Why It’s Not Damning to Define the Thing 

I’ve been known to be obsessed with defining things. I’m addicted to semantics—you might call me a semant-aholic. I believe deeply in the importance of words and get really annoyed at dual meanings and misunderstandings, ambiguities caused by rampant misuse of terms, and just lack of agreement on the meaning of things.

I have found being a teacher amplifies this constant drive towards clarity in language and form. I would like to further argue that this is even more important for interaction design and its related disciplines. At the crux of our practice is the mitigation of complexity, and we do so by bringing clarity to the complicated.

But defining User Experience (UX) and it’s related disciplines hasn’t been without trying, that’s for sure. Great contributions by Jesse James Garrett, Challis Hodge, Dan Saffer, Peter Morville, and a host of others have tried to visualize definitions of UX as relationships with other disciplines. I feel this has been a flawed approach, mainly because each of the other disciplines are as fuzzy as the ones they are being related to in almost all cases.

While the corollary goes that if A = x and B = x then A = B, I am not so sure you can do the same thing with “is related to” as with “is equal to.” We have had a strong tendency to focus on the overlaps between disciplines in our world. We’ve done so because our practice has been one big overlap. The problem is that while A overlaps B and B overlaps C, this does not mean that A is related to C in a meaningful way, as many would like to believe.

Because the collection of disciplines that make up UX practice overlap an often so closely, is precisely the reason we need to have better clarity of the discreet units of the disciplines themselves.The overlap of disciplines like HCI, Information Architecture and Interaction Design creates confusion and complication for those who have to consume, manage, negotiate and value our services. They can do so better if we ourselves work on creating clear uncomplicated messages and definition.

If our true job is clarity and meaning, it is fundamental that we describe our value to others in a clear and meaningful way. Otherwise, how can we, with any integrity, portend to be good at what we claim to do?

But this goes beyond saying A = x. It is also says that A is good at being = x. Maybe B is better at being = x. This is where A and B are two solutions that lead a user through an experience of similar intent. We have to be able to be critical, and to be critical, we need to know what it is we are criticizing. We need a shared language of criticism that is not built on top of fungible fuzzy ambiguous properties. They need to be firm while at the same time flexible enough to evolve.

I have always asked my peers, what is so horrible about this attempt to Define the Damn Thing (DTDT), as it is often called? Some tout it as a waste of time. As I hope I have illustrated here, this is far from the truth. Others find that it can’t be done and that making the examples is all the clarity we need, as we can point to X and say, “Yes, that is X and X is good.” Yes, we’ve done this with Apple’s iPod and iPhone for what feels like Internet centuries, but what I’ve noticed is that when everyone points to it and says, “Yes! That! I want that!” they are all talking about a different part of “that.” This just leads to no one knowing what X really is.

This all leads me back to clarity. Every time we accept when someone uses “usability” when they mean “user experience”—or worse, vice versa—we are fighting our own cause. We are demonstrating that we cannot create the content strategy and information architecture of our own work environment. When we proclaim that Apple iTunes has a great UX at the same time we point out—almost equally fervently—how much we hate iTunes, we are confusing each other.

Lastly, and most recently, I have heard, “UX has won, so we should just use it.” For whom has it won? I believe we are so eager to have anyone understand what it is we do in any way at all that we equate some usage of any of our terms as affirmation that the world understands them. I would argue that no matter how many Fast Company or  Forbes articles allude to UX, or job descriptions list UX, that usage is not the same as understanding or acceptance. It’s like when my six-year-old son uses a big word, I’m stunned for a moment until I probe further to realize that he has no idea what he’s saying. He just likes the idea of what he thinks he’s saying

So our work as practitioners and researchers is not done in this arena. Am I suggesting we remain paralyzed, waiting for an epiphany? Of course not. Keep working, keep critiquing, keep writing, keep discussing. It is part of the work, not a distraction from it. Your work, all of it, will only get stronger from the exercise.

About the Author

Dave Malouf is a passionate advocate for the power behind the culture of design. He is a 20-year veteran of interaction design. Feel free to follow him on Twitter (@daveixd) or Google+ (+dave.ixd).

What I learned as two completely different activities some use the same word for or more correctly use the term for one that I use for the other without having a disguising term for the other.

Collaboration–are 2 or more people working to achieve a common goal. The activities can be done together or separately, but usually the fence between activities is fluid and dynamic.

Coordination – is again 2 or more people working to achieve a common goal. However, the activities are siloed either into small distinct groups or to individuals. Only when pieces are “ready” are their individual pieces brought together and coordinated to fit into a new whole.

For me this is more than a subtle difference and definitely not semantic, because I’m more concerned with the behaviors and outcomes.

In my model of collaboration the team works in unity. The ability for everyone to have impact on the whole in a meaningful way at the moment when decisions are being made and when problem identification is most required is greater.

It requires both discipline and trust but doesn’t have nearly as many bottlenecks through the process and greatly decreases the possibility for time & resource damaging adjustments.

This is particularly important when working on dynamic complex systems. Systems whose parts all intersect each other or have linked relationships require a more collaborative approach because we can’t wait till the moment of unit integration for problem discovery. Insights earlier into problem designs & implementations are cheaper to adjust than later on.

When you use a coordination system you create opaqueness in your team. You create distrust because fear of “toe stepping” becomes a point of vigilance and this a distraction. Further you create a system of delayed insights.

Using a collaborative system, however, creates transparency and engenders team trust while creating opportunities for early insights into systemic problem framing.

The conference is called Up to All Of Us (http://uptoallof.us/) @up2us13. Check out the site for sure. This was its second incarnation and it is a spin-off from another conference that I have never been to but often wondered about called Overlap. The idea of Overlap is that many of us are working in the space of the multi-disciplinary and what we do overlaps so many different things. Up2Us is also about a lot of overlap, but centered on technology, design and education.

So how does it all work? Well, I’m a little fuzzy to all this because I came in late to the show, but I understand there is a lot of collaborative prep before the event. People mention topics that they feel they can contribute and the organizers curate the topics into sections each morning session. The afternoons though are split between “show & tell” sessions and ad hoc sessions that people set up based on whatever they want to do. For example I called a session for people interested in talking to me about my ideas for setting up a consultancy around helping organizations make their design teams more effective by helping organizations adjust their culture towards a more “Balanced Team” approach. But sometimes it is just ad hoc conversations. Someone described the event as the best part of a conference, and called it a “Hallway Conference” because the hallway conversations are the best part of any conference, right?

What I got out of this event was encouragement, self-awareness, a new group that I feel camaraderie with, and bits of knowledge I didn’t have previously. There was definitely a “kick in the ass”  spirit. The theme of the conference was JFDI. No, we didn’t misspell “Jedi”. It’s an acronym for (pardon the French) “Just Fuckin’ Do it” and the mantra of “Do It” (NY Accent for effect) was a constant refrain throughout the weekend.

The venue of the event was outside Austin, TX the weekend before SxSWEdu which many people appreciated so they could coordinate it. We were at Lake Buchanan Damn on a cabin site called Willow Point Resort (http://willpointresort.com/) right on the lake. Campfires at night, with stories, songs, and lots of opportunities for many to see stars they never have a chance to see in their otherwise bright cities. People shared cabins.

For someone who was new to this environment, I felt immediately at home and welcomed into the fold. I feel like I made rich relationships with many people there I never met before and strengthened some relationships with people whom I see in my usual world (but never nearly often enough).

I have 4 major thoughts going through my head right now:

1. How can I convince my wife to let me go to Overlap?
2. I also really want to figure out to come again to @up2us13 (but let it be 14)
3. What would an event like this look like for my more direct community?
4. I really want to do my consultancy to help organizations interested in better design create the culture necessary to allow design to flourish, or otherwise bring “design culture” to organizations that have never even thought about it before.

Thank you Aaron and Megan for creating such an amazing event and I’m only sorry I had to leave early due to my own big mistake. Thank you everyone else for being so warm and welcoming (deep in the heart of Texas).

Everyone who is creative should move every 5-10 years; to minimally find a way to live somewhere else for a yr (sabbatical).

http://twitter.com/daveixd/status/278919010391826432

Why do I put such importance on travel? What value does it give a creative person? And to the point of the exact Tweet, why is long term residency so important?

First thing you need to know about me is that I’m an anthropologist. I never really realized how much it frames my world as a designer, but recently it seems to mean everything. The confluence of design and anthropology seems to be at the forefront of what I do and have done throughout my career.

Back to travel. Well as an anthropologist I’ve always been a traveler. Whether by airplane or by book the idea of visiting the exotic and going native was always attractive to me. Having lived abroad during college I didn’t do it the traditional safe way. I went early and created connections with my chosen country outside the safety of the more controlled university environment. Well, I didn’t go crazy mind you. I lived on a kibbutz for a bit and fell in love w/ agriculture and a whole new way of living in a communal setting.

But why is this experience of alternative living so important as a designer. I’ll highlight 4 basic reasons:

1. Language – even if you go someplace that speaks your native language, changing cultures impacts how that same language is used. Metaphors, frames, idioms, constructs all change as culture changes. These language subtleties give the designer new pathways to think about their designs.
2. Reflection – Anthropologists aren’t as great at describing other people’s cultures as they are at reflecting on their own culture. They wouldn’t want to admit it this way, but the anthropologist’s descriptions of “the other” tell us more about the anthropologist and their culture than they really do of the culture they are describing. What this means for the designer, is attaining a deeper understand of themselves. This is hugely empowering.
3. Serendipity – Design works best when we have a reservoir of material to integrate with into our design process. The more in that reservoir the more associations we can make in new and creative ways. Design succeeds through the accidents of associations. Travel gives you “new”.
4. Break free – This one is harder to explain and was actually the point of the original tweet. When we stay too long in a single environment the environment becomes too known. Our circles get entrenched and our frameworks start to calcify. By taking extended stays where we are not just visiting, but changing our work environments, we are forced to live in new frameworks. We don’t loose what we have brought, but through language and reflection added to a bit of good old fashion critical thinking we can move beyond ourselves and when we return (if we return) we can bring these new insights to our former homes.

Later in the twitter conversation I posited that we should use the number of passport stamps and/or Foursquare checkins as a way to determine travel experience. Yes, it’s not a fair way to do it, but it’s not all together bad either.

This news makes me feel both sad and grateful. Johnny Holland (JH) has been a rare place that allowed me to include my voice where other magazines rejected the types of topics I was interested in discussing: esoteric, foundational, semantic, über-theoretical, etc. As a multi-contributor (I lost count) I got to work with two amazing souls, Vicky and Jeroen. Their guidance, patience and care as editors and publishers was astounding. They were passionate, caring, determined and focused when it came to JH and I have the utmost respect for the community of writers they built.

Then there are the over 150 Johnnies out there and all of our readers. You have constantly challenged me, inspired me, and taught me and this community will need to find a new outlet for our energies and passions.

Johnny, I understand that your time has come, but I don’t have to be happy about it.

I know that I will miss JohnnyHolland.org very much and I am very sorry to see her go.

Thanx for the memories! (cognitive sparks, and emotional spikes).

So far the biggest challenge of being a visiting foreign instructor is about being able to “working the system”. You can’t. You can only go w/ the flow and figure out later if the flow leads you down a clogged pipe, or worse causes you to break the rules.

The biggest opportunity so far is that I get to use material I’m very familiar with but riff and improvise in front of a 1-time audience both at the same time gaining validation on old modes of expressing ideas and being forced out of your previous analogies that may have been too culturally embedded.

An example of this occurred today during my discussion on creating affinity diagrams. In my lecture, I came up with a new analogy (for me). I discussed how as a researcher it is easiest to describe the whole forest or an individual tree in the forest. What is difficult is describing the impact that all the individual trees have in the forest on each other and on the forest itself.

Going on, I explained to them that each datapoint they captured is the equivalent to an individual tree of the total context which is the forest of the data set. They need to externalize every tree abstracting their experience into a tangible artifact. The goal then is to reveal the relationships of the data (trees) thus creating clumps of data.

The new epiphany for me coming out of this talk, was that the real win, is when a researcher can see relationships between the newly formed groups of data that would have otherwise never been realized before those groups were created. That is the power in the affinity diagramming process, that I never truly grasped till today.

Again, proving that teaching still remains for me my greatest learning tool.

So what problem is Peer Loft trying to solve?

To talk about the problem, one must understand the context of the design studio. There are many components that make a studio works. The space is probably the key element, but it is what the space allows that is important. Yes, it is open with limited obstructions. And yes, it has tons of space for making visible ongoing work at various stages of development.

But why? What do we gain from this grand open space with opportunities for visibility? To undertand this we need to understand how creativity works and how design like arts & crafts and art before it harness this understanding. Creativity is a process of associating against a combination of both historical experience and real-time influence & inspiration that is passed through the filter of principles, goals, and contexts. The open space’s goal is then twofold. First, it gives us visibility so we can be influenced and inspired in high volume. Then is requires that we have constant visibility into our collected wisdom to reflect those new ideas against.

Being a physical space, it has a huge advantage over existing systems of collaboration, communication, and knowledge management: passivity. The visibility allows for passive and active interaction. The artifacts being interacted with are available without the requirement for a request, notification, or invitation.

In the virtual world of collaboration tools, regardless of how well meaning towards being designer-centered, miss this very important point. The system needs to be first and foremost (but not limited) a passive system. It cannot require intervention as its primary mode of interaction to successfully model itself after the designer’s studio.

Others have discovered this problem in the past for two reasons. The first is our interaction with the screen as our primary work environment as designers today. There are very few design and other creative activities done within practice and education that is not focused squarely on screens within a 2ft radius from our eyes. This has caused us to loose peripheral vision in the standard digital studio. Yes, we have passive moments of interference and contribution usually while walking around, but these are fewer than they were before the age of digital design tools. Further, a greater number of studios are distributed over distances that prevent visibility in the same way one gets when being co-located.

So what does Peer Loft do? We use the increased network speed, its pervasive availability, increased screen resolution coupled with multi-screen/device eco-systems, and cloud architectures on top of thick application programming to allow designers to re-enter the classical design studio so they have ultimate passive visibility and expanded peripheral vision. In this way they can amplify their organization’s peripheral vision.

Embedded here (below) is a presentation of our vision for how we achieve the intent and culture of a studio in the virtual space.

This video is an early example of our vision. All the components are still there, but they have been both refined and executed more roughly in our alpha release. For example we will not have an iPad version for the alpha, but we can imitate the expected behaviors by using support tools. The current look of the application is also more in line to standard Mac OS X guidelines and less customized.

If the concept intrigues you and you want to be considered as an alpha tester, please fill out the application. All approved applicants will get a demo of our current system so they can make amore educated decision as to whether being an alpha tester is appropriate for both your studio and Peer Loft. Feel free to send us questions.

Peer Loft’s social network connections can be found at http://peerloft.com/ .

During the call I was asked what advice I’d give to these folks who will be looking for work in a few weeks?

Is your company recruiting designers? Will they be in 2013?

Did you know that the best way to get on the radar screen of the best potential recruits is to have a booth at Interaction 13? Why you ask?

Because those that come to Interaction conferences cross all segments of interaction design and other cross-functional UX practices in terms of years of experience and types of engagements (internal or agency).

They are reaching out to peers to engage others and educate themselves.

They are curious about the best of what is happening in the design of interactive systems of all types of technology.

They are proactive in wanting to network in person and aren’t afraid to cross borders or a room to engage in “what’s next?”

This and many other reasons makes Interaction one of the best places to try to gain mindshare of the IxD community and the host of designers who may want to work for you.

It’s never been more competitive to find good talent than it is today and all the players are clamoring to scoop up the talent you already have. So you better be out there to represent.

If you are interested in being a sponsor contact me here and I’ll send you more information. You can also start satisfying your curiosity by going tohttp://interaction13.ixda.org/sponsors

I hope to hear from you soon.