Design News
Informative Feedback Curbs Energy Use
Studies show providing feeback is crucial for curbing energy use. Users simply can’t understand energy use without context. A Power Cost Controller power strip does provide that crucial feedback, allowing users to change their behavior.
A Social Network Radio
Olinda is something new in the form of a pocket radio. Modular, with social network fuctionality, it has interesting design goals, “Physical things make people think differently and can help them better understand new concepts.”
Olinda is genuinely interesting design, which is what can happen when you don’t neglect the design brief. Creating a design brief can be as simple as answering a few key questions to insure you and the designer are on the same page.
New Article on Branding Through Design
Most companies slap a logo into a hole in a layout or product and call that branding. It is rather a too literal application of the cow branding metaphor applied to branding than one would hope. Consequently what the graphic designer (or worse yet, a creative) does goes on in one silo, marketing goes on in another disconnected silo, and never the twain shall meet in the place where branding matters: the mind of the customer. So I’ve done a series of graphic panels — high bandwidth — as an online presentation you can find here. If you like this presentation, let me know and I’ll do more.
A designer can take graphic dictation, or become a strategic partner to ensure the CMO needn’t pursue any other interests than making the cash register ring. The cow branding idea of slapping in a logo breaks down in the twenty-first century where scientists develop test tube cultured designer meat.
Perhaps Information Technology Does Exist — Meet SuperMemo
It predicts the future state of a person’s memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains. But for Wozniak, 46, helping people learn a foreign language fast is just the tiniest part of his goal. As we plan the days, weeks, even years of our lives, he would have us rely not merely on our traditional sources of self-knowledge - introspection, intuition, and conscious thought - but also on something new: predictions about ourselves encoded in machines.
— Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm
A fairly modest goal for information designers is to minimize cognitive load and leveraging intellectual assets. SuperMemo does just that.
System Dynamics
Whole system thinking is crucial for information work. The presentation An Introduction to System Dynamics explains why the level of thinking producing problems isn’t sufficient to solve the problem.
New Article: 3D Style and Architectural Views
…I looked at all the fancy architecture magazines. None had any pictures of people inside buildings. The buildings were all devoid of people. And most still are. We put people inside the spaces they inhabit. We inserted people into the conversation of their lives. Now, smart architects engage the masses in their designs. They hire firms who do social geography, showing how people really interact in organizations, not what their titles suggest. Informed with this information, they design spaces.
— Are Designers The Enemy Of Design? by Bruce Nussbaum
You’ll find a new article added on 3D design and architectural illustrations.
Human nature is an inconvenient fact foiling many an otherwise perfect design. I used to have a lot of meetings in a building designed by a hugely famous architect. The building’s metal skin sucked up wireless signal like a sponge. The purpose of the building: Business School. I guess real business people don’t need to get a signal.
You can’t fully appreciate the pristine beauty of human–free architectural views until you watch people delay a business meeting while on a reception ‘bar hunt.’
Strangely enough I never see the problems I saw in real life depicted in architectural illustrations. It’s an instructive design exercise to see people trapped in a vestibule due to design. (In design, indicating how a door opens is called an affordance). Right now, you may have the misadventure in technology dubbed destination based elevator technology.
CIOs use Artificial Ignorance Technology
CIOs should start embracing ignorance on the front end of the technology life cycle. That is, how and when technology enters the organization. The request for proposals process that prevails in most organizations is too stupid. Technology organizations deny their ignorance, saying that the bunch of lists they send to ethically constrained but word–processor–powered vendors constitutes a legitimate problem statement.
If you really know what the problem is, put it on your Web site — along with how much money and time you are willing to spend to solve it. Then let the solution providers bid for the right to solve it under the fiscal and temporal terms you have dictated.
— All hail the chief ignorance officer By Thornton May
An intriguing little post on log scanning via artificial ignorance brings out a point in stark relief. Most companies with IT departments have no actual Information Technology. Zero. Information processing is offloaded to humans, and then painstakingly uploaded manually by computer users …where the technology takes the credit. That’s data processing, not information work. Information happens, but it happens in spite of technology. Consequently, information is still scarce, only now meaningfully actionable information hides in a thicket of hyper structured data sets instead of a desert.
Your first information worker should be the CIO, which does not stand for CIO/CTO, the first bit “nescience” to manage.
Non Disclosure and The Myth of The Big Idea
I’ve signed a lot of non disclosure agreements (NDA). Fully 80% of the time, you’re not missing out on anything — what you can read about freely available here is more interesting. In practice, most people don’t seem as concerned about their big idea getting out as not allowing any information in. Especially anything which would end their love affair with the one big idea.
The myth of the one big business idea is just that: Myth. Too often people want to fall in love with their belief in the potential of a specific, singular big idea. Don’t look for just one big idea. The better probability for success is often three or more fair ideas. One fair idea each in the areas of business, technology and design for example. Each idea polished and integrated so it feeds into and multiplies the effectiveness of the others. Try for an ecosystem of ideas.
Ten ideas about Ideas gives a very thoughtful perspective on secrecy versus disclosure, ideas versus execution. Don’t use the NDA to shield your precious, untested and unproven idea from the incovenient information it requires to become viable, feasible and desirable.
Text As Interface
We don’t understand how to make Web content both usable and persuasive. I, by no means, intend to imply that we should sacrifice the usability of content to make it more persuasive. Truly winning content must be both.
— Turn Usable Content into Winning Content
A List Apart has a singular tagline, “for people who make web sites.” That’s why it comes as a surprise when you find out ALA has an entire section dedicated to writing. Perhaps not so surprising when you read text is interface and web designers should learn to write. Nor should it be much of a surprise well written content does more for branding than some of the stock photography being used.
To that end, I have a PDF Design Crux Special Report on Positioning and Copwriting for you to download. Your Homework: If you download it, give me some thoughtful feedback on how what you read applies to your business.
What Game Design Can Teach
11 innovation lessons from creators of World of Warcraft is probably familiar to the young inventor of Elemento, a card game aimed at kids and based on chemistry. Using a game interface for a variety of system adiministration tasks harnesses what employees are doing on break to accomplish work.
The Design Crux: End the tyranny of multitasking and embracing the genius of task fusion: Simultasking.
A Branding Test Most Designers Continually Fail
Ask yourself, or your designer, what’s wrong with this picture. An absolutely gorgeous layout design done in the grunge style, blood red on black. You could put this in front of ten, perhaps twenty designers and not get a hint of anything wrong. Now, add the client business: An orthodontic surgery center.
Blood red, spattered upon the page is not really something a potential surgery patient wants to be reminded of. Grunge, symbolizing unsanitary conditions, is the wrong symbolism. Until I pointed it out in my design intervention, the designer didn’t see the problem. (And this is hardly the exception which points out how great designers are with branding.)
And that is the problem. Designers use the word branding all the time. Most simply have zero brand literacy, of looking at a design like the object of branding efforts would. Yes, there is a recognition of this week’s PhotoShop fad. Yet there is almost no recognition brands don’t happen in graphics programs or board rooms, brand meaning happens in the mind of the customer. Too many designers know the word branding, when they need to add terms like positioning, brand dissonance, as well as the difference between brand awareness and brand preference. Until designers can pass the brand test, they’ll continue using the words, and producing atrocious design decisions.
The Future Tense: What separates infographics from data graphics
The predictive power of data lies in the idea patterns repeat. The infographic What If shows some important variables of where a life could have gone. Click on an icon to read how a possible future unfolded. The descriptive power of data is useful for prediction, as long as current patterns or trends continue. A turbulent present and uncertain potential furture which will result from decisions today require the “what if” information provides.
Art of ’Ware — Now Online
One of the classics of software, an adaptation of Sun Tzu for software development, The Art of ’Ware is now online. (scroll down to see the chapter headings) And Bruce Webster is developing an updated 2.0 version.
Nobody should be allowed near software development without this book. Get it. (Since it costs nothing, I’m not getting a cut of the zero).
Wufoo Shows The Importance of Desirability Design
As I made my selection and moved the curser to hit the submit button a feeling washed over me that was unlike anything I had ever felt with a webservice online. I felt like they cared. I felt confident that my problem would be solved. I felt like I was contacting PEOPLE who have beating hearts, and families, who had felt worried about their missing contact e–mails too. How very humane of them!
— Wufoo, UI that really cares By Samantha WarrenWhen software implements social interfaces while disregarding cultural anthropology, it’s creepy and awkward and doesn’t really work.
— It’s Not Just Usability By Joel Spolsky
As web design moves from bare minimum “can we get it to show up in the browser” function, desirability of use becomes an option. Wufoo shows what can happen with one, lowly UI element repurposed for affective usability. With emotional accesibility comes actual accesibility — until desirability design becomes mainstream, designs are stuck on accessibility for the autistic.
Web 2 …Users 0
Performance issues and complexity hobbling attempts to use rich AJAX apps for daily work, disappointing power users. Since AJAX is all about usability, the usability mistakes need to be addressed. Web 2.0 is not inherently problematic for users — but the myth rich internet applications provide a better user experience by default is the source of a lot of problems.
Not Everyone Who Buys is a Customer
Top 5 reasons why “The customer is Always Right” is wrong and the article How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong bookend several ideas. First, there is nothing so simple than it can’t be oversimplified until it ends up doing the opposite of what it was designed for. Next, not everyone who buys is a customer.
Consumers buy from you, but only based on price or special terms. They aren’t customers because they know only one dimension of your product or service: Price. Consumers know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. While high maintenance, consumers aren’t loyal because they don’t identify the motivational requirements or value proposition. Consequently their feedback doesn’t improve competitive advantage. With this distinction in mind, Lessons to Learn from a Do–It–Yourself Curry House shows how businesses self destruct by going after every sale, for any reason, at any cost.
Like the myth about the Eskimo having fifty words for snow, perhaps business people need more than one word for people who buy. While the factoid may be apocryphal, the idea of better describing the environmental variable most likely to play a role in your chances for survival seems apropos for information design.
Making Computer Systems Even More Annoying Than They Already Are Isn’t Captology
It’s implied that this problem would be solved if only there werent lazy caregivers, if only they would wash their hands," said Fernie. "And that's such an oversimplification of the issue."
— Electronic system tells if hospital workers have washed their hands
Annoying a user until they burn out or submit isn’t persuasive, just typical for computer design. This latest version of the hand wash monitor is an old idea which gets reinvented every so often. While it does seem an ideal computer application, it’s really a system thinking problem. Quite a nice design challenge because it seems so easy to solve …at first. Hand washing looks like a perfect example the computer’s annoyance–based widgets work well for: Seize attention. Slam the user with a compliance demand, computer alertbox style. While you can be annoying by jumping to the solution stage before finding the real problems, technology style, captologists study Factors influencing handwashing behavior of patient care personnel. Address the problems deterring handwashing first, don’t simply make not washing hands more annoying because people will disable the annoying signal. This leads to a worse information state because you may get misinformation on compliance levels.
New Article: An Interview with BJ Fogg on Captology
The latest edition in the Design Crux interview series is BJ Fogg on captology design. The author of Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do Fogg talks about the role captology can play in marketing and corporate change management. Also discussed are the top persuasion mistakes made in web design today.
Why Is It You Never Hear Them Called Result–Aholics?
Case in point: Alph Bingham of InnoCentive remarked at the conference that many of the brilliant “solvers” in his network would never be hired by companies whose most difficult problems they just solved.
— But do we know how to hire for innovation?
A post on why you should fire the workaholics doesn’t cover the design issue. Workaholics often confuse management–by–emergency, also called pyromania, as the only signal of how much important work is getting done. Troubleshooters often become invested in problems — trouble prevention isn’t as visible. That’s why workaholics aren’t called effectiveness or innovation addicts. Fire your “best” people…reward the “lazy” ones suggests troubleshooters are engaging in a publicity campaign to show you how invaluable they are. Strangely enough, with all the “productivity” technology around, nobody seems to flag long hours as a system failure serious enough to get a purported information worker fired for.
If the only actionable signal you’re getting from your information system is whatever is visibly on fire then it’s not proactive and so can’t be an information system. And if your information system dilligently tracks hard work while working smart is undetectable, then I can offer a couple of culture design suggestions. For one, develop a detection system for dangerously dysfunctional monocultures. For another, when you’re in a hole don’t shoot the messenger and make sure you have a signal for when to stop digging. Now, that’s no information system, it’s just head and shoulders above what exists right now.
Only In Technologist–land Would the Discovery Emotions Drive Humans Be a “Breakthrough”
Breakthrough: Scientists Find Emotions Influence Design is only the grudging acknowledgement humans have to interact with products, and like it, for the company to keep writing a technologist a paycheck. That’s probably what has Google befuddled about the huge amout of iPhone users using the search engine. There’s a difference between grudgingly allowing users a search function and designing a cell phone to make mobile search desirable enough for actual use. This is not about techinques, the techniques exist. The problem is the difficulty achieving a breakthrough within companies to apply the breakthrough discovery human nature exists.
You Have To Ignore What Users Say To Deeply Understand What They Desire
I Repeat: Do Not Listen to Your Users is a new article on the first rule of interaction design: Listening to users considered harmful. While true for usability, it’s even more so for desirability and persuasion design. Few people understand you’re designing for what users will want, not what they know they want right now. By the time they can fully articulate something with the precision required from engineering, that product is already outdated and discounted by more nimble competitors. Listening deeply allows you spot which cutting edge users reflect where your user based is going to be when you’re ready with a product launch.
Lego May Have Lessons for The New Economy
An article on the new Lego Universe has this intriguing tidbit “Any structure or vehicle you may construct out of the MMOs virtual blocks, you can also export to LEGO who will allow you to purchase traditional LEGO sets that are exact replicas of what you've created in-game.” In a seemingly unrelated story comes a registry from MIT for interchangeable useful protein sets. Called Biobricks, these protein groups are useful biomechanisms not unlike Lego Mindstorms. Not to be outdone on the consumer front, Bug Labs offers you a set of blocks which can build almost any consumer device you imagine while the Modu Transforming Cellphone system offers a solution to the thorny problem of Mobile Handset Usability and Design.
Open Letter 2.0 : Stop Using the Beta Tag Like an Under Construction Sign
A major upgrade to Gmail is getting the thumbs down from users who complain that the new version is extremely slow, often fails to load pages and even crashes their browsers.
— Gmail Update Draws Gripes
One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is perpetual beta, denoted by the “Beta” badge. It’s all fun and games when you’re trying for a certain “suspension of disbelief” from the user with the beta tag. In working practice, more than quite a few Web 2.0 projects are guilty of abusive use of beta. Users are beginning to get wise to the beta tag as developer crutch. Stop turning the beta badge into a trendier version of the under construction GIF. Beta status is not a get out of interaction design free card. Nor is beta status an excuse for releasing what would be better reffered to as an alpha version. Perpetual beta itself should be seen as a term in need of a bug fix. Continuous improvement might be a better developer state of mind for apps users have come to depend on — and that is a big difference from rolling beta code.
Aviary: Web 2.0 RIA Done Right ...for a change
The obvious question is “why both tools and a marketplace?” As founder Avi Muchnick believes, both are needed for the other to be successful. They need a marketplace for creators to sell their works and encourage use of the tools. They need tools so they can confirm and maintain the copyright of the works created on the platform. …The lingering question is whether online tools will be of a high enough caliber to produce marketable content. …So far, signs are pointing to yes.
— Aviary’s Incredibly Ambitious Art Project; TechCrunch
Web 2.0 is an idea which in working practice is slated to get interesting and useful around version 5.5. While a bit premature for prime time, the Aviary creative suite is a promising candidate for Web 2.1. Some of the online tools are the Phoenix image editor, Raven for vector illustration, and Hummingbird 3D modeling. You can see how mature the tools are in the Aviary blog and the article In-depth review of the Aviary design platform.
Aviary is what other RIAs aren’t. With the addition of Rookery, you get file, rights, and an online marketplace. The tie–in to the Worth1000 audience is brimming with strategic possibilities. Not only has Aviary figured out Rich Internet Apps have to do things destop apps don’t, that perpetual beta is not a get out of interaction design free card, and success depends on an ecosystem approach …platforms beat apps. Web developers need a course on user psychology 1.0 before they slap the 2.0 on. Or maybe, in keeping with the spirit of Web 2.0, only the users get to vote on anything over Web 1.0; giving each site a 1.1 to 2.9 rating. This would help answer the question “Am I Web 2.0 or Not.” But maybe that’s Web 3.0 level thinking.
How Does Grandma Like Them Apples
How grandma sees the common TV remote control seems to be the inspiration for Jason Roebuck’s buttonless TV remote concept. Operated by motion, like a gentler version of the Wii game controller, the TV remote is an intriguing exploration of simplicity design.
Take the “Design What’s Right” Quiz an entire industry failed…
But it sounds like he’s saying that it’s hard to know what's right in product design, and he’ll never convince me of that. A ten-year old could have identified the design flaws in the frames I tested this week.
— Designing What’s Right for Consumers
It’s not difficult for companies to get design right — it’s politically unpalatable to allow designers to be in charge of design decisions. Jonathan Ive of Apple has this to say, “By the time you had acccepted a commission so many of the critical decisions had already been made. Increasingly I had also come to believe that to do something fundamentally new requires dramatic change from many parts of an organisation. …The more I learnt about this cheeky almost rebellious company the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry.”
Essentially Ive is at Apple because he’s allowed to design there, with the implication being he wouldn’t be elsewhere. Everyone can veto a design decision for any reason at most companies, from the receptionist on up. Consequently most companies will continue to fail the Design What’s Right quiz, with disasterous financial results.
And in totally unrelated news Nokia’s Touch UI Hands-On: Officially Way Behind Apple. The hard won lesson for digital economics is to figure out when copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. One big thing that sets up the reverse engineers for failure is design strategy. The reductionist mindset simply can’t fathom the emergent nature of design. Valerie Casey; Creative Director of frog design explains the issue this way, “The push to get products into stores also often leaves critical decisions to be made by non–designers. The more designers skills are bypassed, the less likely products will evolve functionally, aesthetically, and creatively.”
Note On Steve Krug’s Book: Don’t Make Me Brain Dead
The full title is Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. The idea is perfectly compatible with information design, because users want to think …just not about all the things designers force them to think about. Its just so hard to get technology out of the user’s way, designers forget not making the user feel stupid is only half the job. Not feeling stupid does not automatically result in the user feeling smart — usability only goes so far.
“Not stupid” doesn’t appear on many job reviews so it can’t be the number one goal of any successful web site or IT design. Contrary to popular opinion, users in a vegetative state don’t keep their jobs.
So, while usability can get away with not making users feel stupid (cognitive load), information designers have to make users feel smart, confident, and happy. The goal of information design is Maximum Leverage of Intellectual Assets with Minimum Cognitive Load. The best usability can do is to make ccomputers transparent to user objectives — not the best IT strategy for a CIO (or is it CTO? …nobody seems to give a straight answer).
Guitar Hero Gets Interesting
It looks as if games like Guitar Hero are driving music sales. (A game which runs on music …hmm). Not to be outdone, Guitar Rising uses a similar inteface to teach you how to play a real guitar, with the potential to drive instrument sales.
Information Arbitrage: What Information Workers Thrive On and what Data Processors fear
Information arbitrage is about finding game-changing intelligence buried in vast, unappreciated data assets, and exploiting it to leap ahead of the competition. Like a financial investor, the Information Arbitrager takes advantage of an opportunity before the window slams shut (which can be very fast indeed).
— Information Arbitrage - When big data plus big math pays off
Competitive Intelligence in a Global Communications Age explains a subject information workers know, but data processors prefer not to: Information Arbitrage. The objective is to create the Medici Effect. It is exaclty what you should do as an information worker, and what IT systems generally don’t support. The design crux: Stop the tyranny of "OR" (multitasking madness) embrace the genius of "And" (simultaneous tasking).