Ghost in the Pixel

I’ve often written about the value of rapid prototyping your designs, with an edge towards going high-fidelity quickly so you can glean more accurate feedback from target users, which cycles back into the product design process. There’s also ample value for going low-fidelity too, particularly with rough physical prototypes, made with found materials in the studio, a la Stanford d.school :-)  

I’ve recently been assigned to a UI project exploring various forms of “multi-modal” interactions across devices (phones, tablets, laptops, large HDTV, roaming robots, etc.). There’s understandably much debate around what constitutes the best interactions (voice, touch, gesture, etc.) given the variety of contexts and assumed purposes or core tasks to be completed. Much of that debate gets captured on whiteboards and nice Illustrator diagrams. Lots of sketching ensues of the device screens and possible UI affordances and behaviors. 

But that’s just all very… theoretical. You’ve got to get physical fast. Make physical models of the devices and actively “act out” the interactions…in effect, dramatizing the prototype using “Wizard of Oz” staging techniques or simply “Bodystorming” (Ugh, I hate that word actually…it’s just acting. We all did that as kids!). So why is this helpful?

Drawing sketches, while necessary to get warmed up thinking about and probing the problem space, is actually rather inaccurate for helping to inform tangible decisions impacting the shape and behavior. You’re having an internal debate of how things may or may not function in actuality. Things do get foggy up in the ol’ noggin!  Even the most expert visualizers (who are surgeons, by the way…it’s true!) train and practice with real physical models to test their assumptions and verify actualities. There’s a valuable, rewarding, memorable learning and understanding that happens via the hands, feeling out the materials and textures and angles/joints/connections of physical pieces, separate from the ephemerality of animated pixels. 

Other benefits to physicalizing your prototypes:

* Forces you to consider posture, position, proximity, with your whole body and body space, as well as entire environment. As Raz Al Gul said while mentoring Batman (Bruce Wayne), “Always mind your surroundings!” ;-)

* Alerts you to possibilities, discovering pros/cons as you see it acted out, particularly with gestures and mixed modalities of interactions: In the car, in a cubicle, in a loud busy cafe, on a crowded bus, etc.

* It’s fun! there’s something very collaborative and engaging about creating rough models that folks can play with, poke at, shake around, and try things out. We “know” it’s all fake but can lead to novel discoveries and trigger associative ideas in other peers’ heads, per their unique experiences. 

* You can put them in the hands (literally) of other people, like your target users for initial conceptual high-level evaluations to see if you’re on the right track. And, this leads to great conversation fodder, as users love to play with them, hold and manipulate the artifacts, suggesting other ideas!

Finally, dramatizing also helps communicate your ideas robustly to remote development teams: just record short video clips on your smartphone (using your peers as hand models ;-)  and send along with some verbal commentary. Static sketches simply don’t do justice for conveying complex, multimodal behaviors. You gotta build quick prototypes, to illustrate the intent, and gather support for your ideas.

 

 

Every hero has an “origin story”, which we love to see unfold, whether in the pages of a comic book, or on the big screen at the cineplex. We witness the original motives, historical factors and coincidental elements that conspired to manifest this hero and possible journeys of self-development (villains are often a big part of this). There’s a dramatic path of hope, dread, fatigue, despair, fulfillment, joy… and not necessarily in that order! Ultimately, we achieve a fuller, richer sense of this hero, cheering that character on accordingly.

The same can be said for a start-up. Let me explain…

I recently started advising start-ups as part of the Citrix Startup Accelerator on a part-time basis, in further evolution of my role as a Principal Designer (that’s a whole other post to be written ;-). In my first “UX Advisory” session with a start-up founder, I began rather conversationally, asking for his “origin story”–without PowerPoint! That’s vital, as I really wanted to know what made this founder tick… on the inside.

This person (and his small dedicated team) are spending their own money, burning through lots of midnight oil, to achieve something they believe will change the world in some way…but why? What’s driving them? This relates back to something a former CMU professor once described as the “felt difficulty” that we sense when something is outta whack yet needs to be corrected. It’s that itch in the mind that we just can’t or won’t let go, until we solve it somehow. As Morpheus said in The Matrix, it’s “the splinter in your mind…driving you mad.”

In order for me to offer proper service to this start-up (and others) I gotta understand what’s really driving them, what’s the origin of the “felt difficulty” they sought to correct. Often it may be a lifelong pursuit, or childhood hobby that  has become a professional passion. This reveals the heart and soul of why…the deeper motives that a PPT of a business model doesn’t truly convey. That’s all important, of course, but as a UX Advisor who’s trying to help a small band of pirates try to dominate a market with a novel, disruptive product/app/service, I need to empathize with their predicament that they feel needs fixing. I must understand their origin…how they came to be, where they are now, and where they aim to be in the near future. What’s their mission? What is heroic success to them? 

As I told this fellow, I’m happy to offer input on colors, fonts, icon styles (which I did ;-) …but my chief concern as an advisor is to enable a deft translation of their vision with clear, strong intent into the interface and consequential experience for their users. And for me, that comes from understanding their origin story. The seeds are all there for nurturing a powerful offering which will set the stage for the start-up to truly become a hero for their market. 

Two recent items have sparked some deep personal introspection into the consistently hot topic of “creativity”. I’d like to scaffold my thoughts on top of them into some operating personal theory of sorts…

First, the SVP of Customer Experience at Citrix, Catherine Courage, brilliantly articulated a design executive’s perspective on inspiring business people to own up to their creative potential (which she argues is a “birthright” of everyone, not just a select few). She described various conditions and qualifiers that enable creativity within businesses, like building a physical space, following a design process, embracing iteration and risk. Catherine’s TEDx talk is really quite good and worth your 15 minutes!

No doubt, having an executive (including your CEO and executive leadership team) advocating for the right conditions, backed by money, people, and tools/methods to materialize the results, is essential to fostering a culture of creative thinking and increasing the probability of breakthrough solutions. Without executive support you’re simply doomed to fail badly or suffer ongoing disappointment and attrition of talent.

Second, I saw this question on Quora asking for a succinct description of the “creative process” into just a couple sentences. Dave Malouf, renowned design thought leader & teacher, supplied a thorough multi-step explanation of how a creative process unfolds, based upon user-oriented design thinking, with observation and insights manifested via synthesis, models, stories, conversations, and iteration towards a result. Excellent!

Incidentally, that reminded me of a quote in Managing as Designing: “Creativity needs a design process to structure it, giving focus on humanistic aims.” There is an order to the madness that provides coherence and constraints, not just “100 monkeys with typewriters” trying to come up with Hamlet…ostensibly grounded in user-oriented motives and themes (via empathic methods). 

So, organizational executive-backed conditions for creative activity …Check. A descriptive, structured process based on user-oriented goals…Check. 

But there’s gotta be more to it, right? Yes, there’s the neurological element of synaptic connections, feeding your consciousness (“priming” as it were) with tons of data and context, having heroes/mentors to train and offer confidence and guidance, tools and methods of execution to manifest and execute the results. Anything else…? 

I believe all that is for nought (or only yields perfunctory results) without heart, soul, and passion. In a word, you gotta believe. It takes a personal commitment, that feeds into the collective team. The power of belief complemented by the struggle of overcoming, guided by focused discipline (habits, routines, sources) that shape and engender, truly bringing alive, your creative potential and powerful outcomes–that’s the golden key IMHO. Any “cultural creative” (musician, artist, writer, etc.) will tell you that it’s quite difficult to be creative “on demand”, very taxing emotionally and spiritually, while also uplifting and rewarding. There’s a bit of a heroic quest in being reluctantly drawn to the creative endeavor, anticipating some vague vision, working through the grind of making it happen and potentially failing in a very big way, encountering tremendous resistance by others, too. There’s incredible risk and fear and hope and joy. It’s a powerful roller-coaster of upheaval and delight, towards the final deliverance of a awe-inspiring outcome, shared collectively with a team and individually. There’s the consequence of growth, renewal, achievement that results from a truly creative act.

The struggle in particular is essential, as this is where one’s integrity and authenticity comes to bear, staring down the twilight of one’s soul in the depths of midnight itself (at 2 am usually), banging your head against the table (or the team becoming frustrated, questioning the merits of this escapade, this risky jaunt of a trip), and powering ahead through it all, via sheer force of heart and will, believing (“trusting the process” as d-schoolers often say!) that this darkness will give way to the emerging light of imagination, lighting a spark in the individual or collective mind, that blazes with a fury inexhaustible of all creative possibilities towards final resolution and delivery…and even then the embers glow on, smoldering yet ready to be re-lit for the next creative challenge.

It’s that gut-level stuff of heart and soul vividly manifest in passionate effort that enables “creativity” to transpire at all, resulting in something everyone can be proud of, and reap the benefits. 

So, what does it take to “be creative” for innovation efforts back at the office? Executive support, user-oriented design process, and passionate, soulful belief to achieve. Simple, right? ;-) 

I like visual chrome in UI…and I’m betting many designers secretly do too ;-) In the current (circa 2012) mood of anti-chrome dogma (i.e., skeuomorphism hate, fueled in part by recent “lust of the new” infatuation over Windows 8’s informationally ascetic aesthetic–which, BTW is still unproven among users) this may seem like a radically outdated statement. After all, a UI that’s so rich you “want to lick it” is just so 2001, right? Well, not so fast folks…

“Chrome” (not the Google browser ;-) unfortunately has taken on a negative tone of something that’s overdone, gaudy, mawkish, anachronistically applied visual flourishes for gratuity’s sake, not applicable to (and perhaps even interfering with) a digital product’s functionality. And just flat out “tacky” to some. I mean, who wants that??

Well, if done improperly in such silly ways (which is NOT new…remember Kai Power Tools, anyone born before 1980?) then YES, visual chrome can lead to just that effect of ostentatiously getting in the way. After all, design should always be invisible, right? Except when it shouldn’t be. 

What about visual affordances that offers clues as to the existence of and potential use for a feature, like a page curl revealing layers of functionality or (gasp) a button or (face palm ) a menu? Pulling in learned knowledge from physical metaphors into the digital space is not a sin. It helps with discovery, understanding, learning, and adds (if done well with subtlety and sensitivity) delight to digital austerity. Ascetism is great for monks. Not so much for complex products armed with layers, spaces and modalities of capability to be found and used. Especially when we have devices loaded with 30+ apps all trying to be cute with gestures and no basis to come back to. 

Chrome provides an anchor, a framing element to the space, actions, and content, with clear lines of demarcation, so you’re not tapping all over the place wondering what’s “active”. Nicely done headers and footers and sidebars, etc. can house primary controls, navigational aids/cues, and of course branding, thus creating a distinct space of meaningful value. A oft-stated concern with Windows 8 style is getting lost in a floaty, never-ending space of content, losing where you are within a seamless, unfolding infographic. Seams can actually be useful, not shunned.

Chrome enables place-sensing: where the hell am I? and how do I get out? what do I do next? And with animations and subtle touch/swipe gestures we can do even more compelling and useful anticipatory digital actions like peek, reveal, depth effects, etc. Thereby adding joyful moments, and balanced utility, creating a product that’s more than a Swiss poster infographic–as fetishized as we elite designers like to make them out to be. Posters are useful, but we’re talking about full-blown digital products and services, often within multifunctional mobile devices.

Some say this all contradicts the notion of “being authentically digital”. I say chrome enhances and augments what the digital space can be, bringing vitality and utility together, if done well. So instead of being gratuitous distraction, visual chrome can add value to an interface; simply a matter of finding that “sweet spot” of balance between affordance, content, functionality, discoverability…and delight. 

(Side note: there’s an underlying issue of “taste” here. Of course, certain textures, styles, treatments simply rankle folks the wrong way and become annoying. The faux leather in iOS Contacts and Calendar apps come to mind. I agree that could be done much better ;-) But it’s important to discern personal taste preference from functional intent to augment the interface’s capabilities, tackiness notwithstanding.)

Repeat after me: Visual affordances are a good thing. Subtlety is poetry. Nuance is elegance. Let’s make digital interfaces more than authentic but awe-inspiring. Chrome can help and shouldn’t be dismissed because we’re suddenly tired of it thanks to a new Window to stare at, or a few bad Apples…if you’ll pardon the puns ;-)

It’s fun to re-tweet nifty design phrases we come across while surfing around. Hey, I do it all the time! We find nice  zingers or deep maxims that seem to speak to something we individually or collectively behold. Some aspirational phrase by Jony Ive or stern admonition by Paul Rand. But it’s another thing to actually use that as the basis of design decision-making and trumpeting it as dogma back at the office (or within a design community), with little understanding to the historical context and motivation for that phrase…like “form follows function” (Louis Sullivan, written in 1896 essay stating his views on Modernist architecture as a departure from organic decoration, in the context of new technologies enabling the skyscraper’s advent) or “good design is little design as possible” (Dieter Rams, proclaimed as part of his 10 Principles of Good Design, which interrelate and integrate, shouldn’t be cherry-picked just to use one or two for when it’s convenient). These are popular ones often thrown about in arguments with designers and engineers as credos and laws. Another favorite is “design should be invisible”. Really? Is that why you noticed the beautiful interface of Path 2.0 iOS app or Flipboard’s elegant origami-esque UI pattern? Oops, gotcha! 

Now, it’s not horribly bad to throw around platitudes, but the big risk is that ill-informed or inexperienced designers take these things literally, even blindly, potentially negating their design work & credibility…possibly harming client relationships. It’s a problem that I call “bumper sticker design”, tossing about fun platitudes that are not well-considered for their initial purpose or relevance, nor deliberated for their applicable extent of value and consequence (which takes judgment and experience). There’s a tendency to accept such a platitude as fiat (Hey, Eames said it, so it’s gotta be right all the time, right??) and apply it as such. An absolute law. Just like political bumper sticker slogans that simplistically–yes, I mean that phrase, not “simply”– distill a campaign position into some fun, pithy catchphrase that becomes a sensational buzz, bypassing any substantive discourse, exploration of exceptions/parallels, and thus useful decision-making…like, who should I really vote for and what policies and principles are really at stake? But I digress. 

Let’s do our part as serious designers and avoid simplistic use of such catchphrases & platitudes as weapons in design arguments or laws thrown at a design problem (or worse, at an unknowing non-design stakeholder to whom you’re just trying to appear “smart”, but merely badly worn condescension). If we come across something that we think is meaningful, resonates with a value we hold, let’s explore it further, dig deeper into its origins, apply that learning and yield a more enriched understanding that enables a productive dialogue and decision-making, particularly amongst non-designers. 

Oh and I’ll still keep re-tweeting interesting design quotes and phrases of course ;-) Helps add to our knowledge. But debating and questioning adds to our understanding and effective use over time.