Enterprise culture and the UI

I think in today's times its a given that we as designers take cultural factors into account while designing. The term 'culture' is actually quite bothersome to me, because it seems really difficult to pin point the exact characteristics that make up this 'culture'.

Of course answers can be found about the culture of a people with anthropological studies, looking up some history etc. Poets, writers, film makers and other media all contribute toward shaping and 'preserving' a culture. Blogs like the this one (I am co-authoring and hence promoting :D) are the also examples of artifacts that help you understand culture.

So the term 'culture' is ambiguous I think because there's no one direct way of understanding or defining it. Now think about the term 'work culture' or 'enterprise culture'. How hard is that to grasp? Will understanding it actually help in designing better UI's for enterprise software? What sources could I tap into if I need to understand this? Who are the gate keepers of the 'enterprise culture'?

This is not Surprising

Of course, some already thought about thinking of a service in terms of a script & how film can be used as tool for experience designer.

Jeff Howard, whose blog I follow fairly regularly has a few entries of his own which you can read up here and here.

Surprise in a Service

Recently I was surprised with a government service; pleasantly. When I had visited the same office in person, I received some pretty rough treatment and was somewhat assured of being left in the dark for atleast a month. But, things took a completely different turn when they mailed my documents way before time...surprise!

Twists in films is fairly common (Seven, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Shawashank Redemption). Would you use twists in your service? What kind of twists?

How do you script a service design twist ? A pleasant one hopefully! I wonder....

Mr. Azim Premji@SAP Labs, Palo Alto

I was quite excited about this address by the Wipro owner and one of the top thirty entrepreneurs of all time (Business Week).

Fact : The speech started a good 20-25 minutes later than the scheduled time (I had gotten my colleague from Israel to attend it, but he had to leave since it got quite late). I don't want to be sarcastic about this whole typical "IST" thing, so I am just stating what happened. It was unfortunate and really wish it had started on time.

Anyways, the speech content was a summarized bullet point list of Mr Premji's lessons in life. It was plain to say the least. "Lesson number one is..." ....& it went on till "Lesson number seven..". There were some very valuable points in there and the man's achievements and contributions are truly phenomenal. Quite simply, he deserves every little praise he gets.And he speaks well too, just not 'attractive well', I guess. His style of speaking seemed honest and crisp. The enormity of his experiencing are humbling.

I was most interested in his take on design. He kept mentioning "listening to your customers is the key", but no mention of design efforts (read user research). Another theme of the speech was the social impact corporations make (again no mention of design).

Mr Premji seems a firm believer in "technology as a liberator". His stance on viewing all things from the IT perspective is slightly unsettling (for me as a designer). And doubly so because he is one of the leaders of India in the software industry. He talks about all the right things, but a 360 degree view is lacking. His emphasis on science and engineering degrees is also a bit conservative to the point of being obsolete.

What he has done is inspirational, but its never always about technological determinism.

An experienced stalwart, but a somewhat incomplete 'visionary'.