As Experience Design broadens to take on the challenge of delivering experiences that are clearly related and consistent regardless of context or channel – the aim of customer experience initiatives in many large organizations – we run the risk of failing in our attempts if we persist in adopting terminology relevant only to a single context, and focused only on a small portion of the experience itself.

As Experience Designers we are running the risk of failing in our attempts to enable experiences that are clearly related and consistent regardless of context or channel. Our persistent use of terminology relevant only to a single context, and focused only on a small portion of the experience itself, hampers the efforts of customer experience initiatives in many large organizations.

To design experiences that are consistent across different contexts and environments we need to focus on the qualities of the experience that do not change, rather than the means through which we enable that experience.

Experiences are a combination of the actions we take; what we perceive through our various senses; and our emotional response to both.

Form constrains

Actions are constrained by the physical or technological environment within which the experience takes place. A person’s behaviour, and context, are inexorably tied to this environment. The form of an object or space both implies and constrains its use. The availability and type of controls; the physical or virtual dimensions; the presence or absence of pathways; all contribute to, and constrain, the range of available actions.

Similarly, the range of senses we can stimulate is also limited by the environment. Digital environments lack smell and touch, producing a greater reliance on thought, sight and sound. Physical environments provide different perceptual constraints, allowing for the use of aromas, for example, to enhance the experience. At the same time, the presence of these additional stimulants also acts to dull the influence of all sensual influences.

Our focus, then, falls to the emotional response participants have when undertaking these activities, and perceiving through their senses. It is the emotional response that provides a consistent design intent across environments, touchpoints, interactions.

Articulate design intent

We need to articulate our design intent using the language of emotion so that the same resultant experience can be delivered across the various environments within which customers might interact; working within the constraints of action and perception imposed by each environment.

The transition from usability and HCI-type practices to one of user experience has been represented by a shift in focus from the functional characteristics of a system or interface, to a focus on the slightly more abstract qualities of those functions when executed in a certain way.

We need to articulate our design intent using the language of emotion

This can be seen in a lesser reliance on measures such as task-completion and time-to-complete, and the increased use of descriptors like ‘ease of use’ of a system, or whether a system is ‘intuitive’ to use. These are qualities of the functional implementation. And whilst these contribute to the emotional response a user may have when interacting with the system, they can be seen merely as descriptors of the qualities of the actions undertaken within one very specific type of environment; and then only at the plane of interaction between user and system. Descriptions of perceptual attributes within this UX tradition are similarly narrow. Talk of “speed” and “performance” provide some level of broader application – to, say, the efficiency of a service – but focus solely on one type of perception – namely the passage of time.

Emotive qualities

UX designers with a more visual bent, coming from a graphic design or visual communications tradition, (typically) speak more to the emotive qualities of a visual language or aesthetic. And it is here that we really begin to see an appropriate descriptive focus for the resultant experience, albeit within the realm of the visual domain.

The process of arriving at an emotive description often works in reverse, however, with the designer choosing an emotive language to describe a particular visual exploration or aesthetic, rather than receiving a direction in experiential or emotional terms to begin. Where that direction is given, such as through the guise of brand values or personality, the description is of the organization – not the emotional response of the customer or user.

Such descriptions tend to fall short in two, significant ways:

• the perspective and focus of brands is, by definition, around the personality of the organisation; and;
• this emotional perspective is kept distinct from the work of designing the activity and perceptual qualities of the system/service.

Whether we look to the qualities of actions undertaken as described in usability/HCI circles of the UX field; the narrow perceptual lens of time; the broader perceptual lens of aesthetic; or the language of brand personality, we fail to articulate the qualities of an experience we may wish to reproduce in a consistent manner across environments.

Mac App Store

An articulation of the emotional qualities of our intended experience is, therefore, essential when we take on the more holistic challenge of designing systems or end-to-end service experiences. For example, when aiming to deliver an online experience consistent to one delivered in-store – such as with Nespresso; or when extending a product line into a product-service system – such as the introduction of the new Mac App Store.

Coming back to the example of the phrase ‘ease-of-use’, let’s explore why such descriptors are insufficient as a means of articulating the experience intended. Something is easy-to-use when the actions possible within the context of the system are clear, well-ordered, work as expected, and do not require complex or complicated input sequences in order to achieve some desired end.

Express our intent

However, our desire for such ease-of-use – from the perspective of experience design – is not an end in and of itself. Our aim might be, for example, to instill our user with a sense of confidence, capability, or willingness to act. Perhaps our aim is simply to avoid frustration and maintain a sense of calm.

When we express our intent in these terms, we’re much better equipped to execute across different contexts and environments and achieve the same experience. “Easy to use” might be a useful descriptor for a digital interface, but it is inappropriate, and therefore largely meaningless, when designing, say, a retail presence or the logistics capability for an online purchase. Much better to employ ‘willingness to act’ as the desired experiential characteristic.

To what extent are organisations attempting to craft the type of consistent, multi-context experience for which these emotional descriptions are needed?

Similarly, we find ourselves woefully ill-equipped to make decisions about other experiential elements that become relevant in different context. For example, how should our retail environment’s lighting be designed? What aromas or smells might be appropriate?

Vice versa, if scents or lighting are being used in a physical environment – such as the signature smell of some hotel chains – do we simply ignore them when designing a customer’s interaction with a call centre? Or is there an emotional intent behind the use of a particular scent which can be translated into a contact-less environment like a call centre?

Is this really a concern, however? To what extent are organisations attempting to craft the type of consistent, multi-context experience for which these emotional descriptions are needed?

Modern practice in architecture, systems, interaction and service design all require the type of multi-context consistency described above. Corporations and Government agencies in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia are actively pursuing projects designed to introduce ‘customer’ experiences designed around an holistic, unified set of characteristics – and mostly failing to achieve the level of consistency desired or needed.

Let us ensure alignment

We can better ensure alignment across contexts and environments if our objective is described in terms more suitable for such application. Once we begin to think of experiences as experiences, rather than actions or perceptions, we become much better able to critique each specific incarnation of that experience in whatever context it might occur.

We cannot ignore the actions customers will want or need to carry out; nor should we. Similarly we should not ignore the characteristics of customers’ perception. However, it is the emotional qualities of the experience that provide us with the means to translate the full range of experiential qualities of one system or service component to another, thereby delivering on the promise of experience design.

A very special thanks to Janna DeVylder, Livia Labate and Leisa Reichelt for their ideas and feedback on this article.

Back in the late 1980s, Bill Verplank, when working at what would become IDEO, stopped calling what he did ‘user-interface design’, and instead coined a new term: ‘interaction design’. His work over the years has included  Xerox Parc, IDTwo/IDEO, and collaborations with design schools such as the RCA, MIT and Carnegie Mellon. Steve Baty talked with him about interaction design.

You’ve been working as an interaction designer for three decades: how has your approach to your work changed over that time?

Bill Verplank

After my PhD from MIT in “Man-Machine Systems”, I went to Xerox and spent three years testing systems that had taken ten years to invent; then after the Xerox Star was introduced, we spent five years refining and extending it. So in my first decade, I did “human factors” testing and “user interface design”. This is also the decade that ACM started SIGCHI and I started teaching “graphical user-interface design”. (‘70s ‘80s)

In the next decade, I was hired by Bill Moggridge at IDTwo to move the insights from computers to products of all sorts. We called what we did “Interaction Design” and saw what we were doing as the key to modernizing “Industrial Design”. As consultants, we were dependent on clients, so for me it was a scramble to keep up with the variety of problems. When IDTwo merged with David Kelly Design and Matrix to become IDEO, we had established a new kind of multi-disciplinary design consultancy. (‘80s ‘90s)

In the third decade I have returned to invention and teaching. At Interval Research, we enjoyed the freedom to develop technologies (e.g. haptics) and methods (e.g. “body storming”). Also, we encouraged educational programs at RCA, MIT, NYU, Stanford and finally at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII). My favorite post-graduate program now is a spin-off of IDII: the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). Also, at Stanford, I have been teaching Computer Science and Computer Music with a focus on the tangible aspects of interaction. (‘90s ‘00s)

Over that same period, how has the practice of interaction design changed generally?

What do we think a “computer” is? I like to contrast three dominant metaphors or paradigms: PERSON, TOOL, MEDIA.

In the ‘50s, we called computers “electronic brains” and many were motivated to make them intelligent, language processors. There are still people pursuing these “anthropomorphisms”; they call it “artificial intelligence” or “robotics”. Interaction is a verbal dialog. A computer is an “agent” or “assistant” – autonomous and intelligent. Think of the computer as a “PERSON”.

In the ‘70s, rather than replicating or replacing people, Englebart proposed “augmenting intelligence” – thinking of the computer as a “TOOL” which extends and empowers us. We became “users” not just programmers or operators. Anyone who asks “Who is the user?” and “What is the task?” is very much in the business of “interaction design”. Good interaction is useful and efficient.

In the ‘90s, with ubiquitous networks, mobile, graphical and dynamic interfaces, computers are “MEDIA”. Televisions, phones, games are all computers that we watch, connect, play and mostly enjoy. A good interaction is engaging, immersive and persuasive.

PERSON, TOOL and MEDIA are sufficiently established as metaphors, we can call them paradigms; they define our business, schools and conferences. What will the next paradigms be? What will we call what we do?

Here’s a sketch I did in 2000 on Metaphors for Computers: PERSON, TOOL, MEDIA – each one a robust “paradigm”. Beyond those three, I predict LIFE, VEHICLE, FASHION.

Bill Moggridge's Metaphors for Computers diagram

In your “Interaction Design Sketchbook” you write: Interaction design is a profession that will mature in the 21st century. Where do you think interaction design is currently immature, or is this more a reference to the emergence of embedded and ubiquitous computers? Implicit in that section of the IxD Sketchbook is the idea that interaction design concerns itself with computers and computer-driven interactions. Do you see a place for the practice of interaction design in non-computing environments such as services?

Interaction Design in the 21st century will be a challenge because almost everything (and everybody) we interact with will have computers in it or on it. Services and systems will be autonomous and only ask for guidance (think of automated cars and guideways); tools will be augmented and powerful; even the most mundane artifact might have far-flung connections and consequences; media will be interactive and engaging and we will all become fashion designers.

We’ve recently seen the principles of interaction design applied to situations where the aim is to shift individual or group behavior in social, economic or environmental activities. Do you see this a logical extension of the work you were doing in the 80s and 90s or a shift away from interaction design’s foundations?

Interaction Design as I practiced it, is very much in the “TOOL” paradigm; the principles were “consistent conceptual models, direct manipulation and WYSIWYG”. If the “aim is to shift individual or group behavior” then use the “MEDIA” paradigm. Advertising, education, persuasion, are at the core of ancient practices. Making media more interactive may or may not get your message across. Media can mystify and intrigue. All I know about media is that “the medium is the message” – a technocrat’s rant.

You’ll be speaking to nearly 600 interaction designers in February at the Interaction conference in Boulder. What is the one thing you’d like them to take away from your lecture?

I would like them to take away my enthusiasm for metaphors and engage in the search for metaphors that help us organize the various paradigms of professional practice.

What will the next metaphor be in your practice? Is your design motivated and organized as a form of LIFE? Or as infrastructure or VEHICLE? Or as the latest FASHION?

Verplank's professional practice metaphor simplified for Designing Interactions

Interaction 11

Bill Verplank is one of the keynotes at Interaction 11 . It has sold out, but workshop places are still available. It is the fourth 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 Boulder, Colorado (USA).

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Picture of Verplank: Mayonissen with CC

In conjunction with Rosenfeld Media, we’re very pleased to announce the winners of the UX Story competition. Entrants were asked to tweet – in 140 characters or less! – why storytelling is such a powerful tool for UX practitioners. Throughout June the responses came in and, after a tough judging task, the winners were chosen.

5 winners will receive a copy of Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks’ new book: ‘Storytelling for User Experience‘ from Rosenfeld Media; and all 12 winners will receive an exclusive Webinar with Whitney and Kevin.

Thank you to everyone who entered the event, and to all those who helped promote it! And now, the winners:

Book + Webinar

Every interaction is a story, with the user as the “star.”  This appeals to our human need to be at the center of every experience.
@dgelman

Storytelling is a two-way mirror. You see yourself reflected in the experience of others.
@nathangibbs

Storytelling is the way we learn and explain the world.
@argonaut

Stories take our audiance on a jouney and enable leaps of faith.
@MarkEhrhardt

With storytelling we give our stereotyped users a soul
@mcmarcos

Webinar prizes

Storytelling is how we make sense of the world: re-imagining our everyday lives as an experience to be shared with others.
@otrops

Stories help us to translate real life.
@franxo

Stories make #UX personal. They remind us that everything we make is made for a real person.
@ianeverdell

Stories help us empathize and experience another person's condition. Stories appeal to our emotions and drive us to action.
@balchenn

A good story will evoke emotion and the listener is able to relate to it on a deeper level – as humans, we remember emotions best
@Mike_me_up

Stories have the ability to change the way we view and interact with our world!
@christiansaylor

Stories make things meaningful, moving and memorable
@iaexperience

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you for entering! [Winners: we need your email address so we can contact you about the prizes. Please email stevebaty at gmail dot com]

Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano, Ezio Manzini, took time away from airline food, flatbed seats and a view out the window of the Himalayas to talk to us about designing for social innovation and his work with the DESIS network.

Ezio Manzini

SB: Can you tell me a little about the DESIS network and the work you do there?

EM: DESIS is a network of schools (design and others), institutions, companies, and non-profit organizations interested in promoting and supporting design for social innovation and sustainability. It’s a light, non-profit organization, conceived as a network of partners collaborating in a peer-to-peer spirit.

More precisely, DESIS supports social innovation using design skills to:

• give promising cases more visibility;
• make them more effective;
• facilitate their replicability;
• help companies and institutions to understand the promising cases potentialities in terms of enabling services, products and business ideas.

At the same time, DESIS reinforces the design community’s role in the social innovation processes both within our community (developing dedicated design knowledge) and outside it (redefining the perceived design role and capabilities).

SB: What is social innovation? How does it differ from other types of innovation and garage invention that have been the norm for hundreds of years – the two guys in a workshop or the college room-mates with an idea?

EM: Social innovation is a process of change where new ideas emerge from a variety of actors directly involved in the problem to be solved: final users, grass roots technicians and entrepreneurs, local institutions and civil society organizations. The main way in which it differs from traditional “garage” innovation is that here the “inventors” are groups of people (the “creative communities”) and the results are forms of organization (the “collaborative services”).

Some well known examples of social innovation include:

• zero-mile food networks, where not only a new way of eating but also a new relationship between production and consumption and between the city and the countryside are established.
• co-housing initiatives, where groups of families decide to share some services to reduce the economic and environmental costs, but also to re-create a neighborhood
• collaborative services where elderly people organize themselves to exchange mutual help

Looking attentively to the complexity of the contemporary society shows many cases of these worldwide (for more, see the Sustainable Everyday project). While the stories are diverse, they have one clear (and expected) common denominator: they resulted from the initiatives of people who collaboratively invented new ways of living and producing and who have been able to enhance them, solving specific problems and, at the same time, making concrete steps towards sustainability happen.

Car Sharing in Milan - one of the Sustainable Everyday examples

That said, it must be emphasized that social innovation has always existed. But now there are good reasons to say that its role is expanding and will continue to do so in the next future. In fact, previous experiences show that social innovation flourishes when two contemporary conditions are given: when society is facing difficult problems and when some new technologies, having spread in it, open new and (partly) still unexplored possibilities. No need to be said that both these conditions exist and are particularly relevant today.

Previous experiences show that social innovation flourishes when two contemporary conditions are given: when society is facing difficult problems and when some new technologies, having spread in it, open new and (partly) still unexplored possibilities. No need to be said that both these conditions exist and are particularly relevant today.

SB: You talk of ‘diffuse creativity and entrepreneurship’ – can you tell me a little more about these concepts?

EM: Let me start from the phenomenological consideration we did before: in the complexity of the contemporary society it is possible to recognize promising cases of social innovation. These cases can be found in a variety of fields and have usually been conceived and implemented by the actors involved, moving from their direct knowledge of the problems and their own personal capabilities (namely their creativity and entrepreneurship).

These people have been able to recombine existing entities (technologies, organizations, both traditional and new existing ideas) to give them a new use and meaning (that is exactly what, in one of its best definition, creativity is). At the same time, they have shown an incredible skill and sensitivity in term of entrepreneurship, as every one of the new solutions they invented had to be imagined, realized, and managed in the real world and in economic terms.

The economy to be considered here is a complex and sophisticated one: a social economy emerging from the combination of different economies; the market one, of course, when marketed products and services are needed; but also the economy of time and attention of the involved actors, when their active participation is required; and sometimes also the economy of the gift, when some voluntary activity is included too. I think that is more than enough to say that whoever succeeds in imagining, realizing and managing this kind of organizations is a real champion in terms of creativity and entrepreneurship!

SB: What does a favorable environment for social innovation look like? Are there some key characteristics we should look for, or design for?

EM: Given its spontaneous nature, social innovation cannot be planned. Nevertheless, the invention and implementation of new ways of living and producing are more likely when creativity and design thinking are diffused and, most importantly, where local institutions have a collaborative and tolerant attitude (this is what, in my view, can be defined as a favourable environment). In parallel to this, they become more robust and spread when they are empowered by specific sets of products, services, and communications that can support them and make their realisation easier (that is, when appropriate enabling solutions had been developed).

I like to add that, in our experience, the most successful cases (i.e. the one who lasted in time and spread) have been the results of a positive interplay between creative people, proactive local institutions, and sensitive entrepreneurs:

• creative people who imagine (and actively participate to) new proposals;
• proactive local institutions who understand the social value of these new proposals, tolerate them even when, as it frequently happens, operate at the margins (or even beyond) some existing laws – but it has to be said that creativity, by definition, has to break something in the existing order!) and develop innovative governance tools that permit to support the new initiatives;
• sensitive entrepreneurs, who recognize in the emerging social innovations new explicit or latent demands, and therefore, new business opportunities.

SB: As interaction designers, what can we be doing, today, to help foster this type of innovation?

EM: Designers can use their specific knowledge to empower the social innovation processes: bringing new ideas, orienting the resulting initiatives and conceiving a new generation of enabling solutions. In this larger framework we can discuss, in particular, what interaction designer can do. Of course, this discussion is open.

In my view, speaking in very general terms, interaction designers can play a fundamental role in social innovation. The core of interaction design is of course the way in which people interact (with products and/or with other people). At the same time, the core of the new social innovation initiatives are service-oriented solutions where, similarly, the core of the overall systems are the interactions (their qualities and their effectiveness). If this premise is true, it therefore appears that the social innovation could be a “core business” for interaction designers and that a whole set of lines or research on how to improve it will appear.

Interaction designers can play a fundamental role in social innovation. The core of interaction design is the way in which people interact (with products and/or with other people). At the same time, the core of the new social innovation initiatives are service-oriented solutions where, also in this case, the core of the overall systems are the interactions: their qualities and their effectiveness. If this premise is true, it therefore appears that the social innovation could be a “core business” for interaction designers.

Moving to a more concrete discussion of the same topic, I can introduce here some considerations, which have emerged from research we are doing at the DIS-Politecnico di Milano. The topic of our research is what designers can do to conceive and develop digital services to catalyze people (in the digital sphere) and support them in some collaborative initiatives (in the physical sphere). This possibility appears very concrete and, at the same time, highly promising in social and environmental terms.

What we’ve found and focalized so far is a variety of digital service typologies aiming to support the existence and the consolidation of collaborative organization in different ways. They are:

• Creating new producer/consumer network;
• Mapping diffused information;
• Aggregating social action;
• Creating social network for conviviality;
• Building mutual support circles;
• Exchanging competences, time and products;
• Sharing products, places and knowledge.

In each one of these typologies we can already recognize several interesting cases: from new networks of farmers and urban consumers, to maps of localize sustainable initiatives; from initiatives aggregating collective power (in order to achieve some social goals), to organization aiming to promote social conviviality; from mutual support circles of people suffering of the same diseases (as diabetes, allergies, obesity, etc), to platforms to exchange competences or to share products. The list goes on.

I would say in conclusion that if ‘correctly designed’, digital services and platforms really can support social innovation, and thereby improve social fabric and promote more sustainable ways of living and producing. Of course, to design them ‘correctly’ is what interaction designers should do. And what, in my view, they all have the potential to do.

Interaction 10

If you want to meet Ezio Manzini in real life: he 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).

A year ago UX Book Club kicked off with posts to the IAI and IxDA discussion lists on November 24th, 2008. A Sydney group was announced along with those posts; Canberra, Washington DC and New York followed pretty quickly. And by the end of that first week 28 groups were up and running, and 400 people had signed up to attend.

One year on and nearly 80 UX Book Club groups have been formed in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australasia. A ‘best guess’ estimate puts the total number of events at somewhere around 180 in this first year, and anywhere from 1,500 – 2,500 people in attendance.

As groups have started up I’ve been constantly surprised and pleased by the widespread interest in User Experience around the world. And, more pleasing, has been that these local communities have chosen to come together through the UX Book Club to share and learn from one another.

“It was fairly incredible how natural—how routine—it felt. I mean, here was a group of people, many of whom had never participated in any community event, and none of whom (to my knowledge) had ever engaged in an extrinsically focused book club. The book became the medium for discussion, though the topic remained entrenched in UX and design.” 
- Jonathan S Knoll, UX Book Club NYC

My first real inkling that UX Book Club was contributing something significant to the global UX community was the formation of a group in Israel. What was encouraging was that those events attracted just a handful of people, and yet those folks gained something that was present in New York, Sydney, Los Angeles and London – a connection with other practitioners like themselves, and an opportunity to learn.

Here’s the list of published events at the time of writing:

• 17 November: Switzerland
• 18 November: Dallas, Texas USA
• 19 November: Groningen, The Netherlands
• 22 November: Tokyo, Japan
• 25 November: Switzerland
• 25 November: Calgary
• 26 November: Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands
• 26 November: Ottawa
• 01 December: Sydney, Australia
• 01 December: Glasgow, UK
• 01 December: Brighton, UK
• 01 December: London – LBi
• 01 December: San Francisco
• 02 December: Philadelphia
• 03 December: London – IG Index
• 03 December: Auckland – New Zealand
• 07 December: Perth, Western Australia
• 08 December: Amsterdam
• 15 December: Berlin, Germany
• 16 December: Warsaw, Poland

UX Book Club Sydney, October 2009

So what is it about UX Book Club that has made it such a compelling idea for local UX groups around the world? There seem to be a few consistent themes that emerge when you look at the different groups.

Low cost of entry

By ‘low’ I mean zero. Starting up a local group costs nothing. Attending an event (usually) costs nothing, other than the effort to read a book that, chances are, you were probably considering reading anyway.

Everybody contributes; everybody learns

I was asked the other day “What’s in it for an experienced practitioner?”. I think the format of UX Book Club really lends itself to people of all experience levels. For someone new to the field there are obvious benefits:

• They get told what books to read to help them learn about UX, without having to try and figure that out for themselves;
• They get to discuss the book with people more experienced than them, and gain the benefits of their practical experience and perspective;
• They get to meet other people and connect with the community
• They get a voice. Sitting in a small group, everyone is encouraged to participate and provide their own take on the book. Unlike other professional meetings, UX Book Club isn’t about one person standing up and talking at people – it’s a discussion; a conversation; focused on the book and topic.
• The discussion is engaging (we hear this from every group.)

For the experienced practitioner, the benefits are very similar, but also different. They get to hear fresh perspectives, and ideas from other fields (in Sydney at least, about a third of attendees would consider themselves to work outside the field of UX). And, in talking about the topic with others less entrenched in the vernacular of UX, they need to think about how they communicate ideas and concepts – something that helps them when they’re next in front of a client.

“Most UX people I know are web interaction designers like me, but the book club drew developers, software UI designers, business strategists, visual designers, and various flavors of agency and in-house IAs and IxDs.” – Sarah Mitchell, UX Book Club Los Angeles

Everyone who attends talks about the level of energy in the discussions – people who are passionate and engaged, talking about a topic they work closely with regularly.

The authors show up

UX Book Club Sydney, June 2009

It has been great to see the number of authors who show up – in person or virtually – to contribute to the discussion of the books they’ve written. It was awesome to see Bill Buxton – jetlagged and under the weather – drop in on the Toronto group for their discussion of his book. The guys at Adaptive Path have been on-hand to answer questions about Subject to Change; Russ Unger & Carolyn Chandler have talked about their book – A Project Guide to UX Design – at a number of events. And Alex Wright – author of Glut – made an early-morning call to Sydney to answer questions for them. I’m doing a disservice to some authors, who’ve also made the effort to appear, and I apologise for not being able to name you all. But your involvement in the UX Book Club – beyond the wonderful books you’ve written – has only served to enhance the experience for everyone.

The Publishers have been awesome

Support from the publishers of UX books have been fantastic in their support of this initiative – contributing giveaways, discounts, and encouraging their authors to attend. Rosenfeld Media has been especially supportive, stepping in to help out early and often over the past twelve months. We’ve also enjoyed the support of O’Reilly Books and Morgan Kaufmann – offering discounts to UX Book Club members for books being discussed.

Playing with others

Directly and indirectly, UX Book Club has gained a great deal from the support and encouragement of the IA Institute and the Interaction Design Association. From day one both of these organisations have worked to help nurture and foster the spread of UX Book Club around the world. Our friends in both organisations – in the executive and the membership – have been personally involved in running local events, promoting the initiative as a whole, and providing advice and encouragement along the way. I can honestly say the UX Book Club wouldn’t be where it is today without their support.

And last, but by no means least: each and every one of the 2,000-odd people who have taken the time to read a book, attend an event, and engage in discussion with their peers – these are the heart of UX Book Club, and the ‘secret sauce’ to it’s success.

So, looking forward to the year ahead, I hope to see the UX Book Club continue to provide a forum in which people interested in User Experience can come together to connect, share and learn. If you haven’t attended an event previously, I encourage you to do so. Information on upcoming events can be found at the UX Book Club website.

Thanks again.

Transformation is the act of taking a set of values from a dataset, processing them in some way (depending on the aims of the research) and arriving at a new set of values with the goal of revealing some aspect of the data from a new perspective.

(This article is the fourth part in the Deconstructing Analysis Techniques series.)

This technique is characterised by the fact that the values are changed; that someone looking at the new values will be unable to work backwards to the original values; and that for each original data point there is a single, new data point.

In mathematical parlance, (and you can skip this part if you like) the difference between a manipulation technique and a transformation technique is that manipulated data sets are congruent with the original, whereas transformed data only maintains cardinality (i.e. the same number of elements).

So, what does that all mean? We’re talk here about analysis methods like:

• Scaling – taking one set of data and massaging them to fit a distribution or ‘shape’ of values.
• Moving averages – taking a number of consecutive values and averaging them as way of ‘smoothing’ the last value in the series.
• Weighted averages – calculate an average value where more importance – ‘weight’ – is given to some values.
• Weighted indexes – calculate an indexed score (against a baseline) where more importance – ‘weight’ is given to some values.
• Seasonal adjustments – an adjustment made to a data point to account for cyclical peaks and troughs to highlight the ‘real’ shift
• Differences – a method of looking at the changes between one value and the next.

Now, initially, most of these methods may feel pretty technical, quantitative and removed from standard design research analysis. However, they form a powerful collection of analysis methods that will better equip you in undertaking design research. They also represent fairly low-level mathematical/quantitative methods and are available in a standard spreadsheet program. More importantly, used properly, these methods – and transformation techniques generally – open up new avenues for understanding the people who will use the services and products we design.

Used properly, these methods – and transformation techniques generally – open up new avenues for understanding the people who will use the services and products we design.”

Scaling

In “Deconstructing Analysis Techniques” we used the example of fitting test scores to a pre-determined probability distribution – scaling – as the example for Transformation techniques.

When we measure a population characteristic – such as height, or a test score – we create a sample set of data for that characteristic (unless we are measuring the entire population). There are times when the raw distribution (the frequency of occurrence for each value in our data) of results is not what we’re after. We may wish to compare the shape and attributes of two separate samples – two groups of test participants, for example – and so we transform the two sets of data so that they share a common mean (the average value for the data set).

Usually this is done to bring both sets of data to what is known as a ‘normalized’ distribution with a mean of 0. Of course, in our test/exam result example, we want to adjust the scores so that the class as a whole receives a pre-determined number of A, B, C, D & F. What we’re doing here is to adjust the overall shape of the data. (In these cases a plot of the raw data will look different to the scaled data.) When graphed the scaled data will look roughly bell-shaped, with the middle – or ‘hump’ – representing average performance, and the two thin tails representing high-performance (at the top end) and failure (at the bottom end).

Moving Averages

A moving average is used to smooth out day-to-day fluctuations with time series data. It is, literally, the average of the previous x days’ worth of data. A good example would be the number of page views received by a site. Each day the data will jump up and down, creating a sense of “noise” that makes analysis difficult, and, when a small number of observations are looked at in isolation, can create a false impression. A moving average is useful in time-series or longitudinal studies where we measure the value of a characteristic for a single object (person, server, site etc) over time.

One rather well-publicised and important example of this is the series of global temperature readings that have been used by both sides of the climate change debate. Skeptics of global warming point to a recent period of observations (2002 – 2007)   which show a decline in global average temperatures. When the same data is looked at using a moving average, smoothing out the peaks and troughs, a clear upward movement is seen.

The choice of time period to use when calculating a moving average is based on the specific circumstances of the data. However, common sense is usually all that’s required. For example, when looking at Web traffic, a moving average calculated over 7 days is sufficient to counter spikes that occur during a given week. You might also calculate a moving average over a month if fluctuations occur over a longer cycle.

Weighted Average

Weighted averages aim to address one of the criticisms of a moving average – and other types of averages – that being all values in the average are treated equally. It is often the case that one observation is more significant or important that another.

Let’s say for example we’re measuring the time to complete a task in a user evaluation session. We have representatives from each of our personas (or other audience segments): 2 primary personas, 3 secondary personas, and one tertiary persona. In this case, the performance of the two primary persona representatives is far more significant than that of the tertiary participant.

When we calculate the mean time-to-complete value, we can weight the results so as to reflect the relative importance of each participant. We may assign (and the exact values will vary for you) a weighting as follows:
Primary: multiply by 9
Secondary: multiply by 3
Tertiary: no multiplier

What we’re essentially saying is that our secondary personas are three times more important than our tertiary persona; and that our primary persona are three times more important than our secondary. We could just as easily use a factor of 2 (instead of 3) leading to values of 4, 2 & 1 in the example above; what matters is that we use weighted averages to adjust the dataset to account for the relative importance of some measurable data set by some exogenous variable.

Weighted Index

An indexed value is one measured in terms of some baseline figure. The aim is to convey movement around a starting point when there is no way to specify a zero.

An example of an index might be a satisfaction score. Since satisfaction a largely subjective measure, there is no way to define a zero point. Instead we typically measure a ‘pre’ figure and map that over time. Common values for an index are zero and 100. The choice is arbitrary and is typically chosen for clarity in communication.

Indexes are often calculated as an aggregate of a number of measurements. But it is also the case that we sometimes need to treat the data we receive from one group as being more important than another. This is where a weighted index comes in handy. A weighted index  – like our weighted average – treats different values as more or less important.

So, if it is common practice to design a product or service to better meet the needs of our primary audience segments; it also makes sense for our satisfaction index to put more stock in the satisfaction of our primary segments. We do this by applying a weighting (some multiplier) to each piece of data collected based on its relative importance.

We could easily do the same with responses to a question like “Would you recommend this service to a friend?”

This technique provides us a with a convenient way to build positive bias – towards the needs of our important audience segments – directly into our research methods.

Seasonal Adjustments

Some of the things we observe in design research are subject to cyclical variations. We may not, however, want to include a change in our data due to “seasonal” fluctuations, instead wanting to identify “real” changes (in frequency of use, for example).

In order to look at the real changes in our observed data we need to account for the seasonal variability first.

A familiar example might be to look at the number of page views or unique visits received by a site. We might see a big lift in traffic between Sunday & Monday; and a big drop between Friday & Saturday. In order to tell whether an observed drop in traffic on some Saturday is “normal”, we need to look at the regular pattern of changes and “adjust” the Saturday figure.

One way to do this is to calculate the average drop in traffic over time (between Friday & Saturday) and then apply this to the current observation for Friday. This as a predictor or estimator for the current Saturday, which we can then compare against the actual observed data. The average difference acts as our seasonal adjustment.

The Adaptive Path Aurora concept uses a scenario where a farmer shows that their farm will still have rain, using seasonal adjustment. See video

Differences

There are times when what we’re interested in knowing is not the raw value of an observation but the change between one observation and the next.

The calculation (transformation) is simple: for each pair of observations, subtract one from the other. Of more interest is why we would want to know such a thing.

Consider a test of a new design in which we test first the time to complete a task with the current design; and then the same task with a new design. Across all participants in the test the raw observations (i.e. time to complete) is far less interesting than the change in that time as a result of the new design. (Note that we may wish to express that change as a percentage rather than a raw value.)

We can use the same technique to highlight the variability of some observation over time. For example, we may be tracking the number of connections or ‘friends’ a person has in some social network to understand the relationship between the current number of connections and the rate at which new connection requests come in. To identify the number of new connection we simply calculate the difference between successive observations.

Summary

Although primarily applied to quantitative data, transformation techniques are useful in a wide range of design research activities beyond the quantitative.

Transformation of our research data can act as a way of reducing noise and bringing into sharp relief characteristics of the underlying user behaviour. The act of transforming removes us from the raw, original data, but in doing so we can gain the opportunity to uncover meaningful insights hidden from us otherwise.

Ahead of this year’s EuroIA conference I caught up with experience architect, strategist and all-round nice guy Joe Lamantia. We talked about designing for experiences, games design, Killzone and monasteries.

Steve Baty: Joe, you’ve been working in User Experience design for many years. What is it that first got you interested in the discipline?
Joe Lamantia: Waaaaay back in the day, I wanted to be an absent-minded professor. I’d always been interested in the transformations that emerge when you bring dynamic cultural, technological, and social layers together, and disciplines like media theory and cultural studies seemed like a good spot from which to watch all the action.  Then the birth of the Web presented a perfect opportunity to participate in the creation of a new medium from the inside.  In terms of aspiration, what could be more rewarding than having a hand in building the world we all inhabit in the future?  I find that it is more fun to create than to critique, so I stayed on the ‘creating’ side of the balance every time I came to a career decision.  In retrospect, looking at my writing and speaking, whether on user experience or ubiquitous computing, it’s become obvious to me that I’m in between the creator and critic camps. I like to do both. So far, I’ve had opportunities to follow through on this synthesis, and I hope that continues to be the case.

SB: The connection between experience design and game design has been gaining interest in recent times. What is it about game design that we can use to inform the design of other types of experience?
JL: I wouldn’t say I have an insider’s view of game design, since I’m not a professional, and the only game I designed was 20 years ago.  (I used to make my friends play; the fact that some of us are still friends is a testament to the strength of the friendships, and not the game!)  The two things I try to take away from game design are a sense of wonder at the amazing diversity of experiences that people crave and want to engage with, and a broader appreciation of what people will happily accept as a natural part of those experiences.  At the more tactical levels of methods, design patterns, codified best practices, etc. the biggest lesson from games seems to me to be that many of the hoary old truths of experience design that are rooted in established disciplines like human factors / usability and information science, are easily trumped by considerations such as emotional and social aspects.  (Err, in all but life-threatening contexts, perhaps.)  I don’t mean to throw out the baby with the bathwater – properly minding our foundations is critical to creating good experiences – but there are wider horizons out there for how we should be working, and what we work with.  Lazzaro’s language of choice is a good example.

Why not borrow from game design to add richness to what seems a very hum-drum type of chore?  People take pleasure in mastering even the simplest tasks. Thus the rewards of ritual; say when cooking using traditional tools & methods such as whisking everything by hand with the just right amount of manual dexterity. We can design for the emotional rewards that come from the different levels of accomplishment and knowledge for even simple tasks.

Take the design of interactive voice response systems: I’ve observed that people who use the same IVR repeatedly often make a game out of going through a menu of choices as fast as possible by speaking memorized choices before the system prompts them with a question, once they know the timing and the choice trees well enough.  Why not take this into account by offering the option of issuing a string of several commands up front that will take you directly to the choice you need, and then recognizing you for getting it right?

SB: You’re recent article for Johnny Holland presented an overview of the work of Lazzaro. What is it about her work that resonates with you most?
JL: Nicole’s work directly connects the way that designers create experiences – our materials, processes, outlook on what’s possible, etc. – with the emotions that these experiences inspire or encourage.  Her language for design is close to fundamental, since it works at the level of choices.  There’s no ‘middle layer’ of abstraction that Lazzaro’s design language has to work with or through.  For example, we’ve learned much about the psychological and emotional impact of design decisions about elements such as language, typography, color, and line weight via research in cognitive science, linguistics, the vision system, etc..  But remember that these design elements are often heavily coded by culture and context; at different times and places, the people experiencing these elements will have different feelings about them, and the experience as a whole.  Designers have to work with these elements as they are mediated by cultural and contextual layers.  Lazzaro’s language of choice addresses a deeper level that is less dependent on context and culture.  If someone has the choice of fragging you or working together with you, very little of the emotional impact of that choice on the experience you have is determined by cultural and contextual factors.

SB: What are the parallels between the design of the social mechanics in games that we can draw for other social environments?
JL: Relationships are one of the four basic types of fun Lazzaro identifies, which means that we should be able to directly translate these ideas into the design of enterprise social environments.  Groups of humans will always have work that needs to be done. Why not structure the working experiences to directly provide social rewards in the same ways that games do, in addition to the usual pay or other sorts of incentives?  Looking further afield, new models for economic and cultural production like co-creation and distributed business (and we’ll see if social business catches on) all depend directly on well-designed social mechanisms for their basic functioning.  Far from being a game element, social mechanics that encourage feelings of cooperation (or competition!) are indispensable for the new ways that we’ll be working and creating in the future.  Here perhaps we finally see potential for cracking the glass wall that separates the commonly understood purview of experience design from activity and effectiveness at the levels of organizational structure and culture [that some of our leaders in the field have been pushing industry to recognize].

For a good historical example of how this all comes together, I think there’s lots to be learned from the monastic orders – Christian and otherwise.  These experiences were structured by mechanisms designed to create mixes of the different sorts of emotional rewards Lazzaro identifies, in addition to the fundamentals of providing food and shelter for their members.  Recall that the original monks were hermits who avoided society; the rise of the various orders reflects a substantial change in the basic character of the experience offered.  We have different language for the core attributes now – value proposition, brand promise, experience theme, what have you – but as designers of social environments, we could use the analytical power of Lazzaro’s model to examine the historical evolution of the monasteries, since all the major orders were carefully designed to create a certain sort of experience, each distinct from the others.

SB: For EuroIA you’re presenting a case study on Killzone. Can you tell us a little about that game?
JL: Killzone is a popular first-person shooter style game with a science-fiction setting, created by an Amsterdam-based studio called Guerilla Games, which is owned by Sony.  The Killzone family is known for offering an experience that’s rich in environmental detail such as graphics and physics, as well as an extensive character creation and advancement possibility space.  We’ll talk specifically about Killzone 2, looking at some of the many social elements that this release includes.

My role in the presentation is describing how Lazzaro’s language points the way toward the hybrids of game and social experience that Killzone exemplifies.  Reinoud Bosman -  esteemed former colleague and experience architect par excellence – takes the spotlight by looking at the structure and design of the Killzone experience in detail. Reinoud was directly involved in the design of those social elements, so his perspective is – pardon the pun – first person.

SB: Thank you for the interview.

Joe is one of the speakers at the EuroIA 09 conference, being held in Copenhagen (Denmark) on September 25 and 26. The theme of this year is “Beyond Structure”.

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

(This article is the third part in the Deconstructing Analysis Techniques series.)

Manipulating data is that process of re-sorting, rearranging and otherwise moving your research data, without fundamentally changing it. This is used both as a preparatory technique – i.e. as a precursor to some other activity – or as a means of exploring the data as an analytic tool in its own right.

One of the key characteristics of a manipulation technique versus related techniques like transformation is that the underlying data remains unchanged. The main thing we’re doing is changing the relationship – logical or physical – that one piece of data has with another.

Reorganizing the data helps us to identify patterns that may otherwise not be apparent. In fact, it is almost certain that most patterns won’t be visible at first glance.

Let’s start by taking a more detailed look at some of the processes that contribute to the manipulation of data.

Re-sorting is literally a technique aimed at changing the order of the data. Re-sorting is most often carried out on numerical or quantitative data, but can just as easily be applied to text content. There are a few common types of sorting – numerical, alphabetical, chronological; as well as some that are much less common. For example, a list of responses to a survey question asking for a rating of a service might be sorted based on the severity and tone (positive or negative) of the review.

Sorting data helps to isolate significant individual values – the highest or lowest, most-frequent or least-frequent, first or last; and can also be a way of highlighting the shape of the data (more on this later).

Re-arranging is an activity that typically involves the physical or digital repositioning of a data element so that it sits in closer proximity to another. This might be to organize photographs into a narrative; or to juxtapose contrasting ideas for discussion.

Rearranging ideas through the manipulation of Post-its. Photo courtesy of Todd Warfel.

Much of the rearranging we do is exploratory, although at times it will be more directed. In these cases we might be trying to present a new configuration for our data – like rearranging furniture – to better support some activity.

Some of this manipulation will be more purposeful. We might be seeking to categorize a collection of photographs by grouping them into similar piles; or draw out common themes in user interviews. Recall, for example, in our article on Deconstruction we talked about breaking out key phrases or ideas into separate data points (on index cards, post-it notes etc).

What are we trying to achieve, though, with all this moving about?

Patterns

I’ve written previously on the important role pattens play in analysis; and the different types of patterns one might seek to find and identify in research data. The patterns we seek include:

• Trends: the gradual, general progression of data up or down;
• Repetitions: a series of values that repeat themselves;
• Cycles: a regularly recurring series of data;
• Feedback systems: a cycle that gets progressively bigger or smaller because of some influence;
• Clusters: a concentration of data or objects in one small area;
• Pathways: a sequential pattern of data;
• Gaps: an area devoid of observations;
• Exponential growth: rapidly increasing rate of growth;
• Diminishing returns: there is a decreasing rate of growth;
• Long tail: a pattern that rises steeply at the start, falls sharply, and then levels off over a large range of values.

Immersion

Many design researchers and design practitioners talk about the need to immerse themselves in the data before they can make any kind of sense of it. Manipulating the data is a way of gaining that immersion – that familiarity – through direct engagement.

Designers will undertake this process in a number of ways, depending on the format in which data has been stored. One of the most popular forms of manipulation is to write out key concepts, observations, and ideas onto Post-It notes and stick these to a wall.

The design team them actively moves the physical Post-It notes around, rearranging and grouping concepts and observations to help trigger creative ideas. This technique may be used in both the analysis and design processes to assist the design team, and there isn’t a write or wrong time at which it can be undertaken. This type of exploratory analysis can be powerful, and is a key tool in the card sorting analysis arsenal.

If running the card sort was the fun part, analysis is the painful part, at least until you get going. Exploratory analysis is like playing in the data – looking for connections that make you think “hey, that’s interesting”, or that show patterns of behaviour. – Donna Spencer, Card Sorting

Donna’s quote highlights two important characteristics of this analysis technique: firstly, that it can help uncover and highlight key insights in the design research data; and secondly, that sometimes starting is the hardest part.

Where Do I Begin?

Design research – any research activity, really – can result in a body of data that simply feels overwhelming. Thousands of sticky notes containing observations or notes, covering the walls of a ‘war room’. Perhaps it’s thousands of survey responses, or dozens of interview transcripts. It may be hundreds of photographs taken of users in context; or hours of video of a user testing study.

Sometimes this richness of available data works against us, making it difficult to understand where we should begin. Like it’s counter-part in analysis – Deconstruction – the techniques of Manipulation are easy to undertake, and require little or no preparation.

Perhaps more importantly, Manipulation encourages exploration. It works well as an unstructured activity and therefore works well as an entry point into those vast collections of messy data points we’re so often faced with early in the analysis. If you’re not sure where to begin, begin with manipulation – the more tangible and tactile the better.

Uses of Manipulation

Despite the simplicity of manipulation as a technique, it delivers the heart of some very powerful analytic methods. For example, affinity diagramming is requires little more than manipulation (and perhaps deconstruction as a preparatory technique) to produce some real insights.

In many respects, the method of creating a mental model introduced by Indi Young in her book of the same name is another example of manipulating data with intent. Throughout the method data is manipulated – usually physically – through the use of sticky notes or index cards. Ideas are grouped and compared, collated or isolated, by physically repositioning and rearranging the physical object.

Manipulation can also be used to answer specific research questions. We can sort our data chronologically to find the first occurrence of an event. We can sort the data numerically to identify the highest or lowest values, or to identify the median figure (the middle observation) in a series of observations.

Perhaps we’ve already gone through an exercise of aggregating data points and tallying up the number of occurrences of each. We can now manipulate the data and sort in either ascending or descending order to identify the most common or least common responses. This combination of techniques – aggregation and manipulation – provides for an unsophisticated, but still useful ‘method’.

And that, of course, is one of the key things about each of the analysis techniques discussed in this series: whilst each is useful on its own, their real power comes from the ways in which they are combined to form the sophisticated and rich methods we tend to encounter in books.

Challenges

One of the greatest challenges we face when we start to play with our research data is a tendency to settle on the first arrangement; the first patterns; the first grouping. We begin with such a chaotic mess, that first glimpse of something that presents us with a clear view – some sense of real meaning – can be quite powerful. We resist the step of re-shuffling and messing it up again, and may therefore miss the opportunity to see a second, third or fourth pattern.

Another major challenge – which we’ve mentioned above – is that the volume of data can be quite daunting. As much as it is a good step to just get started, some sense of how data elements can be grouped or arranged before you begin is important; but it shouldn’t be an obstacle.

And, of course, we must be in a position to easily manipulate the data we’ve collected. This means the format and medium in which our data is recorded is critical. Storing data digitally is not necessarily advantageous or preferable: many designers will attest to the positive effects that can come from physically interacting with the data.

Summary

Manipulation can therefore be seen as one of many low level analysis techniques with which we work every day. We’ve all encountered it in one form or another, and probably spent little time considering it. And yet it is one of the major workhorses of any analysis effort, and one which we should understand.

We’ve heard it before: we should focus on designing for an experience; experiences are fundamentally different design challenges to a product or services; experiences are designed from the outside in.

We’re also told that we can apply this experience-centric perspective to tackle problems beyond the design of a product or piece of software. But we don’t often see examples of these ideas being put into practice. So that’s what I’d like to share.

Earlier this year I was asked by a client -YHA Australia – to work with them on a project aimed at selecting a new core IT platform for the organization. YHA Australia operate a network of some 120 or so hostels across Australia, and the system serves as the primary booking and hostel management system for each property.

During the first meetings to discuss the system it became fairly clear that the organization lacked any real sense of purpose for the system, and no clear idea of the strategic role the system might play in the organization.

More importantly for me, there was no real understanding of the role of the hostel management system in delivering a service or experience to hostel guests. What this meant was that we had no basis for prioritizing system features, or weighting features in the selection process.

To help facilitate this understanding I proposed to undertake some work with organization to help them better understand three things:

• what does the guest lifecycle look like, and what are the characteristics of the experience at each point in that lifecycle;
• in order to deliver on that desired experience, what does the business need to be doing; and
• what are the technology requirements or features needed to support these business functions.

This approach explicitly mirrors the user:business:technology trinity of requirements that need to be balanced in order to deliver a quality experience, that in turns delivers value to the business. It also provides us a slightly simplified view of the framework Peter Merholz discussed in his recent HBR article, which begins with the experience and works inwards through interactions, touchpoints, procedures & systems.

In order to understand the guest lifecycle we brought together a group of experienced industry operations (hostel management), marketing and front-line service staff. We worked through a series of brain-storming and analysis tasks to arrive at a draft lifecycle.

This draft lifecycle was held up to reality using a number of techniques including:

• contextual enquiry
• interviews (with guests, more staff)
• research in social networks

Using materials, research notes from previous projects (I’ve been working with YHA Australia for a decade), and interviews with back-office staff, each element of the customer experience was mapped to one or more front- and back-office tasks that need to occur to ensure the delivery of the experience as ‘designed’.

This research allowed for significant improvements to be made to the lifecycle in the pre- and post-stay stages of the service delivery. The detail in these two stages was meaningful because it allowed us to identify elements of the experience that would have been unsupported and yet clearly fit within a guest’s mental model of what constitutes the experience, even if not being a part of the traditional view of the service.

Most importantly, the research allowed for the experience to be deconstructed, and the important elements highlighted. This part of the work was informed by competitive analysis carried out previously, allowing points of clear and valuable difference between YHA and it’s competitors to be identified and prioritized.

By this stage we were back into familiar IT territory: what were the characteristics and features of the system needed to support the business functions previously identified. The big difference now, however, is that each business activity is directly related to a specific element of the guest’s experience.

Structuring the evaluation framework in this way also allowed us to question a lot of firm assumptions about what elements and functions within the IT system were most important. When features aren’t directly delivering a customer benefit, or enabling staff to deliver a customer benefit, it is muct easier to question the importance of that feature.

This framing of the problem also focused attention on several different sets of interactions within the overall service delivery system:

• that between guests and the system, mediated through 3rd-parties (e.g. external reservation sites);
• that between customers and front-line staff; and
• that between staff and the hostel management system.

In other words, we have defined user experience requirements for two distinct audiences: customers and staff.

Describing multiple interfaces

The next stage in the project is to layer in the functions that the business needs that aren’t tied directly to a customer experience. These include features related to financial management, corporate governance and risk management. In this model, these business-centric considerations are separated from the guest-centric considerations, and evaluated in parallel.

We are still in the process of using this approach to select the organization’s new IT platform, but this new framework has helped to transform the decision from a tactical, ‘day-to-day’ operations decision into a strategic choice affecting the whole organization’s positioning and point of difference.

I’ll be talking about this project, the approach, and lessons learned at UX Australia 2009 – a 3-day user experience design conference, with inspiring and practical presentations , covering a range of topics about how to design great experiences for people. It will be held on 26-28 August 2009, in Canberra (Australia).

We often discuss the need for us to be designing for an experience. And we talk about the importance of experience design – and design generally – playing a strategic role in business decisions. But we’re less forthcoming when it comes to discussing what is an experience strategy?

The question of what, exactly, do I mean when I talk about experience strategy has been coming up a bit recently. In part, that’s because a good chunk of the work I do revolves around experiences; and in part it’s topical here in Sydney since UX Book Club has been reading Subject to change by the folks at Adaptive Path as our title for June.

As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of discussing experiences, and strategy, and what an experience strategy actually is. So here is my definition of experience strategy in one statement:

An experience strategy is that collection of activities that an organization chooses to undertake to deliver a series of (positive, exceptional) interactions which, when taken together, constitute an (product or service) offering that is superior in some meaningful, hard-to-replicate way; that is unique, distinct & distinguishable from that available from a competitor.

Let’s deconstruct that a bit and see what I’m trying to say.

An experience strategy is that collection of activities…

Delivering products or services, or hybrid systems of both, is a complex undertaking that involves many people executing many tasks and activities. Some of these activities are really obvious: the sales staff in your retail store; the product engineer; the call-centre staff. And some are not so obvious: like the person responsible for driving the forklift in the warehouse to move spare parts to where they’re needed; or the person responsible for the servicing of the forklift. Some activities have a much more direct impact on the end customer, but all contribute to that customer’s perception of us and our products. And if a change to an activity is required in order to deliver on your new experience, then that should be mentioned in your strategy.

That collection of activities is often summarized in the experience vision. Subject to Change includes a very nice example of an experience vision from Eastman Kodak over 100 years ago: “You press the button, we do the rest”. Or Apple’s experience vision for the iPod: “All your music, any time, any where”[1]. Drawing on a literary heritage Cindy Chastain puts forward the idea of an experience theme as the coherent, binding articulation of our intent. Both work for me; the theme/vision helps us not only choose the activities needed in execution, they also help to galvanise and coordinate the way these activities are carried out.

…that an organization chooses to undertake…

Strategy is about two things: compromise and intent. When we devise a strategy we are necessarily indicating an intent or aim. If there is no goal then you don’t have a strategy: you have a to-do list.
We choose certain activities over others for a number of reasons:

• We can’t do everything;
• We don’t need to do everything in order to reach our intended goal;
• There are some activities that will actually take us further from our goal.

A core component of an experience strategy is also an articulation of the what. That is, the collection of activities described above. The choice of activities is also a way of putting into action a specific design solution – the how.

…to deliver a series of (positive, exceptional) interactions…

There are actually two points in here worth identifying and discussing. The first is that the experience we deliver is the sum of a series of separate interactions. I like the way Eric Reiss articulated this concept in his article explaining how he thinks of user experience. Our experience at a restaurant is more than the food; more than the service; more than the wine list or the decor. It’s each of those things, and all of those things, and it’s the way in which each is choreographed with respect to the others.

But there’s a second facet here that is important: not every interaction has to be exceptional or even good. It’s OK for some components to be average, satisfactory or mundane. This is one of the choices that we make in selecting our activities: not only which ones to carry out, but at which we’re going to excel. A memorable experience isn’t necessarily made up entirely of memorable interactions. Making every interaction memorable might make the entire experience too expensive for anyone to afford; or too time-consuming; or impractical. And so we’re back to compromise: what are the critical components of the experience that…

…when taken together, constitute an (product or service) offering that is superior in some meaningful, [hard-to-replicate] way…

We’ll go out of business quickly if our offering is inferior. That’s pretty simple. When all of those activities are brought together we need to have something that sings, and – more importantly – sings in the hearts and minds of our customers. Our offering needs to be meaningful for our customers – and there are ways that we can try to achieve that, through our design process – but our aim should be clear.

…offering that is superior in some meaningful, hard-to-replicate way…

Businesses that wish to be profitable design experiences that are meaningful for their customers. Businesses that wish to remain profitable in the long term offer something that is not only meaningful but also hard to copy. In business parlance that’s call a sustainable competitive advantage and it’s the shining difference between companies like Apple or Toyota and the also-rans in the market-place.

Think of it this way: if your offering is easy to copy; easy to replicate – you won’t be the only one offering it for long. And that just means your profits will very quickly be eroded as you shift from a value proposition built on the strength of the experience, to a price war driven by operational and scale efficiency.

…that is unique, distinct & distinguishable from that available from a competitor.

Your offering – as good as it is; as compelling as it is; as hard to reproduce – needs to be uniquely identified with your organization for you to really reap the benefits. There’s a great photo of Lance Armstrong – 7 time Tour de France winner – shown in Bill Buxton’s book Sketching User Experiences in which Lance is shown on a stationary exercise bike warming up for an event (he’s not sweating so I assume he’s not cooling down). From his ears are two white cords that converge and disappear into his pocket. He’s quite clearly listening to an iPod even though the product is nowhere to be seen.

There’s a restaurant in Sydney named Tetsuya’s – one of the finest restaurant’s you’ll find, anywhere – that dishes up what can only be described as an eating experience. 13 courses complemented by a 7-course degustation wine list that delights, and tantalises, hints and astounds your taste senses over several hours. The experience is unique, and distinctive.

And one of my favourite distinctive experiences: driving a Mini Cooper S (original or modern).

These are experiences that are exceptional (as a whole), memorable, and worth telling to others. They sell themselves through the passionate response of the people who have already experienced them, and they are uniquely connected to the name and the brand behind them. There is no mistaking the experience of driving a Mini Cooper with any other car. Other consumer electronics manufacturers don’t design and make products like Apple. In fact, if they did, it would so clearly be inspired by Apple that the other company would be doing Apple’s advertising for them.

Finis

Delivering on an experience requires the coordinated effort of many parts of an organization. Whilst the experience vision or theme provides the guiding light for those efforts, the experience strategy takes that vision and articulates the specific areas of focus around which the organization will strive to differentiate itself in the market by crafting that experience in a particular way.

The strategy holds and speaks to both the destination and the journey and in so doing bridges the gap between concept and action.

I’d like to send out a big thank you to Cindy Chastain, Joe Lamantia, Donna Spencer & Ruth Ellison for reading through the draft of this article. Their time and insights were much appreciated.

[1]: In Subject to Change the authors refer to these as experience strategies.

In my opinion they’re not. A strategy encompasses both a goal and the path. These statements are vision statements. At best they describe the experience – such as the example experience on page 28 of the book – but without the activities needed to deliver on that vision I don’t class these as strategies.