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randomrainman · 3 years

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why the american campaign in afghanistan was destined for failure, and other strange stuff.

Our campaign in Afghanistan which began on October 7, 2001, dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom” for some peculiar and uniquely American reason, was doomed from the very beginning, and most of the blame for the failure is ours.

Pictured: A group of Afghans rest near Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. (Photo: me)

So why did this happen in the first place?

Detailing the entirety of Afghanistan’s tumultuous 19th- and 20th-century history here would an arduous (and, ultimately, pointless) task, but, put succinctly, the USA and Afghanistan’s eastern neighbour, Pakistan, were instrumental in the initial development of the Taliban as a viable militant organisation and major player in Afghanistan.

Pictured: a Soviet soldier takes cover near Herat, Afghanistan. (Photo: AP/Jacques Langevin)

The Soviet Union embroiled itself in a bitter conflict in Afghanistan from 24 December 1979 until 15 February 1989. Through Pakistani intelligence services, the CIA, in its anti-commie fervour, armed and funded anti-Soviet resistance groups, collectively known as mujahideen (which is Swedish for “turboprop plane”, or maybe just Arabic for “those engaged in jihad”). Spirited resistance and brilliant guerrilla-style tactics by the mujahideen, which included future prominent Taliban figures such as Haibatullah Akhundzada and Mohammad Omar, led to the eventual departure of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in what has been termed (perhaps ironically, considering our current situation) “Russia’s Vietnam”. At least 562,000 Afghans perished in the Soviet-Afghan War, and millions more either fled the country or were internally displaced. This conflict also likely directly contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Pictured: Former Representative Charlie Wilson (D-TX) with a group of mujahideen. Wilson championed a veritable Cyclone of bullshit. (Photo: Wikipedia/unknown author)

As a civil war further ravaged Afghanistan, the Taliban, founded in 1994 by Islamic cleric (mullah) Mohammad Omar, emerged as the preeminent force amongst the mujahideen. Backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the Deobandi Islamist group quickly made territorial gains and captured Kabul in 1996, brutally murdering former President Najibullah to punctuate their conquest.

Under the newly established Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban regime went right to work in establishing stringent shari’a law over the territories they subdued, barring women from education and work, suppressing ethnic and religious minorities, and outlawing music and TV (which, with the exception of the last thing, should sound familiar to anyone familiar with our own history).

A certain Usama bin Laden (UBL), who founded the terrorist organisation al-Qa’ida (literally “the base”) in 1988 during the Soviet-Afghan War, funnelled resources, to include arms and foreign fighters, into the mujahideen resistance effort in Afghanistan through his Maktab al-Khidamat. Though the organisation provided little in terms of overall impact on the war, it boasted a backing of both Pakistan’s ISI and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency, and was later absorbed into al-Qa’ida.

Having had his Saudi citizenship stripped and amid mounting pressure from Saudi Arabia, the US, and Sudan, bin Laden opted to return to Afghanistan in 1996, where he would forge an alliance with Mullah Omar. Omar’s Taliban regime provided a suitable, ahem, base of operations for bin Laden’s burgeoning global terrorism aspirations, and Pakistan provided continued funding and manpower for the Taliban and its al-Qa’ida allies up until 2001.

Pictured: Ahmad Shah Massoud and a group of mujahideen in the Panjshir Valley, 1984. (Photo: Jean-Luc Bremont/AP)

Ahmad Shah Massoud, a guerrilla commander who famously repelled Soviet occupying forces from the Panjshir Valley, became a leading figure in anti-Taliban efforts. Massoud, along with Abdul Rashid Dostum, a polarising yet powerful ethnic Uzbek warlord, formed the United Front (commonly referred to as the Northern Alliance). Instead of the Pashtun-centric approach utilised by the Taliban, Massoud sought to incorporate Afghanistan’s numerous ethnicities under the United Front’s umbrella.

Despite the Northern Alliance’s clear opposition to the Taliban and ostensibly having prior knowledge that radical elements were at play, the United States provided zero backing to the resistance efforts. Massoud himself addressed the European Parliament and warned of an imminent attack, and also expressed the need for US aid in combatting Taliban belligerents.

Two days prior to the September 11 attacks, the highly revered Massoud prepared to give an interview to a pair of Arab TV journalists, and it would be the last thing he did, as the “journalists” detonated a suicide bomb fashioned out of a TV camera, which was apparently stolen in France. The "Lion of Panjshir” was buried in his home village of Bazarak, Panjshir Valley, with hundreds of thousands of people in attendance.

Pictured: The World Trade Center’s Twin Towers erupt in flames after airliners hijacked by al-Qaeda operatives crash into the buildings. According to conspiracy nutjobs, these planes and their passengers never existed, and instead flew into a wormhole and into a parallel universe. (Photo: Silva/Reuters)

Following 9/11, then-President George W. Bush threatened the Taliban regime and demanded that they deliver al-Qa’ida leaders in Afghanistan to American authorities, an undertaking they promptly decided to never do. Naturally, Bush came to shove, and a joint resolution that somehow declared war on the very concept of terror was issued.

The United States also finally decided to team up with the Northern Alliance at the onset of OEF in October 2001. Fortunately, it paid off; the Taliban regime rapidly disintegrated after being bombed into the Bronze Age. Despite having effectively vanquished the Taliban, the US failure to capture or kill UBL at Tora Bora likely protracted the conflict into the behemoth bumblefuck we currently recognise.

We did manage to finally kill UBL on May 2, 2011, but stayed in Afghanistan for another 10 years, because stuff. In 2018, then-President Trump ordered a drawdown of approximately 7,000 troops, and in February 2020, US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban vice emir Abdul Ghani Baradar signed a peace agreement. In July of this year, we abandoned Bagram Airfield, our biggest base, virtually overnight, and did not bother informing the Afghans, which I’m sure made them extremely happy.

Pictured: The mountains near Bagram, Parwan province, Afghanistan. (Photo: me)

The Taliban resurgence into power was equally swift and met surprisingly little resistance: on August 15, 2021, the Taliban took Kabul and cemented its authority. This version of the militant group the NATO coalition and pro-Western Afghan forces soundly defeated in 2001 made promises to uphold women’s rights and to maintain an inclusive government, though the killing of at least three at a protest in Jalalabad, amongst other things, probably does little to reassure critics that their takeover is a positive turn of events. That said, far-right and neo-Nazi elements are, in fact, celebrating the Taliban’s seizure of power for some depraved Nazi-exclusive reason. It must also be noted that, on multiple levels, the evangelical brand of Christianity possesses significant overlap with the Deobandi Islamist stylings of the Taliban credo.

Pictured: President Joseph Biden discusses Afghanistan at the White House, Aug. 16, 2021 (Photo: AP/Vucci)

As of late, we have frequently underestimated the capabilities of enemy combatants, and the conclusion of our campaign in Afghanistan is no different: President Biden hugely miscalculated the Taliban’s competence in retaking the nation, citing the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces’ (ANDSF) strength in numbers and superiority in armaments and materiel. Following the takeover, he even went on to blame the ANDSF’s lack of resolve as a reason for the US-backed regime’s collapse. While technically true, it also fails to take into account Afghanistan’s nature itself. In reality, Afghanistan, in contrast to a central federal government such as that of the United States, is very splintered, factional, corruption-ridden, and largely fiercely independent and self-governing, especially amongst Pashtun tribes. It’s as if Piru and Crip sets spread out over an entire country ... and over several centuries.

Pictured: “NAYBAHOOOOD!” ... now take away the colours, replace every clothing article with shalwar kameez, and turn it up to a cosmic scale, and you have Afghanistan. (Photo: unitedgangs.com)

An additional blunder was approaching the campaign as one would a conventional conflict, something which clearly does not apply to a place as plagued by lawlessness as Afghanistan. There are largely no clear enemies (or friends, for that matter), and trying to distinguish friend from foe is akin to stabbing a warbling mass of sentient Silly Putty or the weird black goo from Prometheus. The United States will almost always win in terms of sheer might and overall warfighting acumen, as we are skilled in both conventional and asymmetric warfare, but what can you do when you have no idea who the enemy is? When the enemy is willing to “wait it out” indefinitely? Sure, we could literally blow everyone up, but, last I heard, wholesale genocide is a generally frowned-upon activity.

Calling Afghanistan even a Pyrrhic victory seems like an overstatement when you examine the initial mission, our successes, and the final result. Sure, we got UBL, which was supposedly the entire point of the invasion, but if so, why did we choose to remain for another ten years, wasting a metric asston of resources in the process? To build a nation? To soothe our collective ego?

Pictured: Workers construct a road in Afghanistan (Photo: AP/Rahmat Gul)

If one is to build a nation, it requires a decent understanding of and a rapport with the people groups with whom you are dealing. It is not enough to simply install people who share your particular leanings and instruct them to do what you would do. It is certainly inadequate to provide arms, training, and funding to people and expect them to do your bidding when shit hits the fan. This sort of thinking also indirectly implies that we possess some kind of moral authority over the nations we invade. While our post-war influence has proved positive in some places (Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc.), it does not mean that we should be building nations in every place in which we set foot, especially in a place so volatile and tribalistic as Afghanistan.

I have communicated with a few individuals who insist that President Biden’s withdrawal was too hasty, or that we should just remain in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. As much as I am typically revolted by former President Trump and his frequently incoherent word salads, he was right about this particular matter: “The only way they last is if we’re there. What are we going to say? We’ll stay for another 21 years, then we’ll stay for another 50. The whole thing is ridiculous." Yes ... yes, it is ridiculous to prop up an institution that will collapse instantaneously in our absence.

I am no fan of former Senator Ron Paul, and especially Alex Jones and InfoWars, but Paul is almost completely correct in making this statement. Ultimately, a militaristic approach to dominance does not pave the way for longevity. While it is virtually impossible (and infeasible) to return to a 1930s-era isolationist policy, repeated and extended global conflicts only serve to deplete American resources, even if war profiteers have much to gain from it.

Pictured: barbed wire fencing at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. (Photo: me)

Ultimately, rather than rushing pell-mell into unknown and dangerous situations, it is important, especially in this time period, to examine why things went wrong to avoid embroiling ourselves in additional catastrophic and unwinnable debacles such as our Afghanistan conflict. This is a time for self-reflection, rather than outrage.

|the kid|

#Afghanistan #afghan crisis #afghan peace talks #Taliban #US military #USA #crisis #humanitarian crises #Pakistan #international relations #foreign relations #war #Middle East #Pashtun #world affairs #creative writing #Clayton Jones Images #intelligence #CIA

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consummate-deviant · 5 years

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I reckon I’m gonna talk about Hordak for a minute

So, I feel the need to talk about Hordak. This is, perhaps, not unusual. Once upon a time ago, writing stupidly long pseudo-essays about characters I rather liked used to be my thing… and it’s still a bug that bites me from time to time. The timing certainly seems right! Homeboy has been the topic of conversation lately, thanks to the recent release of She-ra season 4, and the manifold feels associated with it. I’m fond of Hordak, as it were, so I don’t mind sharing my perspective on the subject, since there’s some confusion as to his appeal.

The two stances I see taken on Hordak most often, by those who don’t like him, I should specify, are as follows:

A.) He’s an irredeemable villain who has done terrible things, and I don’t see why anyone would like him.

And

B.) He’s a lame, nonthreatening villain.

I’m not going to be engaging with mindset ‘B’ quite as much as with mindset ‘A’ in the following post, in part because the reasons why he’s so lame and nonthreatening are kinda tied to what I’ll be discussing by implication, but mostly because my response to mindset B can be summed up with the following: “You are not wrong, at all. However, that’s literally the entire point of his character, so while you aren’t wrong to be disappointed if you were hoping he would be a more measured, megalomaniacal sort, it’s also not a failure on the part of the writers, since his lack of suitability for the role he was trying to play was always going to be what his story was about.”

Mindset ‘A’, though... well... that’s a bit tricky. Ultimately “irredeemable” is a personal value judgment. The threshold a character must cross before one audience member feels they no longer deserve forgiveness can vary quite wildly from another, and while trying to pass one’s personal opinion off as an objective fact is something of a pastime on the internet, I am- and I cannot state this emphatically enough- NOT your dad… probably. At least, I hope to god… Look, odds are really good that I’m not your dad, so… you do your thing and shine like the crazy diamond you are. I probably can’t change your mind, and considering I don’t even know you, it’d be kinda creepy if I thought I could! What I can do, though, for those genuinely curious how anyone could consider him redeemable, is share my own perspective on the character, and why I think redemption is the direction the story is going, based on how I’ve read the text thus far… So I’m gonna do that. Let’s go over Hordak as he has appeared in the She-Ra reboot.

Part I: Season 1 Hordak

Now see, when we kick things off, I totally get where both the ‘A’ group and the ‘B’ group are coming from. Hordak, as he appears in season 1, seems ruthless, intimidating, and single-minded. Hordak doesn’t carry the conflict in season 1, serving as more of a background presence while Catra and Shadow Weaver, who have a more personal investment in the central narrative, do all the heavy lifting of antagonizing the heroes and angsting.

This keeps the attention off of Hordak, which is precisely how he likes things. When people aren’t going out of their way to interact with him, then it’s easy for him to control what few interactions he does have. That’s what season 1 shows us: Hordak, when he has perfect control over his own narrative. Every scene that features him is shot with a low angle, often with his form either concealed in shadows or with his face partially out of frame. When he speaks, he’s always calm and distant… but calm in that ‘he could totally fly into a rage at any instant’ way that keeps people on their toes. Pragmatic, taciturn, perfectly measured and groomed,… pretty tall! By any metric a reasonable person can measure a competent, intimidating villain, Hordak circa season 1 seems like he’d pass the test.

Part 2: Season 2-3 Hordak

Here’s the thing... though... about season 1 Hordak... that we learn pretty quickly when we transition into season 2: Season 1 Hordak is a massive fraud. Like, seriously, he’s a fabrication created out of necessity to hide a single, prevailing truth: Hordak is an awkward dork who is kinda terrible at being an evil overlord.

I’ve seen some people describe Hordak’s season 2-3 character development with the expression “You thought I was Ozai, but I was actually Zuko this whole time!” Now, I like this expression fine. I’ve borrowed it a time or two in the past, but with regard to Hordak, I prefer to phrase it like this: “You thought I was Emperor Palpatine, but I was really the Wizard of Oz this whole time!” The former expression gives someone an idea of the tropes of the character pretty well, but the latter does a better job, I feel, of showing the relationship between season 1 and later seasons with Hordak. Hordak is a competent, unflappable, all-seeing leader… hey, hey! Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain! Hordak’s past… as a mindless clone created to lead other mindless clones in a mindless clone army… has left him laughably unprepared for the task of leading others. He’s smart, like, in a general bookish sense, but he has no charisma, no interpersonal talents to speak of, and doesn’t really seem to have any grasp of how to motivate his underlings, save to reward talent with promotion.

Out of necessity, Hordak keeps his true self buried underneath multiple layers of protection. The first layer is the season 1 illusion: Delegate direct command of his soldiers to a single adjutant, interact with that adjutant just enough to keep them in line, and remain in his sanctum all day, like the geeky shut-in he is.

The first layer is pretty nice, and seems to have bought him quite a few years running the horde… but what happens if, say, some uppity Force Captain decides to pester him with personal status reports… or some absent-minded inventor decides to raid his lab for a six-sided hex driver? Personally interacting with his minions for too long will reveal the illusion he’s been hiding behind! Well, fear not... This is where the second layer of protection comes in handy.

Yes, Hordak’s second layer of defense: blustering, shouting, and intimidating. Threaten them with dire consequences for bothering him, let them visit the planet with nearly-enough-atmosphere for a few seconds… do everything in his power to frighten them so badly they never want to directly interact with him again. What should happen if this second layer fails him, though? They learn of the most terrifying secret in Hordak’s entire arsenal.

...There is no third layer…

Nope. If a minion is plucky enough to peak behind the curtain of his grand illusion, and then bold enough to stand their ground at the explosion of hot air that follows… he has basically no follow-up left. One of my favorite nonverbal scenes in the entire series is the moment where he realizes that his screaming is having no visible impact on Entrapta. There’s a look on his face that seems to say ‘What the hell am I supposed to do now!?’… like, it’s clear the dude has never needed a third step to scare someone away before.

Ah, but you, my savvy reader, have no doubt cottoned on to the error in my argument thus far. Establishing that Hordak is an awkward, introverted nerd doesn’t really change the fact that he built the Etherian horde. The fact that he’s not especially competent doesn’t change the bad deeds his committed! Well, rest assured, you beautiful person who can claim no paternal relation to me, I agree! However, characterizing Hordak like this goes hand in hand with the other big reveal of season 3: his backstory.

Now, cards on the table, I’ve been taking Hordak as he comes, and up until this point I didn’t really have any strong idea of whether they were going the big-bad or redeemed-bad route with him. It wasn’t until season 3, when his origin was revealed, that I genuinely began to suspect that the redemption path was where the writers were headed, because it re-frames his actions in a subtle, but pretty important way.

With no Horde Prime, when one looks at Hordak, they see a man who orchestrated a corrupt and oppressive system for his personal benefit, who holds others in disdain due to self-aggrandizement, and is motivated by a desire to be seen as greater than everyone else. That is a character who would be very hard to convincingly redeem. While I’m loathe to raise the specter of Steven Universe discourse here, it’s a lot like the notion of redeeming the Diamonds… and, while I have no strong feelings about that show one way or the other, suffice it to say I can at least see why their redemption is controversial.

Horde Prime shifts the context of Hordak’s actions, though. Now, Hordak is a man who perpetuates the very system he is, himself, a victim of, because it’s the only system he knows. His conflict with others is born from the projection of his own self loathing. Said self-loathing comes from his chief motivation, which is to be acknowledged as worthy by an authority figure who has no interest or desire in ever offering him that acknowledgment.

Such a character is still flawed and villainous, because of course it is. If a character has done nothing wrong, they don’t need redemption in the first place. It’s a lot easier to accept the struggles of a flawed character if they’re a victim of oppression rather than its source. To borrow the SU comparison one final time, the Horde Prime twist reveals to us that Hordak isn’t a diamond, he’s just another one of the countless gems caught in their system.

By the by, does “perpetuates a system they, themselves, are victims of, suffers from conflicts born of projected self loathing, and desire to be acknowledged by an authority figure who has no interest or desire in providing said acknowledgment” sound familiar? I hope so! It ties into my final point of the day.

Part 3: Season 4 Hordak (aka “Hordak and Catra have basically the same arc”)

Now, implying similarity in the character arcs of Hordak and Catra has, historically, been a fraught endeavor. Even I, Hordak stan extraordinaire, felt that we needed to see a bit more of where the writers were wanting to take Hordak before we went and made comparisons. Then season 4 happened… and guys… the subtitle of season 4 may as well have been “Hordak and Catra have basically the same arc.”

Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. Catra had people she could perceive as her peers, which granted her a social circle outside of her direct superiors whom she could feel camaraderie with, which added a dimension to the emotional turmoil she felt, but in broad strokes it seems to be a comparison that the writers are inviting us to make. Their alliance in season 4 is based around their commonality. They motivate one another by feeding into the insatiable hunger both of them feel for external validation… in that regard, they bring out the worst in each other, and thus season 4 ends with both of them brought to their lowest point.

At the end of season 4, if the princesses had never arrived, and Double Trouble hadn’t been there to finally force her to confront the emotions she insistently projected onto others, Catra would have assumed the mantle she claimed from Hordak. She would have ruled the horde, devoid of satisfaction or happiness, and any children she took into her numbers she would have treated in exactly the same way Shadow Weaver treated her, and the same way Horde Prime treated Hordak.

To escape that fate, she needed her chance to face the system that oppressed her, and then the chance to face herself… and only once she had done both, could she start to move forward again. That’s why we see the start of her recovery in the final scenes of the season. Catra did unspeakably terrible things- by the end of season 4 her atrocity count easily rivals Hordak’s- and not everything can be blamed exclusively on others, but we, as an audience, have seen enough of what made her the way she is… that’s why most of us are onboard with her eventual redemption.

Catra is, beneath all the layers of spite and illusions of who she thinks she should be, a sweet kid who ultimately wants to reconnect with a friend she fears abandoned her, and to be respected and appreciated by the authority figures in her life. Hordak is, ultimately, a hikikomori dweeb who, not too long ago, was content to spend the rest of eternity with his gamer girlfriend in his lab, pretending to put together a portal machine.

The villain of She-ra is Horde Prime, and the system he put into place to feed his arrogance at the expense of those trapped within it. For those inside that system, like Catra or Hordak, they don’t cross the line and become truly irredeemable until they are given a clear and unambiguous chance to escape from that system and change their life for the better… but refuse to grasp it. Even then… sometimes it takes them a little while to see the hand being offered to them… and sometimes that hand is in the form of a fist.

In conclusion

Look, guys, I’ll be real with you… I made a play at pretending that I wrote this for some point or another… but I kinda didn’t. When I get into a fandom headspace, words get stuck in my head, y’know? When they do, they buzz around like bees until I write ‘em someplace… so here we are.

I’m not so arrogant as to assume I can change anyone’s mind with my 4 AM word vomit about the emaciated bat villain in my favorite children’s cartoon. This is just a thing I wrote! Maybe if you agree with it it makes you happy, and if you disagree with it then it doesn’t get’cha too worked up! I was gonna include Hordak’s relationship with Entrapta into the proceedings… but honestly, that would have doubled the length of this thing, and would have been kinda tangential to the point. I may do a more shippy essay thing later on… but if there’s one thing I learned from the last time I wrote a bunch of these… it’s that planning them out never works well. I guess if people wanna see it I can write it though.

Anyway, I’m rambling, so I’m gonna letcha go! Thanks for listening to my TED talk. Remember, villains are an artform, people are complicated, and hot cocoa is the best winter beverage. I’m going back to fanfic writing until the next bout of insomnia!

#she ra hordak #entrapdak #hordak #she ra 2019

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ticktickblog · 4 years

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Steering towards Your Most Important Goals in Work and Life with OKRs

ticktick.com

What is OKRs?

Drown in the jargon river where so many abbreviations represent different business management methods, the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) framework stands out due to its popularity among some household names, e.g.Google and Linkedin. Moving through Andy Grove, who first introduced Management by Objectives to Intel in the 1970s to now John Doerr, whose book -- Measure What Matters -- probes greater depth of OKRs in the workplace. How to embed the company’s purpose and values into everyday goal-setting and outcomes throughout the company’s workforce, is where OKRs come into play.

The basic process of implementing the OKRs is: The company sets a goal (normally for the coming quarter), and lists some metrics that can be used to measure whether this goal is met. With the same practice, this process further goes to different teams and then down to individuals.

Here’s an OKRs example displayed under Kanban View at TickTick:

From the example above, we can clearly see Q3 OKRs are displayed and sub-divided in three levels: Company’s OKRs > Marketing Team’s OKRs > Jack’s OKRs in Marketing Team.

*Key Result 1 of the company is the Objective of Marketing team, and KR1 of Marketing team is Jack’s individual Objective. It is not necessary to always have correspondent O and KR, but the full path can go similarly like this to other teams and individuals.

OKRs vs. KPIs

To understand OKRs better, we may also have to identify where it differs from another performance evaluation method: KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Why do OKRs work?

Encourage company-wide focus

OKRs create the same context within a company, which connects and immerses everyone as a whole, by setting the company’s biggest objectives and identifying what matters most to achieve these objectives. A common sense will form organizationally: working towards the goals, trimming the unnecessary, and keeping anything off-track away from the runway. Motivated to only focus on what’s important, individuals are more likely to outperform. With all efforts channeled into one thing, there’s also higher possibility for the company to win the game.

Ensure top-down alignment

The traditional management method tends to be like: the top tier dictates, and the rest executes. One of the biggest issues caused by that is the disconnection between decision and execution, which may lead to employees’ lack of higher-level thinking, with only the hard-work on completing given tasks, not knowing what the meaning of their everyday work is. OKRs solve this problem because of its transparency and accountability. On the premise of knowing what the company steers towards, and what the team’s responsibility is, one can be well-aware of what their work should be built around. One is also less likely to feel themselves drifting away from others, especially when they are at the bottom level.

Enhance both-side engagement

When setting the company’s OKRs, the proven way is to involve not only leaders of the company, but also individuals, into the discussion and goal-setting. If well-implemented, OKRs also allow adjustment and continuous improvement. Both the leadership and individuals can check on the key results regularly, adjust, or even abandon the goals according to real-time circumstance changes. That way the voice of individuals has been heard and commitment from both sides has been greatly increased.

Tips of implementing OKRs

1. When there are too many focuses, there is no focus.

Some may fall into an OKRs pitfall -- Achieve as many objectives as possible. When asked about what the company’s objectives are, the leadership themselves may even be confused, let alone other employees. Thus, setting only one objective of the top priority and then investing resources in it to do exceptional work, is perhaps better to enhance the sole concentration in everyone’s mind. Conversely, if there are too many focuses, people may find it hard to decide which they should really pay attention to.

2. Allow sufficient time to test out your OKRs.

Setting quarterly OKRs is what’s been used in most cases, even though some prefer the 2-month duration or a year. If you’re implementing OKRs for the first time, make sure the duration is not too long or too short, because you need time to test out the key results, and also need to adjust or reset the goals as OKRs progress.

3. Be careful of the goal-setting.

Make sure the objective you’ve set for the company/team/individual is ambitious and also inspiring, not to be unrealistic or too easy-to-reach. It might immediately scare people away if it seems too challenging. On the flip side, they may feel less-motivated if it seems quite attainable. A method mentioned by Christina Wodtke (author of Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results) is: Target the rate at 5 with full score 10, because that would be something challenging but still achievable, 7/10 can be considered as a success, and 10/10 is unsuitable to be KRs.

4. Communicate, communicate, and communicate.

Communication and engagement alongside the way is the key to successful implementation of OKRs. Ensure employees have been involved before the objective-setting, in the process of checking on key results and also reflecting on the results of OKRs implementation.

Personal OKRs

Walking through all the above, you might come to the recognition that OKRs could be effective for fast-growing companies. But some of you might also wonder what it’s to do with me if I’m not the founder of a company or the leader of a team. Like so, can OKRs only be used at work for companies? The answer is NO, because it’s a general methodology for goal setting and achieving, which can be used for personal life as well.

*Note: Personal OKR here doesn't mean individual OKRs at work.

Christina Wodtke, the author of Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results, shared how OKRs modelled her life as a professional writer:

To say OKRs have changed my life would be an understatement. They have made my life possible. They are the backbone that holds my life together.

Here is a personal OKR example she’s given:

O: Model life as a professional author

KR1: Rough draft of Continuous Feedback to Alpha reader list (and Cathy) with actionable feedback

KR2: Working with Pictures V2 on Amazon with 4 five star reviews

KR3: Product-Market Fit book (Creative Founder) interviews complete with essays at 2K views each or higher

Similarly, if the most important goal currently in your life is the IELTS test for example, then your OKRs might be like:

O: Get the C1 level in IELTS exam

KR1: Enrol in courses to improve weak skills, e.g. Listening

KR2: Enhance strong skills e.g. Speaking by practicing more

KR3: Increase the overall score by 1 point

Or, if one of your recent life goals is to find a better job, then the personal OKRs could be:

O: Find a better job

KR1: 20% of salary boost

KR2: More training opportunities and resources

Tip: Further divide these key results into actionable tasks, with TickTick’s new task nesting feature! Then it will look like:

To wrap up, OKRs provide a general methodology of goal setting and reaching for startups/fast-growing organizations, and it can also be well applied into personal life. It helps steer us towards the most important goals in work/life and get closer and closer to what we’d wish ourselves to be.

#okr methodology #okrs #okr framework #goal setting #goal reaching #business management #productivity #kanban #subtask

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

Note

Look, I know you've covered this already but I just want to reiterate how AWESOME it is that several lines and scenes of s14 were deliberately drawing our attention to the in‐betweens, to the fact that these guys have lives outside of what we seen and that they have significant moments in those off screen lives. I just fricking *love* that.

Hi hi! I know you sent this like a week ago, but I really wanted to have time to sit down and detail all the moments in s14 where they’ve used this device before replying– both for the sake of completeness in demonstrating just how critical they’ve made these “in between” spaces to the overall narrative, as well as for my own general reference purposes. :P

I’ll start by saying that the show has done this on some level from the start. I mean, the entire series begins with a cold open in 1983 before jumping 22 years into the future to begin in the “present day” of October, 2005. We begin our introduction to the story of Supernatural immediately aware that there’s already a metric fuckton of backstory we’re due to have filled in, and we’re primed to begin looking for more pieces to flesh out that history from the moment the first scene airs.

*clenches fist* STORYTELLING

I’m currently in mid-late s7 in my eternal rewatch, and even s7 uses this device MULTIPLE times. I mean, s6 does this, as well, immediately informing us that a year has passed since the events of 5.22, and gradually filling in the missing events from that gap, using Sam’s soullessness and then post-re-ensoulening amnesia about his soulless time, him “scratching the wall” and beginning to piece his own memories together, as one entry point into this “filling in the blanks of the past for full understanding of the present” storytelling device. The other major expression of this device in s6 is Castiel’s story throughout the season, which doesn’t truly begin to fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions until episode TWENTY.

(I am not defending this storytelling choice, because in s6 it served as a metaphorical “punishment,” which is still so skeevy I struggle to watch the season as a whole… in Gamble Era, characters are “punished” for remembering their past– Sam for his guilt over what he did while soulless, and eventually Cas for his hubris in believing he could devour the souls of purgatory without consequences… and again, what I get from Gamble Era overall is an unkindness to all the characters… this Erasure of Identity. For years now, I’ve read this exchange from 6.09 as a bit of an indictment of the story of that era by Ben Edlund:

SAM: So you’re saying having a soul equals suffering.DEAN: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.SAM: Like, the million times you almost called Lisa. So you’re saying suffering is a good thing.DEAN: I’m saying it’s the only game in town.

but back to the point)

S7 employed this technique in really in-your-face obvious ways, showing us time skips with little montages that cover several weeks in a matter of less than a minute, during which we’re shown the tone of the events of the “missing time” and are being told directly how to fill in those blanks:

7.01 shows this montage through Dean repairing Baby while receiving occasional updates on Sam’s recovery and Cas’s Godstiel rampage.

7.03 gives us a montage of Dean’s healing leg while he’s relegated to the sofa in the cabin watching tv… weeks elapse like this before the action picks up again.

7.10 uses flashbacks as Bobby lays dying to directly show us a fuller snapshot of who he is as a character, and why he’s been so important to Sam and Dean as their adoptive father figure

7.11 uses another “weeks pass” montage to show us Sam and Dean’s grief and their respective ways of handling Bobby’s loss

7.17 uses another flashback montage as Castiel literally rebuilds his identity from these moments… can’t really be more anvilicious than this about the import of filling in the narrative gaps…

But over the years, this has evolved in the narrative from these blatantly obvious tells to something we’re being low-level reminded of in nearly every episode through a constant implicit assumption that these characters have lives outside of what we see on The Magic Rectangle for 42 minutes a week. The show’s gone from literally subtitling these scenes and telling us exactly what we’re seeing to requiring our assumption that all we need to learn how to fill in the blanks is to assume these are actually real people who casually reference things we never knew before from their own lives and assume we know all the characters well enough by now to correctly fill in the blanks they so casually point out to us, or even expand on vast swaths of otherwise “missing time” from what we actively see of their lives from an otherwise minor comment made in passing…

Gosh, ain’t it nice when writers assume their audience is actually intelligent, considerate, engaged, and caring like this? Honestly in this day and age of GOTCHA! oneupsmanship, of authors attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority over their audience, it’s rather refreshing.

One more thing before we jump right into s14. Dabb and Company have been “educating” us on how to read these subtextual instructions for years now. We had the Mixtape Revelation in 12.19 that idiotically devolved into fandom arguments over what a mixtape itself was intended to symbolize, with people arguing that the thing itself had no inherent romantic implications (which… wow… but people be dumb sometimes…). I’d argue that regardless of what anyone has convinced themselves the gift meant symbolically (or didn’t mean symbolically for people with their heads shoved so far up their butts they actually made that argument in a public forum with a straight face and actually got mad about folks who actually know better…), what it meant NARRATIVELY was that the original gifting of the tape was something that had happened in the past, that we-the-audience previously had no knowledge of this particular interaction between Dean and Cas, and were being SPECIFICALLY TOLD that even though WE DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN ON SCREEN, it absolutely, definitely, CANONICALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED regardless of that fact.

Not only did that unseen exchange canonically happen, it was discussed by Dean and Cas in a casual fashion, as if it was simply one moment in a past filled with moments just like it. In a season where the episodes leading up to this one were filled with comments about Dean and Cas calling each other regularly (conversations that we never see, yet are informed casually happen constantly offscreen), and Dean’s increasing distress over NOT being able to reach Cas for several episodes, it’s impossible NOT to draw the conclusion that this lack of communication is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and therefore SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED ABOUT. We didn’t need to *see* all of this to apply this fact far more broadly to the entire narrative, and understand there were massive gaps between what they could show us in 42 minutes a week versus what the baseline background life is for all of these characters in those between-times.

They doubled down on this in s13, specifically in 13.06, both with the “Dean and Cas regularly watch movies together” comments AND in the casual knowledge Cas shares with Jack about Dean’s sleeping and coffee drinking habits. It’s not just these isolated facts that we’re supposed to take away from these sorts of exchanges, but what they mean in the larger context of their off-camera interactions and relationship as a whole.

So that said, let’s move on to s14, where this has honestly evolved to the next level. The rest of this is going under a cut for now, because the totality of this post is something like 7700 words...

14.01, Stranger in a Strange Land:

The season begins with a montage of Dinkle’s actions over a period of weeks, talking to different people and asking what they want. We don’t see every one of these conversations, but we can extrapolate out from the ones we DO see and infer how all of those experiences guide his subsequent actions (as well as Dean’s subsequent emotional and psychological state later down the road).

But we’re shown one more of those conversations INDIRECTLY, from an offhand comment of another character, where we’re both reminded of Dinkle’s little conversations, AND reminded that they don’t constitute the sum total of those conversations. There is much we haven’t seen (and will NOT see, because this scene renders any additional on-screen time to cover the tone and content of those conversations superfluous and redundant), and yet we still understand the importance and gravity of Dinkle’s entire occupation during those missing weeks:

Kip:You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.

We also see this from the other side of the narrative– through the progression of events occurring at the Bunker in Dean’s absence. Sam’s despair is conveyed not only in dialogue in his conversation with Mary, it’s conveyed through just how poorly he’s looking after his own wellbeing, not shaving (visual confirmation of his mindset informing us of what his life’s been like over the previous weeks), not eating or sleeping (we’re told, and believe because of how he’s presenting himself, but also emotionally informs us of how he’s been affected by his ordeal), while simultaneously having stepped up to lead the army of AU Hunters– i.e. people from a world where war against Michael has been their lives for more than a decade, and are literally bringing that experience to THIS world, metaphorically going back to the start of their own battle to a world where Michael is only BEGINNING to enact that war on this world, who now have the experience of having survived that war and the knowledge gained while having fought against it, but also a chance to stop it before it can be allowed to start again. Or that is the hope, you know?

We’re also seeing Jack struggle with guilt, with adapting to life without the magical powers he’d been born with, and being forced to confront what is truly important to him, and what his own humanity means to him.

We’re subtly being reminded of VAST quantities of canon upon which the current character developments are resting.

14.02, Gods and Monsters:

There’s a lot of “backtracing” through character arcs in this one, which I’m gonna boil down to the general themes:

Jack seeking out his familial history, seeking out Kelly Kline’s parents to make a personal connection to his mother’s past in order to better understand himself now

Cas relating parts of his own past to Jack (falling and becoming human, not mourning the past he can’t change but finding strength in himself regardless of his current circumstance, and to have patience while his circumstance will change in future) (aside to remind folks that this setup at the beginning of the season is entirely about subverting his words through his own actions throughout the season… with 14.14 being the massive turning point again for both Jack and Cas)

Nick’s setup of beginning to fill in the blanks from his own life after a decade of having lost everything to his possession by Lucifer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a heck of a lot of blanks to fill.

the absolute knowledge that the show is 100% aware of how they’ve trained us to look at the narrative this deeply, using character mirrors, foreshadowing, parallels, etc., and that they’re keen to use this power against us. And it’s up to us to understand the difference between “things being presented to us for the purposes of subversion” and “things being presented to us to fill in narrative blanks.” Like the entirety of Dinkle’s conversations with both Dean and Lydia the vampire. Heck I’m already down to bullet points and I’m gonna need to extrapolate on this one… *sighs*

Let’s start simple, with a couple of quotes:

Michael: Why do you think I dumped your brothers and sisters in plain sight? Why do you think I let you escape?Lydia: You let me escape?Michael: Rule number 1 – you can’t have a trap without bait. That brings us to rule number 2, which says once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.

and

Dean: Get… out!Michael: I don’t think so.Dean: You can’t!Michael: Oh, but I can. Because, see… I own you. So hang on and enjoy the ride.

Because the first defines and contextualizes the second… Do I really need to elaborate? No? Oh good, then we can move on!

14.03, The Scar:

Again, using the trope of amnesia and memory recovery to illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of “missing time,” if not the entirety of the content of that missing gap. In addition, to Dean recovering his memories and demonstrating his reaction to his own lost time, the two respective cases of the week (Darth Kaia, learning how she came to this universe, and everything she’s endured at Dinkle’s hands also informing further the information we learned in 14.01, and in the bunker Jack and Cas helping heal Lora of a witch’s curse that was literally stealing time from her in the form of her own life energy).

I love demonstrating how “filling narrative gaps from the past” is not only built into the inherent structure of the narrative like this, it’s also the entire purpose of all the character development we’re witnessing, as well as setting the foundation of the entire story going forward.

We had that in spades from Jody, putting in plain words what we all saw happening in 13.10:

Jody: They have a right to know but I can’t. I promised Claire human cases are mine, but anything “monstery” I’d loop her in: this. God. Claire’s been doing so good. I mean anything connected to Kaia, she’s a powder keg. First loves strikes quick, and then to lose it like that. Wow, you two are having a time of it.

Confirming the subtext of Claire and Kaia’s relationship, while simultaneously informing us of what Jody, Claire, et al’s lives have been like since then, filling in a huge narrative gap with just a few innocuous comments. But there’s one more example from within the span of this episode:

Sam: Okay, look, I’m just saying… you said you let Michael in, then, bang you’re back in a blink. But for me? You were gone for weeks. I didn’t know if you were alive. I just need you to talk to me, to slow down so I can catch up.

Sam, defining the narrative gap and begging for information to fill it with. And then at the end of the episode, he gets an answer, but it’s nothing like what he expected or hoped for:

Dean: And it wasn’t a blink, being possessed. I make it sound like that, but it wasn’t. I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was underwater, drowning, and that I remember. I felt every second of it – clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone and he’s out there putting an army of monsters together and he’s hurting people. And its all on me, man. I said yes. It’s my fault.

And it’s still not really an answer.

14.04, Mint Condition:

Narrative gap reshuffle yahtzee. I’m just gonna give a few links to meta already written for this one, because it’s about the journey, and being informed enough to pay attention to all the sights along the roadside as we go:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179792849870/when-in-doubt-sing-mittensmorgul-i

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/181790806615/questions-and-their-empty-spaces

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179742780230/mittens-help-dean-says-he-loves-hatchet-man

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179734411135/i-love-there-wasnt-any-acknowledgement-about-dean

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179724128520/stuarts-my-best-friend-we-watch-movies-and-eat

(gotta throw in at least one destiel reference…)

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179700702490/hey-mittens-just-wondering-if-you-could-help-me

And because this reading list is already getting long, I just want to use this post to point out how the use of narrative mirrors informs our understanding of those one-off characters through our established understanding of the main characters, enabling those mirror characters to serve their function in the story. Davy was not subtle with pointing that out in this episode, and it’s an essential tool in understanding the bigger picture of the narrative. But it’s also a device in filling narrative gaps by recognizing and applying the subtextual lessons being demonstrated:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179695858820/a-few-observations-on-the-mirror-characters

So this isn’t just about individual lines at this point, but an entire narrative shift that the writers spent the entire first half of s14 laying out for us through these sorts of storytelling lessons hidden just under the surface of the story itself. Brilliant.

Basically, if you’re NOT making these connections and using your brain to flesh out the entire world pointed at in the narrative gaps, you don’t really have a hope of understanding the bigger story.

14.05, Nightmare Logic:

Aah, the superpowered djinn, 3D walking metaphor for filling in gaps from the past to find wholeness in the present. Also, one of Michael’s “monster traps” he laid out in order to lure in and kill unwary hunters, which he believed (and the monsters themselves believed) made them more powerful, but in reality became the vehicle through which the Winchesters were eventually able to gain the upper hand… they survived the encounter and walked away with new knowledge about both themselves AND Michael’s bigger plans that had been evading them before this episode.

Information fills narrative gaps.

The djinn itself has been “enhanced” from djinn we’ve seen in the past, able to create its illusions in reality rather than only within its victims own minds. What was imaginary becomes tangible. Subtext becomes text.

We also get AU!Bobby’s backstory, which demonstrates that this alternate version of Bobby is really nothing like our original version, and the sum of his life experiences have made him who he is.

We also get another “zombie” reference, which the more I think back on this entire season (and Jack’s long obsession with zombies in general) is an interesting metaphor for this sort of viewing, not engaging with the deeper text and instead shuffling across it without looking deeper. Because pretty much every time someone suggested the monster could be a zombie, it’s definitively shown to be something much more complex once they begin to dig for answers.

(we also have Dean discussing his past, his relationship with his father, and talking about how setting that baggage aside and living in the present, and for the future, is something he’s worked long and hard to achieve for himself. And we’ve seen some of that journey for him, but this was a huge step for him, which will become profoundly more evident in 14.10 and 14.13)

14.06, Optimism:

Oh, we wanted zombie references? Well, alrighty, have some zombie references! Via the entirely self-deluded MotW character, masquerading as a person with a sad backstory of being “unlucky in love” while all the while she’s a necromancer who murdered and resurrected her boyfriend as a mindless zombie she enacts a brutal game with for her own personal pleasure: luring in suitors and letting her zombie boyfriend kill and eat them. Worst honey trap ever.

Speaking of honey, the other MotW is a fly dude who couldn’t find love among his species and exiled himself to live alone among a pile of rotting corpses of his victims. I mean… ew.

But back to our necromancer, who is a lonely librarian, who is surrounded by stories and laments that people in her town aren’t interested in stories. All the while she’s not engaging with her own reality, and has decided that her own version of the story is an accurate reflection of reality (while the rest of us shake our heads in horror because whoa no hon…)

We also learn AU!Charlie’s backstory, with the constant reminders that what Sam keeps mistaking on the surface level for “his Charlie” IS NOT HER. Man, I feel that feel, AU!Charlie.

Jack: What's 'courting?'Dean: It's what you do before you start dating.Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.Wanda: Sometimes you just have the sex.

Yes, Wanda. Sometimes you skip all the courting, all the emotional and interpersonal stuff, and just go right to the sex. But then you tend to just walk away after without any sort of deeper connection having been made. One night stands are fine, but they’re very different things from deep interpersonal relationships.

You can absolutely engage with Supernatural like a one night stand. The story’s fun on the surface, but ultimately the courting is what provides the deep payoff.

14.07, Unhuman Nature:

We get back to the twisted story of Nick, and his quest to understand himself. He’s filling in more of those horrific gaps in his history and getting closer to the Worst Possible Conclusions about himself. He ENJOYED being Lucifer’s vessel, and wants that feeling of power back, even if it wasn’t HIS power, just being the vehicle for that power is enough for him, more important to him than even discovering the truth about himself. At the bottom of himself, he’s just an empty douchebag-shaped vessel for pure evil.

What a fucking delight >.>

Nurse: Uh-huh. Family medical history? Let's start with the father.Dean: He's dead.Nurse: Cause of death?Castiel: He was stabbed through the heart, and he exploded.Dean: Okay, you know what? We don't have time for this. All right, he's sick. His name is Jack Kline. His father exploded. There, you've got all the basics. Now what does he need to do to see a doctor?

Well that simplified the whole “filling in the backstory through the narrative negative spaces” thing in this episode, didn’t it?

Jack: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed that I would be this special 'person' who goes on forever. Only now it looks like forever might be a couple of weeks, so--Dean: We don't know that.Jack: What I do know is I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it. I just want a chance to get a tan or see a hockey game... get a parking ticket... get bored... and when it's all over -- die.

I mean, isn’t that what all of TFW kind of wants? They want to not be “special.” They want the universe to stop picking on them specifically. They want to just live their lives until they’re done.

Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.Dean: I didn't say that.Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell. I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss -- it wouldn't be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I'd miss more time with you. I'm getting that life isn't all these big, amazing moments. It's time together that matters. Like this.Dean: Well, who'd have thought hanging out with me would make you sentimental?

Dude. Dean. Everyone thought this. You are the king of “family is the most important thing in the universe without which I am nothing.” Talk about Jack filling in that particular blank for you.

14.08, Byzantium:

Aka that one where we discover something important to Jack in his own Heaven-- and it’s literally a missing scene from 13.06 and their road trip to Dodge City where they stop for burgers. UNPROBLEMATIC FAMILY BONDING IS JACK’S HEAVEN. And it also fills in a past narrative gap, specifically from an episode that was structured around filling in narrative gaps. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.

We also have the return of Lily Sunder, now grown old since she’d completed her revenge quest against Ishim and the other angels who’d wronged her (including Cas, who literally killed Ishim FOR her). Talk about filling in a lifetime worth of gaps, and her literal near-lack of a soul she “fills in” through one final sacrifice made of love, which earns her redemption and entrance to Heaven.

I mean… those narrative gaps are looking pretty important here right about now.

Also, what’s that other big gap I haven’t mentioned yet? Oh, right! A villain literally known as “The Empty.” I’m sure that’s not meta relevant to the importance of the narrative empty spaces at all...

14.09, The Spear.

Sequel to The Scar (since the spear is what left Dean with the scar in the first place, so we’re back on our Dinkle nonsense again). There’s a lot of blank-filling going on in this episode.

Remember Garth? Well, as he’s reintroduced in this episode it appears as if he’s gone over to the Dark Side, but of course we learn he’s actually there as a deep cover agent for the Winchesters. This tells us they’ve been keeping in close touch with Garth all this time, despite us not having seen him on screen in ages. (FIVE YEARS!)

Remember Ketch? Well, he’s also doing deep cover agency stuff for the Winchesters, but with a level of incompetence that reminds us all that he’s still not one of the good guys, no matter how hard he’s trying, he’s still… falling a bit short. But at least they’re still keeping contact with him. And BOTH of these characters appearing after a while offscreen reminds us that TFW truly aren’t alone in the world, and they DO have this network of people (at varying degrees of competence still ranging from typical bumbling civvie to TFW themselves).

This entire episode was also a massive reference to Die Hard. Just… it was Die Hard: Supernatural. And we know Dean has referenced this movie endlessly. But the funniest thing: Die Hard isn’t actually referenced ONE SINGLE TIME in text in this episode. Nobody points out the similarities between the situation at the Hitomi Plaza at Christmas with Die Hard. Narrative negative space ftw.

And then we have the reveal that Michael had somehow left a “secret back door” open into Dean, and was able to just jump right back into him when it was convenient to do so. I.e., when he was losing the fight to Dean. He had a cheat code at the ready, because his possession of Dean had been operating on cheat code rules since the start in 13.23. His entire possession of Dean was a violation of the “standard rules of angel possession.” Consent of the vessel being primary. Even BAD consent has been enough in the past-- tricking the vessel into saying yes, backing them into a corner. I mean, remember s5 and the horrors Zachariah was willing to go to in order to secure Dean’s yes? Not even manipulation here with this version of Michael. Even if the face of Dean’s abject rejection of his possession, he refused to vacate the premises. Which is an interesting narrative blank to fill in, yes? Angels may have these rules, but for some reason-- is it Michael’s supreme power? Is it the fact Dean is his “destined vessel?” is it a factor of this Michael being from an alternate universe that might operate on different rules? Is it a factor of Dean’s own lack of conviction in his demand that Michael get out? Whatever it is… it is interesting.

We also catch up with Darth Kaia, who after months of balking at the notion, hands over her spear to Dean with the promise that he’ll return it after he kills Michael. It would solve her ongoing problems with the monsters Michael had been relentlessly sending after her. But he also promises to help her find her way back to her own universe. And now we don’t even know if any of that is possible… (aside to say that I’m now crying over the loss of Wayward again, and I feel this lack of resolution here is a damn pointed statement on that from Bobo.)

14.10, Nihilism.

Nihilism being a descriptor of Michael’s basic personality, in this case.

The most long-term relevant narrative negative spaces in this episode are Sam and Cas venturing into Dean’s mind, and literally using what they know about Dean to find where Michael had locked him away. They literally rely on their knowledge of who he is as a person as a map to find him, and then as a codex to actually get through to him and break him out of the illusion Michael had trapped him in. And then they all turn around and weaponize all of that to lock Michael away in Dean’s mind fridge.

Metaphors, anyone?

Meanwhile, Michael literally insists he’s telling everyone the truth about how Dean really feels about them, but it’s all… ALL OF IT… a manipulation and a lie.

(aside to admit that at this point I have been working on this post on and off for the last 12 hours, can barely remember what the point of it even was, and regret everything. I think we were supposed to be discussing Narrative References To Stuff That Happens On Screen, but at this point, that is so deeply intertwined with the narrative structure as a whole that I’m having trouble separating out textual references to offscreen stuff from the actual content of the story as a whole… yes this is already approaching 5k words at this point, and no I don’t care anymore :P)

14.11, Damaged Goods.

Dean is given information (that we have not yet seen) by Billie (again, offscreen) about “the only way to save the universe.”

Disclaimer to note that we STILL haven’t seen exactly what Billie showed Dean in her magical destiny book… which fact in itself can be open to myriad interpretations, because canon itself has shifted from this point in the canonical timeline to what we have actually witnessed unfold, which fundamentally differs between what Billie told Dean and what actually transpired on screen.

This… is major.

Also, Nick, and the effective end of his story… or is it? He’s finally got his personal backstory filled in, and turns out he was just a dick all along! Surprise! Because his “truth” never actually mattered to him. It was all a lie he told himself from the very first moment he was ever introduced on screen back in 5.01. He was never a good person who’d been used by Lucifer and manipulated into doing terrible things. He was always just a bad person who’d been looking for an excuse to do terrible things. Lucifer was just his excuse.

Dean fills in some horrific bits of their childhood for Mary through the metaphor of Winchester Surprise. Apparently delicious to Dean, but yikes… stuff like that’s really not healthy…

14.12, Prophet and Loss:

So, Donatello might not be as brain dead as previously believed! Let’s fill in that backstory, through a broken prophet who can’t be fully realized because Donatello’s technically not dead, so the new guy is getting a distorted message because Donatello’s interrupting the signal.

Dean asked Sam not to tell Cas about his Drama Coffin plan, but of course Sam had immediately told Cas about his drama coffin plan anyway…

CAS: Sam. Maybe if I spoke with Dean…SAM: It wouldn’t matter. Believe me, I-I I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to me. H-He just – No. If we don’t find some way… Dean’s gone.

But then just a little while later, when Dean talks to Cas and learns that Cas knows his entire dumbass plan:

DEAN: Really?SAM: Dean, it’s Cas. I had to tell him.

Well, some time in the previous few hours, when Sam hasn’t been trapped in the car with Dean (which we know he has been canonically), Sam’s first priority was calling Cas to tell him about Dean’s plan. Like… duh…

14.13, Lebanon:

I love this episode on every possible level. It drops us at the climax of a hunt and just trusts us to understand what’s going on. Someone has been murdered for their collection of supernatural artifacts, and it’s been traced to this shop, where the owner trades in dangerous artifacts… all of that happened offscreen, yet we understand the context if not the specific case itself. Beautiful.

Then we have the cursed pearl that apparently grants a wish. Dean uses it to theoretically wish that Michael was out of his head. In monkey’s paw fashion, instead of just granting the wish through the simplest means, the wish actually attempts to rewrite history (this is the sort of thing that differentiates a “cursed object” from a “magical cure”) in order to remove the root infiltration of Michael into Dean’s life… by literally bringing John Winchester into the present time from 2003, removing him from the entire timeline to this point and changing EVERYTHING.

Talk about filling a narrative negative space. Cas doesn’t know them, Dean never went to Hell. Hell, Dean never even went to collect Sam from Stanford. NOTHING from the entire history of the series as we know it actually happened AT ALL.

At least we got to see Zachariah get stabbed again. Sam deserved a turn, you know? :’)

But we also have the other half of the episode-- the case in Lebanon, and seeing the Winchesters through the eyes of the locals. Talk about a HUGE reminder of the things that happen offscreen. They go to the post office, the local shops, and have a weird reputation around town, despite most of the townsfolk accepting their brand of weirdness. It’s… weirdly refreshing, seeing how they’ve gone from “hunters of urban legends” in s1 to “actual urban legends themselves” in s14. The power of storytelling at its finest.

In this case, so many personal blanks were filled in for Mary, Sam, and Dean just by being able to share a single family dinner with John in the aftermath of everything else. In the end, Sam and Dean CHOSE their own lives, and smashed the pearl with John’s blessing, putting everything back the way it was. The most powerful line in this entire episode, to me:

John: Dean. I, uh -- I never meant for this.Dean: Dad, we pulled you here.John: No, son. My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you -- you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would... get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family.Dean: I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. :’)

It might not be what John ever imagined for him. Or even what Mary wanted for him when she rejected the hunting life the first time around. But it’s the family Dean earned for himself. The one he CHOSE for himself. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything-- not even for the family he was born into, or a white picket fence he used to think he should have.

And then after this… everything changes… again…

14.14, Ouroboros:

Right. That one where everything changed. Where everything from Billie’s Books of Certain Prophecy to Jack’s soul to Dean’s certainty about… pretty much everything… went up in a swirling whirlpool of burning grace.

Yes, the episode where they burned the spiral narrative structure and were clearly beginning the inevitable run toward endgame. I mean it had been hinted at as a possibility before this, and 14.13 was certainly a product of the inevitability of endgame, but this episode sealed the deal.

They could’ve technically still gotten away with 14.13 as a one-off product of “very special 300th episode” and still continued down the narrative spiral that they’ve been circling for years now, but in retrospect from beyond the rest of s14, this was the official burn point.

So the story shifts radically in very fundamental ways from this point on, and reference to the past become… different. But what happens offscreen in the context of these episodes going forward takes on so much more weight as a result. We’re now “living in the present” with these characters.

We have Sam’s relationship with Rowena, which has clearly developed to the point of casual intimacy. Rowena confronts Sam in ways we’ve never seen before, demonstrating a confidence in their interactions DESPITE Billie’s assertion that Sam will be the one to “kill” her. That has strangely given her a sense of… comfort… with Sam, that’s demonstrated in the fact that they work together through this entire case-- paired off much the way Dean and Cas are.

Again, like in 14.06 and 14.13, we’re dropped into the middle of their case, and only informed that they’ve been tracing this monster through numerous other towns in this episode, requiring us to extrapolate out their entire hunt from discovering there might be a case, to the point where they’ve even brought Rowena onboard to help give them an advantage of a monster that had repeatedly eluded them.

The monster itself has an advantage in that it can literally see the future and escape before they catch him, until they discover the huge gaping hole in what it can actually see-- Cas and Jack are literally invisible to it. He can’t see THEM coming, specifically. The importance of actually reading what we DON’T see. Because if the monster hadn’t been so confident in what it COULD see, he would’ve understood that he was missing a critical piece of information-- the door literally shut itself in his vision of the future and he didn’t bother to stop and question WHY. And it was his downfall.

The narrative is telling us that missing this key gap-filling information is effectively our downfall as viewers.

14.15, Peace of Mind:

Hooray, we’re back to simple “missing scene” levels of text to latch on to, and I don’t have to swim through the whole of the narrative structure to make a comment. Wheeee! (sorry it’s been like 14 hours since I started writing this reply and I’ve achieved Peak Mental Exhaustion for it) :P

Let’s reflect on how all of the characters managed to delude themselves in this episode, and simultaneously approach their own personal concerns without actually talking to each other directly… and then instead focus on this exchange:

Dean: Oh. Hey! How was Arkansas?Sam: Arkansas was, uh It was weird.Dean: Heard you wore a cardigan.Castiel: Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.Sam: Great. Thanks.Dean: And the wife. He said you were, uh, really happy.

Yep. Proof again of offscreen communication happening, in a way I can yell and point at without having to write paragraphs to explain and defend. :P Aah, just like the simpler days of our past… which hey, is also a narrative theme of this episode! Nostalgia!

14.16, Don’t Go In The Woods:

Or, that one where we discuss why we don’t share everything with the general public, while Jack… behaves poorly with the general public, and then hides that fact from Sam and Dean. Also, we have this confirmation of offscreen conversation:

SAM: You got it. I'll grab Cas.DEAN: Mm. He actually left.SAM: What?DEAN: Early this morning.SAM: Why?DEAN: I don't know. Something about being cooped up in the bunker for a few weeks. We all need to stretch our legs. I get it.

Dean… had a whole conversation with Cas… and didn’t even mention it until Sam specifically asked about Cas. Stuff happened offscreen… big important stuff… and we’re only getting a peek at it now. Not only that-- because this will be VITAL to remember two episodes down the road-- they have been cooped up in the bunker “for a few weeks.” In 14.15 ONE EPISODE EARLIER, Dean complained to Sam that he’d been driving them literally from case to case without a break:

Sam: (Sam was in the map room flashing back to Maggie and the other hunters dying. He looked sad as he went to the kitchen) Found us a case. Arkansas.Dean: We've just done three back-to-back Hunts. I need some rest. At least a night. We both do.Sam: Yeah, well I'm leaving in ten.Dean: Like I said, not good.Castiel: Maybe I should go with him. And you can stay with Jack.

So the events of 14.16 are clearly after a hiatus of several weeks. Again, things have happened offscreen, and we’re only learning about them in the absolute most casual statement-in-passing sorts of ways, but these tiny references are pretty earth-shattering.

14.17, Game Night:

The timeline isn’t concrete, but I’ve written in several places that I believe 14.16, and 14.17 flow one into the other, just based on these subtextual sorts of cues-- Dean’s statement in 14.16 that Cas had been feeling cooped up after several weeks in the bunker, the fact that Cas had only LEFT the bunker at the beginning of 14.16 and we only see him reach his destination of talking with Anael now in 14.17 (and how long do we REALLY think it took him to find her and convince her to meet with him? Especially when the events of 14.17 take place over about 36 hours before bleeding directly into 14.18…). So this timeline that I’ve understood presupposes the gap of “several weeks” of being cooped up in the bunker to have elapsed between 14.15 and 14.16 as suddenly resolved itself into all of them willing to spend time in the bunker as a family… except for Cas, who’s on an as-yet unspecified mission.

This episode reinforces those missing scenes, through showing us the very different mission Cas is on, finally addressing the seriousness of Jack’s condition, but also paralleled through Mary’s growing suspicions of Jack that she’ll be unable to ignore by the end of the episode…

Jack even addresses this “but in that scene you didn’t see play out, this important thing happened!” IN TEXT, TO MARY:

Mary: If Sam and Dean saw what you did, they would be as worried as I am.Jack: Are you gonna tell them?Mary: You need help, we'll help you. We're your family.Jack: You can't.Mary: We care about you, Jack.

And now the things that happen offscreen have been lampshaded as being CRITICAL to understanding the whole of the story. And the divide between the two can be fatal...

14.18, Absence.

Literally, the title itself is telling us to be aware of what’s missing.

But we finally get the payoff on the “missing information” about those several weeks spent cooped up in the bunker-- Sam was literally not there. It was Dean and Cas, alone with Jack.

Sam: You know, after Maggie and the other hunters died... I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left.

That happened in 14.14. The other hunters dying. But we KNOW that Sam had not left on his own at that time. He’d dragged Dean and Cas and Jack on three consecutive hunts in the aftermath of that to avoid going back to the bunker, in the run up to 14.15. THIS was the payoff of that “cooped up for weeks” comment in 14.16… because SAM hadn’t been cooped up with them. He’d dumped Jack on everyone and run off on his own after 14.15…

But this episode doesn’t stop there. It takes each character individually and pushes them through memories of the past, of Mary specifically, but those memories do so much narrative heavy lifting I can’t even begin to yell about them here. I’ll just link a post:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184195342200/you-know-when-deans-turns-around-after-that

Wait, I found that post while looking for the one I’d set to to find, but it’s in my Narrative Negative Space tag, so yay? Bonus. This is the one I’d meant to find:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184144189665/drsilverfish-mittensmorgul-mittensmorgul

There. My best thing from s14. And I’ll leave this episode at that.

Oh, and with the reminder that if Dean and Cas had truly still been at odds over Mary’s death, then Dean would not have brought Cas to Mary’s funeral pyre. Period.

14.19, Jack in the Box.

Aka that one we’d all figured out what the big plot thing was just by the on-the-nose nature of the title, months before it aired.

At least the drama coffin got blowed up good?

14.20, Moriah:

The most meta meta to have ever meta’d. There’s not much happening offscreen in this one aside from the entire setup and premise of the episode as a whole. Again, we’re dropped into a hunt and expected to understand the setup, the legwork that’s already been done. We learn that Dean has been in touch with Cas, but they’re investigating different avenues. We see Chuck FINALLY answer Cas’s prayer for help from 14.17, but Chuck’s idea of “help” isn’t helpful in the least.

We understand the fundamental nature of the extent of the personal little lies Sam and Dean tell each other (Thanks for that one, Jack!), and therefore are being asked to reassess which comments from their past were the full, honest truth, and which were the comfortable performance they put on to maintain their own projected self-identities.

And whoa.

It’s now 3 am, and I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 16 hours. And I am tired, and officially out of mental steam to keep thinking about it. So I’m gonna post it. All 7700 words of it. I hope this helps... :P

#emiliaoagi #spn s14 #revenge of the subtext #the scheherazade of supernatural #the story became the story

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waldbrown · 5 years

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How an Astrophysicist Can Shake Up Design Thinking: Using a Scientist to Argue an Artist’s Perspective

A discussion surrounding William Gaver’s “What Should We Expect from Research through Design?” (2012) is both timely: there are important questions raised around the framing of design research; and timeless: embodied in the effort to expand our conception of research-through-design is an enduring rift between the arts and the hard sciences, to put it bluntly.

Early on, Gaver hints at a complaint that the diversity of approaches to research through design is seen as a “sign of inadequate standards or a lack of cumulative progress in the field,” arguing that it is instead a necessary facet for generative work. With a particular focus on the area of human-computer interaction (HCI or CHI), Gaver points out that the world of research through design is seen as unorganized, lacking a documented system of precedent and practice. He quotes the following from a panel on “Quality control: A panel on the critique and criticism of design research”: “Research through design, it is said, 'lacks clear expectations and standards for what constitutes "good" design research', and thus would benefit from 'some actionable metrics for bringing rigor in critique of design research'.”

The frustrations seem to emerge from a familiarity with the hard sciences and technical sciences. Whereas the humanities tend to embrace an open discussion on research methods, particularly those concerning generative practices, this is not the case with mechanical engineering, for example, where there would be a well-established history of methods and best practices that any aspiring engineer would need to be familiar with, even if their current method diverged from the precedent. Yet in the relatively more emergent area of HCI, where many designers pride themselves in an interdisciplinary approach including computer science, art, media studies, engineering and even the territories of cognitive science, anthropology, and sociology, it seems a difficult task to establish a rigid form of standards. Rather than view this as an obstacle to generative work, Gaver sees it as necessary:

Overall, I suggest that the design research community should be wary of impulses towards convergence and standardisation, and instead take pride in its aptitude for exploring and speculating, particularising and diversifying, and - especially - its ability to manifest the results in the form of new, conceptually rich artefacts.

This reminds me of a not-so-ordinary example from astrophysics. I’ve taken a couple astrophysics seminars, one a general paper-sharing class and the other a semester-long investigation of exoplanet research, and noticed a couple significant differences in the behavior and practice of astrophysics PhD students compared to those I most often come across in my media arts department: (1) Research is lab-based and includes three to four authors, rather than just one, and (2)There is a strong emphasis on empirical approaches to both knowledge and methods. Essentially, astrophysicists are closely building on the recent work of others in the field, rather than the more dramatic, “creative” departures anticipated in media arts.

I was reminded, however, of one prominent astrophysicist who stands out as different. The research of Avi Loeb, chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, is regarded as provocative (to an annoying degree, as the postdoc leading one of our discussions pointed out). Loeb is one of the lead researchers on the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, a $5+ billion project to send a gram-sized object through interstellar space to Earth’s nearest star (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, including a fly-by of Earth-like planet Proxima Centauri b after which the object would transmit information back to Earth. A break from the traditional idea of sending larger spacecraft, manned or unmanned, to the star system, this project’s tiny object would be propelled by laser from the Earth’s surface using light sails. Doing so would allow it to reach relativistic speeds 15-20% the speed of light, reaching the Proxima Centauri system in 20-30 years and sending a message back in an additional four years; for most involved in the project, they would witness a communication from the star system within their lifetime. Given the speculative nature of this project, as well as its radical approach to conventional space vessel size and the overall long scale of time involved for the completion of the mission, Loeb and others may be viewed as “wasting time,” a potential critique of any researcher-by-design not conforming to a set of best practices and convention, as many would have them do.

But Loeb’s provocation doesn’t stop there. There is a strong sense of imagination, perhaps even ludos, in the way Loeb routinely challenges new discoveries in the realm of astrophysics. The recent passage through our solar system of interstellar object Ouomuamua, a cigar-shaped object with properties of an asteroid and a comet, raised many questions about the object’s origin. Loeb famously published a paper speculating that the object was some form of light sail from another civilization.

While Loeb is by no means known as a designer, his playful attitude towards research, which he centers around speculation and the testing of unconventional ideas, seems to be one of the characteristics criticized by those arguing for an adoption of design standards within HCI. Yet many physicists would agree that the energy Loeb’s curiosity injects into the discourse around interstellar travel might be just the sort of thing needed for the next major technical breakthrough.

#astronomy #astrophysics #research #art #creative #practice

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ruthjsmithfl · 4 years

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CrawlErrors - What Are Crawl Errors & How To Resolve them

This is the error in which a search engine tries to reach a page on your site but flop at it. First of all let’s elaborate the term crawling. Actually crawling is the process where a search engine tries to visit every page of your website through a bot. The search engine bot finds a link to your site and from there searches all your public pages. The bot scans pages and indexes of all content for use by Google, and also adds all links to these pages to the stack of pages that are yet to be crawled. Your main goal as the owner of the website is to ensure that the search engine bot can access all pages of the website. Otherwise, it will lead to crawl errors.

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The thing for your concern is that you have to be sure that every link on your website leads to an actual page. That might be via a 301 redirect, but the page at the very end of that link should always return a 200 OK server response. Google categorize crawl errors into two groups:

1) Site errors. You don’t want these, as they mean your whole website can’t be crawled/reached.

2) URL errors. You don’t want these either, but since they only relate to one specific URL per error, they are not difficult to maintain and fix.

Let’s get into the details on that.

Things to Keep In Mind

Site errors

Site errors are all the crawl errors that block the search engine bot from reaching your website. That can have many reasons, Most common reasons are mentioned below.

DNS Errors: This is mostly a temporary issue. This means that the search engine is not able to communicate with your server. It might be down, for a short period of time, meaning your website can’t be visited. But Google will come back to your website later and crawl your site anyway. If you notice this with crawl errors in the Google search console, this probably means that Google has tried several times and is still not able to reach your site.

Server errors: If your Search Console server shows errors, it means that the bot cannot reach your website. The request might have expired, which means that the search engine (f.i.) tried to visit your site, but it took time to load which indicates that the server served an error message. Server errors also occur when there are defects in your code that ceases a page from loading. Moreover it can also mean that your site has so many visitors that the server just couldn’t handle all the requests. A lot of these errors are returned as 5xx status codes, like the 500 and 503 status codes described here.

Robots failure: Before crawling (f.i.), Googlebot also tries to crawl your robots.txt file just to see if there are areas on your site that you have not indexed. If this bot cannot access the robots.txt file, Google will postpone scanning until it gets access to the robots.txt file. Therefore, always make sure that it is available.

This will explain you a bit about crawl errors related to your whole site. Now we will dig in the craw error that may happen for particular pages of your site. – URL errors

URL Errors

As you know that URL error happens when a search engine bot tries to crawl a specific page of your website. When we discuss URL errors, we first discuss crawl errors, such as (soft) 404 Not Found errors. You should often check for errors of this type (use the Google Search Console or Bing Tools for Webmasters) and fix them. If the page / theme of this page does not actually return to your site, then serve 410 pages. If you have similar content on another page, please redirect 301 instead. Make sure your site map and internal links are still relevant.

Mostly a lot of these URL errors happen due to the internal links, which means that usually these errors are due to the fault of the owner of the website. If you remove a page from your site at some point, adjust or remove any inbound links to it as well. These links are useless, If that link remains the same, a bot will find it and follow it, only to find a dead end (404 Not found error). On your website you have to do some adjustment now and then on your internal links!

Another most occured URL error is the one with the words ‘submitted URL’ in the title. These errors appear when Google detects inconsistency in behavior. On the one hand, you submitted the URL for the index, so you tell Google: “Yes, I want you to index this page.” On the other hand, Google gets information from something else saying: “No, do not index this page.” What might be possible is that your page is blocked by your robots.txt file. Or that the page is marked ‘noindex’ by a meta tag or HTTP header. If you don’t fix the inconsistency in the message, Google will not be able to index your URL.

Within these mostly occurred errors might be an occasional DNS error or server error for that specific URL. Check this URL later and see if the error persists. Be sure to use fetch as Google and mark the error as fixed in Google Search Console if that is your main monitoring tool in this.

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What Are The Different Types Of SEO?

At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P.

“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.

I’m Interested!

Technical SEO

Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.

Relevancy SEO

Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.

Authority SEO

Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority.

Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight.

If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.

Popularity

Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.

I’m Interested!

Very Specific URL Errors

There are some URL errors that apply only to some sites. Therefore, I want to list them separately:

Malware errors: If you encounter malware errors in webmaster tools, it means that Bing or Google detected malware at this URL. This may mean that software has been found that is used, for example, “to collect guarded information, or to disrupt their operation in general.” (Wikipedia). You must check this page and remove the malware.

Mobile-specific URL errors: This refers to crawl errors associated with a particular page that occur on modern smartphones. If you have a responsive website, it is unlikely to appear. Probably for the piece of flash content that you already wanted to replace. If you have a separate mobile subdomain, such as m.example.com, you may encounter a lot of errors. Talk about the erroneous redirection lines from your desktop to this mobile site. You can also block this mobile site using the line in your robots.txt.

Google News errors: There are some specific errors in Google News. The Google documentation has a list of these possible errors, so if your site is in Google News, you may find these crawl errors. They range from the lack of a headline to errors that indicate that your page does not have a news article. If this applies to your site, be sure to check it out for yourself.

Fix your crawl now by going through the link below.

Read more: Google Search Console: Crawl » https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/crawl-stats

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syndiket · 4 years

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Understanding Webpage Errors with

CrawlErrors - What Are Crawl Errors & How To Resolve them

Get In Touch

1) Site errors. You don’t want these, as they mean your whole website can’t be crawled/reached.

2) URL errors. You don’t want these either, but since they only relate to one specific URL per error, they are not difficult to maintain and fix.

Let’s get into the details on that.

Things to Keep In Mind

Site errors

Site errors are all the crawl errors that block the search engine bot from reaching your website. That can have many reasons, Most common reasons are mentioned below.

This will explain you a bit about crawl errors related to your whole site. Now we will dig in the craw error that may happen for particular pages of your site. – URL errors

URL Errors

Break it Down

What Are The Different Types Of SEO?

At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P.

I'm Interested!

Technical SEO

Relevancy SEO

Authority SEO

Popularity

I'm Interested!

Very Specific URL Errors

There are some URL errors that apply only to some sites. Therefore, I want to list them separately:

Fix your crawl now by going through the link below.

Read more: Google Search Console: Crawl » https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/crawl-stats

Want More Info?

Let's Chat!

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LocalStateNationalGlobal

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from Syndiket Marketing | SEO, Adwords, Web Design https://www.syndiket.com/services/technical-seo/crawl-errors/

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finejump20-blog · 5 years

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SEO Terms Glossary

One of the reasons that SEO is getting a bad reputation in some circles is that the terminology so casually used by providers of search engine optimization services is sometimes so obtuse and inscrutable that it might seem as an attempt to throw dust in the client’s eyes.

On the other hand, no one can argue that saying “We’ll improve your bounce rates” is infinitely more efficient and succinct than claiming that you’ll: “Ensure that your users don’t leave your site before interacting with a particular element on a page they’ve reached your site through, before lingering for a while, or before visiting another page.”

If you’ve hired an SEO agency and aren’t quite sure of what exactly is it that you’ve been promised, or if you are an SEO agency looking for a third-party provided elaboration of your offer, this glossary might be able to help you out.

0-9

301 (redirect) – 301 is the HTTP status code describing a permanent redirection of traffic from one URL to a new one, with negligible losses in link juice.

404 – HTTP status code notifying that the requested resource (usually a web page) could not be found on the provided URL.

Above the Fold – The topmost part of a webpage, the one that is visible as soon as the page loads.

Affiliate link – Links leading to external webstores, and earning commission for each sale that they contribute to. For instance, link from a photography blog leading to a camera product page on Amazon, containing the ID which allows Amazon to easily track where the traffic that link is bringing is coming from, and to pay the commission.

Algorithm – Generally in computer sciences, a set of steps or rules involved in solving a problem. When mentioned in relation to SEO, usually refers to Google’s algorithm (more accurately set of algorithms) used to evaluate and rank web pages.

Alt text / Alt Tag / Text Attribute / Alternate Text – Text describing what the images on your web page contain. The text can be seen on image hover, and is used to explain the content of the image to search engine crawlers and to site visitors with impaired eyesight.

Anchor text – The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, describing its purpose or destination.

Authority / Trust – Perceived value of a website in terms of the number and source of relevant links it is getting.

Average time on site – A Google Analytics metric describing the amount of time users average on your site once they’ve reached it.

B2B – Business to Business, describing a business which is primarily offering its products or services to other businesses, institutions or organizations.

B2C – Business to Consumer, describing a business which is primarily offering its products or services directly to consumers, i.e. general public.

Backlink / back link / inlink / incoming link – A link to one of your pages coming from a different domain.

Black hat / Black-hat SEO – A set of, mostly outdated, SEO techniques aimed at manipulating and deceiving search engines instead of working with them and following Google Webmaster Guidelines. Much more likely to get you into trouble with Google than to help, even in the short-term.

Boolean search – Type of search that allows you to modify your query by adding operators like OR, AND, NOT and others. Typical Google search is a good example, except AND is implied, and therefore redundant, and NOT is replaced with a minus sign.

Bot / Googlebot / robot / spider / crawler – When used in this context, it describes a script or a program which indexes the known web by following the links it comes across, and sends the information back to Google.

Bounce rate – The percentage of visitors who’ve reached one of your site’s pages and left it without interacting with it further or visiting any of your other pages.

Branded keywords – Keywords containing your brand name.

Broken link – Any kind of a dysfunctional link, like the ones leading to pages that no longer exist, or the ones with typos in the destination URL.

Browser – Software you use to access the Internet – Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are some of the most popular web browsers.

Canonical URL – Page duplication, a frequent consequence of allowing for creation of dynamic pages, can lead to issues with duplicate content. Designating one URL as the canonical version of a page ensures that search engine crawlers know they need to treat that page as the ‘original’ and that they understand its relationship with the ones derived from it.

Cloaking – Deceiving both users and search engine bots by serving different content to each. There are a number of ways to do this, from making the text you want registered by crawlers and ignored by users (usually exact match keywords) the same color as the background it is displayed on, to hiding it behind images. Regardless of the chosen method, this black-hat technique is only attempted by those who don’t know anything about SEO, or don’t care about their clients in the slightest.

CMS Content Management System – Platforms and frameworks allowing webmasters to focus on the less technical aspects of building and running a website. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento are just some of the examples of popular Content Management Systems.

Content – Informative or entertaining materials that site visitors could benefit from. Videos of cute cats or detailed whitepapers, it’s all content, as long as it serves a purpose and answers a user’s query.

Conversion (goal) – Visitor action that benefits you and that can be tracked. From making a purchase, to simply signing up for your newsletter, there are a number of steps in the buyer journey that bring leads closer to the end of the funnel, and each of them could be treated as a conversion.

CPC Cost Per Click – The amount that the Pay Per Click Advertiser has to pay for each click that their ad receives.

Crawl Frequency – How often your site is crawled by Google’s spiders. Depends on its authority, update frequency, number and velocity of incoming links, etc.

Crawling – The process of discovering, indexing and (up to a point) classifying new web pages, or revisiting old ones. Carried out by bots, crawlers, spiders, or whatever you want to call them, it is constantly performed by Google and other search engines, but private crawls with custom bots are perfectly commonplace.

Dead link – A link that is no longer working, usually because the domain or the exact page it is leading to is no longer functional or online.

Deep link – Any link leading to a page that is lower in your site’s hierarchy than the home page.

Deep link ratio – The ratio of the number of deep links to your site compared to number of those leading to your home page.

Directory – When mentioned in relation to SEO or digital marketing, referring to online, usually publicly available lists of websites, businesses, organizations, etc. submitted for inclusion by the owners of the property, the general public, or discovered through manual or automated research and vetting by the owner of the directory. The ones most commonly discussed and sought after are directories of businesses servicing a particular area, providing a particular type or service, or those doing both and specializing in, for instance, IT services in New York. Vendors usually submit the business details themselves, for free or not, depending on the directory; and aside from getting their essential pitch and information in front of the customers who are likely to be looking exactly for what they are offering; they are getting their Name, Address and Phone information cited on a number of easily verifiable sources, helping their local SEO, and making it easier for Google’s algorithm to recognize them as an entity.

Disavow – A way to distance your website from links you don’t want to be associated with, at least when it comes to Google. It consists, ideally, of a detailed backlink portfolio analysis of your website; taking note of the links that you think might be harming your website; and trying to remove them on your own. The ones you cannot remove even after several attempts should be listed in a disavow file, that you should submit to Google, along with your reasons for wanting to disassociate your site from them.

Domain – Usually used when referring to the URL or the root domain of a website, including the Top Level Domain (TLD).

Duplicate content – One of the main reasons that Google started paying special attention to duplicated content were websites which were doing nothing else than copying others’ content, publishing it without permission or attribution, but still managing to rank. Even the most stubborn of black-hat SEOs have largely abandoned the ‘content farm’ approach, as these sites were known, so these days, more often than not, content duplication is accidental. Either caused by laziness or lack of precaution when allowing for creation of dynamic pages, while having content that can be found elsewhere on your site or anywhere online will make you less interesting to Google, you’d really have to overdo it to get your pages removed from the results.

Dynamic content – Showing different versions of certain pages to different users, based on their preferences, past actions or personalization data. That means that dynamic pages don’t have one basic form, but are created on the go when a user requests them.

Engagement metrics – Web metrics showing how involved your audience is with your site, how interested they are, and how driven to interact with it. This includes values like average time on page, bounce rate, pages per visit, time on site…

Ethical SEO – Search engine optimization practices which don’t go against Google Webmaster Guidelines, and are not meant to deceive the search engine and get a site ranking undeservedly, but instead aim to actually improve the site’s visibility through meaningful improvements of its technical aspects, its crawlability, UX and content.

Everflux – The perpetually changing nature of Google, its algorithm, rules regarding individual ranking factors, result pages layout and content, etc. Also sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to the same mercurial character of the Internet as a whole.

External link – Any link leading away from the site it is found on, so any link on your site that is not targeting one of your pages.

Fresh content – Refers to the tendency of newer content to rank better for certain keywords until that ‘freshness’ period expires, when it usually drops in rankings. It is mostly reserved for ‘query deserves freshness’ searches which are, at the time, spiking in popularity, making it reasonable to assume that users want current, fresh information.

Fuzzy search – A flexible type of search where the returned results don’t have to match the provided query exactly – Google’s SERPs are an example of this kind of search.

Google AdWords – Google’s advertising system giving businesses a chance to have their ad displayed in search results, for a price determined by the popularity of the targeted keywords.

Google Analytics – Google’s utility allowing webmasters to easily track their site’s performance, visitor behavior, and the efficiency of their marketing efforts.

Google dance – Most often describing the fluctuations in rankings of a site, or a number of websites, either caused by an algorithm update, or by the inscrutable micro-forces endemic to the search ecosystem.

Google Hummingbird – While often referred to as an algorithm update, just like Penguin or Panda, Hummingbird was actually a major rehaul of the entire algorithm, much closer to Caffeine when it comes to the scope of the changes made and their impact.

Google Panda – A string of Google’s search algorithm improvements, aimed mostly at improving the search engine’s understanding of the value of the content a site is publishing. The first version of the algorithm rolled out in February 2011, but it has been modified countless times since.

Google Penguin – A set of Google updates focusing on link quality and on the discovery of link schemes. First unrolled in April 2012, Penguin has since gone through a number of iterations and changes at one point becoming a part of the core algorithm and becoming granular.

Google Pigeon – Rolled out in July 2014, Google Pigeon update was aimed at improving the accuracy and relevancy of local results, among other things, by paying more attention to search proximity signals.

Google Sitelinks – Ever since 2005, Google has been showing additional links with certain suggested results, usually leading to site’s most important pages or categories. Since they vastly improve click-through rates, they are highly valued, and often given special consideration during the development of general site optimization strategies.

Google Webmaster Guidelines – A set of best practices recommended by Google, meant to guide webmasters in the creation and optimization of their websites. Adherence to these principles ensures you’ll have a crawlable, functional website, which focuses on users and delivers on is promises.

Google Webmaster Tools / Google Search Console – Rebranded into Google Search Console in 2015, Google Webmaster Tools allow webmasters to get data regarding their site’s performance in search, the backlinks it is getting, etc.

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language, markup language predominantly used for the creation of web pages.

HTTP status code – Hypertext Transfer Protocol response codes are sent by the server hosting the requested page and notifying the client from which the request was made of the current state/availability of the page in question.

Index – as a noun, a repository of sites and information on them that Google has managed to gather and organize; as a verb – the act of a site being added to that repository by being discovered by crawlers.

Internal link – Any link leading from one of your site’s pages to another (or, technically, the same) page on your site.

IP address – Internet Protocol address is the number associated with a device or a range of devices in a network, used to convey identity and location information.

Keyword / Keyphrase – one or more words entered as a query in search.

Keyword position / Keyphrase rank – The position in search results that a page occupies for the specified keyword.

Keyword cannibalization – A result of suboptimal keyword distribution and mapping, where a number of your strong pages are competing to rank for the same keyword, instead of each of them having their unique focus, i.e. pursuing different keywords.

Keyword density – The number of times a keyword is repeated on a page compared to the total word count of the page in question – usually expressed in percentages.

Keyword Not Provided – While webmasters were once able to use Google Analytics to check which keywords was their organic search traffic coming from, in 2011, Google stopped providing this info, allegedly in the interest of user privacy and data security. Interestingly enough, the data was only withheld from webmasters without active AdWords campaigns – those paying to advertise through Google’s service continued receiving keyword-related information like nothing ever happened.

Keyword research – Naturally, can refer to any kind of research that has to do with keywords, but usually describes identification of the most lucrative keywords for the purposes of organic or paid promotion, i.e. finding the keywords that would bring you relevant traffic and that you have a chance to compete for.

Keyword stuffing – Excessive and unnatural repetition of a keyword to get your site or a particular page to rank for that keyword. Disliked and immediately detected by search engines and users alike.

Landing page – The visitors gateway to your site, and your gateway to conversions. In a broader sense, landing pages are those that visitors are reaching your site through, in a narrower, those that you want the users to be reaching your site through and that you have optimized for that purpose.

Link bait – A page created to attract links on its own, passively. Most often, this is done by offering valuable, informative and citable content that people will share and reference on their own initiative.

Link building – The practice of improving a site’s visibility in organic search by expanding its link portfolio and exposing it to relevant audiences.

Link checker – Most often, tools you can use to check your internal links, but some of them, often appropriately labeled as backlink checkers, also allow you to check the links your site is getting from other domains.

Link churn – The rate at which you are losing backlinks to your site.

Link equity / Link juice / Google juice – the trust and authority passed on by a dofollow link coming from another website to the one you’re promoting.

Link velocity – The speed at which you are acquiring new backlinks.

Long tail (keywords) – Specific keywords or queries containing more words than the broader exact match. While having lower volume due to their nature, they are also usually easier to rank for.

Manual penalty – Unlike with automated, algorithm-based penalties, receiving a manual penalty means that an actual (Google-employed) person has taken a look at your website and decided it needs to be removed from search results.

Meta description – Text describing the page it is associated with, often (but not necessarily) provided along with the URL of the page being recommended in the search results.

Meta keywords – While search engines were more trusting of people, webmasters used this tag to inform crawlers of what the page is about. While you can still add meta keywords to your pages, since this has been abused by black-hats in the past, search engines largely stopped paying attention to these tags and people largely stopped providing them.

Meta title – The crawler-readable title of your page, and along with meta description, one of the most direct ways to let users and search engines alike know what the page is about.

Monetizing – Finding a way to make money off of something, in this context, usually a website.

Negative SEO – The practice of trying to get a site removed from the SERPs or to compromise its ranking by intentionally building suspicious and outright harmful links to it. While the ability to disavow links, along with the search engine’s growing competence in detecting foul play have made negative SEO mostly ineffective, some people are still trying to undermine their competitors in this manner.

Nofollow – A tag instructing crawlers not to pass on PageRank to the linked pages. It can be used in the link code, for individual links, or in the ‘head’ element of a page to designate all the links that the page contains as nofollow. While often claimed to be useless for SEO purposes, even though they don’t pass any link juice, they are still sending traffic your way, and are a part of every natural backlink portfolio.

Noindex – A tag used in the head section of a page to instruct crawlers not to index that page. The same tag could be used to prevent indexing of certain parts of the page, but since crawlers can be set up to ignore this tag, and since Googlebot is only interested in it when it prevents indexing of entire pages, most people don’t bother using it any other way.

Off-page SEO / Off-site SEO – Every action meant to improve a site’s position in organic search without making changes to the site itself. Link building, influencer outreach and creation of linkless citations of your business information are all examples of off-page SEO.

On-page SEO / On-site SEO – Direct modifications of your website, meant to improve its exposure. Some of the essential on-page techniques include meta elements optimization, page loading speed improvement, inner linking structure modifications, etc.

Organic link – If a tree falls down in the woods and there’s a happy lumberjack at its base, did the tree fall or was it cut down? This dilemma is at the core of organic links discussion. At its basest, this definition refers to links that were created solely for the purposes of identification, attribution, elaboration etc. in other words, links that the webmaster giving them felt an actual need to provide. By that definition, ‘pursuing organic links’ is an oxymoron, as solicited links are not completely voluntarily given, but they can still make more sense in certain contexts than in others. These days, the phrase organic links is most often used to describe links that don’t seem out of place and which meet the expectations of those following them, regardless if they were created spontaneously, or if they were negotiated.

Organic Search Results – Search engine’s recommendation of the pages it found to be the most relevant for the entered query. These suggestions are made based on the page’s technical optimization, traffic and engagement metrics, freshness, number of links leading to it, etc. and shouldn’t be confused with the paid ads also displayed on the search engine results pages.

PageRank – Part of the of the Google’s algorithm which assigns value to pages based on the number of links they are receiving and the number of their outgoing links. A rough estimate of this value, expressed on a scale from 0 to 10, used to be available through Google Toolbar, but since PageRank is now just a minor part in the overall algorithm, and since a lot of webmasters and SEOs have been focusing on it too much, Toolbar Pagerank is no longer supported since 2016.

Paid search results – The paid-for ads displayed at the top of search engine page results.

Penalty – Having your site or some of its pages completely removed from the SERPs, either manually or algorithmically.

Query – The string entered into the search box, in other words, the keywords and phrases you want to look up.

Rankbrain – A machine learning powered part of the Google’s search algorithm, claimed to be one of the most important ranking factors.

Reciprocal link – A link you got from a domain in exchange for linking to that domain from your website. While sites linking one to another are not necessarily suspicious, and might be just the result of actual partnership, overdoing it with this can land you in hot water with Google.

Redirect – Diverting the incoming visitors from one URL to another. There are numerous ways to change the destination a URL is leading to, most popular ones being the 301 and 302 server-side redirects.

Relevance – In the context of SEO, usually referring to topical connection between two sites, and the appropriateness of linking from one the other. For instance, a plumbing website could create relevant links on a home improvement site, but it would be out of place on a site about the string theory.

Reputation Management – A range of SEO, content marketing and related services focused on tracking the type of exposure a person or a brand is getting online, and trying to minimize the number of negative mentions in the top search results pages.

Retargeting – Visitors to your site who accept your cookies can later be identified on other sites offering advertising and presented with your ads. While this is the most common type of this technique, there are also CRM, email and search retargeting.

Robots.txt – A text file you can edit to easily modify what authorizations should different bots have when crawling your website, for instance which pages can they crawl or index and which are off limits on both accounts.

ROI – Return On Investment, how much you earned from a particular tactic or campaign, compared to how much it cost you to implement it.

Scrape – Crawling a website, usually with custom bots, and retrieving relevant information, including, for instance, the site’s inner linking structure, meta elements of individual pages, word count, etc.

Search engine (SE) – A program designed to search smaller or larger databases for the requested keywords. In this context, usually referring to internet or web search engines like Google or Bing which rely on crawlers for data gathering and complex algorithms for the assessment of individual pages to be returned as results.

Search engine marketing (SEM) – Describes promotional efforts meant to improve your site’s visibility in the SERPs, both when it comes to paid and to organic results. While some consider SEM to be a broader category also including search engine optimization, others only use the term search engine marketing when referring to PPC and other paid search campaigns.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – A range of web design, content creation, influencer outreach and social media promotion strategies meant to help make a site rank better for the keywords that they wish to pursue. The goal of SEO is to create a crawler-friendly website which visitors will enjoy and engage with.

Search marketing – A term encompassing both SEM and SEO, used by those who think that the term search engine marketing should refer only to paid search advertising, and not also include SEO.

SERP – Search engine results page, listing paid ads and organic search results that were estimated to be the best match for the entered query.

Site map – Usually a hierarchically or topically organized list of links to pages of your website that users are meant to have access to, and that you want to make as easy to crawl as possible.

Spamming – Can refer to a range of intrusive advertising techniques which offer no value but rely solely on brute force and quantity. From buying contact and lead lists and inundating the people found there with poorly targeted and composed emails, to squeezing in clumsily anchored links in pointless blog or forum comments, many of these techniques have been completely devalued, but new ones do crop up.

Static page – Pages the content of which is not dependent on session info or user requests, i.e. which are not created on the go, but saved in their final form, making them easier to index and display to visitors.

Top Heavy – Referring to sites which, according to the 2012 Google’s Page Layout Update have too many ads above the fold. Sites that were found to be too Top Heavy dropped in organic search results and even if they promptly responded, sometimes had to wait quite a bit before reclaiming their old positions.

URL – Uniform Resource Locator, or a web address is one several types of Uniform Resource Identifiers used to specify different resources, but most commonly, web pages.

Usage data – Information retrieved from various analytics utilities, detailing the way visitors interact with your site and its content. Often represented through various engagement metrics, like bounce rate and average time on page.

User generated content (UGC) – Content created by site’s visitors, instead of by its owner/webmaster/staff. Includes everything from forum and social media posts to blog comments.

Vertical search – A search focusing on a single category of content. The category can be determined by the industry or niche, content format, or anything else. Some examples include Google Image Search, specialized directories like Yelp, etc.

Web beacon – User behavior tracking method, often combined with cookies, relying on miniature, transparent images placed on web pages, which help gather information on the visitor’s browser type, IP, etc.

White hat / White-hat SEO – A collection of Google-endorsed optimization best practices, meant to improve a site’s visibility in organic search through legitimate tactics instead of through manipulation and spam. The only way to ensure lasting results with SEO.

Source: https://fourdots.com/blog/seo-terms-glossary-4495

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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t-baba · 5 years

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A Deep Dive into User Research Methods

User research plays a crucial role in shaping any successful product or service. It keeps the user at the heart of the experience by tailoring it to their needs, and in turn provides real advantage over competitors. But with a growing arsenal of different research methods out there, it can be a challenge to know which is best to use, and when.

This guide offers an overview of the fundamentals for each of the most commonly used methods, providing direction on when to use them — and more importantly, why.

We’ll cover:

the origins of user research

discovery and exploratory research

quant and qual, and the difference between them

core methodologies:

user interviews

ethnography and field studies

surveys and questionnaires

analytics and heatmaps

card sorts and tree tests

usability studies

further reading and resources

key takeaways

The Origins of User Research

Product designers and engineers have incorporated user feedback into their process for centuries. However, it wasn’t until 1993 that the term “user experience” (UX) was coined by Don Norman during his time at Apple.

As the discipline of UX evolved and matured, practitioners began to use investigative research techniques from other fields, such as science and market research. This enabled decisions to be informed by the end user, rather than the design teams’ assumptions, laying the groundwork for UX research as we know it today.

That’s a quick rundown of the origins. Now let’s dive into some research frameworks.

Discovery and Evaluative Research

User-centered design means working with your users all throughout the project — Don Norman

Broadly speaking, user research is used to either discover what people want and need or evaluate if ideas are effective. The methods to achieve these two distinct outcomes can be loosely divided into two groups.

Strategize: Discovery Research

Methods that help to answer unknowns at the beginning of a project can be referred to as Discovery Research. These methods range from reviewing existing reports, data and analytics to conducting interviews, surveys and ethnographic studies. These methods ensure that you have a solid understanding of who your user is, what they need and the problems they face in order to begin developing a solution.

Execute and Assess: Evaluative Research

Once a clearer picture of the end user and their environment has been established, it’s time to explore possible solutions and test their validity. Usability studies are the most common method employed here. Evaluative research provides you with the knowledge you need to stay focussed on the user and their specific requirements.

Examples

Discovery Research Methods Evaluative Research Methods

field study

diary study

one-to-one interview

focus group

behavioral analytics review

open card sort

email survey

contextual inquiry

remote usability testing

closed card sort

tree test

benchmarking analytics review

heatmaps

popup poll

usability benchmark testing

impression testing

Quant and Qual, and the Difference Between Them

Although every design problem is different, it’s generally agreed that a combination of both qualitative and quantitative research insights will provide a balanced foundation with which to form a more successful design solution. But what do these pronunciation-averse words mean?

Quantitative (statistical) research techniques involve gathering large quantities of user data to understand what is currently happening. This answers important questions such as “where do people drop off during a payment process”, or “which products were most popular with certain user groups” and “what content is most/least engaging”.

Quantitative research methods are often used to strategize the right direction at the start of a project and assess the performance at the end using numbers or metrics. Common goals include:

comparing two or more products or designs

getting benchmarks to compare the future design against

calculating expected cost savings from some design changes

Quantitative data analysis can offer useful insights such as abandonment points on a form. This can lead to further qualitative studies to understand why.

Qualitative (observational) research techniques involves directly observing small user groups to understand attitudes, behaviors and motivations. This is where we begin to understand why something is happening and how to solve a problem.

You can optimize everything and still fail. That’s where qualitative approaches come in. By asking “why”, we can see the opportunity for something better beyond the bounds of the current best. ― Erika Hall

Qualitative research methods are also used to strategize the right direction at the start of a project, and to inform design decisions throughout the ideation process. Common goals include:

to uncover trends in thoughts and opinions

understand a problem more deeply

to develop a hypothesis for a quantitative research study

Christian Rohrer authored a popular framework for understanding user research methods, illustrating where 20 popular methods appear along three dimensions, including quantitative and qualitative. Source.

Core Methodologies

So that’s enough of the background behind the methods. Let’s dive into the methods themselves. It’s worth noting that, since every project is different, there’s no quick way of strictly stating which method is best for what. However, pros and cons have been listed for each.

1. User interviews

Qualitative | Discover/Evaluate

Interviews allow you to ask questions to help see things from the participants’ perspective. They are usually recorded and later analyzed to find out what the beliefs, attitudes and drivers of users are, alongside uncovering new considerations to aid with ideation.

Stories are where the richest insights lie. Your objective is to get to this point in every interview. — Steve Portigal

Interview length, style and structure can vary depending on what you’re trying to achieve, and the access to and availability of participants. The following are some different types of interviews.

One-to-one interviews are often conducted in a lab or coffee shop, but can be undertaken almost anywhere with a little preparation. In-person interviews are preferable to remote (via phone or video) as they offer additional insights through body language. Sessions are conducted with questions that loosely follow a discussion guide. This allows you to uncover new learnings around an objective and not get sidetracked.

Focus groups are used to gain a consensus from a group of 3–10 representatives of a target audience when you’re short on time or availabile participants. Focus groups take the form of discussions and exercises and are a good way of assessing what people want from a product or service and their opinions on things. They’re not recommended for evaluating interface usability, due to their lack of focus and the potential for groupthink bias.

Contextual inquiry interviews are the holy grail of interview methods. They’re conducted within the participants’ everyday environment whilst they go about their daily activities. A researcher can observe a participant and discuss what they did, and why, whilst the activities take place. Unlike other interviews, the researcher usually summarizes the findings back to the participant at the end, offering them a chance to give final corrections and clarifications. This method is used to generate highly relevant and reliable insights from real situations, but it can be very time consuming.

For more on user interviews, there’s some great resources on the Interaction Design Foundation website.

2. Field Studies

Qualitative | Discover

Field studies involve observing people as they interact with a product, service, or each other, in their natural working or living environment (rather than in a lab) to better understand user behavior and motivations in context. These studies are usually conducted over longer periods of time than most other methods, recording extensive field notes for later analysis.

Ethnographic research involves researchers actively participating within a group setting, becoming the subject themselves. This method is particularly useful when studying a target audience that is culturally or socially different from your own, and it can uncover lots of unknowns and important considerations.

Direct observation involves passively observing from a distance (like a curious fly on a wall), allowing researchers to uncover problems and workarounds in user journeys and flows (such as retail store layouts), and also allowing for future improvements.

User logs involve diary studies and video journals, and are sometimes referred to as the “poor man’s field study”. They allow the user to generate the data for you by recording their experiences with the focus of the study at a specific time each day over a period of time. The real-time insights provided can be useful for understanding long-term behaviors such as habits, workflows, attitudes, motivations, or changes in behavior.

The post A Deep Dive into User Research Methods appeared first on SitePoint.

by Mark Seabridge via SitePoint http://bit.ly/2WKxxDX

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sjohnson24 · 5 years

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8 Questions To Determine Your Website’s Success

There are many things to consider in creating a real estate website that helps you drive your business to success. Is your website the effective lead-generating platform you want it to be? Find out by asking yourself these questions.

What are my goals for this website?

Launching a site isn’t just about getting your name out there and promoting yourself as an agent. Ultimately, you want to drive traffic to the site, convert that traffic into leads, and persuade leads to buy or sell property through you.

Your goals will vary depending on your business’ priorities, but there are metrics that the majority of agents and brokers keep track of:

Getting a certain number of clicks on pages and listings

Lowering the bounce rate on landing pages by a certain percentage each month

Securing a specific number of newsletter subscriptions via landing pages

Getting a specific number of people to read the blog on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis

Attracting a certain amount of leads through marketing

Netting a specific amount of sales based on your leads

Do I want a custom site or will I use a template?

When choosing between a template that allows for easy set-up and maintenance or a customized option that gives you the freedom and flexibility to wholly modify HTML and CSS, you need to determine how good your web development skills are, and how much time you can realistically spend updating the site. You also need to consider your clientele and how they would interact with your site. A template site may be good for showcasing a small listing inventory to a small audience, but as your portfolio, team and services grow, sometimes a more custom solution can be a smart long term investment.

If you lack the time or technical skills to build a site, but still prefer a customizable option, you can always get a professional to do it for you. Agent Image creates both custom and template sites based on your needs. The company has been producing award-winning real estate websites for over 20 years.

Do I have all the information I need on my site?

Make sure to include the following information before your site goes live so that visitors will find what they need to know when deciding to hire you.

You can add other pages over the site’s lifespan, but here are some key areas to prioritize:

IDX – Your IDX must be well integrated to ensure that visitors are seeing listings that meet their criteria. For WordPress users, IDX listings can be integrated using plug-ins. There are tools and services that allow agents and brokers to customize listing displays and enhance the user experience while searching for homes.

Blog – Your blog should be updated with unique and compelling content on a regular basis. Find out what your target market wants to know. Popular topics include market trends, home prices, and lending practices. You can also blog about buying and selling tips, or about the lifestyle and community you specialize in. Alternately, you can serve as a true resource to your readers by finding out what their pain points are, and produce content that responds to those pain points.

Contact Page – Potential leads will want to get in touch with your business, so make sure your contact page includes your phone number, email address, office address, and links to social media pages. Having a built in contact form is also advisable to keep your online leads centralized.

Agent Bio – Write a concise biography that states your skills, experience, qualifications, service areas, and other information clients want to see. This will help you capture the interest of potential leads and help them warm up to you as a professional.

Am I delivering quality content?

Blogging is essential to creating and promoting any real estate website. Posting regularly, even just a few times a week, can help increase traffic. As you create more quality content, visitors will begin to acknowledge your expertise and remember your brand when they finally decide to buy or sell.

But keep in mind that the blog is only one component of the site. It’s important to have quality copy across your site, including the homepage, listing descriptions, landing pages, and agent bios.

Moreover, you must include other types of content if you really want to make an impact on visitors, and to get them to subscribe to your site. Free content and special offers like videos, infographics, and ebooks are types of content that you can produce in the weeks and months leading up to the site launch.

Creating a variety of content before the site goes live allows you to hit the ground running, so to speak – when visitors view the site within the first days of its unveiling, you won’t need to worry about having too much blank space.

You don’t even have to be a writer or graphic designer to start with. Developing quality content can be done each week as long as you have enough time to build your skills and do research.

Better yet, hire someone who can create content on your behalf. Agent Image Marketing offers blogging packages and content development packages to agents in need of content.

Regardless of the type of content you include on the site, remember that search engine optimization (SEO) must play a central role – without it, your site won’t be visible.

Which leads us to the next question you should ask yourself…

What am I doing about SEO?

Your site won’t show up anywhere near the top of search pages if you’re not strategically optimizing content. Learn the basics, invest in the tools you need, and gain a better understanding of algorithms and what the search engines favor.

Find out which keywords work best for your services, locale, and target market, and use them across your web pages to attract visitors. You can find pertinent data using Google AdWords and Trends.

Aside from doing keyword research, familiarize yourself with inbound marketing and SEO to inch your way up the search results, and into the RSS feeds and bookmarks of your leads. Check out Agent Image’s SEO packages.

Am I effectively promoting my site?

Social media visibility and activity plays a big role in site promotion. Find out how platforms like Facebook and Instagram can help drive organic traffic to your site.

Here are several channels you can use for promotion:

Social Media – The latest advancements in social media allow you to engage with buyers and sellers like never before. You can promote content, updates, events, milestones, promos, and services on social media platforms.

If social media users respond to your posts, thank them for engaging in an online conversation before answering their questions or expounding on their comments.

Keep in mind that social media users expect timely responses to their questions, so be quick to address any concerns or inquiries.

Email – In addition to posting on social media channels, other tactics like email campaigns can also be beneficial. Send automated emails and newsletters to visitors who subscribe to the site, who will receive these communications at various points of the sales and marketing lifecycle.

Email campaigns provide leads with new information related to the latest listings and new content on your website.

Ads – These include PPC ads, social media ads, and so on. Effective keyword research combined with hefty investments in online advertisements make for a superior tactic for lead generation. It’s also worth investing in quality copy and graphics to entice internet users to click on ads and drop links to your pages.

Guest Blog Posts – Doing guest blog posts for top real estate websites will help you reach a wider audience and help you build your reputation as an authority in the industry.

Am I measuring my site’s traffic and conversions?

If the site has been up and running for a while, you’ll be able to analyze how much traffic you’re getting, and where the traffic is coming from. Knowing where your site visitors come from will provide remarkable insight into how you can modify and further develop your marketing scheme.

There are three kinds of traffic:

Organic Traffic – These are site visitors who find you through online searches.

Direct Traffic – Visitors who reach your site by directly typing in your domain name or URL. Getting more of this kind of traffic means that people know your business and that they are actively seeking it out

Referral Traffic – Visitors who are sent to your site from other sites and social media pages.

In order to track traffic and conversions, you have to choose an analytics provider. Google Analytics is of the most popular providers, allowing you to keep track of key metrics like conversions and click-through rates.

An analytics provider will help you determine if you’re meeting your goals and if you need to make adjustments to the site, the keywords you’re targeting, or your promotional scheme overall.

Am I converting enough leads?

In order to convert leads, you have to find out if site visitors have the means to convert. To do this, you must create landing and squeeze pages that discuss the services you provide, as well as include a form that leads can fill out with their contact information. A strong call-to-action will get them to share their information.

Once you have the information, you can contact them one by one and start tracking and monitoring their movements using customer relationship management software (CRM). The right CRM will enable you to check in with leads – even if they don’t sign up for your services right away, at least you’d have started and maintained a relationship with them.

Launching a competitive site in a saturated industry is challenging, but not impossible. Get the right kind of support so you can implement an effective strategy for your website. Build your brand with Agent Image – we offer a host of website design and marketing services to help make your site a success.

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myallywynn · 4 years

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Advance notification of cargo rollover – Reality or Myth?

Cargo rollover happens for a variety of reasons, at various stages and various places. Cargo rollover can cause significant delays and result in potentially crippling operations.

Most shippers assume carriers would send rollover notifications, but only a few carriers seem to notify customers in advance that their cargo is about to be rolled or has been rolled. This especially happens when transhipment is involved and catches many customers by surprise and upsets their production or sales plans.

What most customers don’t know is that there is a reliable way to get advance warning of cargo rollover so that they can take suitable action.

How?

Before we answer that question, let’s take a closer look at the causes of cargo rollover, how it impacts ocean freight, and why forwarders and logistics managers need to realize what’s happening in regards to cargo rollover.

The real cost and causes of cargo rollover

Despite best plans and intentions, ships are regularly overbooked bringing with it the risk of exceeding allowed tonnage.

Journal of Commerce attributes the primary cause of cargo rollover to poor forecasting between Carriers and BCOs.

In fact, “less than 50 percent of container carriers actually forecast their capacity needs, and less than half of those are forecasting properly,” says Greg Knowler of JOC.com.

Soren Skou, CEO of Maersk tells JOC.com “For Maersk, on average, 30 percent of bookings made don’t show, and we try to estimate for that and overbook,” said Skou. “The risk of doing that is we get it wrong and containers have to be rolled or the ship is not full when it leaves. Both of these situations cost money for us and our customers.”

Carriers may be forced to cut and run in an attempt to restore the liner schedule and avoid delays along the route.

Rollovers can happen at the Port of Load or at Transhipment port(s) and in some cases when cargo gets rolled, the customers may only find out about the rollover much later and in some extreme cases when it fails to show up at the destination.

Consequences of cargo rollover can be severe — “a single delay for a major BCO could lead to a daily loss of more than $400,000 a day” according to Bjorn Vang Jensen, vice president of global logistics at home appliance maker Electrolux as explained to Greg Knowler in the Journal of Commerce:

“It costs about Euros 400,000 [$440,000] a day to shut down an Electrolux plant anywhere in the world, and all it takes is one container that was late at destination.”

A study of more than two million data points was done using the Ocean Insights platform. In the study, only carriers that moved more than 10,000 containers in H2 2019 were included.

The result of this study was clear: container rollover is a serious issue affecting on average between 5 and 17% of all containers shipped.

Consider the below charts derived from these data points :

In the below image you can see the highest cargo rollover ratio among carriers is almost a whopping 18%.

If we isolate containers that undergo transshipment at various hubs (transshipment ports), you can see that the ratio goes up quite drastically and Carrier 2 that had only 16% of rollovers in total has almost 32% rollovers when transhipment cargo is considered.

The below image using data points from Ocean Insights platform shows which of the major transhipment ports have the most rollovers. This helps customers to understand how the ports are performing around their containers. The data is pulled from H2 of 2019.

As discussed earlier, cargo rollovers can be due to cut and runs, overbooking, or blank sailings by the carriers in order to avoid berthing delays and maintain schedule integrity.

Some of the causes of cargo rollover could be :

Carriers exceeding the allotted tonnage for the ship and the ship cannot physically accommodate all booked cargo;

Improper forecasting by BCOs;

Documentation problems, such as poor paperwork and compliance with international trade regulations;

Resulting from inaccuracy in booking or even the need to overbook to avoid unfilled space

Yes, even if cargo makes it to the port, it could still get rolled due to port closure, if the shipment lacks the right documentation, or the port has a high volume of activity.

Ocean Insights uses data to give customers advance warning so they can take action and reduce the impact and cost of rollovers.

Data keeps customers appraised of cargo status & proactive.

The use of data forms a basis of business cases for investing in new systems and technologies across all industries and around the globe.

Data proves its value with fact, not an assumption. It gives BCOs and Forwarders an opportunity to see not only what has happened but see and more importantly understand what will happen.

Shippers that recognize the warning signs that the cargo looks like it may be rolled have the upper hand, capable of intervening to prevent further disruptions to the supply chain, such as :

Moving inventory from one warehouse to some other location, if necessary

Proactively communicate status with customers, improving services.

Switch to emergency mode, such as airfreight

How does Ocean Insights do it?

Ocean Insights’ Container Track & Trace Service captures the original and then compares it against the real-time progress of your containers. In case of any discrepancy between the original plans and actual status, or if the further routing of a shipment is changed, corresponding alerts will be pushed to the customer immediately.

This also includes situations where vessels are replaced throughout the journey. Any vessel change is highlighted and complete information and position data for the replacement vessel is provided. With this powerful insight into the variance from the original carrier commitment, shippers can quickly and easily see when their cargo has been rolled.

Ocean Insights leverages carrier data for shipment details and then constantly compares those against the real-time global locations of container vessels. By incorporating real-time monitoring, Ocean Insights is able to create a more complete picture of the shipment’s status.

The technology detects deviations much earlier and more comprehensively compared to what is usually communicated by the carriers because it also triggers automatic event and exception alerts on the software dashboard to notify logistics managers and operators of potential issues.

Furthermore, by using historical shipment and vessel travel time data, Ocean Insights leverages machine learning technology in order to predict near-future travel times to generate warnings for containers that are at risk of being rolled over.

This predictive analytics tool works independently from carriers’ scheduled ETA and regardless of whether carriers initiate the notification or not, the Ocean Insights platform continuously calculates and updates the estimated time of arrival of the cargo.

Freight forwarders on behalf of their customers and logistics managers could stay more informed of what is happening, will happen, and what they need to do to accommodate any changes in their supply chains.

Ocean Insights provides means of connecting logistics managers and freight forwarders with the current and predicted position of their cargoes.

Think of it as a primary management platform for the logistics manager to proactively manage ocean shipments.

The Ocean Insights platform enables visibility and data points tracking the following metrics:

Port of Landing;

Transhipment Port;

Port of Delivery;

Land Facility;

Containers Behind Schedule;

Estimated Time of Departure Changed;

Estimated Time of Arrival Changed;

Port of Delivery Arrival Warning; and

Cargo Not Yet Released.

Each dashboard value provides insight into what’s happening, exceptions, enabling better responsiveness so both shippers and freight forwarders can leverage the event history to understand what’s happened within the past 24, 48 or 72 hours.

Even though carriers have grown better in terms of notification of cargo rollover to customers, shippers still need a hand and help in recognizing when cargo gets rolled. The industry needs an overhaul of how to receive early notification of cargo rollover and other reasons for delays.

What are your views on cargo rollover and how do you handle cargo rollover, whether you are BCO or Freight Forwarder or Carrier?

About the Author:

Josha Brazil works as the Chief Operations Officer of Ocean Insights. Ocean Insights has a best-in-class ocean visibility software and a team of experts to make supply chain data visible and actionable.

They bring down your demurrage and detention fees, support day-to-day operations, and strategic decisions within the freight industry.

The post Advance notification of cargo rollover – Reality or Myth? appeared first on Shipping and Freight Resource.

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729renegades · 5 years

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REPORTING RHYTHMS

April is a month of reckoning for the business owner. It seems like you just completed your budget for the year, and now the first quarter of the year has passed, and your forecasted financial numbers are under scrutiny by your board, investors, or other stakeholder.

You should have a quarterly board meeting or a general first quarter review coming up soon, where any significant financial issues will be discussed. You’ll be on the spot to present any major deviations from the annual budget, a looming financial miss, or a change to plan.

Before you present to your board, your analysis must first pass the scrutiny of the finance committee.

Here’s a spoiler alert for this article. You want to have a system of monthly financial reviews in place no matter the type, the stage, or size of your business. If you don’t control your numbers, they will control you.

WHERE THE FINANCE COMMITTEE FITS INTO THE BOARD STRUCTURE

The finance committee is typically the first subcommittee to be created from the main board. Its chair will be a Chartered Accountant, an outside CFO, or a financial investor with deep knowledge of finance and accounting. They will ask challenging questions about your numbers and ensure they are confident in your financials before you can present to the board. In fact, the board will typically defer to the expertise of the finance committee to formally approve any finance resolutions.

Their responsibility is to oversee financial reporting, budgeting, and expenses. They have authority over emergency expenditures and other extraordinary items. They review the audit and have private conversations with the auditor to ensure no mismanagement of finances or fraud is happening.

If this seems like something only a large corporation must deal with, think again. Frequently there is a disconnect between a numbers savvy board and a business owner that’s missing a finance expert. This gap causes frustration and stress for both parties. It’s typically these interactions that force the business owner to hire a financial lieutenant. Although the business owner may have been reluctant to hire this person at first, a skilled financial lieutenant will quickly make him or herself invaluable and facilitate the next stage of business growth.

THE CONTENTS OF A STRONG FINANCIAL PACKAGE

First, I’d like to discuss the rhythm of financial reporting, specifically focusing on the monthly financial close cycle and how it’s reported to the business owner and finance committee. To begin, it’s important that the business owner’s top financial lieutenant, set the reporting schedule. One example of such a lieutenant could be a financial controller, who is responsible for all accounting activities in a company. For example, the business owner’s controller dictates that the monthly financials close by day 15 of each month. The monthly financial package, which is outlined below, is sent to the executive team and finance committee on day 17 with a presentation of an optional monthly ‘state of the numbers’ call on day 20. This optional ‘state of the numbers’ call is exclusively done with the business owner, controller, and the board. Ideally it is led by the controller and is limited to one hour. A short presentation (less than 10 slides) summarising the key financials, metrics, and any topics for discussion are sent out at least two days in advance.

The main financial package includes the following key documents. First, the balance sheet will compare last year’s (audited) numbers, trailing 12-month, and current month numbers. Secondly, the income statement will compare the same numbers as the balance sheet above with a final column showing the variance in absolute value and percentage. Thirdly, the income statement will compare the budget with the current month numbers and show the variance between the two columns in value and percentage. Finally, it will include an up-to-date cash liquidity analysis that shows the level of cash the company has remaining at the end of each month for the next 12 months and how the cash cushion has changed since the previous meeting. The cover letter of the package is called the ‘MD&A’, the management discussion and analysis. Your financial lieutenant will write this cover letter and oversee the distribution of the package. With the support of the business owner, he’ll also drive the Q&A that occurs in email, or in a Google document.

WHY YOUR NUMBERS MAY BE UNDER SCRUTINY

If you want more certainty in your business, then you must increase the predictability of your revenues and expenses. I’m working with a company where there are two areas that are causing the revenues to be erratic.

The first source of uncertainty stems from existing contracts with established invoicing schedules. This type of cash flow is called ‘bookings’ and should be highly predictable. Nonetheless, there are several things that can and are derailing the process of timely cash collection. Firstly, the starting date of several projects continues to be pushed out causing the first payment and subsequent future invoicing dates to be delayed. Secondly, invoices for on-time projects haven’t been sent out in a timely manner and lack a predetermined system to keep invoicing on track. Finally, invoices aren’t getting paid on time.

Here are some suggestions for the company to fix these issues. If you have recurring monthly or quarterly invoices, use the automatic invoicing function in Xero or QuickBooks Online. If the invoices need to be sent out on different timeframes and for varying amounts, assign each project team lead responsibility for their respective invoicing. Create one shared Google document where each team lead inputs their information, so you, the business owner, can track all invoicing in one place. If you need to use time tracking software for resource allocation purposes, try using a strong yet simple tool such as getharvest.com for small businesses. It connects to Xero and QuickBooks Online and can directly invoice your customers.

If you don’t control your numbers, they will control you

The second source of the company’s income uncertainty stems from their sales funnel. Their annual budget shows a list of projects with expected deal size, month of closing, and probability of being won, I’ve spoken about a table you could create for this in previous articles. Yet many of the company’s contract closings have been delayed, the value size of each is smaller than expected, and many expected contract wins have faltered. A close analysis of the sales pipeline needs to be conducted to be able to answer questions such as: To reach 1 million in sales by year-end, how many qualified leads must enter the sales funnel and how many sales meetings must my salesperson conduct each quarter? What must the velocity at each stage of the funnel be for a contract to close at the expected time? What are the conversion probabilities from one stage of the funnel to the next from lead to close? The financial controller’s ability to predict future numbers is impacted by how accurate and consistent the sales funnel metrics are for each project in all parts of the funnel.

What the company’s business owner wants from her financial lieutenant is accurate numbers to make insightful decisions and to be her point person with the finance committee. The finance committee wants the finance person to provide clarity into the business every month and to email or call them at the first sign of the numbers going awry. Obviously, the company described above is struggling to control their sales and invoicing processes. However, with a consistent monthly financial reporting structure, both the business owner and the board can detect the problems and immediately address them.

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realselfblog · 5 years

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Patients, Health Consumers, People, Citizens: Who Are We In America?

“Patients as Consumers” is the theme of the Health Affairs issue for March 2019. Research published in this trustworthy health policy publication covers a wide range of perspectives, including the promise of patients’ engagement with data to drive health outcomes, citizen science and participatory research where patients crowdsource cures, the results of financial incentives in value-based plans to drive health care “shopping” and decision making, and ultimately, whether the concept of patients-as-consumers is useful or even appropriate.

Health care consumerism is a central focus in my work, and so it’s no surprise that I’ve consumed every bit of this publication. [In full disclosure, last year when this issue was being curated, I was part of a team that proposed to submit an article for the publication, but our submission was not accepted].

I will weave findings from four of the papers in this post, for purposes of getting to the question I ask in the title above: what is the right noun to use for U.S. patients in 2019 — patients, consumers, people, health citizens?

The paper that asserts “no” to the question comes from Michael Gusmano, Karen Maschke, and Mildred Solomon, all associated with the Hastings Center which does research into bioethics. The authors note that “consumer-driven” health care is, “associated with neoliberal efforts to emphasize market factors in health reform,” de-emphasizing government regulation and financing. This concept can be potentially harmful, they believe, assuming that health care is a traditional market. “A consumer metaphor places disproportionate burdens on patients to reduce health care costs,” they posit, placing the burden of cost containment on patients. While price transparency is a sound concept, it’s not a panacea, the authors contend. “Patient-centered” approaches are constructive because they bring patients’ values into clinical care. Asking consumers to shop for services and be “prudent purchasers” of services? That’s too great a burden to put on patients, which could pressure clinicians to make unsound treatment decisions.

Now consider what happens when consumers (the noun chosen by the authors of the second paper I’m adding to the mix) access data, information and tools for self-management in health care. Karandeep Singh of the University of Michigan (GO BLUE! my alma mater) and colleagues track the growth of consumer-facing digital health tools and initiatives leading to consumers’ engagement with websites and apps. The article plots a brief history of the HITECH Act which fostered EHR adoption among clinicians and hospitals, the Blue Button program at the Veterans Health Administration enabling patients’ access to health data, OpenNotes, patient-generated data through wearable tech and smartphone apps, and consumer-grade medical devices like the AliveCor ECG and KardiaBand accessory for the Apple Watch. Singh et. al. point to limitations of consumers’ universal embrace and sustained use of these digital health tools, including low adoption of patient portals (especially among younger people, members of minority groups, healthy people, and those with less education), patient-generated data lack of interoperability with electronic health records, search engine over-dependence (that is, when “paging Dr. Google” yields sub-optimal results for the patient to act on), and lack of transparent and useful, high-quality data online. The authors call for improved regulation from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S. agency responsible for monitoring claims and the use of personal data out-of-health-context.

Article #3 in my deep dive here extends the second analysis into digital health information, next focusing on Americans’ use of quality information on doctors. Mark Schlesinger of Yale partnered with seven other researchers from RAND and other organizations to explain the history of clinician quality information (“report cards,” patient experience surveys and clinical quality metrics, among the different types of information available to consumers) and results of surveys assessing the impact of this information on a consumer’s choice of physician. The research found that peoples’ exposure to clinician quality information doubled between 2010 and 2015, and more consumers sought quality metrics — albeit, with differences across sub-groups of people (e.g., racial and ethnic minority consumers were better informed that whites over time, and people with more education also saw more of the quality information). The good news: that Americans have become more aware of information comparing clinician quality, and more often seek that information than they have in the past — especially other patients’ comments about doctors. The authors warn, though, that consumers may tend to over-trust and -use that patient-reported information more than some of the objective clinician quality and safety metrics. Furthermore, the difference in information seeking between more educated Americans versus less could exacerbate health disparities and the inequities of health literacy.

Finally, to the fourth paper, looking at the roles of assisters and automated decision support tools in consumers’ health insurance marketplace choices. This study assessed consumers’ search for health insurance marketplace plans extended through the Affordable Care Act, analyzing the experience of 32 “assisters,” trained professionals who help consumers navigate their choice of plans. These people included the official “navigators” conceived and funded by the ACA, certified application counselors, and other people who help consumers identify health insurance plans on the marketplaces. For context, the authors note that over 5,000 marketplace assister programs provided outreach and enrollment to consumers in the third open enrollment period 2015-16. Additional context here is that President Trump cut funding for navigators in federally facilitated marketplaces by over 80%, documented here in a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The bottom line of this fourth paper is that consumers need support to understand their health plan choices, but resourcing that support is costly and politically controversial in the current political environment.

Taken together, these four papers from Health Affairs lead to the following themes:

By 2019, patients in the U.S. have been compelled, by both the structure of the ACA marketplaces and the evolving consumer-directed health plan designs adopted by commercial plans and employers. to take on aspects of consumer behavior relative to personal health care choices — related to both health insurance and financing, along with clinician decisions.

Not all patients are willing to or in the moment able to exercise these consumer muscles, whether due to health literacy and education differences, access to digital health tools (including broadband connectivity), or simply lower willingness to engage.

Even when willing and fully armed with digital health tools and information access, being a “health care consumer” can lead people to make sub-optimal decisions for themselves, and potentially find their clinicians in compromised roles when making therapeutic treatment choices.

As Alan Weil summarized in the March 2019 Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief introduction, there are “ups and downs of expecting patients to act as consumers.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points: We can find discussions about health care consumerism in every major health care journal, and the popular press, as well. Just two weeks ago, I read the cover story, “It’s still the prices, stupid,” shown here from the cover of Modern Healthcare dated 25 February 2019.

In the article to which this assertion ties, Harris Meyer talks about the growing push for price regulation in the U.S. — most visibly for prescription drugs, and increasingly for other line items in the medical bill like nursing home care, hospital care, and physician services.

Sixteen pages after the start of the price regulation article in Modern Healthcare, you’ll find another story on hospitals looking for ways to address social needs: housing, transportation, and healthy food access among them. I’ve argued that, instead of allocating over 18% of U.S. GDP to medical care spending, America should reallocate some of these dollars to SDoH. Just today, the New York Times featured an in-depth article on the poor air quality in Pittsburgh, one of the key influences on human health that can be at least as bad for a population as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day — with subsequent negative health and financial impacts on the individual and community.

While our health care trade press re-iterates Uwe Reinhardt’s and Gerard Anderson’s observation that, “It’s the prices, stupid” from back in 2003, closer to peoples’ homes and real lives, Consumer Reports and TIME magazine also try and support Americans’ health consumer muscle/brain) development and ethos.

Here in my curated selection of CR covers, you’ll find research into prescription drug prices, pain pills, over-treatment, picking the right doctor, and protecting one’s privacy.

Many of us who chat via Twitter and LinkedIn, and in health care conferences throughout the year, have wrestled with what we should “call” patients — whether consumers, people, citizens. This is not a new-new question, I assure you. Been there. Asked that.

As my thinking continues to evolve, I will share some of the most recent segment my learning journey. I became a citizen of Italy, and thus the European Union (EU), last year, retaining my U.S. citizenship. When I proudly and humbly took my oath at the Italian Consulate in Philadelphia, I immediately became a health citizen of the EU, along with being covered by the privacy protections of the GDPR. This was one of those lifetime lightbulb moments for me both personally and professionally.

It led me to reinforce my belief in the concept of health citizenship for my fellow and sister Americans. I’ll be sharing more about that with you in my upcoming book on health care consumerism and beyond….so stay tuned for that plotline. For now, please read the entire March 2019 issue of Health Affairs to challenge and inform your own appreciation for and understanding of the patient-vs-consumer debate. Words do matter.

The post Patients, Health Consumers, People, Citizens: Who Are We In America? appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

Patients, Health Consumers, People, Citizens: Who Are We In America? posted first on http://dentistfortworth.blogspot.com

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maxihealth · 5 years

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Patients, Health Consumers, People, Citizens: Who Are We In America?

The paper that asserts “no” to the question comes from Michael Gusmano, Karen Maschke, and Mildred Solomon, all associated with the Hastings Center which does research into bioethics. The authors note that “consumer-driven” health care is, “associated with neoliberal efforts to emphasize market factors in health reform,” de-emphasizing goernment regulation and financing. This concept can be potentiallyu harmful, they believe, assuming that health are is a traditional market. “A consumer metaphor places disproportionate burdesn on patients to reduce health care costs,” they posit, placing the burden of cost containment on patients. While price transparency is a sound concept, it’s not a panacea, the authors contend. “Patient-centered” approaches are constructive because they bring patients’ values into clinical care. Asking consumers to shop for services and be “prudent purchasers” of services? That’s too great a burden to put on patients, which could pressure clinicians to make unsound treatment decisions.

Now consider what happens when consumers (the noun chosen by the authors of the second paper I’m adding to the mix) access data, information and tools for self-management in health care. Karandeep Singh of the University of Michigan (GO BLUE! my alma mater) and colleagues track the growth of consumer-facing digital health tools, and initiatives leading to consumers’ engagement with websites and apps. The article plots a brief history of the HITECH Act which fostered EHR adoption among clinicians and hospitals, the Blue Button program at the Veterans Health Administration enabling patients’ access to health data, OpenNotes, patient-generated data through wearable tech and smartphone apps, and consumer-grade medical devices like the AliveCor ECG and KardiaBand accessory for the Apple watch. Singh et. al. point to limitations of consumers’ universal embrace and sustained use of these digital health tools, including low adoption of patient portals (especially among younger people, members of minority groups, healthy people, and those with less education), patient-generated data’s lack of interoperability with electronic health records, search engine dependence (that is, when “paging Dr. Google” yields sub-optimal results for the patient to act on), and lack of transparency and useful, high-quality data online. The authors call for improved regulation from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which is the U.S. agency responsible for monitoring claims and the use of personal data out-of-context.

Article #3 in my deep dive here extends the second analysis into digital health information, focusing on Americans’ use of quality information describing doctors. Mark Schlesinger of Yale partnered with seven other researchers from RAND and other organizations to explain the history of clinician quality information (“report cards,” patient experience surveys and clinical quality metrics, among the different types of information available to consumers) and results of surveys assessing the impact of this information on consumers’ choices of physicians. The research found that peoples’ exposure to clinician quality information doubled between 2010 and 2015, and more consumers did seek quality metrics with differences across sub-groups of people (e.g., recial and ethnic minority consumers were better informed that whites over time, and people with more education also saw more of the quality information). The good news: that Americans have become more aware of information comparing clinician quality, and more often seek that information than they have in the past — especially other patients’ comments about doctors. The authors warn, though, that consumers may tend to trust that patient-reported information more than some of hte more objective clinician quality and safety metrics. Furthermore, the difference in information seeking between more educated Americans versus less could exacerbate health disparities and inequities of health literacy.

Finally, to the fourth paper, on the roles of assisters and automated decision support tools in consumers’ marketplace choices. This study assessed consumers’ search for health insurance marketplace plans extended through the Affordable Care Act, looking into the experience of 32 “assisters,” trained professionals who helped consumers navigate their choice of plans. These people include the official “navigators” conceived and funded by the ACA, certified application counselors, and other pepole who help consumers identify health insurance plans on the marketplaces. For context, the authors note that over 5,000 marketplace assister programs provided outreach and enrollment to consumers in the third open enrollment period 2015-16. Additional context here is that President Trump cut funding for navigators in federally facilitated marketplaces by over 80%, documented here in a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The bottom line of this fourth paper is that consumers need support to understand their health plan choices, but resourcing that support is costly and politically controversial in the current political environment.

Taken together, these four papers from Health Affairs lead to the following themes:

As Alan Weil writes in the March 2019 Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief introduction, there are “ups and downs of expecting patients to act as consumers.”

Health Populi’s Hot Points: We see discussions about health care consumerism in every major health care journal, and the popular press, as well. Just two weeks ago, I read the cover story, “It’s still the prices, stupid,” shown here from the cover of Modern Healthcare dated 25 February 2019.

In the article to which this assertion ties, Harris Meyer talks about the growing push for price regulation in the U.S. — most visibly for prescription drugs, and increasingly for other line items in th medical bill like nursing home care, hospital care, and physician services.

Here. you can see CR’s research into prescription drug prices, pain pills, over-treatment, picking the right doctor, and protecting one’s privacy.

Many of us who chat via Twitter and LinkedIn, and in health care conferences throughout the year, have wrestled with what we “call” patients — whether consumers, people, citizens.

I became a citizen of Italy, and thus the European Union, last year, retaining my U.S. citizenship. When I proudly and humbly took my oath at the Italian Consulate in Philadelphia, I immediately became a health citizen of the EU, along with being covered by the privacy protections of the GDPR. This was one of those lifetime lightbulb moments for me both personally and professionally.

It led me to reinforce my believe in health citizenship for my fellow and sister Americans. I’ll be sharing more about that with you all in my upcoming book on health care consumerism and beyond….so stay tuned for that plotline. For now, go read the entire March 2019 issue of Health Affairs to challenge and inform your understanding of the patient-vs-consumer debate.

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Patients, Health Consumers, People, Citizens: Who Are We In America? posted first on https://carilloncitydental.blogspot.com

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titheguerrero · 5 years