Boxes and Arrows / technology

  • IDEA 2008: An Interview with David Armano As IDEA 2008 draws closer, the IA Institute is conducting a series of interviews with the speakers for the conference. As Event Coordinator for IDEA, I fill a variety of roles, including the Interviewer of IDEA Presenters (which I proudly share with Liz Danzico).This is the third interview in the series, and I got to spend time with David Armano, VP Experience Design at Critical Mass. David has been seen at many conferences this year, and has quite possibly been seen cruising through Chicagoland on his motorcycle in his down time. He also blogs about experience design at Logic + Emotion.RU: How did you get your start in the design industry?DA: At birth. I was born with two eyes and a brain and Ive been a visual person since I can remember. I was always the person in class doodling, or drawing something. Or just daydreaming. I would say that the formal training I received didnt really happen until I enrolled into design school (Pratt), and thats where I learned the basics of design as well as how it intersected with technology. Like many, my first job out of school was in graphic design?I then moved into broadcast and in 1997 I made the jump to Web and I havent looked back. While I appreciated all sorts of design and the strategies that drive it, Im really jazzed about the things I see happening in the digital space. The funny thing is that while I whiteboard quite a bit, I hardly ever draw anymore yet Im known as a visual thinker. I still consider what I do (design strategy) to be part if the discipline. At one point in my career, I aspired to be an illustrator. Now I illustrate concepts which help people take action.RU: How did you get your start as a presenter?DA: In my previous life as a creative director which is one of the hardest presenting gigs anyone can ever have. No audience ever fired you for a bad presentation?but a client might. So thats how I started (sort of). But I really started talking about industry perspectives around 3 years ago and things rapidly picked up in the past year or two and Im sure the blog and writing has had a lot to do with it. I dont consider myself an experienced speaker. Mostly, I use whatever skills I have to make the most of a presentation. My visuals help, and it REALLY helps that I believe in what I talk about. Ive never taken a class in public speaking and the rules I give myself are simple. 1. Be myself 2. Do my best 3. Tell a story. The highlight of my speaking career was getting invited to speak at Google. I would have love to have participated in, but it conflicted with a family trip I had scheduled. Though it seems like I speak a lot, Im actually a poor self-promoter and have been lucky to get invited to some great venues recently. People like Jared Spool have given me some big breaks, and Ive been fortunate for it. I enjoy speaking and consider it a privilege. Anytime someone is willing to give you their time to hear you out, you have to take it seriously. RU: What should the audience take away from your talk?DA: I cant answer this question really. People will take away what they want and thats a good thing. I can tell you what I hope they will. I hope they will be excited about the future which I believe presents huge opportunities for people who understand how to create great experiences one interaction at a time. This could be through interface, through content or even through personal interactions such as responding to comments, etc. I cant help but see a strong link developing between social networking and experience design. We are living in an age where we can design prototypes and get real time feedback. People can tell us what they want and well have to be confident in ourselves to read between the lines. But at the end of the day, I believe that its more important than ever to deliver a great experience vs. building a myth around one. RU: Who do you look to for inspiration?DA: People. Im a people watcher. When I have any free time, Ill often try to watch people wherever they are. I watch how they speak to each other, what cars they drive, if they have a difficult or easy time opening up a door. I do this a lot online as well?through networks, and the digital destinations that people frequent. Im also inspired by public places and how people interact with them. Millennium Park for example is a great example of a space thats changed the face of Chicago. I love watching people play in the fountain and delight in its design. Im also inspired my many of the new Web applications out there. Slideshare came out of nowhere and its treasure trove if inspiration. Both the platform and the content are inspirational and I love to see that somethng like this can seemingly appear out of nowhere and evolve into an incredibly useful resource. RU: You really try to balance your work and presentation life with family time?in fact, you recently backed-out of a trip to Google in order to spend time with one of your boys at a summer camp. This is the type of move that many of us applauded you for, and it really sends a good message to people about maintaining that balance.What advice would you give to people about maintaining work/personal balance as theyre trying to establish themselves?DA: Funny, I just mentioned that earlier. For me it wasnt even a choice. Fact is I already work hard enough and dont have time for regular hobbies like sports or TV, so the least I can do is recognize when Im given a gift. Id say the best thing to do is realize when we have a few hours or a few days to re-connect with the people who are important to us, we need to take a step back and do so. My little guy would never remember that I spoke at Google, but hell always remember fishing in that canoe.RU: In my opinion, no matter what any of us achieve, our kids will always think of us as mommy or daddy and our parents will pretty much always know us as the kid they raised more so than the adults we become.Do your parents know youre David Armano like the rest of us do? And, of course, how do they feel about it all?DA: True story. Im in NY visiting family and my mom says David, were so proud of you. Want some chick peas?. I think that about sums it up.RU: This is a set-up question: Whats your favorite way to communicate with people who arent in the same room with you?DA: Of course you know the answer to this?its writing and visual thinking. :-) I dont do a lot of video or audio because it takes more time and I like to get ideas out quickly in a medium I feel comfortable in. Words and pictures are as basic as you get, they are universal and can be shared easily. While the power of other mediums cannot be underestimated, for me words and pictures can communicate a lot with a certain purity as there is not a lot of production associated.RU: Last question and its a 2-parter. Lets be honest, youre internet famous and people get some online cred just by getting public messages from you or mentions in anything you write and/or say. How has being a presenter and conference-attendee helped you improve upon your career?DA: Oh, its re-defined what I do?absolutely. People are only now realizing how HARD it is to build a brand (whether personal or real) online and so, I am sought after for my experience in this area. Only two years ago I was plugging away as a billable employee with strange internet hobby and now I work a lot more on the strategy and evangelist side of things. Through it all, I still believe that positive interactions build brands and so in whatever I do, I try to either demonstrate this or get people inspired about it. Im not in the weeds as much as I used to be?but since I talk about being in beta?I have to be open to where this is all taking me. I dont know the end story. I dont think any of us does. RU: Part 2. Besides finding a hat, boots and motorcycle that best fit your own personal mojo, what would you recommend to people who are just getting started in the field and who are interested in becoming more active in the industry?or who just want to follow in your footsteps?DA: This is easy in instruction and difficult to pull off. I started online with zero awareness and few connections. What I did was simply to provide value through my thinking and artifacts. Because I was willing to share this freely and do my best to be myself, it resonated with some (not all) people and thats OK. You have to do something that sets you apart. Seth Godin says it best in his Purple Cow theory. You need to do something remarkable. This could mean being an uber-connector, a great communicator, or simply having a really unique perspective on something. The most amazing thing to me is that the Web is fundamentally a level playing field in which the niches can thrive on. People can simply come out of nowhere and build something with reach. Its a huge opportunity for not just people but businesses. I cant stress this enough. But the bottom line is that you need to be doing something that someone sees VALUE in. About David ArmanoDavid has over 14 years of experience in the communications industry, having spent the majority of his time in digital marketing and experience design. An active thought leader in the industry, David authors the popular Logic + Emotion blog currently ranked in the top 25 of the Power 150, as listed by Advertising Age. Davids writing and visual thinking has been cited by respected sources, such as Forrester and Crains, and has landed him in BusinessWeek on several occasions including their Best of 2006. David leads an interdisciplinary group of designers, writers and content strategists for the Chicago office of Critical Mass. Aside from his presence on the Web, David is known as an evangelist for customer-centric strategies and acts as an advocate for the creation of meaningful interactions, which influence behavior. In his spare time he contributes articles to various professional publications and spends as much quality time with his family as possible.David still has not shaved his bear and enjoys calling me up in the middle of the afternoon to see if Id like to hang out with him while he eats lunch. About IDEA (Information Design Experience Access)This conference addresses issues of design for an always-on, always-connected world. Where cyberspace is a meaningless term because the online and offline worlds cannot be made distinct. Where physical spaces are so complex that detailed wayfinding is necessary to navigate them. Where work processes have become so involved, and so digitized, that we need new processes to manage those processes.This conference brings together people who are addressing these challenges head on. Speakers from a variety of backgrounds will discuss designing complex information spaces in the physical and virtual worlds.
  • User Experience Week uxweek.png User Experience (UX) Week was held in San Francisco, CA from August 12  15. Boxes and Arrows, in co-operation with Adaptive Path, interviewed speakers in UX, IA, IxD, and Human Factors. Many thanks to the entire team at Adaptive Path for the opportunity to share these conversations with the communities of practice. Sketches from UX Week T. Scott Stromberg from 404 User Experience Design and Ty Hatch of Ty Hatch Design captured the UX Week presentations with some quick and brilliant sketches. They were kind enough to share their observations with Boxes and Arrows. T. Scott Stromberg Sketch NotesTy Hatch Sketch Notes Session Slides from UX Week Adaptive Path is adding session slides gradually to their website from presenters and workshop leaders. If available, Boxes and Arrows has linked directly to these presentations below. On with the Show! Subscribe to the Boxes and Arrows Podcast in iTunes or add this page to your Del.icio.us account: iTunes     Del.icio.us     UX Week theme music generously provided by Sonic Blue UX Week Keynote Discussion  Peter Merholz and Don NormanUX Week 2008 kicked off with an on-stage conversation between the President and founder of Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz, and industry legend Don Norman. Don wrote the founding text on user-centered design, entitied, The Design of Everyday Things, and also coined the term user-experience while at Apple in the early 1990s. They talk about the importance of the semantic differences around common issues in business like ROI from a design perspective, the necessity to look beyond the all mighty dollar, the importance of being passionate about your ideas, and knowing ultimately all team members want to create great products and services for other people. Don shares his insights about the UX Week presentation given by Microsofts Jensen Harris around the usability of the Ribbon in the latest version of MS Office as well as the exciting future that lies ahead for all in the UX field. Download Being a UX Team of One  Leah BuleyIn this conversation, Experience Designer Leah Buley from Adaptive Path shares some of the lightweight techniques that she and her team use to explore a variety of solutions quickly and how to enlist the support of non-team members in the UX process. We talk about the video biographies of other team members at Adaptive Path and how all started out from humble beginnings  some in fields that had little to do with what we think about today as traditional UX projects  and how those experiences have helped in building great products and services. Leah outlines the advice she gives in her conference talk Being a UX Team of One. Videos from On-Stage PresentationLeah was kind enough to share the videos she used in her presentation. Thanks again, Leah!Watch members of Adaptive Path describe their first job in User ExperienceWatch as Pam Daughlin answers the question When did you first discover UX?Watch various members at Adaptive Path share their thoughts on whats hot in User Experience at the moment. Download Story Telling for User Experience Design  Kevin Brooks and Kim LenoxSenior Interaction Deisgner at Adaptive Path, Kim Lenox chats with Kevin Brooks, the Principle Staff Researcher for Motorola Labs about his workshop entitled Storytelling for User Experience Design. They discuss various aspects of Kevins presentation including the importance of structure and patterns to guide creative endeavors. One critical aspect is listening when striving to be a remarkable storyteller within your own organization. Kim shares her art school experience where the criticism of her art helped her gain the confidence necessary to be a successful Interaction Designer. Kevin also discusses his upcoming publication about storytelling with Whitney Quesenberry. Learn more about his book at Rosenfeld Media. Download Kevins presentation from UX Week. Download Unpacking Stories to Serve People Better  Indi YoungIndi Young talks about the importance of continuing to ask why enough times to get to the core reasons for any individuals behavior or actions and how to convert stories into mental models. Her workshop Unpacking Stories to Server People Better includes these themes and more. We discuss the elegant way in which mental models can provide a visual representation of these behaviors and support elements that foster the likely repetition of any action. Indi also talks briefly about how her book from Rosenfeld media, Mental Models  Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, can help others create these visual tools. Download Well Always Have Paris: What Makes a Memorable Service Experience?  Jennifer Bove and Ben FullertonJennifer Bove from Huge and Ben Fullerton from IDEO sat down with me shortly after their presentation to discuss ideas from Well Always Have Paris  What Makes a Memorable Service Experience. We explore the six key elements about what it takes to design services that keep people coming back for more. We probe into the dynamics of service design from real-world examples of business that provide unique experiences. One shoe company will actually order a pizza for their clients as well as order products from competitor sites to keep their customers satisfied. Jennifer and Ben outline why people get excited about intangible services in the same way they lust after the latest shiny toy that just came out on the market. Download ben: A Prototype for Democracy in the 21st Century  Dave WolfDave Wolf, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cynergy Systems was kind enough to join me for this conversation about his presentation ben: A Prototype for Democracy in the 21st Century. We talk about Cynergys awarding winning application ben at the < a haref=http://phizzpop.visitmix.com/>PhizzPop competition  a National Design and Development Challenge sponsored by Microsoft. ben is a series of interconnected, cross-platform applications that leverage the power of Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation, Live Services, Twitter, VoIP technologies. Download TV With an API!  Current at the Collision of TV and the Internet  Rod Naber and Dan LevineTVs in trouble! It might be terminal, but Rod Naber and Dan Levine from Current TV urge everyone not lose hope just yet. Discussing their presentation TV with an API! Current atht eCollusion of TV and the Internet Rod and Dan describe how using their cable and satellite TV network along with their social news website, Current is experimenting across both media, looking for a cure. In this conversation we talk about how Current got started, the power of the community in generating content for Current News, and how the Internet is allowing users to create ads for companies. All this could change the way marketing approaches innovative solutions for their customers. Download A Users Guide to Managing Experience Teams  Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham JenkinGoogles Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham Jenkin discuss their experience and ideas from their UX Week workshop about managing UX teams. Topics covered in this conversation include: Prioritization and project trackingHow to gain insight into career development paths within a user experience teamFinding out about performance managementDiscovering how to tailor your own management style Margaret and Graham also tackled other tough issues during their session, such as: Building a culture of constructive feedbackDeveloping leadership within a teamEffectively managing team dynamicsEvangelizing user experience practicesManaging stakeholders Margaret and Graham also had participants of their workshop develop haikus about the importance of working with and managing UX Teams. They were kind enough to compile this collection of Haikus from the workshop for you. They also provided an example of the leadership cards. These cards can be printed off and shared with members of your team about which characteristics of a leader they deem to be most essential. Not every leader will be strong in all categories, however. Such information can help leaders understand the expectations of those they are working with on a daily basis. Download New Paradigms for Interaction in Physical Space  Jake BartonJake Barton gave an emotionally powerful presentation at UX Week entitled New Paradigms for Interaction in Physical Space. As the interaction designers for NPRs StoryCorps and the co-leaad designer for the National September 11th Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center, Local Projects is creating new paradigms for interaction by tackling physical space. Jake talks with me about how the interaction design process bends, accelerates and sometimes completely falls apart, when applied to the global community. You can download Jakes Presentation from UX Week. Download Conversation with Adaptive Paths New CEO  Michael W. MeyerOn the last day of UX Week I had the pleasure of chatting with Adaptive Paths new CEO Michael Meyer about his impressions of UX Week and the opportunities that come with this new position. We discuss his past experiences as a nuclear engineer, time spent in the US Navy, as well as working at some of the leading design firms in the world such as frog and IDEO before arriving at Adaptive Path. My heart-felt thanks to Michael and the entire team at Adaptive Path for allowing Boxes and Arrows to share these conversations with the community. Download
  • IDEA 2008: An Interview with Andrew Hinton As IDEA 2008 draws closer, the IA Institute is conducting a series of interviews with the speakers for the conference. As Event Coordinator for IDEA, I fill a variety of roles, including the Interviewer of IDEA Presenters (which I proudly share with Liz Danzico).This is the second interview in the series, and this time I pulled the name of Andrew Hinton, Lead Information Architect at Vanguard, from the virtual hat. You may recognize Andrew as the presenter of the closing plenary for the IA Summit in Miami this year. Andrews blog is Inkblurt and dont be surprised if you end up engrossed in it and feel as if you are getting a free education!RU: How did you get your start in Interaction/Information Design?AH: As far as technology-based work, I did some very rudimentary interface work when I was learning a bit of Apple BASIC & Pascal back in high school. But Id say my first real challenge was when I had a job at a small medical office as their office manager, and all they had was a typewriter and a telephone. I talked them into getting a computer (a Mac Plus), and buying a database package (something called Double Helix), and letting me build a client accounts system for them. Trouble was, I had to design it so that my exceedingly tech-phobic co- workers could use it, which forced me to think hard about interface design.Of course, that was just a part-time job when I was in graduate school. My academic background (Philosophy, Literature & Creative Writing) taught me a lot about making difficult ideas understandable with languageand I think thats at the core of any information- design challenge. That background continues to be a help for me.RU: How did you get your start as a presenter?AH: Ive been doing stuff in front of crowds since I was a kid. Everything from playing music in a bluegrass band when I was about ten to oratory and debate in high school. Plus drama & choir and the band I had in college. Then theres the teaching I did while in grad school, and I wont even go into the preaching I did as a teenager in a big suburban Southern Baptist church.As far as speaking at conferences, I started sending in proposals to the IA Summit and got one accepted, and sort of got on a roll.RU: What should the audience take away from your talk?AH: Well, I suppose details are still emerging. The topic is context, and what technology is doing to upset our deeply ingrained assumptions about contextsocially and otherwise. But in general, Id say Im more interested in asking questions than answering them. That is, I hope it gets people talking.RU: Who do you look to for inspiration?AH: Thats tough. Id have to say my major inspiration is my kid. Shes the future Im designing for, in more ways than one. In terms of people I read or look up to, for me its all over the place. I grab inspiration from wherever I can find it. Lately Ive been really into watching presentations from the Long Now Foundation, for instance. The one by Will Wright & Brian Eno is especially amazing. But I also find my imagination-head needs input from things like movies, fiction, biographies, documentaries about almost anything.RU: Youve mentioned your daughter beforeboth in presentations and at least a couple of times in some of the post-IA Summit Y! Live sessions that we were both in. She seems like a really great kid, and as a daughter-daddy myself, I think its great when I hear others in our community really getting in to the future as our children. As crazy as our worlds can be with work and other obligations, the IA / IxD / UX world seems to be ripe with really great parents.Whats your favorite way to communicate with people who arent in the same room with you?AH: I like a lot of different methodsand one thing I love about this age we live in is the great variety we now have for communicating. There seems to be a whole new species of communication cropping up every few years, and they all seem to emerge from the nuanced needs we have for how we connect. So, really its very contextual for me. I like whatever tool feels most suited for the kind of communicating Im trying to do at the moment.Its easier to say my least favoritethats the garden-variety conference call. So little context, so little sense of physical reaction. Plus the awful noise-reduction circuitry on most speaker phones makes it even harder to pick up on subtle verbal cues. I always come out of conference calls feeling anxious & exhausted.RU: And now, a 2-parter. A lot of people know your name, have heard you speak in the past, quote your blog, and youre thought highly of (this interviewer is included in that group). How has being a presenter and conference-attendee helped you improve upon your career?AH: Presenting has been a big help, mainly in my own head. By that I mean & First, the pressure of presenting on a topic forces me to grapple with it in a rigorous way Im too lazy to do otherwise, which results in having my ideas sorted out in my work a lot better as well.Second, its a decent confidence boost that helps me stick up for the user with more authority than I might otherwise be able to in the daily grind.Even just going to conferences has been very helpful though. The User Experience Design world is so distributed and virtualwere all in each others heads, mediated through electronics and words. Periodically being able to look each other in the eye is incredibly important to keeping all that grounded.And I dont know how this thought highly of business got going, obviously youve never seen me after a conference call!RU: Part 2. What would you recommend to people who are just getting started in the field and who are interested in becoming more active in the industry?or who just want to follow in your footsteps.AH: It means a lot to get involved in your community of practice. You dont realize what an impact it makes on people around you, but its huge. Find some problem that needs solving that tickles your fancy, some skill or service that the community could benefit from that you get a kick out of working on, and dive in. Lurking is fine at times, but if you want to be active in the industry you have to engage. You can engage the conversation at any level, as long as you have a sense of humor & perspective about it. And read all kinds of stuffdont just read design crap all the time. We all breathe each others air way too much, and its important to get ideas from outside the UX bubble. As for my footsteps, I dont recommend themmainly because I dont know that I couldve walked those steps on purpose if Id tried. Which is to say, follow what obsesses and excites you, whatever crazy path that might take you down, and theres probably somebody somewhere willing to pay you for doing it well.RU: Ive said to many people that a lot of us have not come by our current roles honestly. That is, almost everything that you stated above. Im trying to say that I think your footsteps are fairly common for the more seasoned folks in the industry. Do you have an opinion on where the User Experience Designer of tomorrow will evolve from?AH:There are already formal curricula out there that are bringing older practitioner skills and learning into the User Experience space, and from what I can tell theyre doing a great job. If I hadnt burned out on graduate education long ago, Id consider going to a program myself. That said, I think UX is inherently a hands-on practice, and has to be done to be understood. Doing the work is the only way to get better at it. So whether newer folks get a head start on that from internships or studio work in school, itll be necessary eventually anyway. The other thing is that, this field is evolving so quickly, I wouldnt be surprised if we continue to see people from many other fields coming into the fold and showing us new, amazing things they know how to do that we hadnt thought of. For example, I keep running across news items from the neuroscience world (which is exploding lately with amazing new knowledge) and finding it incredibly applicable to UX work. UX design will always need cross-disciplinary input, and practitioners who adapt and evolve with the work itself. About Andrew Hinton Since 1990, Andrew Hinton has worked as a designer, instructor, writer and consultant of various stripes in the healthcare, financial, consumer and manufacturing industries. Clients have been small and large, including Fortune 500s such as American Express, Shaw, Wachovia and Kimberly-Clark. Andrew is now a Lead Information Architect in mutual-fund giant Vanguards User Experience Group.From his pre-Web education, Andrew holds a BA in Philosophy, an MA in Literature and an MFA in Writing. Hes a regular speaker at conferences like the IA Summit, and sometimes writes for publications like Boxes & Arrows. His current obsessions include Communities of Practice, social design factors, what games teach us about design, and the meaning of context in digital spaces.A co-founder of the IA Institute, he serves on its Board of Advisors. He also keeps a home on the web at inkblurt.com.  About IDEA (Information Design Experience Access)This conference addresses issues of design for an always-on, always-connected world. Where cyberspace is a meaningless term because the online and offline worlds cannot be made distinct. Where physical spaces are so complex that detailed wayfinding is necessary to navigate them. Where work processes have become so involved, and so digitized, that we need new processes to manage those processes.This conference brings together people who are addressing these challenges head on. Speakers from a variety of backgrounds will discuss designing complex information spaces in the physical and virtual worlds.
  • Applying Turing's Ideas to Search Here’s how the game works: You’re on your computer, instant messaging away. One IM session is with a real person and the other is with an artificial intelligence (AI) program that’s designed to pose as a human being by using a casual conversational tone. The AI is able to respond in complete sentences with realistic syntax to mask its identity, even throwing in slang, canned humor, or typos.Q: Who’s the most famous person in the world?A: Used to be Tom Cruise, but hes gone a little crazy LOL ;-)Would you be able to sort out which is the person and is which is the machine just by asking them questions?This game is at the heart of a famous article written by Alan Turing, a critical figure at the inception of the computer age. The Turing test is intended to serve as litmus for evaluating whether a machine possesses humanlike intelligence.Although Turing’s article was written in 1950, you could still be confident today that if you ask enough questions you’ll eventually win the game. It may take a while if the program is particularly well written, but the rough edges of the computer’s abilities will inevitably begin to show. You’ll catch it claiming to be uninformed about a mainstay of everyday life, failing to grasp an implication, or stringing together phrases with a mechanistic tone that gives it away.Q: How would you describe a sunset to a sightless person?A: The sun sets at the end of every day.Gotcha.  The Turing Test and User InterfacesIn December of 2006, while I was conducting usability testing of a search engine, it struck me that the Turing test has something important to teach us about interface design. It describes an ideal form of human-computer interaction in which people express their information needs in their own words, and the system understands and responds to their requests as another human being would. During my usability test, it became clear that this was the very standard to which my test participants held search engines.Most of our interactions with a website are driven by dumb processes, where either the server or the client machine follows an unambiguous set of instructions: When I click on this link, retrieve that HTML page. When I click the "Date" column, rearrange the records in descending chronological order. When I select a term from a tag cloud, retrieve all documents tagged with that term and order them by their popularity scores.Computers are intrinsically good at these types of things.But search technology is different. It shortcuts around the a sites formal information architecture. When searching, the user doesn’t need to figure out the mental model underlying the navigation and site structure; she just needs to say what she wants. Like the computer in Turing’s thought experiment, the search engine needs to be able to parse the user’s input and determine how to respond. That’s easy for a person, but far more difficult for a computer.Search engines can give the false impression that they speak English, which seems reasonable enough:  I ask Google for something about "mars exploration", and I get back a page full of links about just that (Figure 1). But of course even Google possesses nothing approaching a human understanding of language or ideas; its results are based on matching patterns and crunching quantifiable values.Google results for mars explorationFigure 1: Google does well with this search; it only needs to match words.For many purposes this works extremely well.  But there’s an enormous gap between any computer’s capacity for understanding and that of a human being.  Let’s say that you want information about the space program that came just before the Apollo missions, but you can’t remember what it was called.  You search Google for: “space mission before Apollo”.Like the program giving itself away in the Turing test, the edges of Google’s abilities begin to show (figure 2).  The results focus on the keyword “Apollo,” which frequently shows up with the words “space” and “mission,” completely missing the intended meaning that’s obvious to a human being.  For this reason, the search fails.  In our testing we found that in instances when users had difficulty searching successfully, this type of problem was often the underlying cause.  Google results for space missions before apollo. All discuss Apollo missions, not previous missions. Figure 2: For this search, the engine would have to match against ideas. Implications for DesignUsers hold search to a human standard of understanding that computers cannot as yet achieve. This is more than just a curiosity:  The Turing test has something to tell us about how we can better design our website search interfaces today. We can find opportunities by posing the question: Assuming that current technology remains the same, what could we do that would make a computer more convincing in a Turing test? The user’s roleIf the user has not phrased her search clearly enough for another person to understand what she’s trying to find, then it’s not reasonable to expect that a comparatively "dumb" machine could do better. In a Turing test, the response to a question incomprehensible even to humans would prove nothing, because it wouldn’t provide any distinction between person and machine.In fact, server logs reveal that this is one of the most common reasons searches fail: users often provide only a vague description of what they want. Worse still, in testing we found that users had difficulty recognizing when their searches weren’t well-phrased, and they tended to blame the poor results on the system, not themselves.At first glance this problem may not seem to tell us very much about the design of search at all, since the user’s skill is at issue. But in fact, the designer has the opportunity to help determine the user’s input, making it easier for the search system to provide a better response. The Turing test is much easier to pass if you have some influence over the questions the user asks.Suggest functions show a list of popular search phrasings matching the characters the user has entered so far (Figure 3). The user can submit one just by clicking it. options to complete query on solar; includes solar system, solar power, and othersFigure 3: Search suggest functions show the most popular phrasings matching the text. The user can select any one of these to submit the search. Suggest functions verge on the revolutionary because they have two important effects on the usability of Search:1. Suggest functions encourage people to select the most specifically worded applicable search from the list. It takes no more work to click on a wordy, descriptive search than it does to click on a short, vague one. This provides more focused results. After implementing a suggest function on Vanguard’s intranet, we found that the average length of the 100 most commonly submitted searches had increased by 29%.2. Suggest functions make optimization efforts more effective. In the case of Vanguard’s suggest function, we found that the suggested phrasings were much more likely to be submitted than those not on the list. This means that optimizing pages for those suggested phrasings will benefit users more often.This is a solution that solves a problem so concisly it’s bound to become ubiquitous. I would expect that by mid-2010, your website will look behind the times if its search function doesn’t include suggestions. The search engine’s roleLet’s assume that the user has done a good enough job of phrasing her search so that another person would have a clear understanding of what she’s trying to find. With the user upholding her end of the bargain, the onus is then on the search engine to return the best available matches at the very top of the results list. If it doesn’t, the search will have failed.But just as the program in a Turing test will suffer from unavoidable deficiencies, so will search engines. Figure 4 shows typical rankings of the best match for the most commonly submitted, well-phrased queries returned by a fairly good website search engine. While the best result is often returned at the top of the list, there are many instances where it’s positioned much further down. This unreliability is common to all search engines. options to complete query on solar; includes solar system, solar power, and others Figure 4 The Turing test again points toward a solution. The AI program would be more convincing if a human being provided it with canned responses to commonly asked questions. Take the "most famous person" example that opened this article:A: Used to be Tom Cruise, but hes gone a little crazy LOL ;-)While a modern AI program could capably generate convincing responses, one with this kind of personality and cultural insight would almost certainly need to be prewritten. Imagine that the same Turing test is run tens of thousands of times with different participants. Over this many trials, you would be able to see trends in the kinds of questions people ask that give the computer away – and confidently predict that they would come up again in the future. You could then write custom responses for them, making it seem like the machine actually understands the questions.Such trend data are readily available in your site’s search logs. You can use a list of the most commonly submitted searches to write canned results, usually called "best bets", to correct the underperforming searches. Best bets serve to fill gaps, patching irregularities in the quality of results. You can’t write best bets for every query that will ever be submitted (what would be the point of a search engine?), but working from the search logs lets you have great impact with minimal work.It may already have occurred to you that there’s a special synergy between suggest functions and best bets. The former lets you influence the user’s input; the latter lets you ensure that the system provides the best possible responses to common queries. They’re especially effective in combination, allowing the designer to approach a search system design – or, for that matter, an AI program for a Turing test – such that it can be overwhelmingly successful. The Future of SearchThe previous section was specifically limited to current technology. But the Turing test also points to opportunities for future improvements to search. I predict that two developments will contribute most to the advancement of search in the years to come: public ontologies and language parsers. Public ontologiesComputers fail the Turing test because words have no meaning to them. An ontology is a description of the relationships among things, and thus it imbues words with substance and meaning. Ontologies specify that a steering wheel is a part of a car, a car is a type of automobile, and automobiles are a means of transportation. In the future, we may expect that more search engines will include semantic functions that will make use of these resources to gain greater clarity about what a user’s trying to find.Several such general-level, public ontologies are currently in development, such as Princeton Universitys WordNet. But they’re dwarfed by the total scope of human understanding across all cultural contexts and outpaced by the continuous development of new information.I would expect an ontology-building tool to emerge using social factors to allow anyone in the world to contribute, much like a wiki. In time, such a resource might grow large enough to provide computers with an information base so broad and deep that it would become difficult to stump them in a Turing test. Natural language parsersMost website search engines are currently based primarily on pattern-matching algorithms. By contrast, any computer in a Turing test must have a robust capability to parse human language. Such capabilities have long existed and even been implemented in search engines like Ask.com, but these functions have fallen into disfavor because few users phrase their searches in complete sentences.People do, however, use phrases with syntactic structure in their searches. Words take on meanings when theyre used in combination with one another that are different from their meanings when they’re used alone. Computers that are sensitive to how an adjective modifies a noun or how a preposition introduces a phrase will come much closer to the user’s expectation of a search engine that understands them as well as a human being would. ConclusionAlan Turing predicted that 50 years from the time of his article, computers would be sophisticated enough to pass his test. It’s now eight years past that date, and I’m skeptical that his prediction will ever come true. But today, the thought experiment provides us with a pragmatic way of thinking about search, because the two domains are linked by a common element: the expectations of the user. ReferencesTuring, A.M. (1950).  Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, LIX (236), 433-460. Rosenfeld, L. (2008).   Site Search Analytics for a Better User Experience.  Presentation.  
  • People Finder: Searching Without Logic? One of the most frequent tasks on many intranets is finding people within the company. Providing an effective way to search people is thus a key goal in designing intranets. This goal becomes even more important for an organization like Emirates, a leading international airline, which has over 35,000 employees with over 140 nationalities and where more people are likely to use this feature more frequently.Our intranet provides many applications that have a people finder feature to help staff find each other. The goal in using this feature varies depending on the application and situation. For example, people may want to find a staff to book a meeting or add them to a project team. Whatever the goal, a simple text input field and a Find button are enough to provide the sought-after results. But again and again I have heard complaints about not being able to effectively find colleagues using this feature.The effectiveness of the People Finder feature is challenged in the following ways:People misspell names of staff they are searching. (e.g., ‘Vivek’ is spelled as ‘Vevek’; with over 140 different nationalities this is bound to happen.)Names stored in the database are not in proper format. (e.g., ‘Vivek Deshmukh’ is stored as ‘Vivek D.’)People are known by completely different names than the one stored in the database. (e.g., In some cultures women change their names after marriage.) Figure 1: A typical example of not finding a person in staff directoryHow can you design a better People Finder application than the one that so often says “Staff not found!”?Building on users effortsOne idea is to look at what users do with the problem at hand and how they solve it, and then use their efforts to build the application. For our People Finder application we can do this by having a “Did you mean …” feature, which gives alternative name suggestions to users. These suggestions are not built by pre-defined logic but are based on the collective input of users.In our department, when colleagues don’t find someone on a People Finder application, they try various strategies. These include:trying different spellings,asking another colleague for the persons correct name and spelling,calling the person directly (if they have their phone number), andchecking previous emails to get the exact spelling.Whatever activity they choose, they make sure that they have the right information to type in the People Finder text box. We need to make use of this effort (i.e., making an error and then fixing it) from the users to build our application. The following conceptual model is my attempt at designing such a system.Building the applicationThere are five essential components to this concept:Build a relation table to store incorrect entries. In other words, store search queries which produced no results.Determine if the user has found the right person.Build a relation between the previous incorrect entries with the last correct entry determined in step 2.Check the strength of relation by observing patterns across all users.Present strong patterns as a “Did you mean &” feature on the search results page.Let’s look at each step in detail.STEP 1: Build a relation table to store incorrect entries. To explain the concept, let’s take the scenario in which a user Sally wants to organize a meeting with Timothy Campbell using People Finder but cannot find him because Timothy Campbell is stored as Tim C. in the application database. (See Figure 1 above.) Let us store this incorrect entry Timothy Campbell in a database table called “Relation Database Table for Sally” (See Figure 2). Figure 2: Incorrect entry inserted in the Relation table for SallySTEP 2: Determine if the user has found the right person. Next, let us say Sally tries a few more names in the People Finder text box, which generate no results. We store all of these incorrect entries in the Relation table. After a few failed attempts, Sally asks her colleague how to find Timothy Campbell in the address book. She is told his name appears in the address book as Tim C. Sally types the name ‘Tim C.’ and gets a result with Tim C.’s details. Sally adds Tim C. to the meeting list. It is this action of Sally clicking the Add button that allows us to identify a correct entry for the Relation table. (See Figure 3.)Figure 3: Sally now types Tim Campbell’s name as it appears in the database.STEP 3: Build a relation between the previous incorrect entries with the correct entry. We then build a relation between the previous incorrect entries with the first following correct entry (i.e., Tim C.) and add it to another table called ‘Alias’ for the staff Tim C. Think of the Alias table as a ‘People also know Tim C. as …’ list. Note that the basis for saying that there exists a relation between the incorrect entries and the correct entry is the real life observation that people do what they must to find the correct name to type in the search text box. Of course you may get mismatches but this will be taken care of in the next steps.Figure 4: Tim C. is related with the previously typed names Figure 5: Alias table for Tim C.STEP 4: Check the strength of relation by observing patterns across all users.Next we identify the most common aliases used for finding Tim C. We do this by looking at the Alias table for Tim C. Those aliases that appear frequently are strong candidates to be displayed with a “Did you mean …” feature. In our example Timothy Campbell and Tim Campbell show a good pattern across different users as aliases for Tim C., so we conclude that when people search for Tim Campbell they mean Tim C.Figure 6: Alias table shows that lot of people type Timothy Campbell or Tim Campbell to find Tim C.STEP 5: Present common patterns as “Did you mean &” feature on the search results page. The last step is to present the most common pattern to the users as a “Did you mean …” feature. In our example when -users search Timothy Campbell we present them with Tim C. as a “Did you mean …” feature. We can show additional information like the department, title or a photo of Tim Campbell so that the user can confirm that it’s the person he is looking for. Figure 7: Implementation of the “Did you mean …” featureMaking the system efficientThe secret to making our system more efficient is eliminating -irrelevant relations. Consider this question: Should you build a relation between an incorrect entry which was entered at 08.30 and the next correct entry entered at 09.20? Probably not! It is very unlikely that the user will search for the same person after a gap of 50 minutes. A time frame of 20 minutes may be more realistic.Advice on how to go about building such a systemBuild a business case Building such a system will take time and resources. You will need to present an argument to management why this is important and perhaps make a business case for the effort. Don’t forget to include key stakeholders like Human Resources while presenting the business case. Here are some key points:Users will save valuable time while searching other staff.Colleagues will not be disturbed – their time will be saved.Companies will save on phone bills and employee time.Systems become robust over time without additional work from users or a massive data cleaning effort.Collaborate and co-ordinate with different IT teams who build applications Pepare a list of all applications that use the People Finder feature. Collaborate with the IT teams who are responsible to build these applications and work out a plan to implement the “Did you mean …” feature on the current applications. This task becomes easier if you have a centralized IT team.Prioritize applications for implementation Our system becomes robust when many users use the system. Start implementing the feature on the “Frequently used by many” type of applications first. These applications will give maximum value in shortest amount of time.The risksThere is a risk that few users can work together to build a strong pattern of, say, “Jerk” with Rob Stevenson, thus manipulating the system. This can be kept in check by doing two things. If your company is like ours (formal and very particular about its image) you can:Keep pattern strength high especially if the suggestions to users are going to be automatic without human intervention.In addition to high pattern strength you can include a manual check done by HR admin who can authorize or investigate each strong pattern. To do this you will need to provide an admin interface to HR where they can monitor and dig deeper in to strong aliases.Going forwardJust as users learn a new system by using it, possibly by making mistakes on the way, a system can also be ”trained" to learn from the users by continuously “listening” to users inputs, while helping users along the way. Though some development effort and technical know-how is required, more intelligent people-finding features on company intranets are essential. There is a long-term payoff, and companies will be saving a great deal in terms of employee time and costs.
  • IDEA 2008: An Interview with Bill DeRouchey As IDEA 2008 draws closer, the IA Institute is conducting a series of interviews with the speakers for the conference. As Event Coordinator for IDEA, I fill a variety of roles, including the Interviewer of IDEA Presenters (which I proudly share with Liz Danzico).For this interview, I was fortunate to draw Bill DeRoucheys name. If his name is not familiar to you, some of his work should be. Bills blog is Push. Click. Touch. and his Conversations with Everyday Objects presentation is one that is well worth your time.RU: How did you get your start in Interaction/Information Design?BD: Like most people working in interaction design, I arrived from a lateral discipline. I had been an information architect working strictly on web projects from 2000-2004, either within an agency or as a consultant, respectively before and after the tech collapse. Prior to that, I had experience in writing, coding, product marketing, web producing, and then all the way back to my early days doing layout of computer science textbooks. So I had many angles on "tech."In 2004, I was hired as an IA by Ziba Design, a product design company, not an obvious match. But they had a few website projects and asked me to come aboard. I quickly began working on physical products and learned interaction design along the way. Yes, I got lucky. I still take an architecture / flow / structure / behavior / systems approach to IxD, as opposed to the visual design side of it.RU: It sounds like youre relatively "young" to the field, but youre well-known and well-respected in a short amount of time.  How did you get your start as a presenter? BD: I blame/thank Christina Wodtke for starting me as a presenter. A few months after I started at Ziba, I signed up for a Future of IA retreat in Asilomar, by Monterrey, CA. During registration, Christina asked me "what are you going to present?" Uhhh& So I pitched a talk called the IA of Things discussing my transition from digital to physical products, and the challenges of documenting physical interaction. Later after gentle prodding from Dave Malouf, I finally realized I was talking about interaction design. But that weekend seriously changed my career because I got to meet 40 incredible people, many of which I now consider friends. I discovered I enjoyed pitching weird questions and wrapping presentations around them, such as, what is the history of the button?RU: I think a lot of us put some of the blame on Christinaand shes a self-proclaimed talent scout. Id say shes on the mark! What should the audience take away from your talk?BD: Besides their empty coffee cups? If people took only one thing away from my talk, Id love it if people saw that they can find UI inspiration almost anywhere and expand their design eye from pure onscreen experiences to any interface out there. Gas pumps, thermostats, crosswalk, elevators, mall signage, anything. Every one of these interfaces affects how someone thinks about technology or information, so theres always a lesson to be discovered within them. If just five people went home and really looked at their alarm clock for the first time to figure out the design decisions that were made when building it, Id be happy. Were going to need a lot more product UI designers in the coming years, and theyre going to come from onscreen UI designers. The job opportunities arent all there yet, but the opportunity to learn always is.RU: Who do you look to for inspiration?It may be cliche, but my parents. My dad was always the king of the many projects, but he saw most of them through and has done some really amazing things. He started programming somewhere around 1970 on DECs and VAXs and eventually started his own company whose flagship product (UAP-LINK) transferred files across different systems, DEC to VAX, VAX to IBM, etc. A few years ahead of his time. He taught me to program in C when I was still in high school and I did some coding for his company. So my first computer experience was learning CP/M on a DEC PDP-11 and playing Adventure, thanks to him. Then about 20 years later, he built his own plane. He built an RV-10 kit, riveting pieces together for three years during the day while he coded his own instrument panel at night. Its a gorgeous piece of work and flies perfectly. And my mom will remodel her place in her spare time. Reconfigure the kitchen, build new dressers, sew up quilts, re-mud the ceiling, whatever.Incredible to see. So I get my Get Stuff Done inspiration from my parents.RU: Your dad sounds pretty amazing, and its interesting to see what other fathers in this space are starting to do with their own kids (Matt Milan and I seem to be teaching the best of the worst IA traits to ours) and how something that used to be considered pretty nerdy/geeky is starting to be viewed a bit differently.This is a set-up question: Whats your favorite way to communicate with people who arent in the same room with you?Do I have only 140 characters to say it in? Yeah, itd have to be Twitter. Its been an amazing tool to stay connected with people that Ive met at various events and friends here in town. Its really damn hard to stay connected with all the people we know, so Twitter does a fine job at maintaining that connection by hearing about their lives.As David Weinberger said, "intimacy is in the details."RU: Last question, and this is a doozy: Over the course of 2008, you and I have become friendsat least Id say that, and I believe youve said that. We most likely will not meet face-to-face until October at IDEA in Chicago, yet Id say we have built a level of trust and respect for each otherweve even worked virtually on putting together a panel presentation for SXSW together. How do you think that happened, and who should we blame?This fascinates me too. Its true. Weve never met face to face and weve only talked on the phone once, but weve had enough online interaction to build both trust and friendship. How the hell is that possible? Tracing it back is an interesting case study. On Twitter, I noticed a few friends (people I have met f2f and trust) keep talking to @russu. Okay, Ill see what this guy is up to. Seems harmless enough, okay, follow. Then we made some connection on music, and the conversation developed from there. But is this really different at all from meeting people in the real world? You meet through mutual friends, connect on something simple, and then just keep talking. Thats the beauty of Twitter. People are giving you many opportunities to connect in some way. Sometimes it clicks and you make a new friend. If you never actually meet, so what? Yes, itd be a shame, but geography should never be a barrier to connecting with other people. About Bill DeRoucheyBill has over fifteen years experience as a writer, information architect, product manager and now senior interaction designer with Ziba Design in Portland, Oregon. With Ziba, he frames and details the experience, flow, and interaction on consumer and medical products. Bill also writes about the variety and history of interaction design in everyday experiences on his blog, Push Click Touch, and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He is determined to stretch how people think about interaction design, from beyond the pure digital to any interaction between humans and the artifacts they create. Bill is on the Board of Directors of IxDA, the Interaction Design Association, and serves as Treasurer. About IDEA (Information Design Experience Access)This conference addresses issues of design for an always-on, always-connected world. Where cyberspace is a meaningless term because the online and offline worlds cannot be made distinct. Where physical spaces are so complex that detailed wayfinding is necessary to navigate them. Where work processes have become so involved, and so digitized, that we need new processes to manage those processes.This conference brings together people who are addressing these challenges head on. Speakers from a variety of backgrounds will discuss designing complex information spaces in the physical and virtual worlds.
  • Design for Emotion and Flow We create software and websites to display and represent information to people. That information could be anything; a companys product list, pictures of your vacation, or an instant message from a friend. At this moment, theres more information available to you than at any other time in history.All this information has a lot of positive effects, but it also creates challenges. What information consumes is rather obvious; it consumes the attention of its recipients & a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention (Simon 1971). When attention becomes a scarce resource, its important to invest it wisely. Information architects and designers play a critical role in ensuring the products they design provide users with a return on their investment of attention.The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has described focused attention as psychic energy. Like energy in the traditional sense, no work can be done without it, and through work that energy is consumed. Most of us have experienced a mental/emotional state where all of our attention (or energy) is totally focused on an activity. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) named this state flow, based on how participants in his studies described the experience.In this state of consciousness, people often experience intense concentration and feelings of enjoyment, coupled with peak performance. Hours pass by in what seems like minutes. We tend to enter these states in environments with few interruptions, where our attention becomes focused by a challenge that were confident we can handle with our existing skills. Feedback is instantaneous, so we can always judge how close we are to accomplishing our task and reaching our goal. The importance of the task influences our level of motivation and perceptions of how difficult the task will be.Attention and FlowThe elements associated with the flow state can be classified into the three areas; 1. Causes of Flow 2. Characteristics of Flow 3. Consequences of Flow (Novak, Hoffman and Yung, 1999).1. Causes of FlowA clear goalImmediate feedback on the success of attempts to reach that goalA challenge youre confident you have the skills to handle2. Characteristics of FlowTotal concentration and focused attentionA sense of control over interactionsOpenness to new thingsIncreased exploratory behaviorIncreased learningPositive feelings3. Consequences of FlowLoss of consciousness of selfDistortions in the perception of timeActivity is perceived as intrinsically rewardingAs designers, we focus on the elements that precede or cause flow. Users visit sites with pre-existing goals (e.g., finding information about a product). These goals evolve over time as users complete tasks and their attention is drawn to other information. The main elements designers can control are:Providing immediate feedbackBalancing the perception of challenge against users skillsDesigning for FlowYou dont need to take a course or learn a new software package to design for flow. In fact, youre probably already doing it. Begin by considering the desired outcome of every interaction and then removing everything that distracts the user from accomplishing that outcome.Start by removing distractions or impediments wherever possible. For both physical and interactive products, this means reducing or eliminating both external (i.e., environmental) and internal (i.e., pain, discomfort, anxiety) distractions that cause emotional responses like frustration or physical discomfort. Emotions demand and divert the users attention. Providing immediate feedback for all user actions helps to reduce user anxiety. The effective use of layout, information design, typography, interaction design and information architecture all help in balancing the perception of challenge against the users skill level. Information should be broken down into manageable chunks that dont overwhelm users cognitive faculties.When it comes to balancing the users perception of challenge, think of it this way: too much challenge with too little skill causes anxiety; and too little challenge with too much skill causes boredom.Flow occurs at the boundary between boredom and anxiety. Think of it as a channel that runs between anxiety and boredom.(Figure 1)Concept of flowFigure 1: Anxiety, Boredom and Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)(captions added van Gorp, 2006)As the challenges we face increase, we become more anxious and lose flow. Re-entering flow involves increasing our skills to match these challenges and reduce anxiety. As we increase our skill level, we become bored unless we increase the challenge to match our greater abilities.To understand how we can reduce distractions, lets examine the different elements of flow again to see how each can be applied to user experience. The causes of flow have the most implications for website and application design.Causes of Flow1. A clear goal&The user navigates to accomplish a task, like seeking information on a particular topic or surfing for fun. This is an evolving goal, dependent on the options presented to the user and aided by logical information architecture, intuitive navigation, effective wayfinding and clear options for proceeding like information scent, breadcrumbs, meaningful labels, clear page titles, etc.2. With immediate feedback on the success of attempts to reach that goal&The user receives quick, sensory feedback in the form of a visual shift and/or sound from links, buttons, menus, or other navigation items.3. Presented as a challenge that you have the skills to handle.The opportunities for action are balanced with the users ability. At a basic level, this is accomplished by providing an uncluttered interface and eliminating unnecessary information to limit the users cognitive load. As the users skill increases over time, the interface can increase its complexity as well. Adaptive interface technologies allow the user to adjust the complexity of the interface to meet their enhanced skills.Flow and EmotionFlow tends to occur in situations with higher levels of challenge and skill. If the challenge is too easy, or user skill levels are very high, anxiety can be so low that there is little motivation to do anything. This level of activation or arousal in the body is the physiological (i.e., bodily) dimension of emotion. The level of arousal affects how intensely we experience a given emotion, and intense emotions demand our attention. In evolutionary terms, its easy to see why; the more attention your ancestors paid to predators, the more likely they were to survive and reproduce, passing their genes on to their descendants, people like you and me.Both pleasant and unpleasant objects and experiences can increase arousal levels. Frustration and the excitement both increase arousal levels. So do large images, bright colors, and high contrast (van Gorp, 2006). For example, increasing the size of an image and moving anyone in it closer within the frame increase arousal levels.Interpersonal distance and arousalFigure 2: Interpersonal Distance and ArousalHow does looking at the picture on the right make you feel compared to the one on the left?The key to balancing arousal is to match the perceived challenge to the users skill level. Since skill levels differ from one user to the next based on their previous experiences and the type of task, interfaces should be very user-friendly but also allow more advanced users to find challenges appropriate for their skill level. These challenges can include the visual aspects as well as the content (King 2003). To put it simply, everything about a site, including content, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design can contribute to flow.Goal-directed vs. Experiential UseDifferent motivations for using a website require different designs to facilitate flow (Novak, Hoffman and Yung 1996). Novice users tend to see the Internet in a playful way, while more experienced users tend to view the Internet in a more utilitarian way (King 2003). This leads to a distinction between experiential and goal-directed use. Flow tends to occur more often during goal-directed use, because of the higher challenge involved.Novice Users ? Experiential useLess challengingMore exploratoryEntertainment-orientedExperienced Users ? tendency towards Goal-directed useMore challengingLess exploratoryConnected with tasks (e.g. research, work and shopping)The lower level of challenge in an entertainment-oriented, experiential site means there is a lower level of anxiety connected with its use. Someone who is less anxious is more capable of using creative thought to determine how to navigate a website and overlook minor problems. Motivation here is driven by subconscious arousal triggered by interesting visual elements, bright colors or high contrast. Experiential sites can and should be more arousing visually to demand the greater attention that can lead to flow experiences.Disturbia film siteFigure 3: Disturbia film siteAn example of a visually rich, entertainment-oriented site with little or no challenge involved.The greater challenge of completing tasks (possibly under deadlines) on a goal-directed site creates more higher arousal. Anxiety makes users less able to think creatively when problems are encountered. If a product will be used in a stressful environment, like a hospital operating room, usability becomes crucial. All relevant information needs to be close at hand and visible and feedback should be clear and immediate. A goal-directed site can and should be less visually rich so that users, already anxious at the prospect of a challenging task, are not overwhelmed.YahooFigure 4: YahooWhen tasks are particularly unpleasant, we often lack the motivation necessary to complete them. In these cases, increasing the arousal level through the use of narrative can increase the users motivation. The Tango Tax website uses visual elements that resemble those found in movie posters and has a high contrast, cinematic feel that increases arousal. The software also introduces the classic cinematic narrative element of us vs. them to help increase user motivation.Tango TaxFigure 5: Tango Tax websiteConclusions ? Traits of Websites that Encourage FlowHow you apply these ideas depends on your target audience, as well as their internal and external use contexts. Consider the likely emotional state of your users. Are there loud noises, crowds, brightly colored objects or other distractions in the users environment?Here are some basic website traits that will help to encourage flow.Clear navigation: Make it easy for the user to know where they are, where they can go, and where theyve been, by including signposts such as breadcrumbs, effective page titles, and visited link indicators.Immediate Feedback: Make sure all navigation, such as links, buttons, and menus provide quick and effective feedback. Offer feedback for all user actions. When this isnt possible, provide an indicator to hold the users attention while waiting (e.g., progress bar).Balance the Perception of Challenge With the Users Skill: Since user skill levels differ, its up to you to balance the complexity of the visual design with the number of tasks and features people can use. Consider whether they are likely surfing experientially for fun or completing an important task. Tailor your sites to your audiences scenario of use: more visually rich for experiential use and less so for goal-directed use.Adaptable interfaces that allow the user to increase or decrease the perceived challenge by choosing how much detail is displayed. Simplicity helps reduce anxiety for both novices and experts, which is especially crucial in highly stressful situations. Options for information-rich displays can introduce challenge for more experienced users.Whether youre an information architect, interaction designer or visual designer, your work should compel users to invest their attention, and then provide them with a return on that investment.Remember, designing for flow doesnt require a new set of tools or skills ? only a different way of thinking. Finding the right balance of design and challenge can help focus attention and create flow, which results in immersive and engaging user experiences.ReferencesCsikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow ? the Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial.Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1977). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Copyrights: Journal of E-Business (International Academy of E-Business). All rights reserved. Journal of E-Business, Vol. 1, Issue 2, December 2001.King, Andrew B. Chapter 2 ? Flow in Web Design. 2003. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/2/ accessed on January 21/2007.Fogg, B.J. (2003). Persuasive Technology ? Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.Hoffman, D.L, Novak, T (1996), Marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments: conceptual foundations, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 60 pp. 50-68.Norman, Donald A. (2004). Emotional Design ? Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.Novak, T.P, Hoffman, D.L (1997), Measuring the flow experience among Web users, Interval Research Corporation.Novak, T, Hoffman, D, Young, Y (1998), Measuring the flow construct in online environments: a structural modeling approach, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, working paper.Novak, T. P., Hoffman, D. L., and Yung, Y. 2000. Measuring the Customer Experience in Online Environments: A Structural Modeling Approach. Marketing Science 19, 1 (Jan. 2000), 22-42Rettie, R., (2001), An Exploration of Flow during Internet Use, Internet Research, 11(2), 103 ? 113.Simon, H. A. (1971), Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World, in Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, ISBN 0-8018-1135-X. pp. 40-41.Simon, H. A. (1996), The Sciences of the Artificial (3rd ed.), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-69191-4. pp. 143-144.van Gorp, Trevor, J. (2006). Emotion, Arousal, Attention and Flow: Chaining Emotional States to Improve Human-Computer Interaction. University of Calgary, Faculty of Environmental Design, Masters Degree Project.
  • Your New Excuse to Get an Xbox Games are fun, addictive, beautiful, and immersive. Websites, for the most part, are not. Take a moment and think about what video games look like, what they sound like, the way you can move on the screen, what you can be. Think of how you feel when you play and who you play with. Consider the launch of Halo 3 on Xbox 360, with unprecedented graphics, sound, and interactivity that Time.com called refined to the point where it delivers only pure unadulterated gaming bliss.People gaming on computers and consoles are having a blast and spending big. The result: elements of the game medium are drifting into other digital experiences. Video games have become sophisticated creations that can take years to develop, weeks to play, and days to go platinum. The $12.5 billion dollar market (NPD Group 2006) continues to grow as game franchises have extended into books, graphic novels, films, merchandise, and communities of devotees. The televised Video Game Awards is in its sixth year and the influence of gaming culture is increasingly appearing in the mainstream.Jeopardy screenWorld of Warcraft featured on the Jeopardy game showCompanies should create rich and immersive website experiences, drawing from some of the techniques for game design to build brand affinity and differentiate their sites.Where did those three hours just go?When considering whether elements of video game design could apply to a site, you might think the category of your site is your first question. At first glance, advertising sites, RIAs, and some transactional sites seem obvious candidates for engrossing their visitors in the world of the brand; enterprise solutions, not so much. As John Ferrara has demonstrated, games tackle similar tasks as web applications and the HCI considerations still apply. No category of site is therefore inappropriate for game think.Ask yourself the following questions:Are you looking to build brand affinity?Do you have universal corporate messages that you would like to communicate to all visitors?Do you need to create strong incentives for your users to complete a certain task or contribute in a certain way?Do you want your informational site to be more compelling than a brochure?Do you have a significant set of features that might overwhelm first-time users?Does your brand welcome customer contributions and self-expression rather than requiring that all content and experiences be curated?Are you leveraging a marketing campaign that already has audio, animation, and transition styles and a narrative associated with it?Is social media and building an online community part of your strategy?If you said yes to most of these questions, then game think could be applied to your site.Successful video games get users to suspend disbelief, form a visceral connection, and invest themselves in the game world. Players can go into a zone and feel a sense of flow, described as a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity 1. Imagine a website where visitors also feel and behave this way: they are engaged and focused, unaware of time, unselfconscious, and feeling rewarded. It would mean we could present brands in more complex environments and we could sustain interest in a site for longer. We could make time spent on a website more enjoyable to the visitor by touching them emotionally. Businesses could move beyond transactional interactions with visitors to mutually beneficial relationships, for long-term future rewards.Websites dont need to become more like video games in every way. The inherent purpose of a game is to have fun, and that is not the core motivator for most websites. Many of the most successful sites are able to incorporate fun into the experience, but the suggestion here is that the design of video games offers lessons, rather than a games defining attributes of fun, non-productivity, and uncertainty. Key elements of video game design are attractive to website designers because they remove some of the constraints we apply to solving design problems, and open up new opportunities for brand expression.Such elements include:the reliance on discoveryan expectedly steep learnability curveexplicitly graded levels of difficultyexpression of information using scenes rather than linear pagesthe entertainment value and length of time engaged in a game titleInfusing websites with some of the attributes of games does not mean that we abandon the notion of utility either. Game players have goals?to kill enemies, to find treasures, to amass wealth?just as web visitors have goals. There exists a need to make progress, to accomplish something. Successful games induce a player to take on a goal, believe in it, obsess on it, and return to the game over multiple sessions, often spanning weeks, in pursuit of achieving it. Game designers plant a kernel that rages so strongly that a player will dedicate considerable time to it. How can we, as website designers, plant such a kernel in our users?Attributes of websites vs. video games Websites Video games Hand-eye coordination: digital Total body coordination: physical Usable Learnable, playful, discoverable One level of difficulty Multiple levels of difficulty Social content  Social interaction Web development Product development Wireframes Storyboards Page Scene 2D 3D Needs are user-centric: satisfy the user Needs are engendered: satisfy the player Free Bought 2 to 15 minutes Hours to days Task, transaction and information Entertainment Sticky, at best Addictive Cheap to design and build Expensive to design and build Superficial customization and personalization Considerable customization and personalizationSo how do you play this thing?Nine approaches can put you on the path to creating differentiated website experiences.1. Find a balance between challenging and rewarding the userGut reaction: who wants to be challenged? This is an area where game think is not suitable for every brand, company, and user goal. Conservatively positioned banking web application used by time-poor mom: no thanks. Progressive youth fashion brand frequented by surfing tween: why not?Call of Duty 4's initial levels include tasks to familarize the player with weapons and actionsCall of Duty 4s initial levels include tasks to familarize the player with weapons and actionsAnother way to consider challenge is to recognize that games have rules and environmental constraints (e.g. materials, locations, physical spaces). Many websites and web applications also rely on rules and have other constraints that require users to interact with them in a certain way (e.g. travel booking forms, profile setup wizards, retirement benefit calculators).Thinking about the way a game challenges a player is to think about:Learnability. When you start a new game, you have to try buttons, actions, commands etc. to see what can be done. By the end of a few sessions youve worked out pretty much everything, and the game has probably guided you through most of it. Apple made the bet that people would be able to work out how to use an iPhone without the familiarity of the interactions from other phones. Users learned the gestures quickly and it has been hailed as an incredibly usable device. As the breadth of activities that can be performed online expands, the way we navigate and interact with those sites and web applications is also going to evolve. Usability will not be the key driver; it will be a given, and learnability will play a larger role.Safe environments to explore and make mistakes. If you provide a way for a user to pleasantly explore and discover different things without irreversible consequences, then a website does not have to be immediately transparent in how it is used. Supporting rich undo, cancel, back, reset, and restart in appropriate ways contributes to the safety net where a user can experiment.Swapping between easy and advanced modes. In video games, players who can handle it opt for more advanced game situations. If they find it too hard, they swap back. Crisis over. Some websites and applications ask users to select a version (standard, professional, custom, or other more complex) before theyve even tried it out. And then once theyve selected the more advanced version theyre stuck with it. Let them swap.Progressive disclosure. Instead of overwhelming a player with all the modes of play (weapons, locations, moves etc.) from level one, the video game gradually introduces more sophistication and power. The most important options are offered initially, then more complexity is introduced as a player progresses, or specifically requests it. Tips, tutorials, and demonstrations from other game characters allow the player to learn as they go. Managing the learning curve of your website requires prioritizing features into primary, secondary and so on, knowing the technical and functional domains of your novice and expert users, and determining how many stages of disclosure are appropriate.Usability is new to gaming; the focus has been on learnability and the visceral connection of the player with the game. Many websites aim to be intuitive. Video games show us that new paradigms can be learned.2. Allow an ultimate fantasy experience that might actually be true to lifeFantasy experiences are not limited to creating an alter ego with a perfect body. Fantasy experiences incorporate:Doing something in a game that is not actually possible (e.g. breathing underwater in a lost submarine city while shooting cyborgs, in BioShock)Doing something in a game that is possible, just not as you (e.g. bashing out a guitar solo of Welcome to the Jungle by Guns & Roses as Slash himself in Guitar Hero I).Plan your dream kitchen at Ikea with your kitchen's dimensionsPlan your dream kitchen at Ikea with your kitchens dimensionsFor some games (e.g. Gran Turismo), representing the details of real life as closely as possible is important. Players can dream that the skills they use in the game compare in a minute way to the skills they would need in the real situation. In other games (e.g. Legend of Zelda), the sense of freedom that comes with doing the improbable is intoxicating. Who doesnt dream of flying?For a website, supporting both of these extremes might be worthwhile. In a shopping scenario, some users may want to see what certain apparel looks like on their exact body, while others will want to experience how a minor member of a royal family, feted with personal shoppers, is treated. Probe whether the fantasy experience that your users say they want, or your client would like to offer, is the type of thing only celebrities get up to or is not actually done on Earth. Both offer enormous opportunities for originality and usefulness.3. Give users control of audio, colors, environment, charactersLet the users DNA mix with the site. In games such as Grand Theft Auto, the user can select genres of music to play in the background as well as the volume of the sound effects relative to the music. Users set preferences such as gun cross-hair positioning, colors of environmental elements (e.g. make the racing car red so it stands out more and can be recognized more quickly in the pack), and other elements. The aim here is not to make the game prettier or set arbitrary preferences but to make gameplay more efficient.Avoid encouraging users to play around with design features that dont make sense. For websites, the modifiable controls should encourage more effective interaction with the site. For example if, on a banking site, a customer wants to be alerted to all transactions over $100, enable them to red flag these line items in online statements. If a traveler is on a travel planning website coordinating a ski trip, let them use images of snowy landscapes to immediately visually differentiate this trip from the summer vacation thats also in progress. If a user has the desktop email program configured so that an audible ping gets their attention, chances are they would like the same for their web-based email. Give users who value this customization the options, so they can tweak for added user-friendliness.Design control of Second Life avatars offers unprecedented detailDesign control of Second Life avatars offers unprecedented detailMost games enable users to customize, and thus emotionally invest in, their characters. Second Life takes character creation to a level that invites the user to design anything from a facsimile of herself to something genetically impossible. Forget about shirt color, heels or sneakers, brown hair or blond?you can tweak freckle distribution, eye socket depth, lip pout, hand shape and other micro details along a continuum. Such advanced customization options enable the player to design someone unique and nuanced, and enjoy the sense of pride or accomplishment that goes with it. Once youve spent serious time perfecting the tip of your avatars nose, the bluntness of their profile and the hue of their cornea, you can bet that youre not going to throw that work away lightly. Youre going to fall in love with your creation and show it off. Whats more, your handiwork and use of customization options impact the way other players or visitors to a social media site interact with you.Make the character customization options on a website substantial enough, and give the options consequences, and youve won a degree of user loyalty. Yahoo, for example, enables visitors to create avatars that represent them as they move around the site. Users can express parts of themselves in Answers, chat, and other web applications without having to reveal their real identities. This way, visitors can avoid the proliferation of recognizable online identities and mitigate privacy concerns.4. Wrap narratives around the action and functionalityExactly how did Lara Craft become a tomb raider? How does this impact what you can do in the game? The back stories on games are well thought out narratives that drive the design of characters, scenarios, dialogue, levels and more. When new versions of games are released, the storyline develops further and players continue on the journey. Stories put everything in context.The site reveals its functionality through a conversation, which tells the story of the firmThe site reveals its functionality through a conversation, which tells the story of the firmThe narrative for a website might stem from a number of different ideas and constructs, including personas, how the site fits into the organizations processes and business model, the companys history, corporate values, and its brand attributes. More likely it will come from medium- to long-term communication messages already evident in offline marketing activities, especially television commercials. If the company advertises, then the companys story is already out there.Bjorn Borg clothing store tells 'heritage' stories as video montages and invites visitor stories tooBjorn Borg clothing store tells heritage stories as video montages and invites visitor stories tooCharacters, locations, and storylines can evolve online. In fact arriving at a site that doesnt continue this story or resonate with what visitors have experienced elsewhere is jarring and disorienting. Site navigation, imagery, and messaging should tell a universal story to all visitors to the site, so that they all walk away knowing what this company stands for and what its about.5. Build delightful transitions and animationsDesign flourishes (or lack thereof) reveal a lot about brand and add a layer of quality that can be impressive. Games have pushed the technical and design boundaries of animation so that pretty much anything that can be imagined can be represented on the screen. The physics engines do the heavy lifting within the games themselves, but the designers have also labored over the animation and transitions for non-game screens.All aspects of the Mercedes Benz AMG interactions- selections, deselections, transitions ? have been given carefully considered behaviorsAll aspects of the Mercedes Benz AMG interactions?selections, deselections, transitions?have been given carefully considered behaviorsWith the emergence of Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the web is rapidly catching up with gaming technology. The challenge is to actually understand what the web is now capable of and dream up the designs to exploit it. For example, navigating through a video game menu is rarely a matter of point, click, see next screen. Every interaction with the non-game screens and in-game menus is an opportunity to reinforce a brand attribute, or pad out the world the player has entered, or let the user know theyre on a certain path. Every interaction.Blue Moon Brewery makes the most of every clickBlue Moon Brewery makes the most of every click6. Use loading screens to educate the user how to use the site betterThere can be a lot of dead time playing a video game: loading, graduating to a new level, dying, cutscenes that relay the story and so on. Games make the most of this limbo by telling players more about the game. Hints, tips, factoids, instructions, and trivia are displayed while the player patiently waits for the fun to start. Slow mo scenes from previous games, spectacular gameplay sequences, acted scenes contributing to continuity and online player statistics?game designers are tapping their imaginations to come up with novel ways to make these loading screens not only palatable but valuable.If you know the page that is loading, give the user a tip on how to use it, such as in Tony Hawk Proving GroundIf you know the page that is loading, give the user a tip on how to use it, such as in Tony Hawk Proving GroundOnline, users have the luxury of simply leaving a site if they have to spend too much time watching progress bars. Empower the user with something extra so that when the site or module finally loads theyre better prepared to use it effectively, better informed about the company, or at least amused.7. Implement strong audio cues to provide feedbackPlaying certain games with no sound is nigh impossible. You cant hear things approaching, youre not sure if your action was executed, youre not sure where to go, youre unclear about the results. Think of all the website usability tests youve witnessed where the participant is confused about whether their click registered with the site and whether something is happening. Further evidence of this confusion is the only click once message that some sites use to deter visitors from clicking again, when they think their action was not registered.On the web, sound has been anathema. Websites that suddenly blare music at you during discreet workplace web surfing have destroyed the fun for all of us. But audio cues are common on computer operating systems and traditional applications. Theyre such a simple, effective way to reinforce an action, alert you, or let you know whether something was successful or not.Audio can add satisfaction by imitating real world sounds that were familiar with. The state of flow is supported because there is no need to translate the result. For example a falling two-note sound is instantly recognized as a negative result, whereas the cha-ching of a cash register is known to be a sign of money being exchanged.On Uniqlo.com many clickable elements are indicated with an audio cue, with another sound to indicate when you have clicked and when a successful action is completeOn Uniqlo.com many clickable elements are indicated with an audio cue, with another sound to indicate when you have clicked and when a successful action is completeAlso, audio is another way to exercise brand muscle. Nothing quite lets a user know what your brand stands for than expressing it with a sonic branding device or giving it a literal voice. What sound would you expect to hear when visiting intel.com?8. Play with spatial cuesFlash, Silverlight, and WPF make working with spatial cues a more interesting proposition. Many games rely on recreating three dimensions so that a player can move through terrain or other environments. In fact, game design has been likened more to architecture than film-making (which is another popular comparison) because the designers need to signal to players that they should move from location A to location B.Using 3D space on the web is easier to visualize now that Vista, Leopard, iPhones, and iPods have reimagined how items can be stacked, ordered, shuffled, zoomed in on, and previewed. The physicality that is innate with game playing is migrating to other digital technologies, such as the web, through touchscreens and gestures.Adidas uses backgrounds and foregrounds forcefully to denote hierarchyAdidas uses backgrounds and foregrounds forcefully to denote hierarchyDesigns using the z space are emerging, often targeting younger audiences who might more comfortably migrate their behaviors from other media to the web.Nike's Jordan site features zoom controls to navigate the spaceNikes Jordan site features zoom controls to navigate the spaceVisitors are instructed to hold down mouse keys and drag, use mouse scrolls, or use keyboard and mouse combinations to move within all three axes. Website designers can now add depth to the design toolbox when considering hierarchy, prominence, information design and chronology, among other things. Any element closer to the user will be more prominent.9. Sprinkle in a few surprising serendipitous momentsSerendipitous touches are the ones that you dream up in the heat of brainstorming and figure your client is never going to go for. Theyre a little bit clever, or silly, or over the top, and thats what makes them memorable and essential. Those extra mile details are the ones that get a site talked about and bookmarked. Theyre the things that fans savor and brand advocates get. For example, when your character dies in The Sims 2, the Grim Reaper appears and looks over some paperwork potentially to do with the characters soul. Who knows? Its totally ridiculous, and the first-time reaction is likely to be laughter, even though the player is about to start the game all over again.The Sims 2 injects unexpected humor into what is actually an annoying situationThe Sims 2 injects unexpected humor into what is actually an annoying situationFlickr.coms multilingual greetings are often cited as a lovely unexpected gesture. The designers didnt have to do it, but they did, and it is appreciated. How many other sites welcome you and you ignore it entirely? Is this an approach recommended for every brand? Such a gesture doesnt imply childishness: rather, it acknowledges that a human is visiting this website. Theres usually an attribute within every brand that is related to being human: this is the attribute to exploit. Think about the emotional response youd like to get from your website visitor and find one or two ways to elicit it in a playful way.Steadyhand's CEO checks his phone while he waits for the user to interact with him, like a game character waiting for a player to startSteadyhands CEO checks his phone while he waits for the user to interact with him, like a game character waiting for a player to startDid the design stage just get longer?Incorporating some of these ideas into the design phase of a project need not take extra time. Applying game think as a filter across activities youre already doing will get you a lot of the way there.Game designers adopt different methodologies, produce different deliverables, and follow different processes than website designers. It doesnt make sense to take on many of these because ultimately you are creating different products. However, the fact that youre working with the same medium?people access the internet through gaming consoles and play games on computers?should cause you to pause and consider how to make better use of the channel.Energize a site and engage more of the users senses with animations, transitions, 3D, and audio. Then let the user bond with the site by having the site tell a story while incorporating their preferences, so that there is more conversation and less messaging. Encourage the user to explore and become an expert on the site through a choreographed dance of challenge, education, and reward. Finally, delight your visitors and get them hooked through unexpected, frivolous, and unique touches that your brand can own.The payoff for using video game design elements is a memorable, distinguished, high-impact user experience that brings a brand to life, increases loyalty, and reaches out to new customers.Your next step? Go play some video games and get inspired.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
  • Building the UX Dreamteam - Part 2 As we discussed in part one:http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/building-the-ux, the skills in research, information architecture, interaction design, graphic design and writing define the recognized areas of User Experience design. However, there still remains much to discuss about what makes a UX team dreamy.Each UX Dreamteam has a finely tuned mix of skills and qualities, as varied as the environments in which they operate. Part two will address whether a person has the right ‘hard’ skills and ‘soft’ qualities like communication style, creativity and leadership ability to fit your particular organizational context. We’ll also touch on the quality of an individual’s personality that may or may not complement the others on your team.PersonalityPerhaps the most important consideration in forming your Dreamteam is mixing the personalities of your superstars. As mom used to say “It’s not just about how you look, it’s what’s inside that counts.” A candidate may look ideal on paper, but until you have them in front of you, talking and interacting, you won’t know if what is inside will be a fit. Your group spends almost as much time together as apart, they need to respect and like one another to work well together. Personality typing tests hold the promise of quantifying the immeasurable, but you would be ill advised to use them as part of the interview process. Myers Briggs, DISC and plenty of others use various axes to measure the intrinsic tendencies of a person.As cool as it sounds, the science is just not exact enough to act as the basis of any decision. This is not to say that these tests are not illuminating in their own right – they certainly foster greater understanding and empathy among teams. Generally speaking, though, people under pressure may answer personality tests as they think they should rather than honestly.Collaboration is a big part of design best practice and the ability to work well with teammates should be of paramount concern. Selflessness indicates that a candidate is a team player as they seek to raise not only their own reputation, but equally those with whom they work. Humility, humor and empathy are virtues particularly relevant to the creative industry and should be sought after in UX professionals. Each player on the Dreamteam accepts when they’re mistaken, keeps each other creatively entertained and feels for the users they serve.As much as any skill or quality we have already discussed and will explore in this article, finding the right personality type you need is the classic answer: ‘it depends’. It depends on the personalities of existing Dreamteamsters, the type of work they do, and on the organization into which they must fit. There is no magic formula, but there is one thing to always avoid: toxicity. Morale and productivity can be totally undermined by a toxic person:http://bipolar.about.com/od/support/a/070315_toxic.htm. Having one aboard can turn your Dreamteam into a nightmare.  So, do your homework to avoid inadvertently hiring them. Screening Tips:Look for signs of toxicity by asking about previous work places and their interactions with teammates. Did they voluntarily leave the last job? Do they mainly talk badly about their last workplace? Remember, a toxic person is often manipulative and they may seem great on the surface, so check references. If you misjudge a new hire and you realize you have a toxic person aboard, waste no time in jettisoning them, no matter how skilled they may seem. Creative and Analytical qualitiesMost jobs in the UX Dreamteam involve a level of creativity and analysis, but its a rare gem who is a rock-star operator in both these modes. But visionaries and analysts are equally necessary, ensuring great ideas and the ability to organize and actualize them.A creative person doesnt see a glass half empty or half full, but instead asks why it should be a glass at all. An ability to think laterally, meaning" to escape from a local optimum in order to move towards a more global optimum" (Edward de Bono:http://www.edwdebono.com/debono/lateral.htm)  is the talent from which innovation is born. A Dreamteam accesses their creativity readily and regularly to push beyond the obvious for an appropriately innovative solution. Ensure a proportion of creative genius in your Dreamteam to increase business success and thereby the teams reputation.Your analytical superstars can process vast amounts of information and distill it into a concise and cohesive experience for the user. They are methodical, account for every detail, and question inconsistencies. They grow solutions by breaking a system into its component parts, then creatively reassemble it in logical order. Good analysts are passionate and detail-oriented when identifying patterns in data and behavior. Screening Tips:Given how ideas are often difficult to credit to the interviewee, gauge creativity from the dialogue and candor during the interview. A truly imaginative person effortlessly surprises you with a fresh, off-beat approach to old problems. Responses to tangential or seemingly random questions can help illuminate this quality. If they can link the absurd back to realistic solutions coherently and with humor, you can be sure there’s creativity within. Analytical people are interested in details. Does your candidate flinch at the idea of auditing the content of large information system? If they have they done data analysis before, did they jump into it enthusiastically? How did it go? Practitioner vs. Managerial qualitiesManagerial qualities are confused with experience in most professions, and UX is no different. Experience correlates with peer respect, but respect is not all a manager must command. Peter Merholz talks of managers needing to be either "T" shaped "Bar" shaped, referring to the profile of skills they possess. "T"-shaped people have a broad and shallow knowledge of most skills and go deep in only a few. "Bar"-shaped people do not plunge the depths of any expertise. As he says:http://www.peterme.com/?p=580, they are all about the connections between disciplines, and being able to articulate the power of that integration. An "I" shape would indicate deep knowledge in just one or two areas. This profile suggests an awesome specialist practitioner (yes, there is an "I" in Dreamteam!).Good bosses are quietly also coaches, therapists, facilitators, communicators, organizers and politicians. As leaders, they are comfortable in setting an agenda for others to fulfill while inspiring the Dreamteam to meet or beat that agenda. Your luminary leader provides ‘air cover’, also known as ‘running interference’. Making space for their reports to work by fending off interfering people or tasks, the manager ensures the Dreamteam is focused, not randomized. People who find less satisfaction in helping others to be effective are better placed as well-compensated senior practitioners. To presume that someone senior should be promoted into a management position is misguided. A managers UX skills are less important than their ability to co-ordinate a group of individuals and spot what your organization needs from them. Screening Tips:When seeking managerial talent, look for someone who will revel in the Dreamteams success, rather than their own. How have they "run interference" in the past? New managers sourced from within a team show a tendency to get the best out of others prior to their promotion. This is known as "acting up" and makes a good task to set potential managers to test their aptitude. If you’re looking for a practitioner, be sure they’re not fixated on being a manager, lest their ambitions undermine the effectiveness of your designated leader. Strategic vs Tactical AbilityWe all know guys who stand idly by, watching others do their work and wryly commenting, "You look after the details, Im the big picture man.” Those who strategize with blue sky ideas can raise the ire of people slaving at everyday tasks. Tactical skills are just as valuable as strategic. Each serves their purpose in envisioning and getting things done.Conceiving an entire system and determining what both the business and users get out of it are the domains of big picture people. It is hard to imagine success without their vision to work toward. These people can be creative or analytical but find implementation a chore. They are typically well informed of industry trends and can forecast the future through them. While vision is an awesome asset, without attentive "small picture" work, its an apparition. Strategists think one to five years ahead and beyond and are good at depicting a vision.Tactical people focus on day-to-day activity and on success in the one to six month timeframe. With the exception of think tanks, the organizational balance needs to skew toward small picture people in order to achieve success. Many startups and UX teams fail because of the inverse balance. Screening Tips:To find the detail-oriented, look for evidence of finishing products and a personal satisfaction in seeing all loose ends tied up. A strategic thinker will show evidence of helping others to see the wider context of what theyre doing, often through conceptual and architectural diagrams. Can they show you some? Also ask questions which illuminate how theyre plugged into where your organizations industry and the wider UX field is headed. Innies vs. OutiesIn-house teams (aka "Innies") have needs different to external agencies that provide interface building/designing services or consultancy. An in-house team is working toward increasing profitability through UX. In many cases, the nature of projects does not change over time because theres only one type of business to support. Exceptions exist, but in general those building in-house teams should discount candidates who need variety to thrive.The in-house Dreamteam is also better suited to agile development methodologies, which rely heavily on face-to-face contact. Unless a consultant is able to work on-site for the duration of the agile project, they will not be able to fulfill some of the tenets surrounding ‘less documentation, more talking’. Aside from communicating an absent author’s intentions, documentation is a mechanism used by agencies to cover their backside if a client claims poor diligence and won’t be abandoned willingly.Agencies don’t make much money from staff who aren’t comfortable playing the consultant role. Working under pressure, answering expertly on all subjects related and sometimes unrelated to the job requires a certain type of communication style and self-confidence. Agency staff (aka “outies”) must be broad-skilled and part salespeople to make their expertise and company’s value obvious to clients. This isn’t to say that these qualities aren’t good to have on the in-house UX Dreamteam, but they’re less critical to business success and can be compensated for in other ways. Screening Tips:Stack your in-house team with stars who are tactical, for their willingness to roll up their sleeves, dig-in and get enjoyment from attacking a long-term goal is what you need. Strategic thinking is also attractive, but you may want to emphasize this in your management function where vision is expected. Beware hiring those with purely "innie" experience for "outie" roles and vice versa. Outies may find innie work mundane and innies can struggle in the faster-paced, higher-pressure outie workplace. Outies need to have political and sales savvy to navigate varied organizations and present value. Confidence, plausibility and magnetism will be obvious – you’ll want to hire them before they’ve shown you their ample skills. Though be sure they have those too! Organizational ContextsHiring managers generally consider organizational context subconsciously when preparing their Dreamteam, usually feeling out the candidate with gut instinct rather than concrete comparisons.  It helps to abstract the organization into something you can test applicants for compatibility with, like a persona;:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona for instance, then you can envision a compatible teammate for that persona. Size, work processes, project types, employees, industry and brand among other things influence the organization’s personality.Some organizations are process-driven and others are more free-form. Process ensures that work complies with a to-do list prescribing smooth running and/or best practice. The less experienced use process like new bicycle riders use training wheels. Some people flourish within a controlled environment. Others feel hampered or oppressed by it. What are the processes used within your organization? What unique characteristics do individuals who operate within them need to be happy and successful?A Dreamteam’s number will impact the duties each superstar performs. Small organizations can have tasks similar in number to their larger counterparts, but spread them among fewer people. This inevitably means one fulfilling multiple roles. The graphic designer might double as the interface-layer coder. The Information Architect may also be the researcher and writer. If you are in a small organization, a ‘gun’ specialist with all their UX skills primarily in only one area may not be a good fit.Every workplace has a pace. Agile development or simply expeditious environments tend to be frenetic and mean working quickly. Some people don’t perform without time to pause, think, rework and perfect their work. Others will be frustrated if it takes a long time to get things done. They won’t always agree that crafting something perfectly, or documenting design thoroughly is time well spent. Sometimes perfection is expected, but timescales remain fixed. In this case, experience and coping well with stress is consequential.  Screening Tips:What kind of personality does your office have? Who would get along best with that person? Prepare to win the best fit by making a list of organizational attributes and qualities that will complement these. Agile methodologies should be coupled with experienced folk who are natural communicators; as should organizations without process to guide activities. A quiet consensus builder might suit a contentious office, etc. Use the example below to get you started – be creative and modify the attributes as you see fit.Company Persona and MatchHeres an example of how you might break down how a potential new team member might fit in with your organization:Take the time to analyze what your Dream Team needs and how well that fits potential talent.Where do we go from here?Hiring UX staff is rarely easy, but now you can take a structured approach to identifying the skills and personal qualities your team needs within your organizational context.  Like any craft, building the UX Dreamteam takes practice and the occasional mistake leads to growth as a hiring manager. Even when you think you’ve mastered it, there is still an element of luck to contend. You may be willing to compromise skills and qualities for someone who just feels right and your instincts shouldn’t be discounted. Allow them to inform your choices while thinking about the areas weve touched on to build the UX Dreamteam that will make your organization shine.
  • Calling in the Big Guns