This May, Dan Brown will be speaking at UXLX in Lisbon, Portugal. As part of our media partnership with UXLX, Johnny Holland got the chance to interview Dan on a topic that he has been the go to expert for years now, Effective Design Documentation. We’d like to thank Dan once again for taking the time out of busy schedule for this interview. Hope you enjoy.

JohnnyHolland: Given all its moving parts, design can be a challenging thing to document properly. What advice would you give to design teams that are attempting to get proper Design Documentation injected into their organizations process?

Dan Brown

Dan Brown: “Design documentation” is shorthand for the collection of techniques to capture and communicate design ideas to other people on the design team. Those ideas may be half-baked or they may be well-cooked, and designers have various reasons for creating documentation. “Documentation” may not be a printed PDF: it can come in many forms, including interactive prototypes. Regardless, documents are any tool that communicates a design idea and ensures projects run smoothly.

Let’s now unpack “proper design documentation”. Different organizations face different challenges, and documentation that works for one group may not be “proper” for another.

The central challenge we see time and again is ensuring consistency: different designers communicate the same concepts differently. Consistency remains important, since different designers may be working with the same stakeholders, developers, and quality engineers. Imagine being on the receiving end of those deliverables, not knowing what to expect from one project to the next. One designer provides painstaking detail of every interaction and the other leaves more to interpretation.

There are lots of things a team can do to normalize their deliverables, but using templates is not one of them. Ultimately, the content of the documentation must be driven by the project itself: forcing people to fill in the blanks yields unreadable deliverables. Instead, to ensure consistency, the design team should meet regularly — monthly or quarterly — and share their work, examining their deliverables as a single portfolio. They should identify opportunities to streamline and align so that readers of their documents aren’t bombarded with a new approach in every project.

How has EightShapes Unify helped design teams create and manage the documentation they create?

Early in EightShapes’ history, we established ourselves as a firm that didn’t just do design, but also helped design teams communicate better. This can mean a few different things:

• translating mature design systems into re-usable components to speed up the design process and ensure consistency in the resulting designs
• preparing guidelines around the use of design systems
• running workshops to help teams correct the discrepancies in their approach to documentation

When Nathan conceived and implemented EightShapes Unify, however, we had a real opportunity to make a broader impact. Through much soul-searching (and expensive lawyer meetings) we decided to release it for free. We can’t know how everyone uses it: it’s been downloaded more than 15,000 times, by teams of multitudes and teams of one.

Everyone at EightShapes has a different perspective on the value and impact of the documentation system. For me, the beauty of EightShapes Unify is the freedom from meaningless templates. I remember using meaningless templates earlier in my career, answering questions like “Who are the actors of the system?” and “What are the dependencies?” These questions are either so broad or so irrelevant that the document becomes a mish-mash of trite responses.

Instead, the system provides “page patterns” — simple page layouts used frequently for common tasks like explaining a wireframe or comparing two approaches. This task-based approach to documentation mirrors our design philosophy

How has UX documentation had to evolve over the past few years? Did this have any influence on why you wrote a new edition to Communication Design?

There are two factors exerting pressure on documentation–the design problems and the project participants. My experience shows a marked increase in both over the last several years.

People generally point to new interface conventions (carousels, accordions, fly-outs, mega-menus, ad nauseum) as driving the evolution of documentation. But web sites went from nice-to-have to essential business tool overnight. The range of new UI patterns is only a small fraction of the story: more companies are trying to do more work online. This means increased complexity in transactions and depth of information. These sit at the heart of new design problems, and they force us to reconsider the tools we use to describe our solutions.

At the same time, there are more people involved in the web design process. Our projects incorporate team members with a greater range of experience and broader perspectives. They have different interests in the project and different agendas for the outcome. All of this puts pressure on the design documentation, serving more needs and purposes.

I wrote a new edition of Communicating Design to scratch an itch—much of my thinking around documentation had evolved over the preceding five years. These two pressures—new challenges, new participants—contributed substantially to the changes in my thinking.

Considering the current trends towards mobile, tablet, and in general ubiquitous design, how will UX documentation have to evolve yet again to support these new challenges?

At EightShapes, we’re exploring how interactive prototypes cooperate with other kinds of deliverables to document the entire user experience. Coming from a passion for good communications, we acknowledge that increased complexity demands a multi-pronged approach for defining experience.

Luke Wroblewski’s “mobile first” design approach resonates strongly with me: in a recent project, while I was sketching concepts, I started with the tablet version of the application without even really thinking about it. If the trend continues, however, we designers will need to separate further from specific platforms and start with the underlying models.

The biggest challenge for designers will be the increasing emphasis on abstraction. As data becomes available everywhere, the models we use to define its structure across multiple platforms must divorce themselves from any one specific platform. If the available information and its inherent structure is one factor driving the design of an interface, we need better tools for designing those structures. In short, the more abstract side of information architecture receives greater emphasis.

Why is creating good documentation essential to a designer, regardless of what their current role is?

We are purveyors of stories. We design products to support the stories of users’ lives. We design products that presumably bring about a change, going from “Eli suffers from situation X” to “Eli benefits from product Y”. This is how we do design and how we describe our ideas to other people involved with the product.

A design document tells a little story in and of itself: for example about how a particular feature works, or the conclusions stemming from user research. A document a also contributes to the overall narrative of the project. But the most important story is the one about the product, how it works to bring about change. This multi-layered approach to storytelling is the essence of designing an interactive product.

User experience designers must be able to create good deliverables because they should be able to tell a good story.

What are the dangers of going from the whiteboard to design/development?

There may be none, but that’s not true for every case. Planning is crucial to both design and development: knowing what you’re going to do before you do it can prevent wasted effort and unnecessary detours. Experienced designers know how much planning and design they need to do based on the nature of the problem, the existence of well-established patterns, and the composition of the team.

That said, no amount of planning can ever replace the brute force method of trying lots of different things. Discarded ideas might not be a sign of wasted effort, but a necessary by-product of the creative process. One might argue that successful creative endeavors depend on the balance between planning and trying things out.

Some signs that you might need more robust documentation include:

• Working with new team members, where communication conventions have not yet been established
• Working on a project with multiple streams of work, where keeping track of progress on each stream is crucial
• Working on a project with clear milestones, where the project team expects each phase to come to a solid conclusion
• Working on a poorly-defined design problem, where taking the time to define boundaries is time well spent

I’d recommend creating more documentation in new situations just because it forces you to communicate clearly and acknowledge constraints. If you start creating documents for the sake of demonstrating productivity (rather than moving the project forward), perhaps its time to go back to the whiteboard.

How can designers move beyond being all about the documentation? How can they stop being deliverable monkeys?

As I thought about this question, I really wanted to understand what “all about the documentation” and “deliverable monkey” means. (And if you think it’s easy to get past the picture of a thousand monkeys sitting down at a thousand MacBooks, you are wrong.) I came up with two things:

First, designers in our field can often feel removed from the product. We’re pushing boxes around a page, composing annotations that no one reads. We’re writing mark-up and code strictly for the purpose of demonstrating an interaction, but know full well it will be tossed when it comes time to build the product. Our involvement ends once we’ve told the story, capturing the experience sufficiently for someone else to build it.

We feel like we’re paid to create things that are at once essential to defining the product and are still so far away. This demand to churn out wireframes all day long makes us feel like, well, monkeys. (No disrespect to our primate cousins. I’m sure they lead very productive, fulfilling lives.)

Second, in order to feel connected to something, designers sometimes focus more on the deliverable and less on the product. We pour our ego into the PDF, reflecting our passion for the product in the documentation, something we control.

Both of these things come from designers themselves. That is, if you think treating these issues depends on a systemic intervention, you’ve looked too far for a cause.

Here are some things that have become ingrained in my work, that help prevent any possible devolution:

• Determine the barest minimum that needs to go into the document in order to communicate the ideas effectively. Try not to do much more than the barest minimum, but definitely don’t do less. Can the team sufficiently understand your intent with some rough wireframes and light annotations? Perhaps embellish those with some context through business objectives and user requirements, but avoid doing much more.
• Treat the document as a framework for a conversation, not as a final product. By thinking of it as a means to an end, rather than as an end in and of itself, you approach it differently.

How could proper UX documentation have prevented the Cylon Uprising?

Products sometimes behave in unexpected ways. Some ways are delightful, like when you discover that shaking your iPhone “un-does” your last action. Some are disturbing, like when robot servants rebel against human oppression. While good documentation should capture all the functionality of a product, we can’t predict how people will use it, and people always find new ways to use (or abuse) products.

UX Lisbon 2011

Dan Brown 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.

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.

Next week, Josephine Green will be delivering the closing keynote at The Web and Beyond 2010. I was able to chat with Josephine to get a sneak peek into her closing presentation and learn more about her experience performing Strategic Design over the years. 

Could you please give our readers some information about yourself?

JG: I have always been fascinated by ideas, in truth I think ideas are really sexy. I believe that the imagination, thought and ideas  are what truly make a difference and help us to positively think our way to the future; They are the stuff that inspires us to action. For me thoughts and ideas are as strong as actions. This is why I very much liked being in Design at Philips. The Culture of Design is about imagining, conceptualizing and creating. The difference today is that it is less and less designers in splendid isolation and more and more designers and stakeholders working together, This reflects the shift away from doing things for people to doing things with and eventually by people.

Tell us about some of the work you are doing at Phillips. What are some trends that you are seeing?

JG: I joined Philips Design in 1997 and much of my work has been around imagining and thinking about the future, based on research into  society, cultures and people. At Philips Design we promoted new thinking and new knowledge in the field of social foresight which in turn fed into company knowledge,  innovation, strategy. This is a period of unprecedented change and transformation and while it is scary it is also a golden opportunity to re-address the kind of society we wish to live in. Is it the old Pyramid society of top down command and control through large organizations and based on economies of scale or is it a more Pancake society based on customized and contextualized solutions, enabled by the new technologies, and sustained by all the stakeholders involved in those solutions on a continuous basis. I believe there are two powerful trends that will re-shape our societies. One is a more human scale and intimate view of society and economy based on smaller and more local economies and the other is a much greater participation by the stakeholders in the ownership and outcomes of these economies.

What has Phillips done historically with regards to Strategic Design?

JG: Design has increasingly been positioned strategically in Philips. This means that Design has and is an integral part of the innovation and branding approach and process. This was explored back in the nineties when Philips Design carried out a number of Vision projects for Corporate and the Business to explore the next ten years and the implications for Research,  Innovation, Branding and Business; Throughout Design in Philips has emphasized putting people, rather than technology, at the center of our thinking and at the center of our main Functions and Processes; This is now the established approach . I left Philips in 2009 to return to live in the UK.

What is the one thing you want attendees to take away from your keynote “Engaging with the Future Differently – From Pyramids to Pancakes”?

JG: The one thing is that as we go Pyramids to Pancakes we need a new way of perceiving, of being and of acting in the world if we wish to prosper and flourish in the future. People are now able to be the creators and innovators , through the connectivity and diffusion of the new technologies. In the Pyramid world innovation was the responsibility of experts and the process was a linear one where ideas were fed into the front end and a ‘product’ emerged at the other end. Now, in a more messy and chaotic approach,  people are increasingly creating their own content, films, music, extended networks etc . This is mirrored also in the real world by growing grass roots movements to re-design how people wish to live and love in their communities.

What do you consider to be one the biggest impacts of social networking?

What’s the biggest hurtle of going from a world that has traditionally been driven by linear thinking to one driven by system thinking?

JG: The biggest hurdle is ourselves. Many of us were brought up in the linear world and so we have those mindsets. There are no rule books for the future and this is frightening for people who believed that the world was more linear, predictable and controllable. We have to learn how to embrace complexity, continuously learn, act intelligently in the now and trust in letting go. Unless we begin by changing ourselves we cannot let the world go where it needs to go.

What are some examples of new patterns of demand and supply?

JG: I believe demand will go from finalized finished products or services to more ‘open’ solutions based on the context of place and time and activity. We can talk of a Context Economy in which we live in and are enabled by an ecosystem of products, services, solutions and experiences that change over time. Another change in demand that will mark the 21st century is that we can talk of a Social Economy, meaning a shift towards a social demand rather than a consumer demand. We face many challenges in the 21st century e.g. health, care, ageing, pollution, etc. Which means  that we need to think about Social Innovation which, unlike product/consumer innovation, must involve all the players in the system if the solution is to be meaningful and work. This means more empowerment for more people.

How can the people in leadership roles prepare for this coming shift?

JG: If everything is changing then so is Leadership. I believe that identifying change agents is as important as identifying leaders. They may in many cases be one and the same. I think, Women, GenY and the so called Cultural Creatives are powerful change agents as they, for one reason or another, are less tied to the Pyramid system. If we think in terms of Transformational Leadership then these leaders need to have one thing and lots of it: courage. Courage to maximize a vision and mission that makes sense to society and not primarily to shareholders and financial elites. Courage to create the space for longer term investments and returns, courage to enable the change agents I have mentioned and courage to let go. Perhaps the role of our leaders today is to enable the change agents and then hold the ship steady while those agents do what they do, namely change things.

Are there any organizations you know of that are best prepared for the future? Why?

JG: There are some examples of first steps. Rather than a single company, there is evidence of different ingredients for the future in a number of companies. At Philips we did research on what we called Pancakish companies and some of the examples were interesting. Examples such as abolishing job titles and ranks, of re-thinking the role and mission of the CEO, of creating self-organized teams to drive innovation and results, all examples of greater freedom to decide and act .

What kind of dangers do you see in a world where innovation has been decentralized?

JG: As the capability to innovate spreads then we can innovate for the good or for the bad. Take for example the latest news about the first creation of artificial life, the first artifical organism. This  means that we can have many possibilities and benefits, for example in the health arena, but also it means that we or someone also has the possibility to be destructive by for example creating a threatening microbe that could wreak havoc across the world. The danger is that we become stronger and weaker at the same time. We are certainly introducing more fragility in the system. I think the only thing we can do is to try and ensure that there are a lot more goodies in the world than badies, but how, one way is by raising the learning, capability and responsibility of all of us, and then keeping our fingers crossed.

The Web & Beyond 2010

Want to know more about Josephine Green’s thoughts? She is one of the speakers at The Web & Beyond (June 1st), a one day event held in Amsterdam.

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.

As always a pumped, but a bit more tired from previous nights sponsored festivities, the audience kicked of the last day of the conference. After the opening keynote the winner of the student competition was announced and everybody got a chance to know a little more about the results from that.

Jeffery Blais – Designing for Mobile Experiences

One of the prediction for the coming decade was the importance of mobile technology over the next 10 years. Jeffery Blais from Sapient gave us a glimpse exactly why mobile experience will be so predominant. Mobile is for people that are constantly on the go, personal, naturally social, and used frequently. Presently, there are 4 billion people in the world that have some type of mobile subscription, and it’s projected that in 5 years, all cellphones in the United States will be a smartphone of some kind.

As designers, we have certain challenges we will face with the rise of mobile. For example, there will be a massive amount of devices available, each with their own nuances and methods of interactions – an interface design that works perfectly for one could completely fail for another.

Luckily, there are some strategies that can be adopted to deal with these challenges:

• Understanding the business goals behind the mobile channel of your product.
• Who is the audience that you are targeting?
• What kind of opportunities does this mobile channel provide?
• What does the road-map of your mobile interactions look like?

The keynote closed with tips on how to design for mobile experiences. The first step is to gain an understanding of the UI constraints: are you dealing with a full touch based screen or a tactile keyboard with a trackball? Understanding this allows you to know what the most optimum interactions are needed. In order to flush out these interactions, sketching is the best tool. An important part of this sketching activity is to detail the various states that a mobile application can take. It also lets you get down to the interactions that truly matter, and keeps the mobile experience as simple as possible.

Cindy Chastain – Thinking Like a Storyteller

Cindy Chastain's use of the classic dramaturgic model to map a use flow in the same manner

The importance of storytelling has been a recent topic of debate within the interaction design community. This was highlighted by a series of tweets that Cindy Chastain showcased at the very start of her talk. Some argued that they didn’t feel storytelling should get the level of importance as was being implied, while others argued that storytelling is pivotal to the process of interaction design. With her presentation she hoped to paint a better picture of storytelling’s role in design, and it would be safe to say she knocked it out of the park.

Perhaps the most profound nugget of knowledge that Cindy shared with the crowd was the fact that no matter what, when people use something they describe that use as a self-narrative. Everything from how it was used, to how it made them feel by using it. It’s how they convince their friends and family to either purchase a product, or avoid it. So, even if we don’t see the importance of storytelling from the perspective of our work, it’s very much there when our designs make it out into the wild.

Cindy pointed out that the best form of storytelling which we can learn from is drama. Specifically, there are six qualitative elements of drama which can be incorporated into our design process and thinking.

• Plot (events)
• Character (agents)
• Thought (ideas/themes)
• Diction (language)
• Song (pattern)
• Spectacle (The visual)

In closing, we were left with a practical exercise which ties to a design activity we already do: taking the natural flow of classic dramaturgic model, and mapping that to the flows we generate for how people will interact with our designs. This allows for us to map certain steps, people, or systems to one of the six qualitative elements listed above.

Gretchen Andersson – The Importance of Facial Features

Gretchen Andersson

The intention of Gretchen’s talk might not come through at once to the uninitiated. It connects a lot to what Chris Fahey said in his talk: “If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us.”.
Gretchen’s talk was more of a suggestion on how to hands-on work with how to convey the inner message of what we are working on.
Gretchen says we need take our heads out of the information architecture, wire framing, boxes and arrows work now and then and pay more attention to what it is we want to communicate to our users on a more emotional level. Her suggestion is to do that by using what she has chosen to name facial features. Gretchen referred to something that Jared Spool has said, that we are risking “if we don’t watch ourselves we risk ending up becoming perceived as a very boring crowd”. Gretchen referred to her recent switch to an employer that has a tradition to work more with product design, an area where these kind of emotional features are much more apparent in the design process.

She gave us long list of examples of static, physical products with obvious facial features among other from a recent commercials and then continued on to compare/discuss this to products with more interactive/experience over time related aspects.

She suggested we start by dissecting existing products with this in mind and then use that knowledge to apply it to our own products.

Kel Smith – The Use of Virtual Worlds Among People with Disabilities

Kel did a talk on what is referred to as inclusive design. In his introduction he talked about the term digital natives vs digital immigrants. In relation to this Kel suggested introducing the term digital outcasts, the people that are not considered in a design.

Several of Kel’s examples come from the online virtual world Second Life. He showed how people with all sorts of disabilities use various adaptations of it. Some of these were a digital guide dog for blind that leads you around and reads out tags to the user; a group of people in the Boston area with cerebral paresis that have experienced great personal development by sharing a Second Life avatar; and the Virtual Ability Island, a place on Second Life specifically adapted to people with disabilities.

He went on to show examples of cognitive computing where people control user interfaces and devices only through the power of the mind. Here is one example of a person controlling a robotic hand with the mind.

Some of the psychological aspects Kel talked about were how a virtual worlds adds a buffer of anonymity that facilitates connecting with other people easier or how fantasies can work as a distraction for pain management.

Kel gave a couple of pointers on what to think about when working with inclusive design, the most important being not to offend by for example using condescending wording and that there is a important difference between acting understanding and empathic rather that patronizing. Another source of information on the subject is Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 which is described in the POUR (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Reliable) framework.

Dan Hill – New Soft City, Closing Keynote

Dan Hill

Dan Hill gave us an image of what the future looks like, and the role designers play in it. The work he does today is dealing with the design of cities, from a bus stop to an entire metropolis. By using projects that his firm is working on today, both those that are currently being worked on and those that are purely conceptual at this point. Some concepts that have come out of his work tie directly to how things are designed and how they interact with the people around them:

• Sustainable Urbanism – Taking that which in our world that is invisible, and make it visible. Projecting real time data on the fabric of the city.
• Responsive Urbanism – Public libraries around the world offer the use of WiFi internet connection for free. People are using these spaces in order to do simple browsing to their full time jobs.
• Interactive Installation – Pieces of a building or structure that can be packed and unpacked like a playpen in order to be constructed.
• Strategic Prototyping - Create artifacts from the future to show clients and stakeholders a vision of what things will look like.
• Responsive Architecture - Cover a building with material that is capable of providing feedback in real time: Display the city’s activity as it happens.
• Landscaping Information – What is the ‘cognitive load’ of the street? When does urban data become too much?
• Urban Sensing – Is it possible to monitor mobile usage in real time? How does this affect people’s behavior if that information is displayed to the public?

Strategic Prototyping

The design of a city isn’t something that happens overnight. When his team is commissioned to design a subway system, they have to consider the fact the overall life span of that subway system is 50-100 years. Some things are considered in the design knowing that the technology may not be ready yet, but maybe in 20-30 years it will be. These designs are nothing but concepts, yet they still fit into the overall design of the system being created. Dan mentioned how in one of the previous keynotes we don’t really know what a sustainable future looks like. He has a pretty good idea though, and he sees it every day in the work that he does.

Conference Committee – Closing Remarks

All the people from both IxDA and SCAD thanked all the sponsors and participants for creating yet another successful event. As announced earlier, next year’s conference Interaction11 is going to be held in Boulder, Colorado.

The vibe at the end of this conference was positive, uplifting, and inspirational. As people walked out of the theater many goodbyes were shared, hands were shook, and hugs were shared. It’s been said that our community is one of the best there is, and it’s conferences like this that makes us proud to be a part of it.

After a night of some great parties, and even better conversation, the second day of Interaction 10 began with a preview of the new IxDA.org website redesign. The team doing the redesign covered all the great new features that are coming, and went into detail on how local groups will be able to leverage the new site for their own networks and events. The excitement from yesterday was easily carried over, and people were pumped to see what the presenters had in store for us today.

Opening keynote: Ezio Manzini – Design for social innovation and sustainability

Ezio Manzini

Today’s opening keynote, given by Ezio Manzini, built on a lot of the topics covered in yesterday’s opening keynote. The topic revolved again around the subject of sustainable design, and its role in society. Ezio started off with the message that interaction designers are some of the best people to talk to regarding this as we are young both as a profession and as designers.

Over the course of the presentation, he touched on the various signals signifying the rise of a new economy. The economy of the future isn’t some utopian idea, but rather something that exists today within the framework of the old economy. The focus of the new economy will no longer be around particular products, but rather services and interactions. And most of these interactions will be totally new to us. The signals that are directing us towards this world changing economy were summed up using real world examples that are happening right now:

• Individuals and communities are inventing new ways of living. The emphasis of this point surrounded the agriculture industry and the way economics of farming are changing. People are starting to get their produce more from farm shares and farmer markets rather than big produce stores. This act of getting back to the providers of nutritional substance allows people to become more connected with the people that provide these services, but also to their local communities.
• Digital platforms are becoming catalyzers of social change. Being better connected with those around you creating an aggregation of the social action. Based on shared values and beliefs, they are able to act on these things both within their local communities and on a larger scale.
• A new scenario is emerging. Though we may not know what a sustainable society looks like, we at least have an idea. This idea is rooted in the simple concepts of Small, Local, Open, and Connected. These concepts can be mashed up in a variety of ways to think of new ways to accomplish old tasks, and allows us to create a better framework for this new economy that is being created.

In order to ensure that the new economy works in the long run, the services and interactive products produced to fuel the economy need to satisfy people’s needs and enhance their capabilities. These new services and products also need to have a goal of enabling systems (similar to the message of engagement from yesterday’s keynote). This enabling platform needs to be accessible for normal people, effective, and most importantly create a sense of trust. In the end, there is the potential for great beauty in this enabling platform.

Shelly Evenson – Service As Design

The topic of service design has come up several times already at the conference, both in the back channels and in other presentations. Shelly’s talk was interesting as it provided a great visualization of what true Service Design is, backed up by some the work her past students have done. One of the first great points she makes is about the overall context of objects today. It used it be, 15 years ago, that to order a special pair of shoes you would have to do it via a stores product catalog. Once ordered, those shoes could take up to six weeks to arrive. Today, however, it can take a mere 24 hours from when the order was placed to when the shoes arrive at you door step. Because of this increase in turn around, peoples expectations are higher today. They are looking for more faster, and it can lead to the inability to cope very quickly with all the information we are bombarded with.

This setting of the context leads directly into why service design is so important. Service Design facilitates a multifaceted and co-produced experience, with many touch points and variety of dependencies. These touch-points included People, Product, Place, Process, and Performance, and when they all come together you have something you can call a Service. People interact with each of these touch points, and it’s the path that they take which in the end fosters some kind of experience.

Today, we are seeing more and more of a mash up of social and service. People are able to tweet about a particular service, which opens them up to being directly contacted by someone representing the company behind the service. When performing Service Design in the modern, connected, world, you are creating affordances in which for people to engage in the overall conversation. The themes that make up these affordances are People, Time, Place, Usability, Visualization, and finding and organizing. The resources we design to invoke experiences must respect these affordances, and capitalize on them in new and exciting ways.

Timo Arnall – Designing for the Web in the World

Timos itterative model

Timo is a designer leading and collaborating on international projects and research on mobile technology and media out of Oslo, Norway. Timo, being a very skilled photographer and film maker, gave a very visually pleasing presentation with lots of moving video and beautiful layered graphics. In his talk, he showed us the results and findings from his work where he and his team has explored what we do with the internet “beyond the glowing screen of computers” . He also gave us a set of basic findings in his research that can be used as a tool for successfully design these kind of products.

The talk covered a mix of examples from other already existing products and examples of projects where his team had experimented with how Near Field Communication (NFC) devices such as RFID (40 billion around the globe) can be integrated in to products. He also touched briefly on the ethical issues around the use of NFC. Some of these examples of the existing were mobile tracking applications like Nokia Sports tracker and Nike Plus. The projects made by Timo and his team are great examples of how they have experimented with NFC to create new interactions and very pleasantly looking objects with a digital interface in them. Again also beautiful examples of video and product production and several of the projects he showed you can see for yourself at Timo’s Vimeo Channel.

To finish off, Timo listed three central aspects to both evaluate how successful existing NFC objects are, and as a basis for criteria when designing new objects that can also be used as an iterative cycle.

1. Immediate tangible experience – Don’t wait with giving feedback
2. Short term connecting and sharing – Satisfaction through sharing/comparing of results
3. Long term service, data & visualization – Well working online services to mediate social space

Read more of Timo’s research at http://nearfield.org and http://aho.no

Ben Fullerton – Designing for Solitude

Not only was this session standing room only, but people took up seats on the floor wherever they could. Ben delivered one of the most interesting talks of the day, dealing not with any particular practice or process but rather a state of mind. He starts off by stating that we all have the assumption that being connected is a good thing, but that there is an alternative state that also needs attention: solitude.

In order to show the importance of solitude from a historical point of view, he discussed how Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad all take their own solitary journey in order to reach a certain level of spirituality. Another example was an author who spent 10 years holed up in a library, completely alone, in order to write his masterpiece: it turns out that many of the great creatives all used some form of isolation in order to do some of their best work.

There’s too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche – Charlie Broker

In the past, the devices we used in our everyday life only had a single mode to them. Products of the present are becoming more and more multi modal, providing more unique types of interaction all at the same time. To combat this certain products are going back to this single mode of interaction, including a music/phone device he helped design. Rather than allow for you to access either function at the same time, there was a define toggle that turned one aspect of the device off in order to perform the other. You could either listen to music, or you could send and receive phone calls, but never at the same time. This idea can also be found in the “Quiet Cars” found on Amtrak trains. If you decide to sit in this area of the train, you are not allowed to disturb the others around you: no loud music, no friendly banter, not even excessive coughing or sneezing is allowed. All of this is in place to ensure that passengers have a place in which they can get away from everything. Allowing yourself to get away from everything, or disconnect, is Ben’s big call to action. There is nothing wrong with BEING connected, just allow yourself the freedom to disconnect too.

Kevin Cheng – Augmented reality: Is it real? Should we care?

Google search statistics for Augmented Reality

Kevin, entertaining as always, gave us a very thorough rundown on the current market of existing augmented reality applications out there. He even managed to have a live demo of a couple of them for iPhone. It was a mix of both entertaining variants and more or less useful ones.

AR is a term to describe the real-time merging of various technologies with the real world to create a mixed, augmented reality. Going on at looking at the history of augmented reality we have seen examples of this from the world of movies for over 20 years but it is not until with the computing power of mobile phones that we start to see a boom in the development of these types of applications.

Even so there is still a slight lack in accuracy with the current technology like GPS and electronic compasses so we will have to wait a bit longer before we see some more advanced applications. This might also be there reason why there are currently no established standards to how to design for AR.

By researching Google, Kevin could show a distinct increase in the search patterns for AR during the last two years. Notable was that the top five countries on the list were Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, a clear indication that this is a region of the world to keep your eyes on in regards to AR.

Steve Baty – Lunch Discussion, UX Book Club

UX Book Club founder (as well as IXDA VP and fellow Johnny) Steve Baty organized an opportunity at lunchtime to discuss books by two of the speakers at the conference, Thoughts on Interaction by Jon Kolko and Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer. Both authors also took the opportunity to join in in the discussions and a short Q&A after the discussions. It was a very light hearted event where Steve introduced the audience of around 150 people to the concept of  UX book club and urged us to all do the same in our home area. Anahi Bagu and Will Evans gave us a short introduction to each of the books and then we dived in to lively discussions for about 20 minutes on both the books and adjacent subjects. Finally the two authors stepped up for a short Q&A whilst the audience was chanting “Two men enter. One man leaves!”

Two men enter. One man leaves!

This is an extremely simple but yet rewarding experience that you easily can set up where you live or even at your work place. Having the authors on the spot was an added luxury but not necessary for a successful UX book club.

Chris Fahey – The Human Interface

Things to try from Chris Fahey's talk

We are cyborgs. This is the statement Chris uses to kick off his session into why human like interfaces are important and what are the danger zones that should be avoided with regards to allowing technology replace humans. For many years it has been a fear that one day technology will some how replace humans. According to Chris, the best way to alleviate this fear is to not let technology replace us, but rather having human behavior become reflected in the technology that we use.

As designers we need to capitalize on the fact the people already give objects a bit of humanity by anthropomorphism. Since this is one of our standard behaviors, it isn’t much a leap to use that knowledge in the overall design of what we create. The way to do this is by concentrating on Strong Centers, Positive and Negative Space, Roughness, and Echoes. The world of game design has been hitting these areas recently and it has been a huge success for them.
Chris’s session was wrapped up by going over the three qualia of the human interface:

• Sentience - The ability to see or feel subjectively. This is best described by the advancement of voice or facial recognition over the years.
• Intimacy – This can be facilitated with or through machines. Devices are able to better detect our presence and collect personal information about us in the background.
• Personality – We want to see the things we use have a personality. We want to see ‘faces’ in the stuff we interact with.

The final message of “If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us”  is one that we can all use posted up on our walls, or cubes, in order to remind us of the human aspects of our designs.

If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us – Chris Fahey

Closing Keynote: Paola Antonelli – Talk to Me

Tonight’s closing presentation was given by Paola Antonelle, of the Museum of Modern Arts in New York City.

Paola Antonelli. Image by Monica Ferro

She started off by explaining how objects have always spoken to her, sometimes in the most peculiar ways. Walking down the street, stop lights, TV’s, or bus signs all speak to her in a very cartoonish manner. But by having this conversation with everyday objects, she is constantly finding new things to add to her next exhibits. In truth, we all have conversations with technology, thanks to the interfaces that helps to put a face to these objects. It allows us to communicate and interact at a very personal level, both positive and negative ways. It’s important that this face is able to not only communicate, but also be functional, provide instruction, and allows us to access relevant information.

Paola then ran through an amazing range of relevant and beautiful design projects including Crossroads, Significant Objects, We Feel Fine and Josh On.
In closing, she gave us some insight on her struggle to get the ‘@’ symbol not only included in some of her exhibits, but also making it a permanent fixture of the museum. This symbol which so many of us use everyday has been around for centuries, even going so far as span languages. At some point, accountants started to use it to refer to something, such as four bags of flours @ $50.00 a bag. Why she feels that is has a place in the museum is that fact that when the email was invented, the reason the “@” was chosen was thanks to its traditional usage. The only thing that changed was its context of use.
Paola suggests that the ‘@’ sign should be treated as a design artefact because of its history and how well it translated into our technological world, therefore highlighting the role it has played over the years.

Objects have always spoken to us – Paola Antonelli

The first day of Interaction 10, hosted by SCAD in the wonderful city of Savannah, Georgia, kicked off without a hitch. Though eventually everyone was plagued by spotty, windy rain storms, the general pulse of the conference was positive and uplifting. Attendees were still talking about some of the great workshops from the day before, and they carried that energy over into today’s sessions. If one thing had to describe the overall theme of the first day it would be the importance of providing meaning in the work that we do. Below are recaps of the opening and closing keynotes, as well as some of the sessions from the day.

Nathan Shedroff – Morning Keynote

The opening keynote came with a message of why it’s important for us as designers to innovate. Drawing from his books Making Meaning and Design is the Problem,  Nathan Shedroff approached the topic from the businesses point of view and provided insight on how our skills can help them. The goal of any business is to grow, but the only type of growth that leads to continued success is organic growth. Sure, you can rebrand easy few years, but after a while people catch on to what you’re doing. The key to ensuring lasting, organic growth is providing meaning to the people that use the products or services companies provide. Innovation is the means to providing this meaning.

Meaning comes in the shape and form of the experiences we are exposed to. Luckily for us, there are a finite number of core values that describe meaning, which Nathan describes as the following:

• Accomplishment
• Beauty
• Community
• Creation
• Duty
• Enlightenment
• Freedom
• Harmony
• Justice
• Oneness
• Redemption
• Security
• Truth
• Validation
• Wonder

What makes something meaningful to one person over another is how people prioritize these core values. In order to understand how a particular group of people rank these values, it’s necessary to do a lot of qualitative research. By understanding this ranking, we are able to trigger meaning in the things we design and bring meaning to the work that we do.

The keynote wrapped up with Nathan describing how strategic design is looking for the overlap of meaning between a company, team, and customer base. If there is little to no overlap, than something is off: the wrong customers are being served or the wrong team is trying to do the job. All of these lead to the statement of “Consumerism isn’t dead, but it should be. It hasn’t served us well. But, we don’t know what to replace it with yet.” Interaction designers are poised to be the ones that come up with this new solution, as we have the models and research methods that serve us well.

Consumerism isn’t dead, but it should be. It hasn’t served us well. But, we don’t know what to replace it with yet. – Nathan Shedroff

(The presentation and related material are available on Nathan’s website – also check out the interview we did with Nathan)

Dave Gray – Knowledge Games

Any presentation that starts off with a detailed history of the AK-47 is sure to be challenging. Dave’s overview of Knowledge Games and their role in the design didn’t disappoint. The design philosophy that drove the creation of the AK-47 is the same one he is using to develop his framework around knowledge games: keep it simple, make it rugged, ensure that it is reliable, and that it is lightweight. His goal with creating knowledge games is to provide the tools that anyone can use to design better things, regardless of whether that person is a designer or not.

Don’t over think things. – Dave Gray

Dave Gray and the AK47

How do knowledge games help in the world of design? It gives us a framework for getting from point A to point B. It allows us to open up a problem, explore the problem space, and come to a closing point where we have a defined outcome. Here are some key points that we took away from this session:

• Never open something you can’t close;
• Ask questions that get people fired up, that gets them talking and brainstorming some ideas;
• Create a meaningful space in order to do work in. A space that inspires us to create, think, and collaborate;
• Sketch, everyone can draw. If you can draw basic shapes, you can draw just about anything;
• Choose what you will finally create well. Be critical and kill a lot of babies. (This came up a lot for some reason over the course of the presentation.)

Dave ended with perhaps the best message possible. “Don’t overthink things.” This is something that plagues us all sometimes, and it’s good advice to follow no matter what you happen to be doing.

Nate Bolt – Remote User Research

The popularity of performing remote user research is growing. Nate did a great job giving an overview of the value remote user research brings to the design process and highlighted some of the best tools that are available today. He is passionate about this subject, which is best highlighted by a book he is co-authoring and being published by Rosenfeld Media.

He started off by clarifying that the research user experience really cares about revolves around the behavior of people.  While the majority of all user research being done today is still in-person, remote research is gaining popularity. This is firstly because it’s easier to get someone to show up to a remote web meeting than it is to an unfamiliar office or conference room. Another advantage is that it’s easier to pause a study to iterate a design if the research is being done remotely.

If you can put it on the web, it can be studied and tested. – Nate Bolt

One of the most valued aspects of performing remote user research is mashing it up with traditional methods. Since the cost of some of these tools are so low, it’s easy to do a good mix of qualitative and quantitative research. All of the tools he covered are showcased here at RemoteUsability.com

Matt Cottam – Wooden Logic: In Search of Heirloom Electronics

Matt Cottam’s talk explored how natural materials and craft traditions can be brought to the center of interactive digital design to give modern products greater longevity and meaning. This was a very inspiring talk on how to work with electronics prototyping combined with classic wood carpenter craftsmanship.

The initial reason why Matt founded his company, Tellart, was the current disconnect we as designers have from the technology we design for. Matt compared the crafts industry in the mid to early 20th century when design was often closely related also to the technical side of the craft like the loom industry where textile designers and the loom technicians were educated in the same school. This closeness created a good setting for creating these products with longevity and meaning. Compared to today, there is a gap between interaction designers, programmers and electronics designers. What Matt is trying to do through his work is to close that gap, or at least make it smaller.

Part of his work has also been about experimenting with the patina process of objects and how to actually control it. As an example he showed models of toy boats that were put in a bag with ground coffee and then put in a river for several months, which was a very successful way of faking patina. Several of the student projects revolved around the challenge of doing user interface prototyping without computers, often with a very limited time and space, putting lots of emphasis on the presentation of the results.

Drawing examples from numerous student projects Matt has done over the last year with students at CIID, UID and his team he showed very interesting results on how to combine traditional material with modern electronics such as sensors and switches to create new unexpected combinations.

Tellart has created a client server application for iPhone that makes it extremely quick to do simple iPhone apps that communicate with hardware in literally a couple of days. The application is open source and you can read more about it at the Google code site.

All in all, the presentation showed very promising examples, if maybe not the final answers of what he wanted to achieve. You get the feeling that Matt is on to something that could potentially be big in the coming years, certainly in connection to the conference’s overall theme on creating meaning to the things we design.

Activity: Design Jam

Cupcake Carrier Sketches

The leaders of the Portland IxDA group gave a large group of people a run down on a common activity they perform at their meet ups. Jeanne Turner and Barbara Holmes created the activity of Design Jams in order avoid designers from getting burned out and over worked. The technique is borrowed from jam sessions that musicians do in order to avoid the very same things. During the jam session it isn’t about making something real, but rather about play and having fun. During the design jams, designer discuss, sketch, explore, and listen to each others ideas about how to solve a defined problem. By doing so, they learn new methods for solving the same problem and more importantly learn from each other.

The Design Jam has some simple rules that people must follow.

1. Solve real, concrete design problems
2. No limits to what can be discussed or designed
3. No stakeholders allowed. Everyone is a designer
4. Random groups each time
5. At the end everyone has to present their designs and what the contributed to the solution

With this the actual design jam started with the crowd being given one of two problems to solve: redesign luggage carrier to avoid clothes getting wrinkled while travelling, or a means to transport cupcakes without damaging the cupcakes. My group choose the cupcakes problem. After much discussion and exploration some of the top solutions came out to be using hard sugar in the icing, create scalable containers, use an edible container, generate magnetic cupcakes, and use tooth picks with gummies stuck to the top to provide additional support. The great thing about this activity was that it was simple, very interactive, and something that any group would be able to easily host for one of their meet ups.

Kendra Shimmell – Environments: The Future of Interaction Design

Kendra Shummel in action

I was told this talk was actually a bit of a wild card in the program and I can attest to that it as it was very inspiring and entertaining to see. To quote Kendra herself from the day before: “Sometimes you joke about how during a work meeting you should stand up and do improv dancing, and here I am going up on stage doing just that at an interaction design conference”.

We all need, and try, to do other things than our normal work to get perspective on things. Kendra being a trained dancer since the age of four wanted to give us a glimpse into her world of how she uses dance as an alternate way of approaching her design challenges. Kendra started up with talking about the similarities in choreography and interaction design, and how they are connected in staging activities over time in order to convey meaning. Of course in dance there are a whole lot more choreography.

For the second half of the talk, Kendra had in collaboration with Robert Wechsler from palindrome set up a motion tracking system that was hooked up to an application that that detects movements in three dimensional space. By connecting defined volumes in this space  to virtual triggers and scales, loops of sounds, talk, and noise Kendra created new music completely based on the movements from her improv dance. The whole experience is very hard to reproduce in text. All talks were recorded and will be put on the IxDA website with in the coming weeks and if you  decide to watch any of them this is definitely one of the ones you should not miss.

Nicolas Nova – Observing Failures to Provoking Them

Failure is cool. Not only was this the statement on the opening slide, but it sums up the overall session as well. Using personal experiences, Nicolas showed a packed house how vital failure is in the art of design and how much we can learn from it when we try to make it happen. The main focus of the presentation was on the failure of products, specifically automated products such as doors and light switches. What makes these products so interesting is how easy it is to observe the failures in action, showcased by a sensor used on Swedish trains for automatically opening the doors between cars.

Some of the more interesting behaviors he has witnessed involved talking to motion based sensors, and stomping on the ground when the sensors where located near the floor. These behaviors arise due to the invisible nature around automatic products, and a person’s inability to discern how they work. The failures themselves are unique since in the past they may not have ever existed, and thanks to advancements in technology we are able to view them for the first time. There are some common reasons why automatic devices fail though:

• Distinguishing the automatic from the non-automatic
• Invisible or illegible “locus of control”
• Too quick or too slow to activate
• Weather dependent calibration
• Different ‘door’ conventions (e.g. swing vs retracting doors)

A common problem that arises when these automatic devices fail is “Individual-Blame Bias.” People start to get blamed or end up blaming themselves for the failure of technology. After a while, people get fed up and will lash out in frustration at these devices. A great example he used was a robot that helps in the care of people in a hospital. This poor robot would get kicked by patients when it came around to do its duties, for simply coming in at the wrong time.

The session wrapped up by exploring a technique called the “Anti-Probe”, which is meant to provoke a failure. One of the cases he went over where he had used this technique was with regards to the use of the Wii remote. His team modified the remote calibration to make small movements to generate huge reactions while playing a game. Surprisingly, the participants actually really enjoyed this behavior since it took a little effort in order to cause such a huge reaction. These provoked failure lead to the insight of how important it is to see how people react, what new solutions they create, and how annoyed they might get when something does go wrong. This allows the team to use failure as a design tactic and to use failure as an inspiration rather than a hindrance.

Jon Kolko – Closing Keynote

Jon Kolko

Jon Kolko started by offering four pillars which our profession resides upon: experience, behavior, meaning, and culture.

According to Jon, the word ‘experience’ is special and should be used with reserve. This is because we all have one, and no matter what that experience is unique to each person involved in the experience. Factors that help shape the experience are the complexity of ourselves that we bring to it, design artefacts, natural events, and the other people surrounding the experience. This is why though designers may be given the same input and use the same process, the end solutions will be drastically different. Therefore, the key to getting people involved in experiences is through engagement: this, rather than repeatability, is key to good experiences. It’s up to designers to be less prescriptive, focus on the space between, and strive for real engagement.

An echo from his article Our Misguided Focus on Brand and User Experience, Jon again proposed why designers have the power to change culture, and that we have the ability to affect massive and acute change in society. To showcase this point, he talked about a project one of his students did where she went in search for the answer to the question “What’s the deal with deal with kids, beer, and sex?” After collecting some amazing quotes from college students, her solution to this problem was presented. In order to raise awareness of the dangers of unprotected sex, she attached condoms and important information to bottles of beer. The result was an increase in college students practising safe sex. She was able to accomplish this by empathizing with the people she was studying, and designing something that was aligned to how they actually behave.

The final point of his keynote revolved around the quote “Good design is a privilege rather than a right in today’s world.” He states that in some cases, it’s not money that is preventing people from using new technology but perceived complexity. To illustrate this point, he told the story of teachers who refused to use PC’s in their classroom due to the poor performance. The solution to this poor performance was regular maintenance of re-imaging the machines, something a standard school teach just doesn’t have the time to do. His team at frog design helped with this problem helping HP provide a machine that would re-image itself at the end of each computer session. Teachers were then able to use all the advanced tools available to them without having to deal with all the overhead of maintaining the computers. This lead to his closing message of “Designing for real cultural change starts by understanding how people currently behave”.

Designing for real cultural change starts by understanding how people currently behave. – Jon Kolko

The first day of the conference ended on a high note, poor weather notwithstanding. Day 2 has some big shoes to fill based on the sessions of today, but the promise of the session for tomorrow lead us to believe that tomorrow will be just as informative and inspiring as today was.

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All images by Brad Nunnally and Niklas Wolkert

Paola Antonelli is the design curator at the New York Museum of Modern Art and a leading voice in the power of design, shown most recently in her acclaimed 2008 exhibition Design for the Elastic Mind. Antonelli talked to us about how her process for creating an exhibition, the future of design, and how we make people and objects more elastic.

You have organized a lot of succesful exhibitions at MoMA. What is your approach when setting up a new exhibition?

Paola Antonelli

My passion is contemporary design; to look at how people live today and understand from that what’s going to happen the day after tomorrow. I never do science fiction movies, but I like to give some idea of the way we are going to live maybe in two to three years from now.

In order to do so first of all, a theme comes to mind, an idea. An idea is a dollar a pound, and it depends on which one you decide to develop that really makes it worthy of talking about. Let’s say you decide to develop a certain idea, you start to look for examples in the world of design all around the world that supports this idea. Now, when I say the world of design it doesn’t mean just the bona fide designers that get published in magazines. Sometimes it’s products that are already on the market that don’t really have a name attached. But, you know everything that is built is a form of design, so there is a lot to look at. I usually gather a lot of different material and begin to sculpt the exhibit, I usually start with too much and as you really prepare the exhibition certain objects get abandoned and others come to the surface. It’s a process, it really is. In the end it all comes together, but it never is completely finished. When it comes to contemporary design it is best to leave the exhibition slightly unfinished to let the public finish it itself.

When it comes to contemporary design it is best to leave the exhibition slightly unfinished to let the public finish it itself.

One of the strong points of MoMA is the ability to ‘experience’ an exhibition digitally. How far do you want to go with this? How far will this go in relationship to the physical exhibition?

I started the museum website in 1995, because my very first short MoMA was a show about new materials about design. I figured it would be good to have a website. So ever since, I’ve had websites for every show I’ve done. I consider the website a place to archive everything, every website has all the materials and an explanation of all the objects in the show. Progressively it has becomes a place for an experience, and I feel the experience should be different than the show itself.

I don’t see the website as a surrogate or a substitute to the show itself, but rather a space all on to its own. For every show there are three main spaces, one is the gallery space, another is the catalog if you do it, and a third is the website. Each one responds to different laws, and they lead you to different experiences. The website for ‘Design and the Elastic Mind‘ was truly an experience, one that you would either love or hate.  It was completely in Flash – Yugo Nakamura, who is considered to be one of the kings of Flash, was the creative director – and required you to really float around on and explore to experience it in full. It had a personality that was very distinct. It had nothing really to do with the show, even though it contained the same objects though they were organized for the space of the website.

Right now the limit to what can be done on the web is the software. The limits are the crashes and the speed download. So much that we can do more without, I don’t believe in doing virtual galleries. That’s a bad use of the medium. So much is imperfect. We have all tried to do exhibitions on SecondLife, but I’m sorry, it was terrible.

When setting up a new exhibition, how do you try and capture the attention of the audience? How do you lure people into the exhibition?

Design and the Elastic Mind

I don’t know. It kind of comes naturally. There needs to be a good balance, of course you want to convey a certain idea and you hope that the idea will push the whole world a little further and forward. But, at the same time you need to do it with some grace without being too pandering and too heavy. So there are always a little sense of humor in certain objects, some lightness every now and then, even when you have a serious message to convey. Then there is also the idea that you want to show that design is a very creative discipline and that there is playfulness in it and talent, but there is also a lot of thinking and reasoning. And, more than anything, there is a lot of thinking about human beings.

However, people usually like it better when it’s not that abstract, where their lives are not at stake. So one of the best ways to make the exhibition engaging for people is to make them understand that it is about people.  What designs do is they really focus on people’s lives, even when they use the most advanced of technologies. They are the ones that guarantee that these devices actually work for people. It’s a mixture of that and the overall design of the space, ensuring its attractiveness, and the choice of objects. I always compare curators, especially curators at MoMA, to movie directors. It’s as if I was the director and MoMA was the studio. Each director has their own personality. It really has to do with the philosophy of displaying and the philosophy of exhibiting.

You see a lot of new forms of design popping up, like ‘critical design’ and ‘green design’. What new form of design appeals to you the most?

“Design for the Elastic Mind” was all about new forms of design. But, the type of design that I’m really interested in is all of them. I love the way designers work with scientists, biomimicry, and nanodesign. I love tissue design, behavioral design, and I’m interested in social design depending on how it’s done. I’m very passionate about informational design and visualization, I think it is one of the biggest avenues for designers in the future. In a way, I’m interested in any form of design that doesn’t start with an object but rather starts with reasoning. A reasoning about how people live and how they could live better in the future.

What, for the coming decade, will be an important influence/change for the way we approach design?

I think more and more it will be not about objects, but rather about other things. Or at least the objects will be in the computer screen. I think the designer that are going to survive are the ones that have studied how to make chairs, but are more interested in experiences, interaction, and interfaces. The next show that I’m working on is about this, called “Talk to Me.” It’s about the communication between people and objects. I really believe that’s what’s going to happen the most.

I also feel that designers will start to be employed more in policy making, and sociology and ethnography. Their knowledge of how people think and behave will be exploited better.

Over the last decade, which product has made the most impact on you and why?

The iPod, which then became the iPhone, really it’s the whole i-suite. I use a BlackBerry personally, but any kind of portable communication device that supports both text and email has revolutionized our life the most.

How do you see the balance between input from users and the brilliance of designers when designing new products?

It depends on the product, because every product requires a different balance. There are some products that are all about how people want them to be: these tend to be open source. There are others where people want the hand, or mind, of designer. They want the signature. It’s becoming more and more thinking before doing, and understanding where the object sits. Let’s say you want to buy a Cabana chair for $10,000, you don’t want your input in it. You want it to be their input only. Instead, you want to customize your Firefox, you want to customize it all by yourself. Your input is in the parts you decide to assemble and all the plugins that you want. So you see, there is a big difference between the functionality and symbolism of the object.

In an article you once wrote that “the figure of the designer is changing from form giver to fundamental interpreter of an extraordinary dynamic reality”. What did you mean by this?

What’s happening is that designers used to be those that made chairs, or those that made posters. Instead, right now they look at the way people live and they try to translate their observations into better products, better interfaces. Objects that are better, more flexible, more adaptable, and more elegant artifacts that we can surround ourselves with. Since people are changing everyday faster, and what’s happened in the past decade is the rate of change has become more rapid, what designers have to do is first and foremost be like anthropologists, or ethnographers. They have to observe how things happen and interpret them as fast as possible in a smart way.

What designers have to do is first and foremost be like anthropologists … observe how things happen and interpret them as fast as possible in a smart way.

In the same article you wrote this beautiful sentence “If design is to help enable us to live to the fullest while taking advantage of all the possibilities provided by contemporary technology, designers need to make both people and objects perfectly elastic” How do you make people more elastic?

People might become more elastic before you make them. But, it’s a matter of open-mindedness and getting people to accept change. The reason people call innovation distributive is because when it’s imposed upon society by the people creating it, they don’t give a damn about the people. They don’t care about the consequences of the innovation, rather they just pass on the innovation to society. Designers try to ensure that innovations are able to be used by people and it speaks the language that the people are familiar with. This is how you make objects more elastic, how you make people more elastic is by making them more comfortable with change as it happens. It’s not a one way street, both people and objects need to have better interfaces.

Interaction 10

If you want to meet Paola Antonelli in real life: she is one of the keynote speakers at Interaction 10. It is the third annual conference hosted by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Each year, IxDA aims to gather the interaction design community to connect, educate, and inspire each other. This year it is held in Savannah, Georgia (USA).

There are many degrees of failure in the world of design. This is a hard truth that every designer has to learn one way or another. A hard knock lesson that has the ability to be the best teacher a designer could ask for, or completely crush their spirit. Dealing with our failures is never easy, especially when a personal connection is involved. These failures can appear throughout the design process, but each failure can be seen as an opportunity. So where do we go to learn how to deal with and learn from our failures? Reach way back and consult the great Sun Tzu and his masterpiece ‘The Art of War’.

It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.

The entire profession of design is one rooted in failure, for without it there would be no need for designers. Designers exist to come in, assess what has been failing, and offer up solutions for the future. Even the process of creating that solution is made up of a variety of failures that lead the designer to a single golden idea. The more we design, the more failures we are exposed to, and the better our work becomes in the future for having learned what not to do. Luckily, making mistakes in a design doesn’t always lead to death and mayhem like it can when conducting a battle, but the principles are the same. In order to truly use the power of failure to our advantage, we must experience it and not back down when an overwhelming challenge presents itself.

Another advantage the world of design has over that of warfare is the fact that we always have the chance to look back at our ‘battles’, even when we failed. It’s important to take the time and look back at a project once complete to gauge what worked well and more importantly what didn’t. If we want to learn and improve we should review past events in a conversation that includes everyone that contributed to the project. Stakeholders, sponsors, developers, designers, and project management all contributed something to the success, or lack there of, of a project. The outcome of this conversation is an understanding of what needs to be replicated in future projects, and suggestions to processes that failed to deliver. While pride might be the only real casualty of this conversation, everyone should leave the meeting with an understanding of how to avoid similar mistakes that plagued the project in the future.

The general who thoroughly understands the advantages that accompany variation of tactics knows how to handle his troops.

There is no such thing as a ‘silver bullet’ method for designers. Many of us have an underlying process which we try to follow as closely as possible, but modifications are made to it over the course of a project. This ability to adapt and compromise is the single greatest skill that can help anyone deal with failures. When the inevitable mistake occurs, it’s a true fight or flight situation and the demeanor one takes towards it speaks not only to their professionalism, but to their natural talent as a designer. Any design project can be plagued with the unexpected, be it last minute feature requests that ‘have’ to be in the final solution or budget changes that move the delivery date up two months. Taking these random events in stride and using them to help propel the project to completeness is the true sign of a master at their craft. Just like a great general, the battlefield is always being assessed and battle plans adjusted to meet current needs.

Being able to adapt to a given situation can be made easier by keeping a catalog of past warning signs that at the time were missed, but later identified as the reason for failing. By having an understanding of these warning signs, it’s possible to already have the means of dealing with problems as they appear. This ability to think on your feet and maintain a sense of calm while chaos reigns around you can be fostered and learned. It isn’t the talent of a few, but rather a skill of the experienced. And the first step to learning this skill is by acknowledging that whatever process you’re following today probably won’t work for you tomorrow.

To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

Effective communication can be seen as bringing in the reserves when a battle takes a turn for the worse. Taking in the situation and coming up with a revised plan that is easily explained to all parties involved can make or break the success of a project. Failing back on excuses, pointing fingers at others, or simply pointing out the obvious pales in comparison to the benefits of offering a solution that helps get a project back on track. A well written email or a timely placed phone call to put a client at ease, lessens the severity of the situation and fosters a sense of partnership. It’s this partnership that allows a project team to get past all the bad things that can creep up, and continue to work.

The key to maintaining effective communication is ensuring everyone involved with a project is accountable for their own actions. The current rise of the Agile Development Process has helped this sense of accountability grow with the advent of daily standups. Unfortunately, it isn’t as common place as it should be. ‘Fessing up to problems while the issue is still in its infancy allows the team as a whole to develop a solution. The delay caused by these baby issues is minuscule compared to if they are allowed to fester. Meaningful communication over the course of a project is hinged on the accountability of the members of the project team.

Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.

In order to truly harness the power of failure, it’s important that the leadership behind an organization encourages a culture that is forgiving and encourages the natural exploration and growth that can come from failure. If an organization’s leadership blames others for the mistakes they themselves make, than there is no desire for the worker bees to accept their own shortcomings. It’s a shame when people, or whole teams, are let go because of failures that they may or may not have been the cause of. Even when fault can be placed on them, drastic measures shouldn’t be taken unless the failure can be attributed to simple negligence.

Companies like Dyson and Honda are prime examples of companies who have turned many failures into great successes. They put a considerable amount of effort into fostering an environment where people are encouraged to fail and to use those failures to reach a particular goal. People are encouraged to explore and test ideas with the goal of throwing out as many bad ideas as possible. If the traditional punishment that is associated with failure is removed from the equation, people are more willing to test out something crazy just to see if it might work. The overall leadership sets the stage for this type of corporate culture, and it’s the individual managers that use the flexibility allowed to them to push their teams to create greatness.

Failing at something sucks, or at least that is what we are lead to believe. The truth is: without failure, nothing would ever improve and innovation would be impossible. If there is one constant, it’s that what works well today will eventually become deficient and need to replacing. Since we’ve already identified that the world of design is made up of failures, it’s time to stop hiding from this mythical boogie man. It’s time to open our eyes and see failure as the beautiful muse it is and as just another tool to use in order to create awesomeness.