Cennydd Bowles on user experience.

Archive for 2010

Free editing help

Friday, August 20th, 2010

No it's fine, take it all.

My recent writing endeavours have further kindled my interest in words and language. I’ve chosen to study the fundamentals of editing, work on my grammar, and investigate the nuances of written style (such as global attitudes toward the Oxford comma featured in this sentence). I consumed The Awl’s What It’s Really Like To Be A Copy Editor with empathy and faint envy.

Regular readers will know I’m eager for the British UX community to get the recognition it deserves. I’ve therefore concocted a scheme to combine this cause with my new-found obsession for the written word.

I’d like to volunteer my (free) services as an editor to anyone in the British UX community. Whether you’re writing a blog post, an article for a UX magazine, a book review—hell, even a tweet—just drop me an email and a timescale and I’ll be glad to offer questions, corrections, and suggestions. All I ask is that your piece is somehow related to UX and that it’s for public consumption. Hopefully we can make some great work together, while I get a fantastic opportunity to read more and offer my modest skills to the community.

Photo credit: Wondermonkey2k.

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The making of Undercover UX Design

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

After 200 pages, 50,000 words and over 1000 hours, we’re done. Undercover User Experience Design is now available for pre-order from Amazon UK and Amazon US. It’ll hit the shelves from 17 September on.

The writing process

Writing a book has been the most complex information architecture challenge of my life. The permutations in which you can sculpt, exclude, clarify and link information are staggering. No surprise then that we relied on our familiar design process, heading up the chain of goals, structure, content and surface. We appropriated the tools of our trade: personas, content analysis, user feedback and deep iteration—but it was trial and error that finally unearthed the process that worked for us.

  1. Research. The scale of the project demanded hundreds of hours of research: absorbing other books and articles, recombining miscellaneous thoughts into coherent patterns. The trick was knowing when to stop. The only way to write the perfect book is first to read every book. We repeatedly had to refocus on our audience and mark tight boundaries around curiosity. Several high-level ideas, although fascinating to us, weren’t relevant for the punchy style of the book.
  2. Outline. We then turned our scrappy notes into a hierarchical structure with the help of OmniOutliner. Somewhere between a vast card sort and a minimax search; an exhaustive attempt to craft as coherent a flow as possible.
  3. “Pigeon”. Turning this outline straight into high-quality prose proved too great a step, so first we threw words onto the page without regard for their quality.
  4. First draft. Only then did we turn this “pigeon” prose into tight writing. Even with this narrow remit, this step challenged our writing skills and patience. We reshuffled and excised enormous swathes of text, while juggling minutiae of definitions and style. Here too we finally cast off our Britishness and accepted dollar signs and American spellings, although we’re proud to say we drew the line at “gotten”.
  5. Diagrams. Undercover UX Design is printed using two inks—black and the blood-red Pantone 484U—meaning our illustrations could only use these colours. We had to recreate several deliverables from scratch to suit this setup, and spent many hours struggling with the technical requirements of the printers.
  6. Templating. The first draft then had to go into an awkward Word template for the publisher. Mind-numbing hours of copying, pasting, and style formatting, including smart quotes and other preferred typographical treatment.
  7. Author review. Our two wonderful editors Wendy and Jacqueline then reviewed our work at both the logical and technical level, and returned corrections in a haze of Track Changes. Most points were minor—grammatical or logical errors we kicked ourselves for not seeing—but even at this stage we found ourselves in deep spirals of “What are we really trying to say here?”. Our response was usually to leave the offending sections on the cutting floor.
  8. Proof. Finally, we returned the author review and the compositors laid the text and images out in a PDF which we then proof-read alongside the publishers. Proof-reading was impossibly tedious but immensely valuable, giving us the chance to fix clunky phrases and embarrassing typos.

The tools

I relied on the excellent Scrivener throughout, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It suited my non-linear writing style and its stability is truly impressive. As we worked concurrently on chapters, James and I shared our work with a hacky Dropbox sync. Only once did we overwrite each other’s work. There’s a strong case for a more formal version control system, but the very thought depressed us. Dropbox worked for us, and again I gladly recommend it.

Our other essential tools included Skype, Illustrator, a good thesaurus, and several Stars of the Lid albums. Trial and error again showed me which albums I could successfully listen to while writing. Anything with vocals or strong percussion was out, creating a last.fm-skewing portfolio.

The effort

Everyone knows writing a book is hard, and I won’t play the martyr. But I will say the extent to which my life ground to a halt surprised me. A writer isn’t just an author; he is a project manager, juggling chapters, drafts, reviews, illustrations and copyright releases, as well as personal time and client time. A book is a constant source of ideas, questions, and worry. The pressure made me regress into quasi-adolescent nail-biting and insomnia, and I’m enjoying the quiet return of my regular life.

I was initially advised not to partner with a co-author and not to write a book while in full-time employment. Excellent advice, which we ignored. For six months I’ve been fond of saying “Having a co-author doesn’t mean you each write half a book. You each write a book”. It would have been substantially easier for either James or myself to write this book alone, but without my co-author’s inspiration, efforts and motivation, Undercover UX Design would be a shadow of its final form.

The money

Our financial return from Undercover UX Design will depend of course on sales, but we shan’t end up rich. Tech & design books don’t sell in the quantities required to turn huge profits, and what initially seemed a decent advance was quickly demolished by currency conversion, tax, bank fees, and other costs. Both James and I had to register as self-employed, go through the US tax system with its obscene forms and mandatory trips to the US Embassy, hire an accountant, and so on. As a wage slave all my life, it’s been a major upheaval, but money was never a priority for this project. Royalties will be a happy accident rather than the main reward.

The illustrations

Early on, we decided we wanted to make a book that was slightly different to other tech books. We politely insisted on a 9×6-inch format (rather than New Riders’ customary 9×7) for aesthetic and usability reasons, and commissioned my friend Chris Summerlin to produce chapter illustrations for the book.

He did a spectacular job. The results lie somewhere between Kevin Cornell‘s A List Apart illustrations and The Perry Bible Fellowship, demanding a second or third look before the penny drops. They’re quirky, slightly tangential and wonderfully drawn. We hope our readers will love them as much as we do.

The result

Undercover User Experience Design ended up shorter than expected, mostly thanks to rigorous editing. There’s no wasted space, and the book’s concision is definitely a feature, not a bug. As befits the title, we’ve tried to create a down-to-earth, practical book that avoids the more ponderous tendencies of the field. We’re proud of the results and I’m hopeful UUXD will become an essential guide for people who can’t do UX by the numbers.

It’s too early to say whether writing a book has changed me, but it has certainly sparked further interest in writing. I’ve learned a great deal about making a coherent argument and writing well. My client work is suddenly full of content challenges I never previously saw. I’m no longer frightened to wield an axe on my favourite ideas, and I now see a good editor as the solution to most of the world’s communication problems. (More on that later.)

Now we wait, and hope others will respond well to our work. James and I would be eternally grateful if you could spread the word about Undercover User Experience Design. Please feel free point people at the website or suggest they pre-order on Amazon. (Please use these links so we get a small referral fee per sale: Amazon UK and Amazon US. Note that the RRP is still unconfirmed, so there’s a very good chance the book will end up cheaper. Pre-order now and you’ll get the lowest price available.)

Thanks to everyone who supported us, and we hope you enjoy the book!

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UX Fundamentals workshop

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

James and I are holding a User Experience Fundamentals training workshop on Fri 8 October in sunny Brighton.

User experience is rightly seen as a critical way to stand out on today’s competitive web. But how does one go about shaping something as vague and personal as someone’s enjoyment of a website? What does it mean in practical terms?

This workshop gives an outstanding introduction to the world of web user experience design. By learning both the basic theory and practical applications of usability, information architecture and interaction design, you’ll learn how to make websites your users love and your company will profit from.

The workshop covers the entire design process. We begin with the fundamentals of both user and business research, including how to draw out unspoken requirements from both groups. We move on to discuss ways to turn your research into design concepts, and tools that will help you structure the site and pin down its major elements. Finally, we look at how to make effective wireframes and prototypes, test them with users and improve your designs through iteration.

It’s £345 until 10 Sep, or £395 after that. As an added bonus, attendees will get a free copy of Undercover UX Design.

Find out more at Workshops for the Web.

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SXSW 2011 proposal

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

Please forgive some minor self-promotion. Meaningful posts are imminent.

This year’s SXSW was such an enjoyable mix of sunburn, Tex-Mex, beer and intelligent conversation that I couldn’t resist throwing my hat into the ring for 2011. Common sense suggests I should stick to safe topics: user experience, the book, hand-wringing over what is and what isn’t HTML5. Instead, I’ve tossed all that aside and and am seeking permission to indulge my fascination with sports data. If you like the sound of this session, please do pop over to the Panel Picker and add a vote or a comment. I’m also named as a panelist on Perfect Your Web Navigation: Where Am I?, so support for that panel would be appreciated too.

The real-time sporting revolution

The sporting world thrives on prediction, with fans and professionals alike studying the form guides to best predict the outcome of upcoming contests. Until recently, the data that fueled these efforts told us of historical or theoretical patterns: how world records were broken, or the likelihood of being dealt a pair of aces. But modern technology has caused an eruption of real-time data, with profound effects on the sporting world.

Live performance statistics now inform us about the state of the game as it’s played: a quarterback’s pass completion, the heart rate of a cyclist, the likelihood of an incoming storm. The data hints at the story hidden behind the surface, giving us valuable insight into who’s struggling, who’s in form and how this might affect the outcome.

The real-time phenomenon isn’t limited to the stadium. Live betting markets rise and fall dramatically with each event of the game, giving an aggregated view of the watching public’s expectations. But we needn’t just read the mathematical tealeaves, since the backchannel chatter of Twitter and other social networking sites also provide a live public commentary on the game. Drop an easy catch, take a heavy punch and people will be sure to let you know.

This cavalcade of data is changing the face of sport, giving us revolutionary ways to understand the ebb and flow of the sporting struggle. This session will explore the power of sporting data, and how design can turn this data into meaningful insight.

The questions we’ll answer:

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On writing

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Writing is a jealous lover. Every hour I’m apart from her, she saddles me with guilt. Time is my new currency, a precious gemstone traded on rare occasions.

Writing is about control. I’ve learned to suppress my florid linguistic tendencies – hence this brief stretching of the legs – and tolerated the cruelties of American English until they became mere indiscretions. I’ve learned that the tyranny of the blank page can only be defeated with words, and that structure is the heart of the battle. I’ve learned to spot ambiguous pronouns at ranges of up to a mile.

Writing is as punishing, as unglamorous, as stressful as any author warns. Would I do it again? Absolutely.

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IA Summit 2010 in review

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

“Graduation is only a few days away and the recruits of Platoon 3092 are salty. They are ready to eat their own guts and ask for seconds. The drill instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their control.” – Joker, Full Metal Jacket

“Show me your kill face!” Dan Willis‘s UX Deathmatch encouraged us to unleash the beast within, taking sides in the battle between agency and in-house design. The sparring was sharp but good-spirited, with claws largely sheathed after the scars of 2009.

The eleventh IA Summit found strength in reconciliation, but the spirit of free speech still ran strong. Whitney Hess was the recruit unexpectedly promoted to squad leader, to the muttered chagrin of a few veterans. She accepted the role with surprising vulnerability and admirable humility. Extrapolating Jesse James Garrett’s dream of a UX designer-turned-CEO, Whitney proposed that it’s time to graduate and take on the world. Keynote compatriot Richard Saul Wurman, meanwhile, headed straight for a Section 8. Meandering and rude, he demonstrated why hypertext is best delivered on screen, not in speech. The audience killed its idol through backchannel sarcasm and planned for a better world.

This hunger to improve led, unsurprisingly, into continued debates about the format of the Summit. There’s no doubt that it’s grown beyond its original constraints and that it suffers from a lack of vision compared to more recent events. I expect that 2011 will see a notably different Summit – indeed, Lou Rosenfeld has fired the first salvo in the battle for reformation. But the conference’s strength is still its outstanding content. Of particular note this year were Kevin Hoffman‘s detailed thoughts on kickoff meetings (sending many agencies scurrying back to their drawing boards), Karl Fast’s tour of the semantic richness of a messy desk and Cindy Blue revealing the face of the supposed enemy in Adventures of an IA in business school. My session The future of wayfinding appeared to be well received, and I’m delighted to have been able to contribute.

It’s a pity that more didn’t share these excellent three days with us, but slipping attendance is understandable in the face of alternatives and the maturation of our field. Although we revel in the company of our passionate yet introverted peers, the field is increasingly eager to take the fight to the outside world. It’s natural therefore that practitioners will look outside the industry for maximum impact – but with some rejuvenation, I’m confident the IA Summit will find a niche of reflection and ‘going deep’. I for one can’t wait for next year’s boot camp in Denver.

Posted in conferences, user experience | 1 Comment »

The perils of persuasion

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

On graduation, I found the business world laughable. I saw otherwise intelligent people wrapped up in circular rituals of ‘doing business’, oblivious to customer disinterest. My cynicism lasted until I discovered user-centred design and realised there were others who shared my viewpoint. From that point, I saw user experience as a refreshing break from the almost Fordist attitudes I’d witnessed, where business tried to create the market and efficient production appeared more important than demand.

My mindset was naive, but I stand by the principle. One of the things that excites me about UCD is that it isn’t only a mode of design: its values amplify the voice of those previously ignored, who now form part of our network economy.

The success of UCD has sustained demand for user experience design skills, and the land rush has continued in 2010. UX is becoming a cookie cutter add-on for digital agencies and I rarely meet a web designer now who doesn’t claim UX proficiency, although not all can articulate what that means. And it’s not just the designers: I also see back-end developers, SEO professionals and marketers rapidly appending these two magical letters to their CVs.

Many of these people do have genuine user empathy and knowledge of the diverse skills required of UX design. Many do not. I welcome them to the field regardless and hope we can all learn from each other. However, I am concerned at the expansion of the User Experience label to include activities I see as contrary to the values of user empowerment. In particular, I’m worried about persuasion design. Although it’s a powerful and topical approach, I also believe it has the potential to severely damage our industry.

A political model of design

Interaction designers often advocate design as an agent of behaviour change. Jesse James Garrett frames this as an extension of the classic information architecture v interaction design debate, with IA optimising for the way people think, and IxD attempting to drive particular user actions.

When I try to make sense of this struggle, the crude model I keep returning to is a political spectrum. User-centred design, empathetic and inclusive, sits left of centre. Persuasion design, individualised and competitive, sits right of centre.

As with politics, one’s stance is a matter of preference and most mainstream modes are appropriate. The problems lie in the extremes: let’s call them radical UCD and radical persuasion design.

Radical UCD

Under radical UCD, the user’s priorities outweigh others. It’s here that we see Naoto Fukasawa‘s notion of design ‘dissolving into behaviour’ realised. Design becomes an ethically neutral activity whose role is to amplify and liberate the end user. The rewards are intangible, long-term and altruistic: we hope to engender loyalty and word of mouth referrals, but the effects are notoriously hard to measure.

However, as with the political equivalent, radical UCD is economically unrealistic and unworkable. At this extreme, design could only cause consensus-building timidity that reinforces current modes – an accusation already pointed at milder contemporary user-centred practice.

Radical persuasion design

Persuasion design doesn’t share UCD’s ethical neutrality. Instead, it makes an implicit but undeniable judgment that certain behaviours are preferable to others. We need only look at the vocabulary of persuasion design to see this. Jon Kolko’s infamous Johnny Holland article talks of design’s contribution “to the behaviour of the masses, [helping to] define the culture of our society.”

While I respect Jon’s intellect, I find this to be dangerous rhetoric from which we can draw uncomfortable parody: Fear not, huddled masses – the design elite will lead you to the promised land. Persuasion design’s assured ethical superiority is unfortunate. Although some of the cases put forward are compelling – guiding people toward better macroscopic decisions about environment, health etc – we must recognise that, for all the good deeds behaviour change can encourage, it is prone to murkier applications.

What privileges the designer to dictate desired behaviour? And since we’re for hire, does that mean we’re ethical relativists, bending people toward whatever agenda lines our pockets?

Whomever the paymaster, the common pattern I observe in digital persuasion design is that its values are uniformly technocratic. Science is better than faith. Action is better than reflection. Progress is better than the status quo. These values strike me as practically Futurist and, at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, I’m concerned that radical persuasion design is vulnerable to similar autocratic pitfalls.

Persuasion design is marketing. UX isn’t.

I have struggled for months to unify my understanding of these two political wings, and now conclude that I cannot. I believe that persuasion design is not part of user experience design. It is marketing. Persuasion design prioritises business goals above those of the user, and its values are irreconcilable with empathy, the central value of UX.

That’s not to say that persuasion design isn’t highly valuable and attractive to business. After all, it matches the recognised business patterns of marketing, making its effects felt in tangible measures that UCD’s intangible altruism cannot: conversion rates, signups, and so on.

I subscribe to Peter Drucker‘s view that business has only two functions: innovation and marketing. Under this model, user experience design is innovation. It uncovers people’s needs and and gives makers the knowledge to develop new products and services that meet those needs.

This, finally, is why I disagree with Josh Porter’s assertion that UX is really just good marketing – however, my disagreement isn’t with his framing of marketing, but of user experience. As far as persuasion design is concerned, he is right – but the equation does not apply to UCD and UX.

Opinions and unwinnable arguments

I am of course straying close to two notoriously unwinnable arguments: semantics and politics. I have neither time nor inclination to enter into political debate or vanish down the rabbithole of Defining The Damn Thing, and I am all too aware that, like any model, the one I give is simplistic. It overlooks the complexities of authoritarianism and liberalism, which are not necessarily tied to economic left or right, and belies the greys that lie between black and white. I raise it instead as a way to highlight the risky territory I believe we are heading toward. All I ask is that the community considers these issues carefully and reaches its own conclusions. I’m happy if those differ from mine.

Even if my thoughts turn out to be at odds with those of the broader UX community, I’ll take heart from the words of Dieter Rams, who also took a stance against the involvement of persuasive techniques:

Braun categorically rejects the idea of motivating people to buy its products by adding features that toy with the psychological sub-terrain of the consumer’s consciousness. Braun refuses to swell sales by exploiting human frailties: neither its products nor its advertising use such seduction techniques.

Those who wish to employ persuasive techniques are welcome to do so. But my focus continues to be on striving to make better products by listening, not driving behaviour change. At times I will use tactics from the persuasion design toolkit, as I do with other tools of marketing, but I will do so only when I have fully considered the ethical implications. I hope that others will do the same.

Posted in politics, user experience | 8 Comments »

Beauty in web design, part 3

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

The final part of a 3-part essay, based on my presentation at SXSW Interactive.

In Part 1 we saw that the web presents an ideal vehicle for beauty, and in Part 2 I argued that beautiful design is reflective, exploring message and meaning. How can we use this knowledge to create beautiful websites?

Making the web beautiful

Meshlike roof of the British Museum

We are certainly making progress, and perhaps I’m being harsh on a field still in its infancy. The web is only 7,000 days old, after all. Technological improvements such as new authoring tools, better screen resolutions, more bandwidth and technical convergence will free us to experiment.

We’re already seeing fresh visceral approaches courtesy of developments such as CSS3, typographic tools like Typekit and Fontdeck, Canvas and SVG. Even the death of web-safe colours freed us to try new visceral design techniques. Better understanding of usability, better design patterns and better web education has also freed us to try new behavioural approaches, such as the horizontal, keyboard-driven navigation on Thinking For A Living. It’s too early to know whether these paradigms will stick, but it’s heartening to see previously locked-in approaches challenged.

However, the key to creating beautiful websites that our users actually love, rather than merely tolerate, is to think at the reflective level.

1. Get emotional

Appealing to emotion is an important way to create reflective design. It means we must understand people, not merely user tasks. What makes them tick? What would they never dream of asking for? How can we improve their life beyond this one visit? The focus is therefore on experience, not just usability. These days I see calling a website ‘easy to use’ as like praising a restaurant for serving edible food. It should be a given, not an exception.

One way to engender emotion is through stories – an area where what we patronisingly call ‘old media’ is streets ahead. Advertisers, writers and film makers have long known the power of narrative and created emotional content to reinforce their message. Content strategists in particular should therefore take centre stage in our quest for emotion, using not just text but other content types. Some of the most emotionally resonant content on the web today is photographic, such as Pictory or the Boston Globe Big Picture.

2. Think bigger

User and business form the classic duality of design. We’re well accustomed to solving for the needs of both, making compromises and tradeoffs where appropriate. I now believe this model overlooks a third piece of the puzzle: the ecosystem. We should design systems that are good for the surrounding web and for society.

Many experienced designers already consider this intuitively through their work, but there’s benefit in explicitly considering these issues in our design process. Are we trying to make a genuine difference, or just churning out more wireframes to keep the client happy?

3. Lead

When did you last see a statue of a committee? The classics of design have typically been created by one person with strong vision and the technical and political skills required to execute upon it. In film, this is known as the auteur theory: the director is regarded as the custodian of the creative vision and the final product is his or her realisation of it. At the least we need to appoint leaders who formulate and communicate a vision for the site.

Assuming leadership can be difficult in real business contexts and can foster problematic attitudes, but without strong leadership, clear vision and faithful execution, we have no hope of creating beauty.

4. Think long term

It’s relatively easy to make something viscerally attractive, but how can we maintain interest after the initial lust wears off? Just as in a romantic relationship, we should consider long-term seduction. The odd surprise can be rewarding, bringing joy in unexpected moments of the experience. By varying things we prevent over-familiarity and the contempt that this can breed.

Possible approaches include rewarding people who explore to deep areas of the system – a tactic frequently used by game designers – or something as simple as unannounced free shipping on your tenth order. Google’s holiday logos provide a real example of how the tiniest detail can keep users interested.

5. Notice everyday beauty

My mother, a retired teacher, told me recently of the ‘golden moment’ in education. It’s the point you always remember, when you discovered something and suddenly your worldview was shifted – that “one way valve to a new way of seeing” again. Educational theory suggests that to create golden moments, you must recognise them for yourself. So notice the world. Where’s the beauty around you?

As we previously discussed, there’s beauty all around us: art, writing, architecture, music, products, nature. We should breathe it in and learn from it. It may even be that inspiration lies close to home. Perhaps web standards specialists could take inspiration from developments in the Flash world, and vice versa. Maybe designers can be inspired by developers. We should be aware and scan the horizon to find our own golden moments.

6. Be brave

Finally, since reflective design is about meaning and message, we needn’t fear making statements. We should stand for something and convey ideals through our work: both ours and those of our clients. Surprisingly, the web design community seems reluctant to do this. At last year’s IA Summit, Jesse James Garrett asked why there are no schools of UX thought. Why indeed are there no major schools of web design thought? Our movements and sub-communities are, instead, almost entirely technique-driven. To me, it’s sad that we’re more interested in endlessly debating topics such as HTML5 v Flash, rather than exploring the important philosophical approaches that drive our work.

Caveats

There are of course some dangers to these approaches. The demands of client work mean we’d be unwise to blindly apply these rules, and there are some difficult questions left unanswered. The most important is whether beauty is always appropriate. I suspect not. When I’m filing a tax return, I don’t want the system to speak about who I am; I just want it to work. When getting the job done is more important than enjoying it, beauty is cruft. Better for designers to let the task and usability have priority.

Reflective design shouldn’t become dogma. Fortunately, when we take time to truly understand users and what they want, it soon becomes clear when it’s appropriate to strive for beauty in design.

Hero design

It would be easy to misinterpret our discussion of leadership and bravery and overestimate our authority. Designers aren’t heroes; instead we must serve our industry, our clients and our users faithfully, discarding ego. Too frequently, I see design that is more about impressing other designers than solving the problem and making the web better. There’s no beauty in hero design, only narcissism.

That said, I think web designers should appreciate that we can play an important role in society. We’re lucky enough to work on the coalface of the most exciting innovation of modern times. We’re on the brink of wonderful things. So yes, we’ve underachieved, but given the evolution of beauty and the tools now available to us, the web is an ideal vehicle for beautiful design. We’re the generation to turn that promise into action.

I hope in five years to look back on this essay and laugh. If we work hard, aim for reflective design, and believe in the power of the web, I’m convinced we can create our own beautiful design landmarks.

Posted in creativity, design, user experience, web | 8 Comments »

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