary, but it’s still slow going. Now, the real work is starting as I attempt to educate more and more people in usability and its benefits.

This is a very risky endeavor in many respects, but it’s incredibly exciting to both change development practices and build a group from scratch. I hope I’m up to the challenge.