"See What I Mean?"
Posted 27 days ago
If you’re interested in some of the thinking that went into things like Target’s ClearRX program, or Karen Schriver’s redesign of the 1040 form, then you’ll want to make it out to Refresh Dallas tonight.
Wait. Scratch that.
If you build or design Web/desktop apps or Web sites for a living, or perhaps you customize business intelligence packages, or maybe you’re a technical writer or an IA or… Whatever your situation, tonight’s refresh meeting is for you! Co-worker Travis Isaacs and I are going to be speaking on information design. Specifically, we’ll be sharing some of our approaches to making ‘better’ screens (and forms). And, we’ll be running it a bit like a workshop, with some hands on activities…
Here’s the description:
“See What I Mean?”
We all work with information. In our web sites. Our web apps. Print communications. Graphs, and charts. But how exactly do you present information in a way that simplifies the complex, communicates powerfully, and actually delights people?
Join us, as Travis Isaacs and Stephen P. Anderson share their information design secrets. From travel plans to search results to quarterly earnings statements—they’ll present a handful of information design and data visualization case studies, identifying those principles we can apply to just about any project.
Learn how to identify and group related information, create a visual hierarchy, draw focus to the most important content, use images appropriately, see familiar data in a fresh new way, and much more!
As always, dinner will be provided, this time courtesy of Viewzi. I hope you can make it out! More details can be found at the Refresh Dallas Web site
Speaking 'In Defense of Eye Candy' at UPA
Posted 37 days ago
For those of you in the DFW area, I’ll be speaking at Tuesday night’s DFW-UPA (Usability Professionals Association) meeting. That’s this Tuesday, July 15. If you can make it out, the meeting starts at 6pm; I’ll be presenting shortly thereafter (more info on meeting time and place here).
I’m excited, as this will be the first public appearance of my ‘Eye Candy’ presentation. I’m also curious as to how it will be received, especially by this audience. As I indicated in my original post on the topic, visual design— so called “eye candy”— get’s a bad rap, for the wrong reasons. This presentation is my way of stringing together some of the solid research and perspectives supporting the functional value of aesthetics.
Formal Description:
Graphics, eye candy, sexy interfaces— while these aren’t as seemingly strategic as say a mental model or BCG Matrix, it’s time to stand up for these misunderstand elements. Aesthetics play just as critical a role in business as picking the right server or insuring your data is accurate. But here’s the catch—it’s not about shiny buttons or gradient fades in and of themselves. Rather, it’s about “the psychological response to sensory stimulus.” It’s about people. And how people respond to these elements.If we truly care about making things work for people, then we should care about aesthetics, or the science of “how things are know via the senses.” And it’s much more than graphic design: Sights. Sounds. Smells. Motion. Aesthetics is concerned about all the senses. And it’s about how people respond to these elements (and not the elements themselves).
To understand so-called “eye-candy” in proper context, it’s critical that we stop focusing on particular design elements (rounded corners or drop shadows, anyone?), and instead look at the response that is triggered by these elements. We’ll do just this, looking at a variety of design details, focusing not on their stylistic qualities but rather the cognitive and affective responses these details elicit. In doing so, we’ll skim across a variety of research findings from the last decade that will both confirm and challenge many of our assumptions about design.
Oh, and what do the chopsticks have to do with this presentation? You’ll have to make it out to find out! Hope to see you there.
Changing the Experience of Search, or Why Am I at Viewzi?
Posted 57 days ago / 1 Comments
So, a bit about my ‘not-so-new-anymore’ gig.
As some of you already know, I joined Viewzi, a small startup in the Dallas area, back in mid-December. For various reasons, it was a fairly quiet transition. Why? For starters, it’s been a busy time!! I’ve also been speaking and writing more on topics that didn’t seem consistent with my being at a startup, topics pertaining to management, design thinking, being a corporate change agent, social design, innovative thinkers... Topics more fitting of a consultant or director at a large company (exactly the positions I had prior to this, which afforded me the experiences to write and speak about such things). Just as investors consider the financial investment they make in a startup, I’ve had to consider the professional investment I’m making. “How is this furthering my career?” Honestly, I struggled a bit with this. But in the end, I chose to invest myself in Viewzi because it’s something I really believe in (more on that in a moment).
That said, my biggest hesitation in not being more vocal has been a personal struggle to find the deep rooted story that gets someone truly fired up.
On the surface, there are a ton of cool things going on at Viewzi. Our product manager Jay Horne sums these things up rather nicely as ‘food, folks, and fun’. From Viewzi cafe on Fridays to getting to work with some of the best talent I know, to a really fun work environment and a fun product-- there’s plenty to love. But these aren’t the things that keep a curious, passionate learner around for the long haul. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most critical things a leader can do is to find that ‘story’ that gives everyone a sense of purpose in their role. The “we’re putting a man on the moon” message that gets everyone up in the morning and gives context and meaning to all the exciting and mundane tasks that will be required of you.
For me, I have to have a vision and a passion for the idea. To be clear, I’ve had various stories I’ve been trying out, but these weren’t the deep-rooted motivation I was searching for. It wasn’t until we started looking at the feedback and taking a long hard look at our core message that I finally ‘found’ my story, why I am here. And here’s the ironic part— it’s the same message I’ve been giving for the last 3 years…
“It’s all about experiences”
In 2006, I developed a model for understanding where exactly a product is in its maturity. Think of this as a ‘UX hierarchy of needs,’ with six levels ranging from useful/functional up to meaningful (the highest level a product can achieve). This was my way of resolving a lot of different ideas around what makes up an experience, and the relative priority of those things:
Moving from bottom to top, you have a basic product maturity continuum:
Functional
Ideas typically start off as functional solutions to a problem— something useful. Think of the first Motorola cell phone. Sure, it was a brick, but it allowed you to make calls untethered to a fixed spot!
Reliable
From there, things have to be reliable. This can be reliability of the service (5 9’s uptime?) as well as integrity of the data. If I purchase tickets on a travel site, the ticket prices need to be current and reliable. If I host with a site, I need to know my data is backed up and accessible at all times. This is reliability.
Usable & Convenient
It’s not enough to allow me to simply do something— it has to eventually be less awkward to use. This is where the next two levels, usable and convenient, come into play. I draw a distinction between usability and convenience. Both make something easier to use, but in my experience most usability groups focus on fixing known problems— removing the hurdles. A focus on convenience asks “is there a more natural way to make this work?” MapQuest and Google Maps are a great example of this contrast. MapQuest was perfectly usable. But Google Maps, with it’s draggable interface, physics, and other more ‘natural’ behaviors was a much more convenient way to interact with maps data.
Pleasurable
Whereas convenience focuses on cognition, the next level— ‘pleasurable’— focuses on affect and emotions. How can we make something emotionally engaging? (And a memorable experience!) This is typically accomplished through things like friendly language, aesthetics, humor, arousing curiosity, creating flow, leveraging game mechanics and other similar tactics.
Meaningful
The highest level is of course ‘meaning. And no, you can’t make something meaningful— that’s a personal area. But you can design for meaning by focusing on the preceding levels as well as shepherding beliefs and the communities surrounding the product or service experience. Also, whereas the other levels build on each other, a product can be meaningful without any of these levels (I have a 1966 Karmann Ghia that doesn’t even run— ‘function’; sheer ownership connects me with a group of people in a way that is meaningful to me).
The big takeaway from this is that if want to truly create a revolutionary product, you have to shift you’re thinking from a ‘bottom-up’ task focus (which will only get you so far) to a focus that starts from the ‘top-down’ with the experience you want people to have. By approaching things from this perspective we see a host of new ideas, not to mention better ways to implement the same ideas that have been around for a while.
But there’s another takeaway: In mature markets, where you have stable, usable products, taking it to the ‘next level’ means focusing on more experiential things like emotions, clever language, aesthetics. This was the topic of my pleasurable interface presentation, where I gathered dozens of examples of these experiential qualities:
But search?
So, all that’s nice. But what about a search engine? Can a utility tool like search offer an improved experience? And I’m not talking about the algorithms or the results themselves. But the experience of interacting with the search results themselves. Can, or should, searching for information be a fun activity?
The problem with search:
Travis has written an excellent and accurate description of Viewzi. I encourage you to read his explanation of what we’re about. But for the purposes of this post (and to understand why I am so excited by what we are doing at Viewzi), here’s a short description of what we are doing…
Viewzi is changing the face of search. Literally. We’re asking the question: Is there more than one way to look at search? Does everyone see things the same way?
With traditional text-based search engines, no matter what or how you search, your results are delivered the same way. Searching for “Bono” looks the same as searching for “chicken recipes” or “sports cars.”
We think there are better ways to present information than in a simple list. We start with specific topics or search terms and ask: “Is there a better way to present this data?” The result? Dozens of new, unique ‘views’, or ways to look at information, each custom-tailored for that content. It’s the right data, presented in the right way.
Changing the experience of search
When I first described Viewzi to my friend and mentor Rob Moore, he commented with some enthusiasm “you’re changing the experience of search. Most search folks I know are still focused on how to improve the performance by a few milliseconds. No one has really focused on how people actually interact with the data being returned.” (Or something like that!)
Rob nailed it on the head. We’re changing the experience of search. More specifically, we’re changing the experience of searching for [insert topic of choosing or manner of searching]. Contrary to some of the press that is going around, we are not a visual search engine, not exactly. We do place a premium on aesthetic considerations. However, we’re more about the right data presented in the right way. I like to think of ourselves as a designing custom search results for very specific scenarios. I was excited when Brian Oberkirch asked: ‘what can Stephen Anderson do with hyper-niched search contexts?’ That’s exactly it!
With Viewzi you can, eventually, experience search results however you prefer. On one end, this could be a crazy digg labs style visualization. On the other end, you could have something very much like Google, but with ‘that one little change’ you’ve always wanted. Think of Viewzi as ‘search results, exactly the way you want, how you want.’
We are really the platform upon which hundreds of ways to view information will eventually reside. We currently have 17 views, with many more planned. Some are “all purpose” search views (different ways to view and interact with general search results) and many more are specific to a niche topic (recipes, music, celebrity photos).
Here is an example of what I mean by scenario-based search views:
Searching for recipes
Here is what you get if you search for ‘chicken recipes’ on most search engines.
If our goal was simply to create better search results, you’d get little more than some light typographic treatment, or perhaps some subtle information design changes. Hardly the stuff of dreams. But, if you change the question to something based in the experiences people have, in this case ‘how can I make searching for recipes more enjoyable?’, you might end up with something like our current recipe view:
I’ll be the first to say, this is one of my favorite search views. It is (for many contexts) a far superior way to search for recipes. But is this the best way to display recipe search results? No. This view supports the offline behavior of flipping through a book to discover an appetizing recipe. But what about the scenario where…
- someone has 4 ingredients on hand and they want to find a recipe that uses those ingredients
- someone is focused on finding recipes that fit certain nutritional criteria
The resulting recipe view for these scenarios would be (a) quite different and (b) much less visual, as we would focus more on ingredients than appetizing photos. This is what I mean by search results custom-tailored for specific people, activities and contexts. And from this perspective, you can easily image dozens of different recipes views, many of which we will never think of, which leads me to my final though…
“But wait, there’s more…”
So far, I’ve only described the search views we are creating. But it’s ridiculous to think that a bunch of designers and tech geeks might know everything there is to know about [you name it]. The bigger story is the search platform we are creating, a platform that will allow anyone to create their own search views. For now, it’s an API than anyone with Flash AS3 or JavaScript skills can start using right away. In the future, we’d like to enable anyone to begin creating their own search views. That, is exciting. Whether it’s a better niche view or an entirely different way to experience search results— we’re building the platform that will enable user-generated (viewzer generated?) search views.
Pleasurable Interfaces + Search
And here’s why I am so fired up about Viewzi: everything I was talking about in the upper half of my pyramid— taking usable products and making them more convenient, pleasurable and meaningful— that’s exactly what I’m responsible for at Viewzi. I get to test out these ideas in a maturing field that is ripe for a focus on better experiences. When was the last time you described a search engine as fun? Viewzi is a company who’s business model is precisely that— to make search a pleasurable experience!
It’s a crude comment, but more than a few people have described Viewzi as the“‘iPhone of search.” If we can do for search what the iPhone did for mobile phones—change how people do what they’ve been doing for a decade—wow. Now that’s something I can believe in!
What about you?
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Leading the Rebellion Inside Large Organizations
Posted 96 days ago / 3 Comments
I’m excited to share with you my presentation from Adaptive Path MX.
It’s a version of my Star Wars presentation. But, only 6 of the 15 lessons are represented. (I joked that this was the first in a trilogy!) And I’ve made a few critical additions.
In the original presentation, I identify and share 15 lessons that might apply universally to anyone with a visionary idea. Basically, ‘You got an idea? Here’s some advice to help make that idea a reality’. Anyone could be someone founding a startup, or the maverick leader inside a large organization. But, while the lessons might apply universally, I wasn’t thinking of startups when I created this…
The backstory
Between my interview with Todd Wilkens and the opening slides , I think you’ll get a good idea of the backdrop that led to this presentation. There’s a lot of resistance to change inside large organizations (no surprise), but most resistance has little to nothing to do with the project or idea you have. In his book The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun dedicates a chapter to the myth that ‘People love new ideas” (no, they don’t).
On the surface, you’d think that people— companies— are looking for the ‘next big thing’ to invest their dollars in. The truth is, no one really wants to take a risk on the next big thing. We’d rather have “brave souls like Magellan, Galileo, and Neil Armstrong take intellectual and physical risks on our behalf, watching from a safe distance, following behind (or staying away) once we know the results.” Or put another way, “Innovation is expensive: no one wants to pay the price for ideas that turn out to be not quite ready for prime time.”
But, it’s about more than risky, or even safe ideas. It’s about a fear of change. Or an inability to understand truly new ideas. And this is where many innovative ideas fail. Again, Scott Berkun:
Many innovators give up when they learn that ideas, even with dazzling prototypes or plans in hand, are the beginning. The challenges that follow demand skills of persuasion more than brilliance.
And this…
Every great idea in history has the fat red stamp stamp of rejection on its face. It’s hard to see today, because once ideas gain acceptance, we gloss over the hard paths they took to get there. If you scratch any innovations surface, you’ll find the scars: they’ve been roughed up and thrashed around— by both the masses and leading minds- before they made it into your life.
“Behind the Music”
And here is the part that intrigues me: What are the stories behind the truly great ideas? What are the obstacles that got in the way of these ideas? And, what’s the real story behind visionary products that do manage to make it through otherwise hostile environments? From sticky notes to the RAZR phone, the stories of how these things came to be typically includes some form ‘rebellion’ against business as usual— which in large organizations has a tendency to be about power, position, predictability, and a score of other concerns fairly well-removed from the idea itself.
Somewhat familiar with Star Wars, I wanted to explore what it took to get this visionary film completed and in theaters. For starters, I love this film. But I also knew there were a host of challenges, as well as lessons about leadership, craftsmanship, and business that seemed to parallel much of what I have seen in the business world. That, and I can’t help myself— I love exploring patterns and connections between seemingly unrelated things.
Adaptive Path MX
So, when Adaptive Path contacted me to present this at MX, I was thrilled. Here was a chance to (1) share these ideas with a larger audience, but (2) bring out and comment on some of the elements that led to these musings (what I’ve shared here in this post), and (3) it was the perfect venue for my real topic: leading change.
The MX Conference is about ‘managing experiences’, and is targeted at PMs, Manager, Directors, and even VPs— those people ‘managing toward a vision’ (one of six MX themes). It’s not a conference about moving resources around on a Gantt chart. It a conference about promoting the value of a great customer centered strategies inside our organizations. And that can be a rebellious idea. One that may very well lead to adversity.
A business management perspective
Which leads me to a very encouraging paper: Gary Hamel’s ‘Strategy as Revolution’, published in the July-August 1996 issue of Harvard Business Review. Hamel speaks directly to executive leadership, urging them to embrace the revolutionaries within your company, as they may be the key to some much needed revolutionary ideas. Some notable quotes:
... in all too many companies, the entrepreneurial spark is more likely to be doused by a flood of corporate orthodoxy than fanned by resources and the support of senior executives.
If you’re a senior executive, ask yourself these questions: Has a decade or two or experience made me more willing or less willing to challenge my industry’s conventions? Have I become more curious or less curious about what is happening beyond the traditional boundaries of my industry? Be honest.
If you go down and out into your organization— out into the ranks of much maligned managers, for instance— you will find people straining against the bit of industrial orthodoxy. All too often, however, there is no process that lets those revolutionaries be heard… So, like economic refugees seeking greater opportunity in new lands, industry revolutionaries often abandon their employers to find more imaginative sponsors.
These were all very comforting words, especially coming from a credible business management guru. But for me, perhaps the most poignant statement was this:
Revolutionaries are subversive, but their goal is not subversion.
I’ve had profound difficulty articulating this sentiment is as concise a fashion. It’s not that visionaries are immature or obstinate. Quite the opposite: We’re rebellious because we care— not about politics, power, position, or the game (though perhaps we should). We care deeply about the business— creating value for our customers and the companies we work for. “People who care about their country— or their organization— don’t wait for permission to act.” (Hamel)
And this leads to a sad irony, “the secret tragedy of innovators is that their desire to improve the world is rarely matched by support from the people they hope to help.” (Berkun)
Words of advice?
So, what can we take away from this, if you are a revolutionary in your organization? Off the top of my head…
- Be realistic. A good idea is not even half of the challenge
- Politics are a part of corporate culture. Learn to play the game, or saddle up to someone who can.
- Don’t be discouraged when things don’t go smoothly— it’s human nature to resist the truly good ideas.
- Good ideas can and do come out of difficult situations.
- Rejection doesn’t necessarily mean your idea is wrong or bad.
- If you truly believe in the idea, keep shopping it around. Go around the roadblocks if necessary.
- If you must break some rules (we are talking about a rebellion here!), first understand the intent behind the rule you might be breaking or bending
- These are universal, human struggles, present wherever large groups of people gather together.
- Accordingly, encouragement and ideas can come from anywhere—even movies!
With that, I hope you enjoy the presentation. And, maybe you’ll find a few of the 6 (or 15) lessons we can all learn from the making of Star Wars useful or inspiring.
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Speaking at MX, My Interview with Todd Wilkens
Posted 123 days ago
If you enjoy the leadership and management themes I’ve been focusing on recently, then you’ll certainly want to look at Adaptive Path MX. AP has pulled together a stellar lineup— Chip Heath, author of ‘Made to Stick’, Chip Conley, founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, California’s largest boutique hotel company, Julie Peters, Brand Manager at Virgin USA, the stellar folks from Adaptive Path— the list goes on… If you’re managing or leading a UX Team, this looks like the conference not to miss. In speaking with Brandon Schauer and some other folks at AP, they basically describe it as the conference they would want to attend on the topic. And it shows. I’m really excited about this event.
While it’s a little late to be plugging a conference that starts in a couple days, if you are planning on attending and haven’t yet purchased tickets, you can reference ‘MXSA‘ for a 15% discount. That’s if you haven’t already registered.
I’m also very excited to be among the speakers presenting. A few months ago, I had a chance to speak with Todd Wilkens at Adaptive Path about my presentation (if you’ve seen my Star Wars presentation, it’s a version of that talk, with new content and an emphasis on some of the things that I glossed over in earlier versions— namely pushing visionary ideas through a corporate culture). I’m pleased with how the interview turned out. Todd asked some really great questions, which allowed me to comment on many of the more strategic leadership themes that I haven’t yet written about here. If you haven’t yet read the interview, please do. And then let me know what your thoughts are…
And if you’re planning on attending MX— come say hi!
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[IA Summit 2008] 'Managing A Strategic UX Team' Model
Posted 123 days ago / 2 Comments
If you’re managing (or part of) a team inside of a large corporate organization, then you’re familiar with the difficulties of juggling strategic and tactical concerns. This was the focus of my poster for the this year’s IA Summit. So, for all you ‘innies’ running a strategic User Experience Design group, here’s a model for you:
Download the Managing A Strategic UX Team Poster (pdf file)
[CLARIFICATION: Since creating this, I’ve joined Viewzi — I no longer work in the corporate environment in which this was produced…]
The Problem that led to this model
In my experience, we’re frequently asked “what are you working on?” Many times this is just a conversation starter. And other times, if it’s a project owner, that person really only want to hear you say “yes, we’re working on your project.” But at the executive level, the question is a strategic one: what is it that you are working on that is either going to make me look good and/or benefit the business. In these circumstances, we’ve two challenges:
- address their concerns, but also
- communicate how the things about the UX practice that they may not understand but are linked to top level strategic goals.
This is a communication problem. And a difficult question for UX groups to answer succinctly, given the breadth of activities that we are working on at any given moment—from ‘order taking’ on interface efforts to design research, internal presentations, technology experiments, or perfecting our ping pong skills.
But more than a communication problem, this is a strategic planning challenge: As a leader in a company, I have to be able to defend how every bit of our time fits into the overall strategic direction. This is especially the case where resources are tight and you have to make trade-off and priority decisions that don’t sit well with some.
3 Boxes Model
I’m a big fan of models—especially models that ‘get it right’, making simple the complex and providing a platform on which people can map their activities.
So when I came across the 3 Boxes Model from Vijay Govindarajan, I found it to be one those rare occasions where someone has framed the strategic conversation in a way that is easy (very easy!) to understand and can be built upon by almost any group inside an organization.
The ’3 Boxes’ are:
- Manage the present
- Selectively Abandon the Past
- Create the Future
...which are then rolled into these into 2 groups:
- competing for the present
- competing for the future
Brilliant. The 3 Boxes apply to all business units, project teams or disciplines. The resulting groups— competing for the present / competing for the future— are the perfect frame by which to evaluate where you’re time is being spent. Which leads me to…
Proactive and reactive work
When I arrived at my corporate gig, it was agreed that to be successful (truly successful), the UX group would need to split our time between ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ work. Different words, same idea.
Reactive work consists of funded projects for this year— enhancements, incremental changes, new projects building upon existing structures. It’s this kind of work that most folks expect from a tactical UX group (aka ‘order takers’). And this is the work that demonstrates short-term value. Of course to a good design team this is the work that can be immensely frustrating—like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic. But, to quote Thomas Dolby: “A few years in the music business taught me that you don’t invest ahead of the revenue curve.”
Proactive work consists of those future ideas we have around how things should be (and could be, given a reframing of the problem to be solved). This could simply be the ‘ideal’ version of the reactive projects we’re working on. Or, these ‘future ideas’ could be a radically different take on what’s possible and valuable given our understanding of business and customer goals. Of course, these solutions might potentially poke at the business model or challenge the technology infrastructure—which is to be expected as one leg of the 3-legged stool.
One problem with this language— proactive and reactive — is that they only suggest user interface or project related work—which is only the end result of a bigger process. Between ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ efforts, there are a score of other initiatives that have nothing to do directly with any particular project or product design—training, brown bag lunches, design research, persona creation, guidelines and standards, etc.
There was another big problem. Not surprisingly, this language didn’t stick. ‘Proactive’ work began to be associated with the ‘fun, sexy stuff’ that was keeping us from doing the real work. Of course, this perspective is flawed— there’s a world of difference between work and progress. And anyone spending more than a few days with us quickly recognized the strategic value our UX group offered. We would never be satisfied with ‘putting lipstick on a pig’.
Putting it all together
So, a simple change in language sent me down the path that led to this model. I had already listed the many different activities we were or would need to be engaged in, and thinking in terms of competing for the present or the future proved to be the perfect base to layer these activities to… End result, this was a great framework for me to explain all of our efforts to my peers and upper management in a way that is strategic and not tactical.
And now…?
What I’m most curious about is whether this framework would work elsewhere, or is this only applicable to the culture in which it was created? I’m curious to see how these generalized activities translate into other companies and other UX Design groups with different cultures and roles within the organization.
So, now it’s your turn, innies. How does this work (or not work) for you?
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[IA Summit 2008] 'Inspiration from The Edge' Presentation
Posted 126 days ago / 4 Comments
This past weekend I had the pleasure of presenting at the IA Summit in Miami. The topic of my presentation? Other places to look for UI inspiration, specifically, other digital interfaces, such as the Wii, Tivo, Club Penguin, etc.
The Presentation:
The Description:
Want a fresh perspective on UI design? Look around. Not at other web sites or desktop applications but at other interactive media. Tivo, the iPhone, the Wii software interface, the ‘Sugar’ OS for the XO Laptop… there’s a world of new UI inspiration that is already being proven out in other devices— yet much of what we see in application design is more of the same. Tabbed menus. Drop downs. Form fields. Sure, patterns and conventions are important. But is ‘familiar’ always better? What might be more natural? While years of usability studies assert that consistent UI elements are a critical requirement, we also know that people quickly adapt to new patterns of use, new game interfaces, and new hardware-specific interactions.
To increase our field of vision, we’ll take a macro view of interface design, focusing on alternative UIs— and emphasizing patterns that can be leveraged in a business context. What might World of Warcraft tell us about improving our business intelligence tool? How might Club Penguin, a virtual destination for young children, influence the information architecture of our new CRM tool? How might designing for the iPhone affect our desktop UI designs? These are the types of questions we’ll explore, along with how skills in abstraction and synthesis can open our eyes to see new opportunities all around us.
Overall, I believe the presentation was well received. I had a great time preparing for and presenting this. And yes, this time round, I’ll be adding audio to my SlideShare presentation! :-)
To all who were in attendance at the Summit— thank you! I was blown away by the packed room and by all the compliments that followed. Oh yeah, I now have a complete set of the UX Methods trading cards. Whew!
But wait, there’s more…
A lot of folks asked about where (and how!) I collect all these reference screenshots. No secret really. Given how many people asked this, I’ll write a post listing some of the sites I frequent. However, here’s a much better option: Kevin Cheng has started a grouptweet called @inspiring where we will post interesting designs and ideas (web or otherwise) as we come across them. Spread the word!
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Why I Am Not A Manager
Posted 133 days ago / 17 Comments
Confession time: I do not consider my self a good manager. I do however think I am a good director or leader. So what do I see as the difference?
In short, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. And providing a clear, actionable, inspiring plan.
Managers are great at making sure things get done. Directors are great at making sure we’re getting the right things done-. [UPDATE: As Joe points out, this idea originated with Peter Drucker who said this much more eloquently, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”] And that everyone’s inspired and empowered to make valuable contributions.
Managers are largely focused on the minutiae of day-to-day details: Are you getting done the things assigned to you? Have we communicated with the client? How well are we tracking to the project plan? When are you taking your vacation? Those sorts of things. While I can certainly be anal about my own work, I just don’t care to be that involved in what other people are doing. Isn’t that their responsibility?
What I do care about with regards to other people is whether or not we are clear on our roles and responsibilities. Aligned around a common, shared vision. And motivated— intrinsically motivated and passionate about what we, as a group, are building. Given the right circumstances, I think I’m good at creating this environment.
To be honest, I’ve felt a bit guilty about not being a better manager— I’m not good at crossing my t’s, dotting my i’s, or being able to account for what everyone is working on at any given time. I’m just not wired that way. Fortunately, I’ve been placed in leadership roles where I was somehow able to skip past the traditional managerial duties.
But as a director at various companies, I’ve also discovered something interesting: much of what managers do seems unnecessary when you have the right people on your team. I’ll say that again: much of what managers do is unnecessary when you have the right people. With the right people, self-management takes over for you. I think Jim Collins nails this when he says:
...if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.
When you have the right people on your team, what qualifies as management is really about creating a platform from which everyone can track themselves. That, and figuring out how challenge folks so that they are delivering their best. This assumes a lot of trust and faith in their abilities, and not in your ability to handhold. Beyond that, management, in the traditional MBA sense, has been largely unnecessary in an environment where everyone has a clear raison d’être . Again, I’m talking about a specific kind of information worker. This doesn’t apply to all groups.
I think this quote from Michael Hillenbrand sums it up rather nicely:
Managers do things right; leaders do the right thing. This is the primary difference between a good manager and a good leader. A good manager can accomplish only what has been defined and documented for him or her, yet a good leader constantly questions why things are done the way they are and is able to recognize the value and potential of doing things differently. A good leader is passionate about excellence and must therefore strive for continuous improvements and change. In other words, a good leader knows that insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. [ Source ]
Next up: what qualities do I think makes for a good leader?
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Are Image Reflections A Cliché?
Posted 166 days ago / 7 Comments
Or, when is a cliché, not cliché?
I’m working on project where we will be displaying images. And I’m probably going to recommend adding a reflection to the images:
Yes, the played-out, trite design aesthetic: the reflection. Made popular by Apple and (in their wake) every other ‘Web 2.0’ styled site . So popular in fact that there are a variety of different scripts written to make it effortless to add a reflection.
So, being aware that this is not a unique visual signature, and that it seems to have peaked as far as visual trends go, why am I recommending we add reflections to our images? Because it’s natural.
Shadows, reflections, translucent surfaces— we interact with these in the real world, and there are very real cognitive (and emotional) associations with these visual elements. Aside from attractiveness, a reflection is associated with clean surfaces and high style. Long before Apple, most luxury product shots for the last 30 years have included reflections. Reflections communicate class. Also, to have a reflection (of the variety we see today) implies that the object is standing up. If these images were laying down, on a table surface for example, we’d invoke a shadow— another cliché, right?. But they’re standing up, which means reflection (if the surface is at all reflective). Again, these interfaces mimic natural design patterns, and carry with them the same real world functional qualities. I might argue that the concept of affordance, while typically associated with more directly actionable things (like buttons), would also apply to this ‘styling’ decision, given my views on how aesthetics— for information or style— contribute to function.
In this sense, I don’t see the use of a reflection as a trend, but rather a small part of a steady, longer-term progression in interface design. Albeit one that could stand to be refined and served up in a variety of ways— different reflections for different surfaces, for example.
But, consider this: Can a visual element become so trite that the ‘Ugh, here we go again’ response overrides our natural, biological response? Can we reach a point where it is ‘classier’ to not invoke a reflection or glossy surface? I start to think perhaps so, that we can, through overuse, create a learned response that overrides our natural response.
And then I waffle on that position.
Spending just a few minutes on a photography site such as Strobist makes me reconsider this position. Skilled photographers use lighting to accomplish a particular effect, or communicate a particular tone. Watch the end of this video on lighting (about 6 minutes in), and consider our natural response to the different lighting setups. Harsh lighting suggests cheap (by learned association) or naturally suggests harsh weather conditions. Dramatic lighting can be a bit… ominous. Diffused lighting creates a smoother, softer effect. And so on. In a century of photography, our natural responses to lighting conditions haven’t changed. Don’t misunderstand me. Personal preferences for or against these treatments have come and gone. But the effect of these lighting treatments has not changed. And as an interaction designer, I am concerned about the effect of visual treatments, not the artistic merits. Aesthetics—whether through emotion or cognition— play a functional role in how easily something works for someone.
Still, a bit torn on this, I looked up the term cliché. While mostly used of phrases, a cliché is just about anything “that has become overly familiar or commonplace.” I think the intent of something being cliché is that it was original at one time. The first time someone used an expression it was quite charming, and it went downhill from there. But can we ever label something that is naturally occurring as cliché? Is the sun rising and setting cliché? Can the effect of a squat, boxy shape making us feel safe become cliché?
Or consider the reverse: Would we ever say making alert messages red or yellow has become passé? Or that we’re sick green meaning ‘go’ or ‘move forward’—let’s change all our green street lights to brown?
Using a trendy typeface, that might qualify as cliché. But how something is lit, meanings we associate with colors, imbued meaning in shadows and reflections— higher order cognitive patterns govern our response to the deign elements, and for that, they can’t be cliché.
Or can they?
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The Super Bowl and Information Design?
Posted 183 days ago / 1 Comments
Like a few other people I know, I watched the Super Bowl yesterday two weeks ago. Unlike a few other people (okay, everyone), what intrigued me most was not the game (nor the commercials, this year), but the game’s ‘ScoreBar’. Yes, this:
A little background:
So that you know where I’m coming from: I am not a red-blooded, meat-eating, football-watching American. I do tune in once a year for the Super Bowl, but more for the commercials and the halftime show. And because I feel it’s my duty as a citizen of this fine country. Lest I be lynched, my attitude (and aptitude) has changed over time, as I’m starting to appreciate football—just a little. In fact, this year, I was the first one to call my dad to discuss the New England Giants upstart (he was surprised by my call, to say the least). So football, not my thing. One of the things I do get excited by is good information design. And I was fascinated by the latest incarnation of the ScoreBar (anyone know what this is really called?).
What’s the big deal? the ScoreBar contains all the vitals we need to stay in the know. So what? Here’s what I saw:
Efficient delivery of information
For starters, did you notice the persistence of the information. In years past, we’ve frequently seen information appear (and disappear) at random times. So, someone passing through the room might have no idea what the latest score is. Or, if the game is not in play, who’s got the ball, how much time is remaining on the clock, and so on. Typically, there’s only so much real estate you should allocate for this information, and with team logos and such, it’s easy to see why this information has been served up in a revolving fashion. Not so with this year’s Super Bowl. Everything you need to know (stats wise) is always displayed, in a compact fashion that doesn’t distract from the game.
One clean bar. All the information you need.
Clear information hierarchy
One of things that drives me nuts is when there is no thought put into a navigation schema or things are thrown up with no reason. Not so here. There is a clear time-based sequential hierarchy:
The ‘hierarchy’:
- the NFL on Fox logo is seasonal
- the teams playing each other (and the score) are for the duration of this game
- time remaining in this quarter lets you know where we’re at within this game
- these are followed by different kinds of real-time information, most often being the current down/yards to go but also including time-sensitive information such as time outs remaining, touchdown, or flag
- ...and there is the Super Bowl 42 identification
Two quick comments:
First, the Super Bowl identification should technically follow the NFL Fox logo, but that would result in a visually unbalance presentation, which gets into visual considerations. Positioning this on the far right balances things out aesthetically, and allows the vital information to be centered on the screen.
Second, this design favors the utilitarian communication of information over unnecessary graphics or visually interesting layouts. Contrast this clean, ordered layout with versions from previous years (or other countries):
Subtle visual indicators:
You know at all times who has the ball. The indicator? A simple bar above the team with the ball:
Though not as iconic as the familiar football icon, this is just as effective at conveying this information. And more efficient.
Context aware:
In the UX world, we put far too much of a premium on consistent (read: immutable) interfaces. In contrast, I’m intrigued by things like adaptive, conversational interfaces or rhetorical navigation, things that change in the moment. Those thoughts apply in this situation, to the presence of the ScoreBar— it’s only there during normal game play, when it’s needed.
During instant replays or quick interviews, it disappears.
There’s a clear pattern to when it is present and when it is not. Again, contrast that with previous years when you might have to wait on some random interval to see the information that should be displayed at all times.
Context dependent information
Real time information is incredibly context dependent: seconds left before play, down/yards, number of time outs, flag, and so on.
The interesting thing to note here is that this kind of real-time information is relevant for a moment, and then updated with new information. You don’t need to see multiple pieces of real-time information at the same time. This follows the time-based hierarchy I described above.
Color is used to communicate
And if all that wasn’t enough, notice the nice change in background color to signify critical events:
Obvious (or understood) information is removed
With information design, what’s not there is as important as what is there. Too many projects suffer from multiple stakeholders who all believe their bit of the world needs to be represented, in the manner they would like. Notice here that someone (effectively) convinced the teams marketing departments to not only drop the team logo, but also abbreviate the team names. This removes the gratuitous (logos) and removes the obvious — complete spelling of the team names. From a ‘user’ perspective, it can be reasonably assumed that most folks will know the names of the two teams playing each other.
Visual design is aesthetically pleasing
The ScoreBar is not unattractive. There’s some subtle gloss on the bar. Some light 3-D effects. But subtle visual treatments. I mention this only because there is a perception that good information design comes at the expense of being visual interesting—that information design is boring. Perhaps, perhaps not. Whether or not an unnecessary, gratuitous use of graphics can, at the expense of communicating information, actually create an overall greater experience— I’ll save topic for another day. I just wanted to comment on the fact that bar is nicely designed, graphically.
So what?
The truth is, really effective design should leave people wondering what the big deal is. Here’s the irony, clients expect things that cost lots of money and take lots of time to seem like they did. To look complex or shiny. But the really great designs, the ones that break through and solve the real problems, will often be the most underwhelming. If there are lots of fancy bells and whistles and animations, be very concerned. That’s probably novelty. Not good design. Look at the iPod, basic box, right? However, the simplest designs are often the most difficult to design. How many sites get the basic things wrong? I love this quote from John Maeda.
To make what appears to be less can sometimes be more work
To truly appreciate the elegance of this bar (and why I spent far too long writing this post), you’d have to contrast it with the last 40+ years, where we’ve had everything from random displays of information to gratuitous visual noise that began to look like an all day news broadcast, complete with scrolling marquis and unnecessary logos.
I think someone got it right this year.
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