But to all good things come an end. Johnny is doing a good job and we could go on like this for some more years, but for Johnny that simply isn’t good enough. We want to make a difference, an impact in the community. Not just be ‘another source.’ So for now we will step aside until we’ve found a way to make a difference again.

I want to thank everybody who contributed to Johnny, by writing, editing or commenting. I have a learned a lot from you.

So long, and thanks for all the fish…

I remembered a situation a short while ago when I was out with friends, two of them avid fans of different professional american football teams. They were talking in depth about the current season, making projections about who was going to ‘win it all”. I thought to myself ‘I know football, the rules, the game, etc, but this conversation takes it to a whole other level that I’m not equipped to be in’. And that was when it hit me.

You see, my football knowledge is equivalent to the UX knowledge of many non-UX people that speak up in meetings. Like them, I have a general knowledge about the topic, and may even provide high level insight, but I certainly can’t project who is going to “win it all”. Thus, these non-UX people can know about UX, and their interjections can actually prove helpful to us.

Therefore, as the people practicing UX, our job becomes first, not to prove these people wrong, but instead, to facilitate the sharing of their insight in a way that provides us with more ideas. And second, to use these moments as educational opportunities to explain in further detail our rationale. Be doing so we can teach the value of having a practicing UX person there, versus just having people that know high-level UX. From this, I guarantee that the next time they question our rationale, it will be with an air of respect, and an anxious-to-learn ear. And, how does that not make all of our jobs a little easier?

As designers we are naturally optimistic, always on the lookout for opportunities to design new and meaningful experiences. And recent years software and service development has given us reason to be optimistic. A sensation that something new and game changing is about to happen in software design has started to grow. We have gone from “there are loads of potential for new applications or services in this or that area”, to “there’s a bunch of apps for mostly everything”. And they’re working better, smoother and faster across platforms and services. We are nowhere near to be done with this paradigm, but the development is signaling that something is about to change. As more services and applications are being developed, purchased and downloaded, it has become problematic to keep track of and maintain the ones we have.

Desires have turned into expectations

For several years Veryday (formerly known as Ergonomidesign) has been working with Microsoft as design partners, and while doing so we have been able to watch the transformation process courtside. In the process of developing apps and strategies for various business areas, It has become clear to us that the metro interface and now the W8 OS means a new mindset for users and designer alike.

So thinking of the W8 OS which is the latest contribution to the software landscape, touch first thinking seems like a natural next step tying together the ecosystem of services and devices. Apple are taking comfortable steps in the same direction, and noteworthy in that context is the Launchpad introduced in OSX lion to resemble the springboard in their iOS – Although not introduced as the menu of first choice, I’m sure it will play a more important role in future releases. Google are also redesigning Chrome to be more touch friendly, providing a better experience on their Android OS, thus completing their cloud based OS ecosystem. All these developments are driven by users demanding more convenient and seamless experiences across devices.

These demands have turned into expectations of service offerings. However, while services and applications have grown more sophisticated, efforts to bridge platforms, aggregate information and facilitate exchange with other services have all been developed. While on the one hand these effort have helped users connect to the desired information, they are making simple applications increasingly complex to both use and develop.

Our digital backpack

Services try hard to make sure users are kept satisfied and often succeed in keeping them snared in their ecosystem. A problem when introducing a new service is that users already have a set of services that they invested their time and personal content into and trying something new often means having to do less of something else. Statistically while we download a lot of applications onto our smartphone and tablets, we only actually use a small number of these.

We have a number of applications on our devices we use for repeated use cases. Applications that we are faithful too tend to be used across platforms or as part of self-made ecosystem that engage different applications to accomplish an important tasks. We don’t really get rid of applications just get more of them. Can we have too many applications? Many of us already do.

Cross service experiences potentially allows one service to focus on its core experience, becoming a complete ecosystem by harnessing others services.

From monologuing to dialoguing

I believe that Microsoft has taken an important step, by creating a simple way for services to share information with each other, putting an end to service monologuing. It’s been made possible through what they call “Contracts”. For those who are not familiar with Contracts, its a way for any service to tell other services “this is the information I’m willing to share”, and reversely “hey can I get this from you?”. And adding the Bing search engine makes it much like the old card game Go Fish.

These cross service experiences potentially allows one service to focus on its core experience, becoming a complete ecosystem by harnessing other services. Which those other services may be will depend on the user and the use case. So by letting users find their own way of using the information exchanged between apps, they will come up with new use cases and ways that we designers could not anticipate. Allowing experiences to be extended across services, makes service experiences richer by utilizing information from others. An application becomes more of a starting point in an experience journey rather than an isolated island.

One can further imagine that experience journey as described above, will make specific services more viable as long as the touch point of the information provided can contribute to making enough other services better. Often, specific services that focuses on a core experience gives less reason for frustration than the ones that try and accomplish too many things.

Take for instance a video streaming service, that is specialized in delivering high quality video experiences. One of the core use cases is discovery, knowing which to watch. By adding the power of IMDB data, youtube trailers and social commenting, the song I’m listening to, the shortlist of a well renowned film critic, my location, what’s airing at the local cinema or recently on the news, or any other service that can help our associations while in discovery would greatly improve the selecting procedure.

No video service has the capability to be all of these and I’m glad they’re not trying. We find this information elsewhere, but I imagine getting access to that information right there and then would make the experience so much greater.

So…

I see this evolvement as a more organic development of applications and services, where it suddenly becomes easier to find the voids and the empty spaces that are the opportunities for design. And despite the fact that i don’t need an application for everything in life, it suddenly makes more sense and becomes more viable to design applications that do one thing very well.

For users, service experiences can become more serendipitous, to find interesting content by using your own chosen services as filters. This will lead to better content. What is really exciting is that we can’t yet foresee how that mindset will be applied to more complex business challenges, “the internet of things” or new startup opportunities. It is a great time to be developing new services.

To make matters even worse many people see UX as everyone’s responsibility, and use that as an excuse to comment on all of our work. Thus, the amount of feedback that we receive is not only overwhelming, but it can be, at times, daunting. It is hard for many of us to not take this feedback as a sign that we are “doing UX” wrong.

Athletes also receive a lot of feedback. Align your wrist, go faster, slow down, be more sharp… the list goes on. My freshman year of high school, I tried out for the varsity soccer team. During tryouts, the coach was extremely demanding of me. He had feedback about my play constantly, and this made me certain that I wouldn’t make the team. Surprisingly enough, I was one of only 3 freshman that made the cut, and I couldn’t understand how. I went to the coach who helped me to make the connection. “If I didn’t see potential in you, I wouldn’t have provided any feedback at all. Feedback doesn’t mean failure”, he said. This principle is something we should also apply to practicing UX.

The next time that others are heavily commenting on how you did facilitating a meeting or how your concepts worked, or didn’t, don’t let it get you down. Instead keep in mind that if they didn’t see positive potential in your abilities, and didn’t respect you as the professional, they probably wouldn’t provide any feedback at all. This can help you to stop any negative thoughts you have towards yourself so that you can really hear the feedback, and apply it to make yourself and your work even better.

This is something that great coaches and athletes learned to do a long time ago. After each and every quarter, half, game the team sits together and reflects on what’s working, what isn’t, and how to get better. Sometimes this is a formal process, sometimes it is not, but either way it is a useful one. It allows the athletes to build what is already there, as opposed to starting from scratch. It’s like the old line says “in order to know where you are going you need to know where you have been.”. And this is true not only with athletics, but with our UX field as well.

By taking the time to reflect, even by ourselves, about our last meeting, project, deliverable, workshop… whatever, we begin to evaluate ourselves. We look into the positives and negatives, and we do this, not to criticize but to deconstruct and construct. We build off of what we already know, and can make ourselves better, without throwing away the knowledge that we have built up to this point.

The moral of the story is that projects aren’t the only things that you can and should iterate on. You can do the same with your UX career and skills, but in order to get where you are going you need to take a step back and reflect on where you have been.

Perhaps it’s simply the wishful thinking of a James Bond fan (I have all of the movies on DVD), but I find it interesting and useful to compare what I do to other lines of work. For example, last year, I compared user research to ghost hunting.

What can we learn from James Bond?

In both occupations, an expert is brought in to solve a problem. In one case, an evil madman and his deformed henchman are threatening to destroy the Middle East oil fields with a nuclear weapon. In another case, an electronics company wants to redesign its order management software. In both of these critical situations, we investigate the problem by conducting background research, questioning people, and observing behavior. We overcome obstacles to get to the truth and eventually conquer the problem.

Get the Briefing

After an exciting opening action sequence, Bond meets with M, the head of MI6, to learn about his new mission. M gives him the background of the situation, profiles of the people involved, and a direction of where to begin the investigation.

In user research, our M is usually the project manager or the salesperson –the individual who has had the most contact with the client during the sales process. It’s a good idea to have an internal meeting to get all the details and understand the project before the official kickoff meeting with the client. The last thing you want your team to do is go in unprepared and uncoordinated in your first meeting with the client.

Do advance research

Before engaging the enemy, James Bond examines exisiting documents and photographs, gathering background and situational information.

In user research, it’s also important to do advanced research to understand the client and the project. Examine the current interface, background documents, and talk with people familiar with previous research. You can ask the client and stakeholders better questions and you can better understand their answers if you’re well informed before the first meeting.

Don’t rely too much on technology

Bond meets with Q, the technology expert, to get the latest gadgets. And sure, the cool cars and laser watches are fun, but they only give him a slight advantage. Most of his success is due to his own wits, dexterity, and fighting skills.

Likewise, researchers need to be familiar with the latest user research technology (audio and video recorders, cameras, online testing tools, etc.), but the most value comes from people – both those you interact with and you through your skills, knowledge and effort.

Get help from others

We tend to think of James Bond as a loner, but in truth he gets a lot of help from other agents (i.e., CIA agent Felix Leiter) and by allying himself with others (i.e., Pussy Galore, Octopussy, Vesper Lynd, etc.).

User research can be conducted alone, but it’s much easier to have a partner to help you with note taking, handling the equipment, and providing another perspective. In fact, two is the ideal number of people for user research. In addition to helping run the sessions, a second researcher or designer is someone you can collaborate with to understand the findings and discuss solutions. Two heads are often better than one when you’ve both witnessed the same research sessions firsthand.

Get out into the field

James Bond doesn’t sit at a desk in a command center, observing spy satellite images and listening to communication monitoring devices. Even though that’s how a lot of espionage is conducted today, Bond knows that the most useful knowledge comes from being out in the field, talking to people and observing them in person.

Similarly, a lot of user research today is conducted in a usability lab, remotely through web conferencing and screen sharing software, and through unmoderated, web-based tools. But, like espionage, the best information is gained by going out into the field to talk with and observe people doing their usual tasks in their natural context. There’s no better way to understand users and their needs than by seeing their everyday jobs firsthand.

Observe remotely when you can’t get out into the field

In addition to going out into the field, James Bond can use remote surveillance, satellites, and listening devices to gather information.

Unlike spying, we have to get participants’ permission, but we can conduct usability testing and even contextual inquiries through web conferencing and screen sharing software. It may not be as good as being there in person, but it’s better than not being able to do any research or limiting the research to only the people we can travel to.

Spy on people

As a spy, Bond surreptitiously observes suspects. The advantage is that he can see what people naturally do when they don’t know they are being observed.  They don’t act differently; as they would if they knew they were being observed.

Obviously, it’s not ethical for user researchers to spy on people in private locations. We have to get informed consent from participants, which requires us to tell them about the study. The problem is that knowledge of being observed affects behavior. There’s no getting around this dilemma; it’s just something that we have to accept and take into consideration.

Neverthless, we can learn from James Bond in leading discreet observations of people in public places. Unlike spying in private locations, there’s no law or ethical rule against simply observing people in public sites. Remain incognito and observe what people do naturally when they don’t know they are being watched. Take note of the environment, the interactions between people, the artifacts involved, and the problems they encounter.

Interrogate the right people

In addition to observation, James Bond gets much of his information by questioning people –using force if needed.

Obviously, user researchers can never use force (however tempting that may seem sometimes), but interviewing is a key method for gathering information. Start by interviewing your clients and other stakeholders to understand the current situation, the business needs, and the goals for the project. Although observation of natural behavior usually gives you better insights than asking people about what they do, it’s still important to ask questions to clarify your understanding of what you’re seeing.

Report findings to headquarters

Because he’s out in the field and could get captured or killed, Bond periodically updates M at headquarters about the progress of his investigation. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know what was going on with the investigation.

A user researcher is often out in the field conducting research, doing analysis, and creating deliverables. Weeks might pass between reviewing the final research plan with clients and the final presentation of the research findings. Without knowing what’s going on, clients sometimes wonder why research takes so long. Providing periodic updates makes your client and team feel like progress is being made. It also keeps them involved in the research, which makes them feel more invested in the findings.

Avoid capture and escape death

At some point during every mission, Bond gets captured and set up for an elaborate death, whether it’s to be cut in half by a laser, attacked by sharks, eaten by crocodiles, or burned alive by rocket exhaust. After the villain explains his entire plan and conveniently leaves the scene, Bond narrowly escapes.

Although we rarely come across evil villains, we sometimes do get challenged by a particularly difficult client or stakeholder. With these people, it’s important to keep your wits about you to avoid getting injured. At other times, we get captured by long-winded and opinionated participants who completely take over the session, pontificating on irrelevant side-tracks and resisting all of our attempts to regain control of the session. When you find yourself in this dire situation, remain calm and look for a way to wrap up the session. If you can’t reign in a difficult participant, then it’s best to simply end the session.

Defeat the henchmen

Bond villains are always protected and aided in their evil schemes by at least one particularly dangerous henchman. Bond has to fight and defeat the henchman, often several times, before finally confronting and defeating the primary villain.

In user research projects, the villain is the problem that you’re trying to solve (such as a poorly designed application that you’re trying to redesign), and the henchmen are the people and situations that get in the way of solving the problem (such as an IT manager who says the new application has to be created using SharePoint). To solve design problems, you often have to defeat these organizational “henchmen” that cause the problem to exist in the first place. Achieving this coup may require more than interface redesign; it may require changing business processes.

Kill, when necessary

Okay, this one only applies to James Bond. Although it may be tempting at times, unless you’re properly licensed by the British government, please refrain from killing participants or clients.

Sleep with beautiful women

Yeah, sadly, this one too only works for James Bond. There are Bond Girls, but there are no Research Girls (or Guys). It’s better to just keep your mind on the research.

Call in reinforcements

In addition to henchmen, Bond villains often have an army of fighters to defend their hollowed-out-volcano or underwater fortresses. Bond doesn’t attempt to defeat this entire army himself. He calls in British special forces units to fight off the villain’s army, while he focuses on defeating the villain and his main henchmen.

User researchers don’t solve user experience problems alone either. We find problems and recommend solutions, but we need an army of reinforcements (designers, developers, project managers, and clients) to fix the problems. It’s truly a team effort to solve user experience problems. Don’t attempt to go it alone.

Defeat the villain

At the end of the mission, James Bond always defeats the villain, usually surrounded by explosions and massive destruction. But Bond doesn’t always defeat the larger enemy, and some villains (such as SPECTRE leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld) return again in the future.

For a user researcher, “defeating the villain” means recommending solutions to the problems found. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that those recommendations will be implemented correctly or at all. If we simply hand over our research findings and walk away at the end of the research phase, it’s likely that the problems will persist. That’s why you should remain involved throughout a project to fight the user experience villains as they continue to resurface.

Conclusion

By this point, you’ve either realized that user research and espionage have more in common than you originally thought, or you think that I’ve made a big stretch comparing the two. Either way, there’s no denying that we gained a different perspective and new insights about the user research profession. If you’re a user researcher, you may never watch a James Bond movie the same way again.

Problems thus arise when we try to define what user experience (interaction design, experience design etc also) is. Where it ends, what it concerns, and what it can claim.

Nathan Shedroff touches on this in a good post in Boxes and Arrows. And suggests that we regard experience design in its larger form.

The way I see it, at issue is the question of abstraction. At what level, and on what basis, do we accurately abstract from the specific (situated, contextual experience)? What methods and what theories privilege our claims to understand our observations; and from there to recommend or even predict outcomes?

Experience design claims to know better both a user experience as well as its design. The paradox therein being that no experience is designed. Experience is either in the Now, in which case it is event. Or it’s in the past, in which case it is reflected upon and then retold.

Design, by abstracting according to principles, experience, tradition, and constraints, seeks to improve and master. It seeks to design what will be experienced later. It is already a projection forwards in time of something contemplated and designed now. There’s no escaping the abstraction of design from experience. Experience design abstracts its interactions with the help of concepts, models, and other factors by which we can better anticipate outcomes. Our entire disciplined is a forward thinking, and hopeful projection of future interactions and experiences in some correspondence to models and concepts with which they were thought through (designed).

Here designers seem to bifurcate in at least two directions. Those who seek effectiveness and those who seek pleasure. Experience design either measures its success on the basis of functional adequacy — a utilitarian model of the value of human activity. Or it seeks satisfaction and happiness — an experiential view of human activity.

Brands engaged in experience design practices will tend to receive advice according to the philosophical bent of the designer: use, utility, functionality, effectiveness, or satisfaction, happiness, serendipity, desire. Put simply, quantity vs quality. Or that value which is easily quantified (and measured) vs which is enjoyed (and appreciated).

These are a vastly over-simplified dissection of the discipline.

But it has struck me, over the years, that designers will tend towards the object of experience or the inner experience of the object. Towards the design and aesthetics, the functionality and objectivity of a “thing,” or the inner meaning of the thing, as experienced uniquely by an individual. Object and subject.

Both are needed, obviously. For a design practice to seek a full and holistic appreciation of its own field, it must have a well-articulated and descriptive language for what it observes. And it must have an honest and self-reflective understanding of how it organizes its observations and from which it draws its claims.

There is a vast amount of understanding of how people interact, of how interactions become organized, of how patterns (habits, traditions, rituals, pastimes, games, etc) form and persist over time, and so on.

I can’t see any reason why those of us interested in the place of technology, as object world and as subjective experience, would ignore the work of anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and many others long working in the human sciences.

All design, at some point, must draw its boundary. How much does it claim and on what basis. Clearly we understand that the complexity of human affairs disguises a high degree of identity and repetition. Technologies sit within that complexity, and should not be regarded outside the context of their use if they are to be understood — as objective constraints on subjective experiences.

Unless we dig deeper and think harder about our own discipline, we risk losing the field to what much of design is, and always has been: a matter of taste.

As designers we often try designing ways to do things faster and making things easier for the rest of us. We hope to leave behind something that makes the world a better place. But what is the actual value of the designs we create? How much time is being saved? More importantly, what could humanity do with the extra time?

That’s what we want to find out with you. And along the way you can win an awesome prize. As inspiration Andrew Mayfield (CEO of Optimal Workshop) created a very interesting and interactive infographic exploring how to quantify the value of UX design and how it’s making the world a better place.

The contest

We know what the most important thing of a contest is: meeting new friends. No, just kidding. You want to know what you can win. Well, we’ve got an awesome prize for you. The winner of the contest gets The Optimal Designer’s Toolkit from Optimal Workshop.- the absolutely best set of tools, training and inspiration ever bundled together for World Usability Day 2012.

How to win

Tweet your best ideas on how you would help people save time with a good UX design. You must also follow @johnnyholland and add the hashtag #uxsavestime to the tweet. At the end of the contest period (which ends on November 10th) we will decide what tweet was the most original. You can tweet as often as you want, just make sure it is very creative, smart and good.

Example: “Delete form fields that are not needed for the proces #uxsavestime”

Competition closes November 10th 2012.

Have fun.

Now, my surrender was not giving up. I certainly didn’t throw away my own game plan, I just didn’t push it on to others. Instead, I took down my wall and let in all the other ideas, processed them, combined them with my own to come up with new ways to win. And guess what happened? As soon as I surrendered those around me began to as well.

Being a UX person on a project team is no different. We can think our UX way of thinking and doing is the best way all we want, but pushing that way on to an unreceptive team, or being unreceptive to new ideas ourselves, will never bring success. Instead we need surrender our strong hold. Once we do that  not only will our team follow suit, but we can also begin to take in all the other knowledge around us, meld it with our way of doing and thinking and come to a successful solution for all.

She couldn’t do those things she loved anymore. Horseback riding was physically impossible, just like playing the piano. Those late night dinner parties were just too intensive. That hurt Maria, but what hurt her most was that her friends sometimes made comments that she looked so well. Her friends thought that Maria was winning the struggle against her illness, while in fact Maria’s treatment was not catching on. She was slowly dying.

While I did research on the context of struggling with a severe illness I learned that we lose one fourth of our social environment when we are diagnosed with a severe illness. That is quite a lot, especially in the time that you need that social contact the most. It creates support, self esteem and makes the illness more bearable.

Quite frankly I was stunned by this. Because I have a technical background, I know there are many amazing technologies which change the world rapidly, especially in the way we communicate. But yet we cannot utilize these technologies to communicate about our thoughts, feelings and health.

The Necklace

It was after that experience I started to design for ‘intimate communication’. The Necklace became the first design in this genre. It is a piece of jewelry for breast cancer patients. After each important moment in your struggle against this illness you add a new link. By gently pushing a link of the necklace onto your skin it withdraws a small blood sample without any feeling of discomfort. This link then changes color based on your blood values. The deeper the color of the link the healthier you are. Such information infused decoration allows you to see, at any time of the day, how your recovery is progressing and lets you communicate it with your love ones whom you learned how to read The Necklace. In this way this unique piece of jewelry symbolizes your personal story.

Design for Debate

The interesting thing is that The Necklace is not an actual product, but a tangible and interactive future scenario about that our intimate communication could be like within the next ten years. This design is currently on tour with the Nano Supermarket, a traveling exhibition full of speculative products which could be realized within the next ten years with the help of nanotechnology. During this tour I got a lot of mixed comments; either people loved the design, or deeply hated it. They explained how it could have helped them in their disease, or how they would hate to give up their privacy.

Because it is a tangible, interactive and realistic design people can engage and experience it. They can actually talk about it how it would affect their lives, because it is there, right in front of them. This was exactly the point of the design. It was not designed to be a future product, but to be debated about. Through these comments I learned a lot on how people experience communication in the context of health and on how they see products influencing this communication. It is a design for debate.

User Experience

I believe that we need such realistically crafted future scenarios in order to investigate what we want our future to be like; specially in the case of ‘intimate communication’ via technology. We can than start to create new dimensions in the way we communicate via technology and become closer. The user experience of these scenarios is therefore very important. They either make or break the illusion, and therefore the discussion. This experience is needed in Design for Debate.

As Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: “Objects are carriers of experiences and emotions”. Designers can and should create those objects. The people who engage with the objects then are able to create the future.