dreaming on route 66

On a Tuesday afternoon, about twelve years ago, I was chatting with a young IT student near Grand Canyon. With all our belongings stuffed in a U-Haul van, my husband and I were in the process of moving from San Francisco to the east coast. This young man was eager to hear about our work. The local community were sponsoring his education, for which he was very grateful. But he was also sad, as it meant having to leave the 'Big Rez' to find a job.

It was in the early days of the Internet boom. I was amazed by Navajo culture and craftsmanship, by the beauty of the painted dessert and its people, and a dream began to form; I should set up a web-design group to benefit the local community, while making use of the incredible talent and creativity surrounding me.

Unfortunately, I never managed to follow up on my plans. I still think it would be a wonderful opportunity, but due to the lack of a green-card, and the addition of two children, I probably never will.

In England, I had been part of a group of woman in technology who provide role models, presentations, and tutoring at girls' secondary schools. When our son started primary school in The Netherlands, I volunteered to teach computing, web design, and English lessons to young children. As most parents at our local school, we also took out paid subscriptions to publishers and sites that provide additional material for our children to practice at home.

At the same time I started helping my niece with her maths homework, as I used to do with the girls back home in grammar school; It seems many teachers have difficulties to explain or present logical questions and solutions very well.

And a new dream began to form; All children - regardless of their location, culture, gender, religion, or financial means - should have access to education resources that teach logic and maths in a fun and easy to understand way. I don't know yet how to achieve this dream, but I guess every journey has to start with the first small steps ...

p.s. If you have any ideas or suggestions, or want to help fulfill this dream, please get in touch!

Sort of Date @ Design by Fire Café

Yesterday evening, the first Design by Fire Café took place at Café Midi in Utrecht.

As locations go, Yohan certainly managed to find another hidden gem! - What I first mistook for just another beer-swishing corner joint, turned out to be a cozy pub offering a feast of amazing fresh, natural, excellently prepared vegetarian food, with a select choice of wonderful organic tea!

After dinner followed another treat as the team behind Sort of Date presented their amazing labor of love.

First, Marrije Schaake talked about the process, how a small, multidisciplinary group of colleagues and friends managed to created a fun & useful website for organizing appointments within a few weekend sessions. Next, Ivo de Boer shared a collection of drafts, wire frames, and screen shots of the service.

Initially, the group intended to 'do something' along the theme of cooking and dining. Renting a cottage for a weekend of intense teamwork, they came up with Sort of List, an interactive website for planning shopping lists.

However, despite some success, the team found that they had been over ambitious, not well prepared and suffered from lack of communication; the intended solution had not been well defined and too complex.

After a year's break, the group was ready for 'take two'. This time more effort was invested beforehand using online chat sessions to define the intended solution, and prepare the infrastructure and setup, resulting in the creation of Sort of Date.

Via Twitter and personal connections, a wealth of user feedback was then collected, and resulted in an updated version during a third weekend session a few months later.

Marrije considered the fact that all team members knew each other well, both personally and professionally, as a prerequisite for the success of these sessions. She also stressed the importance of a well defined and achievable goal, good preparation (ranging from items such as Internet access, to food supplies), lots of ongoing short meetings to catch up with the status amongst the team, and having a tactile result (e.g. online site) at the end to serve as motivation.

All in all a very enjoyable and interesting evening, and a nice appetizer for the Design by Fire conference next month!

UX Cocktail of Cultural Context

Picture byUser Intelligence

On May 6th, User Intelligence was hosting an entertaining & educational UX cocktail hour at their light and airy premises in Amsterdam’s historic downtown. The event proved very popular; only limited spaces were available, unfortunately, and they had filled up within hours. Nevertheless, as always, the cocktail hour was a great opportunity to catch up with many familiar faces, as well as make new intriguing contacts.

After a private tour of their usability lab and facilities, Mark Kassteen gave a short overview of User Intelligence and their services. I was particularly interested in the team’s extensive user research experience, including traditional usability testing, explorative user research, and web analytics. Amongst other accomplishments, User Intelligence developed a web traffic map to visualize and analyze usage data of web sites and applications, which has won several prices, and will be presented at the upcoming Chi NL conference in Leiden.

Marc also shared several examples of user research in practice, including a recent project on target audience definition for a health services portal. Initially, the clients had identified several distinct types of users that they thought would require different variations of the portal: patients, volunteers, and donors. However, closer inspection established that all patients were also volunteers or donors, and thus a different and more effective homogeneous user interface strategy could be chosen.

Next Steve Portigal (the evening’s guest of honor, who happened to be on vacation in Amsterdam with his charming partner) kindly agreed to share some observations on cultural context and its importance within design research. Rather than a traditional usability or design firm, Steve’s expertise lies in research, support, and cooperation with designers, engineers, and marketers to generate ideas and concepts.

For example in a recent project for Belkin, explorative field research on user context and behavior was conducted. The aim of this blue sky project was to identify unique demands of various environments and settings (e.g. while jogging, shopping, walking a dog, on the beach, at school, at work, etc) in order to provide sketches of unmet user needs and thus identify product opportunities for IPod accessories. However, the research showed that the assumed premise of “sylos” did not apply; instead users moved fluidly from one “bubble”(i.e. environment and situation) to another, often in parallel (e.g. social calls while shopping, working while walking the dog, etc.).

In particular, Steve’s interest lies in the observation of cultural context. Cultural norms can be crucial for the introduction of new products that require, encourage, or enable new types of behavior. To be considered and accepted as “normal” behavior, it needs to fit within the unspoken rules of a (sub-) culture, as expressed for example in media, product offerings, advertisement, street culture, trends and fads. In user research, people will often have the urge to “normalize” themselves by talking about perceived end points (“I might do …, but I’m not like some whacko who does …”), thus providing valuable insight into barriers that restrain user behavior, believes, and acceptance of products and concepts.

Steve shared some amusing and insightful examples of his observations on cultural differences and idiosyncrasies around the globe (see also Steve's pictures). For example, at MacDonald’s in Bangkok, uses are greeted by a Ronald MacDonald figure with Asian features, bowing to guests with politely folded hands, thus merging pervasive global fast food culture with strong local customs.

Steve also noticed that in the street culture of Amsterdam, a thinner edge is evolving, for example concerning sexuality, but also other “bodily functions” and advertisements for toilets. In contrast, in North American culture it is generally considered taboo to talk about “pooh” in polite society, and in Japan successful product offerings have been identified and developed to provide “camouflage sound” on public toilets (raising the interesting question whether it is considered more embarrassing to hear or be heard in this situation). By understanding these hidden “problems” or issues of different social locations and settings, potential solutions can be identified and translated into concepts and products.

Steve finished his excellent presentation with the call to “keep exploring”!

Finally, Elio Tagliola shared some of his thoughts on integration of user research within a multi-channel process, including several examples on how this has been applied at GroupM for large multimedia projects such as Simyo, to ensure that consumer needs are put first in multi channel processes. For this purpose a model of “circle of contacts” was developed at GroupM to serve as a trigger to start discussions. In multi-media marketing departments and agencies there is often still a lack of understanding and insight into customer’s context, needs, motivations, and emotional state. Elio argued for more analysis, integration, and communication across all channels.

Sexual Paradox & Gender Gap?

I recently came across Susan Pinker's ideas on behavioral and professional differences caused by gender & hormonal influences. Particularly her explanation in a recent Dutch TV documentary, on why female success (or seeming lack thereof) should be defined and measured differently, stroke a chord.

To some degrees, I myself am an example of Susan's "high achieving women [who] choose jobs that pay less or opt out at pivotal moments in their careers".

In my mid thirties, rather than continuing my thus far quite successful career, I resigned a profitable position with a prestigious organization, not for any rational reason, but because it felt like the right thing to do at the time. Since then I have foolishly turned down several interesting opportunities and started my own company, which has not been making a lot of profit so far. This is partially due to the fact that I have approached my company more as a hobby (my main task being currently that of a mother), and many of my projects represent honorary work.

Thus measured by traditional standards, in the past couple of years I have not been very successful professionally. A fact that seems to baffle my accountant, my husband, and many of my friends and colleagues.

Nevertheless, I feel that I have contributed more value to my profession and society in recent years, then when I was still receiving a lucrative salary. Indeed most of our communities could not operate without the dedication and commitment of talented individuals, many of them female, who are not driven by status or financial rewards, but humanitarian values and long-term impact. And I wonder if for myself this might not in fact be a more accurate and justified measure of success.

(business) success through UxD?

As user experience has become more popular amongst business and marketing, there seems to be a trend to focus on conversion rates and how to get users to purchase certain products or services. Of course commercial aspects are important, but we must not loose sight of the essence and purpose of our profession.

As Valeria Maltoni recommends very fittingly in her Top Ten Reasons Why You're not a Leading Brand, we should ask ourselves "what have you done to improve someone's life today?".

Or as Peter Drucker put it, the purpose of an organization is to create value for its customers. Our aim is to know and understand users so well, that the product or service fits perfectly and sells itself. The reward of doing this is profit.

new year's confusion

In the autumn of 2006, I resigned a lucrative position as senior designer and user researcher at an established user experience group. Many of my friends and colleagues were surprised by my decision, but at the time I felt it was the right thing to do, make a change, and take some time for myself and my family.

Over the past two years, I got to know many inspiring people and organizations, occasionally had the opportunity to contribute to exciting projects, and was privileged to exchange and learn many interesting insights and experiences. Occasionally, I still have doubts and miss the financial, intellectual, and emotional benefits provided by my former position and team.

As 2008 is drawing to a close, I wonder where I stand now and what the future will bring.

Next year I will be 39 years old (pretty ancient for the IT industry, according to some recruiters). To my great amazement, some (female) students and practitioners actually seem to consider me an inspiring role model. I guess they don't see the inner turmoil. Sadly, I still don't know what I really want or where to find it.

However, I do have a pretty good picture what I do not want; I don't want to miss having enough time and attention for my family and friends, but I also don't want to become a stay-at-home housewife. I don't want to be rude or hurtful, but I also don't want to be taken advantage off or ignored. I don't want to be scared or insecure. I don't want to hide who and what I am. I don't want my life and work to be in vain. I don't want to be mediocre and I don't want to produce bad work. Nevertheless I don't want to be just an idealist, but achieve realistic results. However, I don't want to work just for profit, but help to make the world a better place, one minuscule step at a time. I don't want to despair or give up in the face of adversity and I don't want to forget that I can't always achieve all of my good intentions.

So what is my new year's wish in the face of general confusion? - Maybe to have the patience, stamina, and self-confidence to be true to yourself and follow your own path, wherever it might take you!

web analytics at UR BOF

Yesterday evening was the 7th meeting of CHI Netherlands User Research BOF at the Creative Learning Lab in Amsterdam, with two presentations on web analytics.

Adam Cox en Martijn Klompenhouwer of User Intelligence shared some interesting examples and lessons learned of combining web analytics and user research.

While web analytics can provide a lot of data on where users are coming from (e.g. referrals, search engines, etc), what they are doing on a site, and where & when they leave a site, they do lack an accurate interpretation of the reasons behind these actions (i.e. "why").

User research on the other hand provides good insights and qualitative data, but often lacks sufficient quantity of data to easily verify results, and is less suitable for capturing users' behavior over longer periods of time or catch infrequent user behavior.

Both approaches complement each other very well, and can be very powerful in combination, for example by using statistically significant findings of web analytics to support and confirm hunches gained through user research, as well as applying user research to further investigate the rational for specific issues uncovered through web analytics' continuous monitoring.

Adam and Martijn shared several examples where they had successfully combined web analytics and user research. For example one customer had in the past evaluated their site by starting from the homepage or internal search engine. However, web analytics showed that most visitors of the site actually arrived at the detail pages through external search engines. Thus usability test scripts were adjusted accordingly, which emphasized several issues that usability tests had previously not encountered.

In another case, an expert review indicated that the homepage was confusing to users, because it offered too many options. Web analytics showed that 90% of all visitors continued on to the same secondary page. Thus the other options could be removed or relocated to less prominent positions.

Another customer discovered through web analytics that their sales funnel had a disproportionately high rate of customers abandoning the shopping process at a specific step. During usability testing, particular attention was given to this page and the user's reaction. Whereas during the test scenarios, users continued through checkout, further in depth questioning revealed why they would otherwise have abandoned their purchase at this point.

Web analytics can also be useful to define the target audience for user research, for example based on location (local, national, international), time of day (home vs. office users), screen resolution, operating systems, etc.

For further information, Adam and Martijn recommended Web Analytics Demystified by Eric Peterson and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day by Avinash Kaushik, as well as Web Analytics Wednesdays and upcoming seminar by WAA Netherlands.

Eelco van Kuik of Conversion Company calls himself a 'hardcore web analyst' and has so far mostly been oriented toward online marketing and online channel management. Eelco provided a short introduction to web analytics 2.0, according to Kaushik's model, with different methods of increasing depth and complexity:

1. clickstream analysis; most widely know approach using tools such as Google analytics
2. multiple outcome analysis; comparing data from different measurement systems or tools to validate results and establish common trends
3. online experiments; A/B testing to compare effectiveness of different design or marketing propositions.
4. targeting; e.g. multivariate testing example presented by Martin McNulty, where significantly different test results occurred at different times of the weeks due to varying user groups, and thus the decision to display different designs at different times of the week.
5. voice of customer; adding some detail through online surveys and video analysis (i.e. tracking user's mouse movements and selections on a page)
6. competitive intelligence; comparative data and tests through 3rd parties such as Alexa

Eelco pointed out the importance of focusing on a particular area or priority initially, and extending the analysis incrementally rather than taking on too much in one go. First the basics need to be well established and set up correct, before moving on to more advanced approaches. Also the total cost of ownership has to be considered, including ongoing maintenance of tags etc and setting up a process for ongoing evaluation and taking according actions based on the accumulated data .

The presentation raised a lot of ethical questions and heated discussions amongst the audience. As Eelco pointed out, it is important to pay close attention to the process and regulations regarding where and by whom information is captured, reviewed and stored (e.g. internally or via external facilities, in which country etc.). It seems advisable, particularly for organizations handling sensitive information, to consult with experienced Web analytics experts aware of these issues and implications.

Personally, I don't believe self regulation of the industry can be trusted to prevent any unethical business practices and abuse of data. Certainly considering (video) analysis of unwitting (and possibly unwilling) test participants, and the enormous amount of data accumulated by Google through their analytics tool, I cannot shake a distinct paranoid feeling, and consider blocking any such clandestine activities from happening in my browser. It was reassuring, though, to hear that there are some (publicly funded) efforts to review sites concerning appropriate use of web analytics systems.

However, I am very intrigued by the opportunities offered through web analytics to validate, and refine usability research and thus improve the user experience. Definitely worth while investigating further!

For more impressions see also Tess Doucet' blog.

paper prototyping on steroids

I want me one of them!! ;-)

Awesome animation by Evelien Lohbeck:

concept visualization - take three

I've often been praising the strength of visualization techniques to define, communicate, and refine technology and business concepts. As Adam Greenfield points out in Everyware, a good example how powerful a tool concept visualization can be is the development of Raytheon's Common Tactical Blackboard for the US military after seeing the animation of John Underkoffler's original concept in Minority Report (see e.g. demo at CeBIT '08, Jeff Han's presentation, and Microsoft's vision demo).

Addition (Nov '08):
Another neat example on the art of concept visualization is The ambient life by Buro Knapzak. (though the story line is unfortunately not very original) .

concept visualization XXL

Opinions seem to be divided on this one (see e.g. Kara Swisher's note), but I'm absolutely in love with Scott McCloud's visualization of Google Chrome (then again I have always been a fan of BD's, i.e. Franco-Belgian comic strips ;-).

Of course in this instance the strip was created after the fact and is used mainly as communication & marketing tool. But in my experience these type of visualization lend themselves excellently for testing & refinement of user experience concepts before any detailed design or coding has taken place.

interface sweet spot & comfort zone

Interesting theory by Marc Van Rymenant (Netway) on dividing user interfaces based on physiological and behavioral research as foundation for composition principles (think Phi and Leonardo's magic numbers) to determine interface sweet spots and comfort zones.

I'm very curious to hear if any designers actually observe noticeable positive effects when applying this approach to their visual designs.

dutch language police

Occasionally I feel inspired to write articles and reports on usability and user experience design, amongst others for CHI Nederland. Unfortunately, my written Dutch language skills are far from perfect, but the editor kindly agreed for me to write my contributions in English, even though the CHI NL site is almost entirely in Dutch.

It seems this fact did not sit well with some supporters of the 'Dutch language police', as conveyed by a commentary from June 24 on the DdUX site, including a link to an article by Stichting Nederlands, who condemns the use of English and sees it as a major threat to Dutch culture and history. This xenophobic paranoia is reminiscent of a campaign by Dutch politician Rita Verdonk, who wanted to ban all Dutch residents from speaking foreign languages on public streets in NL. I would expect to encounter such nationalistic tendencies in the hardworking traditionalist neighborhoods of Rotterdam, but not among an academic and internationally well connected society!

p.s Maybe the commentator should suggest to rename DdUX ("Design for Digital User eXperience") to OdGE ("Ontwerp voor Digitaale Gebruikers Ervaringen")?

p.p.s. Luckily so far nobody seems to consider my foreign genes as a threat for future Dutch generations ... or maybe that's just the paranoia of my German upbringing ... ;-)

p.p.p.s. Not having informed me about their public critique of my report, I wonder if DdUX might at least have the courtesy to offer some apologies?

The Web and Beyond 2008: Mobility

The second Web and Beyond conference took place on May 22, 2008 at the historical Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. It was once again a great success, with inspiring keynotes, interesting stands and presentations, and over 500 international attendees; a fertile exchange of experiences, contacts, and ideas.

This year’s conference was focused on mobility, exploring the opportunities, challenges, and implications for users, communities, and designers to provide rich and smart access to data, communications, and transactions in a wide variety of settings and devices.

Chairman Steve Pemberton opened the conference with his usual flair and humor by sharing an anecdote about the recent ADSL breakdown, where his mobile PDA temporarily became the only link to the internet. In fact, in Japan, thanks to “all you can eat” high-throughput subscriptions, it is the norm for users to access the Web on mobile devices when travelling as well as at home. However, despite this global trend, most traditional site designs are still focused solely on windows PCs and high-resolution screens.

Adam Greenfield, charismatic author of "Everyware", shared his vision and hopes on the use of “ambient informatics”, that is locally distributed information (for example embedded in urban infrastructures) that can be interacted with and acted upon. These services should be well considered to support more humane and pleasant “metropolitan experiences”, reestablishing a spirit and soul often lost in many modern cities. A person walking down a sidewalk becomes in effect a user of the city, with complex information processing tasks merging into subconscious behavior. Furthermore, given the rise of mobile access to virtual communities, the “big now” that an individual might be emerged in at any given time is no longer limited to his current physical location, leading to new types of behavior. These developments have big economic, social, and security implications. As the web services model gets increasingly applied to physical reality without effective recourse, these represent important political questions that need to be addressed. Adam argues that as usability professionals we should not focus on trying to control the total user experience, but rather design thoughtful seams and hinges with sufficient “looseness in the weave” to allow for organic, bottom-up emergence of behavior, culture, and communities.

Along a similar line, sociologist Jyri Engeström, founder of micro-blogging site Jaiku, talked about the importance of “social objects” and “nodal points” for the creation of valuable social media services. He argues that urbanism is starting to kick back, changing the basic concepts of the industry so far. Long-term success of social networking services depends on the reason why people want to connect; not just a cool little application on facebook, but adding more profound value by sharing a common interest, a “social object” (often reflecting existing objects such as pictures, videos, text messages, links, etc). Jyri defines “verbs” as individual actions that leave traces on a social object (such as “created”, “bookmarked”, “commented on”, etc). Users want to be aware of their contacts’ actions in their social peripheral vision, to stay virtually connected with friends and family that might be physically disconnected. Mobile devices enable users to capture slices of reality that couldn’t be captured before. By detecting the “nodal points” (such as content, time, location, or media), the significance of data can be evaluated, thus filtering those bits relevant for a particular person in a specific context and time.

Based on the previous keynote presentations, Ben Cerveny adapted his presentation and took the audience on an exciting - if somewhat mind boggling - flight of inspiration on communities as “geomorphic organisms” (geomorphology: a landscape shaped as a result of the forces surrounding it, geomorphic organism: individual social groups shaped by events and environments surrounding them), as a model to understand behavior in the new real-time networked environment. According to Ben, a dynamic set of people and their interactions can be compared to a multi-cellular organism, shaped by their links and connections, and bound together by their “vision of utopia” as an ideal future to aspire to. Ben also used the analogy of a school of fish or a flock of birds, where individual behavior merges into and is entrenched in the group as a whole, and group dynamics become self-organizing with different roles emerging for individual members of the group. Their “envelope of sensation” is formed, for example, by perceived emotional states, networks, built environments, financial markets, etc. The combined input of subjective opinions influences how members of the group instinctively experience and interpret external stimuli, but these individual opinions are in term shaped by that community. A common cognitive model is formed by trading subconscious “flotsam” back and forth, taking in impressions, tagging them in a shared “internal language”, and extracting meta data to reinforce and evolve a shared model of the world. Thus similar to biological metabolism, input is digested, transformed, adds sustenance, and might result in ‘accidental’ output. Ben envisions a city to become a temporary configuration of urban resources, almost like a wiki with its own scripting language to activate various resources, bathed in many small stimulations and constantly engaged in reforming itself unconsciously in response, where collectives can “play their environment like an instrument”. This constant peripheral awareness of - and reliance on - a person’s multiple communities or “tribes” becomes almost like a cybernetic extensions of their own body, potentially leaving individuals and groups vulnerable to the threat of losing this vital connection.

There were also a number of interesting parallel sessions by various Dutch practitioners and academics. Continuing on the previous evening’s presentations, Ingrid Halters, TomTom’s head of user experience, gave an overview of recent developments within TomTom’s navigation devices, including aggregation of user generated content and context sensitive data detection. Ingrid also provided an insightful glimpse at the special challenges faced by highly mobile, specialized consumer applications, used by novice users of all ages and cultures in a variety of contexts. For in-car navigation devices, this includes safety issues, intuitive task-based interactions, task automation, instant recognition (“out of the corner of the eye”), social environments, varying noise and volume levels, weather and light conditions, physical/ergonomic conditions, as well as persuasive interfaces to discourage or limit interactions with the device while driving.

Kars Alfrink, a seasoned speaker at CHI NL, shared some examples of mobile components for “playful cultural resistance”, and presented a compelling argument on the importance of play to achieve a greater purpose. As Kars points out, playing is not the opposite of productivity, but forms in fact the basis of many innovative achievements in society, business, and design. Kars closed his entertaining presentation with a request to all designers of future mobile services to ensure there remains sufficient space for games; reminiscent of Adam Greenfield’s argument for “looseness in the weave”.

Maartje van Hardeveld, user experience consultant at Rabobank, provided an insight into the advent of mobile banking and illustrated the user experience process leading to the introduction of Rabo Mobiel and Rabo TV. Developments within the financial industry result in less physical visits to local branches, but an explosive growth of direct channels. Consumers are less committed to any particular bank, but expect easy, instant access anytime, anywhere. Nevertheless, in the past, uptake of mobile banking services has been slow. In 2005 Rabobank conducted an ethnographic study using interviews, photo diaries, and group sessions to investigate how, for what purpose, at what time, and in what context consumers want to use mobile devices and financial services. This resulted in some interesting insights and creative ideas, some of which were further explored with persona, storyboards, and several real-life trials, including mobile payments at a supermarket branch and virtual access tickets to Rotterdam Zoo.

Christian Lindholm rounded up the conference on a lighter note, sharing some anecdotes and insights of the mobile market and recent technology trends. He elaborated on the success of Apple’s iPhone, with users passionately addicted to their mobile devices as an extension of their personality, as well as the trend of netbooks versus smartphones, such as the revolutionary Asus Eee and iPod touch. According to Christian the continuum of convergence from phone to computers are examples of the advent of “casual computing”; light and affordable networked devices that can be instantaneously accessed in almost any social situation, without disturbing the social context.

Many of the speakers portrayed the vision of a revolutionary new networked urban society. While this can be inspiring, there also often seems to be a lack of careful thought and consideration in the overall enthusiasm and hype. Beyond commercial and personal benefits, there are major implications, including

• environmental (e.g. how to sustain the massive energy requirements, health implications, and waste by-products of large computerized networked environments)
• social (e.g. how open and inclusive are networked communities and services)
• political (e.g. in how far can they be abused to subconsciously influence the views and behaviors of a groups’ members)
• ethical (e.g. in how far are consumers aware of their interactions and dependence on these services)
• security risks
• etc.

It seems imperative that the usability community, as well as society as a whole, becomes aware of and addresses these issues!

Overall, the conference set a high visionary as well as pragmatic standard. A great achievement for CHI Nederland, which over the past ten years has grown into the second largest local chapter of ACM SIGCHI; perhaps a reflection and continuation of the philosophical and literary tradition of the Netherlands within Europe throughout history.

[This report was also published by CHI Nederland]

walk in beauty

Though I must admit that I am not very successful at practicing it, I greatly admire the Navajo aspiration to "walk in beauty", i.e. to lead our life in harmony, respect, and balance with ourself, our fellow humans, and the natural world surrounding us.

Or as cited on Jyri Engström’s extraordinary wedding site:

“An optimistic, forward-looking call for all people and communities to make a difference to the prevailing trends, make the world more sustainable and beautiful using the means at their disposal. We can make a difference through our attitudes, willingness to change, and professional skills.”

What an exhilarating thought!

user experience at TomTom

On the eve of the second Web and Beyond conference in Amsterdam, TomTom was hosting this month's UX cocktail hour at their brand new offices behind Amsterdam's central library.

In front of a breathtaking view of downtown Amsterdam, we were treated to drinks and a glimpse behind the scenes of TomTom's user experience team.

Quite a large turnout this time, including attendees and speakers of the conference. First off were the usual introductions & announcements by our host, Peter Boersma, who's voice was unfortunately starting to disintegrate. Once again, there seemed to be a big demand for medior and senior UX designers and usability practitioners, as well as lecturers, across the Netherlands. This time with an international edge, as Adam Greenfield was advertising his UX group at Nokia in Helsinki, London, and Palo Alto.

TomTom's head of UX, Ingrid Halters, and interaction designer Simone Tertoolen were giving a short overview of TomTom's history and the organization of the UX team within the organization, as well as a very interesting presentation of the design process and rational behind TomTom's new line guidance feature.

Interesting to observe that the 35+ members of TomTom's user experience team are part of R&D and placed high on the companies' hierarchy, working closely with technology and all other parts of the organization across the product range. The team is divided into separate disciplines, including interaction and visual design, product design, usability, content, etc. I noticed that this is a strategy that seems to work very well for many market leading companies famous for their innovative design and outstanding user experience.

Unusual compared to many other companies, most of the usability research at TomTom is accomplished by expert reviews and in-depth feedback from novice users as test-drivers of beta versions. Given the context of use for navigation systems in a driving vehicle, realistic conditions are critical to evaluate fine details of the user interface, and almost impossible to simulate in their in-house usability lab.

I was rather taken by the group, and all in all it was once again a very interesting and fun session, with plenty opportunity to mingle with old acquaintances and make some interesting new contacts. Driving home after the evening, trying to find my way through crowded Amsterdam city center, I must admit I sorely missed not possessing a navigation device myself ;-)

warped reality on mobile monday

This week, at the Mobile Monday in Amsterdam, Joseph Pine provided a fascinating, if slightly mind bending overview of his work on 'multiverses' in the experience economy.

In his book "Technology and Media in the Experience Economy", Joseph Pine argues that just as goods have become commodities in the past, so by now have services. Thus increasingly companies do not only have to compete on availability, cost, and quality, but by staging experiences - memorable personal events - where authenticity (i.e. how real / genuine it appears) is the primary distinguishing criteria. Examples of this are the trend for natural foods, corporate social responsibility, and products such as handmade soaps. But the same criteria can also apply to virtual products.

Joseph Pine suggests in his book "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage" that this can be achieved through use of dramatic structure: Plan the user's experience along the lines of a theater play, where initially the scene is set, then increasing action and complication lead to a climax, after which the action subdues and sees the visitor off gently. He illustrated this with an amusing anecdote of a visit to see Rembrand's night watch at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The challenge for modern companies, according to Jospeh Pine, is how to successfully apply this principle across the entire range of media, from real life to virtual worlds. For this purpose he introduced the context of a three dimensioal matrix he calls 'multiverse' (= multiple universes).

Inspired by Franklin's book "Future Perfect", introducing the concept of fiction as an intangible reality shifting consciousness across time, Joseph Pine reasoned that the axis time, matter and space can also have negative dimensions. Thus in his matrix he opposes matter (atoms, real objects) with no-matter (bits, virtual objects), time (linear) with no-time (non-linear), and space (physical, geographic location) with no-space (virtual). Within this framework, he defines eight 'universes':

1. Reality, the physical world
2. Virtual Worlds, such as Second Life
3. Augmented Reality, digital enhancement of the real world (e.g. military use of overlay on glasses, TomTom location based services)
4. Augmented Virtuality, adding physical aspects to virtual experiences in real time (e.g. Startrek hologram transmitter, Nintendo's Wii)
5. Warped Reality (e.g. teleportation, interruption of experience by for example entering the alternate world of subways during a sightseeing trip of NY)
6. Mirror Worlds, virtual worlds mirroring reality in real time (e.g. life projection of sport events or weather maps in Second Life, projecting mobile user's current location on Google Earth)
7. Alternate Reality (e.g. telepathy)
8. Physical Virtuality (e.g. Startrek replicator, Lego Factory allowing users to order real instances of virtual models)

Using this multiverse framework to think about different ways of adding value to a business proposition, Joseph Pine argues that a rich user experience should reach across multiple dimensions, leading to "transversal storytelling" (i.e. across multiverse, not just multiple media).

In general, the Mobile Monday session was very much aimed at marketing and overall I found it rather disappointing. Some interesting initiatives were presented, such as the Roomware Project, an open-source framework for interactive spaces. Authenticity as important criteria for (virtual) services and overall user experience emphasizes once again the general move towards design for emotion. However, the concept of multiverse in particular was quite mind expensive and could be a great tool to stimulate innovative user experience concepts. Certainly a line of thought worth while following!

Peter has a new shadow ...

... Peter Boersma, that is, not Peter Pan ;-)

Peter is senior interaction designer at Info.nl, host of the UX cocktail hours in Amsterdam, and frequent speaker at various IA and UX events. He kindly agreed to let me shadow him for a couple of months.

Thus as of today I'm officially a mentee - very exciting !!!

UX design & research at Microsoft

Last week, CHI Nederland organized a presentation by two dutch members of Microsoft's user experience team in Redmont: Sander Viegers (design) and Arne de Booij (user research). Microsoft also recently featured in a series on managing design by the British Design Council:

"In 1993 design was a luxury.
It is now generally accepted that design is critical to our success"
(Brad Weed, UX Director at Microsoft)

This emphasizes the big changes since the early days of MS Office, when most developments were technology driven. However, with ongoing progress, user expectations keep growing, too.

At Microsoft, rather than employing a corporate design department, individual designers are embedded in the engineering teams. According to Sander, this allows for a stronger influence of the designers as part of the team, and a better feel for, and communication with, development. However, the challenge is to provide consistency across products. This is facilitated by several central resources, such as the UX excellence group, the central UX support team, Microsoft research, etc.

The design process at Microsoft consists of three phases:

• Understanding
  (what users want/need and which steps are required)
  
• Prototyping
  ("show what you mean")
  
• Production
  (work with developers to ensure final products conform to specifications)
  

All members of the team (not just the designers!) are involved in brainstorming and creating a large amount of iterative prototypes. This allows for cross-pollination and stimulates team work; "The more contributers with different backgrounds, the higher the chance of coming up with new approaches and great solutions."

Sander suggested the following strategy to overcome the perception that designers make things look better, whereas in fact they make things work well:

• Embrace
  (go along with current perception and process, in order to "get your foot in the door")
• Prototype
  (show different options, demonstrating the value of good design)
• Finish
  (leave your audience enthusiastic and eager for more :-)
  

As designer you need to "choose your battles". The challenge is to have a clear vision of the entire user experience, and steer towards that aim throughout smaller detail sessions. Sander called on designers not to end up with a "mediocre average" based on a multitude of input, complexity, and opinions.

"Technology can master complexity, but design must master simplicity."
(Surya Vanka, UX Manager at Microsoft)

Arne provided a short overview of user research at Microsoft. Amongst other means, Microsoft often uses survey data to identify the greatest frustrations users experience with their products. A general "Dynamic Customer Model" has been defined (and is continuously refined), based on numerous interviews, site visits, and historical user research sources. This global model comprises ca. 50 persona's, their relationships amongst each other and a task model of their most important work.

When usability testing a new design, 10-15 users of the same profile as each main persona are invited to perform the most crucial tasks defined for this persona. On a scorecard the measure of success, time, bugs, etc for each task are recorded and compared against the goals.

Arne pointed out that in order to set measurable goals, it is important to set specific aims (e.g. "80% of all users can accomplish this task within 1 minute" instead of "the task is easy to accomplish "). He also warned of showing film fragments of usability tests, as short scenes can often be misinterpreted or given too much weight by developers or managers not trained in the subject domain and unable to see the "total picture".

Microsoft has recently been involved in some interesting research regarding the three aspects proposed by Don Norman:

• self image (marketing)
• appearance (visual design)
• pleasure & effectiveness (interaction design, user research & usability)
  

For each product, this may mean very different things for different people in different circumstances. Sometimes effectiveness is essential, while other times image or emotional value (e.g. memories) might be more important. A good balance needs to be found for the intended audience. In order to achieve this, we need to know what the intended audience is and understand them well. Particularly the aspect of 'pleasure' is very difficult to measure and design for.

In order to measure visual design, and to establish effect, impact and consequence of visual appearance, Microsoft is currently looking to develop new models together with several universities. The aim is to measure what users think about current products, what they find generally appealing, and what effect the overall design has on them.

One approach relies on images and associations; When users are asked about products, generally the answer focuses on smaller details rather than the 'overall picture'. To overcome this problem, a set of 25 mood images were developed with Copenhagen IT University. The test subjects are shown screenshots of a specific design and are asked to choose 5 mood pictures that best match this design. Next they are asked to explain these choices. This helps users to disassociate from details, allows them to 'think differently', and results in more emotional answers (e.g. "peaceful", "boring", etc). The designs are then adjusted according to the feedback. Through iterative prototyping and testing, the overall visual design can be improved towards targets such as "powerful", "innovative", etc. However it still needs to be established, what the (commercial) importance of such research will be for (business) users.

Currently the common pyramid of useful -> usable -> desirable is still seen as a sequential or incremental process. Hopefully in the future this should be a concurrent and complimentary process. The aim is to provide a continuum across all touch points (home, office, web, devices, etc)

On the question what it is like to work at Microsoft, Sander pointed out that it is a very large company and "the people you work with can have a bigger influence than the problem you're working on". According to Sander, most employees at Microsoft are very passionate and driven. To get a better impression, he recommended the following resources:

• View my World
• UX Design at Microsoft (incl. product design)
  
• MSDN Channel 9 (a look behind the scenes)

It seems that Microsoft has a similar setup as I noticed at SAP: designers embedded in the product teams, supported by central resources and centers of excellence. Both companies are dealing with complex software and a large user base. They also both have been working with Alan Cooper in the past. Of course Microsoft bears the additional burden of having many novice users and often being a trend setter for third parties.

Their recent move on Vista and Office to deviate from established standards and risk initial decrease in productivity and client satisfaction to ultimately hopefully achieve a much better user experience were quite brave. I'm certainly very interested to see how their research into appearance and emotion pans out! An opportunity to catch up to more aesthetic and design-driven companies, such as Apple?

Considering the call for traditional design disciplines at the recent CHI symposium in Amsterdam, and the work by groups such as Haring institUte of Happiness and Partners-InC, there certainly seems to be a strong trend towards aesthetically pleasing and emotionally engaging solutions. Should be fun :-D

[This report was also published by CHI Nederland]

(retro) show & tell

Yesterday evening's UX Cocktail hour took place at the beautiful offices of chunkid in Amsterdam: An interesting and very well attended show & tell session. Amongst others, we saw some neat timeline examples, Jacco shared some rather complex process flow models for the Dutch government, and Martijn talked about a recent project at Satama and the success they had defining a library of standard components and templates together with the developers.

My own modest contribution was an example of storytelling / concept visualization in true retro style; a wireless portal concept animation completed by Nortel's former UX group Design Interpretive almost a decade ago. Some aspects seem rather funny in hindsight, but it is quite amazing how many of these predictions were spot on, and how many are just now starting to be deployed! (Then again, we were an amazing team of extraordinarily creative and talented people, ey ;-).

travelling HCI salesman

Last Friday I was attending a symposium on the retirement of Gerrit van der Veer from the VU in Amsterdam. Quite an illustrious event with some interesting speakers and attendees, culminating in Gerrit receiving the "Orde van Oranje" for his achievements in HCI and the Dutch educational system.

Joëlle Coutaz from LIG presented a short history of HCI from a computer scientists point of view. She pointed out the inherent tangibility of applications during the era of punch cards, which was lost through abstraction and has recently been recaptured by researchers, such as Karouzaki's interactive tiles. Joëlle also shared her observations on the development of ubiquitous computing and the importance of well-designed meta UI concepts to control ambient spaces. Common languages are still very important today, with increased interaction and coupling of systems and spaces, using devices such as Nabatztag. The challenge is to enable naive users to control and program complex systems without realizing that they are doing it. Quite an interesting and inspiring talk. As Don Norman commented, his (updated) dream is to walk up to a system "hey this is me, interpret what I want and act accordingly".

Anton Nijholt from BrainGain provided an overview and examples of current research in BCI (Brain-Computer Interaction). Recent developments by the gaming industry, such as Emotiv, have generated a lot of interest. It still seems pretty clunky and rudimentary, though the potential for disabled users is quite promising. However, I find the risk of misuse, e.g. by certain government bodies, rather frightening!

Donald Norman presented his new book "Design of Future Things" and shared his latest interest in services and operations. The anecdotes of mindless equipment overruling common sense and preventing users from concentrating on the real issues were illuminating. As Don points out, "intelligence is not in the equipment, but in head of the designer". HCI is not really a conversation, but rather two monologues (of the user to the system and the system to the user). As designers we have to recognize and allow for the fact that we cannot anticipate or control all circumstances of using systems in different contexts. According to Don, problems occure due to a mixed level of automation, with seemingly intelligent devices that are not reliable and require monitoring by humans. An "understanding of the human" needs to be put back into operations. The difficulty lies in interfaces and communication (human-system and human-human), which requires establishing "common ground". The challenge for designers of systems as well as services is to make life better, pleasurable and safe, while enabling humans to feel in control.

Gerrit van der Veer gave a summary of his work as a "travelling salesman in HCI". As computing evolved from interested experts to casual users, the challenge of modeling and designing for a wide variety of users remains. Most users are not interested about "what's inside", as long as it serves their purpose. Context awareness of systems is increasingly important, as is the influence of art and creative disciplines. However, Gerrit emphasized that it remains crucial to maintain a thorough understanding of the user's mental model, the system's technical model, the design rational, and fully understand implicit choices and consequences. Design for users becomes design for people's context, experience and activities. Including emotional, practical, sensual and cognitive aspects to determine functionality, appearance and interaction of systems. Gerrit also pointed out the need for multidisciplinary teams (including theories, techniques, tools, art & craft, industry, etc) and called on academia for a vision of HCI as a design science.

I guess considering technological developments over the past years, it was not surprising that all speakers referred to the challenge and increasing complexity in the design of interfaces and interactions. Though given the rather academic and traditional HCI background of the event, the recurring reference to design for emotions/feeling and a need for multidisciplinary teams including arts and crafts was good to hear. In the past, the UX and design community often seemed sadly unaware of some of the methods and models of traditional HCI. As business awareness of good design increases, websites grow into complex services, and traditional artifacts become more interactive and connected, the various disciplines finally seem to be coming together. Exciting times ... :-)

[This report was also published by CHI Nederland]