Designing for Experience

While reading a fine article over at BrandWeek I noticed this:

Similarly,  Tim Leberecht, vp of marketing and communications at Frog Design, San Francisco, said he believed there was nothing new about DT. “Doing in-depth research, that’s what marketers have done for decades,” he said. Leberecht conceded that having customers along for the ride during the creative process  is new, but is more the result of the craze over crowdsourcing than for DT, per se.

DT in this context is Design Thinking of course.  This is an interesting concept.  Predictably I don’t have enough time to go back and do the historical research and say whether he Tim is right or not, I don’t think, however that what he refers to as having customers along for the the ride is as trivial a difference as he seems to think.  He attributes this to the craze over crowdsourcing.  I assume he means that this is a fad, just one that will go away like any other fad.

I do not think that the human-centered ethos that design thinking brings with it is a mere triviality.  I think it is important, and will in fact prove to be the key differentiator in terms of results and value both economic and human.

Economic value: Market research HAS been around for ages and best practices are widely available and are usually instituted leaving little differentiation.  DT can differentiate an organization that uses it internally by creating a better working environment, and can differentiate products and services by creating things that fit with human needs and that are beautiful.

Human Value: Market research is oriented towards seeing a hole in a marketplace, see where opportunity is, and to use the most common parlance “make people want to buy stuff” perhaps stuff they don’t even really need.  Design Thinking on the other hand is steeped in a human-centered ethos that creates stuff that fits a need, and in my opinion, fits the needs of humanity/society.  Many designers are creating products, services, and accompanying systems that are green or sustainable (no I’m not going to unpack that loaded term) so that while they make things that are great for individuals, they are also making things that are good for everyone too.  This is a great example of a human value that DT can bring to the marketplace, not because it’s popular, but because it’s the right thing to do and people want to do, they just don’t have good ways to do it.

OK so maybe I got a little bit on my soap box, but I think my point came through.

Of course all the apple fans were waiting with baited breeath and yes all the details on the new models are very cool for those considering upgrades, but I am impressed that even if Apple is reliant on so-called expert design, (not really doing user testing until after the design is done, and hey they have some of the best experts working for them) which is contrary to the more participatory methods I would recommend, they also seem to understand what people want.

What does your typical laptop user want when they are in the offce? quickly plug in and use a larger display, hence their LED Cinema Display.  Connect the three plugs that are all combined from the display, USB, mag-safe power, and the new mini display port and it seemlessly brings your computer onto the larger display.  No one likes having to have a separate hub, and power cord.  To me this is low-hanging fruit, a basic insight that any UX professional would get within minutes of speaking with or observing laptop users, yet Apple is the first to really do this… Why?

One reason is that Apple is constantly thinking in terms of systems, how each device, service, and piece of software fits together.  While at any given moment not every piece of their line fits together visually (the super mouse for example retains the last generation look and feel) they make every effort to make them all look similar and the white look was with us so long that anyone familiar with Apple will recognize it as part of the family.  The primary reason why ipods are ther #1 mp3 player is because it’s not just a device, it’s a service and software too, the itunes store is flawless when it comes to how easy it is to plug in a device and get music on it (although my readers will know I have never and will never for the forseeable future purchase from the itunes store for other reasons). The new LED Cinema Display matches the new MacBook Pro completely which follows this theme.

I could write much more on this topic, but I couldn’t resist this small post.

The disclaimers to the short post are many: I love what IDEO does, I think they do great things.  I have VERY MUCH enjoyed the clarity of Tim Brown’s recent article in the Harvard Business review, an excert of that is:

“Design thinking is an approach that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods for problem solving to meet people’s needs in a technologically feasible and commercially viable way. In other words, design thinking is human-centered innovation.” —Tim Brown

WOW is all I can say to that. I have Bill Moggridge’s book, Designing Interactions, and it is reccomendable. Yes IDEO and the people who work there are awesome.

All that aside, I must protest to their new homepage.

IDEO just launched a new website. Here is a portion of the homepage here:

As you mouse over the text boxes it highlights certain of the other pages by taking away the pink.  If one should click on a text box it keeps those pages highlighted as well as bring up some other links you can click in those sections.  You may then click on any one of those highlighted pages or those links. You CANNOT click on those boxes themselves to go to that section.

I don’t understand why one would want to click on one of those teeny tiny pages.  With the exception of the one with the bikes it is totally unclear what those things are.

The whole look and feel of the site is radically different once inside the site creating more of a mismatch.  The whole thing is a confusing and not very usable, I sincerely hope that IDEO is using human-centered methods to test the website.  If it turns out that people love it, then more power to them, but I just can’t imagine that this is the case.
EDIT/UPDATE on 8-12-08:
I had someone comment that they loved the website (See trackback below) so I went back to the website with a fresh pair of eyes, and most notably a larger monitor.  The big plus is NOW I can see the navigation elements on the bottom, which helps make the site somewhat more friendly.  Even on the larger monitor (22″ widescreen) the lower navigation elements disappear on many pages throughout, giving rise the the disjointedness between homepage and the rest of the site.
I understand going for fresh, new, unique, but only time will tell if this will actually be appreciated. Leave feedback below.

It’s official.  Apple has sold more macs than ever before in their history, and is making an incredible amount of money doing so.  (But yes they are still evil)

Why?

I believe there are three reasons for this: Macs are beautiful, and there is no reason to choose anymore, and the total experience.

Beautiful

There is a portion of the population who will never care if the things they use or own are beautiful, but for the rest of us, we are tempted by macs, ipods, and now iphones.  I unwrapped my macbook air in front of my mother-in-law and she said “It’s beautiful…. can you say that about a computer?”  YES you can.  The way it looks when you actually use it is beautiful as well.  The backgrounds, the screensavers that ship with it are amazing to look at.  And of course since Apple sells both the hardware and the software there is a tight integration and optimization that happens, making the total package fit together seemlessly and work easily.

No Need to Choose

Yup, with whatever flavor of virtualization your prefer, VMWare, Paralells, or even bootcamp, you still get to have all your Windows apps, should you need or want to.  Of course there is MSOffice for the Mac, so really the only thing that people MUST have windows for these days is almost always a niche program, something their work requires, or something that is just indispensable.

Total Experience

From the amazing sense of place that Apple stores have, to the packaging of the equipment, to the thought that goes into details.  Of course they will charge you for it, both in the premium of the price (although arguable MacPro is dollar for dollar worth it in terms of processing power) and for the necessity of purchasing MobileMe to really enjoy the complete experiece.  Apple understands that the average purchaser of their products is using more than one computer, and has a handheld device or three.  We have an increasing amount of digital stuff that is highly valuable (not just emotionally, but financially as well).  The ability to get at your stuff anywhere, back it up, keep it safe etc will only become more important, and MobileMe is an attempt (no word yet on whether it is truly) to help us do just that.

While I have no idea if Apple has hired ethnographic researchers to help them produce some of these things or not, it is clear they have some understanding of what many of the privileged ones (me being among them of course) want and think we need.

I recently got a nice little email from someone who said they liked the title of the blog.  I want to make sure and blog a few times a week, if not more, so I’m using that as my blogging fodder.

The title of the blog is designing for experience, and I often used to talk about being an experience designer, naively thinking that I could, in fact, design an experience and then a person would in fact have the experience I designed. Then the cognitive dissonance started to come… what about when you have an excellently crafted experience, like say Disney World, and people fail to have the experience that was designed.  I know my wife didn’t exactly love it.  What about the person who’s brother is in the hospital thousands of miles away, but yet they aren’t going home until tomorrow, will they have the same experience as the person without such worries?  What about the person who has never seen a disney movie and then arrives to the wonderful world of Disney?

The last example is unlikely in today’s world admittedly, but still the fundamental issue stands: as designers we cannot control someone’s felt experience.  The notion of experience involves both a person’s external surroundings as well as internal states of all kinds.  McCarthy & Wright talk about the “Threads of Experience” they are the aesthetic, the emotional, the spatio-temporal, and the compositional, and these are but the threads they chose to pick out and explain.  Felt, or lived experience is something that is ultimately constructed by the self.  I freely acknowledge that we socially construct many different aspects of our lives and even our self concepts, but in the end our experience is uniquely our own and dependent on our previous experiences.

All these thoughts ultimately gelled and came together while at CHI this year and was at the SIG on towards a shared definition of user experience.  Throughout the discussion this idea had been developing in my mind.  Yes it’s rather elementary after you lay it out, but before then I hadn’t known it. I finally understood why  Ian McClelland of Phillips Design calls himself an experience architect, not an experience designer.  I was speaking with him after the session and asked him exactly that question, and he looked at me as if I was a little daft. Of course that’s why his title is what it is, because he recognizes that the locus of control is not with him, but rather the person who has the experience.  We construct something that is then to be experienced by someone else (or by ourselves in a different role).

So as a designer I am here to say that while I strive to design for experiences that will inform, transform, delight, and even amuse people, I recognize that each individual will have their own experience with what is designed, and that experience is.  It is reminiscent of Kant’s categorical imperative, not treating other as merely a means to an end, but rather being a member of a kingdom of ends (to paraphrase it as I remember it).

In conclusion I design for experience, a holistic, iterative, people-centered approach where I recognize that ultimately each what people do with what is designed is up to them.  Different uses will emerge, and ultimately what I help co-create in this world is not mine, and never will be.