I confess – I’m for it. And I’ll go even further – I think “making it up as you go along” is one of the greatest, and most important processes of any age.

No great explorer set out with a detailed set of explorer guidelines. They adjusted and discovered.

No great inventor set out with a detailed set of inventor guidelines. They experimented and adapted.

No great leader set out with a detailed set of leadership guidelines. Leaders point the way and rally followers when their faith fails.

“Making it up as you go along” means that you recognize a good foothold on your way up a mountain and know how to take advantage of it (in other words, you understand your craft). But you don’t need (literally) a step-by-step instruction book (because you understand your craft). In software development terms, the “step-by-step” equivalent is a requirements specification. Kind of like paint-by-numbers for would-be Rembrandts who don’t yet know that method is incapable of producing genuine art.

As good as your tools?

One of the things I hate most about our industry (the web industry, the UX industry, the IxD industry, whatever), is the penchant for folks with too little imagination and too much process training, to force “development models” on us. We have “mental models” galore. We have “process blueprints” en masse. Sadly, we have a myriad of tools, but not always the proper skills.

There’s a Danish expression common to craftsman: “A worker is only as good as his tools.” Granted, good tools are critical, as is a good process. But tools represent the lowest common denominator. Even with the best tools, an idiot will make a mess of things.

Agile or ingenuity?

We’re still at the beginning of an era. The web is not yet 20 years old. We are very much making things up as we go along despite excellent pattern libraries and established best practices. Anyone who says we aren’t is either a liar or a fool. Unfortunately, in the interest of professionalism, many folks are trying to legitimise their existance by formalising their work processes.

The smart tool of choice these days for software development is agile. ‘Agile’ is basically a fancy term for making it up as we go along. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a good technique used by the pioneers for whom oceans are named.

In the old, pre-computer era, we call this ‘flexibility’ and ‘having an open mind.’ ‘Talent’, ‘intuition’, and ‘ingenuity’ were also once keywords. When did we stop appreciating these abilities? We have, you know…

Now, agile development is being groomed for polite society (e.g. the clueless business executives who would have insisted that Columbus produce a map showing the exact passage to India before he had actually done his discovery work). But gosh, Mr or Ms Business Leader, agile isn’t Russian Roulette. It’s not going to cost a fortune – in fact, it will probably cost less than the idiotic “requirements specification” some overpriced consultant is going to talk you into.

Which leads us to scrum

‘Scrum’ is a term stolen from rugby (which follows a wonderfully make it up as you go along kind of gameplan). In the world of software development, scrum formalizes the informal iterative agile development process. The Scrum Master is a project coordinator who presides over meetings and shepherds the team based on a set of strictly defined rules. A formalised certification course during which potential Scrum Masters learn the basic rules and mechanisms takes several days. Why is scrum popular? Well, first, it’s not a bad process. Unfortunately, scrum can be a nasty weapon in the hands of the wrong people; business execs are often comforted by processes that are governed by strict rules. Particularly those pesky, unpredictable creative processes.

How to win the game? Stay loose!

It’s not that I have anything in particular against scrum, but I have a lot against creating gameplans that don’t allow for deviation or the unexpected voicing of a sudden brilliant idea that turns the whole project on its head. Good Scrum Masters know the value of exploring new directions. My problem is with the tyrants who blindly stick to this (or any other established process); who hide their own lack of talent and creative insight behind a veil of pedanticism and false authority.

Sorry Columbus, ignore this new world of yours. Remember, your job is to find a passage to India. What will you do between now and the next daily scrum meeting regarding this project?

How many of us slavishly follow our car’s navigation when we know it’s giving us bad advice? Very few – that would be silly. And how many times have we uncovered a blatant fault during the very first usability test? Does it make sense to test with several more respondents before fixing an obvious problem? Of course not – no matter what the test protocol may dictate.

Although I’ve singled out scrum, there are lots of other processes that can go equally awry. Many companies these days are busy trying to implement Toyota’s LEAN production system, often with disappointing results. Kaizen quality management (another Toyota development) can also go very wrong – and for the same reasons Total Quality Management, House of Quality, and Philip Crosby’s Zero Defects went wrong back in the 80s; too many managers let the process get in the way of the ultimate objective. Remember, the goal is the goal.

For every rule, there are myriad exceptions. For every battle plan, there are unexpected circumstances. For every process, there are fifty other ways to do things. So, my advice is to do what needs to be done, when you need to do it. And as to the gameplan? Don’t be afraid to make it up as you go along.

While in Phoenix, AZ last month for the Information Architecture Summit, I had breakfast with Crystal Kubitsky, a very smart designer from Comcast, who shared a very smart thought: “Our problem is that technology is moving faster than our psyche.” We had been talking about the privacy issues I brought up in last month’s column.

The Sámi, one of the indigenous people of Northern Europe, say something similar: “Never travel faster than your soul.” They use this to explain modern maladies like jet lag (and probably other stuff like government-regulated reindeer husbandry). Anyway, barely two weeks after my chat with Crystal, I found myself sitting in a Polish taxi on a long drive from Warsaw to Copenhagen, as European airspace recovered from Volcanic Ash Syndrome.

Fifteen hours stuck in an Opel gives you time to reflect. (among other things, I’m now pretty sure my soul is perfectly comfortable at Airbus speeds.)

Speed limits for technology?

My thoughts centered on a simple question: Is there a speed limit for technology? If so, who sets it? And is someone writing speeding tickets?

The disturbing answers are “yes”, “yes”, and “yes”.

Now for most readers of this column, this makes no sense at all. After all, we want to grow and develop, which means embracing new technology. And we certainly don’t want to slow down. Anything else is unthinkable.

Here’s the nub…it’s only unthinkable to us.

I know CEOs who still have their secretaries print out their e-mail and then dictate a response.

The mere fact that you read this particular e-zine suggests you are years ahead of the curve when it comes to understanding the benefits afforded by online media. (That you recognize the term “e-zine” is also telling.) And there are three significant downsides to this:

- we often take so much for granted that we are unable to connect the dots for those who don’t spend as much time in cyberspace as we do
- if we do succeed in connecting the dots, the picture that results usually remains obscure to those outside our industry
- the C-levels* who should hire us remain clueless as to what we can provide

* CEO, CFO, CIO, etc.

The peril of incremental innovation

For the past decade or so, Clayton Christensen, Harvard professor and innovationist par excellence, has been preaching that companies that follow a path of incremental innovation ultimately lose to those that embrace disruptive innovation. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, here’s a good link . For those of you who want the bulleted version:

• incremental innovation moves us from rotary to touch-tone phones
• disruptive innovation moves us from landline phones to mobile devices

The first represents a modest usability improvement that speeds the dialing process. The second opens up communications possibilities for a whole new range of users who can use the product/service anytime, anywhere, plus new applications that help them take advantage of small snippets of time that would otherwise be lost.

Most traditional business leaders embrace incremental innovation. It isn’t threatening, it’s safe. It doesn’t require much special knowledge, it’s business as usual – just a little better. For these folks, a mobile phone merely means you can walk and talk at the same time.

And here we are, the movers and shakers of the digital age, trying to explain Twitter to someone worried about getting tangled in a cord. See the problem?

“Is there a speed limit to technology?”

I know CEOs who still have their secretaries print out their e-mail and then dictate a response. Don’t laugh, this happens more than you might think. In general, the over-forty crowd is nervous and seeks security; the over-fifty crowd spends considerable time forcing our unfamiliar online world into familiar offline boxes; the over-sixties wish all this would simply go away and hope retirement comes swiftly and uneventfully (the same way most of us view air travel these days).

Speed limits

Most C-levels are unwilling to accept that the processes that got them where they are today are probably not the processes that are going to move their company forward. We “online gurus” talk about all the marvelous things new media can accomplish whereas C-levels want detailed business cases that prove our view of the future is true. This is an almost impossible task as so many benefits remain undocumented and common sense is rarely supported by statistical evidence. Remember, a good business plan provides guidance, but it can never predict the future. As Bismarck’s Minister of War, Helmuth von Moltke, remarked: “No battle plan can survive confrontation with the enemy.” Many CEOs forget this in their quest for justification.

Challenge: show why adopting our recommendations, although not always provable in a business case sense, ultimately prepares a company to meet an uncertain future. Ten years ago, the buzzword was “future-proofing”. This is an argument that will be understood by those gathered in the boardroom. Show how the website or online application fits into the total brand package and why it needs to be part of the overall business plan, not just a supplement to offline marketing efforts. Airlines and the travel industry in general are particularly good at this, so draw on these for case stories.

“Who sets the limit?”

CEOs who insist on staying in the comfort zone are setting speed limits for technological adoption. And these limits will only be increased when enough other CEOs move from early adopter to early majority (to purloin Geoffrey A. Moore’s “crossing the chasm” terminology). This will probably take years, although I hope we can accelerate the process.

Isabella didn’t really take much risk, but CEO Ferdinand did by trusting his wife and Columbus. This took real guts!

I’m still amazed that Columbus managed to talk Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella into letting him sail off in search of a hypothetical passage to India. Granted, he had Isabella as a champion (much as we take a visionary marketing director hostage when trying to get a budget approved). Happily, King Ferdinand got the hell out of the way and let Isabella sell her jewels to finance the project. Let’s face it, back in 1492, sailing west to India had all the makings of a MAJOR disruptive innovation. And here’s the point: Isabella didn’t really take much risk, but CEO Ferdinand did by trusting his wife and Columbus. This took real guts!

If we are going to take the brakes off of innovation and help C-levels get the most out of modern communications, we have to remind them of the benefits of taking calculated risks – this ability is the hallmark of almost all good leaders. Right now, C-levels tend to listen to ill-informed advisers who advocate a course of incremental innovation. It’s usually the wrong advice and will ultimately harm their company, but it’s safe, secure, and non-threatening. And by the time the damage is recognized, probably no one will remember who made the fateful decision. Seen with CEO eyes, this is a win-win situation, at least in the short term.

Challenge: don’t talk about how you are going to do the job. Instead, explain why our work will help them achieve both short- and long-term success. Demonstrate the role of the website or application as part of the overall service/branding strategy. No matter what market you’re in, there is certain to be at least one major player who is doing things right. Check out your local telcos, for example.

Are there speeding tickets?

Yes. But not for going too fast. Rather, the market punishes those who move too slowly. Today, a corporate entity needs to address the needs of many groups – to ignore any of them is a recipe for disaster. For example, in addition to the usual product and service information (sales and marketing), there needs to be information for investors (IR), employer branding tools to reduce churn and facilitate recruitment (HR), plus the basic trustbuilding and credibility mechanisms identified by Stanford University. There are many more things, too, that don’t fall into convenient departmental categories (which, for most organizations, means there is not yet an “owner” who can be held accountable for most online activities – the web in particular. This will change.)

The danger of moving forward is far less than the danger of standing still.

In short, the C-level who only thinks in terms of marketing is going to get into trouble. Our responsibility is to make sure ALL the work is done. It’s not difficult to do if we’re given the resources; we just need to reassure business leaders that this use of time and money prepares the company to address future developments in a professional and profitable manner.

Challenge: show the C-levels that maintaining the status quo is ultimately a strategy for failure by using illustrations from related industries. Clayton Christensen’s books can help with examples. The danger of moving forward is far less than the danger of standing still. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Connecting the dots

No, we don’t want to slow the pace of either technology or innovation. There cannot be a speed limit. The problem is not that technology moves too fast, but as Crystal Kubitsky observed, the psyche cannot follow. Can we connect the dots in a disruptive world? Of course we can – but we must acknowledge and respect the concerns of the C-levels. We must use our expertise to help them do their job better in the future, not to trash their past decisions. We need to put them at ease, not expect them to become experts in our industry.

But to paraphrase a great tweet from @beckiemanley,  like Wendy in “Peter Pan“, the business community isn’t ever going to find Neverland if they don’t trust us when we tell them they really can fly.

Image by sundaune / cc-attribution

We’ve been hearing a lot about privacy the last couple of years. And with the advent of Google Street View, GPS and location tracking, and growing social-media communities, we’re going to be hearing a lot more. What most folks don’t understand is that the concept of “privacy” is incredibly different depending on which side of the Atlantic you live. Yet in an increasingly globalized world, it’s becoming more and more important to acknowledge these divergent points of view.

Freedom of speech vs. personal privacy

Americans tend to be less concerned than Europeans. Privacy, after all, is not a clear constitutional right whereas freedom of speech is. Freedom of speech is actually the first article in the U.S. Bill of Rights. It’s not that Americans don’t value privacy, but they often view it as a tool to prevent government from overstepping its authority. This represents a fundamental difference in the way Americans and Europeans react to privacy issues.

In Europe, privacy is considered a basic human right. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights spells it out, “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” To put things in perspective, freedom of speech first comes in Article 10.

Who is listening?

Facebook and privacy

Much of the most recent discussion was triggered by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg who in January claimed that “privacy is no longer a social norm” – this in the wake of a key change in the default privacy setting for his social platform. (the default value for profile content is now “public” rather than “private”)

Zuckerberg may be correct that the norm has changed. But we’re talking about a self-fulfilling prophecy. If privacy is no longer de rigueur, I think it’s because we stopped caring. And we should care – very much. Just because Zuckerberg (and others) are pushing for greater openness (and less privacy), that doesn’t make openness universally correct. Unfortunately, most of the users of Facebook won’t even know this has happened and certainly won’t think about the long-term consequences. Zuckerberg wins by default (pun intended). If we don’t show that we value our privacy, we will surely lose it forever.

If privacy is no longer de rigueur, I think it’s because we stopped caring. And we should care – very much.

“But everyone’s doing it”

Some years ago, Nokia, aware that people were sending SMSs while driving (which is illegal), started to experiment with a steering-wheel input device. Nokia’s design team argued, “Well, people are going to do this anyway, so we might as well make it easier.” Eventually, Nokia had the good sense to drop the project. Just because people do something dumb, doesn’t mean it should be officially sanctioned. If this was a viable argument, a murderer could theoretically defend himself with the following: “Well, people are going to die anyway. So I just helped things along.”

Changing the norm

As user-experience designers, I think it’s our duty to protect those who don’t know they need to protect themselves. We cannot allow individual companies, such as Google and Facebook, to dictate our privacy norms. We need a higher authority.

Where is the international organization that is going to help set impartial standards? The W3C? Their privacy page (last updated in 2007) merely helps people write privacy policies for websites – the legal blather few ever read.  So where is our industry’s “International Privacy Charter”? Again, search for “privacy charter” and most of the information is 8-10 years old.

Where is our industry’s “International Privacy Charter”?

Why haven’t we written one? Maybe we should – and the sooner the better.

Image by Niklas Wolkert / cc-attribution

Along with globalization/globalisation, we increasingly see folks insist on standards (or more often beat each other over the head with standards). But have we actually “standardized” what we mean when we talk about “standardization”, “rules”, and “best practice”?

Gosh, we can’t even agree how to spell “standardization”! The Daily Telegraph, the conservative London newspaper insists on “standardisation”. The Times of London, the Observer, and the Oxford English Dictionary use a “zed” as the Brits say.

So, let’s take a look at how these terms affect our work and our lives.

Defining the damned thing

At a recent business meeting, someone asked, “What are standards?” Almost immediately, some irritating iPhonista came up with this quote from the IEEE website:

“A standard is a published document that sets out specifications and procedures designed to ensure that a material, product, method, or service meets its purpose and consistently performs to its intended use.”

Pretty awful, if you ask me.

The discussion rapidly deteriorated as the historical and semantic implications of “specifications” and “norms” were pondered. Then someone asked the key question, “Why are standards important?”

And I had an epiphany: “A standard is any device that creates comfort through mutual understanding. Standards make you feel secure, safe. They give you direction and confidence when you’re faced with an unfamiliar situation.”

Eric’s comprehensive guide to standards, rules, and best practices

Standards are guidelines. They have no obligation to provide a best way of doing things, only an agreed-upon way of doing things (we’ve agreed to drive on the right in Denmark, on the left in the Botswana).

Rules come about because someone has abused a privilege and taken advantage of an undocumented situation (Speed limits are the result of this).

Best practices are simply good advice (Don’t tweet and drive). Their goal is to provide qualitative improvements. (But we’ll discuss this in a moment)

So, if standards aren’t necessarily improving quality, why bother with them? Well, consider this: when you get in a car, isn’t it nice that the opposing traffic stays on their side of the road? “Comfort through mutual understanding.” And that’s the essence of my definition.

Where do standards come from?

Get behind the wheel of an antique Ford and the chances are you’ll have problems. The Model T resembles nothing else I’ve ever driven (check out this YouTube instructional video). The 1916 Cadillac was the first car to provide basic controls and shift patterns we’d recognise today.

So what brought about standardization? The car rental industry back in the early 1920s. Can’t rent a car if folks can’t drive it, right? And who has time to teach them?

Why are shoe sizes standardized (at least within national boundaries)? To meet the needs of the mail-order industry.

Why do clocks run clockwise? Because that’s the way a sundial moves. So we draw on past experience to make new experiences easier to understand.

Standards reduce stress in unfamiliar situations

Personally, I like most standards. They guide social convention and help prevent you from making a total fool of yourself in polite company. For example, in Lithuania, napkins are kept on the table, not in your lap. In Croatia, the napkin is unfolded and placed in your lap. In Chile, paper napkins stay on the table; cloth napkins go in the lap. At McDonalds, napkins are optional no matter where you are.

But diversity of this kind is both fascinating and troublesome.

Why is airport security so different from airport to airport? “Take your shoes off” “Don’t take your shoes off.” Why are duty-free articles bought and sealed at an EU airport not allowed to pass through Switzerland? (“It’s the Americans. They make the rules.”) Is Indian “paneer” a liquid? Depends on who you ask at the Delhi airport. (Actually, it’s a kind of cheese.)

These “security concerns” are unnecessarily stressful events because of the arbitrary nature of the decisions made by front-line personnel. There is no “comfort” because we’re not experiencing standards, but merely a vague collection of rules.

Of course, once you get past check-in and security, the airports are pretty good about providing consistency. Gates are called “gates” (although they’re called “stands” if you’re a pilot). Gates are numbered with Latin numbers. Transit halls and baggage claim are generally easy to find.

So, like rental cars, we don’t need to learn how to use an airport each time we’re plunked down in one.

Not so with railway stations.

Now departing from Track 9 ¾

Don’t count on train stations to agree on much when it comes to wayfinding. For most people, the only trains they ever see take them from the airport to the center of town. But even in homogeneous Scandinavia, there’s no agreement on what the main station is called:

Oslo S (Oslo Sentralstasjon)
Stockholm C (Stockholms Centralstation)
København H (Københavns Hovedbanegården)

Even if you can navigate the Scandinavian capitols, this won’t help you anywhere else. Heaven forbid you end up in Geneva, where the central station is called “Cornavin”. London has no central station so you need to decide if Waterloo, Paddington, or Liverpool Street will bring you closest to your destination. Even Glenn Miller’s famous “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” left from New York’s Pennsylvania Station, not Grand Central.

No mention of "tracks" at the Zürich Hauptbahnhof

Standardization is a means to an end, nothing more

The rather brilliant Jared Spool and the equally brilliant Don Norman have explained that simplicity in itself should not be a goal. All of this ease-of-use crap we talk about doesn’t always hold water. Jared rightly explains that our job as user-experience designers is to keep the distance between what we need to know in order to accomplish our task, and what we already know as short as possible. I urge you to travel thousands of miles to see Jared explain this simple concept. It’s worth every cent.

Standardization helps shorten this “need-to-know”-to-“know” process. And that’s why standardization plays such an important part in our work.

The “best practice” trap

I said earlier that “best practices” represent good advice that helps bring about qualitative improvements. But there’s a key caveat: Just as you can reduce things to the lowest common denominator, best practice merely brings things up to the highest common denominator. Best practice defines the very box we want to think outside of!

My innovation lifecycle model

Best practice is the outcome following a period of innovation. Unlike invention, innovation is always planned and always solves a problem. And new periods of innovation build on the best practices that resulted from an earlier cycle.

Our challenge

How can we prevent standards from deteriorating into silly sets of rules? How can we prevent best practice from inspiring pseudo-standards that don’t actually provide comfort through mutual understanding? How can we use all of these tools to facilitate change and growth across national and cultural borders?

The discussion starts right here.

The Johnnies have asked me to write a monthly column about culture and concerns as they relate to cross-border user experience (UX), in Europe and beyond. This is an honour for someone born in Texas, USA (me) but probably seems odd to most everyone else (you). Let me share some background.

My father was Austrian. My mother’s family was German. The “Old World” wasn’t just a place in the memory of an aging grandparent and we certainly didn’t worship our ethnicity (as third- and fourth-generation Americans are apt to do). We travelled extensively every year (Rome and Florence were almost always on the itinerary). After university, I moved to Denmark to become a director at the Danish Royal Theatre and have remained in Copenhagen for 33 years. Here, I feel I’ve closed a cultural circle. Although our family tree has been pruned considerably, I’ve made sure the Reisses weren’t chased out of Europe forever. The Nazis have finally and definitively lost.

(Curiously, my father knew that he would never be returning to Vienna when the SS literally kicked him down the stairs of his gymnasium in March, 1938. Yet I have known since preschool that I was somehow destined to return.)

So what are you, Eric?

A New Yorker

Well, my work ethic is clearly Central European (I focus on getting the job done). My politics are decidedly Scandinavian (socialized and empathetic). But I also believe in the American Dream (bootstraps and the rewards of hard work). My temper is Latin (no idea where that came from). And as a Texan, I cherish cultural identity but reluctantly accept that I am part of something larger. (In comparison, New Yorkers don’t really acknowledge the rest of the world. The Steinberg cover for the March 29, 1976 edition of the New Yorker sums this up admirably:

As to language, I sometimes feel like the crazy monk, Salvatore, in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose. Salvatore speaks “all languages and none”. Returning from Geneva recently, I realized I’d muddled through in seven languages that day: French to pay the hotel and manage my airport check-in, Danish and Swedish to the SAS flight crew, German to my seatmate on the plane, English to an inarticulate taxi-driver of uncertain nationality, plus greetings to two of my neighbors – diplomats from Egypt (Sabaa’h el kheer) and Serbia (Dobro jutro).

So much for the long-winded introduction. I hope you’ll follow my cultural journey. And I hope I can justify the faith placed in me by the Johnny Holland editors.

Note: I tend to say “we” and “our” about Americans, Europeans, Texans, Danes, Germans, Austrians, Chicagoans, and eyeglass-wearers. Please forgive and bear with me.

What is “Europe”?

Listen to CNN and you’ll probably conclude that Americans think the European Community is a funny-accented version of the United States (and 33 years of empirical observation on my part suggests that this is exactly how they think). But we (Europeans) know this analogy only serves to make “Europe” easier to understand to folks who aren’t terribly interested in understanding us to begin with. I guess we shouldn’t really care, but hey – North Americans have their own “defining the damned thing” debate. We might as well have ours.

Let’s face it, “Europe” exists on a map, but nowhere else that I know of. Honestly, when are we actually “European”? – except when we’re forced into a convenient stereotype by another geographic group (Americans and Aussies, for example). Otherwise, we’re Danes and Poles and French and Italians and Greeks and Germans and Dutch and Belgians and Romanians and Brits (and you Brits really are a case unto yourselves – and irritatingly proud of it. The rest of us haven’t yet figured out how to tease you into submission but we’re working on it). How many nations are there in “Europe”? I can argue for about 40. (Or 400. Or even 4,000.)

Within each nation, there are incredible regional differences – a Dane from Himmerland sees the world differently than a Dane from Djursland. A Swede from Halland is different from one from Blekinge. Is Galacia part of Poland, the Ukraine, Austria – or Spain? In Zagreb, Croatia, they’ll tell you “The Balkans start on the other side of the river”. Dalmatia and Istra are Balkan; Slavonia is not. Most folks have never heard of these places. But that’s what makes Europe so exciting, right?

Granularity, European style

The most amusing case-in-point is that of the “Swiss” – you don’t really exist at all, do you? There are French, German, and Italian “Swiss” – but you stick together mostly for the sake of economic expediency, not because you like each other very much. And let’s not stop there – you further divide Switzerland into 23 states or “cantons”. And the individual cantons don’t like each other very much either. Now, these cantons also have cities – and here’s the punchline – in the city of Chur, there’s an old joke: “There are three qualifications for becoming Bishop of Chur: 1) you must be Roman Catholic, 2) your must be a consecrated priest, and 3) you must be a native of Chur (or at least from Kanton Graubünden). But in truth, the first two requirements can be dispensed with.”

The joke is, it’s not a joke!

The rest of the world wants us to act like a homogeneous group. But basically, none of us “Europeans” really and truly want to assimilate (you Swiss are just more up-front about it). Let’s face it, the more our nation-states become part of some larger global alliance, the more we cultivate our ethnic and geographical roots. In fact, this could be our common denominator. We are a group united by geography and mutual distrust – which is the surprising basis for many successful collaborations. We’ll put up with a fair amount of cultural diversity – as long as it doesn’t get in the way of our personal or national interests.

Don’t talk about the [war/food]

Our granular identity shows up in the oddest places. For example, here’s a direct transcript of a conversation between Northern Italians at an IT conference I attended a couple of years back:

Man from Piemonte: “My mother makes the world’s best Bagna Cauda.”
Man from Veneto: “Ahh. But but does she use Bianco Veneto?”
Man from Lombardia: “Well in Milan …”
Piemonte and Veneto in unison: “Shut up. You know nothing about garlic!”

Our politicians think that if they change the labelling enough, they’ll eventually describe the product correctly. Sorry, this is a tactic doomed to failure. Happily, no one cares very much. Throughout my years in Denmark, I’ve seen the political community move from (and to):

- The Common Market (CM)
- The European Economic Community (EEC)
- The European Community (EC)
- The European Union (EU)

Ahh…progress. Thank goodness for “search and replace”.

Anyway, let’s explore “Europe” (whatever that is) and examine how our user experiences play out across historical borders that represent more than just arbitrary lines on a map (hey, North Americans, look at all the razor-straight lines on your map. Then look at our map. This is why Nebraska and Bulgaria can never be equated).

Thanks for reading this far. Now tell me what your thoughts are.