Adaptive Path Blog

Clients often come to us to help them develop a better sense of their users. To do so, we venture into the homes of people who are using or may be using our client’s product. Armed with audio and video recorders, we interview them at length. In the course of these interviews, we naturally develop a sense of empathy for these people: We see their homes, we meet their housemates, we make eye contact, and we share a physical space for over an hour.

After the interview, we are tasked with the challenge of articulating what we saw, heard and felt. We rummage through our interview transcripts and notes using a variety of methods and tools. We then produce personas and story-scenarios that document the characteristics, behaviors and motivations of the people we spoke to. Done right, these personas and scenarios help our clients develop a sense of empathy for their users.

But ultimately, there’s no substitute for actually being there, talking to real people, and experiencing it first-hand. To that end, we always encourage our clients to join in on our home interviews. Sometimes, all it takes is a day out of their office and into the lives of their users for a new perspective to settle in. Sometimes, it’s the real, live response to a question they’ve been holding on the tip of their tongue that finally convinces them.

So to all our clients, present and future: “Please, come with us. Take a plunge into the world of your users.”

We’ve been using Basecamp for quite a while now. In order to make it do what we want, it sometimes takes a little encouragement and some hacks.

Things like making use of the existing CSS code to stylize your messages, or using Ajax to dynamically hide and show images to embedding Google calendars and video. Sometimes these little enhancements help you communicate your ideas more effectively.

I’ve created a free Basecamp site that has examples and the code that we’ve collected. Feel free to use and tweak as needed. If you have any others, or better ways of doing something, leave a comment here or in the Basecamp Sandbox below.

Site: Here
Log in using: guest/guest

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.

Chiara Fox & I spent Monday and Tuesday getting our geek on at the She’s Geeky unconference in Mountain View. In addition to hanging out with smart, geeky gals and learning about a wide variety of tech+ topics, there were other things that made the experience notable, memorable and impactful.

What made it different:

• Use of the Open Space principles / Unconference structure
• Wide range of topics, diversity of skills, interests and life experiences
• Fully participatory - it was what you made of it
• All the participant were female, geeky and proud of it
• The participants created the conference contents

Highlights of the experience
The unconference format allowed for participation from anyone and everyone. If you wanted to connect with others about an idea, you were encouraged to add it to the lineup. There was a big sheet of paper where participants could post their sessions (aka: the grid.)

The grid changed and grew throughout the day. The principles of Open Space made it okay to have a big group, or just one person (yes, you can convene a group of 1!) Key to the process was the following:

• Whoever comes are the right people / is the right person.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that would have.
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• Whenever it is over it is over.
• If you are not learning something or sharing something, you have the responsibility to respectfully move to somewhere you are.

Topics were wide and varied…Art + Craft + Geek; GIMP for open source image editing; Shameless Promotion; Guerrilla Tactics of a Diversity Evangelist; Cyber Bullying; What challenging questions should we be asking ourselves? and more.

The Computer History Museum is a fantastic location. One big room for lunch and discussion tables, and smaller rooms for breakout sessions. The espresso bar kept us jazzed for the 2 days.

What made it work? Every activity was grounded in participation:

• You make your own nametag with a nametagcloud
• Snap a poloaroid and write up your own profile
• Write your name on your coffee mug (and drink custom coffee drinks all day!)
• Open lunch table sessions on the first day

What I learned?

• If you want participants to make their own experience, use a format that includes them in the design of that experience.
• Invite interested, interesting people…and interesting things will happen.
• Be inclusive…create many ways to get involved and engaged.
• Make it consistently participative.

Many of the session notes are available on the She’s Geeky site, and lots of photos are on Flickr.

I’ll definitely go next year!

A client asked us for some advice on how to get the most out of working with Adaptive Path (or any design firm, for that matter). We polled the staff, and put our responses into an essay.

Enjoy!

I’m teaching a day-long workshop this year at DUX 2007 entitled Process Rebooting: Changing your Process to Create IxD-driven Innovations. I’ve been having a lot of fun putting the material together and crafting a day of hands-on activities and information to inspire design leaders to innovate their design processes.

I’ve had a look at the registered participants so far and am pleased to see a lot of creative directors, product and project managers from a variety of companies in web, software and device/product with a mix of strategists, designers and information architects as well. I can foresee a day full of lively discussion and sharing of ideas with this group!

With 3 weeks before the conference begins, the workshop is filling up fast! We have a few seats left, so if you’re attending DUX and have been pondering whether to attend this workshop, now is the time to sign up!

And if this topic isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, check out the other workshops scheduled on the same day given by Jeremy Alexis, Marc Rettig, John Zapolski, Kevin Brooks, Richard I. Anderson and Melody Roberts.

Chris Conley of Gravity Tank and the Institute of Design spends his time educating young designers as well as clients the finer points of design, business and the process of building a creative and sustainable culture. I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about what it takes to grow and sustain creative excellence within organizations. Here are some highlights:

There is a tacit assumption that making is a production activity rather than a critical, informative one. Anyone who has ever been a part of a productive R&D team realizes that trying things and doing experiments is the fastest way to break into new territory. By putting a priority on thinking and talking (through email, meetings, and PowerPoint) our work activities and environments have become sterile and devoid of the tangible aspects of what were in business to create! You can’t tell by going into the offices of most companies what business they are actually in! Consider how challenging that inherently makes it for new people in the organization to understand and contribute creatively….

The “new” way of working is to re-train the organization. I put scare quotes around it because it is exactly how we used to work. You remember photos from the 50s of all of our great companies like General Motors, Lockheed, IBM? The photos were of folks in rooms full of prototypes, drawings on the tables, and walls that were blackboards with sketches and drawings. They were building the businesses. That’s gone. Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that tangible things don’t matter.

Check out the entire interview here. Don’t forget, when you register for MX East, use the promotional code BLOG for an additional 10% off.

Please join us at Adaptive Path tonight at 6pm for the IxDA-SF September event, the 2nd in the Design Tools series.

We’ll begin with social time at 6pm. At 7pm, I’ll be speaking about a subject that is close to my heart…sticky notes!

The Problem Solving Power of Stickies: Simple Tools that Deliver Great Results.

I’ll be discussing the true power of the sticky note — yes, stickies! — to quickly and effectively organize data, visualize themes, and identify patterns.

We’ll start with an overview of how Adaptive Path uses sticky notes (aka: Post-Its) in user experience projects. Then we’ll jump into a set of hands-on activities to test your stickies aptitude and gain experience in multiple methods.

Let us know you’re coming: visit upcoming.org to see all the details and to rsvp. Hope to see you tonight!

Presented b the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and Adaptive Path

I was at Rich Web Experience last week and Yahoo’s Bill Scott presented a session on his recently unveiled prototyping library. It’s called Protoscript and he’s written a blog post as well. Both of these sources get technical fairly quickly so the implications may not be immediately obvious to non-programmers. Even though Protoscript is still very much a work in progress and there’s some distance between its current state and Bill’s vision for its future, the opportunities it opens up are are exciting.

The driving force behind this library is Bill’s opinion that “Prototyping is too hard for non-techies”. I wouldn’t make quite the same blanket statement, but I do agree that some of the most useful, effective prototyping approaches do require developer resources or developer assistance. These technical resources are not always readily available. Protoscript shifts the requirements and ultimately will allow designers with little or no actual coding expertise to rapidly prototype in an interesting way.

The Protoscript bookmarklet allows you ‘inject’ Ajax behaviors into existing web pages. That means you can start with an html mockup or a client’s existing site as a starting point and try all sorts of different approaches. Do you have a list of items somewhere on a web page? Want to see what it would be like if they were drag and drop elements? Want to see what it would look like if you could delete list elements and have them fade and disappear? Somebody asks to see what they would look like in some sort of accordion layout? Imagine being able to run through those three iterations in the space of 10 minutes. Now imagine being able to do that as a designer without a developer to help you.

Being able to get by without development resources will require the completion of the GUI interface Bill envisions but even in its current state, Protoscript could fundamentally change work flows. A designer and a developer can sit together over a common screen run through ideas in a much more lightweight way than they currently can. Or, in other words, Protoscript shifts this type of prototyping from a multi-day email interchange with the IT department to something that feels more like sketching quickly on whiteboard.

For many people, brainstorming seems to be a largely useless pursuit—meandering sessions, filled with bad ideas, rammed down your throat by a loud mouth who should have stayed in his cubicle. Brainstorming also seemed to be used during times of panic: the “what the heck are we going to do, the deadline is tomorrow” kind of brainstorming. Painful.

I, too, used to be in the anti-brainstorming camp. I now know that those frustrating, unproductive sessions were just poorly conceived and poorly run. Unfortunately, this is the experience some people have with brainstorming. This makes me sad.

Marc Andreeson, in his post Why brainstorming is a bad idea posted a nice quote from the Medici Effect demonstrating that teams using brainstorming techniques were often less effective at generating ideas than people working on the same problem in different rooms. The quoted study looked at both quality and quantity of ideas.

I’m with Scott Berkun (In defense of brainstorming) on this, though. While it may be true that many times—even the vast majority of times—group brainstorming sessions fail to produce useful results, poor facilitation, lack of focus, inappropriate choice of method, and poor team dynamics lead to most of those failures. (This is why we have sessions at UX Week on facilitation, team building, and collective creativity…)

At Adaptive Path, we use a variety of idea generation methods. From loose and fast brainstorming to highly structured idea generation sessions with clients to impromptu problem solving sessions, we sometimes get great ideas out of the group and sometimes not. The key, though, is that we regularly use these techniques — we practice, we learn, we fail, we try it again.