The Strategic First Step....

Eduardo Olvera, author of the VUIDesign Blog, sent me a very thoughtful response to my note about taking the first steps towards building a real IVR reform movement. Here is an excerpt from his note:

As you well pointed out, there was great resistance at the beginning, and I agree with some of the things that happened after that original resistance. But I think one of the biggest factors some people miss of that story - which is also directly related to your other points about advocates - is the huge role kids played on it.

That's right. If you remember, once the government enforced rules to require kids to use seat belts while riding on a car, the side-effect they didn't envision was what started to happen when kids started asking their parents why it was that they had to wear seat belts when their parents weren't, and guess what, I can't think of a better way to convert users than to have you realize as a parent that you teach by example, and therefore the parents started to use it too!

Going back to Gethuman, I think it would be great if we could find a similar legislation/kid combo which may on one hand start enforcing and monitoring change (e.g. CTI, hold-times, etc.), while on the other hand promote change from the inside... someone with enough power to make us question our current ways of doing things, and why not, ask us directly "and why aren't you wearing one?"

This is the kind of thinking we should be doing if we want to make headway in forcing companies to invest in quality!

I agree. The promotion of the rights and safety of the vulnerable in general and kids in particular has been key to the civilizational drive: labor laws also had their genesis in the protection of children, from which things like rights we take for granted today followed (sick days, 8-hour day, 5-day week); many food safety and air quality initiatives owe their existence for the concern of children also.

For us, then, we need to think carefully about what would be the vulnerable constituency that can enable us to make the qualitative leap in terms of forcing companies to invest in user-centric developments of phone automation systems. I want to think about this some more, but this is a great first step in the right direction.