Search as a Social Morphology

 

Its hard to remember the days when search engines were the first killer web apps.

Before anyone was talking about the programmable web, search engines were functioning as the meta-applications that worked across the web, bringing content and people together in a meaningful way.

Flash forward to 2012 and the search paradigm has exploded and along with it the thinking around how to match people with things has fragmented. This not only impacts how advertising dollars are spent but also impacts how consumers will find consumer goods and services.

Here are just a few of the current models that are in play:

Video as search

More and more people are starting the search queries in youtube, vimeo and other video portals instead of traditional search engines. This is not only when they are looking for entertainment. Whether it is research for a school project, health information or trying to find reviews of consumer products, Youtube is rising in popularity, especially among younger demographics who are developing a higher regard and reliance on video than print.

Social as search

Social recommendations are playing an increasingly relevant role in driving search behaviors. In some instances, searches are begin essentially replaced by socially assembled content—content that has been collected through the process of recommendations from friends, followers or networks. Besides the direct application of this on sites such as Pinterest and Quora, we also see how Google has integrated recommendations from friends into the search results, creating a hybrid result that is part search algorithm and part social push.

Predictive search

Predictive search has been around since the beginning of ecommerce, and like Boolean search will likely be around for while. Its strongest application is around selling products to consumers based on their purchase history or related behaviors, such as shopping cart contents or product viewing history. This technique is more useful to marketers or publishers (who want to keep their audiences engaged for the advertising or subscription revenue).

As the programmable web becomes more sophisticated it’s likely we’ll see more fragmentation and experimentation–hybrid solutions that synthesize different search paradigms together.

Image: Kenny Cole,  ”Dwight Knew,” 2008, ink and gouache on paper, 22″ x 30″

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Published on February 20, 2012 1:29 am.
Filed under: Technology, Truths, UX

Adapting to Agile UI

Pastel on paper by Steve Buckley 2009-2010

User Interface designers face unique challenges in an agile development environment but with the right design approach and production stream great results are still possible.

First let’s look at team structure. Agile teams are usually smaller than traditional development teams and–importantly for UI designers—the engineers play a more decisive role than in traditional development groups.

In this context, there’s a lot of variability in the role of ux. Because requirements and beta are in flux it’s just not possible to create a complete design and then hand it off to the development team. Instead there’s a fluid process that requires coordination and sensitivity to time constraints.

Just because the engineers lead the charge doesn’t mean that UI design has to take a back seat. Quite to the contrary, it is even more critical for the UI designer to establish key patterns and visual memes that will be recognized and understood by the user.

One key learning is that developers and ux look at application design from entirely different perspectives: The developer looks at the system from the bottom up as a result of the fact they have to create functional components one at a time. (I am not aware of any top-down method for development, but perhaps someone can clue me in if there is.)

Conversely, ux designers have the responsibility to look at the design from the outside in: How to surface concepts and processes in way that is transparent to he user. Software design is one field where form does not follow function.

For example, developers in an initial build will often construct a pyramid like trajectory for end users: users enter information through a series of data-centric steps before they get a glimpse of the end result.

Our role in ux is, in a sense, to invert the pyramid and allow users to literally or conceptually see the end result from the beginning so that they are motivated, and engaged throughout the process.

Image: Steve Buckley, Untitled pastel on paper, approx. 18″ x 27″, 2009-2010.

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Published on February 10, 2012 6:08 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: , , , , , ,

Agile Process and UX

Patty Fabricant, Diamond Fade, 2003 Watercolor 22" x 30"

As agile methodology gains traction, challenges to adapting are emerging.

Today at any given moment I am simultaneously working on projects with agile and waterfall methodologies. As a consequence, my teams need to switch mindsets and approaches as they move from project to project. This adds an additional layer of management complexity to our workflow and communications. And a big part of it is about managing responses and expectations.

“Now, not only do we need to balance multiple accounts, working groups and projects, we also need to change the way we respond to design challenges.”

In the projects that adhere to traditional waterfall method our response usually begins with scheduling a meeting while int he agile method we immediately jump to problem-solving. The former is consensus-based while the later is improvisational.

“The agile teams that I work with are smaller and more accepting of individual creativity.”

In an agile environment, individual members of the team are more empowered to solve problems without getting approval or seeking consensus in advance. And importantly, rarely is any formal documentation required. Instead the team-member comes up with a solution, implements it and then asks the rest of the team to review and comment. Most often, the other team members will adapt their own work to the new development and integrate this into the project on the fly.

For organizations that derive revenue from change orders, account management and recurrent meetings this can obviously create challenges. In the more traditional designed and planned projects, the team is often stuck seeking approval and consensus in lengthy meetings for a new idea, enhancement or revision. Downstream there must be documentation updates.

“While part of this is a consequence of working in a regulated environment (healthcare), it is also related to the fact that the development teams are fragmented and geographically separated.”

It’s probably not possible to create using an agile method in an environment where the development and design teams are on separate continents and time zones, but it sure would save a lot of time and money.

 

Image: Patty Fabricant, Diamond Fade, 2003 Watercolor 22″ x 30″

 

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Published on February 5, 2012 1:57 pm.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Technology, UX Tags: , , , , ,

Designed in California, Built in Hell

FIlm Still from Cocteau's Orpheus

 

Inhuman working conditions within Apple’s manufacturing supply chain stand in stark contrast to the superlative usability of Apple designs. It should give ui designers and software design engineers pause—especially those of us that talk about user-centered design.

“As our society becomes increasingly focused on accessing and manipulating information and on communicating digitally, it’s very easy to lose site of the physical reality right around us, let alone on the other side of the planet.”

Right here in New York we use our iphones amid crumbling infrastructure while the best design and engineering talent is applied to the next generation of handhelds and software.

Now we learn that the sleek Apple products we’ve come to love and depend on are produced in factories with exploitative policies and dangerous working conditions, routinely exposing workers to toxins, dangerous machinery and numbingly long shifts that exceed reason.

The fact that these conditions are an integral part of Apple’s pricing structure—and, thus, their profitability—has been widely commented upon. What has not been discussed is how this implicates the design community.

Q: What does it mean to talk user-centered design philosophy and then ignore the manufacturing and supply side of the process?

A: It implies an inherent bigotry embedded in the assumptions. It would seem that we believe that users of the products are entitled to the best possible user experience while those involved in manufacturing the product are not entitled to any consideration whatsoever.

And it points out the extent to which user experience design has become obsessed with the interaction between some humans and computers at the expense of other humans and the physical world.

Public knowledge of working conditions may build and exert pressure on the industry to clean up its manufacturing act.

Physicists and basic technologists are on the path to developing ever-smaller transistors, and progress in nano-tube transistor technology is moving ahead as I write this. It is predicted that one day soon processors will be small enough and cheap enough to embed in everyday objects, allowing us—perhaps—to truly realize an intelligent world.

“Perhaps this will enable us to reconnect the world of pure information with our physical infrastructure.”

And perhaps the brilliant designers who are now working on yet another redundant mobile app will turn their focus to making our physical world more humane.

 

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Published on February 1, 2012 7:13 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX

Proliferate, Aggregate, Repeat: Why App Aggregation will be the Next Big Thing

Archimboldo, The Librarian, 1566

Looking at the path the internet has taken over the last ten years, a repeating pattern is emerging. The pattern starts with the establishment of a new asset or application class. It proliferates throughout the web. Then the aggregators come along and start skimming the cream off the top and presenting the best in single package. This pattern began with pages, moved on to shopping, news, reviews and downloads.

Today, with the proliferation of stand-alone applications, the environment is ripe for the next level of aggregation.

A Glimpse

An early entry into this space is If This Then That (ifttt.com).  ifttt is a meta application that allows users to build custom programs that uses separate apps as triggers and components.

How It Works

Using ifttt, you can create a task (or recipe) that automates a process that you used to do manually. For example, take a Facebook status update as a trigger to create a tweet, a new blog entry and update a photo automatically. Or, it might use a weather report or new information on an RSS feed to trigger a series of actions across personal sites, social networking pages, email or micro-blogging. While it is still rudimentary today, don’t shrug it off as just a novelty item.

Going Beyond the Individual

Consider instead how an application like this could integrate with Google’s social graph. The potential to trigger actions that are rules based, broadly social and widespread are staggering (and potentially virus-like).

While we shouldn’t underplay the concerns about security and the stultifying effect that automated messaging can have on human-based social interaction, the promise of this next phase of aggregation is beginning to come into focus.

Image: The Librarian, oil on canvas, Archimboldo, ~1566

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Published on January 27, 2012 11:50 am.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Mobile, Technology, UX Tags: , , ,

Post-humanism (in the Flesh)

Damien Hirst's Virgin Mother 2005

What is Post-humanism?

Let’s start here: What does it mean to be human if we are disembodied?

As someone who is active in both technology and the arts, I think I’ve got a unique perspective on this. The postulate of the post-human movement is predicated on the belief that the mind can be abstracted from the body and housed within a machine. The scenario was played out in science fiction but is now thought by adherents to be within reach. The human subject is connected to a powerful computer and all the thoughts, memories, beliefs and associations are extracted through a digital process and recorded in a computer. The subject continues to think, communicate and exist but without a body. If you hook the computer up to a system the extracted brain can be used to run operations.

I suppose you can consider this a kind of singularity.

Let’s examine the underlying assumptions that support this model:

Our experience of the world manifests to us vis-a-vis the brain and the brain is just like an awfully powerful computer. Given the ever-increasing power of computers, we should soon be able to create a computer that can function equivalently to the human brain. Once this has been achieved we can extract our sentient selves and live, in perpetuity, in machine form.

This is not a technological fantasy: it reflects religious, social, and economic beliefs.

The post-human belief system is based on a shared social understanding of what it means to be human. It may frequently be expressed through a technological fantasy of the computer-based human but it is just as visible in the way that we picture our selves.

But where does identity reside if we are disembodied? Look no further than social networks to envision what this can look like. A new framework to understand and contextualize friendship, social membership and human contact. And with it the awkward reconnects with high school sweethearts now grown so different as to be barely recognizable and the friends whose context is the network and not corporeal.

Reconstructing Social Systems in Our Own Image

Google’s social graph attempts to quantify and operationalize our emergent identities. In the industry we tend to see this effort as a marketing opportunity or, to put it more kindly, a more accurate way to deliver meaningful and relevant content and experiences to people. In addition to that we may see an emergent phenomenon: With the introduction of highly integrated social applications that respond to and build upon each other (i.e., ifttt, storify) the door opens for automated connections and consequent actions that are not triggered by individual actions but by the collective action of multiple systems.

It promises to be increasingly easy to lose control, not only of the posts that display in your Facebook timeline, but in the actual social connections, recommendations and communications that are generated on your behalf.

Why it Really is Post-human(ism)

It’s an easy shot, but just for laughs and giggles, compare the fifteenth century immaculate conception with the twenty-first century version that displays at the top of this post.

The Renaissance version by Bellegambe depicts the fetus as a vision, a thought in the process of becoming. In Bellegambe’s day anatomy was in its infancy, yet more importantly, it didn’t represent the truth that mattered. What did matter was theological and interpersonal. Hirst’s may be purely anatomical, (and it is modeled after scientific models used by medical students) but, intention is important and the title, Virgin Mother, is Hirst’s way of pointing us back to the religious subject and forcing the comparison. Students of art history will see this as a trope in the Dechampian tradition, but viewed in the context of the post-human movement it could just as easily be our David.

Views and attitudes are never final nor are they ever independent of the social conditions from which they emerge.

Image top: Virgin Mother, Damien Hirst, 2005 Bronze, approx. 33′

Image bottom: St. Anne and the Conception of Mary, Jean Bellegambe, c. 1515, oil on wood, 36 x 26 cm

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Published on January 25, 2012 11:16 pm.
Filed under: Art, Technology

Everyone Wants to Be a Cowboy

Kiefer’s “Aperiatur Terra et Germinet Salvatorem” (“Let the Earth Be Opened and Send Forth a Savior”), a 2005-6 painting with poppylike blossoms.

The surge in start-ups is bursting out all over.

I’ve seen a vast increase in the number of people with good (and some not so good) ideas, looking for input on ux, ui and technology. I love it. It shows that web services technology and especially the availability of open protocols and APIs has lowered the technology bar while enabling execution of sophisticated interactive concepts envisioned by subject matter experts vs. technologists.

This is a democratizing movement enabling doctors, dancers, fashionistas, psychologists and other professionals who have no special knowledge around technology to develop viable business models. Whether these are financially viable is another question. But that aspect of the technology world has always baffled me. So many fantastic applications have no clear path to profitability that I can discern.

Perhaps they will rely upon the old model of building a viable and dedicated user base and then selling to the highest bidder that covets the user population. Perhaps there’s an advertising or subscription model lurking under the covers just waiting for critical mass to emerge.

In the meantime, the creative juices runneth over and the inclusion of mainstream, non-technical participation in building our digital environment is a welcome addition to the hardcore techies that have run the show so far.

Image: Anselm Keifer: “Aperiatur Terra et Germinet Salvatorem” (“Let the Earth Be Opened and Send Forth a Savior”) 2006

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Published on January 24, 2012 5:40 pm.
Filed under: Technology, UX

The Movable Feast: Persistent Social Identity

if this then that allows users to build trigger-based action recipes using open authorization


What do you get when you add Open Authorization to web APIs and then combine with social networks? The next phase in the evolution of the interactive culture.

For a glimpse of what this may enable, look no further than the logical engine ifttt.com (If This then that.)

Using open protocols for authentication, ifttt allows non-technical users to build logical arguments that trigger and execute actions. Ifttt calls them recipes to make them more accessible and they’ve done a smashing job of making them easy to understand and use. A recipe might automatically generate a twitter message when someone follows you, or update your WordPress blog when you post a status to Facebook. Many of the recipes are true time savers. While others suggest a runaway world of robotically-generated chatter.

Perhaps what’s most interesting for the UI/UX design and for anyone concerned with user experience, is how open authentication protocols allow us to carry our social identity, as it exists online, with us wherever we go.

Like the proverbial movable feast we no longer leave our friends. Instead, everywhere we go, our social network is with us.

In the same way that AJAX technology moved us away from the concept of the web as a series of static pages, open authorization moves us away from the idea of browsing. Instead we travel with our posse ever present and perhaps more importantly, ever visible to others.

Image: ifttt (if this then that) allows users to build automatic tasks based on integration of social channels.

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Published on January 16, 2012 3:41 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX

Social Listening Needs Standards

Robert Egert, 1992, Pinocchio, 72" x 72", oil on canvas, collection of Mary Ziegler

In the last two years smart brands have turned themselves inside out to focus on what customers are saying about them instead of focusing on their own marketing messages. This has begun a slow but steady sea change, shifting marketing focus from creative ideas to smart analytics.

Agencies (both traditional and media) are challenged to step-up to the plate and deliver insights based on social listening. Media agencies are often in a good position to take advantage of this opportunity since they have an infrastructure already in place around analytics—extending that to include social listening is a lot less challenging than establishing a new service.

The marketplace is overflowing with analytics tools that range from high-priced industrial strength products to free, web-based products that are open to anyone and new entrants are emerging ongoing. The products vary in quality and some have a deeper feature set, more expansive options or inclusion of third party research data that adds to the depth of the insights and comparisons that can be made as well as contextualize insights against demographics as well as media saturation and spend.

As this market expands and enters the big league what is really missing are industry standards. Conduct a sentiment analysis of the same terms in two or more different platforms and you can expect to get wildly varying results. The reason is partially inherent in the subjectivity of language. (What is social listening if it isn’t linguistic analysis?) But at every step along the way: rules that govern how data is collected, sample size and finally the analytics engine itself vary from platform to platform.

In the race to develop the best product we run the risk of undermining the value of the service if we don’t address the need for standards.

Image: Robert Egert, 1992, Pinocchio, 72″ x 72″, oil on canvas, collection of Mary Ziegler

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Published on January 16, 2012 4:12 am.
Filed under: Branding, Healthcare, Mobile, Technology

What the facebook literati are really saying about Google+

Well, this is an n of 8, but telling nonetheless

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Published on December 22, 2011 12:56 pm.
Filed under: Reviews, Technology

User Testing and Intuition

Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing Instructions, late twentieth Century.

As much as I believe in user testing I find it difficult to advocate for it.

In the last few years it seems like most of our projects are on a compressed schedule that doesn’t allow for formal testing. We compensate by designing variables (A/B testing) into the launch, randomly displaying two versions of the same interface to see which one performs better. The result most of the time: no significant difference. In a few occasions we’ve conducted eye-tracking studies with essentially the same result.

Most of us can quickly recognize a well-designed interface from a poor one, can recognize the established patterns and combine (and recombine) them to form complex systems. THe result is that doing ux produces predictably usable results. This is a result of patterns becoming ingrained not only in the practitioners of ux but also in our audience who are essentially internalizing behavioral interface patterns.

What’s the most fascinating thing to me is that some of the most popular websites still have poorly designed interfaces that are extremely difficult to use (amazon, ebay, google ex-search). And what this proves to me is that the role of familiarity often trumps good design.

Photo: Sol Lewitt wall drawing instructions, late twentieth century.

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Published on November 26, 2011 2:21 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: , , ,

Invention, Reinvention and the Wheel

Working with my team today on a new interface that uses a horizontal transition between pages. The entire site is designed using just HTML5 and JQuery so there’s no Flash to worry about.

It’s another example of how interaction design can largely abandon the concept of pages in favor of a more responsive interface. But how did we get here?

When I was first educating myself on software design, one of the first concepts that I cam across was the idea of control systems. This generally refers to hierarchical relationships between key parts of a logical system that govern which parts of the system give out orders and which parts respond to those orders.

This is what prevents a malicious website from taking control of your computer. It works because in the hierarchy, the operating system is above the browser, and in turn, the browser software is above the website. The OS can’t be controlled by the browser but the browser can be controlled through the OS. (You launch or quit and application via the OS, not the other way around.)

From an end-user perspective, these relationships are somewhat intuitive through common convention, however from a ux designer’s perspective these hierarchies are what delineate the possible from the impossible in design.

The recent history of interaction design can, in large part, be described as the blurring of these hierarchies.

The two key factors at work in this process are asynchronous web programming and app culture. The first eradicated the concept of the web as a series of pages in favor of a dynamic display that can be continually refreshed based on user actions (vs. hyperlinks), and the second changed the act of downloading and installing new software into a casual act from what was previously a considered purchase.

Illustration: Dominance hierarchy of a single population of elephant seal males during the mating season, from From Marianne Riedman, The Pinnipeds, page 206.

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Published on November 16, 2011 6:41 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, Truths, UX

Cloud Libraries

Damián Ortega's "Controller of the Universe," a 2007 sculpture in the Weapons section.

The pace of change in content distribution is even faster than Moore’s law and the pace will only increase as cloud-based distribution becomes the norm.

A quick look at the Spotify model for music distribution is a perfect example. One service with a flat, monthly fee provides unlimited access to the world’s music library across almost any device whether you are connected or not. The math is simple: if you purchase on average than one CD per month (or ten songs on iTunes), it pays to subscribe to Spotify. (I write this despite the noise around Spotify’s relationship with Facebook. I’m only referring to it as a model for cloud-based distribution, not the particulars of their sharing features.)

What’s more, there’s no reason to think that this model can’t be applied to other forms of publishing including, yes, books. Amazon knows this and is already pushing traditional publishing agents to the side in favor of direct contracting with authors. Where the nonsense comes in is with the proprietary platforms for e-readers. If you have a Kindle or  a Nook it is inconvenient or impossible to get access to all the books that you want to read. (As a Kindle reader, for example, I still need to purchase some books in their paper version since not all titles are available on the Kindle).

But we’ve seen historically that any proprietary system is vulnerable to an open source competitor. It is only a matter of time before an open source e-reader will provide a cloud-based library of virtually all titles. How this plays out financially for authors and book designers is a big question.

Book design. Yes, books do require design. Anyone who uses an e-reader knows that the typographical display, representation of images, photos, graphics and the general layout of books in an e-reader are generally of poor quality. We can assume this will improve but here are some challenges:

1. If books become a low-cost commodity, like songs, what will motivate designers of books to continue their craft? Book designers usually receive little or no personal credit for their work–just financial compensation.

2. Digital paper that is used in the Kindle and Nook are substantially different than the light-emitting displays found in tablets. Digital paper is easy to read in large part because it does not emit light. The downside of the technology is that it is very poor at displaying graphics. Light emitting displays found on tablets are wonderful at displaying photographs and graphics, therefore great for magazines, but I suspect that studies will show decreased use for long term reading due to the eye strain caused by the radiated light.

Photo: Damián Ortega’s “Controller of the Universe,” a 2007 sculpture in the Weapons section. P.S> 1, Queens, NY, 2008.

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Published on November 8, 2011 3:07 pm.
Filed under: Technology, UX

The Personal Brand, Schizophrenia and Channel Management

Pavel Tchelitchew Spiral Head--a great but little known artist of the twentieth century.

 

 

I used to think of myself as a person with a lot of interests but I never thought that would become a liability. Today the fact that I’m active in different areas has become difficult to manage–not only because time is limited (that’s always been the case) but because like a lot of people, many of my activities have migrated to the public realm.

Social media is a two-edged sword: on one hand it has enabled us to share our activities real time with anyone who cares (or cares to look into it), on the other hand, it inevitably leaves a trail behind us that can be found easily enough, researched and used in imaginable and unimaginable ways.

In effect each of us has become a personal brand, with our various profiles, pages and accounts. Some of us try to be fastidious about managing this: associating particular aspects of our life with discrete channels. For example, you can limit facebook activities to friends, linked in to business, blog for your own creative output, etc. etc.

Where this starts to fall apart for me is that the edges aren’t always so clean. (By way of full disclosure, I also get anxious before hosting a party around the idea that people from the different world that I inhabit will see each other and essentially rat me out for the chameleon that I am.)

So now I find myself spending an increasing amount of time considering who will see which post, how my various publishing platforms interconnect, and questioning who I really am. We can argue that these  categories are an artifact of the past; that we can reinvent ourselves from day-to-day, from moment-to-moment even. Perhaps so, but as the digital world has enabled a multitude of conversations and possibilities unthought of before, it has also burdened us with the knowledge that most everything we do or say in that giant network will leave its indelible mark and perhaps to haunt us in years to come.

Is it possible that individuals will need to own their own personalities as brands that need to be managed? It has been said, and it is my belief that nothing in the social sphere is natural–it is all socially learned. So there’s no reason to think that the next generation, schooled in Facebook etiquette from an early age will take to this naturally. And all that late twentieth century nonsense about the power of positive branding will perhaps finally pay off.

By the way, the painting above is by Pavel Tchelitchev, one of the great artists of the mid-twentieth century, little known today or in his day, but great nonetheless.

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Published on November 8, 2011 2:47 am.
Filed under: Branding, Technology, Truths

Using UI Patterns for Brands and Customers

Interior view of Hermés store showing the display of products for sale in a manner that does not invite comparison.

Most designers will agree that the most successful interface design solutions are intuitive for users while being elegantly simple.

Simple as it sounds, actually developing a design with these qualities can be challenging and elusive.

There are a number of good reasons for this:

  • The full range of functionality is not always included in the initial scope. As a result new features and functions get added-on later. This can bloat, break or simply confuse the interface.
  • Application design today is increasing a collaborative effort where project sponsors, end users and others participate in the design process. The result often betrays the fact there is no single vision for the interface.
  • Features that appeal or seem intuitive to some (but not all) make it into the final design and this can create mixed metaphors, obscure or inconsistent thinking.

While ux designers rarely can control the terms of the development process, (nor should they be) most of us would probably agree that the ux designer should take a leadership role to synthesize ideas around a coherent solution.

Using a Pattern-based Framework

To manage the design process effectively, designers need a solid conceptual framework. Without this, the design will be subject to unreasonable influence by individuals involved in the process who have a unique standpoint but can’t or aren’t willing to see the needs of the entire cohort of users.

• Using patterns allows ux designers to defend design decisions based on proven usability

• Used judiciously, patterns accelerate time to market and remove some risk

• Over-reliance on patterns, or patterns used in a cookie-cutter fashion can result in poor user experience

Why Patterns Work

Simply put, patterns work because they are in many ways the designers’ means to delivering an intuitive experience for end-users. Ultimately there is nothing intuitive about using computers other than the patterns of behaviors, expectations and visual appearances that have been established by previous experiences. By using well-established patterns, designers stand a better chance of “getting it right” than if they attempt to create a totally novel interaction design.

Balancing Innovation with Pattern Use

Developing innovative design paradigms is without doubt a critical component of the UX designer’s job. Without it there would be little opportunity for improvement over the current status quo. It can be argued that if we consistently stick to tried and true interface patterns design will become homogenous and boring—looking and behaving all alike.

By using patterns intelligently and critically it is possible to get the benefits of established patterns such as intuitive (which I would prefer to call habituated) use, ability to use or reuse existing functional components and a more speedy development process since the development team will be familiar with the functional patterns that are needed to support the UI. Slavish or thoughtless use of patterns will produce mediocre results. What makes pattern use valuable is the knowledge of when to use them and when not to.

Patterns and Customer Experience

Every pattern exists to solve a problem. Whether is to navigate a directory, conclude a purchase, register with a site or publish a comment, UI patterns build on the experiences that users have previously encountered completing similar tasks so that their ability to complete that task is consistent with their expectations. But a pattern is more than just a layout arrangement: Patterns exist as much in the end-users mind as in the display. No pattern can exist without end-user participants who have a cognitive memory of the pattern.

Breaking Patterns to Build a Unique Brand Experience

Consider for a minute what makes a particular brick and mortar experience unique and remarkable: Compare for example shopping at luxury clothing store vs. a local potter that makes handmade ceramics. Both stores offer unique products that can’t be easily obtained elsewhere and both have repeating patterns that we might refer to as:

• Enter the space

• Review/compare items for sale

• Get help selecting an item

• Purchase item[s]

• Comment on the experience

• Wrapping

• Leave the space

We’d all probably agree that the patterns repeat but we also know that the experience can be dramatically distinct. Part of the success of both of these sorts of businesses goes beyond the quality and choice of products but is also tied up in the customer experience.

Luxury brands must reinforce exclusivity and brand consistency. This is usually communicated in high design standards and perfect craftsmanship in the store facility and presentation of goods, excellent customer service with a high sales associate to customer ratio and attention to detail such as packaging, signage and physical appearance of personnel.

The local potter is arguably just as reliant on customer experience for business success but of a completely different type. Customers will probably expect to be greeted warmly and informally upon entry, perhaps by the potter herself. The wares might be displayed within easy reach on simple unadorned shelves. In keeping with the handcrafted spirit, the facility would likely have a handmade feel.

Breaking Patterns to Give a Unique Customer Experience

In the interactive versions of these businesses there are places where the common patterns can be leveraged “as is” and other places where they need to be modified or broken to conform to the unique customer experience that is consistent with the ideals of the particular business.

The luxury store might, for example, eliminate the pattern Compare Items because purchase of a luxury item is usually not driven by comparison or by cost and providing the functionality might actually undermine the brand.

By contrast, the potter’s store might focus product selection directly on cost since their customers would be purchasing gifts with a predetermined budget in mind.

Patterns Resolve Problems

Patterns success depends on how well it solves a problem. Pattern usage depends on how common the problem is encountered. It all comes down to understanding your audience and brands so you can apply patterns judiciously.

Identifying user tasks in the context of brand experience is a thoughtful task that should drive the identification of candidate patterns and the ultimate web of patterns that you employ in your design.

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Published on November 2, 2011 9:29 pm.
Filed under: Branding, Design, Technology, UX

Pattern Languages and Social Transmission

Pole Barn Construction

 

 

Christopher Alexander’s Timeless Way of Buildinglays a phenomenological foundation for pattern making in the real world that is easily adaptable to interactive patterns in the digital space.

Patterns, according to Alexander, are similar to good syntax: each pattern to be valid conforms to a specific set of rules, in a fluid but demonstrable way. One example that he unpacks is the patterns associated with a New England dairy barn. Why is it that each barn is immediately recognizable yet unique? This is explained by the fact that each builder (who are typically not formally trained as architects) reproduce patterns whose rules have been previously established and communicated socially and culturally. One pattern is the general relationship between the width and the length of the overall structure; another is the relationship of a cow stall with the posts that support the roof; yet another is the presence of a central aisle for hay storage and distribution.

Much building (whether architectural or digital) occurs without formal design or planning. This is increasingly true today under time-to-market pressures as well as the influence of contemporary development processes that can transfer the role of user experience design from the designer who has formal training to a group process that includes participants with diverse backgrounds and often no formal training in design. The same has been largely true in architecture as well: farmers, homeowners and other informal building has characterized much of architectural history.

Patterns don’t need to be formally documented because they’re internalized by the people who use the end product–the people who live in the structures that are created. Despite this there’s a lot of activity around formalizing pattern collections for UI designers, some of them quite nicely done. The challenge with a pattern collection is that patterns are tied to experience and experience is constantly evolving. Part of the interesting thing is how each instance that leverages patterns in architecture execute them just a bit differently in each instance. And here’s where architecture and interface design part company: Each building exists at a unique geographic site with unique traffic patterns, exposure to the sun and elements, topographic conditions, etc. Software by contrast is running a relatively small, discrete set of operating systems and devices.

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Published on October 27, 2011 8:38 pm.
Filed under: Design, Reviews, Technology, UX

Usability is a Contemporary Mythology

Milan Kunk: How we adapt to machines and compuers is anything BUT intuitive despite the a=obsession with the term usability

How we adapt to machines and computers is anything but intuitive despite our obsession with the term usability

Recently I have spent quite a bit of my personal time helping people look for jobs. Call it my contribution to the failing economy or just the fact that I hate to see single moms on the street. At any rate, as you might guess, my first point is to help friends negotiate professional networking sites and to generally make their profiles visible to the companies and recruiters that are seeking to hire people with their skills.

For those of us in information technology, advertising and other digitally aware industries, this is a no-brainer and generally understood. However it is not the case for many people who work in other fields such as education, healthcare delivery, and social services.

It is a constant source of surprise to me how many people have no clue how to use social networking sites to their professional advantage despite the fact that most of them are regular users of facebook. After spending time walking them through steps such as taking and uploading photographs, adding biographical and resume entries and creating keyword sets a single observation has emerged: It’s all about how you handle frustration.

We are all confronted with new interfaces that are challenging and disorienting. It is part of the process of UI evolution that new patterns and paradigms are introduced and before they can feel intuitive they must be learned.

There is nothing intuitive about interacting with a computer. It is all learned behavior. Systems can feel intuitive, but that’s because their conventions conform to a pattern that has been previously learned.

In fact, we are all learning and relearning how to interact with machines all the time. We are constantly updating our knowledge, expectations and sense of normalcy. Once a new pattern is introduced it must be learned before it can become internalized: similar to muscle memory that is experienced by a violinist who intuitively knows where to depress a string to get the right tonality.

What does vary is the way we adapt to new interactive patterns. Here are two examples of adoption and resistance to change:

• Blackberry user has adapted to using an input keyboard that is tactile and refuses to move to a touch screen interface because they have become accustomed to feeling the keys in their finger tips and cannot easily adapt to a visual-only feedback system inherent in the iphone and android model of text input

• Website user is accustomed to finding a particular function interface, such as a button in a particular place. If, as a result of redesign, the button is moved, they become agitated and frustrated when they need to interrupt their task to find the new pattern

These examples point out two distinct classes of user resistance: The first is based on an established pattern of feedback (in this instance it is physical but it could just as easily be visual or audio). And, even though I am no fan or Blackberries, it is completely understandable.

The second example is more interesting. It is about a tolerance for interruption and constant adaptation to new behavioral patterns (vs. physical feedback).

What I am positing here is that how a user responds to the interruption of a task is a good predictor of how well they will be able to adapt to new technology. A user that is able to pause and switch focus from the task they are trying to accomplish to the means by which that task is attained and then back to the task itself will be able to learn the new UI pattern. Other users find the interruption to be intolerable will find it frustrating and may interpret the challenge of having to change focus as a direct threat to their goals.

What this points to is the fact that all of us are constantly adapting to technology. As my tag line says, technology changes what it means to be human. Our reactions, interpretation and behaviors are formed in large part by our expectations of what results from our actions.

I think it fair to say that nothing on a screen is truly intuitive. Particular designs just seem that way because they incorporate patterns that we are accustomed to.

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Published on October 13, 2011 9:04 am.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX

Healthcare or Products? We Shouldn’t Have to Choose

A prototype of a wearable sensor to detect symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease

The history of post-internet technology is littered with the corpses of companies that focused on selling products. With very few exception, the winners have been the owners and distributors of content and the innovators who overturned traditional means of distribution. If anything is accelerating, it is the speed at which once robust models collapse. Yesterday it was music publishers and desktop software, today its pay per text messaging and tomorrow it will likely be smart phones themselves.

Somehow while all this innovation and disruption has overturned our economy, the pharmaceutical companies are still operating in world where profits are directly tied to product sales. And what makes pharma even more vulnerable is that many paying customers have absolutely no relationship with the product they’re using. (Because of the way they are distributed many don’t even know what it is that they are taking.) While the second issue is a function of the regulated environment in which drugs are distributed, the former is an organizational attachment to a system that cannot persist indefinitely.

Marketers do their best to establish brands in the patient’s mind and have been very successful with products that treat large numbers of people but is this really viable with small population products? In the rare disease space it is much more likely that patients will have a higher level of knowledge about their disease–for rare diseases it is essential for them to become informed in order to pursue diagnosis. But does this knowledge translate to brand loyalty?

We need to start thinking about integrating drugs into larger systems of health support. The opportunity for us in the industry to think more broadly about how drugs fit into health systems. This includes social networks, financial support, education and employment. Disease impacts the total person and the whole of society. How can drug manufacturers and distributors envision their organizations embedding their products in these systems from conception and not just as a marketing function?

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Published on October 11, 2011 3:45 am.
Filed under: Healthcare, Technology Tags: ,

Hootsuite Impressions

Hootsuite interface elegantly combines OS conventions with that of web-based browser UI to resul tina new, transitionary state.

I just started using Hootsuite as an indivdual user. It does an impressive job of providing an extensible platform to aggregate social network activity across channels for individuals and presumably for smaller more agile marketing and PR organizations. The web-based ui design is among the newer crop that straddles browser-based aesthetics with client app standards. (If this sounds like jibberish, just think of Panic Software’s application Coda, which, like Hootsuite mixes user interface conventions from both operating systems and browsers. The result is a new transitionary state that, like mobile apps, mixes web and application standards to produce a result that feels as responsive as a resident app while pulling data from the cloud in real time.

OK now the downside. The application is still way beta with bugs galore. This is excusable except for the security issues it brings up and the fact that it is extremely powerful in terms of its ability to ramify your message footprint. One false move (intentional or no can wreck havoc).

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Published on October 6, 2011 8:19 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Reviews, Technology, UX Tags: , ,

Why Not Balsamic (Not a Question)

Balsamic is a cool applicaiton but that doesn't stop me from hating it for all the standardization it imposes on the UI design process. Plus the fact that people who have no imagination or understanding of UI design can create acceptable UI designs that often do more harm than good to the process.

Turn back the hands of time, way back to the early days of the dot com boom. Web design in those days was devoid of templates real and imaginary. End users had no expectations and web interfaces ran the gamut from the audacious to the beautiful to the idiotic. Any new project was a chance to establish a new paradigm. And all bets were off.

Keep in mind that in the early days, web browsers were advancing and leap-frogging each other with a rapidity that made any design essentially obsolete within six months to a year. And even if it didn’t become obsolete, innovative new UI features, such as mouse-over effects, expanding menus, etc. were strong motivations for web sponsors to invest in redesign efforts.

I still remember vividly the ABC News site of the late nineties that featured the navigation on the right side of the browser. Eureka! More people are right handed, therefore this is a more convenient design. (They’d designed it to remain in sight regardless of the size of the browser window.) I was busy sharing the interface with my clients and team-members until one day soon after its release they flopped it back the left side, just like every other website.

It was a milestone day, like the day your favorite corner store closed and was replaced by gap or a starbucks. The day that conformity kicked in and a reign of standardization began.

Which leads me to my complaint about applications like Balsamic (For those of you who aren’t familiar, Balsamic is a template-based tool that allows people with no discernible visual skill to create UI mock-ups by arranging pre-made elements such as buttons, navigation tabs, form elements, etc.)

Balsamic has, depending on your point of view, opened up UI design to anyone with an interest, empowered sponsors to get hands on in the UI development process, or rendered the skilled UI/UX designers’ role irrelevant.

Perhaps it does all three of these things. But from my perspective, the larger issue is that it reinforces a standardized approach to UI design that will stifle UI innovation and further limit the kinds of interactions that we can invent or imagine.

Creativity is an essential component of innovation. And in order to remain relevant, designers must prove their worth by demonstrating true innovation, elegance and usability in the interfaces they envision.

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Published on October 1, 2011 12:43 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX

Bifurcate Me (again)

Rats in the works, here pictured, the front end developers and creative staff working like the Dickens to complete twice the work as befoer in the same amount of time! Technology is supposed to make things easier for us--not more difficult and time-consuming, right? But expanding coverage to mobile, tablet and for God's sake now the Kindle Fire is going to make the creative and user experience teams jump into a lake. That is, of course, if they aren't put out to pasture by lesser-paid equals in other continents.

Disappointed once again by the false promise of responsive design, CSS and syntactic design.

Our current project is nothing but a content-driven website–not an app or form-driven experience. So I wonder, why is it so difficult to create a mobile instance? Why is it that we need to create an entirely separate instance of the site? My goal was to implement the site using responsive design best practices; using device detection in combination with separate style sheets. But alas nothing is really quite so simple.

The developer team tells me that the time required to make a single set of files display correctly across devices will be so much greater than just creating a second set optimized for mobile.

But I know that doesn’t take into account the time and coordination required to maintain two separate sites down the road: when there’s a copy change, a new graphical revision, personnel changes, press releases, etc. Every one of them is going to require that each change be made twice and then edited and proofed. Everything times two. There’s got to be a better way.

I’m told the reason has to do with the fact that our site integrates JQuery and that means that once we start implementing across devices it’s going to get very buggy. I believe that too. But I just wonder, when’s the efficiency on cross-platform compatibility going to kick in on this?

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Published on September 29, 2011 1:55 am.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX Tags: , , , , , ,

Code and Fix My Waterfall

Today I gave an informal talk on development process models. I started by explaining and contrasting waterfall method in contrast to the code and fix approach. Most of the people in the room had never heard of either of these terms which was surprising considering that they are either in project management roles or part of an interactive creative team.

What became apparent through the discussion was how we use a defacto code and fix approach for all of our internal projects and a pretty sequential waterfall for all our client work.

The real question is, how much of this has to do with formal reviews and how could that change?

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Published on September 16, 2011 5:26 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Complexity and Interaction Design

Ease of use often has as much to do with how familiar users are with the interface pattern that’s being used as with the overall simplicity.

For example, one of the most poorly designed interfaces I use is the parking meter machines in New York. The machine is incomprehensible the first couple of times you use it. There’s too much information, the steps are numbered but they are presented out of sequence so they are very difficult to follow. However, now that they’ve been in market for a while, people are used to them and if you were to change it up–even to make it simpler to use– you’d probably trip people up because of their familiarity.

Same is true of screen-based interactions. Take Amazon or Ebay, two of the worst offenders. Of course they could improve the interaction for check out but their user base is large enough and familiar enough to grandfather the poor design.

Also as Einstein famously said, there’s such a thing as getting “too simple.” iOS has a number of areas where simplicity has trumped clarity. The result is that users have to poke around looking for how to turn off wireless, turn on location services, or switch random play off.

Our job is to present things as simply and as clearly as possible, but not at the expense of functionality. Looking simple isn’t the same thing as being simple.

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Published on September 8, 2011 6:14 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: , , , , ,

UX: Are You a Pattern-maker?

what it means to be agile? what the agile method feels liek? muddy, dirty, roll up your sleeves and forget about best practices. we used to call it code and fix. agile is very similar.

Is UX design still a skill that requires specialized knowledge or has it become a popular craft that practically anyone can engage in? If it is still a skill, has it become numbingly unoriginal–just the assemblage of patterns from a catalog?

  • Pattern-based thinking has become a standard approach resulting in more sameness in UI design. Familiarity has trumped innovation and simplicity (what users already know is easier for them to adopt)
  • Mobile has spurred an increased integration of OS elements, functions and patterns into design. This is radically different from browser-based application development that was much more of a one-off
  • New template-based software like Balsamic enables team-members with no training to develop pretty clear-looking wireframes in half the time that it takes using Omnigraffle or Illustrator
  • The vulgarized version of Agile method means that everyone is involved in the UX design process, regardless of their expertise. This is not necessarily bad, but can result in irrational design decisions

What this means for the UX design profession will be the subject of my next installment.

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Published on September 6, 2011 10:22 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: , , , , , , ,