There is much we do not recognise and there is so much we ignore from our immature days of play, learning and discovery. The relevance of some lessons and understanding may not seem immediately apparent, but I believe they are all mightily important to understanding how we all interact socially, with the physical world around us, and with the many many interfaces we come into contact with on a daily basis.

Children predominantly learn about the surrounding world through many forms of play: alone, role play, in groups, but all creative. It is their work, always taken extremely seriously and “is the hallmark of the paradoxically useful uselessness of extended immaturity” (see From butterfly to caterpillar: How children grow up by Alison Gopnik).

Even if the adult and child may be viewed as quite different in their approaches to their surrounding worlds, there are many lessons interaction designers can learn from the behaviours and interactions a child has with its environment; If we only pay attention to the behaviour of adults we are doing our knowledge a great disservice. We were all children and there is much we can learn.

Children’s playings are not sports and should be deemed as their most serious actions – Montaigne

There are many examples of how children view the world. How behaviours change as babies mature and develop. Below I concentrate on a selection that I believe are most useful and relevant to designing for interaction today. This is just the tip of a very large library of reference and study – I include some suggested further reading at the end. Some may not seem immediately relevant but all resound and if not directly helpful in time I am sure will prove invaluable insights.

Looking

As designers we accept some ground rules, some levels of presumption on how those we are designing for look, see, and act, but how do small children look at the world around them and the things in it? What can we learn to break our presumptions and possibly work harder to understand a wider range of human ages and types.

Very small children have no concept of where their physicality ends and the world around them begins: when the mother is gone, the mother ceases to exist. It is widely believed the reason why the game of peek-a-boo is so universal is the fact that for small children the game plays out over and over again the lesson of separation.

Children look at things in a particular way. An example. An object appears and catches a small child’s attention. The length of looking indicates the level of interest it has in what it is looking at. The object then disappears and then reappears. If the pattern is ‘predictable’ they will look for X time. If the pattern is broken, say for example it appears higher or lower than anticipated, the baby will look for X + Y time (longer) and can be said to be more interested in the object.

Up until the age of approximately 12-15 months, small children will only ever look at the adult’s finger pointing, not where it is pointing. After this age they start looking in the direction of where the finger is pointing. The human is the only mammal that does this.

This is a fine example of not taking for granted that everyone sees what you expect them to see (or hope they will see). Just because you design something and point people at it doesn’t necessarily mean they will see it the way you anticipated. (Sometimes they will only look at your pointing.)

(Reference: Colwyn Trevarthen)

Hiding and finding

Much like adults striving to work out Paul Annett’s infamous card trick, young children learn how to look and discover where things are, go to and appear. Example: There are two places to hide a ball: either behind point A or behind point B. To begin with a ball is hidden behind point A. Then while the child is watching, take the ball and hide it behind point B. Then ask the young child: “Where is the ball?” The young child will first look behind point A and then move onto looking behind point B. As they mature, they will find the object behind point B at the first attempt.

Object Permanence

At first when the infant can no longer see an object it ceases to exist. Literally ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Example: A small child in a high chair playing with its food. One after the other, it drops the spoon, the plate, the yogurt pot. It never looks down. Just carries on with the discovery of what is in front of it. As the child gets older it will look down having made the connection with the disappearing spoon and so enters the world of object permanence we take for granted when we design for interaction.

We all recognise the importance, power and relevance of scent when designing, ensuring we do not over simplify or presume but guide. Wayfinding is a vital skill for adults but requires education and it is obvious that the foundation is laid when we are children. (More on Wayfinding by Cennydd Bowles Wayfinding Through Technology). Adults have a propensity to look everywhere – that is why they are so complicated to design for. Adults are also a lot more impatient, a trait that should never be lost on designers.

Separation and attachement

Up to around the age of 4-6 months a child is undifferentiatedly attached. It is happy to be held by anyone. After 6 months it becomes attached to one person (usually the mother). Separation anxiety begins. The self is now recognised as separate from the caregiver. For children up to the age of 6 years old, it is widely accepted that separation anxiety is their predominant concern.

(Reference: Attachement Theory)

Theory of mind

It is a huge development in small children when they learn that people see things in a different way and from different angles than themselves. Equally, it is of huge benefit to us as designers to recognise this and understand that at points in our development as humans we see and visualise what is before us with completely different perspectives.

I believe it is one of the great insights into human interaction and behaviour.

For example Jean Piaget’s A, not-B error: Person A hides an object from Person B in Place X. B then goes away. A then moves it to Place Y. When B returns, A asks B where he will look for the object. Up to a certain age, children will say X. Only when they have acquired Theory of Mind will they know that B could not have known what A had done – ie to have the ability to take another’s perspective.

This links to a very poignant example that I think everyone has experienced. Children will stand in front of you when you are watching the television when they want to watch the television too if they haven’t acquired Theory of Mind. They won’t know that what they see, the television screen, is not what you see (their presence blocking the television screen).

Another example is reading a book with a child. The child will hold it so they can see the book. After acquiring Theory of Mind they will hold the book so that you can see the book too (when they have realised that you have a different perspective, sitting in a different position to them).

Preoperational Thought

A fine example of Piaget’s theory is the way young children do not understand that transforming the shape of a liquid (pouring it from one container into another) does not change the amount. Young children fail to understand the significance of the transformation between states.

In front of a 5 year old child, pour the same amount of milk into one squat glass and one tall glass and then ask the child which glass has the most in it? The child will say the tall glass. Again in front of the child, pour the milk out of the squat glass into a new tall glass and the milk out of the first tall glass into a new squat glass. Again, ask the child which glass has the most in it and it will say the tall glass.

(Reference: Theory of cognitive development)

Feedback

At approximately 6 years old, most children can tell you what they think you want to know. At this early age you can actually conduct an interview with a child. Discourse Analysis becomes possible and a whole world of understanding is underway.

Learning space

Why is it that classrooms in early years adopt open plan shared tables, promoting shared learning and movement, but as children get older classrooms adopt more and more structured layouts (eg rows of desks that discourage easy interaction in the pursuit of ‘serious’ learning)?

In adult working environments the same problem occurs. Even though open plan offices consistently produce innovative and successful working environments which are directly related to successful products, many employers insist on reproducing that scene in The Apartment with Jack Lemmon as an insurance clerk, sitting in rows and rows of desks.

It’s surely obvious that successful learning and working environments are more likely in open plan, free movement layouts – isn’t it?

Food for thought on handling different behaviours

In a classroom a child incessantly taps a pencil on a desk. Rather than scold, tell off, or stop, what is an alternative and progressive reaction? Answer: give all the other children in the classroom pencils too and allow them to tap along to the rhythm.

Another excellent example is a child in a classroom who whenever they move about bumps into desks and other children causing no end of a nuisance. Again rather than scold the child, the teacher gives the child a pair of rollerblades to get about the classroom. In time the child is able to glide about the space without bumping into anyone or anything. The child’s relationship with the other children also greatly improves.

The more varied your experience of human behaviour of any age, the better designer you will be. Accepting that people are different in nature and do not just behave differently is a vital understanding. Is siloing of user types the happy path or should we strive for more thorough exploration and research?

(Full details of these examples can be found in The British Journal of Play Therapy and are reproduced in this post)

Conclusion

The closer attention we pay to the way that children interact with the world around them – whether they are our own offspring and we view them in close proximity or through relations and or friends – the stronger interaction designers we will be. Understanding why a child does something helps us to understand how they might behave as adults. A level of understanding why children interact and behave the way they do will only enhance our work. We see behaviours that we are unsure of their source and sometimes don’t completely understand, but we recognise the patterns. And the more inquisitive and interested we become, the more we will recognise these patterns and connections and begin to more fully understand the variation of adult behaviour and how it can help us in our daily work lives.

Further Reading
DE Winnicott: Playing and Reality, Home is where we start, The child, the family and the outside world
John Bowlby: The making and breaking of affectional bonds, A secure base

This article would not have been possible without the help of PN Trichardt

Images by woodleywonderworks / cc-attribution

Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender recently released their brand new book “Search Patterns: Design for Discovery“.  I had the honor to chat with Peter about what drove him to write his new book, why he thinks search is such a challenge still,  and his thoughts on where the future of search lies.

JH: Why did you decide to focus on search for your new book?

Peter Morville

PM: In my consulting projects, search kept surfacing as the single biggest opportunity to improve the user experience, and I felt unequal to the task. So, I decided to invest in my own edification by writing a book. Plus, I wanted to inspire others to make search better. After all, search is among the most disruptive innovations of our time. It influences what we buy and where we go. It shapes how we learn and what we know. Designing for search and discovery isn’t just interesting. It’s important. We have a responsibility to get it right.

How is designing for search different from traditional browsing and navigation?

I design for multiple (complementary) modes of seeking, so that users can browse and search their way to success. Explicit navigation serves as a map for wayfinding and understanding, while the search box offers a shortcut that employs semantics to bypass structure. Often, these modes need be distinct only in the opening. In search, users make the first move by typing words to declare intent. But, the SERP (search engine results page) is a browsable interface with visible context. Alternatively, you may begin with browse, but then query the category that you’re inside using scoped search. A well designed system lets people flow between modes and offers immediate feedback, because in the endgame, it’s all about interaction.

What makes search such a challenge, especially given all the advancements in technology over the years?

Search is a wicked problem for two reasons. First, it’s radically multidisciplinary, requiring real collaboration between design, engineering, and marketing. For most organizations, right there, it’s already game over. They simply can’t get these folks to work together. Second it’s a project and a process, requiring a major initial investment and the commitment to continuous improvement. Few organizations are good at both.

How do you see the findability of large scale gestural interfaces (i.e. The ‘Minority Report’ Interface) working in the future?

I’m very interested in gestural interaction, and we include examples in the book from the activation of Google Voice Search (raise your iPhone to your ear) to the augmented reality of Yelp Monocle (query the world by wandering). Undoubtedly, large scale gestural interfaces will offer us surprising new ways to interact with digital and physical objects such as images, video cameras, and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). That said, absent a great leap forward in the technology of the human brain, it will remain as important as ever to make key features easy to use and discover. In fact, I predict that the large scale gestural interfaces of the future will sport a search box as a starting point, even in 2054.

I predict that the large scale gestural interfaces of the future will sport a search box as a starting point, even in 2054.

Why do you think that search has become such a natural behavior for people?

Search is more natural than language. That’s why “natural language search” won’t work. It’s inefficient and artificial. Why string together complete sentences? We’d rather grunt and point or enter a few keywords and go. It’s a great way to start that admits the “paradox of the active user.” We routinely prefer the illusion of speed and simplicity instead of taking time to understand the territory and chart an optimal course. But, the first result set can be a terrible place to end. That’s why the SERP is such an important map. When we find we haven’t found what we need or expect, we’re surprised and ready to learn. In this way, search results create a “teachable moment.” And this evolution from “act” to “learn” is also natural. It’s only when we get lost and know we need help that we stop and ask for directions.

What was the inspiration behind taking a visual approach to writing about Search Patterns?

Search Patterns

Two major sources of inspiration were Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin and Dave Gray’s work on visual thinking. Collaborating with graphic designer Jeffery Callender (my co-author) to bring search and discovery to life with sketches, diagrams, and cartoons was seriously fun. And, I think the book is better (and different) as a result.

Of the patterns you identify in the book, which ones are misused the most? And why?

Advanced search is the pattern we love to hate. Here’s a brief excerpt:

“Often, advanced search is a clumsy add-on that’s rarely used, and it lets engineers and designers take the easy way out. Valuable features that are difficult to integrate into the main interface can be relocated to the ghetto and forgotten. Plus, there’s confusion about its purpose. Is it a user-friendly query builder for novices or a power tool for experts? Many interfaces try (and fail) to be both. For instance, isn’t it fair to assume that users who understand what “exact phrase” means also know to use quotation marks to specify such a search? The main problem with Boolean isn’t the syntax, it’s the logic. Even the plain language is unlikely to help the few novices who brave the intimidating realm of advanced search, as shown below:

Advanced search at Genentech: Plain text doesn't make it less intimidating

“This pattern also suffers from an ignorance of context. Searches are situated. They take place in a space. Having navigated through music to the folk genre, users may want to search without leaving. Scoped search is a pattern that meets this need. There’s a risk that users won’t see the scope, but overrides in the case of few or no results can help. In most cases, users benefit, because scoped search caters to context. In contrast, advanced search often teleports us to a distant, unfamiliar locale. It’s disruptive to flow.”

But, advanced search isn’t always an anti-pattern. Sometimes, it’s really useful. When? For that, you’ll have to read the book.

What are your goals with the new search pattern library that complements your book?

Our goals for the book and the library are one and the same. We want to make search better. Or, to be more precise, we want to inspire you to make search better. The book is a linear narrative. It’s best read front to back. The library offers random access to patterns of behavior and design. It’s a maze for getting lost and a labyrinth for self-discovery. And, as with any living library or garden, it’s eternally incomplete. We hope you’ll join us by adding novel patterns and forking paths.

So what’s up with the butterfly?

O’Reilly authors don’t choose the animals, but we do have veto power. To get the lemur, I rejected a golden retriever. To get the butterfly, we refused a kestrel. And, to get the polar bear, we just got lucky.

How do you see search changing as the world becomes more mobile? Will we soon ‘Google our shoes’, as Bruce Sterling suggests?

PM: In search, the potential exists for a multitude of diverse futures, many of which will occur. And, it’s a good bet that these possible futures will co-evolve in a loosely joined sorta way. For instance, I still do most serious searching at my desk, even though today’s mobile devices support traditional web search (via a browser) while also reframing search and discovery through the lens of the specialized app. With my iPhone, I can query barcodes with RedLaser, search for bathrooms with SitOrSquat, and find friends with Foursquare. These are all fairly discrete activities, but for personalization, there’s value in aggregating all of my behavior across applications and platforms.

When we use the term “mobile search” we should unbind the concepts of “searching while mobile” and “searching on a phone” because our devices and the ways we interact with information are likely to undergo radical change. I don’t expect, when I’m 64, that “mobile search” will involve small screens. Instead, we’ll augment reality via iGlasses and display data directly on skin, clothing, sidewalks, and buildings. But, I absolutely do expect to Google my shoes, to learn about their construction, history, and proper disposal; and to find out where I left them.

Recently you launched a contest where people had to try and explain IA as best as they could. Why? What’s the biggest takeaway from this challenge?

Last year, as preparation for his information architecture class, Dan Klyn asked Twitter #whatswrongwithia. My response kicked off a discussion with Andrew Hinton that led to Explain IA. Our goals were to engage the IA community (by fostering creativity and discussion) and advance the field (by evolving our definitions and sharing our stories). It was a huge success and a lot of fun. My takeaway was that although the IA community is quieter than it was ten years ago, there’s still tremendous energy and passion beneath the surface.

How have you found yourself thinking differently about the way people search after putting these patterns together?

PM: Search isn’t just about findability. It’s also about learning, understanding, sharing, and acting. In mobile, for instance, we can enable people to buy products, share songs, play movies, and make calls directly from the results interface. Or, in research, we can offer ways to compare and contrast results with rich visualizations and overlays of time and place. Having worked through the more basic patterns, I’m now enjoying the challenge of designing search and discovery applications that embrace the full spectrum of user goals.

What would you say is the most important concept regarding search?

PM: C. S. Lewis once noted “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” That’s why I see every search application as having the potential to become a complex adaptive system that exhibits macroscopic properties of self-organization and emergence. And, that’s why I include creators as part of the anatomy of search. On every project, I try to design for interaction and feedback, and to connect (and intertwingle) users and creators, so that the whole is greater (and different) than the sum of its parts.

The Anatomy of Search

You’re going to be talking about Search Patterns at the IA Summit. What else are you looking forward to?

PM: I’m genuinely excited about this year’s IA Summit, but not because of my own session. What I’m looking forward to in Phoenix is Seeing the Summit through the eyes of Dan Roam, Dave Gray, Dan Willis, Richard Saul Wurman, and Kevin Cheng. And, I’m hoping to build on their ideas in my upcoming workshop, Information Architecture with Maps, which is really just another lens for examining search and discovery.

We’ve been hearing a lot about privacy the last couple of years. And with the advent of Google Street View, GPS and location tracking, and growing social-media communities, we’re going to be hearing a lot more. What most folks don’t understand is that the concept of “privacy” is incredibly different depending on which side of the Atlantic you live. Yet in an increasingly globalized world, it’s becoming more and more important to acknowledge these divergent points of view.

Freedom of speech vs. personal privacy

Americans tend to be less concerned than Europeans. Privacy, after all, is not a clear constitutional right whereas freedom of speech is. Freedom of speech is actually the first article in the U.S. Bill of Rights. It’s not that Americans don’t value privacy, but they often view it as a tool to prevent government from overstepping its authority. This represents a fundamental difference in the way Americans and Europeans react to privacy issues.

In Europe, privacy is considered a basic human right. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights spells it out, “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” To put things in perspective, freedom of speech first comes in Article 10.

Who is listening?

Facebook and privacy

Much of the most recent discussion was triggered by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg who in January claimed that “privacy is no longer a social norm” – this in the wake of a key change in the default privacy setting for his social platform. (the default value for profile content is now “public” rather than “private”)

Zuckerberg may be correct that the norm has changed. But we’re talking about a self-fulfilling prophecy. If privacy is no longer de rigueur, I think it’s because we stopped caring. And we should care – very much. Just because Zuckerberg (and others) are pushing for greater openness (and less privacy), that doesn’t make openness universally correct. Unfortunately, most of the users of Facebook won’t even know this has happened and certainly won’t think about the long-term consequences. Zuckerberg wins by default (pun intended). If we don’t show that we value our privacy, we will surely lose it forever.

If privacy is no longer de rigueur, I think it’s because we stopped caring. And we should care – very much.

“But everyone’s doing it”

Some years ago, Nokia, aware that people were sending SMSs while driving (which is illegal), started to experiment with a steering-wheel input device. Nokia’s design team argued, “Well, people are going to do this anyway, so we might as well make it easier.” Eventually, Nokia had the good sense to drop the project. Just because people do something dumb, doesn’t mean it should be officially sanctioned. If this was a viable argument, a murderer could theoretically defend himself with the following: “Well, people are going to die anyway. So I just helped things along.”

Changing the norm

As user-experience designers, I think it’s our duty to protect those who don’t know they need to protect themselves. We cannot allow individual companies, such as Google and Facebook, to dictate our privacy norms. We need a higher authority.

Where is the international organization that is going to help set impartial standards? The W3C? Their privacy page (last updated in 2007) merely helps people write privacy policies for websites – the legal blather few ever read.  So where is our industry’s “International Privacy Charter”? Again, search for “privacy charter” and most of the information is 8-10 years old.

Where is our industry’s “International Privacy Charter”?

Why haven’t we written one? Maybe we should – and the sooner the better.

Image by Niklas Wolkert / cc-attribution

Adaptive Path co-founder and principal Jesse James Garrett’s accolades range from creating seminal works on user experience to coining the term AJAX. Ahead of his UX London presentation, he talked to us about The Elements of User Experience a decade on, how service design relates to user experience, and his pick of future UX rock stars.

Johnny Holland: It’s been a decade since you released the Elements of User Experience diagram. What’s it like looking back on it now, and would you change anything?

The Elements of User Experience diagram

Jesse James Garrett: There really isn’t much in Elements I’ve felt the need to change. Everything there is still important. I’ve been surprised by the durability of the Elements model, because I created it to solve a problem that seemed to be particular to that moment in the evolution of the field. Everybody had to explain everything about UX, because the practice was so new. What I didn’t count on was that ten years later, there would still be so many people to educate!

But even among experienced practitioners, I think it’s been a valuable touchstone, to establish a common frame of reference for discussions about our work. I love the various riffs on Elements people have put out over the years, from George Olsen in 2003 to Richard Dalton in 2007 to David Sherwin in 2010. Some people have thought I’d be upset by what they’ve done, but it’s actually really gratifying to see people pick it up and do their own thing with it. It’s a tool, it’s no good if it’s not useful to you, so you should reshape it to your purposes.

JH: What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen for the UX discipline in the last decade?

JJG: We’ve had our ups and downs, for sure. The tech bust early in the decade saw a lot of people move on to other lines of work, and it took several years for the field to regain its momentum. But it’s astonishing what’s happened in the last few years, with so many new voices, new conferences, and new websites driving the dialogue in the field. I love the fact that we now have enough to talk about to sustain sites like Boxes and Arrows, Johnny Holland, UX Magazine, UX Matters… the list goes on and on.

The clients are more sophisticated. Sometimes, it’s because they’ve come up through UX — the field has been around long enough now that some people have made it into management positions. But even the clients without that background seem to have more sensitivity to UX issues. Business people are recognizing the strategic importance of the work we do. Not all of them, and not nearly as many as we’d like, but there are more out there all the time.

I think the phenomenal success Apple has had in the last ten years has been a double-edged sword for us. On one hand, we have business people who never before paid attention to UX sitting up and paying attention, because Apple is a company whose product strategy is driven entirely by the experience they want to deliver to users. It drives every product decision they make. But on the other hand, everybody thinks you have to have someone with the Steve Jobs magic to operate that way. But Jobs hasn’t been successful because of his design sensibility. He’s been successful because he’s built an experience-driven organization. And there’s no magic required to do that.

JH: You’ve been one of the leading people (and companies) in documenting and sharing insights related to UX with the community. How do you manage to integrate this in your daily business?

Jesse James Garret

JJG: I think there are three parts to it. The first, and by far most important, is what each of us does individually: simply paying attention to our work and asking ourselves, “Is there some broader lesson that can be drawn from this situation?” So we’re constantly looking at how problems and their solutions apply outside the immediate context.

Secondly, there’s what we do for each other at Adaptive Path, which is an ongoing culture of mutual encouragement. Even if you don’t notice your best ideas, the people around you are likely to, and we’re very fortunate to have a group of people genuinely interested and invested in seeing each other succeed. “You should blog that” is one of the most commonly heard phrases around our office.

The third part is what the organization does to keep that momentum going. We have a number of specific mechanisms for people to share work and ideas internally. Obviously, some clients and projects require that we firewall a team from the rest of the organization, but generally we encourage maximum openness across our project teams, and provide outlets such as open design sessions to foster sharing insights.

JH: Perhaps part of the appeal of Adaptive Path leading UX is that you’re still a small enough company – 40 people -  to make people believe they can carry out UX too. What are the challenges that smaller companies face with UX?

JJG: The challenge with just about everything in a smaller company is reconciling the gap between what you want to do and what you have the resources to do — without sacrificing your larger goals. UX in particular seems to get cut from project plans more readily than other things. But I think that has started to change, as more managers become sensitive to the importance of UX and become knowledgeable about ways to deliver effective UX within tight budgets, timelines, and resources.

JH: You stated at last year’s IA Summit that our field of work (whether you call it IA, UX, IxD) we seem to have a lack of language of critique. What needs to be done to change this?

JJG: We need to be able to talk, as a professional community, about what differentiates successful experience design from unsuccessful (or absent) experience design. In order to do that, we need frameworks for thinking about experience, describing its qualities, and evaluating it. Not just one framework, mind you — things will really start getting interesting when we have multiple frameworks to choose from.

I think the development of a language of critique has to spring from the practice of critique. Critique of experience design work is currently ad hoc, improvised, and specific to the context. We need ways to generalize these practices so experiences can be compared and contrasted across contexts. I suspect that all of this stuff sounds pretty esoteric to the average UX designer just trying to ship a product, but I think it can have a deep and meaningful effect on the day-to-day practice of user experience design.

JH: The words on everyone’s lips this year is ‘service design’. What’s your take on how it relates to user experience? Is service design vs user experience the new information architecture vs interaction design?

JJG: I think any distinction that you could draw between service design and user experience is purely academic. In practical terms, the overlap in the problems being solved, the methods applied to solving them, and the philosophy of practice is so huge that anything you could say was purely a service design issue or purely a user experience design issue would be an extreme edgecase. They may persist as separate areas of intellectual inquiry, but as fields of practice I think they’ll inevitably converge. So in that sense, SD vs. UX is the new IA vs. IxD.

JH: Your UX London talk is on engagement. Could you tell us something more about this talk?

JJG: As our practice at Adaptive Path has expanded beyond digital experiences to integrate products with services, or to develop completely non-digital experiences like retail environments, I’ve become more interested in the question of what makes an experience successful no matter what medium is used to deliver the experience. And I keep coming back to this notion of engagement as the one outcome we’re always driving toward.

JH: In the summary of your talk you mention that there are different modes of engagement we need to understand. Could you elaborate?

JJG: Well, this idea really originated in my thinking about the historical split between how people have viewed interaction design and how people have viewed information architecture. The interaction design viewpoint has been that behavior is paramount, that everything is subordinate to driving particular user actions. The information architecture perspective has been that cognition is what counts, and the key is to optimize designs for the way people think.

Of course, the truth is that neither aspect is paramount. Instead, these are just modes of engagement with a designed experience: engagement through action and engagement through cognition. And these modes (along with some others) must work together in an orchestrated fashion for the experience to be successful.

JH: Who are the names in the field we should keep an eye out for? Who are the new UX rock stars?

JJG: If I’m at a conference where Stephen Anderson is speaking, you can be guaranteed I’ll be in the room. I think Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler’s book A Project Guide to UX Design is one of the sharpest, clearest books on UX I’ve read in years. And I’ve lately been inspired by the insights coming from people like Richard Dalton, Cindy Chastain, and Karl Fast. And of course, I consider anyone at Adaptive Path a rock star — that’s why we hired them!

Note: special thanks to Vicky for helping me out with the interview.

Johnny Holland is proud to be teaming up again with Mozilla Labs for their concept series. This time, Mozilla is working with the Participatory Culture Foundation to present “Collaborative subtitling — How can users quickly create a timed transcript of any video on the web?”.  We’ll be presenting a series of posts to inspire your concepts, and kick it off by talking to Dean Jansen from PCF  about the competition and some hints.

JH: Can you give us a bit of background about PCF?

DJ: The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) began about 5 years ago when television and other mass media really began to move online en masse. Video is the most powerful medium in our culture and we saw an opportunity to push it in a positive and more democratic direction. Our initial strategy was influencing video publishing and viewing practices through popular technology; our goal was to encourage openness and empower the individual. For instance, our first project was an open source video aggregator (video watching application) called Miro that supports open publishing standards such as RSS. It currently has about 1.3 million users each month. PCF has started many additional projects since then, including Universal Subtitles.

You’re part of the Open Video Alliance. Could you give us some more information about the alliance?

The OVA is a coalition of non-profit organizations, companies, and other institutions advocating for open standards for online video. The OVA seeks to encourage better technological practices, as well as spark a social movement, since the basic qualities of online video have the power to influence the development of our politics and culture. Current members include PCF, Mozilla, Kaltura, and the Yale ISP, but we’re about to dramatically expand the scope and membership of the organization. Last summer we co-organized the inaugural Open Video Conference in NYC which brought together a diverse mix of filmmakers, academics, artists, technologist, entrepreneurs, activists, and many others to discuss the implications and importance of open video. We followed up with a series of panels at SXSW and are currently planning the second Open Video Conference.

What are some of the special challenges of working with video?

There’s currently a huge gap in the market for simple and user friendly solutions for doing video subtitles. A number of issues contribute to this gap, such as the lack of standardization in online video players. Flash has proven to be a good basic technology to deliver video, but it’s proprietary, so developing open solutions on top of it—things that would work across the entire video spectrum—have proven difficult. Another issue contributing factor is that subtitling interfaces seem to be geared towards professional subtitlers. We’re aiming for something incredibly user friendly, so that people who would never have thought themselves capable of subtitling are encouraged to pitch in and subtitle/translate their favorite videos.

We’re aiming for something incredibly user friendly, so that people who would never have thought themselves capable of subtitling are encouraged to pitch in and subtitle/translate their favorite videos.

Prototype Collaborative Tool Demo

Is there a difference with getting people to contribute knowledge as opposed to more usual UIs?

Subtitling is something that the vast majority of internet users haven’t done yet, so in that respect maybe this will be a more difficult challenge.  However, that gives us reason to believe that it will be a more unique, interesting, and ultimately, challenging UI challenge. We also think that the probable unfamiliarity with the practice will allow designers to approach the situation with virgin eyes, which is a big advantage in many respects.

Subtitling is something that the vast majority of internet users haven’t done yet, so in that respect maybe this will be a more difficult challenge.  However, that gives us reason to believe that it will be a more unique, interesting, and ultimately, challenging UI challenge.

What are your thoughts on Youtube Video Captions?

We think the initiative is great—it draws a lot of positive attention to the need for subtitles—these will not only make videos more accessible, but also leads to a much higher potential for cross cultural exchange via video. That said, it also has lots of room for improvement, since it relies heavily on machine transcription and translation (which is fairly inaccurate these days). The biggest issue is that these subtitles are only available on YouTube videos. Our approach is more manual and community driven, but we can certainly see using technology to augment the subtitling and translation processes. Our ultimate goal is to end up with an open and standard subtitling technology that YouTube can support on its platform.

What are you hoping to get from the concepts for the Mozilla Challenge?

We’ve thought a lot about a fresh approach to creating subtitles. We’re breaking the process into discreet parts, so instead of transcribing the audio and putting down in and out points in a single step, the user does it in two.

We’re drawing inspiration from video editing software, as well as video games, and we’re shooting for something very inviting and dynamic. Even with all the time we’ve put into this interface, we know there’s a ton of room for improvement —so we’re really excited to be part of the Mozilla challenge.

Do you have any tips for people taking the competition on?

To anyone considering the challenge who hasn’t tried subtitling a video, I’d suggest trying out some of the current solutions. Use YouTube’s subtitling tools (for example Caption Tube or You Tube Subtitler ) or a service like dotsub to add subtitles to a short video that you like. This will give a good idea of the current paradigm and makes a great starting point for imagining a better approach.

Entries are open for the Mozilla Collaborative Subtitling Challenge from now until the 26th of April. For more information, see the Mozilla Challenge site.

Some days, I like to think I have a UX Flashlight. As I point its beam at a design, all the UX problems appear, bright as day, waiting to be fixed by a clever designer.

There are designs where, if I had such a magical device, it would just light up everything. The problems and fixes are obvious. It’s just too easy. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to take their money.

These designs are such UX disasters that I wonder how they got this far without their users raiding their castle with pitchforks and torches. Interestingly, once you meet the client team, it’s not hard to see how they’ve let their design get so out of whack.

They’ve been focused on making the technology just work, knocking off bugs, adding new features. These activities took their full attention. Only now, once things have settled a bit, could they begin to think about the experience of the design. And boy, does it need work.

As UX professionals, when we’re confronted by this type of design, it’s not hard to see the problems. There are tons of them, but most are simple to fix. Just change the visual priority of the interaction elements, add some better copy, and use common interaction patterns—in short, employ the professional’s bread-and-butter tools for this situation.

Bad UX is the Default Outcome

Designs that never receive any UX attention will have problems because the problems don’t go away by themselves. Creating a great experience is a deliberate act, one that takes careful thought and planning. When that thought and planning are absent, the odds of ending up with a great experience are practically nil.

Incorporating UX attention into the design process from the beginning is a nice ideal. It requires real maturity, however. Managers making their first endeavors in designing don’t have the experience to know that it’ll be needed, let alone understand the underlying practices. Add in the fartoocommon perception that anyone can design and you have a recipe for a bad user experience.

Then they patch and fix and tweak and patch, adding far more options and not realizing they are making it worse with every move. No wonder it’s easy to clean up the mess—just go in with a machete and start hacking away the slop. Voilà! Instant success.

The World Of Low Hanging Fruit

Here we are, called into yet another project, where it’s quick to find a ton of easy-to-fix issues. Which we do. Then we’re heroes. Hooray for the UX guys.

Then comes the dreaded plea: “Do it again! Do it again! You did that so quickly, so well. Do your magic again and make us even better.”

We might pull it off one or two more times. But suddenly, the magic wears off. The problems get harder to find. The challenges are tougher. The constraints are more rigid. Getting the same improvements takes much more effort and creativity.

We’ve picked all the low hanging fruit off the tree. There’s still fruit left, but it’s far out of reach. We’re going to need better tools than we have to get it. We’ll need to be far more clever, more versatile than ever before.

This is where a lot of UX professionals struggle. Once they’ve picked the low-hanging fruit—found all the easy problems to address—they need a different set of tools, new methods, new practices, and, most importantly, a different relationship with their client teams to find the more gnarly problems.

This is where a lot of UX professionals struggle. Once they’ve picked the low-hanging fruit—found all the easy problems to address—they need a different set of tools, new methods, new practices, and, most importantly, a different relationship with their client teams to find the more gnarly problems.

Problem discovery is only part of the issue, though. We also have to deal with the effort it takes to design and implement solutions. That’s where penny stocks come in.

Penny Stocks And Beyond

Penny-stock investors represent an investment subculture. They focus on stocks that are close to $1 per share or less—stocks you’d only pay pennies to buy. Penny-stock investors think differently than other types of investors.

Say you’ve bought a bunch of a stock worth 50 cents. If it goes up by another 25 cents, you’ve now seen a 50% increase in your investment. Woo hoo!

What if that stock was trading at $100 dollars? A 25-cent increase would be noise—certainly not cause for celebration. A quarter of a percent increase is nothing to write home about.

When we’re working on a UX project that hasn’t seen the talents of a solid designer, we’re dabbling in the world of penny stocks. We can attain 50% improvements with just small fluctuations in the design’s actual quality.

Dabbling in stocks that are much higher value than pennies requires more patience and a larger up-front investment. You need to sit out small fluctuations and have a long-term strategy. Large changes in valuations won’t happen quickly, not like they do on the penny-stock trading floor.
The same is true with our designs. With those quick fixes, we see huge returns. “Wow, you fixed that one button. Now orders have doubled! Thanks, Mr. Super UX Guy. Can you do it again?”

Yet once we’ve knocked all of the easy problems off the list, we’ve got only difficult stuff left. That takes patience and larger up-front investments to generate the same rate of returns.

Skills and Expectations

Now, knowing about the low-hanging-fruit and penny-stock effects, what do we do about it?
UX professionals who understand the low-hanging-fruit effect know they need to build out their toolbox of skills. A design review (or heuristic evaluation or inspection or whatever you want to call it) works just fine when the fruit is hanging low. However, we need techniques that are more rigorous when we’re grasping for the higher fruit. We need to have practiced them and know when to pull them out.

We also need to ensure we’re keeping our clients in the loop from the very beginning. The days of penny-stock improvements can set an expectation of quick and high returns that’ll become increasingly more difficult to meet. We need to, from the very start of the project, set the expectation of how it is likely to progress, being clear about what’ll be easy-and-cheap and where they’ll need to make more investment.

Sometimes, I like to think I have a UX Flashlight and sometimes I like to think I have a high-powered, broad spectrum UX Floodlight. The floodlight lets me see things I can’t see, once the flashlight power fades. It’s expensive to run and it takes a lot of work. But when I find and fix those problems, that is when I’m really earning my keep.

Top image: Colorado Luis / cc-attribution

At our core, interaction designers are anthropologists. We design interactions between people and people, and people and things. There is only one way to better understand people and better anticipate how they behave: observe.

Be the Seer

The user experience profession is pretty weird. Some argue it isn’t a profession at all because you don’t need to belong to any associations or hold any certifications in order to call yourself a practitioner. We’re an occupation or concentration, or maybe we’re just a mindset.

I see us at an intersection, as a liaison. We combine principles of design, psychology, statistics and computer science to bring humanity into technology. Whether your day to day activities include drawing wireframes or interviewing prospective users or conducting usability tests, we are ultimately advocates for change — and in order to change the world, you have to see the world as it really is.

Conferences are a tremendous place to learn new techniques, hear new ideas, and meet new people who will inspire you on a regular basis. Books can give you a foundation, introduce you to a new methodology, and become a reference point for your work. Blogs help you stay current, separate the wheat from the chaff, and give you insight into the minds of other practitioners. All of these things develop your mind, but none develop your gut.

Being formally educated is nice, and being self-educated is commendable, but knowledge can only carry you so far. To really be great at our jobs, we need razor sharp instinct.

Look

Observe everywhere and everything. Tune your eyes and ears to the world around you. Walk the streets for hours. Look at signs and posters and traffic lights. Watch people cross the street and navigate the sidewalk and go in and out of stores. Map their movements. Chronicle their habits. Notice their hesitations. Count the points of interaction.

Ride the subway. Now watch people when they’re sitting, when they’re standing. How do they tune people out? How do they minimize their space? How do they relax their bodies? And what are the interaction points there? The handrail, the route maps, the doors. Watch how people move through the space. Differentiate the locals from the tourists. Find the patterns. See the tensions.

Go to a gallery. See how people rely on other people to guide their movements. Watch them see things for the first time. See them ignore something, dismiss something, be drawn in. Watch them share their experience with whomever they’re with. Now go to a lecture and see people hear. Watch them learn. How do they compose themselves? How do they connect to the speaker? When do they break the silence to yay or nay with the person sitting next to them? When do they nod off?

It is your job to see behavior everywhere, and your duty to seek out new experiences to learn from. Constantly reboot your mind and challenge your assumptions. Assumptions are our Achilles’ heel.

See

It’s not enough just to look. You have to train yourself how to see. Seeing comes not from your eyes, but from your mind. Seeing means more than noticing; it means understanding. Understanding comes from introspection. The only way to remember everything you’ve noticed is to write it all down. Pen on paper, no dictation to your voice recorder or typing on your iPhone. The physical motion of handwriting will better ingrain the fleeting moments into your consciousness.

Keep an observation journal with a section for each setting that you choose to study. Force yourself to systematically and consciously break down each action a person takes so that it reads like the captions of a storyboard. Use bullet points. Structure your phrases as verb-noun-adverb — describe what they did, what they used, and how they did it. “She pulled the door forcefully.” “He walked through the turnstile effortlessly.”

When you sit in a café and watch people enter and exit, keep a tally of how many people try to open the door the wrong way. Record exactly what someone does as they try to read the subway map. Watch how people navigate their carts at the grocery store and jot down what they do when they bump into someone else.

Periodically, read back through your journal and find the patterns in behavior across settings. Note the common actions and the outliers. Synthesize your bullet points into prose to validate the next time you go on an observation outing.

Foresee

The more regularly you purposefully integrate observation into your life, the more it will become your natural way of being. Soon you won’t be able to turn it off. You’ll notice interactions everywhere, and be amazed at the parallels between settings. You’ll find yourself predicting how people will move through a space and react to the obstacles that come their way; and you’ll give yourself a pat on the back when you discover you were right.

The patterns that you come to know will make their way into your work. They will help you shape design frameworks and develop metaphors. You’ll be able to accelerate people’s learning and assimilation because you’ll be creating familiar spaces and intuitive touchpoints. It might not even be intentional, but you’ll be doing it. It’s visceral.

UX London 2010

Want to meet Whitney Hess in real life? She is one of the speakers at the UX London conference (May 19-21), a three day event with both inspiring talks and energizing workshops.

Top image: elsie / cc-attribution

As an interaction designer working in an Agile environment, I’ve recently been asked by several colleagues in non-Agile arenas – folks in agency settings, consultancies, or in-house software companies – what it’s really like in terms of design workflow and output. Their questions have touched on everything from the day-to-day differences to the quality of the designs coming out of the process, and their perspectives have ranged from casual-and-curious, to scared-and-skeptical (e.g., “Oh, it’s just a fad” and “There’s that vast Agile agenda again.”)

Well, that got me thinking. What were the real differences, anyway?

The Agile Agenda

Two years ago, I was brand new to Agile software development and pretty naive overall when it came to understanding competing development methodologies. These days however, I feel like I have some ground beneath my feet when talking about development processes and their underlying philosophies. In taking a step back to consider what it has really meant for me as a designer these last couple of years, I tried to tackle questions like:

• What am I doing now that’s different?
• Did my previous skills and user-centered design approach still apply?
• Did I need to learn anything new?

And, perhaps most importantly:

• What has the overall quality of the user experience really been like?

The following takeaways capture some of the things I’ve learned along the way. This is simply my perspective with a little insight on what the transition has been like. What it is not, is a guide for what you and/ or your team of designers should be doing. I’ll leave that to far more knowledgeable folks to chime in on. Besides, one of the major tenets of Scrum is to do what makes the most sense for you and your team.

one of the major tenets of Scrum is to do what makes the most sense for you and your team.

(Note: It’s probably helpful to at least have a rudimentary understanding of Agile Software Development at this point. Check out the Wikipedia entry to learn more.)

Designer as Design Facilitator

First, a little context. One thing that Agile newbies should understand is that the importance of the team and its dynamics are paramount. Scrum teams are small, self-organizing, and cross-functional. They should include representatives from design, development, and quality assurance. Work is committed to for a finite period of time – known as Sprints, which typically range from 1 to 4 weeks – and the team takes on a feature(s) that it feels it can deliver in that amount of time. And “deliver” does mean working code that is technically releasable to the masses.

I work very closely with the developers on my team and even co-locate occasionally. That in and of itself isn’t ground-breaking stuff. However, what I’ve found is that a large part of my job these days revolves around continually fostering communication within the team, as well as with peripheral stakeholders.

A large part of my job these days revolves around continually fostering communication within the team, as well as with peripheral stakeholders.

Since the focus of the team is to consistently work on items that deliver the most value to the customer, distinct roles within the team are sometimes blurred. Everyone contributes to the best of their abilities given the priorities, including providing input on design. This is especially true when it comes to new features with undefined requirements, but it really has to do with the intimacy of the team and the immediacy around the thing that we’re working on.

Let’s say a Product Manager gives the go-ahead on Feature X because she sees a glorious market opportunity. Once that is communicated to the team and prioritized within the backlog – basically a to-do list consisting of “user stories”, which are written in non-technical language to describe the value of a feature from a user’s perspective – it is up to the team to decide exactly what to create. The product team may still have the final say, but it’s up to the designer to lead the early efforts. That includes applying the tools of her trade in the way of user-centered design principles, coupled with a clear understanding of the business drivers and the technology behind it all. Although some of you reading this may be saying “Well, I’ve been doing that all along, anyway”, the difference here is that it is now being recognized. More on that later, though.

When we embark on a new user story, one of the first things I do is generate some ideas and hold early brainstorming sessions with my core team. This allows me to corral the different ideas and understand everything from technical feasibility, to ballpark estimates on the potential development work involved. Sometimes the conversations go astray or become focused on implementation details, so it’s my job to get them back on track by grounding everything in the end users’ goals and expectations. And everyone likes to be heard, so there’s a good deal of diplomacy required as well.

This ongoing dialog helps to ensure that we as a team are headed towards an appropriate solution and it’s these conversations that the designer needs to facilitate, time and again. (By the way, all of the above involves getting user feedback early and often, but as designers reading this article, you already knew that.)

Again, the headline here is that it’s all about the team. Designers don’t design in isolation and then simply hand-off a design, never to be heard from again. It’s a much more collaborative and tightly integrated effort between the designers, product management, developers, and of course, users.

Nimbleness Required

OK, so all of the above assumes that a Designer actually has the necessary time to conceptualize, validate, and then iterate accordingly. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case with Scrum and this is one of its downsides; which, by the way, is also frequently cited by its critics – especially in the way of shortcomings related to being truly innovative.

When done properly, a “Sprint Zero” is introduced to allow designers to do their upfront discovery ahead of any coding. However, given the flexibility inherent in a process that is beholden to shifting business needs, priorities for the team do sometimes change from Sprint to Sprint. That allowance is, of course, one of Scrum’s key value propositions. It’s also where being nimble on the part of the designer needs to come into play. The old-school way of having a rigid, stepwise process doesn’t apply terribly well any more for delivering complex software that is useful, usable, and ultimately timely. Design processes need to adapt to some degree as well.

All of the above however, doesn’t mean that design thinking isn’t valued; it’s just that designers need to be flexible and shift priorities in accordance with business objectives. If you’re a designer that finds themselves deeply committed to a design or unable to let go of a particular project, you’ll need to acclimate. Designing within Scrum means being able to shift as needed and handling ambiguity well. Really well.

Designing within Scrum means being able to shift as needed and handling ambiguity well. Really well.

(For more on the pros and cons of incorporating User-Centered Design within Agile, do read Anthony Colfelt’s incredibly insightful article).

The Lovely Bones

As mentioned earlier, Scrum understands that the needs of the business and its customers (i.e., requirements) will change and almost embraces that mantra. However, because Scrum also calls for working code as soon as possible, you may be thinking that those are opposing forces at work. However, the truth is that it can work. And once again, this is where our fearless designer comes in…

Remember Feature X and how the designer was brainstorming what it could ultimately become? Well, if we join our regularly-scheduled programming already in progress, it’s the designer (and potentially researchers) that are coming up with the building blocks for an incrementally feasible strategy.

What are the core features that users need? Which functionality can they live without (for now)? What could add some wow-factor? In other words, what’s the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)? Getting user feedback is crucial at this juncture to help determine what the bare bones will be – sometimes referred to as a “walking skeleton.” Designers help define what gets released in order to then get feedback on what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s next. To a large degree, releasing often tends to keep your designs and product honest.

Designers help define what gets released in order to then get feedback on what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s next.

As with any process, there are very real trade-offs involved. Given Scrum’s inherent proclivity to release something sooner than later, the big question often becomes “is it good enough?” This is why designers working in Agile need to be well-versed in communicating the business value of good design. Making business folks and developers understand why user experience matters is critical to the success of your product in this environment and it’s a never-ending crusade.

Incremental Design While Keeping Your Eye on the Prize

In working to define a Minimum Viable Product, the first challenge is thinking through what can be built in order to satisfy marketplace and user needs in the here and now. Again, we’re back to that notion of immediacy.

Because a designer goes from defining high-level requirements to specifying the very concrete steps of what to build and when, the trick is to keep your eye on the big-picture. I’ll have to admit that I’ve found this to be one of the most challenging aspects of designing in this environment. Once you determine what to build as bite-size pieces of functionality in order to get something out, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a systems-level perspective on the holistic user experience – i.e., trying to avoid a Frankenstein-ish product – when priorities shift and you have to come back to a design at a later time.

Take any great iPhone app as an example. It doesn’t include everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, but instead distills the core set of features that users will need and then attempts to make that experience really good. This doesn’t mean that you can’t add or improve things at a later time; it’s just that you try and give customers the best you can with the bare essentials first. (One could even argue that the entire smart phone revolution is founded on this very principle. Otherwise, users would have surely dismissed the complexity inevitably inherent in designers lazily porting over a desktop experience into the mobile world.)

Welterweight Documentation

It’s probably no surprise at this point that design documentation is kept fairly minimal. The close working relationship among team members means a great deal is communicated face-to-face via sketches, whiteboards, and simple wireframes. The goal of design work (i.e., creating deliverables in the way of experience models, flow diagrams, and mockups) is really to communicate ideas to the team so as to jump-start the development process.

Once developers begin coding, I make sure to check-in early and often to offer advice and provide any additional documentation, repeating as necessary. Documentation still exists and is important, but it’s kept lightweight to capture the essence of an interaction and consumed in a just-in-time fashion.

For those designers coming from more traditional development backgrounds, you may be relieved that large documents with incredibly detailed specifications, footnotes, and obscure corner-cases, are a thing of the past. However, as indicated above, the time you have to think through a design is also compressed.

The big takeaway here is to use your design time wisely and create only as much documentation as is absolutely necessary to communicate your ideas effectively. It doesn’t need to be pixel-perfect, unless of course it needs to be pixel-perfect to get your concepts across.

create only as much documentation as is absolutely necessary to communicate your ideas effectively

Retrospective Introspection

When was the last time you really thought about what you and your team were doing? Did you ask questions like: How is this process going overall? What’s working and what isn’t? Should we be doing things any differently?

Well, with Scrum, facing yourself in the mirror is a standard option courtesy of “retrospectives” after each and every Sprint. They offer the team an opportunity to acknowledge strengths and weaknesses with unabashed transparency. I’ve found that the very nature of this exercise forces designers to focus more on what’s important by continually questioning their own process. This is especially beneficial when it’s coupled with customer feedback from designs that are live because the team is getting stuff out more often.

facing yourself in the mirror is a standard option courtesy of “retrospectives” after each and every Sprint.

Parting Shot

Hopefully you now have a little insight as to what to expect with Agile, as well as some awareness of the trade-offs involved. Upfront design and research are sometimes rushed and the ever-present threat of compromising user experience quality in favor of releasing something – which frankly feels like a gravitational pull sometimes! – are very real challenges. That said, not going astray and loosing your moral and/ or design compass by building unnecessary features and going down dead-ends is ultimately a good thing.

And rest assured designers, there’s still no shortcut to delivering a great user experience. The same, core user-centered design principles you know and love still apply and are highly valued. In the end, it’s not that drastic of a shift and designing within Agile just keeps you on your toes a little more.

My parting advice: be nimble, collaborate with your team as much as possible, and don’t take an uncompromising, hard-line approach to process guidelines. And most importantly, keep your eye on the prize.

This is the first of a two-part series. The second article, Designers as Product Owners, will focus on additional responsibilities designers can take on within an Agile organization.

It always frustrates me when I find out that a USB stick is full after I’ve tried to put new data on it? Does data have to be so invisible? This frustration was the starting point of a new product, one that visualizes the digital information on a USB stick.

Below you see my ideal USB memory stick, even though I am pretty sure it will be too expensive to develop. Let’s dream:

The light inside the glass represents the data saved, so no light means no data and full of light is no more space. Each type of data is represented by different colors. For example pink is for images, blue is for documents and green for movies, etc.

It syncs with the icon on your desktop.