Too Big to Tweet

I don’t believe in UX Design.

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:13:23 -0500

For a while now I’ve held the belief that UX Design doesn’t really exist, or more to the point shouldn’t. I’ve shared this belief a few times and gotten less than friendly reactions, so I’ve been keeping it to myself lately. But recent events have made me want to get it off my chest, so bear with me…

Users have experiences.

People have experiences all the time. Life is one giant experience that our brains break down, dividing moments into those that are memorable and those that aren’t and metaphorically “tagging” them as pleasant, painful, sad, exciting, etc.

I’m not arguing against that at all. What I’m talking about here is that User Experience Design doesn’t exist.

Reason 1: Users’ experiences are built on EVERYTHING.

An individual’s experience when using a product is affected by just about everything that went into making that product: the decisions on what functionality to include, how they work, how they look, how they’re built. As such, it’s important to recognize that everyone who was involved in the product’s creation had a responsibility to optimize that product for the desired experience.

Yet look at how we often set up our teams and organizations. We have our visual designers, developers, content writers/strategists, researchers… and UX designers. To organize our skill sets in a way that would give weight to the notion that one group in this list holds the responsibility for the user’s experience is counterproductive.

Reason 2: UX Designers often don’t define experiences.

Some will argue that there is a strategic component that the UX Designer is responsible for and that this is why they get the title. The UX Designer should be defining the experiences they want users to have.

I don’t necessarily disagree. I do believe in an approach to design called “Experience Design” (described at the end of this post) in which experience definition is the first step in designing.

But in most of the teams I’ve observed, this never happens. The UX team immediately dives into figuring out things like interface components, layouts, sitemaps and task flows. These things are critical, yes. But to say that UX design is the definition of how things are organized and how users will interact with them is inaccurate.

As I mentioned above, the user’s experience is built on much more than that. And besides, if UX Designers are just doing IA and IxD work, why aren’t we calling them that?

Reason 3: It’s not “not visual design”.

We seem to have let “Design” get away from us. More and more often, when I hear people say “I’m a UX designer” it seems quite apparent that one thing they’re trying to communicate is: “I’m not a visual designer”.

It’s clear that for most of the general population “design” translates to “prettification” and I understand where the desire to distance ourselves from that idea comes from.

Having labels to differentiate between things is exactly why they exist, but I can’t help feeling that by bucketing people under the label “UX” Design, we are allowing a misunderstanding of what design really is to continue.

Design is problem-solving, plain and simple. It is the creation of a solution aimed at achieving a specific outcome/goal (or a set of them). It can be done consciously or subconsciously. The fact that making things look nice is what most people think of when they hear “design” does not change what it is, it just means we’ve done a bad job at making what it actually is clear.

Reason 4: It’s not about technology.

Another argument I hear often is that the “UX” in the UX Design label signifies that we’re working in technology, designing digital products and services. But how can that be?

Use of any product or service, physical, digital or otherwise, results in an experience. The term “user experience” doesn’t help identify us as working in the digital space at all.

Reason 5: We’re not doing anything new.

Great designers, regardless of the types of things they design, have always understood the importance of experience, and of understanding who will be using their product and in what context that use will occur. None of this is new.

What we’ve done is take these concepts and methods and expose them to people working in the digital space. A space that was very immature with regard to how to design well.

Why was it so immature? The space is an easy one to get into. It doesn’t take much access to a computer, some software and maybe an internet connection. And most of the people coming into the space have no real background in “design”. Think about it. Marketers, graphic designers, computer science and info tech specialists… none of these areas of study focus on the creation of a product or service.

What Jesse James Garrett and others credited with the introduction of UXD did was expose people working in technology to some of the concepts and considerations that are needed for designing well. They did this under the label UX and it stuck. But it wasn’t really anything new. We owe them a great deal for opening so many people’s eyes, but it’s time to let the label go.

I once saw Dan Saffer tweet something along the lines of “You can replace 99% of the instances in which people use the label “UX Design” with just “Design” and the meaning is exactly the same.” I completely concur. What we’re doing is just design. Let’s accept that and stop trying to separate ourselves here.

Experience Design does exist.

Now, after putting my reasoning out there, I want to come back and say that I do believe in “Experience Design”. And no, there is more to it than just dropping the word “user”.

Experience Design is a mode of making design decisions. In it you first capture the experience you want people to have with a service or product. There are tons of ways to do this: writing out scenarios, comics, journey maps, anything that allows you to articulate how someone feels, behaves, thinks, etc as they interact with your product.

From here you make your design decisions like:

What functionality should be included?
What should the interface look like?
What should the tone of content be?

… and so on.

Note that these decisions aren’t just IA and IxD decisions. They are ALL decisions that affect the individual having the experience. They can be visual design decisions, content decisions, development and infrastructure decisions, etc.

Now some people working under the title UX Design operate in this way, but many do not. As I mentioned before, most of the people I’ve met spend little to no time defining the experience before diving into the interface.

Also, please note that I’m not saying that as designers we can specify that a particular individual will have a specific experience when using a product. There are too many variables beyond our control for this. What I’m talking about is the optimization of a product’s design so that for most people in its audience, most of the components of the desired experience are elicited.

DTDT matters.

OK, so looking over what I’ve laid out, I can see that many people will see this as a semantic argument. I get that, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

What we call things is important. It’s critical in our ability to communicate well. Many of challenges we face in our various communities and societies stem from the fact that when we talk, we make agreements and arrangements because we’ve used the same terms and labels assuming they mean the same things to all of us. But then we walk away and do things differently, because to each of us, those terms and labels meant something a little different.

So yes, this is a DTDT argument I’m making. Love me or hate me for it, but I think it’s important.

So that’s my thinking. My goal here is not to discredit any of the work people working as UX Designers are doing. It is all important. Nor am I trying to call anyone a liar/scammer/con-artist or whatever. I’m merely trying to say that the label “UX Design” is not meaningful or needed.

As I mentioned, recent events (including some new goals I’ve set for my career path) have lead me to want to put this out there. I’m glad to see that others like Peter Merholz are thinking similar things. Honestly, it’s scary to be of the opinion that the community you’re a part of is based on a falsehood. I’m happy I’m not alone in it.

Suggestions for writing a good conference presentation

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:14:28 -0500

I feel very lucky to have started a new phase of my career over the past year and a half as a public speaker. It’s the realization of a goal I set for myself a few years ago. And while it’s not the same as being an educator, a role I experienced only briefly, it gives me a lot of the same satisfaction and enjoyment.

Over the I’ve been speaking, and in conjunction attending many more conferences, I’ve formulated a few guiding rules for myself to help make sure I create solid presentations. In the off chance they’re helpful to others, I figured I’d share them here.

Set the right goal.

In my opinion the goal of a good conference talk is not to “teach” but to expose. You want to get your audience to open themselves up to a new idea or way of looking at something. You don’t have to explain every intricate detail. There won’t be a pop quiz for them at the end. Just give them enough interesting points that, when you’re done and get off stage, they’re left saying to themselves: “Damn, that was kind of cool, I should look into that more.”

Show them you’ve been there.

I owe this one to Jared Spool, who told me that in order to get an audience’s interest right from the get go, you need to show them you’ve been where they’ve been. Identify the pain they’ve felt or experiences they’ve gone through and tell a story about it so that they feel like you were there with them the whole time. Then start talking about your solution or new way of looking at things.

Don’t sell yourself.

So many speakers, especially new ones, spend a significant amount of time telling the audience who they are, what they do, who they’ve worked for, etc. It always feels to me like they’re trying to convince me that they belong up there.

Introducing yourself is necessary, but keep it as short as possible: your name and (if pertinent) who you work for, that’s it.

I know that at least I, as an audience member, assume you must already have something that the conference committee feels is worth hearing, and that’s why you were selected. Nothing you can say in your introduction is going to convince me of that more. Your on stage, it’s time to show me what you’ve got.

Include frequent little “ah-hah”s.

Most sessions that I’ve been to average 40-45 minutes, which depending on how you look at it, can seem like a ton of time, or no time at all to both the speaker and the audience.

On the speaker’s side, if it feels like not enough time, you’ve got too much. If it feels like too much, you may not have enough to talk about.

For your audience though, you’re in control of how it feels. You’ve hopefully got their attention for the first few minutes while, and you want to make sure you keep it. It feels pretty bad to look out into the audience and see multiple pairs of eyes slide shut as the heads their embedded in snap back on their necks due to talk-induced snoozing.

To avoid this make sure that your talk’s content is exposing little “ah-hah” moments frequently, about every 3-5 minutes. And don’t leave those “ah-hah”s to be determined by the audience, be explicit with them. Quote them in your slides. Think about the kinds of things that someone would want to quickly post on twitter, short and too the point. That’s what you’re after.

Be cautious in using only one example.

In the last few conferences I attended, I sat through a handful of talks that tried to use a single example to illustrate their entire concept.

Now this isn’t always bad. If that example can illustrate a number of smaller sub points, all of which are “ah-hah” worthy, it can work. But in all of my recent experiences, the speaker had no frequent “ah-hah” moments. If they did, I missed them entirely.

It just felt like they were going through an overly intensive examination, the kind you’d be subject to in a college lecture, and going back to my first point, the goal is to expose, not educate. The examples dragged on and on, until at the end I had lost all interest, no matter how valid the point the speaker was trying to make was.

The other challenge with single example presentations is it can sometimes give the impression that there isn’t a lot of validity to your point. Were you not able to find other examples to illustrate with?

Agree or disagree?

Like I said before, these are just a few things I’ve picked up on and come from my own personal opinions and experiences. I’m sure their formulation is due in large part to the types of conferences I attend. They may very well not apply to other types of conferences, for example, more academically focused ones.

If you’re just getting started speaking, I hope you find them helpful. If you’ve been speaking for a while and have different or conflicting opinions or suggestions, feel free to share them.

The Curse of Continuous Concepting

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:05:35 -0500

Over the years, as both an internal designer and a consultant, I’ve observed design teams struggle with eliminating potential solutions to the problem they’re trying to solve and focusing their energy on pursuing and iterating upon a single solution.

The problem itself stems from a few different factors in the team’s make-up and process and has numerous negative impacts, not only on the project, but on the team members as well.

Before the holiday break I posted some thoughts on the topic, as well as two rules I find critical to avoiding the problem on the Mad*Pow blog. Have a look and let me know what you think.

We design our own social experiences.

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:54:00 -0500

Hey, guess what. Social networking and media is a hot topic. What? You already knew that? Well shit…

So maybe it’s not big news. But the rate at which new apps and services built around social networking in one way or another are being released other hasn’t slowed much, if at all.

Being a designer, I tend to come across a lot of posts, tweets, etc about these apps as they’re in their early releases. And often I’m tempted to try them out, see what they do, how they’ve been designed and built. Creators have gotten the hang of making signup simple and so it can be really easy to find myself with accounts on more services than I can count or keep track of.

For a little while now I’ve been thinking about all these things I’m signed up for and how they tout how great they are, how they allow you to connect and keep in touch and know what’s going on with friends and family and random strangers. You can know what some is listening to, what they’re eating, when they got to sleep, when they wake up, and even when they take care of certain bodily functions.

Who cares?

In the tech industry there’s a certain amount of social pressure to be a part of all these. To see what kind of experience their creators have tried to make for us.

Here’s the thing though, aren’t we in control of our own experiences? Even though there are these phenomenally talented and creative teams out there crafting these “amazing” social experiences for us, in the end, don’t we get to design our own?

Think about all the apps and services you’re signed up for, and ask what kind of value they provide for you. If they don’t have value, why are we using them? What problems are they really solving for us? Here’s a look at some of the services I’ve used most recently and how they faired when I asked myself what value they were bringing to my life.

And please note that this isn’t meant to be a critique of these apps and services or their design. It is simply my personal review of their impact and place in my life.

Twitter

I use this daily. For me right now, it’s a keeper. I’ve been able to make so many great connections, including some very important friendships and the connections that helped me land my sweet gig with Mad*Pow.

There are some big downsides to Twitter though, one of which is if you aren’t careful, you can fool yourself into thinking that many of the connections you make are deeper than they really are. And that those people are there for you all the time. Some connections may be, but many won’t, and often you can feel like you’re just talking to a wall.

Another big downside that I’ve been seeing more and more is the mistake in thinking that Twitter can facilitate meaningful conversations and debates. It’s very hard to do these things with a 140 character limit and blind conversational exchanges.

Instagram

For a while this one was just fun to play with. The design is pretty well thought out. The filters are nice. But it wasn’t adding a ton of value for me.

That is, until I loosened up on who I was following and started to follow artists I’d never met or heard of before, people who I came across just by looking in the News tab under “Following”.

Now I’ve got a steady stream of amazing art and work-in-progress photos to look at. It’s like a never-ending feed of inspiration and I love it.

Untapped

I love beer. I’m not going to lie. It is absolutely one of my favorite things on the planet. An app for connecting with other beer lovers? Sure, I’ll give it a try.

It’s a nice app. The design is pretty solid. But I’m finding that I’m not getting a ton of value out of it. The connections haven’t meant much to me, there aren’t a whole lot of social interactions going on.

The best thing this app has done for me is to serve as a log for the beers I’ve tried and what I’ve thought of them. I keep it around for that, though I know there are tools available that are more focused on just that use case. Maybe someday I’ll switch to one of them instead.

Facebook

I’ve gone back and forth on this one over the years. Initially it allowed me to reconnect with a lot of people I hadn’t talked to or seen in a long time. But most of those connections have died out again, maybe for the same reasons they died in the first place.

The biggest benefit I’ve seen from Facebook came this past year when I created a page for my illustration work. It’s been a decent avenue for connecting to an audience that I probably wouldn’t have reached otherwise.

Google+

I’ll admit I haven’t used it much at all, but that’s largely because I can’t find a reason to. The people I’m connected to there are almost all connected to me on other networks.

It feels to me like an alternative to Facebook, but I haven’t found a reason to need an alternative. I haven’t yet found anything in Google+ that gives me a significant value over anything else I’m already using.

The one thing I like most about it though is Hangouts, which is the best video chat/conferencing tool I’ve ever used. But my need for that is rare. I keep my account, but I rarely use it.

Foursquare

I tried this one out purely on social pressure. I go get a cup of coffee, I can log that I’m at the coffee shop and post it for all to see. I go to the mall, logged. And I rack up points for some sort of competition, win badges, and can see where my “friends” are.

But is there value? Not for me personally.

This type of thing hasn’t changed my relationships with anyone. And it hasn’t improved my life. I know that some businesses offer rewards for check-ins, most often to the “mayor” but I don’t visit many places often enough to become the mayor.

So for me, Foursquare (and all of the other check-in services i’ve tried) don’t have any value, and so I rarely ever use it.

Path

One of the newer kids on the block. I’ll say right off the bat, that the design is gorgeous. I love what they’ve done, but again, I’m not finding anything new to give me value I don’t already get elsewhere. It just feels like another Facebook alternative. And for me, the beauty of the app isn’t enough to keep me going with it. I’ll leave my account there, but I probably won’t be using it much, if at all.

So that’s 7 apps/services, made by 7 teams, all working to create these social experiences for us. And like I said earlier, it’s easy to get in the mindset of having to be present and using each one.

But what value does that provide you with? How does it make you’re life better?

You are in control of the social experiences you have. You can design them by choosing what services you use. You can decide to get out and meet people face to face and have lengthy, meaningful debates that aren’t impeded upon by character limits. You can choose to make real friends, keep people as acquaintances, whatever.

Maybe I’m late to the party on this. Many of you reading are probably saying “No shit Adam, you dumbass.” But I do think there are people that forget this kind of stuff. I know at one point I did, and I’ll probably do it again sometime in the future.

Look at what you’re using. How is it really benefiting you, really making your life better than it would be if you weren’t using it?

Wrestling with (personal) brand and identity

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:38:20 -0500

Not to get all existential here, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who I am.

I’m a designer. I work with an awesome team and make awesome things with awesome clients. I spend tons of time, both on the clock and off, thinking about design, what it is and how we do it.

I (try to) speak at conferences and events regularly, not just to share my thoughts on the topic but to push others to think about certain things and share their thoughts with me. I was even once a teacher, (hopefully) helping computer science students understand the various aspects in design.

I’m an artist/illustrator. To be honest, I’m still somewhat uncomfortable calling myself this, but I’m trying to own and live up to it. I spend a decent amount of time putting together images that express an idea, statement, joke, or just something that is fun to look at.

It’s safe to say it will be a long time before this work could supplant my work as a designer as the source of my family’s income, but at this point it is way beyond hobby-dom. Being an artist has always been a dream of mine, and I’m hellbent on making it a full blown reality.

And last but not least I’m a father, husband, numerous other family roles, and friend. The work and responsibilities that come from these roles supersede all others.

So what’s the challenge?

What I find myself struggling with is how all of that is represented in the multitude of profiles, accounts and personas I maintain both online and offline.

I have never been one who agreed with the idea of segmenting myself into identities, creating separate accounts for connecting to each individual audience. I believe Mark Zukerberg was once quoted as saying, “There is only one you.”

And I myself have argued when challenged by people on the subject that, I am who I am. You get all of me or none.

I have a hard time separating myself and filtering out aspects of my thoughts and life based on who I’m talking to or who might be listening, and it’s gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion.

I’ve done my best on my Twitter account to represent all sides of myself, knowing full well that it may alienate some people, and it definitely has. I do the same with Facebook, Instagram, etc. And with my website I tried to do something similar but it’s bombed. I’ve ended up setting up a second Tumblr account that’s more focused on my art and personal thoughts. This constantly bugs me.

And lately more and more people have implied in conversations with me that they’re confused about who I am or what I do. It would seem that combining everything, rather than better identifying me, has made me less identifiable to people.

So, I’m still trying to figure out what the best way is. Should I continue as i have been and maybe even do more to merge all these personas? Or should I separate them completely?.

A number of very smart people have recommended separation, but it feels wrong and inaccurate. It also feels a bit unsustainable. The eventual collision of these personas is almost certainly guaranteed.

I’d be curious to know if others have spent time thinking about this topic as well. And if you have, on what side did you land on?

It would seem to me that as technology continues to expand the number of “locations” we can have a presence in, the more this will become a challenge for people. Just think about the number of college and high school students that are now being warned by teachers and family that the contents of their Twitter feeds and Facebook walls may impact their career options.

It’s an interesting topic and one I’m not likely to ever come to a complete conclusion on. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Vote for Aaron and I to speak at SXSW 2012

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:16:06 -0400

Voting has opened up on SXSW’s PanelPicker. This time around my cohort, Aaron Irizarry, and I have thrown our talk, Discussing Design: The Art of Critique, into the fray.

We’ve given this talk at a few design-centric conferences, but with our upcoming appearance at Web 2.0 Expo and hopefully SXSW we’re hoping to get the topic and it’s importance out in front of a broader audience.

Aaron and I feel critique is a critical skill for anyone involved in creating new products or services. Wether you call yourself a designer, entrepreneur, business analyst, marketer, developer, it doen’t matter. Critique is about understanding and helping to improve a solution, and that’s something we are all involved in (or at least, we should be.)

So please, take a minute and head over to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/10667 and vote for us. And as always if you have any questions or comments on the talk or topic of critique, feel free to leave them there, here, or hit Aaron (@aaroni268) or I (@adamconnor) up on Twitter.

View more presentations from Adam Connor

On Fidelity and Comparisons

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 04:25:39 -0400

Creating multiple concepts for design solutions is nothing unique. There’s often, if not always, multiple ways to solve a given problem. And at times, while teams may go to great lengths to internally evaluate, critique and eliminate concepts, they can end up in situations where they can’t clearly discern which solution is “best”.

When this happens, and no one on the project team either wants to make a recommendation, or feels empowered to, the tendency is to “let the user decide” by performing some sort of A/B split comparison study of the concepts.

On a project last year we were faced with just such a situation. It was compounded by the fact that the concepts were created by two different groups of designers, neither of which was willing to let their concept be eliminated by the team.

The project itself centered on individuals withdrawing money from a retirement account. These transactions are’t exactly straight forward. You don’t withdraw $1000 from the account and get $1000. There are costs and market factors that come into play. Because of this the design challenge centered on showing all of these costs and market factors to the user in a clear way that allowed them to configure their withdrawal to get them money they need and understand the impact on their account.

One concept was a very simple, wizard like set of static screens that displayed the inputs and calculations and allowed the user to move forward and backward within them until content.

The second was a more interactive representation of the calculations that allowed the user to click on various values, modify them, and see the impact on the other values immediately.

Enter the user-decided design concept thuderdome. Two concepts enter one concept leaves.

Due to time constraints the designers were required to very quickly turn around a representation of their concept based on a provided scenario. Both sets of designers created a set of wireframes with simple hot-spot based linking between them.

The user study was executed, and the wizard-esque solution came out on top. But the more I look back at the effort, the more I’m convinced that the study was flawed.

The argument was made that in order to accurately compare the concepts, they should be created and illustrated in the same fashion. In design we talk a lot about “fidelity” and we commonly portray design concepts at various levels that include: sketches, wireframes visualy designed comps, visually designed prototypes and working systems.

But it’s clear that the choice to portray the concepts as wireframes meant that the one concept, the simple wizard, was reflected in a way that more closely resembled the finished product than the more interactive concept. Wireframes just could not display the animations, realtime calculations and effects that the designers had envisioned.

Thinking about how we compare concepts, I feel that it’s more important that we look at fidelity on two scales: visual and interactive/behavior.

In comparisons on the visual scale, it is important to render the concepts in the same way. Sketches compared to sketches, visually designed screens to visually designed screens.

On the interactive/behavior scale however, it’s more important that the concepts reflect the intended richness of the interactions equally with regard to the finished product.

The problem with the project above was that, for one concept, wireframes reflected the behavior of the system for the given interactions in a way almost identical to what was intended for the final product. But the limitations of wireframes meant that for the second concept, the behaviors were only about 15-20% of what was intended.

The study relied on users making accommodations for the fact that what they were evaluating was not the finished product, but in one case what they were looking at was far closer to the finished product than the other. The comparison was not a fair one.

As we go forward, it’s valuable for us to start letting go of the hard-line distinctions between mediums like sketching, wireframes and prototyping. After all, I know plenty of designers who are faster and more comfortable at “sketching” in drag and drop wireframing tools. And there are more and more tools that allow designers to turn wireframes into interactive prototypes.

What’s more important than medium here is message. What aspects of the solution do you need to communicate, and what’s the best way to do it?

Is "Service Design" the real "Experience Design"?

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 10:07:00 -0400

I recently wrote a post over on the Mad*Pow blog describing my thoughts on the term “Experience Design” and the opportunity for the Service Design space.

My dislike of the UX label and buzzword-ish nature of “Experience Design” for much of the work we do is no secret. I believe Experience Design is a very specific approach to design.

Have a look at the post. Think about it, leave me a comment, or hit me up with your thoughts on Twitter.

Coding is great! But not coding is OK too.

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:23:00 -0400

There is no doubt in my mind that the ability to code is a great skill to have and designers that can code (and code well at that) have a certain marketability that others don’t. I am personally very proud of my coding skills and Computer Science and programing background.

But I take exception to the notion that the inability to code makes someone less of a designer.

Code is a medium. Would you consider an artist who has mastered oil painting less of an artist because they aren’t much good in watercolor? Creators of any kind should be free to work in the mediums they can best use to communicate their ideas.

Design is about solving a problem and communicating that solution in an understandable fashion. The ability to code helps designers communicate and analyze those solutions. But there are other means to do this as well. And being able to write a solid chunk of code does not have any impact on the validity of your design solution.

If you’re a designer and interested in learning to code, go for it! Understanding the medium through which your solutions will be created is a great asset. But please lets stop pointing fingers and making designers feel like crap because they can’t tell their JavaScript from their Cascading Style Sheets.