The Wrap #7 | Behold, a featureless wasteland emerges
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The Wrap #7 | Behold, a featureless wasteland emerges
A shot of thinking fuel, brought to you each month by Futurestate Design Co.
As spring threatens, we see some green shoots for the news and content industries' incomes – at Facebook's expense.
Meanwhile, a half-a-billion-dollar error shows why it's time for the sun to set on the practice of inflicting terrible software on employees and some new research shows why one of the most widespread business analysis tools has it all backwards.
The end of the 'free' content gravy train?
What’s going on?
The battle between Facebook and Australia has been everywhere. A personal perspective from Celina Ribeiro puts some major issues in stark relief.
Why it matters
Facebook without news content: “A featureless wasteland, populated by boomer memes and dog photos”. Harsh? True? The reality is that FB has bet its entire business on selling ad revenue against things it doesn’t own, and arguably, actively encourages its users’ abuse of copyrighted material. While Australia is the beachhead, many more countries will join this fight in the coming months. If there’s a lesson here for everyone, it’s that your business model should be built on an honest commercial exchange between brand and customer. There’s no need to pretend you’re free if you’re good enough to charge.
Read the original article on WIRED
Blow $500M instantly by ignoring that staff are humans too
What’s going on?
Citibank overpaid some loan repayments to the tune of almost half-a-billion dollars… All thanks to a software interface that its staff misunderstood.
Why it matters
The importance of excellent UX/UI is increasingly well recognised. The positive impact that a high-quality experience has on customer behaviour is well-recognised. The software used inside a business is another matter altogether; the assumption that staff will tolerate a more arcane interface to perform key tasks “because it’s their job” is still the norm. Ask Citibank how they feel about that approach after sending $900 million instead of $7.8 million (a judge ruled that it can’t reclaim what hasn’t already been returned). Don’t expect to get the best from your people if you give them bad tools: invest in your internal platforms as much as your customer-facing services if you want a motivated and happy team who don’t make mistakes that break the bank.
Read the original article on Arstechnica
Guess SWOT doesn’t work?
What’s going on?
Research into how businesses typically conduct SWOT analyses shows that, at best, they’re being done the wrong way round.
Why it matters
We’ve long railed against many of the traditional ‘analysis’ tools that are still taught in business schools today. In this HBR article (and better in the linked research paper) we see how even on the simplest level SWOT analyses are being done wrong, and can prove, essentially, useless. While the authors outline an approach focussed on addressing opportunity and threat first, their examples show why these tools are so dangerous when used badly. The four SWOT dimensions were a great way to analyse a business or service in the 1970s but it’s both super-easy to manipulate to suit an agenda and is woefully inadequate in today’s digital markets where, for example, most threats don’t exist yet and weaknesses can be exploited to become powerful assets.
Read the original article on HBR