Thoughts on Thoughts on Interaction Design

Sorry, couldn't help myself with the title. I just finished Thoughts on Interaction Design by Jon Kolko. For me, just finishing a professional book says something--most of them don't hold my interest enough to push me through to their ends. Of course, it could be that it was only 150 pages, too.

In any case, after reading the first two sections, I felt like just buying copies for my co-workers because it pretty much expounds the way I think and feel about interaction design at this point, which due to its relative newness to mainstream product development and other factors is often misunderstood. Even I must admit to coming to this understanding as a journey myself, so I sympathize with the confusion people face, especially given the shifting terminology among those who more or less fill the same gap in the (software) industry.

There was only one part of the book I really didn't care for--the guest essay by Justin Petro. Maybe it's because I can't personally relate to the negative experiences so much, having come to IxD through a different path, but that essay just smacked a little too much of narcissism, whinging, and perhaps even a bit of arrogance--the designer as some kind of superior being. That sort of thing just doesn't seem helpful, certainly not if you want other disciplines to take us seriously.

In terms of content, I only mildly disagree (FWIW!) with the contention that behavior is our medium/what we design/shape. I guess it's no coincidence that Robert Fabricant and Jon Kolko, both top folks at frog design, share this idea about what we do. If you consider the medium as the thing the designer directly shapes and expresses himself through, I don't see how you can say it is behavior. We design things--things that involve and influence behavior to be sure--but to say that we design behavior or that it is our medium is too strong of a claim.

Human beings are free, reasoning creatures whose behavior is of that same substance--of their own volition--and the best we can do is influence it. True, we can in a sense dictate the specific interactions to some degree that people have with our designed things, but even then, people are free to either do or not do what we imagined we are inducing or inviting them to do, and often (maybe always) what they actually do--as conditioned by their context and individual nature--will at least be at some variance with what we hoped or intended.

That's why design as rhetoric, which is discussed in the book, may be a better way to talk about what we do as it relates to behavior. Even so, I found "design as rhetoric" only a partially fulfilling idea. Acknowledging we are in a way trying to induce some kind of particular response or behavior, the rhetorical element is only a part of what we do in design--we also understand and analyze, synthesize, imagine, and create, among other things. If I had to choose one main activity, it would be synthesis as the primary (differentiating) activity of design.

It also seems to me that speaking of design as a shaper of behavior or rhetoric puts the emphasis on the wrong place for most practical industrial or interaction design work. I guess I align more with Christopher Alexander's approach in Notes on the Synthesis of Form and A Timeless Way of Building--that what we design should fit, not so much change or shape, the way people already behave or want to behave, and it should only be rhetorical if put to ends that align with the good of those being designed for.

I thought Section Three, while it is always fun to philosophize (no, I really think that!), is a section I feel comfortable telling folks they can skim over, unless they're really into the theoretical aspects of design, because I think it is unfinished. To say that design is poetry or language and to delve into particular theories of language is interesting and inspiring in some ways, but it's easy to say these things without taking the effort to draw the necessary lines that would help the average designer to design better. I would have loved Uday to keep going and illustrate a design language, its various concrete parts (more than fleeting references to icons and buttons), and show how consciously developing such a language has (or at least can have) meaningful, practical impact.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the idea of language in design. I just have yet to see a good, full-fledged implementation of the theory, either based on patterns or otherwise. Most discussions of language in design seem to stop just before they get useful or only develop part of a language (usually just a vocabulary).

The last section was the one I most enjoyed, chiefly the essay by Ellen Beldner, partly because her content was just so crunchy but also because of her style and unexpected off the wall comments/footnotes. I laughed out loud a couple times reading it.

So overall, I think that Jon's done the profession a service by publishing this book to help people think more clearly about what interaction design is all about. Even if I disagree on some details, the overall message and explication is extremely valuable and is a great starting point for further refinement of the discipline of interaction design as well as just generally helping people to come to a better understanding of it. Whether you are an interaction designer or you have to work with them, this is a worthwhile read.

Process is Pedagogy

More thoughts stimulated by ongoing discussions on IxDA discussion board...

Process and methodology are not bad. They are a form of practical pedagogy.

That smart, talented people are key is axiomatic; saying so doesn't add much to our collective wisdom.

We need both because even smart, talented people do not start out knowing how best to do things, and even when they know, they can get so busy and focused that they forget important things.

The critical question is how can we share and build up our collective experience, knowledge, and skill in ways that are practical and effective.

This is where process, methodology, and techniques (and formal education, of course) come in really handy, and I think that's why we tend to spend more time focusing on those and discussing those--not because we don't know good people are important.

Saying you need "great designers" is just not enough.

UCD vs. Design Again?

This is a direct copy of a post I just made over on the Interaction Design Association email list. I wanted to post it here to pull it out of the weeds as a kind of open letter to folks in UX and Design.

----

Jared, Andrei, Charlie, et al,

I'm writing as someone working full time in the software industry for over 10 years and a hobbyist/wannabe for most of my life. I came up through the ranks with no formal computer, science, or design education. The only degree I hold is in history and humanities. I was a developer and architect for most of my career.

So why the heck am I presuming to speak up amidst you juggernauts of usability and design?

Because I'm someone who really cares about making great software and making the software industry in general better.

Look, I'm here because it seems pretty obvious to me that the best way to make software better is through a focus on people and good design. The last 8 years of my career have been a steady enlightenment in that direction that all started with a rather silly incident involving some terribly amateurish visual design. (I guess my humanities background predisposes me, too.)

Anyways, the point is that from my perspective (i.e., not having much vested interest in UCD, Usability, HCI, Design, IA, and so on), you're setting up an unnecessary (and damaging) dichotomy. It's not understanding people OR designing. It's both.

Even software devs (those arch nemeses!) have figured out that involving the actual people who will use their software in the design process helps them to make more successful software. They also have figured out that being able to iterate and try different things helps them come to better solutions. These two principles underly what is broadly known as Agile. And if you want an amorphous term, man, Agile beats UCD any day!

The way I see it, the people advocating UCD/UX and the people advocating Agile both see the light--they see the way to make this stuff better. They're coming at it from different directions but essentially marching to the same drum. In the last few years they've been sidling up to each other and saying, hey, we can learn from and work with each other and achieve our common goals.

Now you got folks coming alongside, saying, "no, you silly people don't get it, it's Design!" Well, of course it's design! It's never not been design. You say, no Dee-sign, with a BIG D. We say, okay, what the heck do you mean by that? And you (IMO) have slowly been articulating it in ever clearer ways.

Now, I have gone from more skeptical to almost a believer in Dee-sign, but still, I don't see it as some magic or something antithetical to Agile or UX. I see it as complimentary. Because all along we've known we gotta do good design--that's what the frak we've been trying to do. So you have a different background and discipline, and maybe it's better. Yeah, I think so.

So again, from my perspective, you have the UX folks coming in and helping the somewhat floundering software developers do better in understanding people and you have the Design folks coming in and helping the somewhat floundering software developers do better in design.

Awesome! More, smart, educated, passionate, and talented people marching together. Now what heck are we arguing about??

Bill Buxton in Princeton – A Review

I, like most in the (software) design industry, was pumped that Bill Buxton was coming to my neck of the woods for a talk.  I wager it’s the most popular talk ever put on by the two groups that sponsored it (PhillyCHI and Usability NJ); there was a waiting list and the “large auditorium” at Princeton’s CompSci building was packed.

I’ve only begun to dig into his book, Sketching Experiences, so I don’t know for sure how much of the talk reflected that, but in talking with colleagues, it sounds like there was some overlap (as should be expected!).  In any case, enough with the intro..

Overall, of course, Buxton makes for an interesting presenter.  He has a lot of personality, and it comes out.  And regardless of the particular topic, when you have someone of his caliber—his amount and quality of experience in the field—it is bound to be interesting and have little gems here and there.

I took away four main themes:

• Learn From the Past
• Think About the Transitions
• Keep It Simple/Lo Tech
• Make Way for Design

Learn From the Past

He demonstrated a 1984 Casio touch screen calculator watch—you trace the numbers and signs on it, and it tries to recognize them.  The explicit point was that we should be more diligent in finding and using the research that folks have done in HCI and Design and apply that to what we do.

I also wonder, though, if the state of technology also have exerted an influence on the up-surge of awareness of the value and importance of design in software and devices.  I think the two (tech advancement and design presence, along with business acumen to buy into and fund the potential) have worked together to make the iconic good UX products happen when they did.

Think About the Transitions

This was something he mentioned at MIX.  He reiterated that we need to spend more time thinking about and representing the how we get from state to state in our designs. 

It’s a good point, but it left me wanting more.  It’s one thing to criticize the state of the art; it’s another to show how it could be better.  I want to see how he thinks it could be better—in the context of building software interfaces, which was the context his criticism was made within.

Keep It Simple/Lo Tech

He showed a few examples, mostly videos, of how folks have utilized simple, lo-tech stuff to prototype and communicate ideas design ideas.  He reinforced the idea that you need to keep your design work lo-fi at first, while you’re discovering the design, to both enable you to do many alternatives but also to leave holes for others to creatively critique your designs. 

In having done sketching now, both literal and metaphorical, I am a fan of the idea.  I have found limitations though, so I think there is a happy medium and one needs to use judgment as to when to move from sketchy media to more domain-specific media.

Make Way for Design

He is an advocate (among others recently—Don Norman comes to mind) for raising the visibility and impact that those with a design background have on organizations.  He talks about the three pillars of business, technology, and design, and how he feels they should be relatively on equal footing for truly successful products to happen in our space.

This one makes a lot of sense to me.  Even being the relative n00b in the design world that I am, I see that there are distinct ways of thinking and approaching things.  I also implicitly value the non-quantifiable/aesthetic/emotional as an integral part of being human, so it just resonates for me to have this sort of enshrined in the way we organize ourselves, our businesses, and our products. 

I’ve seen, however, (not with Buxton personally but with “Design” folks in general) a sort of arrogant tendency that is not welcome; this sort of “if you don’t get it, you don’t get it, and it’s not my job to help you get it.”  I think that although we may not be able to quantify something, we can still intelligently craft and use language to communicate about it. 

One of the things that I think Designers need to work on is better working out that language amongst themselves, and, if they want to be equally valued with peers from other backgrounds, they also need to learn to establish and use that language outside.  There will always be competing concerns, and folks need to be able to dialogue about them to come to the best solution.  This is core, IMO, for Design to come into its own as a “pillar” in its own right.

In any case, as I said, all in all it was a good talk.  Good tidbits; good themes, and certainly a stimulant for further, good discussion.  Thanks for coming out, Bill. 

[FYI - they videoed it, if you’d like to watch it.]

Make Prompt Buttons Active

One of the things that I’ve picked up in my efforts to become a good designer is the recognition that more often than not, it’s really the little things—all the little things—that can really make or break a good experience.

Sometimes, in fact, the little things bug you so much that when they get fixed, you notice, and you’re really thankful, and you just can’t hardly believe that such a little thing seems to matter so much.

I had one of these experiences just now.  I recently switched back to IE (after going with Chrome and then Safari 4 beta for a while).  I figured I’d give v8 a try to see what I think.  I have noticed it is faster than Safari (of course Safari 4 is still beta), but anyways just now I went to do something I’ve done soo many times in all these tabbed browsers, I just wanted to “close what I was looking at.”

Of course, sometimes this means close just this tab, and sometimes all the tabs are related enough to want to close them all.  In IE 7, it would prompt you with a warning that you were about to close all tabs.  This was annoying to me because I never felt comfortable checking the box to always close all tabs because many times I’d just want to close the one, not really catching the fact I had the others open in that window.  Of course, that’s why they made the prompt, but the problem is that I then had to Cancel the prompt and then go target the little bitty X button to close that one tab.

Well, no more!  In IE8, the prompt looks like this:

What’s that you say?  You mean you give me my options right there now?  Who’da thunk it??  This is soooooooo much better than forcing people to “Cancel” and then go target a tiny little button.  I think you can derive a general principle here (and I think it is in the Vista style guide, too). 

Consider if in your prompts you can provide the meaningful actions directly and make the buttons (or link buttons) reflect those actions.

If you can, then do that—don’t make people cancel and then do the action they wanted to do in the first place.

Hope this helps.

Interesting Visualization on the Credit Crisis, Except...

Ran across this little video story that explains the credit crisis using pretty good visuals to accompany. I certainly (think I) understand it better having watched it; however, there was one bit that really burned me up:

Why, you ask? Because of the underlying idiotic cultural assumptions made with this visualization. You have to remember--even though things like this flash by in a few seconds, the creator of this thing put significant thought and effort into "what would a high-risk homeowner look like?" This is, by the way, compared to the previously shown normal/low-risk homeowners. The differences?

• The man is fat. Clearly anyone who is fat is higher risk, no? We're talking about higher risk of default, folks. Last time I checked, "are you fat?" is not on any applications for mortgages. ... Yet. Yes, I am fat, and I take offense. I have excellent credit and what I think would count for a pretty high moral code... The creator of this visualization is buying into cultural stereotypes here that fat people are lower on the social totem pole. Bite me. There's a lot to bite...
• They're smoking. Again, this is in the same vein. I don't smoke, not because I'm better than those that do but because I just never got hooked on it. I consider myself fortunate (not proud) in that respect. But does smoking make you more likely to default on a loan? No... Again, the creator of this piece is showing his cultural prejudice.
• What really caught my eye (and ears) and made my blood temperature rise, though, was that this family has four children while the less risky family has only one child (and a dog, of course). Not only that, the four children are crying while the one is happily swinging between Mother and Father's arms. Clearly, not only are the parents with only one child less risky but they must be better parents, too!

This is just ignorant, moronic, unthinking, social bigotry at its finest. The folks profiled by this visualization are what America runs on--salt of the earth types who aren't consumed with self image, who value family enough to have larger ones, and generally are some of the most dependable and hardworking people you'll meet. The government actually provides incentives to have children because, despite the mushyheadedness of some like Pelosi, supporting couples to bear and raise children is about the most time-proven policy in history--it's good for society. Building strong, large families is a cornerstone of society, not a sub-prime risk.

Some other, better options more in line with reality and what lenders actually care about:

• Someone just coming out of jail? I mean, I seem to recall they do ask if you've been convicted of a felony on mortgage apps.
• Someone standing in a line at the unemployment office? Surely not having a job would be considered high risk for a loan.
• Or how about the same one-child family in chic designer clothes, with unnecessary H2 and Lexus SUVs, buying a McMansion they don't need in the "nice" part of town? I think folks drowning in debt, no matter how affluent they seem on the outside, would be high risk.

It wouldn't be hard to dream up some good, realistic visualizations like this rather than let your prejudices be your guide. Just take a look at a few of the mortgage applications to see what they ask about or even do a little research to determine factors that affect credit scores in general.

This fellow Jarvis might be a good motion and information designer, but he clearly needs to get his head on straight when it comes to social issues.

One Would Expect More From Mercedes

..especially from a "hip, new" Web community targeted at 20-30-somethings and trendily called "Generation Benz."

I got an email a few days ago saying my account would be deactivated due to inactivity to make room for others who really want to participate. Sure, let me give my scarce time to provide you with a free testbed for your marketing. (You know that annoying line of commercials for the new, smaller SUV? They tried those out on us a while ago. I said "nuh uh," but I clearly was in the minority.)

It's a good idea, trying to get feedback early on, but really?!?, on the Web you have to "make room" for more people? Seriously? I didn't realize database space was so scarce that my little user account needed to be closed.

Anyways, I truly didn't care because their site is one of the less usable sites I've visited in recent memory and because I'm not really that interested in it. I'm not that much of an MB fan. :)

I would have just let it go, but then I get this in the mail today:

Really?!? You couldn't actually send a simple form email and replace my name in the right spot?

Dear Moderator @ GenerationBenz.com, you really need to work harder on carrying the classy MB brand and experience on to your "cutting edge" community Web site. It's a shame, really. One would expect more from Mercedes.