Adaptive Path Blog

It’s eerie when the Miriam-Webster word of the day feels more like a horoscope than a vocabulary lesson.

Yesterday in the Adaptive Path Newsletter I published an article called Embrace your Page Rage. And later in the day I got this:

The Word of the Day for February 24 is:

logomachy \loh-GAH-muh-kee\   noun

1. : a dispute over or about words
2. : a controversy marked by verbiage

Etymology: Greek logomachia, from log- + machesthai to fight; Date: 1569

Republished from Adaptive Path Newsletter (2/24/2010)

Embrace Your Page Rage

I have a confession to make. I’ve fallen sway to Page Rage. About three months ago I made a choice to stop using the term “Web Page” altogether. It’s been an interesting time. The term is harder to banish than you may think. It started out as a cavalier move, yet it had some meaningful consequences.

In this post, I share thoughts on Page Rage, my “search and replace” experiment, and how it shifted my thinking. I leave you with three simple steps to begin your own experiment and see how it opens new vistas for digital experience design.

In the beginning, there was the Page

I’ve spent the last 15+ years designing digital experiences for the Web, so there are a lot of Web Pages in my past.  I’ve grown to loathe the term Web Page. Why? It’s blatantly misleading. It stinks of “horseless carriage.” Yet it’s so deeply hooked into the terminology of interactive experiences and the world of Web interfaces that it takes serious effort to dislodge it.

I honestly feel that in order to create engaging digital experiences, we need to continuously evolve how we think about them. And this means we need to change the words we use to design them. What we need are new metaphors to play around with…words and terms that unleash fresh thinking appropriate to experiences in the Web and beyond. A language of experiences that can prism through different devices, objects and spaces.

So for the past few design projects, I’ve been playing with new language with the goal of opening up new approaches to design.

Page Rage 101

Here’s the skinny on what I call Page Rage. Page Rage is the emotion that overwhelms you when you realize that continuing to use the term Web Page curdles opportunities for evolving user experiences. Why? Because the word is an artifact of the woefully outdated book metaphor — a metaphor that limits thinking.

The word “page” means paper and books. And although it never made literal sense, it was a helpful metaphor when the digital stuff on the web was mostly about static content…when it behaved more like books. But the capabilities and possibilities for digital interfaces have shifted dramatically.

Now the Web is a teeming landscape of content and services, product platforms, and social streams. It’s an ecology of software applications, gaming, multimedia, small-device displays, multi-user displays, displays on the sides of buildings that can be controlled using mobile devices…you name it, if it’s not already hooked into the Web, it’s going to be. Anyone designing stuff for today’s Web needs to be thinking way beyond sites and pages.

In Metaphors We Live By (G. Lakoff and M. Johnson) Lakoff says:

“The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. […] Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. [...] But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more of less automatically along certain lines.”

Which means that the book metaphor has the power to frame our thinking and define the opportunity space for design, all without our being aware it’s happening. In short, we’ve become shackled by the book.

What’s the nature of these shackles? Here are the elements of a book experience that I feel are deadly for interactive experiences:

• physicality (made of paper)
• singleness (a unit of “a page”)
• similarity/conformity (pages have the same size and shape…bound together into sets)
• sequence (turn page 1, then 2, then 3)
• linearity (turn page 1 first, then 2 next, then 3 after that
• succession (beginning, middle, end, sequel)
• single entry point (cover page)
• limited space (physical constraint)
• word-orientation (visuals as supports, not main content)
• implies reading and focused attention

All these associations are specific to the form of a book. They’re not limitations of the technologies we’re using today. Think this is bunk? The definition doesn’t give a lot of wiggle room: “page” is all about the paper.

Page – noun

1. one side of a leaf of something printed or written, as a book, manuscript, or letter.
2. the entire leaf of such a printed or written thing: He tore out one of the pages.
3. a single sheet of paper for writing.
4. a noteworthy or distinctive event or period: a reign that formed a gloomy page in English history.
5. Printing. The type set and arranged for a page.
6. Computers.
   a. a relatively small block of main or secondary storage, up to about 1024 words.
   b. a block of program instructions or data stored in main or secondary storage.
   c. (in word processing) a portion of a document.
   d. Web page.

Yeah. Web gets a sad little shoutout in definition 6d, and it’s own puny definition. Not a lot of love for the interactive nature of the Web.

So why get all enraged about a word? It’s not the word’s fault. Nope, it’s how we, as people, act (or don’t act) as a result. Lackoff goes on to say:

“It is reasonable enough to assume that words alone don’t change reality. But changes in our conceptual system do change what is real for us and how we perceive the world and act upon those perceptions.”

I decided to banish “page” to unmoor the conceptual associations of the book metaphor. I wanted to force myself into a new conceptual system to be able to think about the interface behavior in a new way. So I blacklisted a word. And it felt awkward and weird, just like any new habit should.

Learnings from the Search & Replace experiment

In the past months, I’ve tasted a bunch of terms as a replacement for Web Page.

• The ones that were easiest to simply swap out: interface (or shortened to just “face”), screen, panel, pane, window, layer, display, frame, template.
• I also played around with: surface, folio, leaf, slip, section, tile, card, lens, slice, wafer, patch. Those were weirder, but still interesting.

Things I learned (and am still learning) by doing this.

1. When it works, no one notices.

If the replacement term makes sense, no one will notice you no longer say “page.” Some words just made sense to the team. Even though it was effort to avoid using the P-word, no one else seemed to care, as long as the term used was clear and appropriate. It was like gender-neutral language. No one notices if you say mail carrier instead of mailman. It just works.

2. Awareness takes time.

You have to take more care with your language. Which means you have to think more about what you say. This is a good thing. I also had to think more about “if it’s not a page, then what is it? A view? A lens? A folio? A stem? What does that allude to? Does it make sense? It’s an exercise in thoughtful design to consider things at this level.

3. Out with the old means in with the new.

You have to find new words to play with. I was encouraged to intentionally explore new metaphors. Was the experience like a performance? Was it more like an environment? An ecosystem? What set of terms would make sense?

I found I had better ideas more tied to the quality of the experience, based on the term and the associations. Cards hinted at interactions like shuffling, randomness, layouts and flipping. Frames showcased a central hero or focal point.

Understanding the qualities of the experience made it easier to think through how the service or information would behave in contexts beyond “sit-down-in-front-of-a-screen.” What would this product be like on an iPhone? On a Nabatag? On a billboard? In a restaurant?

It sharpened the realization that I was not a web designer. I was a designer creating an experience for the Web. And that’s a powerful shift in perspective. It’s one thing to say “I’m an experience designer.” It’s another thing to really think like one.

DIY : Your own experiment

Want to give this a try? Here are three simple steps:

1. Unseat the book metaphor.

Simply replace “Web Page” with something else.

You’ll notice that it feels awkward and uncomfortable, kinda like a new yoga move. That’s okay, it’s part of the process. But you’ll also notice a new awareness for when and how you rely on the term. Try out some different words. Some will work, some will sound bizarre. (Some won’t make sense at all.) But you’ll be playing around with new possibilities.

This step is like sorbet: it clears your palette to taste the next course.

2. Start dating new metaphors

Once you’ve gotten used to using alternate terms, work on swapping in a new metaphor. Move outside your comfort zone and get experimental. Think about the context of the design and the experience. What does a new metaphor push you to think about?

• a movie: play with words like reel, scene, shot, clip, sequence, serried, frame, screen, episode
• a play: play with words like theater, stage, setting, set, proscenium, skene, scene
• artwork: play with words like frame, figure, ground, composition, aspect, face, tableau, vista
• pieces and parts for building with: play with words like tile, block, brick, plate, pane, panel, chip, section, plan, foundation, bracket, skin

Silly? Maybe. But honestly, no sillier than Web Page.

3. Keep your eyes and ears open for new terms to love.

Stay alert for new conceptual metaphors that evoke qualities of a rich interactive experience. One that can bridge multiple channels. Find a couple that have words that carry the attributes you want to design for. Keep your eye out for keepers: words and metaphors that support:

• context-sensitivity
• unboundedness
• fluidity
• glance-ability
• distinctiveness / variation
• series & multiples
• temporality
• media-inclusive
• multifaceted
• no single entry point
• interconnected
• shuffle-able, re-orderable
• multivariate

These are the attributes that we need our metaphors to evoke when designing products and platforms that radiate through many channels.

Think about how the words scale. Can they be used to describe interfaces for any channel? Mobile, micro interfaces on devices, large-scale devices, multi-touch, immersive and ambient interfaces?

Feel the Rage

The payoff of Page Rage is that it’s a helpful wedge to break the book metaphor and to invite fresh thinking that’s inclusive to multiple product forms. At the start of the Web, many of our approaches were limited by the technology. Now we run the risk of being limited by our metaphors.

Companies are already investing in this broader thinking. The BBC recently posted about their new global visual language for the BBC’s digital services. This comprehensive effort was primarily to unify two channels: the web and mobile experiences. It’s clear that creating channel-agnostic design foundations is the next step of evolution for digital experiences. And to get there, we can’t keep designing by the book.

We won’t get there all at once, but we can start by unshackling ourselves from the book metaphor. Embrace the Rage.

My spirit animal is slime mold and I’m not afraid to admit it. This stranger-than-fiction life form has become the poster child of self-organizing systems, and the experimentation is getting interesting. I’m a bona-fide member of the Slime Mold fan club, and it’s inspired a collection of thoughts about how companies can leverage the bottom-up, self-organizing methods that slime mold has mastered.

Now honestly, I’m more of a dictyosteliomycota fan. But I’m not against admiring the myxomycota branch of the family.

After all, what’s not to love about an organism that can solve mazes and whose fear can be harnessed to run a robot? Hell, with a slime mold in your back pocket, you can even win awards.

The latest news is using slime mold to model networks and find the nuanced efficiencies of connecting notes and optimizing pathways. When is this helpful? Well, it’s helpful if you are designing rail systems in Tokyo, or highway systems in the UK.

My prediction? If this handy bio-pet can discover efficiencies in movement and optimize networks, I see smart applications for architecture, urban planning and local transit networks. Heck, you could even model the optimal placement for the office watercooler so that the location promotes local connections between colleagues and team members.

Sigh. It’s all getting so very exciting. Go slime mold! What will you think of next?

More reading for members of the Slime Mold Fan Club:

• Slime Mold Grows Network Just Like Tokyo Rail System
• Designing highways the slime mould way
• Engineers ‘can learn from slime’

This Thursday (Jan 14th) we’re pleased to host the January IxDA-SF event. Please join us for this fun (and free) happening!

• Time: January 14, 2010 from 6:30pm to 9pm
• Location: Adaptive Path, 363 Brannan Street, San Francisco (View the map)
• Organized By: IxDA San Francisco

You can RSVP here.

About the event:

Making the right choices leads us, and our teams to thrive. Many of the best design thinking waxes poetic that the best ideas come from “blue-sky ideation,” but generating ideas is only part of the challenge of our work. While brainstorming generates lots of ideas, but you still have to discern the right choices to win. AND you have to get a group of people to believe that IT is the right solution

That means we need to have a way to build a vision, envision options but then make the tough choices to choose ideas that match the goal. Teams often avoid tough choices because they want consensus, immediate results, and to avoid political fights.

The opposite of whiteboarding, the MurderBoarding™ decision process ensures teams creatively generate many potential options before “killing off” options one-by-one until there is single best solution for a specific organization and situation. The result is the organization or team aligned to a common goal and takes on clear, achievable, and measurable goals. This session provides you with a framework for nailing the tough choices you need to make to win and dealing with the human beings involved!

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Nilofer Merchant founded and leads Rubicon, which creates business strategy to find and win markets. Having worked inside and outside major corporate brands like Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and others, Nilofer has honed her collaborative approach to solving tough problems as much through her failures as her successes. Her firm is hired by global brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Pinnacle, Logitech, Openwave, Symantec and others to create strategy that people will actually execute because they created it. She’s often quoted or published in major business publications such as BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal.

Nilofer earned her MBA from Santa Clara University, a BS in Economics from University of San Francisco. In her book, The New How, she shares the stories and ways to shift from traditional top-down approaches to flat, fast ways to invent the future.

Steve Gundrum | UX Week 2009 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

It’s becoming that season. You know, the season where food seems to take center stage. As the weather gets colder, comfort food, hot drinks and celebratory feasts appear on the horizon.

When I think of food, I think of things like: yummy, fragrant, spicy, hearty. Or, fruits & veggies, meat & potatoes, Mom’s amazing spaghetti.

Then I heard Steve Gundrum, CEO of Mattson speak at UX Week 2009 on “The Secret Ingredient” for Designing New Foods and Beverages. He told the insider tale about how the food industry thinks about food. It was fascinating, enlightening, and, I admit, a little creepy, as I captured in my sketchnotes of the talk.
Steve was passionate and engaged when he revealed the pyramid of maximizing profits. He did a great job of communicating how differently the food industry thinks, plans and designs food products. Do you think about attitude as a key ingredient in food? I didn’t either, but now I can’t get it out of my head.

To cap off the talk, Steve did what very few speakers know how to do: give the audience an experience with the simple tools of jellybeans, nose, mouth and time.

Are you designing experiences that have an insider view? Are you curious about what makes the food and beverage industry go? If so, take a peek through the keyhole into the world of food profitability with Steve Gundrum.

‘Tis the season of the South by Southwest panel picker and the feeding frenzy that follows.

When cruising the 2000+ proposals, I came across tons of cool and interesting proposals. I also found my head swimming with how many panels there are!

So, in the spirit of helpfulness (with a healthy dose of self-promotion) here are some of the panels from folks at Adaptive Path, friends and colleagues.

Go vote ‘em up!

Panels from Adaptive Path

• In Sparking a Crush: Attracting and Retaining New Users Alexa reveals tips and tricks for how not to lose the sparkle in your users eye.
• Peter’s topic for exploration is Beyond the Desktop.
• I’ve got a couple of talks: Lessons from Slime Mold : Surviving and Thriving in Shifting Environments and Pen & Paper Tools to Get From Research to Design.
• We recently created an iPhone app, and the smart.fm team submitted a panel on the iPhone app case study: Going Mobile: Web App Dos and Don’ts.

Panels from friends & colleagues

• Bryan Mason, former CTO of Adaptive Path shares 8 Ways to Deal with Bastards.
• Sarah Nelson reveals her Jedi Mind Skills in Are You There? Hello? Tips for Better Remote Collaboration.
• Greg Veen asks Is Canvas the End of Flash?
• In the Content Strategy world, Kristina Halvorson covers Why Your Content Sucks and How to Fix It and Content Strategy FTW.
• Dave Gray shows his diversity with Browsing the Future: Visualizing the Everywhere Internet and The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book! (I saw this at VizThink and it was great.)
• Steve Portigal offers Culture Kicks Our Ass: How To Kick Back and FAIL: When User Research Goes Horribly, Horribly Wrong.
• Dan Roam, master of the napkin focuses on Blah Blah Blah: Why Words Won’t Work.

Which strike your fancy? Click on over to give ‘em the thumbs up or post a comment.

See you in Austin in 2010!

For years, I’ve found creative inspiration in slime mold. The elegance of this lifeform is extraordinary: when times are good, it’s a colony of individuals. When times are bad, the whole colony forms a single organism and makes a getaway. I use slime mold as a metaphor and learning inspiration for how organizations behave, adapt and how they can better embrace collective work.

In April, I shared my thinking about slime mold and organizational culture at the IA Summit in Memphis. There I met Stacy Surla, who invited me to write an article on the topic for the  August/September 2009 issue of The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

The article went live this week, so you can read the full story on learning from slime mold. Thanks to the great editorial team at the Bulletin for the guidance and editing work. We’re also excited that this article debuted video examples for the first time in Bulletin content.

Article in the August/September 2009 issue of The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

You can read the full article here:

• Web version (html)
• Print version (pdf)
• Current Bulletin issue (html, not a permalink)
• Complete Bulletin issue, August/September 2009 (pdf)

And to whet your appetite, check out this marvelous slime mold video by Thomas Gregor in Princeton University’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. It shows the first 2 stages of the lifecycle.

It’s that time of year again…a celebration of design and specifically, design in San Francisco. This year AIGA SF has kicked off the San Francisco Design Week with lots of interesting events, tours and talks.

We’re hosting an open house and studio tour on Thursday, June 18th from 5:30-9pm. C’mon over and take a walk-through of the AP space, see what UX Design looks like (the stories! The results!) and share your enthusiasm and passion for making the world better through design.

Details and rsvp info here: details on upcoming.org

Stop on over and have a beer with us!

Adaptive Path has an open space where we host events to hear from interesting people and get good ideas flowing. We’ve had the honor of hosting great minds such as Charlene Li, author of Groundswell (co-hosted with the SF-American Marketing Association), A panel on Service Design hosted by our own Brandon Schauer, celebrated the launch of 90 Mobiles in 90 Days, and heard from movers and shakers about what’s Beyond the Desktop.

And recently, Adaptive Path has experienced quite a baby boom…7 in the past year. (That’s a lot of cute goin’ on.)

It seems only natural to combine these interests. So we’re happy to invite you to an evening event co-hosted with Girls in Tech on Tuesday, April 28th, from 6:30-9:30pm.

Here’s the scoop:

If you’re curently raising the next generation (or contemplating what that would be like) please join us for the AuthorChat with Sharon Meers, author of Getting to 50/50 : How Working Couples Can Have It All by Sharing It All.

It’s no secret that both women and men continuously struggle with the “work-life” balance. Whether you’re single, married or have a family, it’s difficult to be a successful business woman, a working dad, a student, a Mom, a spouse, a father, a business leader (insert your own role here) and still find time to have a life. That is why Girls in Tech is excited to announce an AuthorChat featuring Sharon Meers, co-author of GETTING TO 50/50.

This informative, yet intimate presentation will provide a recipe to helping you put together all of the equally important puzzle pieces in your life in a productive and effective manner. For moms, dads, and partners considering becoming parents, this will be a learning experience to remember!

Details:

• When: Tuesday, April 28th, 6:30pm
• Where: Adaptive Path
• Cost: $10
• Register at : http://gettingto5050authorchat.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see you there!

The Big (D)esign Conference in Dallas on May 30th promises to be a terrific experience, packed with interesting sessions in User Experience, Strategy, Social Media and Code Development. For one day and $50, it’s a great way to refresh your networking skills, learn some great stuff and hang in Dallas when the weather is good.

While you’re there, don’t miss our own Teresa Brazen, who will be speaking in the Strategy track, sharing her experiences with exploring the UX Landscape.

Teresa is the founder and host of Tea with Teresa, a podcast blog dedicated to dispelling mystery and learning more about the world together through candid conversation, jargon-free dialog and tea. Here’s a snapshot of what she’ll cover in her Big (D)esign talk:

Tools and Methods to Learn, Navigate, & Make A Name for Yourself in the UX Landscape.

Coming from outside the user experience (UX) industry and landing smack in the belly of the beast, Teresa knows how fresh eyes can be an asset. In her talk, she will present three creative approaches to understanding and navigating the sea of methods and concepts that make up the User Experience practice, while embedding yourself as a key player in the UX industry. She comes from the perspective that ‘It’s okay not to know everything about User Experience yet’ (most people don’t know what it is, anyway!) and reveals some simple, creative ways to learn about the interesting processes, methods and practices that make up the field.

Tools & Methods include:

1] Maps of Knowledge: Diagrams that allow you to visually see what you know about the industry, what you don’t know, and areas where you can supplement what you already know (if you’re already a UX professional) or what you learned in school (if you’re a soon-to-be UX professional).

2] Get to Know the Pros: Building your network is as simple as taking advantage of resources around you. Teresa will share how her podcast, TeaWithTeresa.com, allows her to learn about UX methods and practice from the people that created the field or made huge waves in the industry. She will also share key things you can do to build your own network within the field.

3] Building A Personal Brand: A personal brand means you’re known for something and helps you stand out in a crowd. Whether you’re a student or an experienced UX professional, growing your personal brand will make a difference for your career. Teresa will provide you with tools to help you uncover what you have to offer, create a mantra (What do you care about?) and will share videos from others who have created strong personal brands within the UX community.

On the Experience Design track, you’ll be able to catch AP’s Design Researcher and Manager of the Austin Office Todd Wilkens as he shares his Case Study for Redesigning MySpace.

So hop on over to Dallas at the end of May to say “Hi!”

Today is Ada Lovelace day…a day to celebrate women in technology. Earlier this year, I joined 1000+ people in a pledge sponsored by Suw Charman-Anderson: “I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

I’m writing my Ada Day post listening to a CD of music written in the 11th century. More specifically liturgical music written by a mystic German nun and Abbess. It’s riveting. Over 1000 years later, the tonal transitions and Latin phrases touch a deep chord and inspire with their mesmerizing shifts up and down the musical scale.

In honor of Ada Lovelace Day, I’m reaching into the ‘way back machine to a time where technology was not about systems (technología, 1605 : systematic treatment of an art or craft) or machines (technology, 1859 : science of the mechanical and industrial arts) or code and bits & bytes (high technology, 1964.) I’m talking about a time when technology was truly about the roots of creativity: the Greek tékne meaning “art, skill, craft or method.”

The music I’m referring to was written by Hildegard von Bingen…a mystic, a visionary (literally) and a woman who shook the conventions of her time and society to contribute works on religion, philosophy, art and the natural world. She was a Renaissance woman a few hundred years before the Renaissance.

Hildegarde used her mental prowess to explore the natural world, to devise new systems of thinking, to publish her philosophies and learnings to share them publicly. She worked around the political structures that limited womens voices by using alternative rhetorical arts. She was able to transcend the banns on womens social participation and interpretation of scripture to share her message via preaching, letter writing, poetry, illuminated manuscripts and music.

She was the author of many works, including Physica and Causae et Curae. In these texts Hildegard describes the natural world around her, including the cosmos, animals, plants, stones, and minerals. Clearly, Hildegard was amongst the first Information Architects, or perhaps more accurately, a User Experience Designer who used illuminations, writing and music to deliver holistic, transformative experiences.

As a leader, a thinker and a maker, Hildegard qualifies as a tekne-ologist of the finest sort: a woman who saw visions of possibility and dedicated her life to making knowledge known to others, using whatever means available: speech, writing, illustration and scientific inquiry.

Hildegard, you rock.

About the pledge:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. The pledge is an opportunity to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

Who was Ada?
Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software. Learn more at FindingAda.com.