We all seem to be talking about changing behaviour through good design…but changing behaviour is actually really hard.  Working as a psychologist in a detox unit at the start of my career has admittedly shaped my view of what it takes to change someone’s behaviour; and whilst I learnt it certainly isn’t impossible, it often takes time. Combine this with the fact that most human behaviour is not considered to be overly planned, with ‘conscious thought’ playing, at best, a small role in shaping our choices…things start to become a little tricky for us as designers.  So how do we start to make sense of what influences someone to change their behaviour, given we are often charged with creating designs that are ultimately intended to encourage, if not drive, some form of behaviour change?

Behaviour Change, One Step at a Time(r)

An egg timer – the catalyst of change

Can you recall when you last changed your behaviour and maintained that change for an extended period of time?  The last time I can recall was triggered a few years ago when I received a four minute egg timer in the post.  Our state was then in the height of a drought, and a local government agency (Melbourne Water) had sent the egg-timer out to encourage sustainable water use.

When I first opened the envelope I promptly put it next to our bathroom sink in the hope it would make my young children brush their teeth longer than their current ten second swill.  Not surprisingly, it didn’t.  So it sat near the sink for several months until one day I looked at it and thought, “how about I actually put this in the shower…”.

Almost immediately some things happened.  Firstly I had to learn to shower within the four minutes it allowed.  This took a surprising amount of time and effort.  However, once I had mastered that, I felt incredibly guilty if I stayed in the shower for any longer than the time it allowed, and so was compelled to the timer. (Now, for the few rare times I am under the shower for longer than four minutes, I have a mental bank of time in credit so I can justify the extravagance.)

What’s fascinating is that while it took a while for the device to find its way to the intended context, once it was there the initiative to change was almost immediate, and the result easy to maintain.  The presence of such a small thing, positioned in the right context, made such a huge impact on my behaviour.

Why It Matters to Designers

Design has always facilitated change in behaviour, especially in the area of technology, but it seems lately that design for behaviour change is in the forefront of people’s awareness.  Part of the challenge is understanding what actually influences someone to change their behaviour in the first place.

As experience design researchers we quite often focus on what people do, and why they do it, so we can incrementally design better products, services and systems to ultimately improve the customer perception of a client’s brand.  However, one of the most important things we need to be mindful of when designing for behaviour change is that we must also focus on the ‘future’ view of how we want people to behave with what we create.  We need to consider the end-state behaviour ideals that we are aiming for when we are designing.

As Henry Ford says, “if I had have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse”: people can’t project beyond their current experience to meet a future need.  That’s the designer’s job.  The following models of behaviour change are useful to consider when working on projects.

The A B C of behaviour

The most basic tenet of behavioural analysis is to view behaviours as a function of a person and their environment.  That is, something happens to precede behaviour (the antecedent) which in effect causes or influences the behaviour, resulting in a consequence.  We can’t change a person, but we can influence the way they behave by shaping the environment they function within.

What this model shows us is we can shape behaviour, and generally the easiest way to do this is through some form of positive reinforcement or removal of a negative.

As designers, the important part of this basic model when applied to behavioural observations is that your design is the positive reinforcer, or the negative affect; meaning the behaviour you are observing is quite often a direct result of your design.

This shows us through good design we have the ability to shape and influence someone’s behaviour. (Unfortunately this is true for bad design too!)

We can’t change a person, but we can influence the way they behave by shaping the environment they function within … through good design we have the ability to shape and influence someone’s behaviour.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour

The Theory of Planned Behaviour, proposed by Icek Ajzen, (and a modification of Ajzen & Fishbern’s earlier model called the Theory of Reasoned Action) explains the link between attitudes and behaviours; it essentially proposes a model for how human action is guided.  Today, it is thought to be one of the most predictive persuasion theories.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour by Icek Ajzen

The model highlights what influences a persons decisions, and attempts to reveal why we might make certain choices. The model suggests that in order to predict whether a person intends to do something, we need to know:

• Whether the person is in favour of doing it (attitude);
• How much the person feels social pressure to do it (subjective norm);
• Whether the person feels in control of the action in question (perceived behavioural control).

Without going too deeply into the cognitive side of things, it’s important to keep in mind that behaviour is often not intentional or controlled at all.   With conscious thought believed to play a small role in the decision making process.

Nevertheless, we need to keep this model in mind, because if we can understand the attitudes of customers and what influences the choices they make, we are better able to use this information to design solutions that will resonate with their belief system, and ultimately, have a greater chance of influencing them to change their behaviours.

The Stages of Change Model

Another useful model is the Stages of Change Model proposed by Prochaska & DiClemente, which is arguably one of the most dominant models of health behaviour change.  This model outlines several steps in the behavioural change process, and assists to gauge an individual’s readiness to act on a new healthier behavior, and provides strategies or processes of change to assist someone move through the stages of change toward action and long-term maintenance (i.e., sustained change).

The model broadly suggests that people can cycle in and out, and around several times before sustained change is realised, then maintained for the long term.

Stages of Change Model by Prochaska & DiClemente

The stages in the change cycle are broadly noted to be:

• Pre-contemplation
• Contemplation
• Preparation or determination
• Action
• Maintenance
• Termination (100% self efficacy)
• Relapse (cycle back to an earlier stage).

Taken together, the models can help us as designers understand how people might make certain choices (Theory of Planned Behaviour), and consider ‘where’ in the cycle of change an individual may be (Stages of Change Model), in order to assist them move through these stages toward a new behaviour.

The Models in Real Life

The Models can be tied back to my egg timer experience. An environmental trigger (the water crisis) was accompanied by social norms of the time around saving water in Melbourne, so my senses were highly attuned to this and my motivation to comply was high.  I thought I was incredibly conscious of the amount of water I was using, however, the real game changer was the arrival of the egg timer in the post; this tool forced me to see how long I actually took when I was in the shower.

Applying the models to my situation of behaviour change

Once this tool was placed in the correct context I observed a dramatic change in my water conserving habits, so clearly I was ready for ‘action’, according to the Stages of Change model.  What is more, internalisation of this behaviour has resulted, and behaviour change has been maintained across a substantial period of time.

So looking at basic behavioural analysis – or the ABC of my behaviour – the tool was the Antecedent, and the Consequence was that I felt better about having a shorter shower and saving water…less guilt if you like.  So the result was that I adjusted my behaviour to shower in less time, and quite rapidly too.

What else can influence behaviour change?

Don’t Forget Rules …

Melbourne Bike Service

Rules undoubtedly affect mass behaviour change.  However, the change they make may not always be what is expected.

One example comes from Melbourne’s new bike share service – and the problems caused by the government’s laws requiring users to have and wear a helmet while using it. From a behavioural perspective, how about considering the behaviour the government were hoping to change with the introduction of helmet laws in the 1990’s, and how it’s fared?

Helmets laws were first introduced as a way to assist lower the level of head injuries sustained by cyclists.  And as with many behaviour change initiatives, we are now – some time down the track – in a position to assess if the laws assisted, by comparing injury rates before and after the laws were introduced.

Graphs of cyclist hospital injuries in Victoria with and without head injuries (1995) show that while head injuries were reduced, so were non-head injuries – so perhaps all they did is reduce the number of cyclists?  If anything, the peaks and troughs show that seasonal variation (i.e., winter), appears to have had the greatest impact of all, and that helmet laws have done little, if anything, to improve safety.

Cyclists hospital admissions in Victoria with and without head injuries

Today we want to design services and provide infrastructure that encourages use of bikes, and unfortunately, when we reflect on it from a behaviour change perspective, having to wear helmets appears to have caused a decline in the number of cyclists.

The assumption that all cyclists would adopt helmets because it was the law appears to have caused behaviours within the wider population that were very different from those initially expected.

… Or Fun!

Fun – children understand it!

But what if there are no rules (the world most of us work within)?

It is possible to change someone’s behaviour, particularly through fun.

Ralph Koster’s book A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004) looks into the meaning and significance of fun. He suggests that fun is the element of life that is enjoyable and frees us from the normal stresses of the everyday – and also the means by which we retrain our brain to learn new patterns of behaviour.

Fun is the means by which we retrain our brain to learn new patterns of behaviour.

The explosion of games and apps on mobile phones show that games present a real opportunity to change people’s behaviours and habits. Examples include Frog’s Tempt’d (resisting the temptation of unhealthy eating through leaning on your social network as DesignMind explains), and Runkeeper (a way to track, measure and improve your workouts).  I’ve also heard of great ideas for encouraging people to save money, water and energy  through a game-like applications.  Watch this space! The game explosion and their application for driving positive behaviour change is going to intensify.

Design for Behaviour Change? Yes We Can.

So, we can change behaviour through design of products, services and systems, and the best way to do this is to first consider the customers culture and context, before we even start on ideas.

However, if we hope to design behavioural change, we’ll need to focus beyond what is happening right now.  One way to ensure we are looking ahead is to be mindful of the behaviour we want to observe in the future. Set behavioural goals, just as you would set design goals, and let this guide your strategy and design process.

Here are a few takeaways to consider when you are designing solutions that need to drive behaviour change.

1. Define the desired behaviour change you want to observe;
2. Feed this into the business strategy and design process, let it guide these processes;
3. Define your target audience, then go a bit outside the norm.  You often learn more from those who don’t meet your assumed or expected specifications;
4. Conduct research and understand the behavioural predictors of the population (attitudes, norms, control, stages of change).  Qualitative and quantitative data is needed here;
5. Monitor, measure and modify.  Remember, changing a behaviour can take time, so let’s be patient!

References

• Stages of Change Model, Prochaska & Diclemente (1982).
• The Theory of Planned Behavior, Icek Ajzen (1985). [PDF]
  
• The Theory of Reasoned Action, Fishbein & Ajzen (1975).
• Evaluation of the bicycle helmet wearing law in Victoria during its first four years; D. Carr, M. Skalova & M.H. Cameron (1995).
• A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Ralph Koster (2004).
• Tempt’d (site, soon to be app). More information on the initiative on DesignMind.
  
• Runkeeper (app/site)

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Image Credits:

• Egg timer in shower –  Source: Jannygirl on Flickr.
• ABC blocks, Change Model and Theory of Planned Behaviour Model courtesy of Symplicit.
• Melbourne Bike Share System – Source: Mikael Colville-Andersen on Flickr.
• Head injuries [graph] – Source: D. Carr, M. Skalova & M.H. Cameron (1995).
• Girl – Source: Crackpotstudio on Flickr. © Royalty-Free/Corbis.

Meet Aristotle

Aristotle

Back in the day (300 BC), the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle decided to write a piece called ‘Poetics’ where he explained his beliefs on poetics. In this essay, he outlined the framework of famous Greek tragedies and from this extrapolated the basic structure of a good story. And it’s this structure that has been used ever since in millions of books, movies and other storytelling products. So I thought: why not use it for interactive products? But it wasn’t as simple as I thought. When exploring Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ I came across many different interpretations and translations of his work. Some described seven elements, most others outlined six. When looking at the descriptions of these elements, I also discovered that people interpreted his elements in many different ways. One of the better translations of his work is S.H. Butcher’s translation, describing six elements: plot, character, thought, diction, song and spectacle. This formed the foundation of my framework, but I did make some changes:

• ‘thought’ became ‘theme’ – it basically describes the same thing, but is easier to interpret;
• ‘song’ became ‘melody’ for the same reason as above;
• plus I added ‘decor’ as the part that graphically files in the chosen theme.

Before jumping into the framework, I must note that there have been others that used Aristotle’s thoughts on digital products. Of these the most interesting must be Brenda Laurel, who used it in her book ‘Computers as Theatre.’ In this book she links Aristotle’s work to human-computer interaction on a more abstract level.

The Framework

So let’s get started. I already mentioned the different elements that we have in our framework:

1. Plot
2. Character
3. Theme
4. Diction
5. Melody
6. Decor
7. Spectacle

As you can see they are numbered. The reason is that Aristotle rightly believed that there was a certain hierarchy when setting up a good story. According to him plot was the absolute key, character came close behind and the rest would follow. This is an interesting thought and overall I agree with him, but in my mind there is a better structure to be made, and this is it:

For me both plot and character form the core of the story (read: product) you create. They are created at the same moment, both elements need the other to be created and they directly influence each other. As soon as these are set you can create an overall theme. There can be multiple themes (resulting in multiple products) create on the plot/character base. After this you start filling in the details by defining diction, melody, decor and spectacle. Let’s dive into each element.

The elements

Now I will explain each element and it’s importance in storytelling. Since examples work the best I will relate each element to the (brilliant) movie Big Fish (2003) directed by Tim Burton. After that I will show the relationship with interactive design.

1. PLOT The first step in the process is to define the plot, which is the basic storyline in a play, book, movie, song or, in our case, an interactive product. According to Aristotle it should “arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience. [...] A plot tells of a change in fortune that happens to a character. The only kinds of change, he says, are from good fortune to bad, or bad to good.” (source: Wikipedia) It’s really important to understand that it’s the absolute basic storyline, there isn’t any setting defined yet. There is a handful of plots that have been used over and over throughout the ages, like battle stories (former soldier wants to take revenge, has difficult moments but eventually prevails) and romantic stories (woman doesn’t like a guy at first but through strange events they keep bumping into each other and in the end fall in love).

Big Fish’s plot This story follows a dying father and his son. Throughout his lifetime, the son has heard many different myths told by his father, causing him to have difficulty determining what was true or not about his father’s life. So the son decides to look back on his father’s life and find out what was the real story. By the end of the movie, he begins to understand who his father really was.

An interactive product’s plot The most important thing an interactive product should have is focus: What is the goal of this interactive product? This goal combined with the road towards it is an interactive product’s plot. By defining it at the start of a project it will help you keep a clear focus throughout the design process and helps to decide the outcome of the other elements. For example, the plot of most travel websites is something like this: “John is looking for the best possible holiday location but has difficulties making up his mind. When visiting website x he’ll find out what are the best spots and in the end he makes his choice and books a holiday.” Interactive product plot = goal of the interactive product + its road to get there

2. CHARACTER As soon as you have defined the plot you start working on the characters. These are the personalities that play a central role in the story. These can be people, animals or even objects. The primary characters are the “heroes of the story whose actions determine the plot of the story. Secondary characters have supporting roles to provide the main characters with information, material goods, services or whatever is needed in order to advance the plot.” (source: Narrati)

Big Fish characters The primary character in the story is Ed Bloom (both as a junior and a senior). Most of the story revolves around him. Next to him there are many secondary characters that play around him, like his son Will Bloom (who is both a character and the narrator of the story), Karl the Giant and the witch.

An interactive product’s characters The first obvious answer to an interactive product’s characters are the users. They are very important. But another important character is the brand behind the interactive product. They also have an important role to play as they engage with the user. In social median interactive products it is a bit different, there the relationship between users is more important. So the second step in the process is to define who your target audience is and what the brand personality behind the interactive product is. These will form the characters that will engage in the story.

Interactive product characters = users + brand

3. THEME Theme (or setting) “refers to the set of locations where the story takes place as well as the history, geography and the laws of nature of the world in which the story takes place.” (source: Narrati) It has great influence on the way the plot is perceived and makes it possible to reuse a plot. Imagine a love story that takes place in an American city with e-mail as a central theme (“You’ve Got Mail”), the Second World War (“Pearl Harbour”) or a Celtic story (“Tristan & Isolde”.)

Big Fish’s theme The movie mainly takes place in a magical, but still realistic world. Things that happen seem to be a bit odd, but you can never say something didn’t happen. The physics of the world are therefore realistic. It’s a very colourful and energetic world.

An interactive product’s themeAfter defining the plot and characters of an interactive product, you should define the theme of your interactive product. I see this as the concept behind the site. This is a more challenging element, since it will be what can differentiate your product from competitors. Most travel websites will have the same basic plot and the same characters, so how will your interactive product make a difference? In the concept (theme) phase you will have to come up with a world that is so appealing to it’s characters that users want to use your product over your competitors’.

Same plot, different theme - Hungry Suitcase & Booking.com

So an interactive product’s theme is the concept

4. DICTION Diction refers to the choice of words in a story. These are the conversations between the characters, but also the narrator’s dialog. This is important for building the characters in a story.

Big Fish’s diction In the movie there is dialog between Ed Bloom and the people he encounters that give life to the characters. You notice that Ed Bloom is sometimes surprised by what happens in his journey, but he is never annoyed. His conversations with his son and the presence of his son as the narrator of the story illustrate their special father and son bond.

An interactive product’s diction In what way does the interactive product talk to the user? Does it use formal speech or is it very relaxed? Does it talk to you in an authoritative and helpful voice? Is it challenging or maybe even making fun of you? The tone-of-voice (and thus it’s copy) of an interactive product is really important. The choice of short copy and/or long copy influences the way it’s perceived. Should a travel site talk to you in a personal way and give advise like it’s a friend? Or would it talk very functionally and robotic?

So an interactive product’s diction is its copy

5. MELODY A melody is “a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity.” (source: Wikipedia) It is something that becomes recognizable, it is in fact a pattern. In movies this is often translated into music, like the enigmatic sound you hear in the Jaws movies when something seems to happen. The moment you hear this sound you know trouble is in the air and cold sweat starts to appear.

Big Fish’s melody Throughout the movie you constantly see Edward Bloom get in situations that you wouldn’t believe to be true, but over and over again you are pulled into this magical world and find out that things are real. This recurring event is the melody of Big Fish. “Big Fish is about what’s real and what’s fantastic, what’s true and what’s not true, what’s partially true and how, in the end, it’s all true.” – Tim Burton

An interactive product’s melody The melody in this case isn’t audio-based, but it is the complete set of patterns and the structure of the product. Having a melody forces you to have a logical base that users recognize, by using it often or because it is used in similar other products. In the case of the holiday website a common pattern is the use of filtering on result pages. Usually these are placed on the left and users expect this kind of interaction to be there and immediately understand what to do with it. An interactive product’s melody are the design patterns

6. DECOR The decor is the design of the locations in which the story takes place. Even with the plot and setting defined you can have many different decors. You can have a very detailed one where you get the feeling of a rich and energetic world (“Lord of the Rings”.) It can look raw and comic-like (“Sin City”), but it can also focus mainly on the characters and leave the rest away.

Big Fish’s decor The decor in Big Fish is very detailed. You get the feeling of a magical world, almost a fairy tail. There is always more behind the horizon. It’s also very colorful, which gives a certain energy and affection to the created world.

An interactive product’s decor The decor of an interactive product is its graphic design (art direction). After having defined the plot, characters and setting you can still have a wide choice in decor. Will the site look very modern, simplistic and to-the-point or is it very detailed? Should it feel like there is always more to explore or does it have a classical setup? The decor puts emphasis on the setting.

So an interactive product’s decor is the graphic design

7. SPECTACLE The spectacle is “an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates” (source: Wikipedia). It is something to be remembered, that makes a real impact on you. According to Aristotle you shouldn’t let a spectacle control the story, the main structure of a story should be solid enough to hold on its own. It’s interesting to note that a lot of Hollywood movies actually lay their focus on spectacle above plot.

Big Fish’s spectacle Movie spoiler alert. The biggest spectacle of Big Fish is at the end. At the funeral of Ed Bloom you discover that all the fairy tales were in fact true and that the people are real. This is something you will remember and talk about at the end of the movie.

An interactive product’s spectacleThese are the features of the interactive product. The stuff people talk about when they are not on your site. It’s that way of browsing that’s so special or the unexpected gift you received. A good example here is Moo.com, where Little Moo sends you e-mails about the progress of your order. Or the monkey in Mailchimp that shows you how wide your newsletter should be (he breaks his arm when its too wide).

MailChimp's way of showing the maximum width of an e-mail

So a website’s spectacle are its special features

The importance of the elements

I hope I’ve explained each element well. What’s important to know is that by setting up your story step by step you’ll create a great foundation. Each element is dependent on the elements above it, so by building up your story you’ll make sure your product will be solid. Too often you see teams starting with the cool features (spectacle) or by starting with the design (decor), which results in a good looking site that nobody will use. It’s best to remember this: there are more ugly looking sites with great content being used then good looking sites with bad content. By defining these seven elements in order, you will be able to ensure your product has a great story to tell.

This May, Louis Rosenfeld will be speaking at UXLX in Lisbon, Portugal. As part of our media partnership with UXLX, Johnny Holland got the chance to interview Louis on a topic that is near and dear to his heart lately, Web Analytics and User Experience. We’d like to thank Louis once again for taking the time out of busy schedule for this interview. Hope you enjoy.

Johnny Holland: You’ve been spending a lot of time writing and presenting on Web Analytics and User Experience lately. From what you’ve learned so far, why do you think web analytics are being used more now than in the past?

Louis Rosenfeld: Design is a more strategic activity than ever before, and with more at stake, we’re all looking for evidence to help us make and validate our decisions.

Plus analytics tools are becoming cheaper and easier to use.  For example, there’s really no excuse for not at least trying out a tool like Google Analytics on your own personal site.  It’s free and, thanks to the great work of brilliant UX people like Jeff Veen, easy to use and understand.

How are teams commonly using analytics to measure the effectiveness of the user experience their product/service is providing?

Traditionally, teams have used basic analytics, like clickstream analysis, to measure conversions of all sorts, such as the percentage of customers that successfully make an online purchase, or the points at which prospective college students fail to complete an online application.  They’ve also compared behaviors among audience segments; for example, are international students having a harder time with that application than domestic students?.

Louis Rosenfeld

The challenge with traditional web analytics is that, while it’s a great way to determine what is happening when users interact with a product, it’s not that good at telling you why they do what they do.  Analytics will help you arrive at some great hypotheses–but for the most part, you’ll have to test them using other user research methods.  And it’s through those more qualitative methods–the one that UX people are more savvy with–that it becomes possible to learn why the new design is better, why the new content titling guidelines are worth following, and so on.

How can analytics help inform UX activities prior to performing user research?

Well, to be clear it is a form of user research, but sure there are many ways.  For example, I suggest reviewing frequent queries before determining what sort of task analysis you might do.  The “what” data of analytics helps you sharpen the “why” questions of qualitative research.

How can it be used following user research?

If you can segment your data by audiences that correspond to your personas, you can incorporate things like common queries and most-accessed documents into those personas.

How are teams misusing information gathered from analytics?

By not going beyond the reports.  By taking that what data–say, a factoid that states that “placing the button to the right of the address field increased conversion 13%”–as an important conclusion on its own, rather than exploring why that’s the case.  If we don’t go further, we only learn something about button positioning for some unique case, rather than something more generalizable about user behavior that can help us solve future design problems.

Is this why we see blog posts and articles on “Left aligned buttons work better for …”? How damaging can posts like that be?

Yes.  Those are very damaging when they’re presented as dogma and taken literally, rather than as points for discussion that, hopefully, lead to learning.  Thinking about the “what” is pretty pointless if you don’t explore the “why”.

Yes.  Those are very damaging when they’re presented as dogma and taken literally, rather than as points for discussion that, hopefully, lead to learning.  Thinking about the “what” is pretty pointless if you don’t explore the “why”.

Is the information being gained by analytics impacting boardroom decisions or business strategies at all? If so how?

I don’t spend a lot of time in boardrooms–for better or for worse–but I imagine that when you manage a large organization, even a non-profit, your main job is to supervise one or more tiers of middle managers.  That doesn’t scale well, so you’ll naturally resort to numbers to help track the performance of middle managers and the products they manage.  Those metrics may be poor, or they may be incomplete; either way, they’re likely to amplify what is already a dangerous approach to making important decisions.

Do you think it’s possible to become too married to the data that comes out of analytics? Where do you draw the line?

Yes, but that’s true of any form of research data, whether it comes from analytics or user testing or an ethnographic study.  Each, on its own, paints a woefully incomplete picture of reality.

But there are bigger risks with analytics data to keep in mind.  First, there is more of it, which will impress some people far more than it should–especially because some of it will be garbage data that should have been scrubbed in the first place.

Second, analytics apps provide us with canned, impressive-looking reports.  While these reports can be useful, they’re generic.  They don’t necessarily pertain to your users’ needs or your organization’s goals.  Analytics data becomes more useful when it helps answer one of your questions, but making it do that takes more effort than many organizations are willing to invest.

My favorite example here is Netflix.  They identify which movies are getting searched most frequently.  Of those, they identify the movies whose pages are getting the most visits.  Of those, they identify the movies which are getting added to customers’ queues least frequently.  That’s a report that’s hugely valuable for Netflix to study regularly; in fact, it’s not so much a report as the answer to a useful question:  “Which popular titles not being added to the queue?”  Either way, it certainly wasn’t anything their analytics application was going to provide automatically.

While writing your latest book (on Site Search Analytics), has anything special stood out to you on the subject?

I’m just shocked at how few people even bother to analyze what their site’s users are searching for–which is why I wanted to write this book and get the topic out there as a valid user research method.  This under-utilization of query data is due in part to ignorance–many of us don’t even know we can get at this data–and partly because it can be a little tricky to set up.

But there aren’t many better–or other–sources of such semantically-rich behavioral data.  In high volumes.  Without the taint of coming from a lab.  In effect, query data is our users telling us what content they want from our sites in their own words.  Really, they’re trying to have a conversation with us; are we listening and learning from it?

Search query data can not only to help us improve our search engine’s performance, but our content and our metadata as well.  So, if you’ve got a search engine, you’ve got query data somewhere.  Lots of it, likely.  Why wouldn’t you want to learn from it?

What can User Experience learn from Web Analytics? What can Web Analytics learn from User Experience?

This is one of those questions that could take a few pages to answer.  For sake of brevity, let me distill it this way:  Web Analytics is great at measuring and monitoring how well an organization is performing at meeting its goals (as expressed as Key Performance Indicators).  in other words, WA tells us about the world that we know.  UX methods, conversely, help us suss out patterns and outliers in data–they expose the world that we don’t know.  Each results in an incredibly valuable perspective, but the organizations that combine these will realize benefits far greater than the sums of their parts.

You describe the nature and personality of Web Analytics and User Experience as polar opposites. What if they had a baby together though? What would it look like? How would it behave?

That’d be one amazing (if somewhat schizophrenic) child.  He would pepper its parents with incessant “why?” questions, like all kids do, but just as many “what” questions as well.  He’d probably be quite odd-looking, but that’s another story.

UX Lisbon 2011

Louis Rosenfeld will be  speaking at UX Lx: User Experience Lisbon, one of Europe’s premier user experience events. The second annual UX Lx conference takes place May 11-13, 2011 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Jeroen van Geel: Earlier this year you wrote that design research doesn’t innovate, technology does. This caused quite a discussion. What were the main counterexamples you got back?

Donald Norman: No, that’s not what I said. And indeed, that is the main problem with the reaction I got: many people never read my post or listened to my talk: they simply reacted. (The people who did consider it thoughtfully were very favorable; in fact, I was invited to give it at several places, like Delft and the Copenhagen Business School).

Innovation is a very complex topic, very thoroughly discussed in academia, which is not something most designers follow. The important points are these: There are many forms of innovation–process, product, radical, incremental, and so on. I considered two forms of product innovation: radical (e.g., the invention of the telephone) and incremental (e.g., releasing a new version of a mobile phone, automobile, or kitchen appliance). Radical innovation in the products, I argued, always comes from the works of inventors, excited by some new technology and anxious to explore its potential. I do not know of a single radical innovation that has come from the people who do design research. Not the telephone or automobile, not Facebook or Twitter. Not 3D television nor, for that matter, high-definition television. Not hybrid autos. Not the Internet itself. Market studies, market research, design research, field observations (ethnographic studies), etc., do not yield radical innovations. They are very important in finding new uses of and improvements to existing products, but these are incremental innovations, not radical ones.

Incremental innovation is very important. Over 90% of the radical innovations fail (some of my friends say 99%). Yes, when they happen they change lives, but think about it: how many radical new product innovations have you experienced in your lifetime? One? Ten? Even if it was 100 that is still relatively infrequent compared to the thousands of incremental product innovations every day.

Moreover, radical innovation almost always starts off being inferior to what already exists: it takes good design research to transform that radical idea into something that is appealing to the world.

Alas, we train our design students to do radical innovation, even though in the real world, these radical ideas will almost certainly fail, even though they will be asked to do incremental innovation in their practice, and even though the evidence says that the radical innovations come from anywhere, and often take years or even decades before their worth is understood and appreciated.

In other words: we are not facing facts. We shy away from truth. We are delusional.

One of your points is that there is a gap between research and practice. What did you mean? Do you see any way of changing this?

Don Norman

Unfortunately, the term “research” has two very different meanings in design. One is the way it is interpreted by practitioners: design research is the early studies of the needs and characteristics of the people for whom the product or service is being produced. Let me call this “Design Studies.” The other is the interpretation by the university academic community as well as industrial research laboratories, where research is an activity aimed at increasing our fundamental knowledge in a field or of producing new concepts, ideas, and realizations. Let me use the term “research” for this activity. Both have gaps.

Design studies are often clever, engaging, and entertaining. But the relationship between the knowledge gained and the design of the product is often forgotten. Those who do design studies are often applied social scientists–not designers–and they often fail to frame either their studies or their results in ways that are meaningful to the design team. Many design teams simply ignore their reports. Now, I hasten to add that in many design firms, the design studies are done jointly with the design team, so this gap does not exist. But I find this to be the exception, not the rule.

Research, on the other hand, is aimed at the development of new knowledge and concepts, new ideas, and realizations of those ideas. Researchers often push technology to the limit, demonstrating compelling, engaging prototypes. But they are seldom practical. Here the gap between research and practice is fundamental: I do not believe it can be bridged easily. This is because the goals, motives, and even personalities of the research teams differ from those of the practitioners. One wants deep understanding, the other wants to know what to do next. One is happy as soon as an idea has been demonstrated, even if it is held together only by tape, string and mirrors–that is, even if it only works on special cases and requires careful attendance and repair by the research group. The practitioner wants something complete, robust, and reliable. Researchers are incapable of delivering this; they are too curious, too driven to learn new knowledge. The practitioner is too practical.

The design studies-practice gap can be overcome by better training of the design studies people, better integration of design teams, and better attention to the needs of the product team. The research-practice gap can only be overcome by an intermediary: a translation team that translates the research knowledge into practical realizations that the product teams can develop and deploy.

On emotional design

How far can we take the concept of “emotional design” in the nuts and bolts of a product? Do you believe it can infuse every aspect of the design process?

Emotion is so fundamental to human behavior that the answers are: “all the way” and “yes.”

While product designers have been designing personality into products for quite some time, it’s still very new in web design. Do you think we can design websites with a personality?

Don Norman: Not only is the answer “yes,” but we already do so. Everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal. Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions. Bad websites have horrible personalities and instill horrid emotional states in their users, usually unwittingly.

Everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal. Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions.

We need to design things–products, websites, services–to convey whatever personality and emotions are desired. Sometimes these might be negative. Mostly they should be positive.

You know about personas? Well, in design we should always create a persona for the product and ensure that everything in that product is consistent with that persona.

Ecosystems & Design Thinking

In your book Living with Complexity, you state that products become stronger when they are part of an ecosystem. One of the obvious examples here is Apple–why do you think they were so early in adapting the model of an ecosystem? What makes them different?

Because Apple has always had a mission: to make technology understandable and easy to use. It has always put this first. (There was a period when Apple lost its way and stumbled badly in the jungle of ill-conceived products, but fortunately for all of us, Apple got back on track and now leads the way for others.)

When a company or design team wants to start working on an ecosystem, where should they start?

From the beginning: think through every single aspect of a product or service, from when the person first hears about it, to the advertisements, sales, and purchase experience. to the packaging and installation, to usage, service and updating, and to the products and services with which it must interact. Make sure everything fits the proper persona –the proper image. Finally, think of the end-of-life experience. Updating and/or replacing the item so that the transition from the old to the new is painless: no settings lost, no data, no personalization. And make it kind to the environment.

Think systems.

A lot of people, including many designers, believe that “design thinking” has become too detached from reality and too cocky. What are your thoughts? Do designers really have something different to offer from anyone else? If so, what?

Here I refer you to my Core77 essay on the topic.

As one of the pioneers of our field, where do you get your inspiration from? What is for you the best way to stay energized?

Stay curious. Always be learning new topics. I make it a point to learn a completely new topic every year. And I talk mostly with my critics. When people agree with me, it may feel good, but I don’t learn anything. I learn from those who disagree–that is, if they are intelligent and cogent, with good reasons for the disagreement. When the reasons are good enough, I’ll change my mind. But even if I remain unconvinced, i will have learned through the process.

Or as the old saying goes: Take your work seriously, but never take yourself seriously.

So let’s end with some light stuff. What book did you last read?

Ian Morris, Why the West Rules–for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. This is an extremely important book: read the first chapter, then Section 3, then section 1. Skip Section 2, unless you are a deep history buff.

This year you’ll be a keynote speaker at UX Lisbon. Could you share with us what your talk will be about?

I never know what I am going to say until the night before. I get energized talking with the conference attendees. Quite often I change my mind at the last possible moment. What will I talk about at Lisbon? I don’t know. It might say in the program, but I never pay attention to whatever I told the conference organizers because they insisted even though I didn’t have the slightest idea. I want the audience to be surprised: actually, the person who is often most surprised by what I end of saying is me.

Thank you so much for your time. We look forward to seeing you in Lisbon.

You are quite welcome.

UX Lisbon 2011

Don Norman will be a keynote speaker at UX Lx: User Experience Lisbon, one of Europe’s premier user experience events. The second annual UX Lx conference takes place May 11-13, 2011 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Have you ever double-checked if you really locked a door? That wouldn’t be necessary if you had a lock with a clear indicator that says “I’m locked.” So is there a way to design this constraint into the product?

In the above example, there is no indicator that says which way you should rotate to lock the door. But even when there is an indicator such as a small circle, it doesn’t always mean it’s “locked”. It might mean it’s “unlocked”. So I was wondering if there was a way for anyone to be able to recognize it’s really locked and came up with the following idea:

Actually this does NOT physically prevent the rotation of the handle around its root. This hook is just a fake, but it makes you easily recognize that the door is locked when it’s at the lowest.

So that’s what I thought when reading Living with Complexity by Donald Norman, which I highly recommend.

This week we’ve got a whole bunch of interesting links for you. Ranging from an interview with the creative designer of Motorola Korea to plans of the European Commission.

As part of a new CNN series on internet and the end of privacy, John D. Sutter reflects on the world of public living — where most everything about a person’s habits, location and preferences is just a few clicks away.

Most Americans in fact don’t want to be tracked on the Internet and are unwilling to trade their privacy for web ads that are tailored to their interests. So suggest the results of a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of Internet users conducted over the weekend.

The European Commission meanwhile unveiled an ambitious agenda to bring public services online across Europe so that it could “serve an economy which relies on the networks of the future.”

So, how has the most revolutionary innovation of our time – the internet – transformed our world? What does it mean for the modern family? How has it changed our concepts of privacy? Of celebrity? Of love, sex and hate? These are some of the questions that writer and commentator Aleks Krotoski (who is also the brain behind the digital revolution open source documentary) addresses in a new Observer series entitled “Untangling the web“.

Andy Clark, professor of logic and metaphysics in the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences at Edinburgh University, Scotland, wonders whether devices like iPhones and Blackberries are actually becoming extensions of our thinking selves.

UX Magazine has published a rich trove of articles that looks at the internet and interaction design from a broader user experience perspective.

The Joong Ang Daily, the Korean partner newspaper of the International Herald Tribune, published an interview with Hwang Sung-gul, the creative designer of mobile devices at Motorola Korea, about the thinking and work that goes into designing a mobile phone.

Digital marketing expert Dhiren Shingadia interviewed ethnographer and technology researcher Tricia Wang to learn how ethnography can provide new insights for companies seeking to understand communities.

The Interaction Design Association (IxDA) announced the launch of the IxDA Interaction Awards, a first-of-its-kind awards program dedicated to celebrating global excellence in the discipline of Interaction Design.

Automation World reports at length on how human-centered design techniques are gaining attention in the world of industrial controls and automation, as more users struggle with complex user interfaces.

The UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph profiles Cordell Ratzlaff, director of user-centred design at Cisco Systems, and former head of Apple’s Human Interface Group.

Om Malik, founder of GigaOM Network, also focuses on UX issues as he argues in a much commented post that Google has a user experience problem, as it starts to compete with rivals whose entire existence revolves around easy, consumer experiences.

Do you know the story of the stirrup? The stirrup was introduced to horsemanship alternately by the Central Asians, Chinese, or tribes in India more than 2,500 years ago. But it was not until combined with the armor-plated knight and a saddle with a backrest that it rose from toe-hold to game-changer in the murderous game that was then medieval warfare. Norman shock combat, featuring riders on horseback with couched lances, high-backed saddles, and stirrups, mounted their charge against faltering Saxons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. England has not been the same since.

The story of the stirrup is not without debate — equestrians lay claim to the lance and archery work sans stirrup — but it is an oft-cited example of the role technology plays in social change. The stirrup not only produced a new war machine, in the mounted knight, but was a part also of an emerging social class: those who could afford the supporting needs of knighthood. Chivalry, nobility, glory in warfare, and the crusades all owe a relation to the stirrup. This simple invention was not alone responsible for these social changes, but was a notable and critical element.

I am not a technological determinist. I think culture paves the way for the use of certain technologies when it anticipates their use in that particular fashion. A similar point is often made about guns — whose introduction in some cultures was met with the unenthusiastic reception of warrior cultures for whom killing at a distance was ignoble.

In more contemporary times, technologies launched too early (the apple Newton), or out of synch with cultural practices and social needs (the video phone), serve as more recent examples of the same relationship between the social and the technical. Cultures invent needs and uses, and technologies fill them. It is unlikely that a technology, requiring the design commitments and resources that it usually does, comes along and out of the blue invents a new and popular way of doing things.

Connections

I recently was enjoying Connections, by James Burke, one of my favorite documentary series and in some circles a bit of a cult classic. In the series, Burke traces a dotted and dashed line through history, connecting inventions, discoveries, accidents, and events to trace the lineage of several modern-day technologies. Explosives, electricity, the gasoline engine, television, computing, money, and plastics all receive fascinating treatment.

Among the numerous tales of coincidence and serendipity that footnote the romp through the history of science and technology that is Connections, one recurring theme remains a narrative constant. It is the importance of relations, of the relationships that a new technology had with practices and possibilities, with needs and opportunities, problems solved and new futures created.

And in that not insignificant observation is the more emphatic point that no game-changing technique or technology (for that’s really what technology is — application of a rational technique) would have had the impact that it did were it not for its having leveraged and amplified existing relations.

Likewise, today, no social tool makes waves unless it levers and extends current practices, makes implicit connections explicit, surfaces the hidden and renders visible the latent. Relatedness is all, and online more so than “anywhere” else, for the online world has no “material” or “temporal” persistence beyond the connections and relations that weave it together.

Relations, subjective and objective

Two kinds of relations matter in the world of social technologies. Relations among data elements, digital objects, and the operations possible around them. And social relations, including those between a user and his or her social user experiences, communication with others, and social relations made visible in different ways on our many social sites and services. Objective relations and subjective relations.

It used to be that in computing, objective relations expressed a sort of subjective consensus, a choice given computing’s constraints, to operationalize and represent functions and interaction in a particular way. It might now be argued that an increasing amount of computing, that behind the social web and related businesses, at least, reflects a subjectiv-izing use of objective data relations. That the relations that matter in social web use are those that socialize the world of information, that renew and re-contextualize the static or objectively-structured world of data.

I am over-simplifying the computing industry and professions here, of course, but for the purpose of extracting the kind of truth that makes its point best beneath the arc-light of exaggeration. In social media use, individual user actions provide subjective taste and preference; communication between users supplies social relatedness; and social interaction among users animates social activiities and practices. Social uses connect the dots and dashes of a multi-threaded world of otherwise binary bits and algorithmic processes.

Social media connections

There are, in Connections, a number of connections made. They vary in their composition and so I thought it might be interesting to tease out some that bear relevance to us. In the vein of a “what if” sort of viewing — an exposition of what a BBC documentary aired in 1978 might have observed about the socializing world of today’s internet.

First of all, for a few of the big categories.

• Identifying, locating, positioning, indexing, and categorizing. Historical examples: astrolabe, gridlines, compass, star charts, triangulation.
• Improving the efficiency, effectiveness, application or extension of a process, method, or technique. Historical examples: plow, loom, water wheel, coal-tar, american manufacturing system
• Inventions the revolutionize, change, transform a process, method, technique, or pastime. Historical examples: money and credit, steam power, chemistry, car
• Methods, insights, techniques that give one an advantage over and against competitors. Historical examples: longbow, lateen rigging, gunpowder, synthetics, radar
• Creative innovations that lead to new markets, services, production, and demand in the marketplace and more broadly, socially. Historical examples: printing, double-entry book-keeping, electricity, plastics, wireless

In each of these types of technical innovation, a number of social relations were transformed. These run from the seemingly modest — but in fact transformative impact — of the chimney on dwellings and living spaces (one hall becomes many rooms, social classes divide, intimacies are enervated) to the more obviously revolutionary such as gunpowder, electromagnetism, or the combustion engine. In some cases an invention threatened a change of world view (the telescope and proof of heliocentrism); disruption of social order (industrialism and the worker); competitive dis/advantage (marine navigation, empire, and imperialism); or global repercussions (the atom bomb). And this is but a gloss.

So what do social media amplify?

I hope that I have not strayed too far from the trail, but the force of historical references is far greater than any argument I might muster on behalf of social theoretical insights. That, and Connections is simply such a darned good program(me) that I relish the mental replay.

So, to the point I had in mind to begin with: what power to leverage and amplify social relations might social media represent? And if that’s the generic version of the question, the more particular version is aimed at the startups and social tool vendors out there: what social are you changing?

An example, first.
Foursquare awards badges (think Knights — the lineage of liege lies latent, looming largely!) and points for checkins. This creates social visibility out of individual action. It differentiates socially by means of recognizable distinctions (badges). It locates individuals and renders them available by means mobile and in realtime.

• So it extends the position/location series arcing back long ago to maps, star readings, and the astrolabe. Does it extend the navigation series? Yes but not significantly (it’s not about going someplace with others as being or having been there).
• By combining places with visits and short messages, does it extend the knowledge/classification/indexing series? Not so much — we still use Yelp for that.
• It is mobile and has messaging — does it extend the signal/communication series (lighthouse; morse; wireless; phone) — it may be on the cusp of social location signaling practices (I’m here, yes, come say hi) but norms are still a check against location-based intrusion. A tweet, (meeting request) is often expected first.

And there are other social relations surfaced, rendered, connected, and amplified by Foursquare that I haven’t mentioned. We could run through Buzz, ChatRoulette, Plancast, Quora, or a host of other social tools to tease out the changes they help to introduce. And around which social practices may be forming or might form.

Chain of events

In the series Connections, each chain of events has circumstantial, if not questionable, causal relation. Author James Burke readily admits the numerous chains of connection he might have drawn otherwise: historically, socially, technically. In our universe, that is, the world of social media, we must admit that our chains are not causal, but social. That is, they are signifying chains.

Now I borrow here a bit from 20th century philosophers, and cultural semioticians in particular, but the gist of the signifying chain is quite simply that social media use means something, socially speaking. It goes without saying that nobody but nobody would check in with Foursquare if he or she were the only one doing it. In any given social media tool or application, success is begotten by the social significance with which the technology is met. The greatest power, the most paradigm-changing and transformative social impact, obtains to those services with the greatest social significance.

In Connections, there are moments in history when a certain discovery creates a myriad of possibilities. And moments when a combination of simultaneous but partially-useful discoveries produce something greater than the sum of the parts. In social media we see a similar phenomenon. The browser was game changing, as were the modem, the PC, and the internet. The iPhone, however, is more likely a device whose genius of market timing allowed it to leverage existing social web practices, (mobile) application developer community (some surely with Facebook apps on their CV), and established smart/phone audience habits.

To return to the our example, as the iPhone is helped by twitter, it also helps Foursquare. And it remains to be seen what Foursquare can do to amplify the most out of geolocal social practices. For if history is any fair measure, a host of subcultures and practices might yet take wing on the Foursquare model. (Question for Facebook Places: does the social graph enable or constrain location checkins?)

Or take, instead, Google Buzz. Buzz meant to extend the one-to-many email communication model (itself a time-condensed form of correspondence combined with one-to-many broadcast aspects). Buzz lifts the 140 off short messaging and threads responses for tighter conversationality. But socially it already can’t avoid resonating with public social media cultures and practices (high profile users). And with search just an algorithm away (to say nothing of social search), the DNA in Buzz must already be plotting its next evolutionary leap with a small step along the knowledge/indexing/categorizing series. Buzz, after all, was raised in labs more digital Gutenberg than twitter, which is more Edison.

Anticipating the social

All of the technical and social narratives told in Connections involve breakthroughs whose impact spread out like ripples, often far beyond the innovator’s original intent, and usually beyond the problem immediately solved. These secondary effects exist because things are related. Territory is related to navigation is related to exploration. Constellations organize the heavens and account for earthly events, setting expectations for the future. Credit mitigates risk which permits investment, thus begetting financiers. The curved plow and scabbard were more efficient, which led to surplus, and thus leisure time.

Technologies amplify along an axis, if not several axes, of relation. Each relational axis may be developed along a series of related and extensive tools and techniques, and corresponding social and cultural practices. Value accrues as a result in areas previously left out of administration. These amplifications may involve the extension of an existing method to new practices within a social group; may connect these new practices to new populations; may complexify and differentiate the domains of action and communication possible along a series; and so on.

Consider, for a moment, some of the series in play with social tools today.

• Personal to social: The differentiation of personal habits and real-world separation of private and public spaces and places is extended in “worlds” (experiences) developed online. Not only Facebook and Google, but all social networking and communication tools extend the personal-social series. Here issues are of containment, separation, mobility, visibility, privacy, intimacy, mediation, image, and so on. Issues concern the increase in options for play and use of personal and social distinctions in tool design as well as its uses; and the protection, respect, and containment of normatively-regulated social practices in which lines between the private and the public are understood. Communication, intentional but as often unintentional, easily leaks between and across today’s mediated “spaces” and networks.
• Action and its Consequences: All social actions are coupled to likely and unlikely consequences. We take these into account (consciously or not) in our actions. As tools become more complex, a greater number of actions are coupled to a greater number of consequences. Communication posted in one context but re-contextualized elsewhere (tweets, comments, shares). In some cases the consequences of an action seemingly taken in one domain (use of a webcam to stream a room-mate’s private activity?) have consequences transcending the domain in which action was initiated and taken. Inadvertent exposures result from the many audiences through which a recording may travel.
• Associating and signifying: Signs of social status and position are a focal point of today’s massively mediated culture, and are developed with great care and precision by our image-makers. Versions of these kinds of image-based distinctions, be they signs, icons, badges, points, or some other kind of representation serve to distinguish people online, too. But insofar as they are used by an audience, not just broadcast through mass media, social signifiers online may have a wider range of ambiguity. Do they mean what they appear to mean, or what they were meant to mean by the user who earns or transacts them? With ambiguities come interpretive skills. Users today possess the ability to read the nuances of meaning not only from signs and their original context of use, but also according to friends who use them, groups they belong to, sites they use them in, and more. There is an enormous amount of design possibility in the rich field of social signifiers — from virtual currencies to leaderboards and even enterprise incentive systems.

And that’s just a canvas. Additional series could be found in social tools along axes including: finding and re-finding; discovery and exploration; search and information; trust and loyalties; personas and reputation; mobile and place/location; and so on.

Social media amplify personal and individual uses and practices; extend and connect social practices, and often produce unforeseen common wealth. But how they do so varies, and not just by tool but by insight and foresight. Socially fertile ground can dramatically enhance the impact and spread of a new tool, service, or application. It’s not just about api’s and scalability, but about social api’s and social significance. Did Gutenberg anticipate that within 40 years of his new printing press there would be eight million books in circulation? Or the Vatican foresee that the press would present a real and present threat to the very Church itself? It’s all there in history, and changes afoot today portend as remarkable a shift in communication and social and cultural practices as did the printing press more than 500 years ago.