I think Jim Highsmith’s point about oscillation vs iteration is also relevant here. http://jimhighsmith.com/2011/12/08/oscillation-versus-iteration/. Some design work up front helps you map out a path so you avoid the worst of the oscillation, in my view.

I like Tim Harford’s Adapt as nice exploration of iteration in the market, and how fraught with trouble it has been historically.

Best,
Don

If you haven’t already seen my two-parter on InformIT, you might find it interesting: “Interfaith Marriage: Experience Design Meets Agile Development” (http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1636982 and http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1636984). I also now teach a grad course at the University entitled Agile Interaction Design and Development.

I just returned from beautiful Banff in the Canadian rockies where I delivered the keynote for Cyberworlds 2011: “Crossing the Line: Cyberworld Terrorism and Real-World Targets.” That invitation grew out of my last novel, Web Games (Gesher Press, 2010) about a Stuxnet-style attack on the U.S. With the recent discovery of Duqu (“Son of Stuxnet”), it is clear that agile code reuse is alive and well within the intelligence communities.

–Larry Constantine (Lior Samson)

Mobile devices make this problem of discoverability even worse because screen real estate is even more limited. On the other hand, touch interactions provide some benefit because they often make functions easier to discover. It’s much more likely that you’ll accidentally discover a function by swiping your finger, than by pressing a strange combination of keys, like shift-control-alt-B. Again, keep in mind that it’s only a problem if the function is critical to the task. As long as people can complete the tasks that they care about, they won’t even notice.

In both cases, I would argue that the design principle of Clarity applies. (Clarity is achieved when the user knows what they can do in the place, how to actually do it, and when they do take action—it’s clear what happened.) The principle itself doesn’t change just because you’re designing a mobile app instead of a desktop one, but the design constraints do and therefore, so does the design solution. The same principle, when combined with an understanding of the user’s needs will still lead you to the right design solution for the specific situation.

Two – I would agree that designers should feel empowered to break principles on occasion when it makes sense to do so… but that’s probably a subject for another blog post entirely.

What other principles do you see changing – or broken intentionally?

Thanks for your great courses! It was a pleasure for me to attend them, they have been one of my highlights at CHI.

The “cool” course was great both with regard to your presentation and the content provided! I liked your courage in moving from task to life! I am now looking on the transfer of these insights into our (mid-term) design approach, which is not clear to me yet on an interaction level. Thus, the course was an excellent example of the value of contextual inquiry, but the design impact needs to be worked out by the design teams now in more detail. Thus, I totally agree with the intention of your planned project about implications of cool.

I loved the Agile discussion as well we are just engaging in this practice and no one really knows how to work with us.

I went expecting a presentation on aesthetics, and maybe a few tips and tricks as one might hear during an introductory typography or page layout class. The presentation in fact went much deeper than these expectations. You dissected the complex notion of ‘coolness’ into a handful of fundamental concepts that together have made me look at, and think about products from a rich but manageable set of angles. The class made coolness tangible, and provided an organization of the topic that enables discussion of that previously fuzzy term.

Sorry for my English, Im fron Argentina, Im doing my best.

Here’s an excerpt: “But the obtuseness of this user experience doesn’t stop with the Spot — it permeates the entire interface as though decisions about how things should work were made almost arbitrarily, without anyone stopping to test them in the real world.”

To be fair, I never got a chance to use either of the Kin phones, but after reading this review, it certainly made me wonder what kind of user research was done.

I agree that price is certainly one of the many issues that led to the Kin’s demise. But I’m not too sure it’s really a show-stopper by itself. The same $30 data plan cost doesn’t seem to hinder teen adoption of the iPhone, for example. But it’s as you point out – the device and what it did wasn’t compelling enough to justify that significant cost. I’m just not sure that even at something like $5 a month that it would have been that exciting a product.

The price a typical $30 a month smartphone/unlimited data plan. The problem being, the Kin wasn’t a smartphone. It was a social phone aimed at teens who did not [yet] need a smartphone.

Consumers aren’t dumb. They simply refused to pay a premium price for a somewhat economy device/service.

Good luck to all of you, keep the discussions going!

Blog post – http://www.austincenterfordesign.com/blog/?p=895

A classmate and friend posted a follow up blog post on this -
http://www.austincenterfordesign.com/blog/?p=899

You can also look at the discussions on the comment thread.

What Contextual Design does is discover how people “do stuff” today—and provide a structured way for designers and engineers to use their knowledge of new technology to create both the solution itself, and what people will do with it.

Where user research often goes off track is exactly what you point out: people can’t tell us what they want. And worse yet—they can’t even reliably tell us what they do.

So we don’t ask the customer—as Karen wrote and you underscore with your comment—we learn what they do, and WE design the products to help them do things in new ways.

The Post-it story is great. Post-its are a great user-centered design story, actually. But you raise the next question: if user’s don’t know what they want, how can we convince them they want what we’re offering them?

With respect to “code cowboys”, remember that it’s somewhat difficult to deliver software systems without software. Yes, in 20+ years in the software business I’ve known a couple of people who wanted to go it alone. I’ve known many more people who cared deeply about the system or product they were building and wanted it to succeed. Please don’t lump a whole community into that sort of bucket.

Finally, Mary Poppendieck’s talk on Monday mentioned a 3M product that their salespeople couldn’t sell, except for one place in the U.S. When the people in charge of that product investigated, they found our that the salesperson gave the product away at first, and then the customers discovered they loved it. The product managers tried this strategy across the U.S., and it succeeded wildly. That product was Post-it Notes.

My point is that simple answers may sound great in a 60 or 90 minute presentation, but the true answers most often aren’t that simple.

The developer needs to be in tune with the user’s needs and develope the most cost effective/value added products.

A good example is the Apple IPAD. Apple used their computer expertise and leveraged their large application base of the IPHONE to come up with a new splashy product.

It’s a risk of any carefully specified methodology that it becomes an end in itself rather than a means of carrying values.

Yeah, unfortunately, shipping costs overseas for our books is pretty expensive, so we’re limiting shipping to the US, at least for this contest. I guess if you live overseas but wanted the book shipped somewhere in the States, that would work.

David R. – Your comic was stellar. Very nice.

Nice post! This certainly rings true from my experience. It sure would help if we more often recognized, trained, and staffed projects with this key Cross-Discipline Translation skillset…

Valerie

I don’t think social networking sites are just about maintaining loose social connections. I have found that social networking sites can help strengthen my relationships with the people that are already in my social network in the “real” world. By seeing the profiles of acquaintances in my social network I was able to find people that I had things in common with and the site fostered a deeper relationship. This is especially good when entering new social networks. It can be overwhelming to meet new people in a new place. It is hard enough trying to remember all the names of the new people let alone what activities they are interested in. By being able to connect online after meeting someone, you are able to view their interests on their profile and find the people who will make the best friends. I think this use of these sites probably comes more naturally to the younger generation.

But I do see you point about how this may hinder the natural pruning
process. While sites like this do let me connect with my old friends and see who is still in town, it also forces me into awkward situations about trying to figure out who to confirm as “my friend”.

Also, I’m sure it has caused many issues for people after breaking up. I mean if you are connected to your ex then you find out when they find someone else. That is not something you have to deal with usually.

I actually did end up leaving one site for another when I left one social group for another. I guess that is still one way of enabling social pruning.

But it should be interesting to see what happens with the generation that grew up with these sites and already have anywhere from 300 – 3000 connections. I wonder if they will end up feeling overwhelmed by all their connections when they become successful business men and women.

Shoshana

Developers and designers can’t forget that users are doing a job. Their product is a tool to do the job and not the job itself.

Cheers -Tim

Reality of the market is like a dragon blasting their hot breath at your castle. Making pass after pass scaring the people including the leaders in your castle and starting fires. You need a solution, any solution. You welcome knight that will face the dragon and withstand the hot breath of the dragon against his shield like we see in the pictures from a fairy tale. You do not care if he reframes your problem. You only want a solution. But unlike the fairy tale that same knight is a threat to the castle leaders unless he came from their ranks.

One examples is the Longitude Prize offered by the British government through an Act of Parliament in 1714 for a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship’s longitude. The British navy felt the dragon’s breath of inaccurate location. John Harrison a young clock builder, a knight not from the ranks, had a solution and developed an unusual method based on an accurate clock, chronometer. In 1737 he received a payment by meeting the requirement, but the board dragged its feet so he finally received the a big chuck completing the full prize in 1765. He died three years later.

Larry, I have been reframing problems from my first three patents at Dow Chemical on Ziploc Sandwich bag extrusion process that has been used to make every bag sold. And reframed the paradigm marketing and industrial design image of the Freestyle breast pump shields that was launched in February 2008 resulting in two patents. A few dozen patents fill the time between them. Most because a dragon shadow swept over the castle. Clouds or a real dragon no one knew.

Larry I have always been the scary outsider, the knight capable of facing the dragon, to be kept in reserve in a silo to wait for the next dragon, or to be set from the castle because the next dragon will not occur on my watch.

Why oh why didn’t the designers of the system use proper user-centered design to prevent the obvious user interaction problems before going online??

I like your eye.
I miss your eye.

This is a great story that illustrates looking beyond the obvious.

Best wishes.

Brian