Customer Experience

From Designing Change

A Roadmap for Managing Mobile and Out-of-Office Workforces (Michelle Lanter Smith)

A Roadmap for Managing Mobile and Out-of-Office Workforces

If there’s one universal challenge business leaders have all faced in recent years, it’s their ability to adapt to change.

The advent, maturation and broad embrace of cloud computing and the proliferation of mobile devices have fundamentally altered the business landscape. Organizations today are more agile and flexible than ever before, as “adapting to change” has moved from the conceptual into the operational phase.

Much of this change is reflected in the composition of today’s decentralized workforce. The tools to support mobile communications and in-the-cloud workflow have been in place for some time. Today, company policy and attitudes have caught up, as workforce flexibility has become a major business imperative.

Employees working out of the office will hit 26% by 2015

Indeed, more organizations are turning to distributed mobile labor for a number of reasons — from freeing them from the conventional constraints of time zones and work schedules, allowing work to be done 24/7, to shifting resources to better manage budgets and more easily deploy resources regardless of geographical location.

Industry analyst IDC divides the mobile/remote workforce into three categories:

• Office-based mobile workers;
• Non-office-based mobile field workers; and,
• Home-based mobile workers.

While there’s a huge amount of variety in all three categories, a significant number of industries rely on distributed labor — including construction, health care, building services and maintenance, hospitality and entertainment, retail, manufacturing, staffing, and energy, to name a few.

By 2015, the percentage of employees who will spend at least one day out of the office will grow to over 26 percent, according to the Work Design Collaborative.

The increasingly mobile workforce makes time and labor management an immediate and growing challenge. Keeping up with a mobile distributed labor workforce requires flexible and scalable technology designed to adapt to today’s business and workforce needs. Companies require more than time tracking — they need deeper and broader visibility into an increasingly complex, hard-to- manage workforce, from insights into employee performance to the ability to build budgets.

How to “ground” a mobile management solution

The decentralized nature of a distributed labor force makes a uniform approach to time and attendance a business necessity and a real challenge.

Within any company, diverse functional areas — from Human Resources to Payroll, and Operations to the CFO — need a solution that is not only flexible and scalable, but also delivers information and data in a manner that allows each to make critical business decision that impact the bottom line. At the same time, a time and labor management solution needs to serve the demands of a distributed workforce working under different circumstances, in different environments and locations.

Going forward, a best-of-breed solution can “future proof” your organization for the trends that will impact workforce management, specifically distributed labor, in the years ahead.

• Seamlessly aggregate data from all types of collection modes and deliver the information in an easy to understand format. Regardless of where an employee punches in, the data needs to be collectively tied together. Aggregated data allows managers and supervisors to better manage labor from a cost-savings perspective.
• Address unique payroll rules and effectively manage compliance. The solution needs to account for federal and state wage and hour laws, as well as union contracts. The ability to generate a precise, detailed audit trail that can support compliance, wage and hour disputes, and internal benchmarking and tracking is critical.
• Provide analytical data reporting from the system once time and attendance is merged into the payroll process. This helps managers and supervisors set and adjust schedules and compare staff count to payroll to determine the most effective ways to deploy labor.
• Include GPS functionality to ensure security, accuracy, and compliance. This feature naturally lends itself to mobile time, attendance, and location tracking. GPS can capture, track, and verify where the employee punched in and provide a time stamp on the server to detect and avoid time theft and unauthorized changes.
• Handle data off-line and function without cell service or Internet connectivity. The solution should be able to collect data offline, save it, and relay it once connectivity is restored.
• Deliver data in real time so managers can make time and labor management changes on the fly, as well as utilize the device for multiple functions beyond time and attendance — such as email, presentations, payroll, and communication.
• Issue real-time alerts when thresholds such as budgets and overtime are being reached, or flag instances when employees have punched in outside the authorized work area or have failed to punch in.
• Facilitate use as an employee self-service portal. Value added features such as self-service reduces labor costs for both supervisors and employees. Employees can access time punch confirmation in real time and easily access information on accrued time off and work schedules, or submit time-off requests and receive instant approval. On a business level, self-service reduces time and resource demands on Human Resources and Payroll, while encouraging employee accountability and responsibility for their time, attendance, and scheduling.
• Provide administrative functionality. While mobile solutions offer flexibility and accessibility for distributed labor, supervisors can utilize mobile solutions, such as tablets, when they are “on the road.” A tablet can deliver real-time information and serve as tool to manage and process payroll, monitor overages, or track budgets regardless of location. Transparent budgeting tools can also be applied to help manage or reallocate resources.

Time management to workforce optimization

When the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act was deferred to 2015, many companies decided to shift their focus from “head count” issues to what they considered more immediate workforce concerns (though prudent organizations are implementing tools now to “game plan” potential scenarios if/when the employer mandate takes effect). But today’s distributed mobile workforce makes efficient management an immediate and growing challenge.

Indeed, the challenges require more than traditional tracking a fragmented, decentralized workforce. They require a configurable solution built around a host of best-of-breed criteria, including: centralized deployment with the ability to serve all locations, accurately track and manage labor expenses in real-time, integrate with ERP/HRIS, facilitate compliance, and guard against unauthorized changes.

Just as we’ve moved from preparing for change to managing change — which is to say, managing distributed workforces — organizations now need to think about “optimizing” distributed workforces.

Optimizing distributed workforces goes beyond time and labor management, and extends to monitoring tasks, tracking transportation and managing work orders.

In sum, it’s about giving organizations visibility into an ever-shifting landscape, enabling them to better evaluate the performance of individuals and “virtualized” business units, and more accurately correlate budgets based on real-time workforce data.

Michelle Lanter Smith brings 20 plus years of leadership to her role as Vice President of Marketing at EPAY Systems. She previously served as CEO of Hi-Impact Marketing & Sales Solutions, an integrated marketing agency, and as Chief Strategist at Brillante Multicultural Marketing Group, a multi-cultural marketing and PR agency. She got her start as an IBM Marketing Manager.

Flying blind in the age of ‘open government’ ( André Côté)

Flying blind in the age of ‘open government’

How do our lumbering, 19th century systems of parliamentary government evolve in the age of ‘open government’? This is one of the big questions of our time.

If there is a trend running through the recent scandals in Ottawa and Queen’s Park — from Senate expenses to power plants — it’s the tendency of governments towards secrecy and concealing information, and the damaging consequences when details start to get out.

Governments aren’t sure what to do. In some cases, they’ve battened down the hatches, using any means necessary — stonewalling accountability officers, deleting emails — to resist or obstruct the release of information about politically charged issues.

At the same time, governments are rushing to launch ‘open data’ portals, promising new public engagement tools and tweeting their press releases. Faced with 21st century pressures from new technologies, a vigilant media, frustrated legislators and a public that increasingly demands more transparency, accountability and participation, they are scrambling to become (or to be seen as) more ‘open’, as Ontario’s Open Government initiative promises.

But there’s a big problem: Our centuries-old system of parliamentary government is built around a closed-door decision making model, which has at its heart the convention of cabinet confidentiality.

There are some clear examples of how this tension risks undermining good governance.

First, the drift towards “court government,” in the words of Donald Savoie, has left legislatures increasingly incapable of overseeing government activities, exercising its ‘power of the purse’, or holding the executive branch to account. Opposition legislators, frustrated at the gradual centralization of power and limited access to information, are trying to fight back.

In Ontario’s minority parliament, the backlash has quietly taken a troubling turn. Opposition-led legislative committees have recognized that they have the prerogative to request virtually any sort of executive information they want — regardless of whether a record is protected by ‘cabinet confidentiality’, ‘legal privilege’ or ‘commercial sensitivity’.

That level of committee access is certainly not a bad thing in itself, but the sweeping requests for confidential information have been occurring haphazardly, in a highly politicized environment, with no clear rules or discussion about which disclosures are in the public interest. The moderators of this process — the Speaker and house leaders, the legislative clerk’s office — are entangled and in a very difficult position to arbitrate or take a broader view about the implications.

Politicians and public servants are increasingly hesitant to create records, relying instead on phone calls, verbal transactions or private email accounts. These efforts to circumvent transparency mechanisms are a perverse outcome of the access to information regime.

A second, related fissure runs through the antiquated access to information system. Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) allows for a great deal of discretion about how a freedom of information (FOI) request is interpreted, what should be considered a ‘record’ for release, and what exemptions can be applied to withhold records. Requests are sometimes difficult to interpret or vexatious, and often can be extremely labour-intensive. The rules and processes can be ambiguous, as the provincially-appointed Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) acts as both system overseer and quasi-judicial arbiter of appeals when information requests are refused.

The culture of ‘FOI fear’ that has set in is fundamentally changing the way information is managed in government. Policy decisions are being ‘legalized’ to the extent that advice from government legal counsel can be better protected. Politicians and public servants are increasingly hesitant to create records — written, email or even text messages — relying instead on phone calls, verbal transactions or private email accounts. These efforts to circumvent transparency mechanisms are a perverse outcome of the access to information regime and present a significant threat to the capacity of our governments to make informed, accountable decisions.

Third, confronted with criticism about secrecy and eroding levels of public trust, governments are trumpeting efforts to create moreparticipatory government. The intentions are good, but the devil will be in the details. Most people don’t have the time, information or expertise to think through complex public issues, or to broker compromise solutions. That’s why we have a representativedemocracy, in which we elect people to act on our behalf with the support of professional civil servants. There is a significant risk that, in rushing to roll out these initiatives, governments could create public expectations that can’t be met, further undermining trust and accountability.

What all of this proves is that we’re flying blind into this new world of open government. We need to slow down and consider some fundamental issues.

To begin with, unless we’re actually of the view that cabinet confidentiality is a relic of a bygone age, we need to have an honest conversation about what the right balance is between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ government. Perhaps we need to establish broad guidelines — maybe in law rather than convention — about what information should be kept confidential.

As a guiding principle, we could apply a ‘public interest test’ whereby the onus is on governments to make all information public — unless there’s a compelling case to be made that disclosing information would not be in the public interest. Confidentiality would only be acceptable, for instance, where disclosure would compromise the ability of cabinets to make informed decisions, or where it would jeopardize public safety or security, personal privacy protections, or sensitive commercial transactions. We could also require legislators on parliamentary committees that deal with sensitive subject matter to have security clearances, or swear a secrecy oath, as they do on United States House or Senate committees.

Access to information systems need a rethink. The Ontario legislation, which lays out a set of specific ‘exemptions’ from information disclosure, creates the incentive for political staff or public servants to find reasons to withhold. The dual role of the Information and Privacy Commissioner should be reviewed. Most importantly, in the digital age, any system built around providing paper records in manila envelopes probably needs to be modernized.

It is promising that efforts are being made to create more open and participatory government. I firmly believe that renewing our democracy will require a more meaningful, active and ongoing role for citizens. But we need to be clear about the objectives of ‘open government’.

There has been a great deal of focus on the mechanisms for public participation — from the traditional town hall to online consultations and smart phone apps. But there has been little discussion of the nature of the public input governments should seek, or the level of influence it should have on decisions. To take a recent example, what type of input and level of influence should the public have in technical and hugely expensive decisions like building new transit lines? Could too much public influence actually work against the public interest?

Finally, while Ontario’s Open Government initiative is a start, these discussions need to be convened outside of government. Because politicians, public servants and accountability officers all have vested interests in the current system, groups like public policy schools, think tanks — and even the media — need to take the lead.

André Côté is manager of programs and research at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. He was an advisor to the deputy minister in the Ontario Ministry of Finance.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

THE DRIBBBLISATION OF DESIGN @padday

Only one of these weather apps is attempting to solve the real problem.

There are divergent things happening in the product and interaction design community. On one hand, we have some amazing pieces of writing from the likes of Ryan Singer and Julie Zhuo, moving our craft forward. On the other hand, we have a growing number of people posting and discussing their work on Dribbble, the aggregated results of which are moving our craft backwards. This post is not about Dribbble itself, it’s about what the community on Dribbble value. I’ll use the term ‘product design’ throughout, but I’m including UX and interaction design when I do.

“LOOKS AWESOME!” HOW THE DRIBBBLE COMMUNITY REWARDS SUPERFICIAL WORK

In the last year I’ve reviewed a lot of product design work from job applicants, at Facebook and now at Intercom, and I’ve noticed a worrying pattern. Too many designers are designing to impress their peers rather than address real business problems. This has long been a problem in creative advertising (where creative work is often more aligned with winning awards than with primary client business objectives) and its becoming more prominent in product and interaction design.

Much of the product design work from job applicants I’ve seen recently has been superficial, created with one eye towards Dribbble. Things that look great but don’t work well. Perfect pixel executions of flat design, but work that doesn’t address real business goals, solve real problems people have every day, or take a full business ecosystem into consideration. Dribbble itself shapes the conversation to some extent, the medium shaping the message, with highlighting of colour palettes and other superficial details prominent in the UI. People look and people emulate. A huge majority of the product design work on Dribbble looks the same. Whether it’s social software, accounting software, a marketing site, a weather app, the same styles are applied. Blur your eyes and try and tell the difference.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT DESIGN WORK IS USUALLY THE UGLIEST

In contrast, the best job applicants I’ve seen sent in their thought process. Sketches. Diagrams. Pros and cons. Real problems. Tradeoffs and solutions. Prototypes that illustrate interaction and animation. Things that move, change and animate. Things that use real data.

The worst applicants sent in flat PNGs. PDFs full of wireframes. No articulation of the problem being solved, nor the business and technical constraints. No context. These pixel perfect, retina ready PNGs might look great on Dribbble, but they will have decreasing value as a primary design tool in a real product building environment.

This is why redesigns of other people’s work is pure folly e.g. the new Yahoo logo, iOS7, changes to Facebook, the New New Twitter, the American Airlines rebrand. People have no context for the decision making process involved in these projects, no knowledge of the requirements, constraints, organisational politics.

If product design is about solving problems for people within the constraints of a specific business, then it simply feels that many people calling themselves product/UX designers are actually practicing digital art. They are Artists. They are Stylists. Executing beautiful looking things, certainly an important skill, but not practising product design.

PRODUCT DESIGN IS ABOUT A MISSION, A VISION, AND AN ARCHITECTURE

From broad ideation to pixel level detail, designers should always be thinking about their company’s mission, vision and product architecture. Everything they do should flow through this funnel.

Design starts at the top of a company with the company mission. Then the company vision. It’s very hard to do great design in an organisation without a clear and actionable mission and vision. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. If your company lacks a clear mission, make it your job to facilitate the creation of one.

After the mission and vision is the product architecture. Not the technical architecture, rather the components of your product and how they relate to one another. The system. On the first morning of the first day of work at Facebook, Chris Cox (VP of Product) gives an incredible introductory talk (you can get a small flavour of it here). With an audience of people from any job function at the company, whilst he could talk about anything, he focuses on explaining the product architecture, and how it relates to the company mission.

For Facebook, that architecture is a directory of people, their friends, and their interests; a directory of businesses, from global brands all the way to small local corner shops. And on top of that directory is a map, showing the relationships between all those things. It’s a crystal clear articulation of the product, directly relatable to the mission. In my experience it’s very hard to do great design in an organisation without a clear, well defined product architecture. And in many cases, just like the mission, it’s the designer’s job to help figure out and evolve this architecture. When describing Facebook to external partners, I often drew diagrams like this one on the whiteboard:

A product architecture is not an information architecture. It is not a set of pages that link to one another, or something that shows modals and describes what buttons do. A prototype will always serve this purpose better. It is a level deeper than that. It is the structure. The building blocks. It shows the objects in the system, and the relationships between them. At Intercom we also think about design in the context of our product architecture:

I can’t ever remember seeing a product architecture described on Dribbble. It’s still too rare to witness a designer talk about how their work maps to a mission, drives a vision forward, or how it is placed within product architecture, with the weight that these things deserve. This should be the norm, not the exception.

Once you have a clear mission, vision and product architecture, you can start to think about the other details. The goals people have, what makes them happy, fulfilled, successful. The jobs your product does for them, where it works well, where it doesn’t.

The rough ugly sketches and scribbles that describe these things are far more important than the png that ends up on Dribbble. In the process from inception to shipped functioning product, photoshop files and PNGs are the least interesting and important aspect to me. Much more important is the discussions where trade offs were made. Where pros and cons were discussed. Where people mapped ideas to the company vision, or evolved things based on the product architecture. All the whiteboard sketches, hand drawings, and back of the napkin problem solving is what designers should be posting on Dribbble. Show me those things. Even a written description of what is being built is more important than the PNG or PDF.

THINK ABOUT FOUR LAYERS OF DESIGN

Design is a multi layered process. In my experience, there is an optimal order to how you move through the layers. The simplest version of this is to think about four layers:

I see designer after designer focus on the fourth layer without really considering the others. Working from the bottom up rather than the top down. The grid, font, colour, and aesthetic style are irrelevant if the other three layers haven’t been resolved first. Many designers say they do this, but don’t walk the walk, because sometimes it’s just more fun to draw nice pictures and bury oneself in pixels than deal with complicated business decisions and people with different opinions. That’s fine, stay in the fourth layer, but that’s art not design. You’re a digital artist, not a designer.

DESIGNING SYSTEMS WILL MATTER MORE AND MORE AS THE WEB PERMEATES EVERYTHING

The invention of the web will lead to the biggest changes to society since the Industrial Revolution. The web is permeating everything. It’s in our homes, in our workplaces, by our bed when we’re asleep, and in our pockets everywhere we go. The web is with us all the time. It’s already moving into our cars, into our clothes, into the things we own, into monitoring our health. By 2020, if not before, all businesses will be web businesses. As Charles Eames once said, “Eventually everything connects“.

Designing static, linked web pages is a dying profession. The incredible rise of mobile technologies, APIs, SDKs, and open partnerships between platforms and products paints a crystal clear picture of a future where we will all design systems. PDFs full of wireframes are a dying deliverable, Photoshop is a dying product design tool. Designers moving our craft forward are moving between sketches, whiteboards and prototyping tools (Quartz Composer, After Effects, Keynote, CSS/HTML).

This is one reason people say designers should code. Whether you agree with that or not, designers certainly need to define the problem and solution not in pixels, but in terms of describing what happens between components in a system. Then build prototypes, start coding, and fine tune the details as real data inevitably shows things that were overlooked and couldn’t have been predicted. Working interactions with real data give you a better sense of how something feels.

WE’RE DESIGNING AROUND JOBS

At Intercom, we’re working with Clay Christensen’s Jobs framework for product design. We frame every design problem in a Job, focusing on the triggering event or situation, the motivation and goal, and the intended outcome:

When _____ , I want to _____ , so I can _____ .

For example: When an important new customer signs up, I want to be notified, so I can start a conversation with them.

This gives us clarity. We can map this Job to the mission and prioritise it appropriately. It ensures that we are constantly thinking about all four layers of design. We can see what components in our system are part of this Job and the necessary relationships and interactions required to facilitate it. We can design from the top down, moving through outcome, system, interactions, before getting to visual design.

As well as using Jobs, we’re building a pattern library to reflect the system oriented nature of our design work. We’ll design more and more by using the library code rather than Photoshop. It’s not a perfect process. We iterate it constantly.

I’d love to hear how all this resonates with how you work. Please comment below!

UPDATE

In response to many comments here, on Twitter etc. I wrote a follow up postHow to hire designers. Check it out!

Some people on Twitter and HN have suggested that I’m conflating visual design with UX design. I disagree. In my opinion you cannot consider visual design of an interactive product without considering the interaction and system design. This is not graphic design. We’re not designing posters, or even road signs.

NOTES

You can thank Des for the wonderful title of this post.

Did I mention that we’re hiring Product Designers here at Intercom? 

The four layers above are an adaptation of a six layer model we used at UX Consultancy Flow 7 or 8 years ago, which itself was an adaptation of Jesse James Garrett’s seminal diagram.

Dribbble is a pretty good product, this is not about them per se. They could probably do a lot more to focus the community they are building away from superficial aesthetic work to more substantial problem solving work (unless they want Dribbble to be a place for digital art which might be the case).

Dribbble designs in the header from  bwaddington kolage claudioguglieri alden BillSKenney dash Or get the umbrella app :)

Samara Review of MP Websites

Here.

Overcoming the 10 Dangers of Talent (Leadership Freak)

Overcoming the 10 Dangers of Talent

The 10 Dangers of being Talented:

1. Relying on talent rather than hard work. Too much winging it.
2. Assuming what’s easy for you is easy for others.
3. Being a threat to bosses.
4. Unwillingness to change or grow.
5. Alienating others.
6. Feeling entitled.
7. Being pigeon holed.
8. Feeling paralyzed by too many options.
9. Boredom.
10. Arrogance.

Visit The Leadership Freak Coffee Shop on Facebook to see the complete list. Join us by clicking “like” to become a fan.

Commitment answers the dangers of talent.

Major General William Cohen USAFR Ret., author of, “The Practical Drucker,” shared his first leadership experience with me. He was asked to be a patrol leader in the Boy Scouts.

Gen. Cohen said he was concerned that anyone would follow.

“Why should they follow me?”

Commitment:

“I learned that people respond to commitment.”

Gen. Cohen said his patrol decided to enter a competition. “Because I was committed (to give it my best) the others were committed too. They followed.”

Talent is an opportunity to step up and work harder than anyone else.

Commitment answers all the dangers of being talented.

Helping people step up:

Gen. Cohen said tell people:

1. They’re not omnipotent.
2. Decisions won’t be correct.
3. They’re going to make mistakes.
4. There will be lot of problems.

What’s encouraging about this? It establishes expectations. It says,

1. Get in.
2. Get dirty.
3. Make your mistakes.
4. Press on anyway.

“Success can make us cocky. You’re going to wing it and not prepare. I try to avoid that attitude.”

What did (Ret.) General Cohen learn about leadership from his career?

8 Universal laws of leadership:

1. Maintain absolute integrity.
2. Know your stuff.
3. Declare your expectations.
4. Show uncommon commitment.
5. Expect positive results.
6. Take care of your people.
7. Put Duty – mission or people – before self.
8. Get out in front. Show initiative.

From: The Stuff of Heros

William Cohen has written over fifty books and currently is president of The California Institute of Advanced Management.

6 Reasons Why People -- Not Things -- Will Make You Happier

The holiday season is the time to focus on what's truly important: Spending quality time with friends and family, being thankful for all the blessings in your life, and showing how much you care by giving of yourself. But after being bombarded with commercials and marketing messages galore, it can be easy to forget what it is that makes the holidays special. After all, pressures to give, give, give and receive, receive, receive, only add fuel to the fire of materialism. Check out these reasons why it may be better to take the focus off of material comforts this season -- and turn it back on what really matters.

It makes bad things that happen feel even worse.

Bad events are bad enough. But they could feel even worse to people who place a big emphasis on material goods, according to a Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science study, led by University of Illinois business professor Aric Rindfleisch. "If you’re a materialistic individual and life suddenly takes a wrong turn, you’re going to have a tougher time recovering from that setback than someone who is less materialistic,” Rindfleisch, who is an expert in consumption values, said in a statement. “The research is novel in that an event that’s unrelated to materialism will have a stronger impact on someone because of their materialistic values. In other words, materialism has a multiplier effect. It’s a finding that I think is especially interesting given our consumer-driven economy.”

When stressed, materialistic people turn to behaviors that are not so healthy.

The same Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science study found that in the face of stress, materialistic people turn to shopping and compulsive spending. Unfortunately, that compulsive spending and shopping can fuel a vicious cycle, as it's "likely to produce even greater stress and lower well-being," study researcher Ayalla Ruvio, of Michigan State University, said in a statement.

Focusing too much on money could be bad for your marriage.

Caring too much about getting or spending money could have an impact on the stability -- and satisfaction -- of your marriage, according to Brigham Young University and William Paterson University researchers. The study, published in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, showed that couples who have lower levels of materialism also have higher scores on martial quality and satisfaction tests, compared with those with higher levels of materialism, ABC News reported. Plus, this finding held true even when researchers took the couples' wealth out of the equation.

You'll be happier if you stop caring so much about financial success. 

In his 2002 book The High Price of Materialism, Knox College professor Tim Kasser explained some of his findings on materialism, which showed that people who place central focus in their lives on financial success are more likely to be distressed, have problems adjusting to life and have low well-being. "Although we cannot be sure from these results whether materialistic values cause unhappiness, or whether other factors are at work, the results do suggest a rather startling conclusion: the American dream has a dark side, and the pursuit of wealth and possessions might actually be undermining our well-being," he wrote in the book.

It could be taking a toll on work ethic.

San Diego State University researchers have found that materialism is higher among young people today compared with when their parents were their age -- 62 percent of high-schoolers in 2005-2007 said having lots of money is important, compared with 48 percent of high-schoolers in 1976-1978. However, that rise in materialism is associated with a lower desire to work hard, compared with their parents at their age -- 39 percent of high-schoolers in 2005-2007 said they didn't want to work hard, while 25 percent of high-schoolers in 1976-1978 said the same thing.

It makes us feel perpetually unsatisfied.

Happiness expert and University of Illinois psychology professor Ed Diener said in a 2006 New York Times article that materialism can lead to chronic feelings of dissatisfaction. "It is open-ended and goes on forever -- we can always want more, which is usually not true of other goals such as friendship," he explained in the article. "With friends, we have them and enjoy them but usually are not taught that we keep needing more."