Finally, Google has decided to remove the “On Behalf of…” message from Gmail that so many of us had to put up with when forwarding email under the guise of a work account.
I’m surprised that it took Google this long, since they make a living by being responsive to their user base. I remember emailing the Google Labs folks a suggestion to remove the offending three words almost 2 years ago, when I realized that I couldn’t rely on Gmail for my work email needs, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.
As Google grows up and slowly - or not so slowly - maneuvers to corner the business market, I’m guessing we should expect more of these changes. Or at least, I’m hoping ::fingers crossed::
The Sausage Factory
To what extent does the Client need to know what goes on behind the scenes?
In today’s age of design transparency, where designers are increasingly embedded within organizations, clients often end up knowing everything. This, I think, is a good thing, since a big part of my work philosophy is that “the best ideas come from collaboration”. As mum always said, four eyes are better than two, and it follows that two brains are better than a solo designer working à-distance.
But what about when the Client asks for something seemingly innocuous that is actually pretty complex? Do you make assumptions for them and run the risk of delivering something they weren’t expecting, or do you involve them in the problem’s complexity and get a better result at the risk of being annoying?
A friend of mine at a big foundation once put it this way: “They don’t need to see how you make your sausage.”
Many have weighed in on the topic, and the jury is still out. Any thoughts?
A big part of the guiding philosophy for how I work revolves around the concept of “fun”. Sure, creativity, passion, drive and actually delivering are all part of a job well done, but if I don’t feel I have the license to have fun, good ole fashioned feel-like-I’m-a-5-year-old-again fun, then my overall motivation suffers quite a bit.
I imagine the same is true for our end users. Fair enough, they signed up for a 2 hour usability test, but who says they can’t have fun in the process? And what of our clients - I know that it’s often a very serious affair for them, with jobs in the balance, nay, lives on the line (or it would seem, anyway), but why can’t they get to play as well? “Putting the user first” is all very well as the governing maxim of User Experience, but if it means at the expense of my team and my clients - well, I’ll have none of it.
Fun, I think, should be for everyone.
Design 101
Experience design, I thought, was a staple of the design community. Phone design, airplane design, coffee shop design, car design, everything design - I just assumed that designers made sure to actually conduct basic user research and usability testing before investing hundreds of millions into a product potentially nobody will buy.
As it turns out, Ford is a little late to the party.
Read more…
Design from a Distance
I spent part of the morning last Friday with the team at Architecture For Humanity (and a South African Design Fellow on the ground), brainstorming potential design solutions for FIFA’s Football For Hope program. As it turns out, FIFA has decided that the World Cup 2010 will be like no other: rather than just a sporting event, FIFA aims to use the Hope program to “bring together, support, advise and strengthen sustainable social and human development programmes” in areas affected by the tournament. FIFA’s plan? To build 20 community centers and football pitches throughout Africa, part of its “2o Centres in 2010″ program, and a concerted attempt to leave a legacy beyond the World Cup 2010.
To me this sounds like a great plan but, were it not for the involvement of Architecture For Humanity, whose team brings an amazing breadth and depth of community design knowledge, I would mostly write it off as a CSR/greenwashing play. I mean, let’s be honest, do 20 towns in Africa actually need community centers? Read more…
I spent last night at a lecture organized by San Francisco BayCHI, hosted by PARC down in Palo Alto. It was my first BayCHI event, and the group seemed lively enough - both speakers elicited quite a few laughs, and audience members weren’t afraid to shout out comments and retorts during the lectures.
First up was Ted Selker from MIT Media Lab and IBM fame. Ted seemed like a nice enough guy, and his talk tackled the various trials and tribulations he encountered as a technology product designer over the last 15 years or so. It was definitely interesting to see how he used ‘experimental design’ extensively to explore the intersection of humans and technology - and what its future might look like. This open approach to concept development - and their subsequent failures, many of them in fact, to reach market - resulted is dozens of inventions with varying applicability and real-world usability. However, to be fair, Ted has come up with some interesting inventions over the years, which is certainly a testament to his perseverance, even if very few seem to have made production. I would hazard a guess that this is because A) Ted was trapped in big organizations that resisted his avant-garde ideas, and B) he ignored one of his own “3 Principles of product design”, the use of art and aesthetics. In short, everything I saw except for the One Laptop Per Child (for which as I understand it, he designed the keyboard and ears), was a little on the plain, boxy side. If Steve Jobs had a less successful, less aesthetically-obsessed twin, Ted is the guy. All in all, though, his body of work is definitely impressive.
Next up was Dan Roam, author of bestselling book The Back of the Napkin (and here). Read more…
Make me smile…
It really isn’t a difficult concept to grasp: the presence of a smile is a strong indicator of happiness (at least in the moment).
So many product designers and marketers just don’t get this. If your product and/or service doesn’t include the option - nay - the requirement that I smile at some point (indicating that I’m happy as a result of the interaction), there really is no point. Paul Annett at Clearleft gets this, and lays it out clearly in this presentation (which is designed to elicit smiles).
A friend of mine who works as a Cafe Mistress at a local java joint recently made me smile tremendously when she mentioned that for every customer who comes in without a loyalty card, she puts the coffee credit (which eventually results in a free coffee) into my account. It’s not her job to do this, but since we’ve become friends, she did it anyway.
Lesson learned? Treat all customers as friends (and they will eventually become them). And I don’t know about you, but if making my friends happy with a smile isn’t priority numero uno, then I don’t know what is.
Photo from Bob Fornal @ Flickr.
My uncle is an interesting guy and the ultimate salesman: when he was in his 20s he peddled “designer” handbags, clothes and shoes that he had designed himself. He had no product development background, zero experience with the materials - but boy could he make a sale. From there he moved on to found one of Quebec City’s largest restaurants (now closed down), run a construction firm, and start a TV set-top box reselling business, which he now continues to operate even in retirement.
If my uncle lived by any mantra, it was definitely “never, ever take no for an answer”.
This approach can definitely deliver the numbers that salespeople are often interested in. From cold calls to random knocks at the door to the retail storefront, everyone in sales knows to probe a little deeper after the first “no”. But how do we make sure that persistence doesn’t turn into an annoying experience?
One of the problems, as I see it, is that many companies just assume that “regular” persistent sales tactics will work just as well in a virtual environment (like the web). This is how pop-ups work, as well as their v2.0 brethren, those annoying little flashy ads that drop down and obscure half the screen (which have even, apparently, made it into our inbox). Or rather, this is how these ads don’t work.
A case in point is my Wells Fargo welcome page. Read more…
Castro plaza
Here’s an interesting look at the use of prototyping and “agile” development in a field outside the realm of software: urban development. The project in question is the re-purposing of part of an intersection in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, part of the City’s “pavement to parks” program.
I think it’s interesting to see the evolution and migration (or osmosis) of design principles from the software world into the real one. IDEO’s “design thinking” revolution is perhaps the most commonly cited example of a non-software process employing agile (not necessarily Agile) methodologies, but there are certainly many other examples out there, from Principle 5 of The Toyota Way to basic prototyping approaches used in industrial design more generally.
I love that the City of San Francisco has taken some of this to heart as well, and is flying under the political radar by “piloting” (”prototyping”) projects before actually rolling them out. I’m not sure if the City conducted any user research to see if there is any demand for the plaza (top-down management being a slight problem in government bureaucracies and all that), but I sure hope they conduct user research from here on out to figure out what kind of Castro Plaza, if any, we actually want.
I think I’ll float this idea by the team here at EchoUser to see if we can come up with some time to do some guerrilla research… Gavin Newsom, here we come!
Recently, word got out that Apple (AAPL) filed a patent for something called “active packaging“. In a nutshell, active packaging would allow Apple to plug certain items, most likely iPods and iPhones, into power sources while still in the box. This would allow them to display real imagery and potentially live feeds (assuming that active packaging allows for data transmission), which one would assume is all designed to improve the buying experience and tip someone more easily from a “no thanks” to a “I’ll have one in black”.
FastCompany and TreeHugger are quick to point out that for a company with very green claims, this is a decidedly un-green shift. Is it really true that Apple is willing to risk sacrificing longer term brand equity around its green credentials, all to make their already beautiful products even prettier on the shelves? Let’s take a look at the situation.
This is the basic user experience of buying an Apple product:
Apple buying user experience
Read more…