Provocative Questions from Adaptive Path’s Internal Mailing Lists #1
by DanThe first in a new occasional series. These are questions that have arisen on Adaptive Path’s internal mailing lists that have sparked debate, discussion, and some head-scratching. Take your best shot at answering them!
Is service design just another name for experience design?
What is the difference between user experience design and experience design?
Are Facebook/MySpace widgets the new banner ads? (Banner Ads 2.0?)
Is consistent navigation a crutch?
How do we deliberately add more emotional qualities into the products we design?
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August 6th, 2007 at 9:59 am
“How many feathers are on a Purdue chicken? How many fibers are
intertwined in a shredded-wheat biscuit? What does
touche-et-eh-lay-pooh mean? How many times did the Batmobile catch a
flat?”
August 6th, 2007 at 10:19 am
No. No. The word ‘user’. No. Adopt an emotional quality assurance process into your organization.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Re: “Is consistent navigation a crutch?
My project team has been having an intense discussion on this same issue. We’re all familiar with the conventional wisdom about consistency, but we’re seeing more and more UI examples with adaptive navigation that is contextually relevant yet inconsistent from screen to screen. I would love to hear a summary of Adaptive Path’s internal debate on this topic.
August 7th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Re: user experience design and experience design
I work on enterprise level software. Often times the person who makes the purchase decision is not the same person who uses the software, and there are plenty of situations where you can design the experience to enhance our chance of winning a sale that has virtually nothing to do with the “user” of the software. Obviously you can argue that the purchase decision maker is a type of user, but that hides the difference, and the difference is important. For example, you could use experience design to improve the strength of your channel, resulting in higher sales before you’ve really touched the “user” experience.
Re: Is consistent navigation a crutch?
Yes. I agree with John above. Most sites have a combination of static and contextual navigation already, and I think over time the balance will continue to shift more towards contextual.
Re: How do we deliberately add more emotional qualities into the products we design?
Several answers.
1. Don’t, unless you’re really, really sure that you need to.
2. Don’t, unless you’re doing it to a new product (trying to add new emotional qualities to a product that didn’t previously have any is asking for trouble)
3. Don’t, unless you can add it pervasively throughout the entire experience, from error messages to marketing materials
4. Don’t, unless you can explain the quality you are trying to emote in a way that everyone on the team can understand and demonstrate - i.e. explain it to your tech writer then ask him to produce some writing that follows the style… and if he can’t, you’re in trouble
5. Don’t.
August 7th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Is consistent navigation a crutch?
Yes, but so much easier to design than good contextual navigation. And bad contextual navigation is worse than bad consistent navigation.
How do we deliberately add more emotional qualities into the products we design?
I’d say that trying to add emotion to products is fundamentally gimmicky, and doomed to failure. Products don’t have emotions, humans have emotions — and those emotions generally concern humans rather than things (many people have a strong attachment to some product, but which product is mostly idiosyncratic and not universal). The products that people do have emotional attachments to aren’t because of the product, but because the product facilitates the humanity.
Many people are attached to their mobile phones. This is fundamentally because the phone is a social device and the phone benefits from positive association. Pretty colors, visual design, and unique soundbites come after the fact; they aren’t the cause. Likewise most people aren’t genuinely attached to their Apple products, but rather to the image they associate with it, and the subculture of Appledom. Those who profess “love” for their iPods would be far less likely to say (and believe) so if no one else had ever heard of it.
Intentionally putting emotion into a product is a job for Marketing. Making best use of emotion that users have put into a product — now there’s an opportunity for iterative design.