Ze Frank is a visionary, freak, guy who makes fun things. I won’t go into detail but encourage you to watch this TED talk if you don’t know who he is. It’s a little old, but still fucking hilarious.
Anyway I stumbled across this and loved it. I know the contest is over, but I still want to participate.
There is this idea that if you can build an iPhone app you can ride the next dot-com type wave to millions of dollars. Take the guy who made the iPhone app that tells you you’re rich and lets you know if anyone else with the same app is nearby. He sold 8 copies for $999 each. Now granted that is only around $8000, but for a picture of a gem that lights up, it’s pretty ridiculous money.
The problem as I see it is that just like Facebook, Twitter and mySpace marketers and their clients are jumping into the fray without any thought as to “should I really be here?” Before a company invests considerable time and money in developing an iPhone app they should consider that the usage rate drops considerably after the app is first downloaded.
This is because most apps suck.
They suck because marketers and developers have not considered the audience, the iPhone usage and whether or not they even belong in that space. I know from my own iPhone usage I have downloaded about 40 apps and use 5 on a consistent basis. I use each one in a different fashion, for different reasons and at different times.
For example I use a little app called Majong fairyland twice a day on the subway, once on the way to work and once one the way home. The average game lasts 45-50 minutes which is perfect for my commute. The game is complex enough to occupy my mind, but allows me to listen to my own music or audio book so I can multi-task while playing.
Another great app I use is Run Keeper which I have blogged about before. In both these instances the app is useful and appropriate for the audience. But they are only used in very specific instances. Something like a news app would be useless to me since the only time I have time to read is on the subway, which has no Wifi connection, meaning I cannot read updated news – ergo useless. When I get home I could the iPhone app but I’d rather just turn on the TV.
Now I realize that not everyone takes the subway but what other conditions should developers be thinking about? Say, you drive to work. Gotta keep your eyes on the road, can’t be looking at an iPhone (or at least you shouldn’t be) so what to do? How about an iPhone app that reads the news aloud? It could allow users to select via RSS the types of stories they want. Then it would be like having your own customized news broadcast.
Another group who should be on the iPhone is MLS. Imagine walking with your spouse along a street lined with trees in a neighbourhood you both like and you think, “Gee, We should move into this area.” With an iPhone app it could use GPS to identify your location and show a Google map (which MLS are already using) and display the homes for sale in that area. Then you could change the settings, filter the results and walk over to the houses in the area that your are interested in!
Now there are reasons why this app won’t work, MLS has a strangle hold on the data, for example. But the idea is solid, realtors (especially selling realtors) would love it, and it has a defined use. To make an app successful developers, marketers and companies need to look past the “buzz” and the quick money and consider “would I actually use this?”
So at Critical Mass we started a photo club. Every month or so we choose a new topic and then compare work. Here is the piece I created with some help from Victor Wong at Magic Ketchup.
Click to enlarge
I am pleased with the way it turned out. The look on Zuimei’s face isn’t necessarily concern but it isn’t smiley either. It is sort of Mona Lisa-esque. The arm (yes, it is mine) is possessive but not aggressive. Adjustment layers in Photoshop are freakin’ awesome and I love the liquify tool. Anyway I can’t wait until next months topic!
But the last two pieces in this video are completely awe inspiring and amazing.
Not that long ago my team at work was tasked with creating a new homepage for our client. In true team fashion we were allowed our input as to the problems and solutions to the current home page. Now I work as a web developer so my input was mostly technology based, and was mostly along the lines of what we can and cannot do. We discussed best practices and prototyped what we thought would work best.
The design included a large broadcast space for promotions and specials as well as a fat footer with links deeper into the site targetting specific tasks we had identified as common to most users. Thankfully the client had agreed to do usability testing. The results were quite unexpected. Most of our assumptions were wrong. Users were not responding to the elements we thought were important and most actually preferred the old homepage.
The only person who appreciated the new homepage was someone who worked in the internet industry. Being a saavy user, she was able to relate to the choices we made.
This brought to mind something I had read about the differences in design approaches. And these approaches are best illustrated by the two big computer manufacturers, Microsoft and Apple.
Apple employs the genius design prinicple. They have a particularly gifted individual or team create something, then they manufacture it and sell it. The perfect example of this is the iPod. The iPod is not the best mp3 player on the market. There are others that perform better, have longer lasting batteries, have more features. But when you hold an iPod, it “just feels right”. The downside is that it can also lead to spectacular failures. Sometimes the designers just get it wrong.
Microsoft employs a different technique starting with a user panel and then allowing for rounds and rounds of user testing prior to launch. The advantage to this is that your product has all the features that everyone wants. The downside of course if that the product is unnecessarily complicated and not everyone wants all the features. To understand what I mean, open up MS Word and then open every possible menu and feature bar. There are far too many when most people just want a word processor. It is a safer approach than the “genius design” but can get very cumbersome.
So the solution? The solution in my mind is a mixture of both. Take your best crack at designing something. Refine your ideas as best you can and then allow for limited usability testing. The user group should be the actual people who are likely to use the product. Based on the results of the testing re-address your original premise and see if it is correct. I believe that this will produce better results than either of the other approaches, and save headaches in the long run. Does that mean that usability testing is really design research?
There are several books I keep on my desk at work. Some are about interaction and usability, one on coding and one for design and planning (with emphasis on the planning). I think part of having a well-rounded skill set is having a well-rounded library.
The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag is a must for anyone developing in CSS. As mentioned in a previous post there is also an awesome website that you can go and participate in. Basically the book breaks down CSS into components: layout, images, type-face, and special effects. It provides real examples of technicques used and links to samples.
Don’t Make Me Think: Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug is an easy read for anyone interested in the basics of usability. While none of the insights are particularly profound, they are the sort of things that leave you thinking “oh ya, I forgot about that!” Which is where the whole common sense part comes in I guess. I bought the book when I was starting an e-commerce website. The site didn’t do that well, but that had more to do with my lack of business accumen than the site itself. One fo the most valuable pieces of information is how to do usability testing on the cheap.
Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer was a book I purchased on the recommendation of a collegue. She buys books like some people buy shoes. This book is also an easy read and was particularly helpful to me as it describes interaction design in great detail. Many websites fail, not because the idea is poor or some big error, but because of something small, some piece of uability is causing users to abandon a form, or quit before completing a purchase. This book helps you identify those little annoyances and think about how best to deal with them… which is essentially interaction design.
Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan M. Brown is not a very easy read however it is very useful. Essentially it is a guide on how to properly document the planning of a website. This documentation is tailored to each specific audience and their needs. Should you show wireframes to the client? Do designers really need flowcharts? The book tackles personas, usability testing plans, usability reports, competitive analysis, concept model, site maps, flowcharts, wireframes and screen designs. Now if it could only tell me how to get a client to pay for all of that.¼/p>
Cameron Ley, one of my coworkers was fortunate enough to hear Bill Buxton speak at U of T and Cameron has graciously allowed me to post his thoughts on the event:
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Bill Buxton (http://www.billbuxton.com/) the principal researcher at Microsoft Research, speak at the University of Toronto. It was an excellent talk and he had a lot of great insight into the design process and his experience as a professional designer. The overall theme of the event was the same as the personal mantra he displays on his site. “Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the “things” that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.” Below I have summarized his main points from the talk.
1. The best designers have a process, which includes sketching.
He began by saying that excellent designers are serial offenders. They can do it on demand, without any divine intervention. Comparing designers to athletes, he claimed that designers are trained to explore the design space and generate ideas. Sure athletes might have more natural ability, but the best athletes work at it day in and day out. If you work at your craft it can become an activity that you can do when called upon. “Ideas are cheap”, he said. “They’re a dime a dozen.” With enough practice, a good designer should be able to brainstorm a good idea in about 30 min. His main point at the start of the talk was that excellent designers have a process that has been tested and proved to work. When they have a process, they can generate ideas quickly and systematically.
2. Comparing the current state of experience design to the state of industrial design in the late 1920s.
Current companies that have produced excellent experience design time and time again have done so by implementing an organized design arm that is imbedded in all aspects of the company, as well as having a design manager who is on par with every other senior VP in the structure of the organization. So a President of sales should be at the same level in the company as the President of design (or vice president). If design is not represented at a high level, the president / ceo is saying “I don’t value design, and neither should you” to the entire organization.
The way he connected this idea to industrial design was by comparing case studies from the late 1920s to current successful companies. While I couldn’t take notes on it all, the basic premise was that certain companies (I think it was in the automotive industry) in 1927-9 established internal design consultancies, and those who did survived the 30s. From this, he stated that it is clear that design is not superficial, it is essential for successful companies. Fast forward to the modern day, and we find Apple using the same techniques to become one of the most highly regarded, design focused companies in their field. Jonathan Ive, who is responsible for a lot the big successes at Apple including the upcoming iPhone, joined Apple in 1992 and was a lead designer when they were on the down turn (if I remember correctly from the talk). When Steve Jobs came back in 1997, Ive was given the title of “Senior Vice President of Industrial Design”. Now, Apple is considered a leading company and a lot of its success can be attributed its focus on design. The point in which the company turned itself around coincides with the return of Steve Jobs and the elevation of Ive. Was the title change all that was necessary to turn things around? Not at all, but the elevation in status sent a message to the company about where they were headed. It was representative of the changing culture in Apple, a culture that has separated them from the pack and is currently a key element in their success.
After going through a lot of the history stuff, he then turned to the more tactical stuff.
3. We Design by exploring the design space using alternatives.
This was where defining the whole “sketching” part came in. Buxton claimed that the most important quality of a sketch was that it was ambiguous. It was intentionally ambiguous because that meant that the team needed to use their imagination to fill in the gaps. Sketches are social beings, he stated this over and over. They want to be with other sketches, and with other people. Leaving sketches and ideas ambiguous would mean that they need to be with people to discuss the direction, and eventually from this discussion, be with other sketches. This process would maximize exploration and discovery. Sketches are also very high fidelity pieces of work, they are just high fidelity when the purpose they serve is taken into account. A sketch of a hinge is high fidelity even if you don’t show the door, or draw the hinge in proper ratio, or use a ruler.
Buxton also mentioned that designers need to incorporate the transitions that occur during the experience to truly capture it holistically. The arrows in a storyboard are just as important as the frames themselves. This was his example. We go to work and back home each day, but the bottom example captures the experience of it much better.
The transition(s) during an experience is just as important as the frames of the experience.
4. Sketching does not mean drawing.
We can sketch experiences by utilizing any type of medium that is available. Palm designers for example (I think, but don’t quote me on this) made a prototype out of wood and carried it around in their pockets to make sure that the form they would go with “felt” right. This example was a good definition about “sketching” an experience.
Obviously this summary doesn’t really do such a great talk justice (it was almost 3 hours), and a lot of the techniques he described were ones that are already used by Cm. But it was an excellent lecture, and I wanted to share some of the great stuff I learned. If this kind of stuff is something you’d like to read more about, his book is available now. Here is a link to a sample: http://www.billbuxton.com/bookFlyer.pdf
