Studio Sexy No Jutsu

Yeah, I'm feelin' it. Those San Franciscan packaging perfectionists, there's no denying Incase Studios rock!

Design Ethnography

In other words, "case reports" or "studies" regarding human societies, extending the cultural panorama to the entire world. Focusing on the patterns of everyday life, good design can generated, benefiting both businesses and production, as well as the important folks (here, yee) - people like you and me.

Because design is so broad in nature, we must rationalize it by creating some sort of process. Assumptions within design ethnography is that people are social creatures - not merely consumers. They articulate, discover, and appreciate. They don't just work, but live.

Ethnographers can thus be the mediators and creative directors between the home and the workplace. Because our perspectives of work have always tended to be negative, we can easily work to improve quality of life for all of us - so long as we use context as our guide.

Here's a good example. Italy vs. America. What's the perfect living room like? Some of us will answer, "Yeah, a TV, sofa, and maybe a computer." For Italians, you'll probably get a very bewildered look and a surprising answer, "Well, we love our dining room table. That's where everything happens. It's the center of our home" (Design Management Journal, Fall 1999). Immediate ethnographic insight.

Which brings us to the skills needed to be a design ethnographer. For one, you must be a master of social intimacy. Otherwise, no one's going to let you go into their homes to observe. You also need to ask the right questions. It's not, "How do I master e-commerce?" It's, "Why do people shop online?"

Unfortunately, these types of approaches do not use the same hardcore mathematical approaches of science nor do they allow for "deliverables" to be presented before undertaking the task at hand. Nonetheless, there is no denying the importance of understanding the context of relationships and associations between people and the world we live in. It's not our voice, but theirs, that must be heard.

Process of Interaction Design

Ah, what's in a process? Specifically, what's in an interaction design process? Something as convoluted and abstract as the human mind can't be simply mapped into an A-B-C method, can it? Yes and no. There is indeed a solution that's feasible through extensive sketches and testing, but is it perfect? The answer is no - it's never perfect.

Interaction design involves work on requirements, designing a solution, producing a protoype, and evaluation. But that's not to ignore constant trade-offs with stakeholders, the unexpected, and the task of having firm control of the gazillion ideas you might have for a specific problem space.

By employing proxies (role-playing users) can help get you started by giving a rough idea of understanding user needs. You also need to have good expectation management to keep people from expecting the next iPod (unless you have plans to deliver such a thing). It's always better to exceed expectations than not meet them.

As obvious as this may sound, the level of user involvement plays a great role developing the feeling of "ownership" of the product in the long run. However, whether it be driving around in a pimped out truck pulling users off the street or using focus groups to test your product, one must always remember - you can have too much of a good thing.

In 1985, Gould and Lewis laid down the three principles for a "useful and easy computer system." These steps are still employed today; 1) Early focus on users and tasks (with behaviors and context of use), 2) emperical measurement (prototype data for evaluation), and 3) iterative design (a never-ending cycle of feedback).

While the creative process is elusive in nature, one must keep one thing in mind - that "an expert is someone who gets reminded of just the right experience to help him in processing his current experience." (Schank) Prototyping gives everyone a better sense of the product, allowing for testing of its technical feasibility and subjective "quality" measurements by each and every one of the stakeholders in the project.

Lifecycle models can help out with showing how activities are related. That means lots of Visio work, but also milestones that make sense to different project groups. In HCI, we have three types that take precedence:

That's the Star model. Everything gets evaluated, from beginning to end. Next is the usability engineering lifecycle, which involves a fusing of usability tests within a structured software development routine. Lastly, the ISO 13407 model is an internationally renowned process, clearly identifying itself by correlating directly with the four steps of ID as listed above.

And while it's not easy to come up with a solution that everyone's happy with, being able to design via an efficient and effective process that corresponds with other experts in different fields, meanwhile keeping users as a priority, can only lead to a good thing in this blogger's opinion. Or at least until we create some killer robots or something.

Max Manus Review

Saboteurs, Nazis, and patriotism. Nice mix? Oh, yeah. The film evolves around Max Manus, one of the central heroes of the young Norwegian resistance during the World War II. Together with Gunnar Kjakan Sønsteby, Gregers Gram and the other brave youngsters not willing to see the free Norway become a part of the German Nazi empire The Third Reich. Their story - and sacrificial adventure - leaves a lasting impression for those willing to take a walk in Max's shoes for two hours. As for the direction and cinematography, I couldn't be a happier camper. Though, to be fair, I must minus half a point for a pointless story arch development. Otherwise, solid marks, all around. 8.4/10.

Fonts That Piss Us Off

Ah, Comic Sans. One of Microsoft's most disliked children. Anyone else hear about IKEA's move towards Verdana? I, myself, find the typography controversy quite entertaining. Who would've thunk a font change could stir up so much hatred?

Interfaces, Interactions & Playthings

In the 90's, we focused on improving the GUI for the single end-user. Today, with innovations in user recognition (gestures, facial, etc.), advanced feedback systems, and portability, interaction designs now have a huge bucket to pick from in their strive to advance the way we work with computers and technology.

To be fair, we must cover the paradigm - an adopted and shared approach within a research community - in which the field of human-computer interaction follows. There's this futuristic (well, not so much anymore) idea of ubiquitous computing, where computers will be everywhere, with some more apparent than others, but all playing a large part in our work, social, and everyday lives.

From this shift, we get new to see terms such as persuasive computing, ambient intelligence, and the disappearing computer. Away goes the simple touch, web, and appliance interfaces - and in comes sharable, tangible, and multimodal ones. But let's not forget about all the things we've learned over the years.

Let's start with forms and the act of filling one out. The general consensus? Annoying. Moving through tedious screens? Even more annoying. Indisguishable icons? Oh, don't get me started. We've all run into issues with bad interface design, so through extensive research (and the mind of yours truly), let us avoid these pitfalls by employing one particular mindset; context.

Context is king in the world of HCI, and research is one of the primary ways to get more context in the world we live in. For instance, playing an audio clip before a presentation actually stimulates part of the brain, encouraging more imagination and reception thereafter. Neuroscience, computer science, and education - it doesn't hurt to combine completely separate fields every so often. Heck, I would even go so far as to encourage this type of fusing of the arts and sciences in the future.

Now, let's get a little bit more complicated. Realism vs. abstraction is a fun topic, especially with virtual reality become a reality within the next decade, we're all kind of curious on how rendering reality in a computer-generated space could possibly feel. From my perspective, I'm guessing they'd feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland (as cheesy as it sounds in reference to The Matrix). Sure, they'll gain super-human perspectives as they master the art of technology (as computers master the art of the human mind), but it all takes time.

And time, really, is what we want to master. Today's web is like a flurry of billboards running through the user's mind at 90 mph. Nobody cares about how thoughtful you've placed that drop-down menu. They want information and they want it quick. So, how the hell do you master time?

It's quite simple. Accuracy, non-obtrusiveness, and prediction. Designing and planning for the future. Think in the future. Using shareable (multi-user), multimodal (combining humanistic actions), and augmented reality interfaces, we can get the user to live their lives with rich, interactive overlayed experiences awaiting them in every corner. How well everything will actually connect greatly depends on how well we plan. It all starts now.

Bringin' It Back to 2002

Birdy Nam Nam. We used to be Nam Nam's back in the day (remember Meta.4?). It's just that these guys are 10 times as cool. Thanks Nina.

We All Love Surveys

Except when they have nothing to do with our interests and seem just plain boring. However, since qualitative data (from focus groups) only work well to give insight to why people do what they do, you need an effective method to define your audience. Surveys, baby, are your best bet.

Before scheduling and writing, you must keep in mind that timing is important, as is knowing what you're trying to accomplish. "To understand if our user base has changed since last year, and if so, how; and to understand which features they find most attractive." That's a good start.

When writing a survey, you need to focus on two things: be descriptive (to profile the audience) and be explanatory (to discover their beliefs). There are three sub-categories following that; Characteristic (demographic, technological), Behavioral (web use, usage, etc.), and Attitudal (satisfaction, preference). Make sure these questions are relevant, specific, and clear, as people have a tendency to always give you answers - whether reliable or not.

The types of questions you can ask vary. A close-ended (single-answer multiple choice) questions must be exhaustively selective. Checklists give a measure of reader information desires. Likert scales (Very interesting to very uninteresting) can make answers more relevant to more people.

Fielding the survey is the hardest part. You'll need to think about choosing a proper sample size, but also considering the possibility of haphazard responses, sampling bias (hitting outside your target mark), and a flurry of other biases (timing, expectation, and invitation) that may cause less than accurate responses.

When presenting the survey, you need to emphasize importance, hold privacy ridiculously high, and always present a desirable reward. People don't work for nothing, you know. Pace the survey well by throwing in thematically relevant questions in the middle, then end it with either an open-ended (free response) question or a demographic survey.

Report it. Already? Yeah. Tabulate (count) and get back into statistics class mode because that's what you shall be doing with any apparent bell curves or measurement errors. Draw conclusions without falling into the confusion of correlation and causation. Remember, practice makes perfect - it's just that this time, you've got more studs on your belt to get started.

Micro Four Thirds, What?

Yeah. A got a motherfloppin' problem. One Lumix DMC-LX3 down. Funds barely making it to next month. I don't need to eat. Just read and wait for this camera to come out. C'mon GF1, I wanna see you dance!

In Regards to Those Evil Focus Groups

Focus groups are structured group interviews meant to reveal one thing - want. This isn't always explicit nor completely impossible to extract 100% solid info, but that's where judgment comes in. Knowing when to use focus groups is the first step.

You need focus groups when looking for desires, motivations, values, and first-hand experiences. In other words, attitudes and perceptions. Why do people value something over another?

Focus groups are not for getting usability information. They are not experts and will not outline why a certain interface fails in practice.

There are four types of focus groups: Exploratory (similar topic, observe), Feature prioritization (most attractive function), Competitive analysis (inclination to other products, why?), and Trend explanation (again, to answer, why?).

Now, how do we conduct a focus group? This is easy. All you need is a good schedule, a target audience, a scope (reasonable group size), and a carefully chosen set of topics. Your process should look something like this:

Target Audience:
Just make sure they are willing to talk about the topic at hand, and absolutely ensure that their opinions will not be judged (avoiding generational differences when speaking about music, boys and girls when speaking about cars, etc.). That is all you need.

Scheduling:
t - 2 weeks: Determine audience and scope, recruit. Select topics.
t - 1 week: Write a discussion guide, making sure it's engaging and thought out.
t: Conduct the groups and take great notes.
t + 3 days: After lots of reflection, start listening to the tapes.
t + 1 week: Analyze accordingly.

Recruiting:
Don't recruit those who know each other, those who know how focus groups work, and those who have wayyy more knowledge about the subject than all others in the group. You're looking for general balance, nothing more.

Then, Create a profile:
Demographic - Ages 20-55. Income irrelevant. Avoid $100k+.
Web Use - Has a PC. 1+ Internet experience. 5-10 hours a week for personal tasks such as shopping, comparing products, and info gathering.
Behavior - Has completed home improvement w/in 9-12 months. Cost $20K+.

Say, you can probably use this profile to recruit a couple of people. Most books say get 8-12 people, but for user experience, we're looking at 6-8 at most. For your Scope, you'll have to work systematically, using the first few groups to establish a trend and the later few as confirmation. Never use just one group to establish a conclusion.

When talking about Topics, ensure comfort by wording effectively. A Guide will help as well. Carefully ordered, nondirected, and open-ended questions will provide you with specifics and lend you personal and unambiguous experience data that will be priceless.

During the actual discussion, lay down ground rules, make everyone comfortable by explicitly dispelling any curiosities that may arise, and start sending out those Probes (aka questions), but strategically order them to avoid bias towards any subject. End it with a smile and ask them for tips to improve the session.

Now, let's Analyze. Collect transcripts (written by a helper, hopefully), quotes, observer opinions, and tapes. Create a quick hypothesis and start coding (short names categorizing and describing trends) the comments. Data Extraction time. We've got mental models, values, stories, problems, and competitive analysis. Play these into your hypothesis, carefully gauging the magnitude of trends, creating lists of components that play into the decision making, and toss in quotes for good measure. Fin.

EXTRAS: Always record the session's audio. If possible, throw a hidden camera in there to capture expressions and body language. And as a moderator, you must also be able to vanquish all that nasty "group-think." It's bound to happen, so be prepared to dispel it.

An Aviator World

Guys checking out themselves in Urban Outfitters. Smokers lighting up the street. Is it me, or has everyone suddenly joined the official Yuppie Association of America (YAA)? Speaking of ya-ya's, here's a fine tune I dig. I should warn you that it's quite emo, so grab a tissue.

The Xx - Heart Skipped A Beat (MP3)

So, What Is Design Exactly?

"Design sits uncomfortably between two extremes - a word full of incongruities, has innumerable manifestations, and lacks boundaries that give clarify and definition. As a practice, design generates vast quantities of material, much of it ephemeral, only a small proportion of which has enduring quality."

-John Heskett from Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everday Life