Adaptive Path Blog

Stephen P. Anderson, formerly Principal User Experience Architect for Sabre and currently Vice President of Design at Viewzi, will be speaking at MX San Francisco on how to get visionary ideas made into realities. He uses George Lucas’ work on Star Wars as inspiration and a practical example. We had a conversation over e-mail about changing organizational culture, managing design teams, and doing things that have never been done before.

Todd Wilkens [TW]: Well, Stephen, even though your talk is all about visionary ideas, let’s get the ball rolling with a practical question: What got you so interested in how visionary ideas get pushed through an organization? Why and how has this been relevant to you? What made this an itch you needed to scratch?

Stephen Anderson [SA]: As a consultant, you see a lot of really great ideas that, for whatever reason, never get implemented. Or when they do, there is little resemblance between what actually gets produced and the original concepts. In 2006, I moved from the world of consulting to become a UX director at a large, enterprise company. Needless to say, it was a real eye-opener. I think I went in with a rather naive faith in the power of prototypes and ‘leading with an inspiring product vision’. While I still value this approach, I quickly learned that there is much more to pushing visionary ideas through an organization.

For starters, if you want to bring a great product/service experience to market, you have to first change the company culture. This is basic — and critical. So many other forces are at play inside large organizations — competition, politics, procedure, history. It’s about much more than creating business value. In fact, the biggest shock for me was discovering how internal business units compete with each other in ways that hurt the larger organization…

Read the full interview.

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In the newest issue of Interactions magazine, Steve Portigal laments the use of personas. His point essentially is that personas “invite misuse” and therefore they should be avoided. Peter has responded, pointing out that Steve has thrown a baby or two out with the bath water by conflating personas with poorly conceived personas. To some degree it becomes a war of analogies, with Steve saying personas are like guns (i.e. inviting misuse and dire consequences) and Peter saying they are like movies (i.e. just because most are bad doesn’t mean that we should dismiss the activity of movie-making).

But neither of them addresses the underlying issue that is at the heart of all this fear and loathing, use and misuse. The power and danger of personas is their realism. Good personas use this realism to drive authentic understanding deep into the heart of an organization. As humans, we are highly attuned to observing, interpreting, and relating to other people. Good personas take advantage of this tendency and focus it on “people” that are highly relevant to a design, business, or engineering task. I have seen this have profound positive effects on organizations.

The issue is that personas are not real. They are realistic but, in the end, fictional. Knowing Steve, I can say that he is very uncomfortable with that element of fiction because of how it can affect the people creating and using personas. When handled poorly, organizations can begin (or continue) to talk about real people as characters or stereotypes. And that, as he would probably say, “freaks him out.” As it should. We all hate to see organizations misunderstanding the people they are trying to serve.

But does this potential really outweigh the benefits? In my experience, personas have always improved an organizations understanding of their customers because, if nothing else, they become a tangible and explicit artifact for focusing and catalyzing discussion about customers. While this may not always be inspiring, it moves things forward. Incremental change is better than no change at all.

Of course, Steve’s essay also raises an important question, what is the alternative to personas? (Peter makes this same point.) If we agree that qualitative, contextual, and in-depth research is important and necessary, how do we capture and communicate the things we learn in the field beyond giving people a mountain of raw video and audio to go through for themselves? (Assuming that video and audio actually substitutes for being in the field…). Steve says that we should “tell stories.” But every story told is an approximation. Details are left out or reordered to support a larger theme or message. This is true in journalism as much as in romance or sci-fi. In the same way, some level of fiction is necessary when it comes to personas. Personas are meant to represent archetypical customers or users of a product or service. Representing archetypes requires a certain level of aggregation and synthesis.

In my whole career, I have seen few things that inspire strong reactions like personas. Enthusiasm & excitement as well as fear and loathing. So, I can’t fault Steve for his strong reaction. Personas blur the line between truth and fiction, which can be disconcerting. But this all highlights the fact that personas are more a medium of communication than a tool. So, Steve’s gun analogy isn’t really appropriate. Peter’s movie analogy is better. Or consider painting, which actually had/has a movement called Realism. I think it’s a mistake to throw out the idea of painting or of Realism just because someone’s first attempt looks more like a toddler’s scrawl than a Rembrandt.

P.S. Congrats to Steve for such a provocative first column!

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A new year brings a new start. My family and I have just finished relocating to Austin, TX. The move was purely for personal reasons related to lifestyle and closeness to family. I am, however, staying on with Adaptive Path. What does this mean? Well, in the short run, it means that I’ll be working remotely on a range of different projects. I will also be working diligently to get involved in the design and UX community in Texas. AP has a lot of connections here already — heck, the company was launched in Austin at SxSW. I am explicitly looking to meet talented folks in the area to hang out and, hopefully, build a team to start doing projects with. If you’re interested in grabbing lunch, a beer, or just having a chat, send me an email to my_last_name at adaptivepath.com.

This is going to be a bit of an adventure. Stay tuned for updates on topics including remote work, building a design team, and the UX of Tex-Mex.

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In this age of wireless Internet and mobile email devices, having an effective meeting or working session is becoming more and more difficult. Laptops, Blackberries, Sidekicks, iphones, and the like keep people from being fully present. Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results. Multi-tasking is a myth (and there are lots of other articles corroborating Merlin’s points). This is especially damaging in highly collaborative and interdisciplinary fields like UX. Here at the office, we’ve begun to make most of our meetings “topless” (i.e. no laptops allowed). I’ve gone a step further by trying to ban any form of networked communication from the working meetings I put together. While my colleagues here at Adaptive Path have been tolerant of my eccentricities, it’s not so easy when working with clients whose companies have a culture of being always connected and checking. So, I thought I’d share a few tips I’ve picked up for getting people to put down their Crackberries and actually do some work.

1. No rules without reasons. Don’t just ban laptops and handhelds with no explanation. Make sure to point out how important it is that the group focus on the task at hand. It’s very hard to argue with that.
2. Be the bad guy. Someone has to be the one to stand up to the social pressure. It can be an uncomfortable prospect but it is necessary. Luckily, you’ll find that many people secretly want to have the excuse to disconnect and focus. They just don’t want to take the risk of making people upset. Don’t be afraid to make people a little uncomfortable in the name of productivity.
3. Consequences. You don’t need a slap on the wrist or a time out to make this work. Social pressure is powerful. No one wants to be called out in front of a group. Make sure they know you are not afraid to do this if you see them breaking the rule. (Note: I learned this trick teaching sociology to undergrads.)
4. For short sessions: point out that there are few things that you will get via email that can’t wait until the end of an hour meeting. If you need to deal with a phone call or urgent message, get up and leave the room.
5. For long sessions: include regular 15-20 minute breaks and let people know these are there explicitly to give them time to check in on things.
6. Out of hand, out of mind. Have everyone put their phone/mobile device in a box or on a counter in the corner of the room. We all know that it is nearly impossible to ignore a vibrating device in your pocket. Just admit it and account for it.
7. State the costs. If you are a consultant, remind them that they are paying you $XXX an hour to watch them check their email. I’ve found that to be extremely effective.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had people actually thank me for being such a hard ass about these things. The above list has just a few of the tricks I’ve used to combat the insidious, addictive power of Blackberries, etc. It’s no where near complete, so please add your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

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There’s been a lively discussion over the last couple of days following my post on usability. While it’s become quite clear to me that I was a bit too aggressive in expressing my frustration, I still stand behind the post. In fact, I doubt that there would have been nearly as much excellent commentary if I hadn’t put myself out there for people to get mad at.

To recap some of the issues discussed: Many agreed that usability is just one part of creating successful products that provide great user experience. Many also seemed to agree that I am an idiot. Slightly fewer people seemed to think that, on the contrary, I am actually insightful. There was some great discussion about what actually falls within the bounds of “usability” both as a profession and a concept. Please take the time to look at the comments for much of the discussion. However, since I know not everyone will, here are a few highlights:

The most expansive and perhaps most scathing response comes from my “friend” Kevin Fox. Check out “Sidelining usability is a path to failure”. (Just kidding about the “friend” thing.)

Robert Hoekman Jr also reacts with a post on “why narrow-mindness is a path to failure”

Jared Spool provided some of the most extensive comments and took me to task on a lot of issues with his usual insight.

Yet despite all of the insightful commentary, most of the people who responded so negatively actually missed my main point. Most interpreted my post as frustration leading to shortsightedness and dismissing the importance of usability. Essentially, throwing the baby out with the bath water. Though I’m obviously frustrated, the post was actually about the shortsightedness of others. My point was much more about organizations and practitioners not seeing the holistic experience forest for the usability trees.

It was also not so much about the success or failure of usability professionals and practice but about “usability” as an organizational strategy. JIm Kalbach got this point exactly and summed it up nicely:

It kinda reminds me of Michael Porter’s take on corporate strategy. He essentially says that operational effeciency is important, but not strategic. It’s operational. It’s something everyone strives for, even your competitors. So there is no differentiator there, and others can easily copy you. Same for usability.

Porter has been a big influence on my thinking. Overall this was a great conversation that is by no means settled. For that reason, I’ve submitted a panel proposal to SxSW on the same subject. I’d like to invite folks like Jared, Kevin, and others to talk about this in person; no gloves, no referee, survival of the fittest. If you’re interested in seeing such an event/spectacle, be sure to vote for this panel when they open panel picking in August.

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When talking of a great writer, how often do people talk about how amazingly legible they are? When talking about a great photographer, does anyone ever talk about the fact that his prints actually developed and thus are visible? Obviously, the answer is no. Legibility and visibility are the bare minimum of requirements for a successful piece of writing or a photograph. Any person who focused most of their efforts on legibility or visibility would probably have almost no chance of being a successful artist. Something that is fundamental to great creative acts is aiming high. If your goals and strategies are not oriented toward excellence then it is highly unlikely that your tactics will get you there. No one tells their kids to aim for a C- and then expects them to get an A.

So, why oh why do people in this day age still hold up “usability” as something laudable in product and service design? Praising usability is like giving me a gold star for remembering that I have to put each leg in a *different* place in my pants to put them on. (Admittedly, I *do* give my 2 year old daughter a gold star for this but then she’s 2.) Usability is not a strategy for design success. The efficiency you create in your interface will be copied almost instantaneously by your competitors. Recently, I’m even coming to believe that focusing on usability is actually a path to failure. Usability is too low level, too focused on minutia. It can’t compel people to be interested in interacting with your product or service. It can’t make you compelling or really differentiate you from other organizations. Or put another way, there’s only so far you can get by streamlining the shopping cart on your website.

[NOTE: This was a short post on a big topic. The comments are where the really interesting things come out. Please read them.]

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Why do good research efforts fail? Why do good insights fail to make it into the actual design of products and services? Why do the things we learned about users generally disappear at the end of a project? One reason is that, in many organizations, research is done by a department or group that is mostly divorced from the rest of the design and development process. They are given a set of requirements, go do the research, and then pass the findings back over a wall in the form of research reports and power point presentations. Designers, developers, and management read these once then file them away on a shelf or a folder on their computer to be forgotten. The most successful organizations break this cycle. If your company is in the business of creating user-centered products and services then your whole organization should be oriented toward gaining and maintaining customer insights.

It’s become a pet project to diagnose and collect solutions to these kinds of problems. There are lots of approaches to doing this effectively in different organizations. And even small steps can have profound effects. I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned in my session on Day 3 of UX Week on Making Research Effective. My session should make a great complement to the excellent sessions that day by Emily Ulrich on Reserch Methods in the Workplace, Josh Porter on The Psychology of Social Design, Barbara Ballard on Mobile Usability Testing, and AP’s own Rachel Hinman on Mobile Research Techniques.

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Totally independent of Dan, I was working on the a similar blog post for the Research day of the UX Intensive workshops. I haven’t had anyone tell me that what we discussed wasn’t really about research. But what I have had is a lot of inquiries about what methods are covered during the day. I am usually greeted with a with a look of surprise (and sometimes dismay) when I say “hardly any.” Let’s face it, there are thousands of methodological approaches one can take to research: quantitative, qualitative, contextual, lab, remote, etc. All of them have their uses depending on the nature of the research questions you need answered. Experienced researchers pick up or create new methods as the need arises. 99% of the writing and discussion about research is about methods, while data gathering actually accounts for at most 50% of the job, especially for senior research practitioners. So, I decided to cover a lot of the things that no one else is talking about but which are essential to making research effective.

The bulk of the workshop day is focused on strategies and approaches to research. We cover research planning, approaches to analysis (particularly interview transcripts), and making research effective in a design process (teams and deliverables stuff). The closest we get to methods are a section on “Creating, choosing, and mixing Methods” (not really about any specific methods) and a section on “The Art of Effective Interviewing,” which is applicable for pretty much any method that has you talking to people. I also have a bit of a theory section at the outset called “Understanding People as People.”

In the same spirit as Dan’s post, I’ll ask what other topics would you like to see covered in an advanced research day?

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I’m on a listserv called anthrodesign, which, as you might guess, is full of anthropologists interested in design and vice versa. This is a great idea in concept as both groups have a lot they could teach each other and, to be fair, there is a lot of great conversation on the list. But there is a recurring problem exemplified by this quote below. It’s in response to an interview in BusnessWeek with Jan Chipchase of Nokia (A summary of the conversation on anthrodesign is here in Putting People First’s comments on the Businessweek interview.)

“Nokia’s ethnographic research sounds basic, even primitive. It’s akin to Dr. Livingston in “Darkest Africa,” sussing out the “natives”: how many yams they eat in a week, who tells the iconic stories, what clans do to maintain hegemony, etc. Very ho-hum, except that the technology is “cool.” Cellphone ethnographic research, so far as I can tell, studies behaviors related to product use but as the snippet in BW reveals, not the inner workings of cellphone users — how they relate to cellphones in phenomenological ways, for example.”

The problem with a lot of the people on the list is that they are anthropologists first and students of human behavior second. I know that theoretically the previous statement shouldn’t make any sense but it is sooooo true. People go into academic social science as interested, grounded, empathic people and come out unable to make sense of human experience and behavior except through the lens of abstracted academic theory and methodology. The way you try to get to the answers begins to totally overshadow the answers themselves. It also tends to reinforce disciplinary identity politics and makes people forget that there are other disciplines and perspectives that are as valid as their own. (And anthroplogists should be especially ashamed of themselves for falling prey to this.)

To understand the human world you need economics as much as you need anthropology, psychology as much as sociology. The fact of the matter is that we need to understand all of the things that Jan discusses just as much or perhaps more than the kinds of things anthropologists think are interesting. (Not to mention that it is quite poor scholarship to make a judgment on the research efforts of Jan and Nokia as a whole from a cursory two-page interview in BW.)

This is the kind of talk that spawns and spreads terms like “pseudo-ethnography” and other such demeaning terms. This does nothing but kill meaningful conversation and ensure that the good stuff from anthro stays out of design and vice-versa. It makes me so mad. Grr. Don’t get me wrong, I love academia. I’m just annoyed by 80% of all academics. This is why I left.

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You know how there are certain topics or issues that come up on a recurring basis in organizations? Well, at AP one of these is job titles. This is an often contentious or at least evocative topic in any organization. It is particularly problematic for us here because of the people that make up the company and the way we work together. We all understand that job titles serve a very important outward facing purpose in a consultancy: clients need to know who you are and what you can/will do for them. This has been the primary driver behind our current job titles. Everyone chooses their own title when they come in to reflect their interests and expertise. The issue that we have been dealing with more recently is the internal function/effect of job titles. Specifically, we are an organization filled almost entirely with people who would be in “senior” or “management” positions in almost any other organizations. In practice, we have very little hierarchy beyond leadership roles on specific projects and the small executive management team. Yet, “senior” only shows up in a handful of people’s titles and this is a constant catalyst for discussion. You might ask, “What’s in a name?” Well, as any information architect or librarian will tell you, classification has consequences. So, we’ve been talking a lot about the organizational effects of these linguistic distinctions that aren’t reflected in the way we actually do our work. Among other ideas, some people regularly advocate abolishing job titles.

I know that the boundaries between disciplines are always fuzzy. But my question or concern is less about disciplinary boundaries and more about hierarchy and power. How does this play out in other organizations that don’t function in a rigidly hierarchical way? I’d love to hear examples from others about what has worked and not worked in their experience.

(FYI, you can see our current set of job titles on the about page.)

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