–Engage

Today I was doing a bit of moonlighting of a fun project a former colleague has graciously asked me to work on with him. I love these opportunities and I welcome them (hint, hint). It helps me stay connected to practice.

During the design phase a conversation ensued about the use of a label. It was a simple label at that. It brought up for me a knee jerk response that was so strong, I couldn’t explain it at first. I had to do some looking around the intertubes for similar labels with similar intents to communicate similar functionality and not a single site used that label. I understood the concept from the visual designer and the subject matter expert, but for the life of me, it felt like a needle in my side.

Then a few hours later I finally understood the issue I was having and it had to do with my mental model of computer systems in general and my philosophy about designing technology.

Here’s the dealio: A technological system can either be a cybernetic augmentation of our humanity or a servant that acts in our best interest. My predisposition towards story and performance has always prejudiced me (I think correctly) towards the later. The systems we create are actors as we are in a constrained & guided improvisational dialog. The former option is that technology in all its forms is a metaphorical appendage, meant to augment our very own physicality.

I will say that I lean heavily towards the “actor” but that is also because I’ve been mostly designing desktop-based systems through my career (web-based included). The ways we use desktop computers is almost always from this position of dialog.

But something is changing. What’s changing is the intrusion of mobile devices into our world. Smartphones which are in hand, and mobile, do behave by their very nature as an appendage, or more accurately an augmentation of an appendage (our hand).

So how does this play out in UI Design?

For me it all comes down to the semantics and syntax of language, but also to the type of controls we use. When designing for an appendage system. Everything should be “mine”. The computer shares the same central point of view as the owner, so of course everything that it displays is from the point of view of its owner. The list of groceries it is displaying is “mine”. Obviously, you can see the contrasting use of “your …” when the system is an actor playing the role of concierge. It is speaking to you in dialog and thus the voice of second person or other makes complete sense.

That is probably the first time I have understood from a mental model perspective how to decide when to use what terminology. But is it so clear. Can I have “your list” on the web version of an application but then have “my list” on its iPhone app? I’m not so sure that makes sense. I don’t have a clear answer but part of me feels comfortable saying that they should be different, but I’m not sure if the confusion would be noticed, ignored, or repulsive?

But this mental model can be explored further. The general tone of language is at stake here. Do the buttons I press have the POV of “self” or are the buttons an invitation from another? Am I “looking for …” something, or do I ask the system to “show me” something?

This notion of personal vs. collaborator can be added to the list of design principles that make up your project and hopeful put in a place that allows you to be reminded of that decision so that the system remains consistant. The POV of view of the voice is almost as important as the tone.

I was honored to be asked to write for IDSA‘s latest issue of Innovation. This issue’s executive sponsor was Alistair Hamilton who I had the honor to work with and was edited by Don Carr of the Syracuse Univ Industrial and Interaction Design Program. The issue focused on interactivity and interaction design. You do need to be a member to get the magazine which is only in print format.

I was asked to write about my experience helping to form IxDA. This article at first was a history of IxDA’s growth, but eventually turned into a discussion of the “design principle” that I still feels sets IxDA apart from other similar professional organizations.

IDSA has given me permission to post a PDF of the article here so that I can share it beyond the IDSA membership.

I look forward to people’s comments, but would request that people not comment here, but rather comment here: http://www.papercomment.com/ so that the entire IDSA and non-IDSA community can join in as well.

Designing a Down-Up Organization (pdf)

Ok, I admit it. My last piece on “open systems” was a tad narrow and not thought through. Thanx Tom & Jorge for helping to set me straight. Well, maybe not straight, but straighter. Here’s what I’m thinking at this point:

1. Open vs. Closed is a pretty good ying-yang continuum and not really absolute. Even the most open systems have aspects of control subtle or overt that help them out. And the touted closed systems have elements of openness that act as release valves for otherwise contained energy.

2. What is often meant by “open” is a wide berth of easy participation across a large critical mass of population.

3. Not every component of an open system has to be open.

4. Open != to democratic. Participation, influence and control are different aspects of open and democratic is only 1 combination of those 3 criteria.

But now here are the issues I’m struggling with.

1. Can open systems really support consumer stakeholders? That is to say that consumers are complex individually and that complexity increases exponentially when we consider “the group”.  The main issue here is around the topic of open participation leading to shallow decision making processes.

2. Is an open back-end system (e.g. developer environment) as important as an open front-end system (e.g. end users, consumers)?

3. Since there are examples of amazing innovation in closed and in open systems can someone really espoused a philosophy that one is absolutely better than the other?

I have some more questions that are more difficult to articulate, but I’m feeling that openness is both overstated and incredibly important. I just can’t figure out how to codify the decision making process for when to use an open system and when not to within any larger system.

I’d appreciate other people’s thoughts immensely!

I came across a piece about the iPad from @petterihilsila, entitled Game-Changers Are Usually Imperfect. Normally, I wouldn’t post something just about the iPad, but I think this piece highlights for me the importance of platform design over component design in products and services (especially where they are combined).

Before Saturday, when people asked me how important the iPad was going to be, I told them to judge it not by the sum of the device that Apple released this week. iPad is a platform, and platforms are processes–so if you’re trying to figure out if iPad is a big deal, envision the one that Apple will release a year from now. Then decide.

This seems like such an obvious lesson but so few organizations have taken this approach forward well. There are huge obstacles, but it is very possible and feasible to do and the competition will if you don’t.

It is often said that interaction design evolved out of the requirement to stem the tide of the ever increasing amount of complexity in our personal lives due to technology. Design & engineering a like had to encompass a personal/human view of the effects that inserting their creations would have on the people who would encounter them (directly or indirectly).

To do this type of work required the creation and assimilation of tools from all manner of the world of art, design & engineering. Basically, we created THE most complex hard to understand and do discipline and practice, to help others mitigate complications due to complexity (said wordily on purpose).

People today have been grappling with where does IxD end and where does service design begin. Hell if I know (or care). Just like I can’t tell you where [fit old design discipline here: Arch, ID, GD, etc.] ends and IxD begins and you shouldn’t care either. What I do know is that there is a new group of people who are creating a community–a vibrant and productive one–which isn’t even really all that new relative to our fast-paced world, that “knows” what service design is, why its important and how to do it. No self respecting IxD with half a sense of integrity could argue that they exist.

Today I was giving a lecture that I first wrote in 2005 about the “history of IxD”. It is all predicated on the sense that our discipline emerged b/c of the need of human consideration by those who were grappling with placing ever increasing complex technologies in the context of the aforementioned humans. Further, we juxtaposed this to the birth of other disciplines like interactive design/art and realized that we can’t do our jobs well without considering aesthetics and classical design disciplines are much better at that than us, so lets look to them for guidance.

Along the way though, we realized that there was much in the world outside of technology that was either already more complex than it had to be, or whose complexity existed outside the ream of technology itself, even if technology enabled that complexity to happen in the first place. Institutions like travel & hospitality, financial services, health services, even retail have become so complex that like the graphical interfaces of yore human beings are being left with the same feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Service designers had to emerge to tackle these issues using new tools and to come up with new frames (such as collaboration) in order to take that same spirit of human consideration that is so rooted in interaction design and apply it to new areas of complexity. Like metaphor was used to bridge the distance between system and mental models in technological systems, so too will new rhetorical devices and frames will be used towards bridging whatever it is that is lacking between the system and human being within services.

All this is to say that at least for myself (and maybe for you now) I now have an understanding of the context that helps me thinking about services better in comparison to my core skillsets, and allows me to engage services in a new way.

I’d be interested to hear what self-identified service designers are thinking in this regards and if this framing at all might help you speak to interaction and other designers understand what it is you do.