Adaptive Path Blog

Even while my 21-year-old brother was stationed in Italy with the US Air Force, he could always make me laugh, whether via AIM, Xanga or MySpace. For the past two years, the online Zach is the Zach I’ve gotten to know best, as I’ve been accompanied by ShadowsandDust7’s presence in my buddy list and followed stories of his adventures snowboarding, rock climbing and hiking in the Italian Alps on his blogs.

Thus, when I received the awful news a month ago that my brother had died in a hiking accident, one of the first places that I turned to was his MySpace. His last login was 4/20/2007 — and that salient date-stamp will always remain the same. When I opened his site in a state of initial denial (”Zach can’t be gone — he just left a comment yesterday!”), I found that dozens of friends had already left messages, not about Zach but TO him:

“Zach dude, we missed you today man. I had a sweet assist to Ruben. I was really looking forward to seeing you up in California in a couple of months. I guess i’ll have to delay seeing you for a little longer.”

As grief and the celebration of Zach’s life unfolded and as friends continued to “keep in touch” with Zach via MySpace and the memorial blog we set up, I encountered facets of social media that I’d never thought much about before:

MySpace was how many of Zach’s long-distance friends knew him best while he was in Italy, and online, it’s almost as if nothing had happened: His page looks the same as ever. Though Zach is physically gone, his MySpace presence feels alive. And so people go there to “be with” Zach. Instead of talking to a tombstone in the land of the dead, it’s like you’re chatting with a friend amidst a community of the living.

A person’s physical mark can erode or change relatively quickly. But according to recently-announced policies, “MySpace won’t delete a profile for inactivity, and it also won’t let anyone else control a deceased member’s profile” [1] and Facebook “will put the page in a memorialized state indefinitely” [2] when notified of a person’s death (unless a family member requests that the profile be removed). Zach’s bedroom may not always be his room, but his online spaces will endure.

As people are becoming increasingly aware of the role that online communities play in the grieving process (NY Times: Rituals of Grief Go Online), which has been most recently brought to light by Virginia Tech (USA Today: Slain Students’ Pages to Stay On Facebook) and Iraq (AP: Fallen Soldiers’ MySpace Profiles Live On), it makes me wonder how this role will continue to evolve.

Will we see the emergence of more explicit policies regarding members who die? (I had a hard time finding any policies — including for email addresses — about what happens when the user dies.) Is there a place for online “cemeteries” — sites to help friends and family, perhaps far in the future, easily find and revisit their loved one’s online presence (MyDeathSpace seems like a slightly morbid attempt to create such a thing)? How enduring will online memorials prove to be in the long run? (After all, the web is only in its twenties.)

For now, in these first weeks after Zach’s death, it’s been comforting to still “have Zach around.” Instead of an awkward new ritual of leaving flowers at his graveside, I can leave messages for him the way I always have. There will always be things that only Zach would understand, and it’s nice to know that there’s still a place I can share them.

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I’ve been wanting to blog about this topic since Christmas — when I was home with my relatives, desperately trying to explain things like…

The concept of opening two windows side by side to move things from one to the other… Look, you can move the window by clicking on the title bar! If the window is covering your whole screen, don’t panic, just use the handles to resize it… Oh, and to move the picture file, don’t drag the preview – drag the icon.

Why a 404 Page Not Found error is not a serious computer problem, it probably just means you typed the URL wrong… (and why I can just blithely ignore about half the errors Windows gives me, when the simplest of error can have my mom writing it out, character for character, to investigate later).

It felt like the popular writing class where you’re trying to describe how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to aliens who have never seen one before. You can’t assume anything.

I vaguely remember playing with an interactive tutorial that came with Windows 3.1 that introduced the brand new “windows” concept and let you practice “minimizing” and “drag and drop.” It’s easy to forget, but there are people today — even our peers, people of the same age (20 and 30-somethings) and demographic as Adaptive Pathers — who haven’t established these basic mental models. And because of this, they’re afraid to experiment or to try things.

What can be done for these people?

Should anything be done?

In school, I suggested to a professor that I do a project focused on these people. But he discouraged it, saying:

“To put it bluntly — these people are dying out. The current generation grew up on computers. Designing for these people won’t be a need for much longer.”

Then the other day, Jared Spool was chatting with us. To make a point, my co-worker, Chiara, cited her brother’s — a 30-something with young kids — recent revelation: “Did you know that you can search for homes on the internet???” She went on to say that her brother doesn’t even use email — he just doesn’t see the value of it. Jared replied:

“But do we need to design for these people? I hate to say it, but your brother will eventually die.”

I’m not sure I agree. Are these really only edge cases that we can dismiss or laugh off? Our 30-something peers are still going to be around for more years than the internet has even been in existence. Chiara’s brother and my in-laws aren’t living out in the wilderness. And surely we designers have something to offer — if we’re in the business of improving the human experience — even to people who ARE living in the wilderness.

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(Or, Making Hidden Costs Visible, Continued…)

“Turn off those lights, you’re wasting energy!”

Growing up, I did it cause my dad told me to, and I do it now because I know in the back of my head that running the lights must be costing me. But it’s hard not to be apathetic about it: The costs of household energy consumption, both to my wallet and the environment, are far too invisible to affect immediate decision-making and behavior.

Lucid Design Group recognized that a once-a-month energy bill isn’t enough to change behavior and developed the “Building Dashboard,” a system with a widget-like interface that aims to “translate consumption into everyday units that a non-technical audience can understand — dollars, lightbulbs, carbon dioxide.”

“It is difficult to motivate building occupants to take actions that conserve resources if they cannot easily sense and react to the implications of their decisions.

Research demonstrates that easily accessible feedback on resource use increases both awareness and motivation to act in ways that change attitudes, minimize resource use and save money.

A Building Dashboard™ display provides uniquely interpretable graphics for a non-technical audience and creates opportunities for active learning through feedback that are not otherwise available.”

It’s a great concept. Unfortunately it’s not something that I, the building resident and consumer, could set up and use — it’s something that must be implemented by a green-minded architect or building manager.

Now if only there were more services like this that could make such information available and accessible to the masses. Perhaps the energy companies could provide such a service? What kind of infrastructure does it take to implement designs for widespread behavioral change?

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When it comes to thinking about the true cost of things, ignorance is bliss. People prefer that costs be hidden:

• It feels cheaper to drive to work than to take transit. You see the money leave your pocket for every transit trip. But the annual thousand-dollar insurance bill and depreciation of your car are more easily forgotten.
• It feels better to have taxes invisibly withheld than to write regular checks to the IRS and come face-to-face with the taxes you’re paying.
• It feels better to get “free parking!“ at your apartment or local grocery store than to pay for parking, even if it might mean lower everyday prices.

Now with a little thinking you can calculate the true monetary costs of many things. But environmental and social costs are even more elusive.

Hidden costs lead to a breakdown of capitalism. People are unable to make optimal decisions because they don’t consider the true costs of things. It’s easy to see a price tag, but it is difficult to take into account all of the factors that make up something’s true cost.

How can hidden costs be made visible? An obvious solution is to pass the financial burden on to the consumer.

• Charging for plastic bags (IKEA)
• Transferring the full cost of oil to consumers

Unfortunately, while taking advantage of market forces, these measures also tend to make people grouchy.

Jennie Winhall’s talk at MX on Designing for Social Good has made me think about ways that we, as user experience designers, could use our understanding of psychology and behavior to develop creative and positive solutions that help people see hidden costs and make better decisions. Some examples…

Grouchy experience: Big warning sign featuring fines you’ll receive if you dump toxic waste into a storm drain.
Positive experience: Design storm drains to look like fish. You wouldn’t want to dump junk on a cute fish.

Grouchy experience: A taxi-like money ticker that shows you how much every trip in your car is really costing — in real time!
Positive experience: A taxi-like money ticker that shows you how much you’re saving when you drive more slowly and that turns fuel and money-saving into a game. (”One important reason why hybrid cars result in better mileage is that drivers suddenly have an indication of how various aspects of their driving habits shape mileage.” -Jamaias Cascio)

Other ideas?

But I’ll end with a caveat that experience isn’t everything when it comes to hidden costs. Sometimes facing reality will make us uncomfortable, and that’s not always bad.

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I’ve practiced and polished up a number of answers to this question over the course of my career, but I have yet to land on the “perfect response” to keep in the back of my pocket.

I’ve found that answering this question well can be an excellent evangelistic strategy (a successful answer is one people can relate to: “Oh! So like, my bank’s website just frustrates me to no end…”), and with that in mind, here’s my assessment of some titles and elevator pitches I’ve tried.

But I’m most interested in hearing about your approaches and anecdotes surrounding this question we all have to face.

I’m a user experience consultant.
A what? Well, have you ever had a frustrating experience when using some product or website? I think about how people will use things and help companies create things that will improve people’s lives.

Pros:

• The title itself is pretty literal — if you took the time to think about it, you’d realize it says it all. (But most people won’t.)
• It leads into the explanation well.
• Although some people may associate it with “retail store auras” or “customer service,” most people don’t have many preconceptions of what it means, so it’s open for shaping and explaining.

Cons:

• It sounds like I made it up; it’s a mouthful and may sound pretentious.
• The “experience” word, as used here, may sound overly grand: The average person thinks of “The Disneyland Experience” — not the laundry experience.

I’m an interaction designer.
A what? I think about how people interact with things and help companies create products and services that are easy and enjoyable to interact with.

Pros:

• It’s what my business card says I am; it sounds like a job title vs. something I made up.
• Talking about peoples’ experiences seems to flow better in the explanation than in the title (in this case talking about an easy and enjoyable experience… of course there’s more to experience than that).

Cons:

• Although “interacting with things” makes everyday sense, the “interaction” word sounds jargony.
• To those who have heard something of the field, they may associate it only with software/web design.
• (Note on the “things” word: I’ve struggled with, do I say, “products,” “products and services,” “products, websites, environments, etc.” or what? So I’ve settled on “things” in many instances.)

I’m a web designer.

Pros:

• I only use this when I want to get rid of somebody (it could also work if someone’s clearly just asking to be polite) — it’s useful when you want to avoid the “a what?” question or need a quick escape. Most people at least think they know what it means.

Cons:

• Most interaction designers do more than web work, or at least aspire to.
• The “design” word suggests styling and advertising. (I had the same problem with Visual Communication Design and started just saying “Visual Communication.”)
• It has baggage and doesn’t convey the depth of what we do: We think about the structure of the site, how people will interact with it, and what would be useful, usable, and desirable vs. making cool websites and writing HTML.

More possibilities… I’m an information architect. I’m a user-centered designer. I’m an information designer. I’m an interface designer. I’m a visual communication designer. I help make things better by helping companies make better things.

P.S. To inspire you to keep perpetuating a correct understanding of what we do, here’s a quote from FastCompany’s Top 10 Jobs of 2007: “Experience Designer: These talented individuals work in the retail industry, creating the essence and aura of a store. Experience designers go beyond the look of a place, creating a unique experience in which shoppers can immerse themselves. From cellular boutiques to the American Girl doll store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, the shops created by an experience designer are often considered works of art; mini universes unto themselves. Experience designers are involved in every aspect of creation — from choosing accent colors on walls to slanting the windows in the right direction. The next time you go into a boutique and you feel as if you’ve just had an “experience” — you have, and someone went to a lot of trouble to make you feel at home.”

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