Posts Tagged Quality
The beginning of the end for Apple?
I know what you’re thinking, I must be a complete idiot to think Apple is in trouble. Perhaps I am. But the recent fall out from the iPhone 4 release and the Apple response (or more specifically, the Steve Jobs response) strikes me as something symptomatic of a wider issue.
For those of you unaware, the new iPhone 4 has got some issues with signal reception when you hold it in a certain place. That certain place just happens to be an area which a lot of people will be holding the phone – you kinda have to in order to make a call. Now there is clearly a process failure in the testing procedure for this release; it’s a pretty fundamental mistake to make. I actually flashed back to the story of the iPhone 4 that was found in a bar; it had a special case on it which made it look like an iPhone 3GS. This case would have also prevented the problem from occurring, so it seems likely that despite thorough field testing, the problem didn’t surface.
Jobs’ reaction to the problem is key here. Reportedly he said “just avoid holding it in that way”. Arrogance aside, this is symptomatic of the way Apple used to do business. Apple users, specifically Mac users, have been used to their devices not fitting in very well with the rest of the world. Typically, you’re average Mac user is more technically savvy than your average PC user, or at least that used to be the case. As such, they have no problem in working their way around these little glitches, using the approach Jobs dictates. Working around the glitches is the price you pay for a perceived better experience (often manifesting itself as a cloud of smug, but that’s another story).
Now Apple is going mainstream with devices that increasingly replicate and supersede the function of the desktop PC. They are moving from an audience with above average technical ability towards the mass-market. These are the people who don’t do workarounds, they do returns. They lack brand loyalty when faced with technical glitches.
My question is, now that they are producing computing devices with mass-market appeal, does Apple have the ability to adapt to its new market demands? Top of this list of demands is Customer Service and from this episode it would appear to not be a part of the Apple culture. We all know that Culture is difficult to change, especially when you are lead by an enigmatic and charismatic leader like Jobs. Monkey see, monkey do.
Apple could see this as an opportunity to redefine service in the tech industry, which has been historically poor. The very presence of 3rd party companies offering technical help as a middle-man suggests that this much is true – the Geek Squad wouldn’t exist in a market place where tech suppliers excelled at customer service. Amazons recent acquisition of Zappos.com, whose competency lies in its brilliant service, could be seen as a signal of intent. They are aware of the need to improve and are willing (in theory) to radically alter the way they do business in order to achieve this.
For me this could be the beginning of the end for Apple. If they fail to service their mainstream audience then their products brand appeal will suffer. Without the brand appeal I wonder how Apple will continue to differentiate themselves in a world which is increasingly innovative and increasingly design orientated.
Working Towards a Shared View of Quality
One major issue that faces the E-Learning industry as we look to grow and consolidate is the issue of Quality. Ask two E-learning professionals for what amounts to “Quality” E-learning and you will probably get two very different responses.
Broadly speaking, there are two views on Quality. The first is pedagogical. If a piece of E-Learning is pedagogically sound then some would argue the presentation of this information, so long as it’s usable, is largely irrelevant to the measure of Quality.
This is a view largely taken by higher education institutions; I’ve spoken to rather a lot of them and all of the internal E-learning departments at universities appear to share this view. Of course they would, it is at the heart of any universities core competence to know pedagogy. This approach is not limited to a specific media (say PowerPoint, or HTML) and can be used in more social learning frameworks, but never-the-less, presentation is barely a part of the Quality measure. Here it is more of an order qualifier; is it usable? Yes, tick, done.
At the other end of the scale are those with little to no interest when it comes to pedagogy in E-Learning. Here it is all about style over content; making sure it wows the audience and captivates the imagination with little thought as to the learning framework itself. Sometimes this doesn’t matter; a bite-size piece of learning which is tightly focussed and lasts 10 minutes is quite likely to hit the nail on the head without any in-depth analysis as to the pedagogical nature of the learning. Sometimes it doesn’t. I saw a great looking E-learning demo the other day, nice dashboard layout, hand-drawn images to complement the content and lots of interactivity. The questions were awful, they had little consistency in the approach and the feedback was completely nonsensical. The E-learning looked great, but I would have soon resorted to just hitting the “next” button to get through things as reading it was largely pointless.
It’s worth pointing out at this stage that rapid authoring tools often miss both of these measures of Quality. As these two views stand you either look good, or read good (forgive the expression). So unless you are a designer flexing their muscles into the world of E-learning, or a teacher who knows their online teaching techniques, you aren’t likely to create a piece of Quality piece of E-learning. This assumes that you have the ability to manipulate these rapid and easy authoring tools at all. Whilst the tools are increasingly easy to use for someone like me (you know the type, the one that always fixes the TV/DVD/VCR for the extended family) they remain fairly complex for those whose software experience is largely limited to the Office family of products. But that’s another story.
It would be easy to think that these two views on Quality, whilst fundamentally different, are easily reconcilable. Let’s just make a piece of E-learning that has pedagogical foundations that would make Oxford proud and then get 2Advanced studios to knock it together. Your first issue here is that those ingredients alone aren’t enough to make a great piece of E-learning; both parties need to know something of the others world. But your bigger issue, expense aside, is that the proponents of these two views on Quality often believe they are not reconcilable at all.
The arguments are thus:
“Pretty pictures take away from the real purpose of the product and actually detract from the learning experience”.
“Pedagogical frameworks are out of date, hugely restrictive and make any piece of E-learning long-winded and largely dull”.
Solving this issue will take movement from both sides. Pedagogy will need to evolve (it is, see Connectivism) to take into account the ways in which people are now learning online. Its proponents will also have to step outside of their core competence and realise that creating a piece of E-learning with engaging looks and increasingly complex interactions will only add to the value of the end product, if done correctly.
Equally designers need to be much more than their job titles suggest. They need to develop an understanding of teaching online and to realise that style does not trump substance, it merely augments it.
Developing a shared view on Quality will help the E-learning industry to evolve its next-generation of content and learning. At the moment these two polar opposite views don’t sit well together and present a confusing front to end-users. You might not dare to question the authority of an austere institution telling you that their learning experts will ensure quality learning transfer, but how many words will it take to explain that to your boss, who thinks the end product looks awful?
The corporate E-learning world is a little different to the world of higher education. When you attend a university you are there to learn. When you go to work, sitting through a training course is not at the front of your mind. It’s a job to be done, probably a monotonous one. E-learning needs to reach out more to this audience, to appeal, to make the user want more. Or perhaps less ambitiously, just to avoid pissing people off.
Both sides have good arguments. We need to move to a situation where people realise they can and should have it both ways. Anything less is failing to make Quality E-learning content.
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