Jeckecko

Context over dogma

This is lovely for many reasons, but it’s the last line that gets me: Context over dogma.

What a beautiful way to put it.

Safe

I’ve been wrangling with something for a while. I was hoping the wrangling would end and I’d reach a logical conclusion to this all. And then blog about it. But that’s not happening so I’m resorting to a splurge. Maybe the conclusion will come later?

Some context: One of the principal reasons, I work at Clearleft is because we get to work with leading-edge companies and ideas. I like this; It challenges me and most of the time, gives me an opportunity to deliver work that I’m proud of. But one of the criticisms I’ve recently faced is that my work has been too ‘safe’. What do I mean by safe? Well obviously that’s open to interpretation, but you’d be forgiven for interpreting this as a compliment as opposed to a criticism. Afterall, safety offers protection and reduced exposure to risk, which from a business perspective, is something most of us would welcome.

But in this particular case safe wasn’t being used as a compliment. It was in fact, a term of disapproval and would be more accurately read as conservative or even unenterprising.

No, I’m not about to launch in to a rant about a client. In fact, I think the client’s criticisms were — on many levels — fair. The reason I mention this is because I see this type of criticism increasingly directed towards traditional approaches to user-centered design and this post is my attempt to try and understand why.

Allow me to generalise: As an Information Architect, my toolbox contains a host of tried and tested methods, many of which focus on the derivation of users’ goals. It can be hard work, but I know as long as I use the tools appropriately, they provide me with the ability to extract the basis of a solid proposition: a set of goals which if met, can form the essence of a successful product or service.

The problem is that goals exist in several forms and while I can rely on traditional IA tools to derive what Cooper termed End Goals, the Super-Best-Friend’s web (that’s Web2.0 to marketeers) has created an ever-increasing demand for their less tangible, more subjective counterparts: Experience and Life Goals (I’ve blogged about these previously). Within this space, a proposition has the potential to move beyond the realm of safe, even defensive design and in to the domain of delightful, meaningful experience.

Stephen P. Anderson captures this tension superbly, describing the jump from task-driven to meaningful experiences as crossing the UX chasm:

“With rich interactions, the Social Web, and other recent web application advancements, we are reaching the point where it’s finally appropriate to discuss things like ‘joy of use’ and ‘pleasure’ in interface design. This is also the point at which we must stop designing only to support tasks and begin designing to support experiences…I dub this difficult transition the UX grand Canyon. This is the chasm between designing to support tasks (with a focus on products and features) and designing to support experiences (focusing on people, their activities, and the context of those activities).”

Stephen P. Anderson, Getting from Tasks to Experiences: What’s Next in Interface Design

Substitute tasks for End Goals in the previous quote and hopefully you can see where I’m going. In case not, I’ve ruthlessly stolen Anderson’s pyramid diagram and then scrawled on it to demonstrate what I mean.

The base of our pyramid is built on the solid foundations of functionality, reliability and usability. All coveted attributes, that can typically be met via the fulfilment of user’s End Goals (and should in no way should be ignored). But in order to create experiences that lift users towards the peak of the pyramid, we must also pay attention to their Life and Experience Goals as well.

In hindsight, the project I alluded to earlier probably focused too heavily on End Goals and left little room for anything more ‘meaningful’. Budget and time was certainly a factor (isn’t it always?), but I also believe this was symptomatic of the persona-driven approach I adopted. This resulted in a thorough collection of End Goals which in my opinion was both necessary and worthwhile, but not enough.

The question is how? In my opinion, there’s huge scope for innovation in this space. Lots of smart people are interested in doing the same and it’s certainly something I’m focusing my 20% time on at the moment. It’s also something I’m intending to blog about as I explore different approaches. But for now it just feels good to get this stuff down.

Culture of Creativity

There’s a fascinating conversation over on the Adaptive Path website between Henning Fischer and Chris Conley from Gravity Tank. The dialogue focuses on the challenges around fostering creative culture within an organisation.

In the same way that Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk highlights prevailing attitudes to creativity in education, Fisher and Conely seem uniquely placed to reveal similar patterns within ‘design’.

I particularly like Henning Fischer’s reference to ‘creative stagnation’ at Motorola:

“Does survivorship bias contribute to creative stagnation? To me there seems to be an almost reactionary thing going on. Organizations will break new ground, and then do almost everything they can to stop and consolidate that position and maximize returns. Motorola did that with the Razr and look where it got them. Before long, the organization realizes that it needs to recapture its creative voice and so begins the endless back and forth between breaking into new territory and holding your hard earned ground.”

Humility & the Interaction Designer

When asked what personal qualities make a good interaction designer, Larry Tesler highlighted humility:

“Enough confidence to believe you can solve any design problem and enough humility to understand that most of your ideas are probably bad. Enough humility to listen to ideas from other people that may be better than your own and enough confidence to understand that going with other people’s ideas does not diminish your value as a designer.”

Larry Tesler, Vice President of the User Experience and Design group, Yahoo in Dan Saffer’s Designing for Interaction.

Sagmiester

Unlike some of my my esteemed colleagues, I must confess to being a relative novice when it comes to public speaking. Which makes it all the more awe-inspiring when I get to watch a great talk.

Stefan Sagmeister’s ‘Yes, design can make you happy’ fits the bill perfectly. Sagmeister delivers an eloquent, funny and inspiring account in to how and why design should inspire happiness as opposed to just representing it. Highly recommended viewing.

As I said, I’m a novice orator at best but I’d like that to change. So in advance of my ascent on world superstardom I’m starting to collect some hints and tips. Anyway, this is what I learnt from Stefan. No doubt, these contravene all that makes up that blissful state of Presentation Zen, but it’s a start:

• Being provocative is as effective – perhaps even more so – than presenting big solutions.
• Tell your own stories – personal experience is the simplest means of encouraging empathy.
• Trim the fat. A few simple, accessible ideas are memorable.
• There’s no need to explain everything. In fact if you do, you risk patronising your audience. Let people experience some of the the joy that you did when you worked all these things out.
• Make people laugh. They’ll like you and your presentation .
• Fifteen minute presentations encourage you to be smart with your content. Anything longer inevitably results in some people losing focus. If you can’t tell people what they want in this time, you shouldn’t be presenting anyway.

The Metropolitan World Atlas and Graphical Excellence

Ever since Jordan recommended the Metropolitan World Atlas, I’ve been on the look out for a copy. My search was eventually rewarded on a recent trip to - rather unexpectedly - The Architecture Centre in Bristol.

The design is far from perfect: There’s some really quite awful typography in the opening pages; Likewise, much of the data is disappointingly out of date, despite being published in 2005. But as an exercise in information composition, this book remains a truly wonderful accomplishment.

Its success resides in the author’s ability to present complicated datasets in both elegant and meaningful ways. In my opinion, Arjen van Susteren gets very close to what Mr Tufte would describe as Graphical Excellence:

“Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency. Graphical displays should

• show the data
• induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about the methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else
• avoid distorting what the data have to say
• present many numbers in a small space
• make large data sets coherent
• encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data
• reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure
• serves a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration
• be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set.

Graphics reveal data…”

Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information

Ignore the Exceptions

Complex information, such as price lists and timetables, cannot be designed on a preconceived grid. The page arrangement has to stem from the content and structure of the information itself. First you have to find the shortest and the longest elements, and then ignore them; if your layout accommodates the extremes you will end up making allowances for a few isolated exceptions. The thing to do is make the bulk of the matter fit, then go back to the exceptions and work with them one by one. If there are only a few long lines in an otherwise short listing, it should be considered an opportunity to flex your creative muscles: design them or rewrite.

Eric Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger, Stop Stealing Sheep and find out how type works

Fail to Succeed

On the success of the iMac:

“They would not have succeeded in this endeavour had they not failed along the way. If you team succeeds all the time, then fire them. They’re not trying hard enough and being too conservative. You have to reward mistakes, just not stupidity.”

Bill Buxton (Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research),
Sketching and Experience Design, BostonCHI, November 2006.

Concept Maps

Dubberly Design communicate complex topics using their own take on concept mapping. There’s some beautiful examples of information design here which seems to fit nicely with their approach to producing ‘delightful’ software.