"TR: What's wrong with product design nowadays?
BROWN: Well, one big problem is feature creep. Companies feel pressured to add features, because they want to put a check mark in every check box in the product review magazines. Home stereos are a perfect example. How many people use one-tenth of the features on their stereo? And, in fact, the most expensive home stereos actually have the fewest features, because those users understand that they actually get in the way of the experience. And so I think what we try and do as designers is use real hard evidence of people in the world to show our clients what things are appropriate and what things aren't appropriate, and help them have the bravery that they need to be able to resist the temptation. "
I like the word "bravery" in that sentence. Features are a measurable way to see "improvement" in a product. Yet for many products, more features is the worst thing that can happen to it. Search should always be simple. Having a hundred features makes it slow and complicated... why do you think so few people use advanced search, despite the fact that it would probably get them better results? Because a single box will get them good-enough results, and is less painful to use.
Sometimes innovation is removing features, as much as thinking new ones up.
Doign a bit of research,a dn found this unaswered question on ia-uk.co.uk,
"I've noticed that most sites can deal with up to three levels of navigation before they ditch the nav bars and resort to breadcrumbs. Are there any examples of navigation devices/bars/etc with four or five levels out there?"
It does seem to be essentially unsolvable.
one thing that makes me crazy-- people who leave you a phone message at a perfectly reasonable speed but then say their phone number at top speeds.
If you are giving someone a number, you expect them to write it down. therefore you should speak slowly enough for them to write, and then repeat the number at an average speed so they can check it.
thus: "I'm at five
user-centeredness starts at home!
For those who found experts exchange (www.expertsexchange.com, long abandoned) the funniest URL ever, truck battery manufacturer POWERGEN ITALIA-will send you into spasms of laughter.
from ntk.net
from the introduction of "Making the Web Work"
"User interface versus user experience: The sudden and dramatic influx of graphic designers into the interactive design area has been accompanied by a host of new terms and job titles. One of the most popular is "user experience." As I understand it, user experience encompasses every aspect of a person's interaction with an organization-- everything from the company Web site, to customer support, to shipping labels, to how the receptionist answers the phone. In other words, everything.
Unfortunately, user experience has become entangled, confused, and synonymous with the more specific term "user interface" a term that has been used in the software industry for decades. Despite its techno-babble overtone, user interface is the correct term for describing the specific layer of an interactive product where the technology and the user come together. Makign the Web Work is about user interface, not user experience."
I find this passage interesting for a number of reasons, not the least being that often in the valley interaction designers are responsible and expected to be good at interface design. And interface designers good at interaction. And graphic designers are sometimes relegated to colorists, if they are engaged at all.
I personally do not like the term "user interface", as it seems to me that it relegates the design to surface considerations... but I'd love to hear from others on this.
When I sat down to write my book, I asked myself the question "What are the key things an information architect should know to be effective?" In the book, I realized that interaction design was a tool IA"s needed, and touched lightly on it, with a strong bias to personas as the way to do it.
Now I'm working with my fellow managers at Yahoo to ask the same question. My team of interaction designers is pretty general as a rule, and they all know quite a bit of different stuff from each other. Their deliverables all look different and their processes are a grab bag. So I'm working my way through to figure out what people are doing, what's working, what isn't working and what should be used to make better products. Big fun!
So one of the things I'm working on in particular as part of this process is collecting methods and approaches that are useful in the practice of interaction design. These might include Information Architecture techniques, but I would assume they also have a few tricks of their own.
So starting from Bob's definition of Interaction Design, what are the things an ID needs to know? Please leave me your two cents, I'll add mine as I keep digging, and perhaps we'll have a little list before long.
Here's a quick start:
requirements gathering
needs analysis
conceptual modeling
personas, scenarios
task analysis
user flow/use case design
...
from Boxes and Arrows: Deliverables and Methods: Special Deliverable #8
Client: I want tabs across the top of my homepage, like my favorite site, [fill in high-profile ecommerce site here].You: We can look at using tabs, but we first need to establish the main purpose of the site.
Client: Can the tabs be green?
You: Once we figure out the main navigation categories, we can make some decisions about how the page should look. But we can't even figure out navigation categories until we understand the kinds of information you'd like to make available.
Client: We have a lot of information, but I only want one row of tabs.
good article.. funny section!
Om which Mr. Nahzah says "Das kann ich doch nicht riechen!" and we understand what people mean by a "scent of a website"
I read. A lot. It’s what I do. I’ve always read tons of books since I was a kid. And When I’m puzzled by something, or want to understand something I begin by reading. Returning to management recently, I decided to read what they were reading (peek at your manager’s bookshelf sometime. Reading their books will help you dip your toe into their mind).
Two books leapt into my field of interest: First Break All the Rules and The Art of Innovation. The first states a simple pretext. In your early childhood too many nerons are firing, and pretty soon those settle into a pattern. This pattern defines your strengths and weaknesses. It’s a mistake to try to overcome weaknesses and be well balanced. Better to play to your strengths, increase them, and find a partner for your weaknesses, or avoid jobs that require your weaknesses to be strengths. This suggests designers are “born” or at least, they become designers very early on.
The Art of Innovation shows how bring creativity into your processes. Implicit in this is the idea that with the right methodologies, creativity can belong to anyone. And while I doubt Ideo would never suggest that anyone can design (they are consultants after all) the message is clear—follow their methods and you two can design great products.
This argument is a lot like the “are writers made or born” and “are artists made or born” and the x,y,z argument… it’s always about training versus raw talent. And usually when you are engaged in these arguments, you can come up with examples of each… they guy who never had a lick of training in his life who came up with a brilliant idea, and the gal who has two PHD’s and makes brilliant work.
Throughout my career I’ve met a lot of designers, both with the title and without. I’ve also met a few folks that probably shouldn’t be called such—people with brains suited better to engineering or marketing who never did get their head around design. But in the end I think the answer is training can cover for a lack of talent, raw talent can cover for a lack of training but if you want to be great, you have to have both. This is probably not shocking news. What I’ve found surprising is how little of design is talent, but how crucial that tiny bit is.
What makes a librarian an information architect, or an engineer an interaction designer or a artist a visual designer? I think it is an instinct for users. And I select the term “users” with some care... I really mean people who use the things we make. The great designers are always with the users, seeing them in their minds, know who are the key users and how to meet their needs, and always struggling to delight them with the design.
Training just adds a boost up for these folks. Personas are a crutch for people—like many engineers—who can’t get their head around who the users are. In the hands of a designer, personas take a good design to great. Classification methodologies help instinctive classifiers articulate many things they are probably already doing but also extend and refine their systems to be still more satisfying for the end user.
So what’s the point of this thought-wander? I guess if you want to be great, you get to make some choices. Do you struggle to make good design? Or does it come seamlessly? Does it energize you or exhaust you? When you watch users in a lab, are you thrilled at seeing them struggle or do you curse them as morons? Did you rush to Amazon when About Face 2.0 came out, or did you shrug and pass? If your passion and instincts aren’t with the act of designing you may wish to look elsewhere for employment. Or maybe you are happy to be a workman. Then you must force yourself to read the books, take the seminars and study and analyze the industry leaders to keep yourself solid enough to hold on to your job. And if you are among the lucky for whom each design you make is better than the last, watching user testing is like a day at Disneyland, your surround yourself with books and great design for the sheer pleasure of it well then your path is set. Learn still more. Study the things you don’t know are relevant, but catch your eye. And study the things you know you should know, fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
And what if you can’t tell? Well, why worry? If you love it, do it. If you care, work hard to refine your craft. And if you don’t care, it doesn’t matter if you are talented or not…
Well, if I was wondering, I feel I now have proof form not only doens't have to follow function, it doesn't feel required to have anything to do with function: Shoe of the Day ::Style with Substance: Heeled Flip flops.
Take that you usuability fans. OW!
Had dinner last night to celebrate the B&A nomination with staff memebers George Olsen, Erin Malone and Brenda Janish (and special friends John Z and Lou R). We didn't think we'd win-- we're up against the onion after all-- and so we toasted each other and ignored the 9 p.m. announcement time blithely. But after dinner, we all got struck with curiosity (and perhaps a tiny bit of hope) and trotted over to a local Internet cafe. The Webby Awards: 2003 Winners announcement told us what we already expected... and we all felt the slight let down of seeing we didn't win. But it's hard to feel too bad when you are competing against professional magazines and formal nonprofits.
Then Brenda once more said what we had all said at various points during dinner... "How did we get nominated?"
And none of us could figure it out.
Everyone says, "It's an honor just to be nominated" but for us it really was... our tiny zine, the equivalent of a garage band, was up against the equivalent of a bunch of studio produced records... and that alone was startling and satisfying -- and a bit perplexing.
I mean, B&A is a magazine for specialized geeks... designers who aren't into pretty pictures as much as they are into the underlying structure of design. Thus our site is waaaaay less accessible to the general public than any other design site that is replete with gorgeous layouts and colors. Our site is kinda text heavy. and the articles are things like The Sociobiology of Information Architecture and Six Tips for Improving Your Design Documentation.
Then again, if anyone has the foolish notion designers are idiot savants who take a product plan and say "ugh, i go photoshop now" Boxes and Arrows quickly shows that design is a cerebral process. And somehow, miraculously, the editorial team at B&A keep finding and refining articles from some of the brightest minds in interactive design today.
When it started, I said I'd be happy if we managed to keep it going for six months (as my team likes to tease me about continually). Now it's been a year and a half, the webbys noticed us, and who knows, maybe a few folks clicking through the nominees got a new insight into what it means to design.
I'm honored just to be nominated.
Spotted during travel...
this last one spotted in death valley, adding an interesting layer of irony...
I saw this spray painted on a train. I'm sure this message has a different meaning for a train geek...
I'm back from a vacation-- Philippe and I drove 2702 miles across the southwest. Las Vegas, Route 66, Flagstaff, grand canyon, zion, bryce and through death valley. more to come soon, as soon as I dig myself out from under my thousand emails.
