I wrote a short piece on Medium discussing concerns with conducting user research at this time. The key takeaway is that "it’s essential to recognize that the purpose of user research is to understand how and why users are interacting with technologies and services in the present. We can only ask about and observe interactions in the context of reality, even if we are asking people about the future."
Photo by Oğuzhan Akdoğan
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I've written a post for EY's (Ernst & Young) Better Working World around the need for organizations to assess the quality of their user experiences just as they do their financials and business practices - Who's auditing your company's user experiences?
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It's been quite a while since my last post (now there's an understatement). And it's been even longer since I've updated any granted patents. Since my last post on the topic in October 2013 I've been co-inventor on four additional patents. While the majority of my previous patents were design patents, three of the most recent four are utility patents:
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The terrific design podcast, 99% INVISIBLE, recently discussed, what is claimed to be, the first objects designed by humankind - The Genesis Object. The discussion includes insights from William Lidwell, who I worked with as a contributor on the book Deconstructing Product Design. Lidwell suggests that the first designed object might have been a hand tool, a thrown weapon, or possibly just a "sexy" design object to show-off. See my original post on this story at Intuitive Company's We See blog.
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My latest post on CoDesign (FastCompany's design-focused website) discusses five principles of smartwatch design. Rather than considering smartwatches as smaller, wearable versions of smartphones; designers need to consider the the unique context of use, behavioral patterns and ergonomic constraints of a smartwatch.
Read the full article - 5 Surprising Principles For Designing Smartwatches.
Also, see some of my previous postings on CoDesign from over the years.
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I appeared on Bloomberg TV's Market Makers the day after Apple's WWDC keynote to dicuss the present and future of Apple design.
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The Big Picture
Increasing improvements in user interface design are a natural result of the physical laws of the universe. To understand the underlying meaning of that statement, and its potential consequences, it is necessary to enumerate a sequence of logical assumptions (which I will attempt to summarize, but are no replacement for a fuller reading of the sources cited below):
1. The universe is driven by physical forces, including entropy – the dispersal of energy from localized concentrations towards generalized equilibrium. The cliché example of entropy is the spread of heat from a cup of coffee to the surrounding room. The heat spreads from the local area (the coffee cup) to dissipate equally within the room.
2. The origination and evolution of all systems in the universe from stars, to rocks and eventually life, has been driven by entropy. Moreover, over the history of the universe systems have developed that have been progressively more effective at increasing entropy (i.e. distributing energy). Astrophysicist Eric Chaisson has applied the measure of energy rate density – the flow of energy per unit timer per unit mass – as a common metric that can be used to compare the relative energy emissions of everything from stars, to plants, to people, to cities. His chart of energy rate densities from an upcoming publication, illustrates the emergence of higher energy density systems over time. While stars are incredibly powerful, they are also incredibly massive and pound-for-pound do not emit the relative energy of plants and animals (incidentally, “Gya” is shorthand for giga years, as in billions of years ago).
3. A key contributor to the entropy contributions of living organisms is the complexity of their behaviors – for example, digestion, mobility and cognition. Across species, mammals have higher energy rate densities than reptiles, which are higher than fish, and so on. The more highly evolved the animal, the higher the energy gradient (birds being the interesting anomaly to this pattern due to the high energy demands of executing flight in three dimensional space.)
4. Technology originated and evolved with life, to the point where man-made technologies have even higher energy rate densities than the humans that created them. Kevin Kelly illustrates this (using data drawn from Chaisson), in his recent book, What Technology Wants. As Kelley illustrates below, computer chips, with their extremely high ratio of heat output to mass, have energy gradients that are among the highest of any system in the history of the universe. In other words, the evolution of systems has followed a path of progressively higher entropy output, starting from large scale inanimate systems (stars, planets) to smaller scale living systems (plants, people) and presently to even smaller scale technological systems.
Interfaces as Entropy Enablers
If you’re still with me, you may be thinking that this is all interesting, but how does it relate to user interface design? We can consider the implications at a couple of levels.
Superficially, user interfaces are the mechanisms by which we control computer chips, how we interact with these powerful entropy engines. At the least, this should lead one to appreciate that we’re dealing with powerful stuff even if we have grown accustomed to them because of their ubiquity. Chaisson even suggests that more transistors may have been produced than any other product in cumulative human history. From a historical perspective, the activity of designing interfaces which control interactions with these chips could be considered as fundamental a human activity as laying the bricks to build cities.
At a deeper level, we can consider the computer chip as a product and force of evolution and entropy. Like humans (and from humans), chips evolved as a progressively powerful entropy-generating system. But from an evolutionary context, why do chips appear to be a successful system? In evolution many systems or groups don’t not successfully proliferate – for examples the Neanderthals did not spread out or survive very long, compared to Homo Sapiens. In the case of humans, spoken language led to the rapid advancement and growth of the human population 50,000 years ago. Similarly, I posit that graphical user interfaces have accelerated the propagation of the computer chip. Early on, interacting with computer chips was difficult, requiring specialized knowledge and skills. Over recent decades, the refinement and proliferation of the graphical user interface allowed an explosion in the number of people who could interact with computer chips across a range of contexts, activities and platforms.
In other words, user interfaces have enabled a rapid increase in the number and uses of computer chips, directly impacting the rate of energy dispersal. There is a logical and perhaps inevitable sequence to this as the graphical user interface connected the language of the humans to the language of the computer. Taking this a step further, we can consider graphical user interfaces as an adaptive trait of computer systems that led to their successful proliferation, with humans as the carriers.
The Future of Interfaces
User interfaces increase entropy. To an interface designer, this might be taken as encouraging, discouraging, or both. To be discouraged is pointless as entropy is fundamental and inevitable. I see it as encouraging that those aspects of interface design that we should strive for as a profession - accessibility, ease of use, effectiveness, and efficiency – are characteristics that will continue to lead to the evolution and expansion of technologies.
What does this mean for the future of interface design? I would expect a continued expansion of chips with greater power, smaller scale and concomitant higher energy gradients. Similarly I expect interfaces that allow us to keep up with this growth in technology by effectively controlling more power and complexity. At some point in the future, we will reach a limit in what can be done by a user interface just as we will reach a physical limit in what can be done by a computer chip (i.e. the flattening of the Moore’s Law curve). What is the ultimate end state of the user interface and what can apply from entropy in the short-term to influence the design of interfaces? I will consider these possibilities in future discussions.
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The March issue of Metropolis is focused on products, with the theme of Good Design. And it contains several articles with a specific focus on ergonomics. Niels Diffrient (illustrated above) presents what might be read as a self-contradicting design process, in The Real Driver. On the one hand he posits a master-of-the-universe expertise as a best practice over contextual research:
On the other hand, the result of this approach is a chair that was "ten years in the making—I realized that people needed more comfort with less complication. By that, I mean fewer buttons, levers—everything." I recognize that I'm oversimplifying, but one wonders if the need for a less complex chair could have been identified with a few weeks of research rather than ten years of tinkering (although maybe getting it simple was all in the tinkering).
In the same issue Don Norman's Selective Memories, gives perspective on the evolution of design focus:
"If the last century was about rationality and reason (or attempted to be), let’s hope this one ushers in a deeper appreciation of human behavior. Ideally, logic and reason would remain important, but cognition (how we understand things) and emotion (how we value them) should play equally important roles."
Perhaps the fact that Niels and Norman - both well into their golden years - were the representation for ergonomics issues, speaks to the continued perception of human factors as the domain for gurus, while design is the realm of young rock stars? But the content is is balanced by A Call to Arms, examining high-tech prosthetics for returning soldiers - "the ultimate ergonomic challenge."
Last, but not least, check out Ben Katchor's The Nozzle, a pseudo-nostalgic comic strip perspective on the role of customer research in design and marketing.
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Bruce Stirling's new undertaking, The Imaginary Gadgets Project, has re-inspired my thinking around the human factors of imaginary objects. Stirling describes his project as "a catalog of the weirdest things imaginable." Compared to real-life gadgets, imaginary ones include everything from "futuristic gadgets" (pictured above), to "radically impossible gadgets" and "gadgets of the fantastic and the occult (crystal balls, magic wands); the personal hardware of the saints and the gods", to name a few categories.
What interests me about such devices is not their obviously incredible and/or supernatural capabilities, but rather the more mundane aspects of how a user would interact with them. For no matter how complex, esoteric or unfathomable the capabilities of an imaginary object, there must be some connection between the user and the system, be it tangible, telepathic or otherwise.
I said I was re-inspired to look at this area because in 2007 I had looked at the human factors of nonobjects, nonobjects being branko Lucic's forthcoming design fiction book. For example, I examined the ergonomics of dialing the Tarati, a touch-less phone, pictured below, that has spaces instead of buttons (ergonomic issues included lack of tactile feedback and need to accommodate a range of finger diameters).
Curiously, the nonobjects book has yet to be published, making it something of an imaginary object itself.
So what's the value of this imaginary human factors & usability beyond intellectual curiosity? I think there are at least two relevant benefits. The first is inspiration - thinking about how people might interact with a crystal ball or time machine takes us outside of our everyday human-computer interaction thinking, and can give us ideas, if only metaphorical, about how to design a user experience. I don't have any proof, but there's a good chance that the Wii controller was influenced by light sabers.
The second benefit is more subtle, but perhaps more important - motivation. Consider that virtually every product a designer works on prior to its development and launch is an imaginary product. It's really just a question of degree. A new online form is not much different than an existing one that it might be replacing, but whatever small details need significant enough changes to require a designers input are imaginary until they are designed and realized. Similarly, determining the appropriate human factors for the controls on a new car is necessary because the controls for that car do not yet exist. In other words, the very nature of human factors design is making the imaginary concrete. Studying the hypothetical human factors for imaginary products is really just an extreme version of what we do as designers every day.
I plan to follow Bruce Stirling's thread and find out what practical ideas might come from these fantastic gadgets. Now there is the other side of the coin...an imaginary human factors - but that's for another discussion.
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The Industrial Designers Society of America has launched their new web site at IDSA.org. In addition to an improved visual layout, the site takes a direct approach to user-centered design by providing navigation options for three targeted groups: public, members and media. Once you select your group, the relevant sub-set of primary navigation options appear. This is one of those information architecture approaches that is often discussed but rarely applied, so I'm curious to see if it works out effectively.
{note the site design was up as of 4 Feb, but then went back to the old version and a note that the updated design would be back soon}
In other IDSA news, Human Factors section chair Steve Wilcox was voted as IDSA President-elect. Therefore I am taking over as section chair until the fall elections, so please contact me (robtannen at hotmail dot com) with any questions or suggestions. The full list of IDSA interest sections and chairs is listed here.
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Asterisks - our new label for brief notes of interest. In this case, items that relate to the visual, auditory and tactile senses.
One area where I believe we should (but probably won't) see continued releases of consumer portrait-mode displays, though: personal navigation devices. Recently the PND companies have started to offer wide-screen navigation units. How does this make sense? When we use a computer-generated map that's always rotating to show us where we're going at the top of the screen, why do we care what's out the side windows? It's what's coming up that matters. Serious navigation products for back-country hikers are portrait mode. The wider you make a map display the more you sacrifice useful information for distraction--although, again, it makes the devices look cool.
Auditory & Tactile - File this one under why didn't I think of that? Carnegie Mellon University researchers are using simple microphones and software to turn virtually an surface into a gestural-based controller. From a tabletop to your leg. See the video for a clear technical explanation (from the interaction-focused site johnnyholland.org)
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While the prestige of this year's North American International Auto Show was somewhat diminished by the poor financial condition of the auto industry, there was a strong showing for the state-of-the-art in dashboard user interfaces.
Automobile manufacturers are frequently leaders at bring new technology to mainstream consumers (e.g. satellite radio, GPS), so it seems like it's time the industry caught up to the rapidly changing field of interface design.
The New York Times reported on "Dashboards that Promise to Do More Than Inform":
Drivers accustomed to receiving vehicle information from familiar needle-and-dial gauges will soon benefit from the work automakers are doing to create information systems that are more flexible and take advantage of the latest developments in computer displays.
Instrument panels that can be customized to a driver’s whim are already available, but the next wave could include designs where the gauges are not fixed in place on the dashboard
I'm all for adapting interfaces to drivers' needs, but hope that the customization is limited to effective information displays that support visibility and reaction time.
Of particular note was a system demonstrated by Mercedes, which uses an array of driving behavior sensors to "sense" if the driver may be inattentive or drowsy, and displays a coffee cup warning light (pictured above).
The magazine design mind by Frog has also recently published an article, "Driver Experience Design", that reviews other emerging technologies in automobile control design, including haptic feedback for safety:
Nissan is also working on a design called “Eco-Pedal” that uses chip sensors to determine when excessive throttle is causing poor fuel mileage, triggering a push-back mechanism on the driver’s foot. Volvo’s “City Safety” system uses radar technology to sense imminent collisions at speeds between nine and 18 mph, and it automatically applies the brakes when closing speeds are too high.
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I'm trying to track the hundreds of new product announcements at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. And while there's always innovations in technical functionality, it's hard to spot a direct ergonomic improvement.
But here's a couple of exceptions to that rule:
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I think there's a real opportunity for ergonomic expertise to support many of the international programs that support developing communities. For example, Engineers Without Borders enables the "implementation of sustainable engineering projects, while involving and training internationally responsible engineers and engineering students." These projects are frequently focused on basic human needs such as water purification/delivery and sanitation. Many of these solutions require human power. I wonder whether ergonomic expertise has been applied to the design and implementation of these systems. This is particularly important, given the diversity of anthropometric characteristics across the served communities.
One organization that is contributing is Synergo Arts, which is a "resource for ergonomics education, consulting, and design for communities of artists and artisans around the world, to maximize their health, income, performance, productivity, and the quality of the art or craft that they create." Their ergonomically designed weaving bench (pictured above) also won a User-Centered Design Award from the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society in 2007. The bench is actually produced by local carpenters (in South America) for local weavers, thereby benefiting two industries.
If you know of similar organizations or individuals working towards improving ergonomics in developing communities, please contact me.
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...or from the sublime to the ridiculous. Two interesting videos in juxtaposition:
Scott Berkun of the Harvard Business Review discusses the 40th anniversary of the "The Greatest Product Demo Ever" - computer pioneer Douglas Englebart's presentation that introduced the world to the computer mouse, email, hyperlinking, and other innovative human-computer interaction solutions. The video, above, is a little hard to hear, so turn up your volume. Bekrun uses the demo as a jumping point for a discussion on why it takes so long for great products to reach the mainstream:
One might ask "Why are we so stupid that we can't adopt good ideas faster?" But the problem isn't about being smart or stupid. New ideas travel through cultures at much slower rates that we realize, especially if the idea requires 1) throwing something away and replacing it with something else 2) re-learning skills or 3) co-ordination by large independent organizations.
Fast forward to the present. The satirical Onion has created a convincing demo of the "Macbook Wheel", a keyboard-less laptop that uses an iPod navigation wheel and button for all functions - including typing. It's simplicity that violates usability. I especially enjoyed the automatically suggested sentence completion choices. One wonders whether Englebart's demo received similar disbelief and laughter at the time.
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Objectified - The trailer for this forthcoming industrial design-focused film by Helvetica creator Gary Hustwit is available. The new film is focused on famous industrial designers (think Jonathan Ive, Karim Rashid), but I had emailed Hustwit several months ago about the inclusion of design research and human factors, since it plays an important role in the ID process. Hustwit responded that IDEO's Jane Fulton Suri was interviewed as part of the film.
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Several months ago I discussed the relevance of user-centered design to the successful design of sustainable products and services. Now a more concrete (literally) example of the intrinsic connection between human factors and green design.
Alan Hedge writes about The Sprouting of "Green" Ergonomics (PDF) in the December issue of the HF&ES Bulletin. Hedge reports on the new version of the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Green Building Rating System, which includes specific guidelines and credits for creating an ergonomic environment.
The guidelines focus primarily on office workstation ergonomics (although industrial settings are touched on as well). For example, the LEED guidlines cover standards around display adjustability and glare, work surface dimensions, and chair adjustability. You can download relevant "green" ergonomic checklists from Cornell's ergonomic resource.
Adding ergonomics to LEED requirements seems like a natural extension to me - both are targeted at improving the health and comfort of individuals who work within buildings. There may also be some direct correlations between the more traditional LEED categories such as materials & resources, and ergonomics. For instance, a poorly fitted workstation may be more readily replaced than one chosen appropriately - thereby leading to increased materials use.
Hedge also makes the point that the new LEED guidelines will change perceptions about office ergonomics - from a reactive, problem-solving model in most cases, to a proactive problem-avoiding approach as it is intended.
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Acura is running an elegant new TV ad highlighting vehicle safety. It shows human bodies in motion as if they were in collisions, but out of the context of an automobile.
Not to be taken too literally, but I might disagree that "there is no angle on the human body that was designed for a collision" - case in point, the orbit that protects the eye -
"The bony structures of the orbit protrude beyond the surface of the eye. They protect the eye while allowing it to move freely in a wide arc." (Merck Manual)
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A very impressive story on 60 Minutes on the real-world application of brain-controlled interfaces that allow disabled individuals (and potentially, everyone) to control software and hardware interfaces.
"Once in a while, we run across a science story that is hard to believe until you see it. That's how we felt about this story when we first saw human beings operating computers, writing e-mails, and driving wheelchairs with nothing but their thoughts."
See embedded video above and link to story transcript.
And for more information on the general topic, read my review of the book Neuroergonomics.
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Lots of blog buzz around "design thinking" re: the New York Times article Designing is More than Packaging - see comments by Steve Portigal and Christoper Fahey to name a few.
I agree with Fahey's observation that the NYTimes article "included by far the clearest summary of what design thinking is that I’ve ever read, including from all the design thinking leaders". Then again, it sounds a hell of a lot like just plain old user-centered design to me:
"While definitions vary, design thinking usually involves a period of field research — usually close observation of people — to generate inspiration and a better understanding of what is needed, followed by open, nonjudgmental generation of ideas. After a brief analysis, a number of the more promising ideas are combined and expanded to go into “rapid prototyping,” which can vary from a simple drawing or text description to a three-dimensional mock-up. Feedback on the prototypes helps hone the ideas so that a select few can be used."
What I did find more interesting, was the sentence in the Times article that immediately followed that description:
"It’s the designers’ version of the scientific method,” explains Greg Galle, co-founder and managing partner of the C2 Group, a consulting firm based in Half Moon Bay, Calif. “It’s sloppy and messy and not nearly as disciplined as the scientist, but we do trial and error and we hypothesize and test and we see what we learn and then we go back and try again.”
For those interested in understanding more about true scientific methods, read here.
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So here's my take on the "next big thing" in the little world of user research for product design. Measurement of physical activity is typically tedious (e.g. time and motion studies), highly expensive, or inaccurate (participant self-reporting). Despite these limitations, it has the potential to be very valuable in quantifying user behavior, such as level of exertion, or rest/motion periodicity in shifts. For example, the ROI for a new system or product may depend on measuring before and after differences in user physical effort or movement.
I recently learned of the soon-to-be launched Fitbit, what one of my colleagues described as a "pedometer on steriods". And it is marketed towards the health/fitness marktet. But what makes its particularly useful to user research are its accuracy, battery life (claimed at 10+ days) and reporting features. According to the Fitbit web site:
"The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed. You can wear the Tracker loosely in your pocket or clipped to your clothing, even bras."
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I just wrote a posting for the new Bresslergreen blog on how design researchers can modify their practices and methods to support the environment, based on the guidelines provided by The Designers Accord.
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Microsoft Live Labs has launched a public version of Photosynth, a Web tool that uses the overlapping information in a set of still photos taken in a space to create a 3D mapping between the images. I put together a quick collage of the product "museum" space in my office - the more pictures you take from different positions, the better. When viewing, use "f" for full screen and "ctrl" to toggle to the data points.
Potential applications to user research include modeling observed work environments when videotaping is not allowed or impractical. There's also the possibility of using Photosynth to create 3D views of products or concepts, although it's better suited for large spaces than close ups. But for one example, see this joystick and note how you can move around it from all sides.
Like IBM's Many Eyes for text and data visualization, all Photosynths currently created are publicly viewable. Understandably the site has a high traffic load so prepare to be patient.
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While there's clearly a great deal of attention around "green design" these days, there's very little guidance on how to design such products (e.g. energy-saving, recyclable, super-efficient, etc.) from a user-centered perspective. One could argue that there's nothing unique about such products that a typical user-centered design approach would not already accommodate.
But an interview with Terry Swack, which is making the blog rounds, emphasizes the importance of considering the uniqueness of positioning sustainable products:
"...most consumers still don't see the environment as a problem. Marketers have to help them not only to understand the problem, but to actually care about it. It's a matter of making it personally relevant and that their actions matter. But even the greenest consumers don't use sustainability as their primary decision criteria. The green product has to work as well or better than as the other, and be priced relatively the same. Then they'll look at the green attributes."
In other words, a sustainable product not only needs to provide comparable cost, functionality and ease-of-use, but also has the added imperative of effectively communicating its value above and beyond traditional product alternatives.
How is one to accomplish that? Since we're talking about attributes that go beyond the user's short-term engagement with the core functionality of the product - like its impact on the environment - I believe it is most effective to take a service design, rather than a product design approach. In service design we are not only interested in the ease-of-use around the product, but the user's holistic awareness and experience.
In a service design analysisI conducted last year, I defined three key characteristics of a service experience:
While these characteristics were used in the context of a multi-dimensional user experience (i.e. attendance at a design conference), they can also be applied to a user's experience with a sustainable product:
As with designing services, it's critical to mindfully combine these three characteristics. One example is home power monitoring applications. These interfaces provide explicit guidance via reporting energy usage for various appliances within the home, support comfort, quite literally, through effective temperature management, and deliver sensation through a combination of heightened user control and cost savings.
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2008 was a landmark year for the design research category of the International Design Excellence Awards, with a research project winning "best in show".
SizeChina, the ergonomic data research project focusing on Asian populations won a Gold for the research category and is sharing best in show honors with the Apple iPhone. SizeChina "assembled data from a representative cross section of people from mainland China to create the first-ever digital database of Chinese head and face shapes. Now, designers hoping to reach the two billion people in the Southeast Asian market will be able to create products that genuinely fit the needs of this audience."
I covered SizeChina last year after attending Roger Ball's presentation at the 2007 IDSA conference.
Coincidentally, the Silver winner (pictured) in the research category also has a Chinese connection - How the torch of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games came into being. According to the site "this project's approach infused a sleek and modern design with symbols of both Chinese culture and the spirit of the Olympic Games", although it's not apparent what research was done to support this.
Bronze award winners included three medical-related projects, a field where user research is typically a critical component. This year, the IDEA site not only lists the award winners, but all of the finalists, which range from color trends to condom dispensing projects.
You can also read more coverage of the awards at Businessweek, and learn about my experience as an IDEA juror this year (although not in the Research category).
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I'm a few weeks late in reporting on this, but the WSJ had a very relevant section in the Monday, June 23rd edition, that you can access online. Form and Function contains a series of case studies on recent product designs, ranging from golf clubs, to blue jeans, to power tools and even a Buick.
What each of these min-articles has in common is a focus on the role of user research, human factors and usability in the success (and sometime failures) of products.
One of the more interesting examples discusses the MK Diamond portable masonry saw (pictured here). It's a clear demonstration of what happens when you don't design for your users appropriately, and then learn from your mistakes. And while I could argue the finer points of the described design research (e.g. risks of relying on focus groups for identifying requirements, using product designers as representative users, etc.), let's be happy with this sort of message getting across to a mainstream audience:
"The completed product, released in 2003, was an immediate hit, selling 3,120 units in its first year. But through customer feedback, the company began learning about design flaws in the BX3.
For example, the design assumed that most masons would operate the pull-down handle that brings the saw into cutting position with their right hand. It turns out, though, that masons typically grip the material they're cutting with their right hand and pull the handle with their left. That made the handle somewhat awkward for many users.
The company also realized there had been a critical flaw in its design process: It had conducted focus groups with contractors and suppliers who would buy the saw, but not the masons who would actually use it."
"After four years, MK Diamond decided to redesign the saw, and invited masons to its focus groups...designers became familiar with the BX3 by mimicking its everyday use -- carrying it around, transporting it in a pickup truck and cutting cement blocks. All that was videotaped and photographed, and the designers examined the images to help them find ways to make the saw easier to use.
One conclusion was that the saw folded in a way that required a mason to extend his arm outward while carrying it, causing shoulder strain. Tweaking the design, so the user could hold the folded saw closer to his leg, would make it seem lighter and reduce the strain"
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In recent years the BMW i-Drive system has become the poster child for bad usability in interfaces (e.g. Don Norman's criticisms) - a conveniently-named foil to the positive user experience of the iPod. But CNET now reports that a new version of the i-Drive (pictured) is in the works. As a past user of the i-Drive, the new design seems to be addressing some of the key problems I experienced, with dedicated buttons for accessing each of the primary modes, and a single-axis rotary control apparently replacing key functions that previously relied on a multi-directional joystick.
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Mark Vanderbeeken (Core77) reports on the Changing the Change conference, which focused "on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability". Design research can mean a lot of things, and in fact there were 138 papers presented on related topics. Speakers included arch-IDEOer Bill Moggridge, who provided an "explanation of the three types of design research: generative, evaluative (or formative) and predictive, and his description of the Designers Accord, which is a powerful sustainability initiative spearheaded by some people within IDEO."
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Coming Soon: Nothing Between You and Your Machine (New York Times) discusses the recent trends in direct manipulation interfaces in consumer products. The popularity of the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone are in large part due to their intuitive user interfaces that utilize physical manipulation to give users a more direct feeling of control. The re-emergence of voice control as a potential interface medium is also discussed. The overall shift away from the point and click paradigm may be finally happening:
“I’ve wondered for a long time why the computer interface hasn’t changed from 20 years ago,” said Austin Shoemaker, a former Apple Computer software engineer and now chief technology officer of Cooliris. “People should think of a computer interface less as a tool and more as a extension of themselves or as extension of their mind.”
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The first issue for 2008's volume of the journal Ergonomics is focused on the future of the field. While an academic or professional subscription is required to access the volume, the lead article, Bartlett and the future of ergonomics, is available for free online.
The article takes a retrospective look at Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett's 40+ year old predictions on the future of ergonomics, which were surprisingly insightful and accurate:
"Bartlett predicted that developments in automation and communication technologies were likely to present a significant challenge for Ergonomics. Specific predictions he made seem to derive from overall anticipated changes in working activities, and research foci, as a result of the new technologies. These were:
- greater physical isolation of individuals;
- greater demands on technologically-mediated communication;
- reductions in physical workload;
- increases in mental workload;
- combining of the work of several people into the work of one;
- presentation of multi-modal stimuli;
- greater emphasis placed upon decision making; and
- shorter working hours and more leisure time."
The article closes with a look at more recent predictions made by ergonomists, as well as design research practitioners:
"Fulton Suri (2001) proposed the adding of 'empathy' to the armoury of the professional ergonomist. She saw challenges arising from an ever widening field for the application of ergonomics, from resolving conflict between the commercial goals of organisations and the societal goals of maintaining human values and from trying to influence how systems are designed and operated. Fulton Suri saw the role of the ergonomist as being one of a centrally positioned facilitator of effective solutions through being more empathetic to the needs of all concerned."
Beyond this lead article, the content of the special issue contains articles on future ergonomics trends taken from the present context, presented by a range of international experts. If these experts are nearly as accurate as Bartlett was about the future, then this is clearly worthwhile reading.
On a related note, the Human Factor & Ergonomics Society recently published an article, On the future of ergonomics, based on a survey of their members. It includes estimates of the ergonomics job market across a number of relevant fields and industries.
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If you've taken a standardized test you may recall analogy questions. For example, if the problem posed was air:airplane :: _______:ship, a reasonable solution for the blank would be water (apparently this notation is called the Aristotelian format).
I started thinking about analogies after reading Carl Alviani's recent Coroflot posting - Questioning the Cult of the Sketch. The article challenges the common view that strong sketching, or drawing skills, are critical for a designer, especially in the context of judging whether to hire a designer. Alviani quotes a Creative Director at Nike: "A designer who can't sketch is like a journalist who can't write!". Alviani's point is that sketching, which has traditionally been table stakes in the design industry, is now just one of many design-related skills - and arguably not one of the most important ones, compared to other forms of communication, management, etc. A great designer need not be a great sketcher.
This got me thinking about the analogous skill to sketching in the design research field. That is, what skill is considered so fundamental to conducting research that it would not only be possessed, but well-honed in experienced design researchers? I made an initial, incomplete list:
To narrow this down, I focused on those skills that had characteristics which were most analogous to sketching: early in the process, raw/unrefined, driven by personal interpretation and feel. This led me to settle on a consolidated grouping of observing, interviewing and note-taking, that collectively we can call field research skills.
Now, turning back to Question the Cult of Sketch, can a great design researcher lack great field research skills? I would think not - there is a critical distinction from sketching here - field research skills are intrinsically broader and multi-disciplinary relative to sketching. One might be a weaker note-taker, for instance, but still excel with effective interview questions (and a good memory).
But perhaps Alviani and I are both asking the wrong questions because we are inwardly focused. A more fitting question of the modern designer is - can you conduct research to inform your designing, and of the modern researcher - can you design to communicate your research results? Otherwise expressed as research:designer :: design:researcher*.
*See Christopher Fahey's Design Research is a Design Process for an interesting perspective on these issues.
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Last week I had the privilege of serving on the equipment category jury for the 2008 I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review (to be published this summer). By way of background, I.D. has been conducting an annual review of the best designs for over 50 years. This is something I had wanted to do since I read the magazine as a teenager (perhaps that says as much about my social life as my interest in design, but anyway). Besides equipment, there are a range of categories including consumer products, interactive design, furniture, environment and graphics. Consequently, the selected winners are not only considered the best designs, but represent the state of the art in each category.
Given my background, I saw my responsibility as focusing on the ergonomic aspects of each of the nearly 50 products we reviewed. My sensitivity to usability was heightened by staying in a New York hotel room the preceding night where the temperature controls were reversed. Unable to get my $300 room warmed-up, I later found out that, due to some technical fluke, I had to set the control to cold to activate the heat. This also meant lowering the thermostat to below the current room temperature so that the "cold" would switch on.
Fortunately, it turned out that my co-jurors who are designers/design teachers had as much to say about human factors, as I did about aesthetics. By its nature, the equipment category tends to evolve gradually, compared to the more dynamic year-to-year changes of interactive or even consumer products. The Annual Review issue will be published in a few months, so I can't go into details on the entries at this point (see the 2007 Annual Review for reference), but by participating in the judging process, I did learn or confirm some principles about what makes a successful entry.
The judging process is based on expert review and consensus - in other words the criteria changes from year to year based on the expertise, opinions and criteria of the particular judges in each category. At the same time, the nature of the judging process - one full day of going through a large number of entries - suggests the following to submitters:
1. Treat the Entry Process Like a Design Project: Successful designs meet the needs of their users. In this context, the users of the entry forms are expert designers and their tasks are to relatively quickly review and classify submissions. Design basics like appropriate use of typography and visuals to communicate information quickly and effectively are critical (one would think this would go without saying). In other words, given two hypothetically equal design submissions, the one with the well presented, visually structured entry may get more attention than the scribbled one. This may mean going above and beyond the constraints of the entry form, where appropriate.
2. Communicate to a Naive Audience: While jurors are experts in design, they can come from a range of industries and backgrounds. The equipment category in particular, includes a variety of complex, technical products that may be unfamiliar and require explanation. Explanations should include a scenario to describe when, how and why such products are used. In some cases, videos can illustrate usage with a demonstration or simulation. Similarly, it is valuable to explicitly communicate why a particular product is an improvement over competitor or predecessors, as jurors may not be knowledgeable of particular domains.
3. Link the Product to the Greater Design World: Jurors are not only looking at the inherent strengths of a particular design, but how it fits into the current, changing design world (re: my earlier comment about the Annual Review representing the state-of-the art). Consider that two well-designed products from completely different fields need to be compared against each other - broad, less tangible factors such as symbolism of emerging design trends, or benefits to society and the environment may come into play. This is not an easy area for the submitter to address, but I suggest considering the ramifications of a design to the field of "Design", as well as a product's specific users and industry.
I look forward to discussing the Annual Review issue when it comes out.
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February's issue of Mechanical Engineering is focused on the role of human factors in design. The lead article, the new point of view, discusses the renewed importance of human factors in product design, with a veritable who's who of IDSA experts in the subject, including Don Norman, Rob Tannen and Bryce Rutter.
The article is a useful introduction targeted at an engineering audience, and covering the wide range of human factors aspects, from physical fit to creating an emotional connection with the end-user:
"More than ever, successful companies incorporate human factors engineering, psychology, and cognitive theory in designs. Their goal is nothing less than to create a user experience that makes us love the product."
The issue also contains a focus on use - an article on the importance of collaboration between designers, researchers and engineers in creating usable products, and a video of a human factors discussion panel moderated by Don Norman. Accessing the video requires filling out a brief registration form.
Finally, ME magazine is clearly putting its money where its mouth is, by launching the human factors articles in conjunction with a nice upgrade to it's web site design.
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While I was not able to attend the Consumer Electronics Show this year due to other work commitments, all reports indicate that it was bigger than ever. As expected, a number of high performance, high definition videocameras were announced, featuring researcher-friendly capabilities including larger capacity hard drives, image stabilization and greater optical zoom ranges. I'm somewhat partial to the new JVC Everio line from a styling point of view, especially the top of the line GZ-HD7.
But beyond the typical consumer product lines, one product stood out and even took the Best of CES award for the emerging technology category. That product is Bug Lab's Bug, described as a:
"collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest letting you try out different combinations quickly and easily. With BUG and the integrated programming environment/web community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program and share innovative devices and applications. We don't define the final products - you do."
In other words, a set of modular consumer electronics components that can fit together and then be custom programmed to do whatever the user/developer desires - open source will help with that a lot.
The current set of modules include an LCD display, a camera, GPS and motion detector - all to be released this quarter, with second quarter modules including a touch screen, keyboard, and audio module. Check out some videos on YouTube.
These components represent a promising set of opportunities for user and design research:
The quality of the hardware (e.g. video image quality, motion detector sensitivity) and the ease and flexibility of the development environment will be key of course, but I look forward to the possibilities that BUG may enable for the creative designer/researcher.
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The recent update to the DesigningforHumans site was covered in the December 07 issue of IDSA designperspectives. The page 3 blurb, titled "A Blog for Joe and Josephine", briefly describes some of the recent changes to the site.
Here's some additional detail above and beyond what's covered in the article:
I created the original IDSA Human Factors section site in 2000 (!), but at the time it was somewhat of a hassle to keep it current due to the available web editing technologies and it didn’t last very long. You can actually still access the home page circa 2000, although most of the links have rotted: http://www.idsa.org/whatsnew/sections/hfactors/
In January 2005 I restarted the site as a web log (aka blog) format because that accommodates quick entry of short to medium pieces of information that I could update frequently. It also allows people to subscribe to updates via email or RSS feed. It’s been going strong since then with page views increasing by 100%+ in every year since 2005.
A large part of the audience is international and non-IDSA, who use the site for reference info on human factors issues (it’s ranked pretty high for relevant human factor searches in Google and elsewhere)
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In a New York Time's Magazine* Consumed article, Rob Walker discusses the IDEA award winning HomeHero fire extinguisher. The product is notable because unlike traditional fire extinguisher designs, the HomeHero is clearly designed to be attractive . More than just an aesthetic issue, the argument is that making such a product visual appealing will influence owners to place it in a visible and presentable location - thereby improving access and speeding up time to use in a fire. So there's an interesting concept on making products (at least or especially safety products) attractive to promote their accessibility and enhance user situational awareness. [Incidentally, Walker points out that the IDEA judging is not based on direct experience with the actual products, but rather images and descriptions submitted by the entrants.]
On a related point, Walker mentions Don Norman's idea that "attractive things work better". (Incidentally, this is frequently confused with the Aesthetic-Usability Effect where attractive things are perceived as easier to use.) I bring this up because I imagine the HomeHero's simple, clean aesthetic is perceived as easier to use, but I doubt that its perceived to work better. Rather, it may be the case that traditional fire extinguishers, while less attractive in a designer's aesthetic sense, have an industrial appearance that may more strongly communicate effectiveness to the consumer. In other words when we discuss "attractive" or "aesthetic" qualities, we need to qualify what we mean in the appropriate context.
*Incidentally - if you read one issue of the New York Times Magazine this year. This should be it. It's the "Annual Year in Ideas" - a summary of the most interesting and provocative inventions, theories, studies and concepts that emerged in 2007. Everything from an airborne wind turbine to Radiohead's music pricing approach. And the back-page listing of some of the year's strangest patents (e.g. a chewable toothbrush).
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2007 has witnessed the continued maturity of user research practices in product design/development organizations. As this continues, we look to 2008 and key areas of growth and change in user research technologies and methodologies. What many of these themes have in common reflects a shift from how to conduct research, to how to manage all of the research findings and results – clearly a positive trend and a nice problem to have. Stay tuned into 2008 as these themes are tracked in further detail.
Even a casual reader of this web log will have observed the ever-growing options in data gathering technologies available for a variety of research applications. For 2008, the themes in technology are diverse – from high definition video to a new resource of anthropometric head measurements of the Chinese population. But the more compelling tools address needs in organizing and analyzing qualitative data:
Design research methods will continue to adapt for studying the wider range of user experiences, beyond the primary product. Frameworks and techniques for mapping out user touch points will assist research planning, which will become specialized to particular domains (e.g. medical vs. consumer). Threading across all of this is the need for guidelines for effective research communication and presentation:
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This past week's Businessweek contains an interesting article about the design process at Bang & Olufsen. Bang & Olufsen: Design Reigns Supreme describes what might be called the "great man" theory of design, where design vision takes precedence over engineering and business, and does not include design research. This "model is a throwback to an earlier time when CEOs worked closely with gifted designers to differentiate their products in the marketplace".
While B&O is clearly a leader in aesthetic design of consumer electronics, they have been failing at making the transition to the digital world (e.g. from CDs to MP3s). And it's evident from reading the article that this is partly attributable to the lack of a research process:
"They don't, for example, do even the basic market research ethnography common among consumer-oriented companies. Sorensen says consumers often don't really know what they want. Instead, B&O designers intuit the products that will fly."
Read between the lines and it's apparent that there's a lack of understanding about design research. Ethnography is not about asking consumers what they want, it's about identifying their unmet needs, a very creative process in itself. Later in the article there's a likely example of what happens when you rely on designer intuition:
"Take the digital music player. Even the company's loyal cognoscenti prefer Apple's iPod, with its elegant design and easy interface, to the $460 BeoSound 2--conceived by none other than Lewis in 2002. BeoSound 2 has been, by all accounts, a dud. Lewis says his mistake was not appreciating how quickly digital memory would grow. He figured with 50 songs on a device, the amount the original memory card would hold, consumers wouldn't need a screen to navigate through their music."
Perhaps if Lewis and his team had better understand their user audiences - typically high-net worth music lovers - it would have been discovered that 50 songs was not going to meet their needs long terms and a different design approach would have been more successful.
Of course hindsight is 20/20 and B&O is shifting its focus to bringing in designers who understand the digital world. Unfortunately, it appears that they're still missing the point - they don't so much need new designers, as a new design process.
. Rob Tannen
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The release of branko Lucic's forthcoming design fiction book, nonobject has been moved from late 2007 to early next year. This seemingly fascinating book is about:
" deliberately creating objects that cannot exist -- because the material is not yet available, or the business plan, or the manufacturing process, or the infra- structure to support it, or even the human sensibility -- it becomes possible to explore the meaning of design at a more profound level and to think more richly about what is and what might be."
In addition to a penchant for starting proper nouns with lowercase letters, Lucic's four initially available concepts and videos emphasize communication, with two versions of cell phones - the CUin5 (pictured above) and the Tarati (pictured below). I recommend viewing the videos about each of the design concepts before reading further to get a clearer understanding. At his presentation at Connecting '07, Lucic previewed some to-be-released concepts as well including a motorcycle design, which will presumably be available online at a later date.
In the spirit of intellectual/conceptual thought, I started thinking about these nonobbjects for a human factors perspective. One of my first realizations is that while these are conceptual product designs, the concepts that are strongly human-centered. I don't know whether or not ergonomic and usability aspects of these concepts will be discussed in the book, but here's my take with respect to the two phone concepts - based on the limited information currently available:
CUin5
This concept might best be described as the anti-iPhone. While Apple's device is all about screen size and minimal buttons, the CUin5 is literally all buttons and no display. Multiple sets of numeric keypads are provided on all six sides in different arrangements and orientations. The foreseeable human factors aspects of this include:
Tarati
If CUin5 is all about maximizing tactile connection with a phone, the Tarati is about minimizing it. A very thin design is accomplished by removing all buttons and replacing them with spaces for the user's finger to pass through while dialing. A dynamic digital display, in conjunction with dial tones, provides feedback on actions. From a human factors perspective, several issues are worth considering:
.rob Tannen
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The cover story of the current issue of Wired magazine (15.09) discusses the user-centered approach to make an upcoming game playable. Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play focuses on the work of Randy Pagulayan and his team at Microsoft, who conduct usability testing and analytics to optimize game play - for example, when an area of the game might be too difficult, or a key weapon overlooked by too many players. (Note - Randy is a grad school buddy of mine from University of Cincinnati - I've personally visited his lab and its quite impressive in terms of technology and methods).
I'm also trying out a new feature on the IDSA Human Factors site called Snap Shots, which displays a preview of a linked site on rollover. Let me know if it's more useful than annoying or vice versa.
-Rob Tannen
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http://www.redesignme.org/ is a Flash-based beta site where anyone can post video, photo and text of a product with usability problems. You can also add comments to other people's postings (down with OPP?), ratings, and most importantly, post your own design solutions in image or video format. The goal of the site is to "promote simplicity in product design" and give "a signal to industry".
The site has a friendly, comic-book feel, although is a bit navigationally clunky. For example, when I submitted a new example (poor placement of the volume control in the Mini Cooper), I had to refresh the site following submission to view my entry. And when viewing a full-size image I had to negotiate three vertical scrollbars at one time. I also can't send you a direct link to my posting. Let's chalk it to growing pains - it is a beta, so please don't submit the site as a self-referential product example. A simple registration is required to submit content.
This site is a great idea - a slicker interactive update on classics like http://baddesigns.com/
Thanks to Maxim Schram of Ease of Use (Netherlands) for this link.
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Core77 is featuring an article about a collaborative project between Ignition, Texas Instruments and Southern Methodist University students/users to design next-generation digital projectors.
In, The Future of "User-Designed": How one company worked with end-users to design their perfect product, by Bryan Hynecek, ininitial design concepts were created by gaming users - in this case master's students in video game development - and then reviewed and improved by the professionals.
One might question whether using master's students in game development is truly "user-centered" in the sense that these might not be considered novice users. On the contrary, I applaud the selection of a targeted, expert end-user sample who have clear interest and motivation, but are by no means product designers. Decide for yourself.
Also see previous, related articles on user-driven innovation: http://humanfactors.typepad.com/idsa/2007/03/userdriven_inno.html
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A recent New York Times article discuss some of the trends in designing technology products to be more appealing and/or more usable by women:
To Appeal to Women, Too, Gadgets Go Beyond ‘Cute’ and ‘Pink’
Though anecdotal, the article makes the point that product designers are feminizing technology to give it a broader appeal, rather than creating specifically masculine or feminine specific products. In the case of technology these typically lean towards masculine designs by default.
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Update (7 May) - The article on the Helio Ocean phone discussed below is now available online, at least temporarily:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18648/
I've mentioned MIT Technology Review magazine before as an excellent resource for keeping up with emerging technologies, design-related and otherwise. Well, the May/June 2007 issue is focused on design, with an emphasis on user-centered design and technology. Articles of interest include:
Note the magazine print edition is currently available, but will be available online in the coming months. You can actually view the issue's table of contents here, but the article links are not functional yet:
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Download pdtg_summer_07_newsletter_print_12_pages_web.pdf
The spring 2007 newsletter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's Product Design Techincal Group is now available. The issue features:
and can be downloaded (PDF) -
Download pdtg_spring_2007_newsletter.pdf
"The Product Design Technical Group (PDTG) is dedicated to developing productsthat are useful, usable, safe, and desirable by applying the methods of human factors, consumer/user research,and industrial design. Members of the group are concerned with creating an appealing total user experience forconsumer, commercial, medical, andindustrial products and systems. Their work focuses on both physical and cognitive user interactions."
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Yesterday's NY Times business section (free registration required) included a brief article titled: How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It. The article discussed the rising use of user-driven innovation, where companies are receiving input from customers on the design and customization of their products.
Unlike user-centered design which incorporates end-user input into a company's internal design process, user-driven innovation is externally motivated. For example, a company may adapt a customization made by a current product user into the next version of its product.
The article discusses how this has happened for a particular medical device manufacturer, and touches on the logistical and legal challenges to this approach. For additional information, the article refers to Eric Von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation, which can be downloaded as a PDF.
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The IDSA web site now has a dedicated section to for information and access to Podcasts:
http://new.idsa.org/webmodules/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=2480&z=31
The Podcasts are categorized into subcategories related:
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This past fall the IDSA Human Factors section conducted an online survey to gather data on technologies used to conduct user research. We had nearly eighty responses. The information was used in a recent Usability Professionals Association presentation in New York on Technologies for User Research (TURe). Edited presentation materials, that describe the survey results, may be downloaded from that site (the presentation breaks-down the results between product design and interaction design). The research will also be discussed in an upcoming IDSA podcast (TBA).
Thanks to everyone who responded. I have summarized some of the findings below, and attached two files with more detailed data.
Key Findings:
78 respondents (39 in product design, 47 in interaction design; small overlap between groups)
Overall technology utilization in user research:
General Feedback:
Data Files:
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