Topic: Ideation

The Curse of Knowledge

Sholom Sandalow, Friday, January 4, 2008 @ 11:38 am

You can never know too much about something, right?  Wrong, at least according to a December 30th article in the New York Times.  As we become experts in a particular domain, our ability to innovate diminishes.
"Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, “When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’.” In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself."

Reading the article, I couldn't help but think back to my own experiences with this same sort of issue.  I blogged recently about two related ideas: how interface designers are sometimes guilty of thinking as designers--when they should be thinking as users, and about the mixed bag that is competitive research, which can limit the designers creative thinking by boxing them into predefined solutions.   

Now I see that it's part of a larger problem of expertise and creativity.  The more expertise one exhibits in a particular field, the harder it is to think creatively--to so called think 'outside the box', and the harder it is to imagine not knowing what you do.  The problem affects whole companies, as a certain way of thinking becomes entrenched, and it gets harder for it to adapt to a changing landscape.  The article cites the example of Eveready, the flashlight maker, who's powers-that-be couldn't imagine that their product could be effectively marketed to anyone other than men shopping at hardware stores.

According to Cynthia Barton Rabe, author of “Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine — and What Smart Companies Are Doing About It,” the solution for Eveready, as for any organization bogged down in its own expertise, is an infusion of outside thinking.  Bringing the so called novices--the non expert users--into the discussion at the early stages of design, weather it be product or strategy design, opens the door for new ways of thinking that experts have long been insulated from.

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User Experience Design

DUX2007 – Ubiquitous Computing

Alice Toth, Thursday, November 8, 2007 @ 6:40 pm

Adam Greenfield of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program gave a great keynote presentation at DUX07 on ubiquitous computing -- embedded devices that are wirelessly networked, imperceptible, mobile and post-gui. Devices that are not perceived as computers by the people who use them, but rather as a facet of their lives. An example he cited is the Nike+ product for runners, which pairs with an iPod to give you feedback on how you’re running while you’re running and records info such as distance, time, etc. You can then sync your workout data to either iTunes or the Nike site, where you can then become part of the Nike+ community. It is a computer, but to most people it's just a piece of plastic you put on your shoe.

Ubiquitous computing. Existing or being everyware. Perceived as a facet of the user’s life. Eroding the distinction between product and service

Consider the automobile. When the first Model-Ts rolled off the assembly line, the car was a product. You drove it here and there and that was basically it. With the addition of On-Star, the car’s autonomy eroded as it was now networked with a diagnostic tool, roadside service, emergency contact, etc. The perception of a car as only a product began to erode as well; the car began to evolve to a platform. Fast forward a decade or so and we now have car as a service -- the Zip car. Glimpsing into MIT’s Smart Cities project, we begin to see the car as an interface to the city and not the engine.

As designers, then, our challenge is to design for these product/service ecologies.

Back to the Nike+:  although the device is basically a pedometer it only works for runners, not walkers. In addition, participation in the Nike+ community requires Flash because that's what the Nike site uses. This is a closed ecology and by their very nature, closed ecologies are brittle. Greenfield, therefore, advocates designing these products/services to use open frameworks because of their openness, their ability to be flexible and extensible. The downside of an open framework is a loss of control and for companies heavily vested in controlling their brand, this option may not even be considered. His argument, however, is that open frameworks aid in a product’s long-term viability.

Some final thoughts from Greenfield:

• As designers, we can no longer assume that the product we design will be a standalone product.
• Everything that can be networked, will be.

A final thought from me: it's an exciting time to be designing.

Technorati Tags: Design, User Experience, Usability, DUX07

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Que Multimedia, Part 3, Beyond Typography

Charles Field, Wednesday, May 30, 2007 @ 3:52 pm

As you might expect, I have a suggestion or two. Firstly, I would confirm my standing as a heretic by questioning the hegemony of typography. Put five designers in front of lattes and the one thing they will all agree on with mumbled nods is the importance of Typography. Of course I would too, but this reflexive assent masks a larger problem in how design is practiced and taught.

The design profession has been so deeply fractured in the last 15 years typography has remained one of the few common links between this new multiplicity of practitioners.

Well, for better or worse, the aesthetics of desktop and browser based applications use type in extremely limited ways that are an intersection between common system installed fonts and informative hierarchies. And common system fonts, consider Arial, Impact and Papyrus for a moment, leave much to be desired. However this is the palette of many desktop and browser based applications.

Often the more complex issues in these engagements are how to assemble, change and order vast amounts of information. Designers bring a vastly different focus to these activities than most developers. The developer concentrates on a micro level of specific code interactions to construct a working system while a user experience designer connects the user to a much more general picture. Factors that might be involved include business problems, a users cognitive interest/abilities and the the capabilities of the developers systems.

There are user research activity models, interface and task modeling considerations that have little to do with what anyone would describe as sophisticated print typography. Yet notions of hierarchy and the effect of symbols and composition are elemental to forming easily navigated tasks. So mere type skills will not be adequate; understanding interaction from a standpoint of task and capability is the core activity.

This means that the designer must have a comprehension of the basics of digital design history as well as what is current, and this is equally as trend driven as any part of print culture, in development terms.

I see this as the formation of the question, not an answer. What we do know is that the answer is a moving target, obfuscated by the claims of those who market digital culture. But the challenge to answer it is as real as any aspirations we have as providers of both sensible and innovative solutions.

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User Experience Design

Que Multimedia: Part 2, A Dilemma:

Charles Field, Wednesday, May 30, 2007 @ 3:50 pm

I share the responsibilities of hiring decisions for a small consultancy and being a design educator. Hiring new staff gives me one perspective on the state of education, and designing and delivering classes another.

Our consultancy delivers user experience design for applications; the participation of any kind of designer in these tasks is a relatively new thing, and is too often seen with some suspicion by both developers and financial officers in the organizations we consult with. The ability to convey the passion that is required for the work is an asset, and one beyond any discussion of teaching methodologies. That said, I see it as vitally important work that is rooted in a strong understanding of typographic hierarchies, information design and the mechanisms of interactivity.

Experience in the former role tells me that hiring a design graduate with less than 3 to 5 years experience is usually a mistake. Surprisingly, I have had better luck with geeky film or architecture grads. They tend to have stronger conceptual abilities.

We can deduce that design programs are non-functional in developing graduates capable of exploring and understanding these tasks. This is a simple and troubling assumption, particularly as I am complicit in the activity of educating them.

The organizers of the Schools of Thought conference have recognized a broader problem, inclusive of this issue, and have organized their spring conference around it.

http://superstove.blogs.com/schoolsofthoughts3/portal/index.html

My question is this. Is it presumptuous to expect Design Schools to graduate students with even a roadmap of the skills of information design, interactivity and typography? The problem lies less with graduate programs - where students should have some breadth of experience - but is pronounced in undergraduate education.

I hear no end of lip service; these are core values all lay claim too; yet the results are a vision of the emperors new clothes.

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User Experience Design

The Art of the Thumbnail

Alice Toth, Thursday, May 10, 2007 @ 2:18 pm

I’ve been a designer for a number of years and during that time, I’ve encountered many people who refuse to sketch out an idea because, as they insist, they’re “not artists”. Instead, they rely on verbal skills and attempt to paint a picture of a concept that probably sounds really great in their head, but just isn’t sounding all that great in their description. And even though they realize their audience isn’t even remotely on board, they’d first resort to interpretive dance rather than sketching out an idea. Because, as they claim, they’re “not artists”. Well neither am I. In fact, finger painting back in kindergarden was probably the pinnacle of my artistic career.

However, I did learn about thumbnail sketches, which are very small, rough sketches that let you quickly outline the basic elements of an idea. They’re an easy way to visually let other people know what you’re thinking. By their very nature they’re not a pretty or perfect drawing--objects overlaying other objects, lines scratched out, arrows pointing to a different version, a big X to abandon the initial idea which is now evolving into a new thumbnail, etc., etc. They’re small drawings, done quickly to work through an idea.

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User Experience Design

Web-o-lutions

Charles Field, Tuesday, October 17, 2006 @ 2:21 pm

We have seen many evolutions in website concepts and design over the years. I was talking to my colleague Matt Nolker and I noticed a book on his desk - it was the Internet Design Project book, edited by Liz Faber, published in 1998.

It showed a bunch of commercially marginal but visually impressive sites from the late nineties; back when people put a great deal of energy into brochure sites. And some of them were beautiful - let’s take Swoon as an example. Great graphics, idiosyncratic vernacular forms. Nice work, yet it just looks like a dead zone eight years later.

It made me realize that brochure sites are beyond dead. This is not an easy admission, as I have a couple languishing out in the electronic ether. The currency of websites now is their very currency. When does it get refreshed, what value can be packed up and taken away, or better yet consumed now? Immediacy is so important that aesthetics are largely irrelevant.

With the expectation of daily content, the visuals fall into two classes; an access point to an information nugget or a focussed experiment. For the everyday maintenance, static, highly mediated marketing images are pointless. Look at ten sites and email me if you find a photograph of a business person who isn’t a stockphoto. Look at 20 sites, and you will start to see the same photos recur.

What a site requires is a visual language that is extensible, and dare I say these words, fun to update.

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Innovation Through “Crowdsourcing”

Bob Moll, Friday, July 21, 2006 @ 7:15 am

Companies are leveraging a new technique called “crowdsourcing”  to bring customers into the design process. A recent Businessweek article describes crowdsourcing as “the unofficial (but catchy) name of an IT-enabled business trend in which companies get unpaid or low-paid amateurs to design products, create content, even tackle corporate R&D problems in their spare time.”

The article goes on to describe different flavors of crowdsourcing. For example, a T-shirt company called Threadless relies on the results of a contest to define its new products. Here the customer is the designer. Another example is a furniture company called Muji (Muji.net). Muji relies on its consumer network for generating and ranking ideas, but then turns the highly ranked ideas to professional designers for creation of new products.

While crowdsourcing may work well for consumer products, can it work for more complex products? The article asks this question and the answer is perhaps not a simple one. The more complex something is, the smaller the “crowd” will be that has the interest and knowledge to give input. Nonetheless, the ability to easily network people together provides a reason to believe bringing customers into the innovation process will happen more and more as companies look to create a competitive edge through innovation.

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User Experience Design

Rapid PowerPoint Prototypes for Ajax and Rich Interactions

Bob Moll, Thursday, May 11, 2006 @ 3:02 pm

As applications take the web from static pages to dynamic screens, how can the designer effectively mock up and vet early-stage dynamic screen designs? PowerPoint provides one possible vehicle.

We have found PowerPoint to be effective because it has very easy to use animation, screen transition and click-through capabilities. While the prototypes we produced were not highly polished, they were highly effective in vetting the ideas for a new website IA with three key groups: stakeholders, developers and graphic designers.

One specific effect that was used was the screen transition called “Wipe”. The Wipe effect (available in up, down, left and right versions) enables easy simulation of things like sliding drawers. You simply make a slide with the closed state of the drawer followed by a slide with the open state of the drawer and apply the Wipe transition.

Though the technique is simple, it is quite effective at communicating the screen ideas to users and developers.

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User Experience Design

Maximizing Meetings:

Charles Field, Thursday, April 20, 2006 @ 7:11 pm

or 6 blind men and an elephant, in a phone conference..

We had a meeting a few days ago with a senior rep at one of our clients. This client was a trainer for the product we are doing some substantial revisions on - we learned more about it’s capabilities and the histories of use in 20 minutes from him than we could have in months of studying the app.

So what do you do with that information once you have it? What is the best way to cut that iceberg of information into usable pieces ?  Iceberg is the right term, because most of it is still hidden.

We decided to separate & each write our own version of the truth. Then to reconvene and compare/contrast/collect the ideas we heard while brainstorming more. This way we each define our individual perceptions, without the dynamics of personality minimizing contributions. We have tried this numerous times & found it highly effective for maximizing creative ideation.

And it is worth noting that information gathering at this phase is anything but linear. There are snippets of narrative, hard parameters that must be recognized, ideas that immediately strike you as being part of a larger solution. Capturing these, sorting them and keeping them available to the team is an ongoing challenge to which there are both simple & complex solutions. These can range from the utility of having a well designed directory with ongoing and meta class folders to full CMS solutions that enable sophisticated search. The solution most useful is determined by utility, cost & scale.

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