Ever caught yourself watching the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica shouting “What the frak?!”. What about the shock when the two characters flirting all season finally get together in Grey’s? Now there’s a to share these emotions with your social network instead of just your television. And it uses Twitter.

Enter Yell at the TV (@theTV). Not your typical social site, Yell @theTV supports spontaneous bursts and exclamations concerning your favorite show. No fancy subscriptions, hardware, or technical support needed, @theTV uses our neighborhood Twitter service to capture your shouts. For those of you without a Twitter account, you can still follow the exploits of tv viewers, though I highly suggest you sign up and join the conversation.

The method is simple, tweet starts with @theTV, #tv show name, and then your shout.

It is no mistake the developer launched this application minutes before this season’s premiere of LOST. An interesting view of what people are watching, the developer has made it clear he plans to provide options to vote for popular shows, sort by episode or show title, and add more features. Even without these added features, the application proves to be a great way to see who else is watching your shows and if anyone else is angry at the show jumping the shark.

In its limited scope, @theTV offers a unique social interaction. Where Facebook and instant messenger limit us to semi-synchronous communication with people we are at least familiar with, @theTV allows us to share interests with complete strangers from the safety of our home. It’s odd at first but something I have fully embraced. Looking beyond the rants of telivision viewers, I can see Yell@thetv expanding to corporate blogs, political campaigns and more. CNN asked its viewers to send in pictures of President Obama’s innaguration to make a photo collage of the moment. Now imagine being able to tweet @innaguration for the same, if not more personal piece of history. If corporations had such a feed, then individuals could tweet: @Apple, when will the iPhone battery last longer. Not only will this offer an interesting point of view for the company but it allows the consumer to vent, review other thoughts, and network. Just think about how many people you follow on Twitter based on your friends networks and how much it could grow from social interactions such as these.

In its early stages @theTV has gained a small but true following. Scale is everything and as the community grows, it will be interesting to see how the site expands to match different genres, shouts, and so on. Similarly, it will be interesting to see what else the developer does with this concept and how others take this idea and expand on it.

Beautiful Evidence is Edward R. Tufte’s fourth book on visual evidence. His earlier books about this topic where ‘Visual Explanations’, ‘Envisioning Information’ and the highly praised ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information’. Beautiful Evidence deals with analytical design and is a collection of critically analyzed (and very beautiful) images, principles and pitfalls which apply to everything from MS Powerpoint to sculptures.

Analyzing different visualization methods

The first four chapters respectively deal with mapped pictures, sparklines, links & causal arrows and words, numbers, images together. By critically analyzing beautiful images Tufte succeeds in explaining which characteristics make these methods work for a certain goal. Also for each method some principles are presented at the end of the chapter.

A great example of this is the analyses of Alfred Barr’s book cover / table of contents / history map for the Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition in 1936, pictured here below on the left (on the right is Tufte’s stripped down version which he uses to explain the role the arrows play within this visualization).

Art-styles and a few artist are mapped on a grid of time whereas the color indicates if it was an internal (black) or neighboring (red) influence on Cubism and abstract art. The size of the nouns tells something about the historic relevance. The arrows represent causal paths (which only go in one direction). What it does so well, is focussing on causality and combining multiple sources and levels of data (which happen to be 2 of the principles mentioned in the next paragraph).

Although the causal paths in the art chart are complex, the idea of causality is simplistic.

Principles and pitfalls

After one hundred twenty-one pages of critically analyzing images, Tufte comes with a number of (fundamental) principles for analytical design which are derived from the principles of analytical thinking. He emphasizes that these principles apply broadly and are indifferent to language or culture or century or the technology of information display:

1. Show comparisons, contrasts, differences.
2. Show causality, mechanism, explanation, systematic structure.
3. Show multivariate data; that is, show more than 1 or 2 variables.
4. Completely integrate evidence; words, numbers, images, diagrams.
5. Thoroughly describe the evidence. Provide a detailed title, indicate the authors and sponsors, document data sources, show complete measurement scales, point out relevant issues.
6. Analytical presentations ultimately stand or fall depending on the quality, relevance, and integrity of their content.

He continues with some pitfalls which need to be avoided in order to apply these principles right. Important is that both cause and effect are shown because that’s how we can determine what happened, by comparing before and after. The most common pitfall is that people start ‘cherry-picking’ (making a selection of the content which only advances their point of view). Furthermore one should be careful that the conclusions drawn from the data aren’t overreaching and that meaningless content doesn’t replace the real evidence.

Microsoft Powerpoint and sculptural pedestals..?

Up till now, the structure of the book made perfect sense. From critically analyzing the most amazing images (from Galileo and Da Vinci to medical monitors) and coming up with principles and pitfalls, Tufte suddenly devotes an entire chapter to a full frontal attack on MS powerpoint in which he boldly states:

The PP slide format has the worst signal/noise ratio of any know method of communication on paper or computer screen.

The sudden change of topic might be strange, but the arguments he provides for his statements are solid. In twenty-eight pages he explains how powerpoint’s workflow forces people to create bad presentations. From the emphasis on bullet structures to providing the wrong layout for data visualizations. He thoroughly explains why powerpoint is contradicting with his principles. He even conducted comparisons of various presentation-tools using ten case-studies in which powerpoint was outperformed by all alternatives. In order to make better presentations we should use ‘good teaching’ as a metaphor in which explanation, reasoning, finding things out, questioning, content, evidence, credible authority not patronizing authoritarianism are the core ideas.

In the last two (short) chapters another rather strange switch of topic is made. These chapters briefly explain how pedestals influence the sculpture they carry, but they mostly consists out of photographs of sculptures (of which half are made by Tufte).

Conclusion

Beautiful Evidence is a typical ‘Tufte-book’, which means that it’s full with beautiful images and photographs, mostly from greats like Galileo, Da Vinci and Newton, which he critically analyzed. To me they’re all very inspirational and often work as eye-openers. They tell a lot about how people interact with and perceive visual information. Furthermore the book is full of principles and pitfalls which I’ve already written on a separate piece of paper to keep in mind for when I have to design analytical visualizations again. All very useful content.

The strange switches of topic make the book feel more or less like a collection of information then a solid coherent read. To me it feels like it does take away some of the strength of the book, however this doesn’t make me like the book any less. The chapter about powerpoint, though unexpected, was an eye-opener and also a very entertaining  read.

However, there are some topics in Beautiful Evidence which Tufte has already discussed in his earlier books, which sometimes results in somewhat of a deja vu when reading it. But there’s enough new content to keep me satisfied. I really like it and I would buy the book even if it was just for the critically analyzed images. A incredibly inspirational read.

Book details
Beautiful Evidence
author: Edward R. Tufte
published: Graphics Press, 2006
details: 213 pages, hardcover

Quite often I think about what it would be like if I had any kind of disability. A long time ago, I saw a drama in which a poor girl loses her ability to hear and speak. In the last episode, she also becomes vision-impaired. Even now the memory sometimes reminds me of the challenging situation she was put into. It triggered me enough to try and come up with some helpful tools or gadgets.

I’m not sure if these ideas could be realized.. But if it’s possible I’m sure it will be a big help for the physically challenged.

Gadget 1: The sign language interpreter

Meet the sign language interpreter. A small pendant-like gadget that enables a vocally-challenged person to speak. The camera captures the motion image of the speaker’s hand gesture. It translates it into an oral language and gives out the translated words.

You can pre-choose what kind of voice you’d like it to speak in.

It’s easy to turn it on: just click the bottom part when you want to use the interpreter. It will open up the speaker. The wider the speaker opens, the louder the volume. This volume control will probably be used very often, since you don’t want it to speak loud in a quiet space. So I thought it must be as easy and intuitive as possible. To turn it off, click it back and shut.

(The camera is capturing the image)

Gadget 2: Live cartoonversation interpreter

This gadget is to help the hearing-impaired follow conversations.

Speech balloons in comic books show very well how the characters speak. So if there was a way to see instantly visualized images of how people speak, wouldn’t it be nice for the hearing-impaired? It means they can SEE our voices.

With the particular characteristics of the speech balloons you see in comic books, you can see and feel how the words are being spoken.

Some time ago I was thinking about an essay Michel Foucault once wrote about two competing concepts of the Self in major world religions. In this essay he compared two views of the Self: the Self that is discovered and known through some kind of religious quest and search. And the Self that is created, invented, through free will, action, choice (and so on). What if we would apply his view on today’s social media?
It’s been so long that I don’t now recall which essay it was. Foucault is known for theoretical “archaeology” of western thought. And for his work on the birth of the “Subject” (read: individual). As in, when did the subject, the sovereign person, emerge in thought and culture? And more specifically, when did the Subject become the locus of truth? (He read this through the inquisition, the practice of confessions, and so on).

It occurred to me that a similar bifurcation exists in social media. We have a lot of discovery engines and techniques. Techniques once used to find related documents and data, but now often used to find compatible or similar people. This is an approach that ascribes attributes and qualities to the identity (person, user). They might be interests, demographic data, age, gender, location, even social graph/friend relations. It’s an approach used ultimately to help us find people we might like. Based on the idea that when two things are alike, their shared likeness might lead to further relationships.

But there’s an interesting flaw in the logic. That two things are alike might be liked by one person is fine. But that the two people who like those things might like each other, makes a leap of faith. It rests on the idea that the relationship between two things can be extended to the two people who relate to those things in like ways. We don’t know that this is an extensible logic or idea. Do similar people automatically like each other? Really? If so, aren’t the similarities that would make us compatible, make us friends and friendly, just as likely to be something other than what interests us — our style or personality?

I’m reminded of the logic of dating sites — that a match is a basis for meeting. Anyone who’s tried online dating knows that the first meeting is where chemistry either seals the affair, or dissolves the whole run up into an awkward and disappointing mess.

The logic of long tail can work on objects and things because they are stable. Attributes used to describe them are values that can be shared. They belong to each thing (a movie is documentary) because the two things each share that attribute. The more attributes in common, the more alike they are (these movies are documentaries about penguins).

But is the approach extensible? Do we like each other because we share attributes?

There’s another approach taken in social media – the social graph. This version uses Granovetter’s weak link theory and suggests that the friend of a friend is the most important relationship – because it can introduce us to people who are not one, but two or thee degrees away. We get access to people who aren’t our friends but are closely linked. It’s assumed that trust is extensible from the first degree (I trust you) to the second (I trust someone you know). Not the most convincing idea, but good enough to make friend recommendations.

But in each case, we have only a system of things and attributes.

Human relationships aren’t build on similarity or identity of attributes. They’re a result of interaction, of understanding, of the things we do that move us and by which we move one another.

Our industry needs a richer understanding of the creative acts and the productive aspects of social media use. Of what is required, and what happens, when a connection becomes meaningful to the people connected through what they do, not have in common, with each other. We need to think more about drama. about stories, about conversations and pastimes. About the things and people we anticipate, expect, and wait for. About what time is like, and times are like, online — short and long times, ongoing times, choppy and interrupted times, rhythmic times and times that are over. About how all the dynamics of interaction are transformed but somehow retained and adapted to the way things work online.

Yes, discovery can be produced by searching among common attributes. But the really productive stuff comes out of social practices. Social media may be a means of production. But we are still the production of means.

Siftables are small devices which have a graphical display, a number of sensors and wireless communication capabilities. They are small tangible user interfaces which can function individually or in a group, and can be manipulated to interact with digital information and media.

Siftables is a project from David Merrill, a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Fluid Interfaces group at the MIT Media lab, and Jeevan Kalanithi, a designer and technologist from Taco Lab. For the design of Siftables they were inspired by how humans use both hands and all fingers efficiently when manipulating large quantities of small objects. This is a capability which isn’t utilized in today’s human computer interaction. Siftables however does make use of it, and it does it in an extraordinary manner.

Here is a video in which Siftables are demonstrated:

David Merrill’s presentation at TED about Siftables is also definitely worth watching.

Siftables totally makes use of the five themes for interaction design described in the research paper from the Standford Univeristy HCI Research group which we wrote a post about in december. It’s exciting to see how these human capabilities are finding it’s way into human-computer interaction. Are we going to find this in our living-rooms 15 years from now?

Analysis is that oft-glossed over, but extremely important step in the research process that sits between observation (data gathering) and our design insights or recommendations. In many respects, analysis is crucial to realizing the value of our research since good analysis can salvage something from bad research, but the converse is not so true. This is where the literature tends to fall a little silent, jumping over the analysis techniques straight to a discussion of how best to document and communicate the findings from analysis. This article seeks to begin to redress that imbalance by breaking down the analysis black box into its major sub-techniques.

On a recent project I needed to collect and analyze the content management templates in use across a large enterprise Intranet. We were looking to inventory the diversity of templates in use; whether they existed outside or within the enterprise content management system; what changes might be made to the ‘official’ template set to reduce the overall number of templates, and to prepare for the migration of all content to a new design a few months down the track. I looked around at the literature for information architecture and Web design generally and found quite a few references to content inventories and content analysis, but nothing on analyzing templates.

I set about designing the analysis task from scratch: looking at what we wanted to get out of the analysis; and looking at what tools and techniques would most effectively allow us to get there. In so doing, it struck me that there is very little information published about the process of analysis that would equip practitioners with a toolkit to construct their own analytical techniques. So User Experience literature and all of its component domains focuses on techniques for user research and testing, it’s surprising to realize that the coverage often skips over the process of analysis, since this is where much of the value of our research is realized.

Techniques of Analysis

We can start to pull back the curtain on analysis by looking at the techniques that go into the process:

• Deconstruction: breaking observations down into component pieces. This is the classical definition of analysis.
• Manipulation: re-sorting, rearranging and otherwise moving your research data, without fundamentally changing it. This is used both as a preparatory technique – i.e. as a precursor to some other activity – or as a means of exploring the data as an analytic tool in its own right.
• Transformation: Processing the data to arrive at some new representation of the observations. Unlike manipulation, transformation has the effect of changing the data.
• Summarization: collating similar observations together and treating them collectively. This is a standard technique in many quantitative analysis methods.
• Aggregation: closely related to summarization, this technique draws together data from multiple sources. Such collections typically represent a “higher-level” view made up from the underlying individual data sets. Aggregate data is used frequently in quantitative analysis.
• Generalization: taking specific data from our observations and creating general statements or rules.
• Abstraction: the process of stripping out the particulars – information that relates to a specific example – so that more general characteristics come to the fore.
• Synthesis: The process of drawing together concepts, ideas, objects and other qualitative data in new configurations, or to create something entirely new.

Let’s take a look at each of these techniques in detail and discuss some of the ways in which each technique can be applied.

Deconstruction

Breaking observations down into component pieces. This is the classical definition of analysis.

Breaking down research data into its component parts is a standard technique for analysis. One example of deconstruction is turning an interview transcript into a series of separate comments or answers to questions. Deconstruction is often used simply to prepare data for other analytic processes such as manipulation or summarization, or even abstraction.

The aim of deconstruction is to decouple each component so as to allow inspection of each in its own right. In other disciplines this process is used as a device for critical thinking, bypassing the potentially misleading image conveyed by the whole. In so doing deconstruction can be a powerful tool for exposing unquestioned assumptions about our users’ mental models or the business priorities of the client organization.

Looking at our template analysis example, one of our first analysis tasks was to deconstruct the templates into their components. Like most of the technique we took a very low-tech approach to the task, blocking out the individual components with a pencil. In our case, the deconstruction made easier a lot of the subsequent analysis work.It was a minor, but significant, step in the overall process.

Manipulation

Re-sorting, rearranging and otherwise moving your research data, without fundamentally changing it. This is used both as a preparatory technique or as a means of exploring the data as an analytic tool in its own right.

The ability to “play with the data” is a critical capability in analysis. We utilize this technique in many situations: searching for patterns or trends in our observations; or as another preparatory stage for further analysis. For example, sorting data in some way – alphabetic, chronological, complexity or numerical – is an a form of manipulation.

The ability to easily manipulate data is one of the key determinants for the tools we use in our analysis work. Spreadsheets are an excellent tool for manipulating data; but as we see in our template analysis task, the use of a more tangible form – such as our index cards – can be just as effective: if not more so in some cases.

When data recorded in a format that resists fluid manipulation and exploration people can stumble when moving from observation & data collection into analysis. It is important to plan this task into the research design so that it is not overlooked. You could find yourself with a costly and time-consuming data-entry process  if it is forgotten in the planning stages.

Transformation

Processing the data to arrive at some new representation of the observations. Unlike manipulation, transformation has the effect of changing the data.

Transforming research data is the process of taking our research data and turning it into something else. For example, you may recall from your schooling days the practice of “scaling” results from an assessment task (exam, essay etc) so they fit a certain distribution, so you end up with (for example) 10% A, 15% B, 25% C, 25% D etc

Another example might be to convert raw data into a logarithmic form to reduce the impact of extreme values – or to demonstrate power laws in the data.

Summarization

Collating similar observations together and treating them collectively. This is a standard technique in many quantitative analysis methods.

The goal of summarizing data is to generate an additional set of data, typically more succinct, that encapsulates the raw data in some way. This may be a short sentence that captures the essential point from several minutes of an interview transcript: “participant finds site search unwieldy, confusing and difficult to use”.

We can also summarize the data quantitatively using summary or descriptive statistics such as frequencies, means, and standard deviations. Unlike the process of abstraction, where specificity is sacrificed for the sake of clarity; or aggregation, where several data sets are “rolled up”; summarization seeks to characterize the underlying data.

Once again, spreadsheets are a very useful tool, especially when dealing with quantitative data. But they can be similarly useful when handling other data types. An equally useful medium for capturing summaries (once you have them) – particularly of qualitative data – is the PostIt or sticky note. This medium is also highly suited to manipulation and exploration of the resulting data. One advantage sticky notes have over a spreadsheet is that you can arrange and re-arrange them in two dimensions, so you can further manipulate and explore the summaries.

Index cards share many of the same advantages as sticky notes. They can be an excellent tool for capturing and working with summaries. They have the added advantage of being relatively robust and can therefore sustain a greater degree of handling.

Aggregation

Closely related to summarization, this technique draws together data from multiple sources. Such collections typically represent a “higher-level” view made up from the underlying individual data sets. Aggregate data is used frequently in quantitative analysis.

As discussed previously, aggregation is similar to, but distinct from summarization. In one respect aggregation is simply the process of bringing together data from a variety of sources and adding it together. In an analytic context it also carries with it the connotation of combining those sources together into something new.

A good example to highlight aggregation in action is the creation of a (fictional) customer satisfaction index (CSI). Our CSI will use data from:

• An annual customer survey;
• The number of product returns received; and
• The ratio of new to repeat customers.

We combine data from each of these sources and arrive at some single figure – based on some form of calculation (we’ll save the ‘how’ of that for another time). That single figure – which we can track year-to-year – is our aggregate. Unlike a summary, which characterizes a single piece of data, you can see that our aggregate is a composite value.

Generalization

Taking specific data from our observations and creating general statements or rules.

Taking the results of some specific research task and drawing general inferences about the broader population is one of the most common, but perhaps the least understood analytical technique. Generalization draws a great deal of its strength from the discipline of statistics, and the particular techniques of statistical inference.

In many respects generalization is similar to abstraction in that it reflects a move from the specific to the general or essential. It is a way of describing the common characteristics of the objects reflected in the data.

An example of generalization might be: “security is important to our users” based on an analysis of user interviews.

Abstraction

The process of stripping out the particulars – information that relates to a specific example – so that more general characteristics come to the fore.

The process of abstraction involves the progressive removal of specific data retaining just the essential information needed to communicate particular characteristics of an object. For example, “professional” is a more abstract form of “Doctor” or “Lawyer”; “graphic” is a more abstract form for “photograph”, “logo”, “illustration” or “chart”.

A wireframe is an abstract representation of a page design; the template thumbnails on our index cards are an abstract representation of the templates.

Abstract representations can be very useful because they remove a lot of visual noise from the analysis process. What we’re left with is a “high-level” depiction devoid of specific detail; highlight focused on just those elements which are relevant to the discussion.

Synthesis

The process of drawing together concepts, ideas, objects and other qualitative data in new configurations, or to create something entirely new.

Combining multiple elements together to create a new, complex ‘thing’ is what the technique of synthesis is all about. Similar in some respects to aggregation, synthesis typically deals with non-numeric data.

Synthesis is often undertaken towards the end of an analytic process as the reverse of deconstruction. So where we might begin by breaking down data into its component parts and examining them; we often end by recombining those components in new ways. Note, however, that synthesis can also form part of an exploration and is one of the fundamental tools of the trade for UX strategy work.

If deconstruction allows us to critically examine assumptions by isolating individual components, synthesis allows us to explore new configurations for the whole.

But what about…

In discussing this article with other people we identified three other techniques that we either weren’t sure belonged as analytic techniques, or we couldn’t decide if they were already covered by the techniques discussed above. We believe they’re all very important to the analysis process. They are:

• Reflection: thinking, pondering, contemplating. To the outside observer it looks a lot like staring into space, but your mind is going over and over and over all the detail of your observations, data, diagrams, and other research materials. It’s the part you can’t put a time limit on, and can make or break your subsequent work. You might call it “soaking it all in”, or “immersing myself in the data”. This technique is incredibly valuable to me in my own work and I’m not sure I’d be as effective if I didn’t include it.
• Visualization: this technique is about giving the data a visual dimension. Instead of lists of items, or rows of numbers in a spreadsheet, a chart or graph or some form of illustration. A good visualization can help expose patterns or gaps much more clearly than the raw data.
• ‘Number-crunching’: this feels like it needs to be drawn out as a separate activity from data manipulation, transformation, or summarization, but I also recognise that this level of distinction may just be peculiar to me. This refers to all of the heavy-duty quantitative analysis work like clustering analysis, or regression, calculating correlation co-efficients and the like.

Conclusion

Working with research data and observations is often treated as a black box in design literature. Designers find themselves faced with the daunting task of analysing research data, but lack clear approaches to that task. Understanding the major techniques used in analysis work can remove some of the uncertainty and provide a clear way in to the work.

There still exists a very large gap in the literature on analysis and analytic techniques, but I hope that this discussion of the major components of analysis will go some way towards filling that void. The next time you’re undertaking some analysis work, try and identify these major techniques, and see if there are any others we can add to the list.

I’d like to say a very big thank you to the people who helped clarify and refine both my thinking on this topic, and the expression of that thinking in this article: Will Evans, Livia Labate, Donna Spencer and Daniel Szuc; Christian Crumlish, Michael Leis and Kaleem Khan.

Graphics by Jeroen van Geel (and he’s pretty proud of them .

Initially we only had a keyboard for the command line and text entry. Then the mouse appeared for navigating two dimensional plains of UI. Now the field of computing has a new input toy to play with; our hands. Touch, multi-touch and gestural computing, also known as Natural User Interface (NUI) has become the newest input craze. Excitement around this has even spurred comments predicting the demise of the mouse in the next 3-5 years1. Computer designers (and engineers) have become engrossed with the ability to touch the screen with multiple fingers and control software by waving their arms. However in this excitement, have designers overlooked how to properly engage users and use multi touch to create useful, innovative, and interesting experiences? Perhaps touch and gesture are simply the new shiny objects in the room, soon to be discarded for the next new thing. In my next few articles for Johnny Holland Magazine I’ll look at some of the details of touch and gesture computing and what I’ve learned as a practitioner in the field.

Before I dig in, I want to plug Designing Gestural Interfaces, by Dan Saffer. The book is a great starting guide and reference for anyone looking to get engaged in this field. I’d suggest grabbing a copy if you’re new to the ranks of touch and gesture design.

Touch is but one slice of the pie

Let’s start the journey here. As a designer on Microsoft Surface, we’re uncovering and discovering things as we go. In my work I’ve come to learn quickly that touch, gesture, and NUI are not right for everything. As obvious as this sounds, it’s often overlooked. They should be considered part of an input ecosystem. Each type of input below has unique attributes that make it good for certain types of interactions between users and systems. This is not a comprehensive list, but here are some of the most common input and interaction methods.
•      Keyboard
•      Mouse
•      Stylus
•      Voice
•      Single Point Touch
•      Multi point touch
•      Gesture

Each of these methods have pros or cons associated with them. Text input is a perfect example of a task that touch is rather inadequate for. There is no haptic feedback upon pressing the keys, and there isn’t tactile feedback to touch type. Touch also falls short in applications that require precision, such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office Excel. A mouse would be able to cover ground quicker across the screen and not make the user reach back and forth, as well as more precise in its actions. However when people begin their design of touch, they forget all this, and seemingly everything else.

When not done properly, touch and gesture can appear as a step backwards..

A belief I’ve heard is touch can be so compelling, people will forget the inadequacies, when in reality, it only serves to shine a light on the downfalls of touch. When not done properly, touch and gesture can appear as a step backwards. The (design) problem takes a back seat to the “innovation” of touch. My advice for any designer approached by a client in need of a touch system (holding pictures of Tom Cruise in Minority Report) is make sure to evaluate the problem first. Make sure the interaction fits the needs. Again, the key point is to consider touch as part of an input eco-system, and not view it always as the sole method of device interaction. Not all input methods are equal.

This early thinking has led me to squarely declare that tap is not the new click, which is something I’ve heard thrown around, and anyone who believes so lacks an understanding and respect for how to approach different problems and searching for the best method of interaction between a user and a system.

Systematic approach of gesture integration

Most systems utilizing touch are purely touch based with no addition methods of interaction. This leads to touch being sequestered from other interactions, thus making it more of a user burden to learn. When a new behavior is introduced into a working knowledge system, it can be easier to absorb. In their recent laptops, Apple has taken an approach of incorporating touch into their behavior and input systems by using the track pad. In doing so they have managed to introduce and teach people touch and gesture behaviors in a method users already accept (the track pad). In addition, they are beginning to train people to move between input modes, from track pad mouse, to gesture, to keyboard, depending on the task. These types of associations allow for a better learning and input experience. On the flip side, the gesture actions are secondary to the main system, so they can be ignored fairly easily. It will be interesting to see if this makes gesture and touch easier to adopt, or if people will disregard it.

Top image by pinksherbet

Have you ever wished you wouldn’t have to waste time waiting for a train, bus or taxi to arrive? Every morning on my way to work I wonder if there were a way to solve this problem. I’m not going to wait anymore, but want to constantly travel towards my office. Here is my idea for making it possible.

If you have to travel 20 km on a train and the train runs at 80 km/h, it takes 15 minutes to get to the targeted station. But if you wait for the train for 10 minutes, it means it takes 25 minutes in total, which is on average 48 km/h in speed. 48 km/h? That’s slow! If you count the stations in between, the average speed becomes even slower. Yeah, the stations that the train stops at you never use. You waste some time there, too.

That’s not all. You may have to walk 10 minutes from the station to the office. If you’re unlucky, you have to go exactly the opposite way the train goes. You may think “Isn’t there a way to get off the train somewhere in between stations?”

So, what about a public transportation system that is constantly moving with a lot more exits?

There are people movers on the underground floor that move at various speeds. The outer the belt is, the faster it moves. Each mover has a different speed, but the speed transitions are so smooth that people can walk across them with no problems. The white center part, where you get on/off this system, does not move. If we could somehow make the outer most belt move as fast as a bicycle, it would be able to replace some crowded subways and buses.

There can be much more exits that can be built than the existing trains. Although it moves much more slowly than the current systems, you will never have to wait at a platform instead. No more packed cars. Getting on/off the mover is so easy and you can adjust the speed you want to travel at.

In short: it’s a mixture of a train, platform, underground street and people movers. I know I’m being crazy and impossible (again), but I would love to use this. Of course I know lots of electricity will be needed to make everything in this system work and there will be so many issues that have to be solved before installing this… but one thing I’m sure that will pay off: there will be no TRAIN accidents.

Anyone wandering around the social media scene these days will have seen buzzwords like ‘participatory design’, ‘crowdsourcing’, ‘activity-centred design’, ‘co-design’, and the like. Here’s another: designing in the open (or public: your pick).

Basically, it’s the idea of letting the world see what you’re up to while you design a new app or site. It’s particularly suited to interaction design as you can get a global community of people trying your tests for real (say unlike product design where it’s only an approximation of a 3D product etc). I also like that it has the feel of getting feedback in an organic way, rather than rustling up participants and pushing them through a process. You can design in the open either for a new concept, or a redesign, as I’ll go into below. I’ll then give you some tips as to how to design in the open.

Born in the public eye: designing in the open from scratch

So let’s say you have a great app idea and you decide to put it up online. You might ask: doesn’t that risk someone nicking your ideas, Apple-Xerox ‘open the kimono’ style? Apparently not. In response to a post by Joshua Porter applauding how 37 Signals design in public, Garrett Dimon (the creator of bug and issue tracker Sifter) lists no less than 7 ways that designing in public helped his business:

Transformed a ‘just for fun’ project into a commercial one

Marketing was a very convenient side effect

Sharing and communicating ideas is hard [but you learn]

Feedback

Transparency

Leads to other work

Teaching and sharing value

(See Porter’s blog entry for a full explanation of the 7 benefits).

The overarching theme is that being prepared to share often has benefits that reach far beyond the product itself. Allowing other people to be involved in your process can help create ‘buzz’,

Letting others help you change: designing with community input

Starting something from scratch is one thing. How about a redesign? If you’re lucky, you already have a number of committed and loyal users that would love to help improve it – in other words, a community. Which is where Mark Boulton – currently heading the drupal.org redesign – suggests the idea of “design by community”:

There are a lot of people in the Drupal community. Many hundreds with a strong voice. Providing very early releases–in fact, opening up the process completely–draws reaction. Within that reaction, if there is enough of it, we can identify trends. And I think trends in feedback is the key to Designing By Community.

Drupal is probably a model example of having a community to design with – as a freeware CMS, it attracts progressive web developers who understand that sharing time and resources can help it remain top-quality and free. By engaging with the community (through cardsorts, Twitter feeds and more), Boulton is actively championing their interests and meaning that they should be happy with the result (it’s commonly known that people don’t initially like change, even if it’s for the better – think of Facebook and the Microsoft Ribbon).

Another great example is the redesign of Digg – in his Web Directions South presentation, Creative Director Daniel Burka explains how after having some hits and misses in their initial redesign, they decided to build in a channel of community suggestions and feedback into their second attempt.

Boulton suggests that “design by community” is a more effective alternative to  “design by committee”:

Design by committee does not work … due to the relatively small size of a ‘committee’. Say you have a client, and there are 15 stakeholders. All of them have strong opinions, there are big egos flying around …. it will be difficult to reach common ground with a small amount of people.

I don’t think that’s quite correct. Desiging for community is far more grass-roots (I’m not sure how a committee would deal with ‘design by community’) and involves a level of passion and unified vision (for an example of a committee’s differing ideas for a concept, see the parody video “Redesigning the Stop Sign” ). However, trying to turn a committee into a community is maybe something a designer could aspire to with ‘design by community’.

How to design in the open

So, how could you go about designing in public?

Embrace the spirit of collaboration. If you’re going to ask for feedback, make sure you’re prepared to take it on board, even if it may involve a major overhaul of your concept.  Even in the worst case scenario where someone points out that someone else has already done what you want to do, wouldn’t you rather find that out now rather than several months down the track? (if you want to see some of the hazards of designing in public, take a look at some of the responses to him posting news on the Planet Drupal forum about tweaking the Drupal logo).

Make it obvious that it’s beta. There’s nothing wrong with rolling something out that’s a bit rough around the edges – in fact, that way people know that it’s not finished and will be happier to give feedback. (Though it should’t crash their CPU!).

Make it easy for people to give feedback. It may sound obvious, but you can’t get feedback if you don’t provide a way to do it. Forums are best as other people can see what’s going on.

Keep communicating. Blog about your progress, set up RSS feeds, send out newsletters at regular intervals. The web world is littered with the corpses of dead projects, and if you disappear off the grid, people will assume that you’ve stopped working on it. If you stay visible, they’ll keep coming back. As Dimon also says, it will force you to get better in explaining what your work is about.

Invite-only is always an option. If you’re a bit queasy about having fully-open design beta, a lot of apps start with an invitation-only model – remember when Gmail was invite only?

If you’re doing a redesign, try to set up a feedback loop if possible. How do you feel when your politicians completely ignore public feedback? Don’t let it look like users’ feedback disappears into a black hole – acknowledge it, and if you have a reason to go against it, explain why. Boulton’s explanation to the Drupal community about the website changes are a great example of this.

Play it forward. If you’re creating free resources (like Drupal or Wikipedia), you’re doing it anyway. If you’re creating something that will eventually be sold, remember to help out other people with their demos (though if they’re any good, you probably want to do it anyway!)

Designing in public takes humility and courage – humility in valuing the input of others, and courage in being prepared to take it right throughout the design process. However, if you are prepared to take it, you can create successful work that you already know makes a lot of people happy. Good luck!

And so it ends… after four days the Interaction’09 conference is over. At the moment we’re enjoying a drink at a bar and just finished up this last report. We’re pretty tired, but also extremely satisfied and inspired. It has been a great experience, which was openly shared with 456 other interaction designers. We’re off to bed, and you are going to read our pretty report.

Again special thanks to my fellow Johnnies, who helped out writing this report: Louise Roose, Patrick Sanwikarja and Pieter Jongerius.

Keynote: How to change the world complicated stuff – Marc Rettig

Today’s opening keynote was given by Marc Rettig, co-founder of Fit Associates. A company that has the intention to lead, nurture, connect and equip conscious organizations for the greatest impact for the common good.

Rettig starts off with stating that times will inevitably change. It is up to interaction designers to make the transition as smooth as possible. He is optimistic about the fact that interaction designers will play a relevant part at this.

The times of change he talks about he calls ‘the great turning’.  In this time we need to change the way we produce and consume our food, the way we use our energy, think about transport and the way we live. Basically we need to shift just about everything that is defined. Rettig also sees a shift in attitude.  A shift from ‘I’ to ‘we’, and from ‘more stuff’ to ‘quality of life’. And as these shifts are mostly of a social nature, we need to connect with the people we design for (yes, the user!).

Design is intimate, even when the product isn’t.

As we have already seen in the last couple of days, sustainability is a behavioral problem. Sustainability is also a distant and cold word, while design is not. Design is personal, intimate and sensitive. It effects the lives of people in ways that we can’t always foresee. Example: a simple remote control can completely shift the hierarchy in a household. Design is intimate, even when the product isn’t. So it seems that we’re already changing behavior. Maybe we should be focusing on how to do a better job…

Rettig made the effort himself by starting a firm.  His company is not about design or about engineering, but about ‘making a difference’. This difference must lead to a different way of looking at problems and solutions. Rettig states that the world of change is a social one and we should aim for the ripple effect (small change, big effect). He also states this ripple effect will last longer if we think in ‘programs of change’ instead of just one project.

Finally, can we initiate change ourselves? Once change has become your goal, just launching a product will no longer satisfy you. Change requires that you create a set of conditions that are also sustainable. (Stay on, even when you have left the building.

Foundations of Interaction Design: bringing design critique to interaction design – Dave Malouf

During the entire conference there was a lot of talk related to whether or not we should try to (over)define who we are or what we do. Dave Malouf is one of the people who believe that a good foundation and knowledge level is needed for us to be able to improve ourselves. During his talk he tried to show us the importance of creating a foundation for interaction design; a base on which you can build further.

To press his point he introduced us to the world of industrial design, where so-called elements of design are introduced as a foundation. These are line, plane, volume, value, texture and color. He then showed how these were used in order to create iconical products.

Then he went on and showed us his current view on the foundation for interaction design and admitted this was still subject for discussion. His list of elements consisted of:

• time
• abstraction: this is related to the level of directness in an interaction. Google Maps has a low abstraction level, since it gives direct feedback when you zoom in/out. A command line has a high level of abstraction.
• metaphor
• negativity: what are we not about, what does this not touch
• motion (recently added)

Malouf believes that we need a foundation in order to have a common language we can share.  Especially in the education of new interaction designers this will be a valuable asset. At the moment courses are still searching what’s the correct path. They miss a solid base, which causes students to miss a consistent view.

Designing for Teams, Designing for Touch – Joe Fletcher

This short presentation was split up in two parts. In the first one Fletcher talked about designing in a team. He said that as a team manager it is okay to be dumb, as long as you manage to create a team around you which is smart. The importance is to motivate the team to come up with creative ideas. In order to do this Fletcher shortly gave us two brainstorming methods:

• Improv brainstorming: Introduce a single idea. Shoot down any other ideas and build upon that single idea until it’s great.
• Round Robin: Introduce a direction and let all the team members design solutions on their own for 5 minutes. After this they present them and the entire teams votes on the core ideas.

It’s all about facilitating. The team does the rest.

After this he went on about designing for touch. He stated that ‘tap is not the new click’, which was a direct attack on Dan Saffer’s statement ‘tap is the new click’. Fletcher says that by implying that it is the same you are not thinking about the implications. A touch interface is totally different in it’s use and handiness then a mouse.

Fletcher tries to make us realize that touch isn’t the solution to everything. We are enjoying this new technology, but also hype it… especially walls. Besides that we have to realize that it is difficult to design for touch, since there still isn’t any consent. The maximum number of touch point differs per touch screen technology, ranging from one (Wacom) to 52 (Microsoft Surface). Another example he gave were about gesture consent, or the lack of it. On Firefox dragging to the left means going back, while in Coverflow it means going forward.

Understanding contexts of use – Milford Rochford (Nokia Design)

Miles Rochford from Nokia Design gave a very clear presentation about looking beyond the user and designing for contexts of use. He started with a nice example of how, after studying how people live in rural China and India, Nokia came up with a low-end phone that has a built-in torch. Because the power grid there is not reliable and you always have a mobile phone with you, this is a very welcome addition in emerging markets. One could argue that you don’t need extensive ethnographic research to come up with that idea, but Miles’ point was clear.

the one tool you need as a designer is not sketching, but empathy

The presentation consisted of three parts: What is context of use, why is it relevant and how can we apply it? First of all, Miles’ definition of context is a simple one: the right thing, at the right time, in the right place for the right person. That may sound obvious, but if you break issues up into these four aspects, it is very useful to look at things this way. Secondly, contexts are relevant because designers should not only solve problems, they should create interactions that go beyond people’s needs. At Nokia, inspiration comes from people. Their strategy is to observe, then design.
Finally, Miles provided the audience with three steps to apply contexts of use:

• Define: Establish the laws of physics for your project. Know what the constraints are that follow from the context.
• Document: How do these laws impact the interactions? It’s impossible to tackle every issue, so the designer has to prioritize and perhaps compromise.
• Deliver: Finally, the designer has to create great interactions for different contexts. Designers should not try to design one interaction to rule them all.

Miles encouraged the audience to try out his method, repeat it and learn from it. His closing remark was that designers should be really good at listening. Because the one tool you need as a designer is not sketching, but empathy.

Because of the simplicity of Miles’ story, his points were very clear. Unfortunately, there was no time for Miles to go into the subject in more detail. It would have been nice to see more cases of how Nokia’s designs follow from studying contexts, but I guess we have to go out and apply it on our own, as Miles suggested.

Mobile UX design patterns: a work in progress – Jenifer Tidwell (Google)

Jenifer Tidwell’s presentation was basically a very straightforward overview of the most important design patterns for mobile devices.

In her introduction, she gave a number of interesting statistics, such as the fact that tens of millions of weekly searches on Google comes from mobile devices, of which 80 % comes from outside the USA. In some countries, the number of mobile searches already surpass that from PCs. A nice eyeopener is that 98 % of the world’s mobile phones are keypad phones. That is a good thing to keep in mind, with us interaction designer often being more focused on high end touchscreen smartphones. A pattern needs to improve the user’s life and not be a technical solution. Otherwise it’s not really a pattern at all. In order to design for mobile devices effectively, the field should first be narrowed, as there are simply too many kinds these days. Jenifer’s focus was on mobile phones. She briefly discussed 15 design patterns, most of which most designer are probably already familiar with. I won’t write about all of them. Instead, the most interesting patterns are listed here:

Persistent toolbar. Always keep in mind the scarce screen real estate. This sounds like an obvious thing, but it is often overlooked. Beware of the layer cake effect (the stacking of lots of different headers). Instead, take one persistent toolbar of minimal height.

Infinite list. Because loading times should always be kept to a minimum, it’s a good idea to put a button at the bottom of lists that loads more items, instead of showing the long list right away.

Aggressive auto completion. Typing gets in the way of fast task completion, so auto completion should be used as much as possible. However, designers ought to be careful with free text input. In that case, bad auto completion can be very frustrating. The key here is: test, test, test.

Rich interconnections. These are direct links from one application to another, with data from the user’s context prefilled. This is a good idea because switching between apps is often difficult on mobile devices. Mobile users like things fast, so any work you can take out of their hands is welcome.

I had hoped Jenifer’s story would have been more compelling and inspiring. Her constantly apologizing about the fact that her presentation was missing fonts and pictures didn’t help her deliver a powerful presentation, either. It put too much emphasis on the ‘work in progress’ part, and drew attention away from the actual subject. I would have liked to have seen her address issues such as differences between devices and what challenges that brings, or a vision on how mobile devices and with it, patterns will evolve. Most of Jenifer’s examples were screenshots from the iPhone, which was a pity, considering 98 percent of phones have keypads, as she pointed out herself. Despite of the superficiality of the session, it was relevant to designers, because as Jenifer said: we are all going to be mobile designers soon enough.

Play and embodiment – Kars Alfrink (Leapfrog)

In this very compelling session, Kars talked about tangible and social interactions, or as he calls them, embodied interactions. Kars is a game designer and argued that game design and interaction design are not overlapping disciplines as they have long been considered, but rather game design is a specialized part of interaction design. Looking at play can be very inspiring when designing interactions.

Kars’ story was quite theoretical, such as his explanation of pragmatic action versus epistemic action. Pragmatic actions are about directly performing a task, whereas epistemic actions are about getting a better understanding of the task. An example of this is the fact that Tetris players who do superfluous action (move the brick around a lot before placing it) are better at tetris because they do that. They move part of the thinking in their head to the real world. In other words, there is no thinking without doing. So, as lots of the other sessions have also stressed, sketching and prototyping must be part of the design process.

The core of Lars’ story was this: play is free movement within a more rigid structure. Ultimately, it’s the player that defines the real rules, not the designer – he just sets the structure. Kars gave a beautiful example of users defining their own ‘rules’ within an existing system. At a neonatalogy ward Kars once visited nurses used a whiteboard for planning. They came up with their own system of assigning different tasks to nurses caring for babies, using the whiteboard, magnets, written text and colors. The whiteboard became an improvised information display. Obviously, the designer of the whiteboard and the magnets and the markers never thought about nurses using it that way. The nurses made their own rules. Once people start using products, the products are never the same again, or ‘function reforms form perpetually’. Therefore designers should build a ‘loose fit’ into their designs. We should embrace uncertainty and don’t try to control the complete user experience.

Keynote: Each One, Teach One – Kim Goodwin

This conference has seen some serious muscle keynoting. Kim did a great job of turning this last speech of the conference into a worthy closing piece. It actually gave us some goose bumps.

We are improving in our practice, it’s a fact. We’re not running in a treadmill going nowhere. Ten years back, the industry suffered from many usability and design issues. Today, people demand good design because of the growing number of good design they experience. This is a major accomplishment. The classic example is of course the much discussed iPhone. To many, it really is revelation of the power of design. Designers, developers, CEO’s and MBA’s alike, the iPhone allows them to grasp the value of good design, at a gut level. This is a major step forward from interaction designers being important primarily to fix usability problems.

We deserve to celebrate, but we shouldn’t claim victory too early. We are not there yet, and as other keynote speakers have pointed out, some major challenges lie ahead. For one, we have to design for sustainability. Kim took an alternative approach to this important issue. She argues that sustainability inevitably means that we as a discipline have to be around for a long time to come!

There’s a challenge in that. Our recent successes give us a window of opportunity, but it might close all too soon. We have to deliver. Until now we made a lot of promises, which we didn’t always fulfill. We are being looked at in a critical way, we have to deliver soon. But at the same time there are significant hurdles, like our yet to be defined identity.

At this point, Kim started building at the main point of her talk. There are three major challenges facing us:

• First, there’s no magic pill to creating good design. Design is much more work than many managers believe. At the same time, there are not enough interaction designers to go around. So recruiting managers will get the next best thing, get disappointed, and our window of opportunity might close.
• Second, we need a much greater diversity of experience and color in our profession. It is appalling to see that most interaction designers come from a small segment of society. Our group clearly doesn’t reflect the demographics of the communities we aim to serve.
• Thirdly, you simply cannot design effectively by yourself. Designing by yourself is like singing in the shower. We need to team up.

In order to overcome these, Kim did a dramatic and sincere appeal.

We need start teaching each other, one on one. Every one of you. Start now.

We have to require seniors to start mentoring juniors.
We have to learn to be better mentors. Listen. Observe. Imagine.
Mentoring is a two way thing. You learn your craft by teaching.

Each one, teach one. Only in this way we may grow a sustainable profession.