Stowe Boyd: outdated UX metaphors are holding us back

Stowe Boyd Stowe Boyd arguest that the metaphors of computing user experience are holding us back from new ways of structuring our interaction through computers.

“the thing that is blocking us from moving forward, to a better user experience centered on social interaction and not physical data, are the existing metaphors of OS’s. Since we are living in a world of general purpose computers running Unix, Mac OS, and Windows — and we need to have them interoperate — we seem stuck in the 90’s.
To have a break with the past, and to make the past a platform, we have to push it under and not pretend that its constructs are desirable. We need to push files, folders and the notion of a desktop under the surface of a better user experience, and keep it under. Let a new generation of user experience shield us from that drudgery and detail.

The only way forward is to build a new user experience on top of the physical hardware and software that form a platform for it, and conceal it’s nasty details from us.

This is one aspect of the genius of the iPhone and iPad generation of devices: we don’t need to know about the files and folders. We don’t need a desktop with data bundles lying in piles.”

But, he says, “This break with the past is made faster and less difficult if the new system is closed.”

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February 1, 2010 | Experientia | Tags: | No Comments »

From people to prototypes and products: ethnographic liquidity and the Intel Global Aging Experience study

Global Aging Experience The latest Intel Technology Journal (Volume 13, Issue 30 reports the research and development activities of the Intel Digital Health Group and its colleagues.

One article, entitled “From people to prototypes and products: ethnographic liquidity and the Intel Global Aging Experience study“, documents how a large-scale, multi-site, ethnographic research project into aging populations, the Global Aging Experience Study, led to the development of concepts, product prototypes, and products for the independent living market.

Successfully leveraging the output of ethnographic research within large organizations and product groups is often fraught with challenges. Ethnographic research produced within an industry context can be difficult for an organization to thoroughly capitalize on. However, careful research design and sound knowledge transfer activities can produce highly successful outcomes that can be thoroughly absorbed into an organization, and the data can lend itself to re-analysis. Our research was conducted by the Product Research and Innovation Team in the Intel Digital Health Group, and the work was done in Europe and East Asia, eight countries in all. Using a mixed methodology, our research examined health and healthcare systems in order to chart the macro landscape of care provision and delivery. However, the core of our study was ethnographic research with older people, and their formal (clinical) and informal (family and friends) caregivers in their own homes and communities. Data from this study were organized and analyzed to produce a variety of tools that provide insight into the market for consumption by teams within the Digital Health Group. As the results of the research
were driven into the Digital Health Group and other groups within Intel, it became clear that the Global Aging Experience Study possessed what we term ethnographic liquidity, meaning that the data, tools, and insights developed in the study have layers of utility, a long shelf life, and lend themselves to repeated and consistent use within and beyond the Digital Health Group.

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January 14, 2010 | Experientia | Tags: | No Comments »

The fable of the user-centred designer

Fable David Travis has written a fable that “follows a young man’s journey as he discovers the three secrets of user-centred design”.

“Many years ago, I read a book by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson called The One Minute Manager. The book is an allegory about good versus bad management. It describes the journey of a young man who wants to learn how to become an effective manager.

Sitting at home one day, I found myself musing on what Blanchard & Johnson would have to say about user-centred design. Like management, user-centred design is ostensibly simple, yet when it comes to great user experiences many people do it incorrectly. And as with management, there are some simple but powerful rules.

This fable is the result of my thinking. I’ve retained the narrative structure of The One Minute Manager and if you know the book there are some other similarities you’ll discover. But above all, it’s a simple description of the secrets of user-centred design. I hope you en- joy it, apply it and pass it on.”

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December 25, 2009 | Experientia | Comments Closed

The fable of the user-centred designer

Fable David Travis has written a fable that “follows a young man’s journey as he discovers the three secrets of user-centred design”.

“Many years ago, I read a book by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson called The One Minute Manager. The book is an allegory about good versus bad management. It describes the journey of a young man who wants to learn how to become an effective manager.

Sitting at home one day, I found myself musing on what Blanchard & Johnson would have to say about user-centred design. Like management, user-centred design is ostensibly simple, yet when it comes to great user experiences many people do it incorrectly. And as with management, there are some simple but powerful rules.

This fable is the result of my thinking. I’ve retained the narrative structure of The One Minute Manager and if you know the book there are some other similarities you’ll discover. But above all, it’s a simple description of the secrets of user-centred design. I hope you en- joy it, apply it and pass it on.”

Download the booklet

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Augmented Reality is overhyped and abused

USPS Augmented Reality is overhyped and abused, writes Matthew Szymczyk in Advertising Age, and we’re in danger of killing off a rather useful technology.

“As web-based augmented-reality applications have exploded, it’s more important than ever to remember AR is a technology based on utility and not gimmicks.

Unfortunately, as with most new and emerging technologies, it’s quickly becoming overhyped and abused. Usability and user experience have been thrown under in the stampede of agencies and brands saying “Hey, look — me too!” Even more disturbing is that most marketers are overlooking the most unique aspect of AR itself: that it’s a technology that can create innovative and sustained engagement between a brand and its target consumer through utility.”

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December 11, 2009 | Experientia | Comments Closed

Our misguided focus on brand and user experience

Branded UX If there is a future for designers and marketers in big business, it lies not in brand, nor in “UX”, nor in any colorful way of framing total control over a consumer, such as “brand equity”, “brand loyalty”, the “end to end customer journey”, or “experience ownership”. It lies instead in encouraging behavioral change and explicitly shaping culture in a positive and lasting way, argues Jon Kolko in a long piece on Johnny Holland.

“The focus on brand and control of the user experience is an attempt to avoid the above commoditization and irrelevance of artifact, and it references a dated model of dominance – one where a company produces something for a person to consume. This is the McDonalds approach to production, where an authoritative voice prescribes something and then gains efficiencies by producing it exactly as prescribed, in mass. The supposed new model is to design something for a person to experience, yet the allusion to experience is only an empty gesture. An experience cannot be built for someone. Fundamentally, one has an experience, and that is experience is always unique.

Interaction design is the design of behavior, positioned as dialogue between a person and an artifact. A person commonly doesn’t talk to an object; they use it, touch it, manipulate it, and control it. Usage, touching, manipulation and control are all dialogical acts, unspoken but conversational.”

Jon Kolko is an Associate Creative Director at frog design. He has worked extensively in the professional world of interaction design solving the problems of Fortune 500 clients. Prior to working at frog, Kolko was a Professor of Interaction and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, sits on the Board of Directors for the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine, published by the ACM. Kolko is the author of Thoughts on Interaction Design, published by Morgan Kaufmann, and the forthcoming text tentatively entitled Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis, to be published by Oxford University Press.

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December 1, 2009 | Experientia | Comments Closed

Four key principles of mobile user experience design

Mobile keys In a long article on Boxes and Arrows, Dakota Reese Brown suggests an alternative view of the mobile space based on principles rather than isolated tactics.

“Prior to becoming a senior UX designer at Popular Front Interactive, I spent two years as a mobile UX researcher within the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Mobile Technologies Group – a lab tasked with both future-casting and then rapidly prototyping innovative mobile experiences.

As I transitioned from academia to industry, I discovered that while mobile UX was discussed, it wasn’t discussed from the same broad frame of reference that I was used to within the confines of a research-based institution. Although more recent mobile UX conversations I have found myself in have undoubtedly benefited from the ongoing smart phone revolution, overall I still find these conversations to be needlessly driven by tactical adoration and lacking a conscious consensus regarding the fundamental principles of the mobile-user experience.

I do not presume these following principles to be all-inclusive or ultimately authoritative; rather, it is my hope that they are received as an anecdotal summation of my findings that might then spark and contribute to the larger conversation and consensus-building process.”

Here are the principles he proposes:

  1. There is an intimate relationship between a user and their mobile device.
  2. Screen size implies a user’s state. The user’s state infers their commitment to what is on the screen.
  3. Mobile interfaces are truncated. Other interfaces are not.
  4. Design for mobile platforms — the real ones.

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IDEA 2009: Social and experience design

IDEA 2009 The IDEA Conference took place in Toronto on September 15-16, with a focus on social experience design. Boxes and Arrows, in collaboration with the IA Institute, brings recordings of most conference talks.

Day one
- The impact of social models – Luke Wroblewski
- Social spaces online: lessons from radical architects – Christina Wodtke
- Making virtual worlds: games and the human for a digital age – Thomas Malaby
- User experience as a crucial driver of social business design – Jeff Dachis
- Bare naked design: reflections on designing with an open source community – Leisa Reichelt
- Does designing a social experience affect how we party? Of course it does! – Maya Kalman
- The information superhighway: urban renewal or neighborhood destruction? – Mary Newsom

Day two
- Innovation parkour – Matthew Milan
- The art and science of seductive interactions – Stephen Anderson
- Social design patterns mini-workshop – Christian Crumlish & Erin Malone
- If you build it (using social media), they will come – Mari Luangrath
- The bawn of perfect products – Tim Queenan
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Designing the online shopping experience

Mind the gap Two articles in UX Magazine look at ways of improving the retail user experience online:

Mind the gap
Which types of brands have the greatest opportunity to improve UX? A video-based look at online–offline experience gaps.
by Dave Maren

Designing superior shopping experiences
Online shopping should be a fluid, visually exciting and immersive experience. By designing great shopping experiences free from the constraints of HTML, we can fully exploit the rich audio, video, animation and user interface capabilities of modern personal computing.
by George Plesko
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The human factor

Doctors NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, has published a 45-page discussion paper on how transforming healthcare to involve the public, i.e. the creation of people-powered public services, can save money and save lives.

The National Health Service (NHS) needs to save £15 billion to £20 billion over the next few years. This paper argues that these savings could be achieved through radical patient-centred service redesign and more effective approaches to public behaviour change. However, these approaches are difficult to develop within the existing health service.

NESTA’s experience of working with leading companies and developing projects in healthcare demonstrates that radical new ways of innovating that give genuine power to frontline staff, patients and the public are necessary to make these approaches widespread. This would unlock the savings we need and improve the nation’s health.

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November 9, 2009 | Experientia | Comments Closed
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