She couldn’t do those things she loved anymore. Horseback riding was physically impossible, just like playing the piano. Those late night dinner parties were just too intensive. That hurt Maria, but what hurt her most was that her friends sometimes made comments that she looked so well. Her friends thought that Maria was winning the struggle against her illness, while in fact Maria’s treatment was not catching on. She was slowly dying.

While I did research on the context of struggling with a severe illness I learned that we lose one fourth of our social environment when we are diagnosed with a severe illness. That is quite a lot, especially in the time that you need that social contact the most. It creates support, self esteem and makes the illness more bearable.

Quite frankly I was stunned by this. Because I have a technical background, I know there are many amazing technologies which change the world rapidly, especially in the way we communicate. But yet we cannot utilize these technologies to communicate about our thoughts, feelings and health.

The Necklace

It was after that experience I started to design for ‘intimate communication’. The Necklace became the first design in this genre. It is a piece of jewelry for breast cancer patients. After each important moment in your struggle against this illness you add a new link. By gently pushing a link of the necklace onto your skin it withdraws a small blood sample without any feeling of discomfort. This link then changes color based on your blood values. The deeper the color of the link the healthier you are. Such information infused decoration allows you to see, at any time of the day, how your recovery is progressing and lets you communicate it with your love ones whom you learned how to read The Necklace. In this way this unique piece of jewelry symbolizes your personal story.

Design for Debate

The interesting thing is that The Necklace is not an actual product, but a tangible and interactive future scenario about that our intimate communication could be like within the next ten years. This design is currently on tour with the Nano Supermarket, a traveling exhibition full of speculative products which could be realized within the next ten years with the help of nanotechnology. During this tour I got a lot of mixed comments; either people loved the design, or deeply hated it. They explained how it could have helped them in their disease, or how they would hate to give up their privacy.

Because it is a tangible, interactive and realistic design people can engage and experience it. They can actually talk about it how it would affect their lives, because it is there, right in front of them. This was exactly the point of the design. It was not designed to be a future product, but to be debated about. Through these comments I learned a lot on how people experience communication in the context of health and on how they see products influencing this communication. It is a design for debate.

User Experience

I believe that we need such realistically crafted future scenarios in order to investigate what we want our future to be like; specially in the case of ‘intimate communication’ via technology. We can than start to create new dimensions in the way we communicate via technology and become closer. The user experience of these scenarios is therefore very important. They either make or break the illusion, and therefore the discussion. This experience is needed in Design for Debate.

As Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: “Objects are carriers of experiences and emotions”. Designers can and should create those objects. The people who engage with the objects then are able to create the future.

Today on Radio Johnny Jeff Parks talks with Stephen Anderson, about his workshop at the 10th anniversary of UX Week hosted by Adaptive Path. Stephen shares how design patterns such as spreadsheets, lists, dashboards and grid views suffice for getting data onto a screen. However, when it comes to making sense of this data, these same patterns hold us back from designing great experiences! Generic patterns are poor substitutes for a good custom visualization, especially one designed for the content being displayed.

Quotes

I refactored and retooled the workshop and what I came back to people saying is there are four design patterns that I’ll call out by name and I guarantee that just about everyone in this room has used at least one if not all of these in the past year. Those four design patterns I’m going to reframe as “Villains!” [lists, spreadsheets, dashboards, grid views]… and then show examples of how those villains could be turned around and made better with new patterns or new visualizations.

The flip side to all of these [villains] is you’re building tools that are very easy to deploy, very efficient, low cost, reusable etc and that’s fine because it’s cost of entry…but I think we live in an age where we are moving beyond cost of entry. How can we make this better? How can we make this more effective?…This isn’t the end, this is the start.

…focusing on villains was to give people an easy way to identify opportunities to make things better. I didn’t want to overlook that there are lots of problems for which there are no villain – no one has even attempted to give a before version [He-who-has-yet-to-be-named].

Notes

* Follow Stephen on Twitter
* Mental Notes card deck
* Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences
* Adaptive Path’s iPad App

Today on Radio Johnny Jeff Parks talks with independent content and UX consultant, who will be presenting at the upcoming edUi Conference in Richmond, Stephanie Hay. Steph shares insights about writing content that is both compelling and useful by shifting our perspective to that of the people for whom we are trying to communicate. Sharing insights about user happiness and working towards are greater understanding of the emotional response of the user, organizations can start speaking to the values of their clients resulting in a better user experience.

Quotes

“…people don’t try very hard to write content. They go to this formulaic approach of needing to fill in real estate that may have been ear marked by the designer, or constrained by the CMS of choice..there isn’t the kind of content that really speaks to a user that the user wants to read.”

“Users are now skeptical, and prone, to select whatever is at the top of a search result. Choosing who their friends recommend, that becomes and amazing opportunity to get your content front and centre. The way that you do that is by being different from the pack. In content, for example, maybe 5 or 10 years ago having a website was an asset. Today having a website is not an asset and neither is having a lot of content on your website if that content is not helpful or compelling.”

“The most important consideration from a UX perspective, I think, is about prioritizing user happiness…often UX folks like myself are so focused on the interaction and even getting user feedback, we inadvertently ignore a couple of things… for example the microcopy that encompasses an interaction…the second piece of this is the emotional response that the user can have, is often overlooked. “

Notes

* Follow Steph on Twitter
* Design for Emotion by Trevor van Gorp and Edie Adams
* Why Personas Are Critical for Content Strategy by Kris Mausser
* The Cast of Personas by Indi Young

From World of Business Ideas.

Duration: 16 minutes

World of Business Ideas
BJ Fogg’s site

(Sorry about the autoplay thing. It can’t be disabled for this video.)

Tomer Sharon (Google) interviews Dan Ariely about irrationality and how it relates to design for his book, It’s Our Research.

Duration: 12 minutes

Dan’s site
Dan on Twitter
Dan’s Wikipedia entry
It’s Our Research book site
Tomer Sharon on Twitter

Today on Radio Johnny, Chris Baum talks with Peter Stahl, Senior Interaction Designer for Cisco. Peter thinks we are at a crossroads in the design profession, with tools and deliverables that are optimized for static experience. Peter explores the distinction between rhythm and flow; how flow could work across channels; how flow can be a lens to reflect on the success of our projects and as designers; and finally, the ways our deliverables might morph to encourage flow for all involved on our projects.

Quotes

“I’m interested in coming up with some theory of what we’re after as user experience designers. The best user experiences are the ones where the user is no longer aware that they are participating in something that has been designed. Csikszentmihalyi’s theories, backed up by a great deal of research, resonated with me.”

“I find that, particularly as I work with younger designers, I’m hoping to use some sorts of principles that they can consult to decide whether they are going in the right direction rather than flailing about blindingly or using some random techniques from some random website to understand if they’re moving the ball forward, or downwards, sideways, or backwards.”

“We need new deliverables that reflect the new world of what our products are. They are no longer a series of static pages, so the deliverables need to evolve to reflect that. If we come up with a tool or a series of tools that help us accurately convey the vision of what our designs represent to a wider scope of people with less effort, then I think we’ll have really advanced the practice.”

Notes

* Follow Peter on Twitter @pstahl
* Find out more about Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that inspired the presentation.

The distinction between a ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ medium apparently began with interactive television. The terms have commonly been used by hand-wavers such as marketing people, media theorists, and futurists. The distinction has very little real scientific basis. There isn’t any clear idea what these terms really mean.

Still, there’s something going on here. Jakob Nielsen, in studies of reading via print versus the web, found major differences between the two. To the question of “How readers read on the web,” Nielsen answers: “They don’t.”

According to Nielsen, “People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.”

There is now a big move to migrate news, magazine, and video content and applications from the print world, the (PC-based) Web, and television to the tablet. But the tablet is a different medium than print, the PC, and television. The ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ distinction seems to be important in understanding how the tablet is different, but we need to go beyond it to better understand the tablet and its differences from other media.

To do this, we need to do two things.

First, we need better language to describe what is happening. ‘Lean forward’ seems to imply paying more attention, or, maybe, just getting closer. ‘Lean back’ has an image of someone relaxing on a couch with beer-in-hand, veging out. But the main ‘lean forward’ media experience, the PC-on-the-web, is more typically someone multitasking so much he is stupider. And ‘lean back’ is supposedly the mode that people read the newspaper in. The terms also seem to imply distance from the medium, although that distance is short for print and long for television, both supposedly ‘lean back’ media.

Leaning back or forward? (copyright Apple)

Second, we need to understand why users go into a particular way of engaging with a medium. It’s not just because that they are using a particular platform, or sitting a certain distance from it. Nielsen has also done studies of readers reading an Ernest Hemingway short story on a PC, Kindle, iPad, and printed paper, obtaining essentially the same reading comprehension on different media. The main differences were that readers in some conditions were slower and that readers hated reading on the PC. If readers actually read when it is a short story, but scan instead of read if they are browsing the Web, then it seems clear that engagement style isn’t just about the platform.

New Language

When we use the terms ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ what we are really talking about is what I call ‘engagement style.’ Readers that are actually reading a story have a different engagement style than readers that are browsing the Web.

I would further suggest that a user browsing the Web on a PC be regarded as having a high activity engagement style. A high activity style is one of switching tasks frequently. This style is associated with relatively low sustained attention.

A user reading a print newspaper, in contrast, would be regarded as having a high absorption engagement style, one of concentrated and long-term sustained attention. The terms ‘high activity’ and ‘high absorption’ would replace the corresponding terms ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ that are used today, because they better describe the experience. These terms also allow for different values for each dimension of engagement style. Reading a newspaper is high absorption but low activity. Web browsing on a PC is high activity but probably something above the lowest level of absorption. Watching television is low activity but perhaps something less than the highest absorption, depending upon the program

Each of these categories might have subcategories. Thus, a high absorption style might be either thoughtful or passive.

‘Passive’ is the couch-potato, beer-in-hand style that is often associated with television. It involves little conscious thought. Users are very relaxed, vegging out. Readers might be reading a formulaic mystery or a police procedural novel, or watching one of the more mindless blockbuster Hollywood movies. There is thinking going on, but it is primarily unconscious, passive absorption of content.

‘Thoughtful’ also takes place in a comfortable, relaxing environment, but conscious thought is involved. Readers might be reading long-form journalism or the sort of novel that results in the reader constantly drawing inferences, like Gravity’s Rainbow. Users are relaxed, but hardly comatose.

There are important differences between these styles that have implications for the design of tools for the tablet. For example, an app designed for a passive style of engagement would provide very minimal, simple, easy-to-use tools. A video player that they just turn on to watch for a long time, or a book reader that they just swipe or press a button to get to the next page. It might have quite sophisticated software underlying it to suggest which programs to watch, and some users might initially be in a high activity style to use these tools, but once a program or reading material was selected, they would go into high absorption style. During this period actual operation of any tool would be very simple.

In contrast, thoughtful readers may well want more tools, although still simple, while they are engaging in the thoughtful style. They may want the capability to easily get the definition of a word or to make the online keyboard come up to make a brief note. They also might want significant tools to help them choose which media to interact with, and might briefly use more complex tools. Once they choose media to interact with, the tools would be very simple and unobtrusive.

An example of the balance between activity and absorption.

Factors that Influence Engagement Style

What causes a person to go into a particular engagement style? Many factors are involved: The user’s intention, the platform, the particular task or application the user has chosen, the distance between user and platform, habit (including skills and setting), and set. Much of what has been seen as a particular style due to the platform or distance is the result of habit, mediated by a practiced skill and/or a particular setting.

Tasks like reading are complex skills. Skills require considerable learning and practice to obtain high levels of performance and fluency. In the early stages, these are highly conscious; in later stages much of the skill becomes unconscious and the user doesn’t necessarily have full conscious control. A user can’t fully adjust his or her reading speed and manner. Instead, users develop modes, and switch from one mode to another. One mode might be for the careful reading of, say, long-form journalism article. Another mode might be use for scanning a print newspaper to decide what story to read. Still another might have been developed for scanning Web pages as part of achieving a particular goal. Users will choose a mode, and they may adjust it slightly, but if they go too far out of the parameters of that mode they will lose fluency and become uncomfortable.

Setting and set also play a role. If a user has spent a lot of time in a particular office sitting on a particular chair with a particular computer, performing multitasking with email and Web browsing with a video in background, the user will get used to that engagement style under these conditions and cues. That user may become very uncomfortable if he or she attempts to concentrate solely on a single task such as reading a long-form article. The user may feel deprived of sufficient stimuli. The user may well print the article out and go elsewhere to read it.

Distance also matters. In designing a reader for the iPad, Craig Mod divided reading distances into three categories. These were: (1) Bed (Close to face): “Reading a novel on your stomach, lying in bed with the iPad propped up on a pillow”; (2) Knee (Medium distance from face): “Sitting on the couch or perhaps the Eurostar on your way to Paris, the iPad on your knee, catching up on Instapaper”; and (3) Breakfast (Far from face): “The iPad, propped up by the Apple case at a comfortable angle, behind your breakfast coffee and bagel, allowing for hands-free news reading as you wipe cream cheese from the corner of your mouth.”

Mod used a relatively small font (and wide margins) for the near-distance  “Bed” case, a larger font for the medium-distance “Knee” case, and a still larger font (and small margins) for the far-distance “Breakfast” case. Distance, and corresponding font sizes, will become part of the setting
for a particular style.

Platforms can also influence an engagement style. A PC has multiple windows and thus invites multitasking and high activity, while most tablets effectively have a single window. The iPad, particularly, has usability guidelines that emphasize simplicity, which is also likely to reduce activity. Print promotes a high absorption style because you can’t do much else while holding a newspaper. Television has in the past promoted a high absorption style, but the phenomenon of people using their PCs and tablets while watching TV is changing that.

Understanding engagement style better will be important in designing user experiences for new media such as tablets. And I hope this article is a good start.

Our field is moving slowly but steadily into the world of behavioral psychology. We’ve started to realize that it’s not just about designing good-looking products with usable interfaces, but about a deeper level of involvement. Dan Lockton has been thinking about that area for quite some time, with his Design with Intent toolkit as the highlight. In his most recent article he explores a new approach: behavioral heuristics, where “asking users questions about how and why they behaved in certain ways with technology [leads] to answers which [are] resolvable into something like rules.”

In the article Lockton explores his own thoughts on behavioral heuristics. He shows examples from a recent workshop he did at Interaction 12 and how this worked out. As an example he takes apart an example from Amazon, where social proof is a way of persuading people. What were the assumptions made and how do these translate into heuristics?

Screenshot taken from danlockton.co.uk

Behavioral heuristics - Image from danlockton.co.uk

There are lots of models of human behaviour, and as the design of systems becomes increasingly focused on people, modelling behaviour has become more important for designers.

The aim, really, is ultimately to provide a way of helping designers choose the most appropriate methods for influencing user behaviour in particular contexts, for particular people.

Read the entire article ‘If…’ here

Persuasive design is a popular topic in user experience these days. In fact, our posts on how your coffee mug (amongst other things) is controlling your feelings was one of our most talked about posts of the year.  For those that would like to take a deep dive into the psychology behind it, Psyblog have an 18 part blog series that’s worth checking out.

As you might expect, some are more easily relatable to UX than others (though it’s handy to know that you can help your cause in convincing someone by getting them wired on caffeine and talking into their right ear). Some of the more transferable tips include:

• If you’re trying to convince someone to do something, presenting a balanced argument will help. Repetition does too … so long as it’s in the background and reasonably believable.
• Men generally respond better to email messages than face-to-face; women are the opposite (thanks to gender conditioning).
• Or if you want the tl;dr version, there’s a list for you: 20 Simple Steps to a Persuasive Message.

Full series here. For those that want a more direct link to design, take a look at last year’s UX Mag piece on persuasive design, or some of our posts on persuasion profiles,  images, or  returning.

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Arrow image NC-BY-CC from Three Legged Cat

I know that brands want to figure out how to use social media to do their branding work. And being brands, and generally well-0versed  in the dark arts of marketing and sales, skilled brand professionals know that consumers respond out of psychological interest and not out of material need.

There’s nothing intrinsically loathsome about this — the arrangement is equally familiar to the consumer. Who, in his more lucid moments, believes himself to be playing tricks on the marketers, and to have figured out just exactly how the machine works.

Well then, I’m in a state of chronic nonplussedness when it comes to brand involvement in social media. For it strikes me that brands continue to look for themselves in this medium. A medium full of users — nay, of people who consume shit all day and even night long — and talk about it, too. With their friends.

It’s like brands want to change the channel. Dig that remote up out of the bowels of the corporate sofa and find, all lit up like Christmas in Vegas, the chromed shine of their own brand image shimmering on a screen like a hot desert mirage.

Brands have figured out why people want things. They’ve nailed the imagery, the messaging, even the copy. They know how to mediate desire, how to intensify it, raise it up high and with celebrity pedestal amplitude, work the seductive power of distance and altitude. Brands know why people like what other people like, and how to work this dynamic with Shakespearian precision.

So then why have they not figured out how to go social? What’s holding them back? Why the silly games, the useless rewards, the getting behind the stuff people do on social that’s only “as if” if meant something? A revelation of what’s deep in the brand’s heart and calculating mind — that it doesn’t matter, as long as the numbers come out right. Or fooled, perhaps, by the pitching gearheads whose claim to understand what the user wants is possibly doubly corrupt (for it’s bankrupt too). Shiny person, meet shiny object. Likey likey.

I don’t get it. Why brands would want to get behind the smallest shit that people do online, the little itty-bitty clicks of point-less-this and double-plus-ungood save-and-share-and-like… Because all that counts is what they can count? Why diminish brand value and fork brand equity by scrunching it into little votes and likes and points and badges and other diminutive things because people do them just because they’re in the habit of doing them. Why? Because that’s the best they can get? If, then, because that’s the best we’ve been offered?

It works, this social. It works for high brow purposes and just as equally for the trivial silly and the redundant banal. It works because it’s of and by and for the people who use it. Sell into the small acts, the ones you can count, and you get small branding. Yes it’s distributed, yes everyone gets it, yes it’s the hot thing on mobile and web and pad. But pack a brand into bite-sized activities and you’re going to get bite-sized brand messaging. Sound bytes the value out of brand equity.

Small acts and gestures, the lowest common denominators in a medium whose real value is its stretch and span — relationships on a thread, no distance, spanning time. Think small and get small. Acts, you can see. Just look. Activity, takes vision. Where is it then? Where, the new narratives? Stories we can put ourselves in. Forms of expression shared with friends and rich with meaning that grows. History, past, archives, memories. Or future, hopes, plans, promises. Where, brand people, are we the people? What we care about and find interesting. Not profit motive — real motive.

I’d like to know. Companies have responsibilities on this planet. The people are not opposed. Such a shame, this business underwhelming.