Boarding passes. The stress of getting them in time, or remembering to print them out before you get to the airport, and not losing them. Can QR codes replace them?

Recently I went to Midwest UX in Columbus, Ohio and flew Delta for the trip. Checking in the night before, I was presented with a screen asking if I want my boarding pass:

• Printed
• Emailed to me
• Sent to my phone
• Saved to be printed at the airport

Curious, I chose to have the boarding pass sent to my phone. What I received was a text message to the Safari page below. Immediately I was intrigued. A QR code for my boarding pass? I had never seen any additional infrastructure at the terminals to account for this? But if it saves a few sheets of papers I’ll give it a go.

The Excitement

Going through security I held up my phone to a scanner a proceeded to the metal detectors. The same, at the gate, I loaded the web page and scanned my phone as I walked down the jetway. Smooth as could be, I was pleasantly surprised as the efficiency of the process. Neither security nor the gate attendants questioned my boarding pass, it was as if they expected it. This isn’t without complications though.

Where it Failed

Despite the streamlined workflow and the pleasure of not needing to us the walk-up-and-go terminals there are still a few places my digital boarding pass fell short.

Gate Number

Scroll to the bottom of the boarding pass, the gate number states Check Monitor. This makes sense a night before my flight, but again, when I checked the page at the airport it said the same. Digital boarding passes should provide accurate and current information. Tie the boarding pass to the main system and update me, in real time, of gate information and delays if appropriate. Don’t make me use one piece of technology to hunt around for another.

iPhone Lock

I have a password lock on my phone. Add this to the iPhone screen turning off (and locking) after a minute and timing is everything. I’m in line for security – wanting to make sure I have the boarding pass up when I get to the front of the line, but I don’t know when that will be. The same when boarding the flight. I don’t want to be that guy delaying boarding and I also dont want to keep toying with my phone just to keep the screen active. There needs to be a balance.

Overall this was a new and good experience as a part of my airline travelling experience. I challenge to look at the implications of technology though. If I am saving paper, alleviating lines at check in, can I get a fast track lane as a reward for my planning? Where can we leverage analog methods within a digital realm to streamline the experience further?

Instead of making one product a million times over you can make one product for one person.

3-d printers have been around for some time now and have increased in popularity through the Industrial Design community as means to create fast and cheap, high quality and functioning prototypes. With products like Makerbot making the technology more accesible, entrepreneurs are looking with increased fervor for viable consumer applications of the technology.

Scott Summit, of Bespoke Innovations offers one solution “Instead of making one product a million times over you can make one product for one person”. Bespoke is the collaboration of an industrial designer and an orthopedic surgeon that offers one of a kind custom prosthetic limbs. Rather than build these tools from off the shelf prefabricated parts, Bespoke combines 3-D scanning and printing technology to understand the individual user’s needs and to build custom apparatus. Cheaper than traditional manufacturing, more local and generally a better fit, these tools don’t stop at a custom sizing. Metal plating, leather wrapping, and other post production modifications help create a personalized and genuine product.

While prosthetics is certainly one application of 3-D printing technology, the software still has a steep learning curve and, with the exception of the Makerbot, entry level printers are still pricey. We are not at the point of having individual makers in our kitchens circa Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age but the accesibility of custom products is here. How might this affect computer tower design or automobile design? The revived Volkswagon Beatle is an impressive step in custom design touting hundreds of options and thousands of combinations. That number increases exponentially when custom 3-D printed parts are introduced into the mix. What else is possible? How can this one-off mentality translate to interface design?

_{Source Article: New York Times}

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Day Two started bright and early with a full day of talks, panels, and workshops. With Dan Willis as the morning keynote the room was crowded with coffee–and–ipad–in–hand designers.

Keynote, Dan Willis

Technology is the application of scientific thought to practical application

Dan (aka @uxcrank) opened day two with All You Really Need to Know About Users You Learned in High School and his presentation was anything but traditional (and there is video proof). He introduces this as the Hangover Keynote, being day two and the show didn’t stop there. Before starting beach balls fly through the room and a dance party starts getting the entire room moving and shaking. And after a few minutes of displacement, Dan starts his talk or as he puts it, his Sermon on Demystification.

Dan demystifies UX and our profession and shares that a lot of what we do we learned in grade school. This includes:

• Hall passes are bullshit, control is an illusion.
• The cool kids liked you for your car.
• You can’t trust new friends, online friends are not ‘move your couch’ friends.
• You’re wearing what? People group and act like sheep.
• People go to parties to get drunk and have sex with strangers, sometimes superficial is good.

Dan closes his talk debunking myths of runaway technology, the cutting edge, Web 2.0 and human to human connection, and mobile web. He drives up to be a designer and to have meaningful goals with our products as well as to drop the adjective adjacent to design and to focus on the work as a holistic problem solving process.

Agile’s Secret Step: Discovery, Lis Hubert

Lis opens by defining what she means by Agile as a project execution method that is, simply, different than waterfall. Then, after a quick survey of the room level sets that we have all had some form of exposure to the methodology. She moves to discuss that Agile’s secret steps are discovery and planning. Sharing her stories with a large financial services company nicknamed The Titanic and others she discusses the challenges of UX fitting into Agile.

Lis Hubert

Lis reminds us Agile is not the enemy and communicates how we can have UX coincide as a defined element within the Agile process. Lis equates a product backlog to the bottles of beer coming down an assembly line and the need to be informed what is next to run an efficient system. This comes not from an iteration zero but rather a strategy team in charge of the overall plan. Agile must continue to move forward and balance of discovery and appropriate planning can keep UX involved and balanced throughout the project life cycle.

Influencing Business Using a Wall of Knowledge, Heidi Mucn and Derren Hermann

Heidi and Derren, working at Nationwide Insurance, share their methods and experiences influencing business. They step away from corporate samples though and share personal stories that use their methods.

What is the Wall of Knowledge? In Nationwide, its the large spaces to hang up and present information relevant to the current discussion. Much like an affinity diagram, it collates and organizes in a fluid manner information for the team to be aware of only unlike an affinity diagram it can include facts, inspiration, and any other form of content. When in practice, the Wall is used to obtain unified by in and collaboration earlier on so that the large stakeholder meetings are more around head nodding and less around discourse of a direction and decision. Make the information public and social and everyone is more engaged.

Taming a Nine-Headed Stakeholder Monster, Geoff Alday

Geoff defines the nine headed stakeholder monster, its a shared challenge that we all face, and it is our responsibility to synthesize and understand stakeholder needs and opinions. He immediately arms us with his tips on how to manage the beast and defines nine archetypes:

1. User. The myth is they don’t know what they want but they do.
2. Customer. The myth is the customer is always right, but they really want goals to be accomplished.
3. Sales. The myth is all they want is more sales, but address their pain points.
4. Marketing. The myth is all they care about impressions, but they truly do know how to market a product and ask marketing for content support.
5. Support. The myth is they only hear complaints and they can offer a unique understanding of users.
6. Executive. Geoff admits all these myths are true.
7. The Others. While not stakeholders the myth is their opinion doesn’t matter and is dismissed.
8. Developer. Debunk the myth that developers can’t design. They might not have the visual skills but they can contribute conceptual and functional designs beyond a designer’s skills.
9. Designer. The myth is the designer is they can only make it pretty, but there is more thought behind it.

Geoff close with tips to speak to the monsters language and to not use jargon for jargon’s sake, to listen to the stakeholders, and to consider all angles before disagreeing with something. His final thought is to admit mistakes and to get over it, don’t take everything personally.

Winning Big in UX: Changing the Problem–Solving Culture in Organizations, Jay Morgan

Jay defines his cognitive science background as his kung fu grip. He discusses how we can succeed more in UX by interpreting motivations and behaviours, not only of users but of stakeholders. Jay shares a few heuristics, is A like B (representativeness, Start here, get to there (anchoring and adjustment), and How likely is that to happen (availability). Ultimately Jay charges that we as designers must do more than design and must leverage cognitive and social sciences to be ambassadors and to build relationships more than build things that simply look good or behave well.

Working Lunch: Every UX Person Needs a Portfolio, Abby Covert

The UX community discusses a lot around how to present work, what level of a portfolio is needed, and how to best present work, especially given constraints around NDAs. Over lunch Abby had the audience go through a series of exercises intended for self reflection to understand how we can communicate what we do. Abby communicated three key criteria a portfolio should have:

• Pride not Proof — have pride in your work.
• Quality not Quantity
• Passion and Process — what you do, how you do it, and why.

Abby stresses the need for an ‘About Me’ that is real and tangible. Ignore buzz words and companies, focus on what you do in layman terms. She continues to discuss format (readable, presentable, printable) maintenance and growth, and distribution. In the end the audience left with new contacts to continue the exercises and a completed workbook with the building blocks of their own portfolio.

Abby Covert

“This Product Sucks!” A Sampler of Product Design Issues, Darren Kall

Darren tells a story of a product he created that, after conversations with a client realized that parts of it sucked. Darren communicates how to tell if products suck and then, if they do, how to mitigate the issue. What makes a product suck is not if it is unattractive, broken, or tasteless but rather if there is a conscious design or business decision that reduces the ideal experience. We conclude with a series of different non web-based samples of sucky products and what, from our UX toolkit needs to be done to avoid the issue. Comical and lightweight, Darren reminds us all of what not to do and how to approach design.

The Nature of Information Architecture, Dan Klyn

IA/UX is a dated term and IA should stand alone. As a professor with the University of Michigan Dan communicates how IA needs to and deserves to stand alone and that it is not an IA slash UX (IA/UX) connection.

They learn about this thing Information Architecture and they enter a world that does not have IA by itself.

Dan breaks down the ontology, taxonomy, and choreography of things and reframes what information architecture is at a root level. Using the iPad and Apple’s taxonomy as a basis for the conversation, we analyze language and how different product are organized well or poorly, and the resulting effect on the overall experience. Taking a step back away from the deliverables (site map, product map, etc) we are left to evaluate where IA fits as a larger part of design and an equal level, not a slash to UX.

Thinking with Your Hands, Karl Fast

“An experience designer walks into a bar…” And with that Karl opens up with the simple observation that we all talk with our hands. But why? Our gestures help convey additional information about our story. Sharing research around how and when people talk with their hands Karl discusses the learned habits around gestures, and the rate and reasons for gestures.

Karl describes the three types of gestures: adapters emblems and gestures, and the different use cases for each of them. He realigns the meaning of gestures and by introducing the term emblems aligns the audience to what we actually mean by gestural interfaces. Tying the conversation to affordances Karl stresses that we need to understand and design for the implications and details around gestures. They are just as important as the details of a door handle, and it is our role to understand the connection between what we do with our hands and how we interact.

Destroying the Box: Experience Design Inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright, Joe Sokohl

Joe uses Frank Lloyd Wright as a basis to discuss design. It is not the material and tools we make but what is the experience and purpose. Joe references memes that came out of Interactions 11 in Boulder and by discussing architecture addresses the framework of design.

The reality of the building odes not consist in roof and walls but in the space within to be lived in. — Laotse

Some main theme Joe covered:

Content. Frank Lloyd Wright destroys the box and brings ‘the outside in and the inside out’. How can interaction designers break the bounds of the technology we use and still work within the constraints of our technology.

Clients. Frank Lloyd Wright knew what his clients needed and built homes specific for the people who would live in that space. As designers we must know our audience and design for them.

Ultimately Joe’s talk takes us beyond the screen and reminds us what is important when we design, and that other disciplines have much to give to IxD.

Keynote, Jesse James Garrett

Jesse’s closing can best be seen as a reflection with a call to change perceptions. Sharing popularized samples of web design Jesse paints his vision of where design and interaction across all media is moving. He communicates that UX can be applied to anything, not just the web and we need to continue to push those limits.

The user experience mindset is an acquired condition for which there is no cure

As we move forward with design we are challenged to answer how UX can capture so many different media. But what Jesse defines as design as is simply a mastery of a media, or mediumism. We are too focused on the tools and should not define UX as specific to a tool. Instead we should design beyond medium at which time we can focus on experience and engagement.

Jesse moves across emotion, interaction, and brings the conference to a close as he discusses perceptions of design and our need to get out of the interaction design echo chamber and to seek for more inspiration across all artistic tracks.

——–

_{Top Image: Stephen A. Wolfe’s photostream.
Youtube Clip compliments of brevadude.
Additional images compliments of @ixdiego}

It’s conference season. And we welcome MidwestUX to the mix, brought to you by IxDA Columbus and COUPA. A two day event, hosted in Columbus, Ohio, MidwestUX follows a two track program full of four keynotes, lightning round talks, workshops, and panel discussions. As always, Johnny is there to deliver a daily write-up for those who weren’t able to attend.

I should start by noting, while we had a jam packed first day and an equally full Day Two planned, the conference didn’t start Saturday morning. The conference organizers organized quite the welcome reception with a self guided pub crawl for Friday night for any of the attendees who planned to be there early enough for the pre conference festivities.

Keynote Jared Spool

Jared kicked off the morning with The Secret Lives of Links and shares with us the story of his daughter’s ‘secret’ live journal and evolved the conversation to the findability and secret nature of information on the web. Jared points out that we don’t talk about links, and that they are one of the most important parts of a page and how we communicate information. We discuss the nature of links and search, which as Jared puts it is BYOL, or Bring Your Own Link, as people type in the words they expect to see as links elsewhere in the page.

We never talk about links, yet they are the most important aspect of our sites.

Jared continues through various news sites, university sites, and turns his attention to marketing, ecommerce and other popular samples. He shares the history of links and breaks down why blue underline links don’t work and stresses that links want to look good. He leaves us with the thoughts of how we balance the presentation of links and their actual purpose; on how the power of a link is much more than what we present and how we often mix metaphors to confuse the purpose of links and navigation.

Follow Jared at @jmspool

UX Research in the Real World: Stories from Rwanda, Veronica Erb

Veronica shares her story of travelling to Rwanda to perform UX research around teachers. Three specific lessons were shared.

1. No schedule. When you can’t or don’t schedule your research in advance you think in chunks, not in specific time slots. Work with what is available to you.

2. No Recruiting. Working without a schedule at a new site each day, it was important to know your criteria for who you would like to research and who would be most beneficial gven the constraints provided.

At some point the director is going to come in and start using his filing cabinet and you can’t care.

3. No Lab. When conducting mobile research you are working in any space that is available. Working in a principal’s desk or classroom it requires additional fluidity and the ability to ‘roll with the punches’

Veronica closes with her perceptions on the success of the project: the passion of UXsters, the alignment with the stakeholders, and the willingness to always push for more. She also reminds us not to worry with the Rwandian phrase nta kibazo.

Follow Veronica at @verbistheword

Cooking UX with Cultural Leftovers, Erik Dahl

Erik takes the stage to discuss culture in design and the mutual impact culture has on our designs and design has on culture. We define culture as being more than context. It includes people, activities, context, emotions, motivations, goals, and more. It also includes an abstraction of patterns and stories.

Erik discusses how to suss out culture through observation, empathy and openess to stories and abstraction of differences across people and the world. He moves through definition to examples of where culture and stories are misaligned and it takes time and attention to recognize the effects a decision might actually take. With samples from America and Brazil, expectations and differences in culture help us realize the decisions we make have broader effects and require more focussed attention and thought.

Follow Erik at @eadahll

From Cancer to Bankruptcy, Brad Nunnally

Brad picks up where Erik left off – discussing the need for empathy during research as it helps build relationships as designers. With experience working with cancer survivors and working with retirement savings during the 2008 market turmoil, Brad shares how empathy and relationships are vital in emotionally tense environments. Sharing some advice with the audience, Brad communicates to:

• Never go alone, use the buddy system.
• Always show up on time. Be five minutes early but never late.
• Send a welcome packet, let people know who you are in advance including photos, bios and references.
• Humanize yourself and don’t be a stoic researcher.
• Take the glass of water offered to you and truly be a guest.
• Remember the user is just as scared as you are.
• Be honest.
• When the interview is over, leave. Do not debrief in people’s driveway.

Brad concludes by tying these relationships to different movies — suspense, horror, comedy, and anything else. Research isn’t a scripted science and like a film you have to follow the rabbit holes and follow the user’s stories while maintaining a focus. Brad also shares that it is OK to cry, laugh, and befriend your participant, and to be sensitive that some stories might haunt you beyond the duration of the interview.

Follow Brad at @bnunnally

Empowering Teens through Design Education, Larissa Itomlenskis

Larissa talks about her experience teaching architecture and design to teens in Columbus. Showing samples of work, Larissa communicates the constraints and implications of teaching children in a limited time and what we as designers can take from this experience. Larissa shares the inspiration she found by educating young students on design and by sharing the samples of their sketches and concerns left the room refecting on our practice and the influence we can have on youth. Children want to throw something away if it is not perfect and it is our job to communicate how to iterate and critique effectively, how to encourage discovery in an environment without failure.

In a proffessional environment you can’t just point to something and say that’s dumb.

From Mega Website to Mobile Experience, Edward Stull and Marty Vian

Edward and Marty share their perspectives on mobile experience design with their unique roles: Edward as a mobile app designer and Marty as a current client. Putting the addage to ‘Design for Mobile First’ on end, the duo shares ther story of developing the mobile application Manta based on the rich and extensive online presence. Slides illustrated the translation of functionality from web to mobile and the implications around reolution, environment, and controls. More a showing of their work, the talk acted as a catalyst for the later presentations on design for mobile and showed additional perspectives to a lot of the conversations on how and when to approach mobile.

Follow Edward at @esdc and Marty at @mvianl

Adaptive Mobile UX Design, Jen Matson

Jen shares her story of shopping for a space heater. Navigating the Sears website with Google’s support and through the mobile version and sharing her frustration when the information and experience is sub par. The sub par experience has led, in part, to the notion of Adaptive Mobile UX Design which may be defined as:

Creating web sites and applications that try to give each user the best possible content and experience tailored to their device and browsing context.

This need and definition isn’t new as tailored advertising often employs this as large billboards and targeting marketing spreads adapt to their audience and the context. Jen stresses the canvas or varying size, capabilities of what is available, and the context of the experience as the key items to consider around adaptive mobile ux design. Jen closes by highlighting technologies and methods currently available to employ and support adaptive design including HTML5, CSS3, geolocation, dynamic device orientation and more tools and kits.

Follow Jen at @nstop

Mobile Design Thinking Beyond Apple, Brad Colbow

Brad immediately changes pace from the mobile application design and shares a story of community and social interaction at a modern camp site. After sharing his story he moves back to mobile devices and communicates how the nuanced differences across platforms can be most critical in the overall success and failure of interactions. Sharing samples from Android, Apple, Blackberry and Windows Mobile Brad compares interactions across different platforms. With different hard and soft key placement and different menu paradigms mobile app design is not a one and done process and is not a standardized process. Brad concludes with a review of the different UI Style Guides and best practices of different interactions and motivates us to understand the differences across platforms and the opportunity to build interactions with care.

Don’t let your UI hinder the user experience.

Follow Brad at @bradcolbow

Don’t Watch TV – Experience It, Brian Stone

On avereage there are more televisions in a home than number of people living there

Brian introduces us to some stats: there are more televisions in many homes than people, televisions are more ubiquitous than computers in the home, television is used as a channel to more noise and a venue for social interaction. Yet despite 97% of homes in the US having a television it is wholly ignored from a user experience stance.

Brian calls out the lack of development for televisions wether it is the interaction, the applications, or supporting the experience while exposing the growing number of web-connected systems over the next few years. By sharing samples including Boxee, Hulu and other players he leaves us with three questions around user experience and television: What can it do, How does it do it, and How will it be different?

Users want more meaningful content on demand with a great experience when it comes to tv viewing

Keynote: Marc Rettig

Marc closed out day one discussing Design for Life and brought the theoretical and practical discussions of the day into his presentation. Marc immediately confronts the breakdowns around professional definitions and just as quickly assures us he will not be sharing those thoughts and ‘defining the damn thing’. Instead he uses that as an opportunity to spring board to the need not to define our work but to understand where it fits in the greater landscape. Marc discussed some of the history of user experience and placed us in the context of where we stand in today’s business; both geographically and socially with the amorphous seat at the table.

Marc defines our current status as the ‘UX Era’ and discusses how we communicate within our community and to the broader audience at large. He charges us to determine how to bridge the gap between human society and technology with business. Sharing his journey, there is much that resonated with the audience as he left no tangible action items but rather opportunity for further conversation. If anything Marc’s talk about connections and networks inspired attendees to reach out of their comfort zone and to meet new people during Saturday evenings events.

Follow Marc at @mrettig

_{Top Image: Stephen A. Wolfe’s photostream.}

Designers and researchers love data. Whether quantitative or qualitative data drives design. While it is one challenge to gather data, a far greater challenge is presenting it. Enter Daytum launch August 2008. Created by Nicholas Felton Daytum is a publicly available method for capturing and visualizing data. Felton, a true advocate of data has released annual reports of his life since 2005, capturing everything from food, relationships, and travel in a visual format.

_{Image: 2005 Annual Report}
For me, Daytum offers a way to easily track small sections of my life. Tracking water, beer, and liquor and even simple interactions I am able to visualize a slice of life formerly unavailable to me. With a simple mobile interface, I am able to track life on the go as it occurs in real time. Providing the raw data in CSV format, I am further empowered to create novel visualizations outside the domain of the website.

While this is a novel and fun interaction for my personal life, the value of Daytum spans to UX as well. Imagine providing a user with an account for a journal entry exercise and have access to real time, visualized data. If appropriate, the user could see this data and affect their actions and lifestyle appropriately. How might it be used for accountability across a team, as different items get logged to different categories based on role? Why Daytum has been available for some time, its potential is barely tapped. I encourage you to make an account (it’s free) and start exploring the addictive realm of capturing data.
_{Top Image: Feltron Print Magazine}

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UX Techniques is a new iPhone App designed to act as a pocket guide for UX practitioners. Built along the same vein as IDEO’s Method Cards UX techniques shares simple and concise definitions of 45 common UX practices.

UX is predominately about digital interface design, whether online or via an application, but it is also how an interface behaves and understanding user needs and behaviour.

While the design of the application leaves a lot open to the imagination as far as visual appeal the cards themselves are quite helpful. In my review of the application, I came across a few methods I was less familiar with or had forgotten about entirely. The real benefit comes from the supporting links. Each card has a link to additional information viewable from your iPhone, whether it is a link to UIE or Boxes and Arrows, the authors have located a valuable and more detailed source for further investigation. This is an added detail not provided in all other UX reference guides.

While far from perfect, the application is a nice reference when on the go. This won’t replace your stack of books at home, and won’t replace practice for a particular technique, but it can help in some sticky conversations with clients and coworkers. While some might say this adds another set of definitions to a field with many differing opinions already, this application doesn’t define their stance as the end all be all and instead offers more places to look. UX Techniques can act as a catalyst for further conversation and investigation.

Still not convinced? UX Techniques allows you to email the content of the cards with a single click (though unfortunately this, like the additional content, leaves the application). Similarly, UX Techniques Lite is offered with a subset of the cards for a try-before-you-buy test drive.

Earlier this year we discussed Volkswagen’s superbowl ad and some of our observations around emotions and design. Now, the innovative automobile company does it again, this time with a mobile application. (Note, you cannot access the application through iTunes in all regions).

The application is quite simple in design – offering a brief description of a vehicle and details around some of Volkswagen’s innovative technology. As their video describes though, it is difficult to simply describe the function so the remainder of the application allow customers to test drive the functionality. By selecting a function, one may place their phone over the printed ad and steer their avatar – in this case a Volkswagen vehicle. Depending on the feature selected – lane assist, adaptive lights, and adaptive cruise control, the car reacts differently when the mobile device is placed over the street in the printed ad. Watch the lights follow the curve of the road, the vehicle vibrate when touching the edge of the lane, and more.

While augmented reality isn’t new to the cell phone, with applications allowing you to type while still seeing what is in front of you, superimpose social network information over people’s heads, and more, this is one of my first experiences with it as a strictly marketing technique. In reality though – this goes beyond marketing. The Volkswagen ad is a simple prototype. As interaction designers we spend a lot of time talking about sketching, prototypes, and development. Often that is defined as a tangible representation of a model. In this case though, holding a phone is nothing like driving a car. Still, this simple prototype, or tool, demonstrates a complex interaction, can inspire conversation, and excite people to invest in the product, and ultimately purchase a vehicle. Aren’t these the same goals we aspire to when developing websites and software? What tools can be used to create prototypes outside of the screen to communicate what a technology might be like, without building the entire system, or by building a different one entirely?

_{Images from VW Innovations}

To-Genkyo, a Japanese design studio, offers a new way to mark the freshness of produce. Based on the amount of ammonia in a product the label will darken in color until the barcode is no longer readable. This is an interesting interaction for produce, where we often look for the longest shelf life as we go shopping. How does this relate to interactions though? Can applications have shelf lives? Can the barcode on the Creative Suite darken until unreadable letting us know the next version is around the corner? Or do interactions themselves have shelf lives?

As interaction design has developed as a profession we have seen various platforms and tools wax and wane; Flash was used as a key tool for many system that are now being developed with the newest html and css scripts. Is it valuable or even possible to determine time stamps on interaction models? When will the accordion fall by the wayside to something else? Or when will the save icon be represented by something other than a floppy disc? Produce isn’t timeless, and this is for health reasons. However many systems (especially business systems) are implemented for significant periods of time and are not updated as often as might be expected. What could visual expirations of software and interaction models provide to designers, customers, and businesses as a whole?

_{Images: The Dieline}

The Super Bowl. That one Sunday a year where the majority of Americans crowd around their televisions to watch the championship football game — or, more commonly, the commercials. Volkswagen’s 2011 contribution, entitled The Force, was not only one of the more memorable ads, but also an intriguing study of emotion.

In The Force, a young child, dressed as Darth Vader wanders the house trying to control items with the Force. Failing, he hears his father come home and is excited when, through remote key start, the engine revs up.

While this is a cute commercial, what makes it fascinating the the child’s expressions.

The child in question is wearing a Darth Vader mask that offers no emotion and is designed as such. Still, at every event of attempted force control we clearly read his disappointment. Up to the point where he runs past his father to the car and the surprise on his face when it starts. I am not alone in this observation. Everyone I watched it with and spoke to afterwards felt they saw the same thing.

But this is impossible. By design Darth Vader has no face and no emotion. But the creators of the Volkswagen commercial were able to make us look past this and to the face behind it. Universally the audience knew the looks on the young boy’s face as defeat after defeat until he finally mastered the Force. Maybe this is because deep down we all remember being children wanting to be a Jedi (or a Sith). Whatever the reason, it is impressive the writers created so much empathy from a masked character. Authors employ this a lot – in novels, films, and now commercials. How can systems evoke emotion without a face? A lot of designers humanize their products with humanizing features but how can technology be humanized in a more subtle and evoking manner?

Otto, Dental Floss Dispenser

——–

Otto image from Alessi

Is the dark side always evil? Sometimes, it’s just a matter of perspective.

Recently Harry Brignull shared his thoughts on Dark Patterns at UX Brighton. If you have not had a chance to listen to the presentation, I recommend it for anyone in the UX field, especially those engaged in Ecommerce and marketing. In short, Brignull discusses the notion of what could be perceived as malicious or evil design – not in the sense of design that hurts the user, but by subtly adding unnecessary features to a customer’s cart, making it difficult to unsubscribe from a distribution list, or by simply hiding the cheaper more likely choice in lieu of more profitable options. I should say, I agree with the existence of these patterns and the overal gist of what is said.

Much of what Brignull discusses is around the e-commerce realm. Purchasing of insurance or extra premium packages, subscribing to email threads, and spamming your twitter feed (remember Twifficiency?)

How might additional checks and balances be implemented on an application to support user goals and workflow? What if the system recognized an external email address and automatically checked the box for additional verification to ensure sensitive documents are not sent to the wrong third party? Or if the application is able to buffer a transaction with downtime and additional forms? These would not be seen as Dark Patterns, as they are intended for positive reinforcment of a task. But where is that line drawn? The difference between a Dark Pattern and a positive hurdle is a matter of perspective. As users become more aware of this technique, it will be harder to sneak in unwanted features. First Five Followers is one example of this, where after the backlash from Twifficiency the developers have made it abundantly clear to ensure the privacy of the user’s public feed. So as Dark Patterns become more common and expected, and designers resolve new methods to sneak in additional options, how are these used for positive interactions? Not all dark patterns are done with malicious intent. Even Luke used the dark side of the force from time to time for positive results.

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_{Top Image: Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, 1983}