Fixin' Supper

Is user-centered design not the right model? Should we be more concerned with the activity?

Moderator: Robert Hoekman Jr. [rhjr.net]
Sarah Bloomer [sarahbloomer.com]
Mark Schraad [schraadsblog.com]
Christina Wodtke [Boxes and Arrows]

Schraad: Says user-centered design is important, but even more important is to realize there’s only so much you can learn from them; many of our motivations are unconscious. Seek out additional information from varied sources.

Bloomer: You can’t ask users what they want, b/c they don’t know. Instead design unexpected experiences that people will enjoy. Look for subconscious motivations, but don’t ask for them.

Bloomer has apparently set her PowerPoint on a 20 sec rotation, and she is talking incredibly fast to try to keep up. She is not quite succeeding.

People aren’t just users….they come to the game with expectations, other demands on their time, goals, etc.

She says at the beginning that profiles aren’t useful but she’s describing these incredibly detailed use cases she builds for her sites….

Bottom line, she says, don’t ignore users but also balance their info with experiences and tasks to get the full picture.

Hoekman: Used to be at GoDaddy. Wrote Designing the Obvious.

Problem w/ UCD: Takes too long to meet business goals. Users don’t know what’s possible. They aren’t application designers.

Kathy Sierra: [not on this panel] The more successful a product or service is, the more the pressure to give into user requests, but one user’s must-have feature is another’s deal-killer.

Robert Norman says you should design for the activity, not the user. With activity-centered design, you let people adapt to the technology. People change, but tasks are stable. H. says you can do ACD much faster than UCD.

Look for trends, not for individual comments. When do you talk to users: When you’re out of your area of expertise.

H says, it’s not our users’ job to know how to design a great system, it’s their job to use it.

Bodtke: How do you know you’re right? ha, good point.

Hoekman: Tracks customer support calls. After releasing one new product, no calls, good.

Bodtke: So you’re a fan of genius design?

Heh.

Schraad: Also not an advocate of having users drive product or design. Research and testing should not direct design, but inform design decisions.

Hoekman: You don’t need to know a lot about people using a particular application, but instead on how people use the computer in general. And you have to know a lot about the application and the topic. He DOES advocate thinking about the user as you design, but not doing tons of user research.

Bodtke: UCD is a crutch to avoid conflict with business people who have a particular goal in mind that we know is not effective. This is a great point.

Audience question: Is redesign better or rolling redesign better?

Hoekman: This is always an issue with existing products. Work your way there incrementally. I believe the major redesign should die.

Schraad: There are existing processes we’re comfortable with that are still broken. If you can create a better experience for the user, you should.

Hoekman: It’s a great opportunity for good customer service. Let people know what’s coming.

Hoekman: I’m not just saying you should ignore users b/c they’re idiots. It’s quite the opposite: I care so much about my users I want to create a great experience for them and the goal is to come up with something even better than they would ever have expected.

Bodtke: Web search is a great example of something that can’t use a persona — everyone can use it — and look at the design that resulted: one box, one button.

Schraad: How do you infer design decisions from something as static as a persona?

Bodtke: How do you deal with clients who have already created personas for you to work with?

Schraad: I wouldn’t trust anything the client gave me. I would work to understand the problem.

Everyone agrees with Schraad.

Audience comment: Uses personas to get buy-in from many stakeholders before beginning a project to avoid redoing later. Good point.

Bloomer: You have to earn the trust of your clients [to get the right design in the end].

Bodtke: Everyone is cheap, people don’t want to use designers, engineers etc. until the end, but then they can’t be effective. Bring everyone in on the front end to inform decisions.

Hoekman: There’s a terrible risk when everyone has a seat at the table, and you’re trying to reach a consensus. Someone needs to make the call in the end.

Audience question: Are there designers so talented, intelligent that they don’t have to follow these processes, but there are a lot of people who think they fall into that category but clearly don’t. How do you know if you’re that designer?

Great question.

  I’m stuffed.

We had a great meal tonight at Guero’s Taco Bar on South Congress in Austin, TX. The building is a former feed store, and it’s more than 100 years old. Sadly, they had to laminate and post a sign to that effect at our table, to admonish diners not to write on the walls.

What would inspire you to write on the walls anywhere, I’m not sure. [Yes, I was that square when I was a kid, too.]

They had so many different margaritas that I didn’t know how to choose. I had "Deep in the Heart of Texas" and I’m sorry to report I don’t remember what made it unique. It was good but not the best margarita I’ve ever had.

But my word, the food here is phenomenal. I ordered enchiladas verdes — one chicken and one cheese. I could barely get through 2/3 of my meal….lots of food. But, just absolutely fresh and homemade. There is nothing better than a homemade tortilla. Wow. I was delighted with the whole meal. Fresh, melt-in-your-mouth tender chicken, one of the most unusual cheese enchiladas I’ve had, and really flavorful rice.

Good stuff.

I’m having to write this post in TextEdit b/c the wireless is down here. I am REALLY REALLY trying not to be whiny, but c’mon peeps. This is a web conference.

Here in 18ABCD again for one of those nature vs. nurture type debates. They’re calling it "High Class and Low Class Web Design." The name of the panel doesn’t really tell you what the heck this is about. It is about the difference between design theories on various sites.

Highlight: Khoi Vinh, NYTimes design director and blogger at Subtraction.com, is on the panel.

Question: Do Craigslist and eBay look so crappy on purpose? Can they just not afford good design? What is "good design"?

Maybe we’ll find out here shortly. Side note: Idea for the panel came fr blog posts by Christopher Fahey at graphpaper.com. He’s the moderator.

The lady on the row in front of me is knitting. No lie. It looks like she’s doing some complex 4-needle project. Hey, I’m not tattling….I’m the lady blogging on the row behind the knitter. Also, this is one of those conferences where you can frequently say, "The lady on the row in front of me…." because there very may well be only one. There are actually more women in this session than the last one, but we’re still male-heavy around here.

Good point: Those junky ads you get in the weekly shopper work. They look horrible but they move merchandise.

Whoa. Look at the difference in the Apple and Dell website designs. Are they doing that on purpose, hitting different audiences?

OK the moderator may finally shut up. I think it was Khoi Vinh who [again, no lie] said to him, "Will you just stop?"

Do you design for yourself or your audience? How do you know them?
Vinh: We def design for our audience. We do a lot of user testing. Says they don’t specifically sit down and think about class.

Elizabeth Danzico [Daylife]: They learn about their audience fr user research. Spends a lot of time with users. There’s only so much you can learn about people fr that kind of research. I am making gut instinct decisions.

Brant Louck fr WWF: Says they are not only working to reach the audience you’d expect them to reach, but also to expand to the extreme sports audience. Ha, funny when talking about something else: "….this harks back to when we were a traveling carny show…., well we still are, a publicly traded carny show."
Vinh: Says they’re more concerned with people being able to use the site than who the people are as a group. [Of class distinctions] I’m not sure how that would be useful when you’re trying to get someone to find a button.

Danzico: They also do not concern themselves with demographic info esp when it comes to how people use the site. Instead, they watch behavior.

Moderator is totally stuck on his class thing. Wants to know, are you like your audience, do you respect them?

Louck fr WWF: [Our audience] isn’t really my peer group. No kidding: This guy is dressed kind hip, with shoulder length hair. Customers in his industry are called "marks." Geez.

Vinh: If you become too conscious of class, the limitations of that framework [can harm you]. Disrespect for your client is harmful to your business. [Note: I thought when he said this, is WWF guy insulted? I think he was, see below.]

Daylife isn’t doing any AB testing.

NYTimes does tons of stats analysis etc but no AB testing, but expects to do that soon. All design is done within the brand. I agree with that….their website completely reflects the brand.

WWF insults Vinh….says, if you have Steve Jobs, you don’t need to test design. If not, testing is really useful. Vinh: Wait, what are you saying? big laugh. WWF: I’m saying they have Steve Jobs. It’s one of those little back-and-forths that you can’t quite tell: Is he serious or not.

Finally got back on wireless.

Fahey: Actually uses the term "nature vs. nurture."

Vinh: No design is inherently good or bad. Design should be appropriate for the audience.

The guy next to the knitting lady looks like Ben Affleck fr behind, right down to the unshaven jaw and slightly sticky-uppy hair.

The gist of this is, the panelists don’t like the moderator’s premise, that there are classes of people who are seeking different kinds of design. I don’t know that I agree with him, but I get the discomfort: Americans hate talking about class. This is from forever ago. We don’t like the idea that some people are better than others, that your money or your ancestry defines your character. So the idea that "good" design is "high class" and "bad" design is low class is a hard one to swallow — true or not.

Here’s something interesting: Do user-generated content and open source principles allow us to transcend this discussion?

Thank you, some guy fr Adaptive Path wants to know, so what? Does design affect mobility? Or does it reinforce status quo? Class for class’ sake isn’t necessarily interesting.

Vinh: This is an interesting discussion but I don’t know what practical application can come of it. Technology being a flattener: [MySpace, etc.] — A lot of that has to do with the nature of technology and design to begin with. For a century it was about controlling the flow of information and now it’s about creating platforms for conversation.

Danzico: Before we were creating artifacts, but now we’re creating platforms, and if people use MySpace to do something [you might have considered ugly before], we should celebrate that, that they can create that.

Guy fr audience has a great point: Don’t those awful foot fungus ads work better because they’re so awful? The topic is uncomfortable but the design functions to allow you to discuss a topic without necessarily associating it with yourself.

Vinh: It’s an arrogant sentiment to think you can design for someone you don’t respect.

WWF: I agree with that. Khoi’s point is perfect.

I’m at SXSW for the next few days. Never been here before but it’s great to be here in Austin. What a great city. #1, it’s March and the high temperature today was around 82. Tell me that’s not perfect. My coworker and friend Summer and I did discover that signage related to parking is less than ideal, but otherwise, the trip is great so far. [Summer lives here.]

Well of course one nice part about this trip is getting to eat at all these great restaurants that Summer has been telling me about for years. I didn’t eat lunch on purpose and arrived starving today around 2 p.m. We went straight to Katz’s Deli. Awesome homemade potato chips and fried pickles. Plus sandwiches. I will say that though I’ve never tried to make fried pickles myself, I’m going to give folks the benefit of the doubt and say that it must not be easy. Because I’ve had some bad ones in my life. Greasy, soggy, you name it. But these today — divine. I could have eaten the whole plate. I managed not to.

Then we went to SXSW and heard a great speaker, Jason Fried of 37signals. This guy, he’s a genius. His philosophy dovetails dead-on with what we do at work, and his applications are solid. [Do we ALL think that people who agree with us are brilliant? I guess we must. But really, he is.] But back to the food.

We went to the Hula Hut for dinner with Summer’s husband Cole and our boss Rex, who’s also here. While we ate out by the river, Cole was trying to explain to us why the Colorado River is called "Lake Austin" and "Town Lake" here in Austin. Now I haven’t yet figured out why [surely I learned this at some point in school?] but it’s not the SAME river as THE Colorado River. These Texans are something else. Maybe they also have a Tennessee River and a Mississippi River running around here. I’ll check. I’m also trying to figure out why the "Hula Hut" serves Tex Mex, but it was great. I had roasted chicken enchiladas.

After dinner we headed for Amy’s, the Austin ice-cream institution. I was too stuffed from our earlier exploits to have any, but I snuck a bite of Summer’s cinnamon and graham-cracker ice cream. It was a lot fresher tasting than any other mix-in ice cream I’ve ever had before. No chemical aftertaste. Yum. Must eat less tomorrow to make room for ice cream.