id8 Blog

Show, Don’t Tell

As a designer and analyst, I often notice the use of web sites or systems in television and movies. I was just watching Casino Royale the other night, struck by how elegant the various systems that James Bond tapped into were. The other night I saw a movie called The Holiday in which Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet meet on a house exchange website and happen to just enter a chat room without a login or registration process—and the chat room is really nice. CSI would have us believe that most government systems speak perfectly to each other, and that Photoshop works a whole lot better for their lab techs than it does for me. Movies and TV present to us a world beautifully designed (and apparently load balanced), where everything that’s going on is readable to the viewer instantaneously (this is, of course, a different phenomenon to, say, Star Trek, where the interfaces look pretty, but it’s impossible to imagine how anyone can use colored squares to perform complex functions—but it’s scifi, so the willing suspension of disbelief applies).

Yet movies and television shows that depict interfaces give me something to aspire to—where the most pertinent information is displayed perfectly at all times. Fiction often functions to help us visualize the possible. Clearly the art directors and designers for film and TV know how to display information quickly, efficiently, and creatively. They taunt us with what’s possible.  And it occurs to me that we should try to take these lessons to heart as UI and UX evolve.

The excitement of the visual interface shouldn’t be ignored, and we are now beginning now to find ways to generate that excitement in real, and not only fictional interfaces. Get people excited about system design. A common mantra in Freshman composition is “show, don’t tell.” The evolution of systems design is to do just that—way before the first line of code is written. Show them what they’re going to get—don’t just describe it.

I recently worked on a project where I saw this excitement in a way I hadn’t really ever seen before. In a large group setting, people were watching the simulations of the system we were working on. The sheer power of making it happen like in the movies was testament to the power of rapid prototyping for complex systems.  The team was engaged in a way I’ve way I’ve never seen—a testament to the drama of user interfaces that until now, I’ve only seen in movies.

I want my typing and voice too!

I got a chance to attend the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last month to see the latest and greatest in Web 2.0 software, social media sites, 'gadgets', and data visualizations of complicated 'stuff'.

One of the main things I noticed is that people were very open to each other and sharing information, ideas and thoughts.  There was no cageyness...no hard sell...no "look at us, we're uber"...ok...maybe a little by the big guys.  But mostly, there was alot of.."look at the cool we're doing! What do you think about that?"

I sat in on brown bag lunch event where we were supposed to talked about media...such as photo sharing sites or tv viewing sites.

As a user experience practitioner, I focused on the holistic user experience and not just the singular characteristic of that experience.  I met two software engineers that are working on a TV peer-to-peer software program for watching tv on your computer with proper TV channels such as MTV and BBC.  Basically they just re-broadcast tv shows over the internet.  This means I can watch TV with someone else on the net at the same time.  And they wanted to know if I would want to use a text chatting format to talk to the other person. I said I wanted voice instead of chatting or at least the option to do both.  If I'm watching tv with another person, I'd like to have it match closely to the Real Life (RL) experience.

Social sites, especially those with synchronized media capabilities, should include a voice component - we have the bandwidth, let's have the shared experience! Why type when I can talk? My family is from Hawai'i and every year, there is a big hula event called the Merrie Monarch in Hilo.  I would love to watch that event on TV.  For now, I have to fly to Hawai'i to watch this event (or watch it on youtube).  Why can't I enjoy this once-a-year event with my favorite Aunt over the internet where we watch it together and chat to each other during commercial breaks, like one would do in a normal in-the-same- room experience?  Why not?

Now I know it's not the same as being in Hawai'i, but it gives me another shared experience to stay in contact with my 76 year old Aunt other than email or a telephone call.  That is important to me because I have family and friends spread all over the map.

I think this is missing in some social media sites.  I'm not saying that having a myspace or facebook page that your friends and family can actively enjoy or having that passive notification of changes in their information isn't valid.  But to have that shared in-the-moment experience, adds more value to my user experience. I don't see that often, but I certainly would use it with family and friends across the coconut wireless.

Now this company has this social TV experience working well in Europe, where sport shows are very much a favorite among traveling business people.  But the shows are on local time and not on-demand. I applaud that they allow people to view such an experience, but I think on-demand would be better for synchronization of the user experience between 2 or more people.  I know this idea might be a bit tricky for TV networks and their revenue stream. Maybe these are issues that they have thought about, but maybe not.  Maybe our conversation and sharing of opinion might make this experience better.  I don't know. 

But it was a great conversation. :)

The Impossibility of User Centered Design?

Eric is right in his initial posting on our blog. Web 2.0 is people (I’m reminded here of Soylent Green, but that’s for another discussion). And of course the Web has always been about people—which is why designing usability and human centered design are such slippery concepts. There is no such thing as universal usability, and certainly no such thing as a universal human subject. So when we design an interface, we must now pay as much attention to the users on the tails of the distribution as we do the “average user.” The analyst in me cringes whenever a few people on a project team decide what is “user friendly,” simply because of the impossibility of nailing down who the “user” is.

Many in this business do various forms of usability testing, mostly based in focus groups or (rarely) videotaping end users on the current interface, or (even more rarely) a prototype of the proposed new system. But in focusing solely on the average end user, those who are not “average” are lost. Rapid prototyping, such as with iRise, provides the best means we currently have of expanding our idea of the “user”—and making the impossible possible. We can push out a prototype not just to focus groups, but even to random sample groups of a significantly large n. Not only will these data help us with designing for the bulk of the distribution, but help us see ways to design the kind of flexibility we need for all potential users. This potential is powerful, and we’re trying at id8 to tap that power for ALL kinds of interfaces.

Like a surprising number of UI folks, I spent a good many years doing textual interpretation for a living, and if the idea postmodernity has taught us anything, it is that meaning is fragmented and contextual. But rather than be paralyzed about the impossibility of meaning, I choose to embrace the multiplicity in meaning. Cultural “texts” present themselves, then, with a great deal more to offer when they can be adaptable and contextual. The same will hold true for user interfaces. The trick with companies like us is to look for ways to make such expanded processes accessible and cost effective.

At some level, I’m always thinking of this idea when I’m working on a UI project. Can we claim “user-centered” design when we don’t know our users, or even a significant sample of them? Why invest so much of our resources unless we’re pretty certain we know what they want and what they’re capable of? To simply decide in a conference room what is user friendly before we build it is a lot like saying that all literature should be written like a newspaper article. We’d be leaving out nuance, style, diversity, and innovation.

I believe it’s time for a paradigm shift in application definition and design. Let’s use more than anecdotal data and make system design itself, not just the end system, a more collaborative process. Let’s see “the user” not as the embodiment of the mean, but as a description of the entire distribution.

Exposed at Web 2.0 SF

‘Web 2.0 is people!’ has to be the most resounding message that I took away from the Web 2.0 Expo in SF last week.

Author Clay Shirky delivered a memorable keynote, “Here Comes Everybody”, in which he suggested that since Web 2.0 people are doing more constructive things with their free time than watching sitcoms – and that just 1% of the time we spend watching TV in a year is enough to create the equivalent of 20 Wikipedias!

Sure, there was plenty of talk about the latest widgets, gadgets and technologies, but the common denominator was people; Social networking, user-generated content, social media, and of course, blogging.

 

Which brings me to another resounding message that I could not ignore, try as I may: ‘If you’re not blogging, you’re NOBODY.’ Apparently, this blogging thing isn't going to go away anytime soon. So here I am, writing my first post, a bit embarrassed that it has taken me so long to jump into the fray.

This blog will be authored by myself and my fellow id8ers, and will be about what we do, what we’re passionate about, and what makes us crazy. We’ll share tips and tricks for using iRise (the tool that we specialize in), thoughts about usability, methodologies, best practices; and lessons we’ve learned along the way. So there it is… we have a blog (finally!).