Adaptive Path Blog

In my mind, it seemed perfect: Technologists and transit-enthusiasts coming together to rethink the transit experience. A chance to bring the experience design gospel to an industry in need. Brimming with missionary zeal, my transportation planner husband and I headed off to the Bay Area TransitCamp.

I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock. My idealism was greeted by a ragtag bunch consisting of khaki-clad engineers, frumpy transit riders and suit-wearing transit officials. The engineers preached the possibilities of open-source data. White-haired transit riders screeched frustrations about their particular pet issues. And the transit officials defended cuts to bathroom-cleaning with the hard, cold facts of their bureaucratic reality.

Welcome to TransitCamp.

Could this possibly be the crowd that would transform transit? It felt like anarchy. “No complaints without solutions” was the only rule, and organizer Tara Hunt had to reiterate it again and again. Yet as idealism and realism collided, something impressive happened. We learned from one another. iPhone app developers learned that 40% of riders are below the poverty line. Cost-conscious officials learned that dozens of techies are eager to develop solutions — for free.

I realized that making a difference requires a humble and listening posture. Transit is an interdisciplinary problem that requires interdisciplinary understanding. While it produced interesting ideas, TransitCamp’s greatest triumph was fostering an atmosphere of learning and collaboration between unlikely bedfellows.

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A couple of weeks ago I participated on a panel on Conscious Capitalism at the Commonwealth Club of California. We covered quite a bit of ground in an hour, from how experience design could offset conspicuous consumption to issues like making meaning in the lives of customers, consumer activism, and lifestyle brands.

We had a packed audience for the panel, which I shared with Rajan Dev of Hot Studio, Nathan Shedroff of the Design MBA program at CCA, and Eric Ryan, co-founder of the Method line of green cleaning products. I’d love to tell you more about the discussion, but can do one better, since Fora.tv is now broadcasting their recording of the panel:

Some of the issues we didn’t have time to hit on that I really feel are a part of this discussion on conscious capitalism:

• The design stage for a product or service is worth investing in. It’s when 80-90% of a product’s life-cycle economic and ecological costs are determined (Hawkins, Lovins, and Lovins, Natural Capitalism), but it’s also the best time to incorporate insights about people and their needs. The design stage is often rushed through to be first-to-market, but that’s rarely that big of an advantage — anyone remember the first MP3 player? (hint: it wasn’t the iPod.)
• People’s attitudes towards consumption are hopefully nearing a change. Individuals in the U.S. consume roughly twice as much as they did 50 years ago, and 99% of what we buy isn’t even in use 6 months later (Annie Leonard, Story of Stuff). But recently there has been a shift in attitude, where some consumers look to buying more services and experiences (e.g., travel, spas, OnStar) as a sign/use of their wealth rather than buying more goods. And while new consumer markets are springing up around the world, many of them can leapfrog bad old systems of production and consumption.
• A 21st Century business will operate (not just talk) differently than the old models. Some qualities I foresee: [1] a strong passion for addressing the needs of a customer over the short- and long-term; profit is a by-product of this passion; [2] a focus on services and experiences; designing, supporting, and continuously improving a total customer relationship; [3] measuring development in means other than just aggregate growth more sales isn’t the sole indicator of a better business.

Big thanks to Kevin O’Malley of TechTalk for hosting a great panel!

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending an hour chatting with Chip Conley, CEO of boutique hotel chain Joie de Vivre Hotels, and keynote speaker at our upcoming MX San Francisco conference (April 20-22).

You can listen to the interview (MP3). Be warned that it doesn’t have a formal introduction. It begins with us kind of mid-conversation, and just goes from there. In the interview, we talk about recession planning, service design, systematizing experience design (JDV uses a tool called “experience report cards”), team dynamics, succession planning, and all manner of things. It’s a bit free-wheeling, but I think you’ll enjoy it.

To provide some context for the interview:

Chip has just written PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow, which you can see me reading on BART here:

I hate business books. They’re typically trite, self-serving, and poorly written. At best they have one good idea that takes 10-15 pages to explain, and then another 200 pages of filler so that it warrants being sold at Barnes and Noble.

PEAK, and I’m not just saying this because he’s a speaker, is actually worth reading. I’ve been a fan of Chip’s for a while, and one reason is his honesty, forthrightness, and, as a CEO of a $200 million company that employs over 2,300 people, his willingness to engage with the emotional, squishy, unmeasurable. Actually, not just willingness–he recognizes how essential such things are to achieve long-term success. His book gets at this by way of Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, which Chip translates into serving employees, customers, and investors.

When Chip talks about engaging customers, he sounds very much like an experience designer — he discusses ethnography, and the importance of satisfying unmet needs. He also has fantastic ideas for maintaining not just employee satisfaction or loyalty, but deep engagement. Ideas that I could see working for our 35-person firm as well as larger enterprises.

If, after all this, you’re hooked, don’t hesitate to register for our MX Conference (and use the promotional code BLOG for 10% off). You’ll get a chance to meet Chip, and many other interesting folks as well!

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For those of you still on the fence about attending UX Intensive later this month, now is a good time to choose sides because seats are going fast.

Single day registration for Design Strategy with Brandon Schauer has sold out. There are 22 seats left and they are available only when you register for all four days of UX Intensive. If you’re only interested in Design Research, Interaction Design, or Information Architecture, good news — single day registration is still open for those days.

Use code BLOG for 10% off registration.

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Brandon, Sarah and I had the pleasure of speaking with Jeff Parks and the I.A. Consultants podcast after our mini-workshop at the VizThink conference. In our discussion, we discuss five elements which “illustrate” why pictures are a powerful way to communicate with multi-disciplinary teams, including:

1. Disambiguation
2. Efficiency
3. Emotion
4. Telling a Story
5. Leadership

Check it out on the web here. It’s also available via iTunes.

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The big news for our 2008 events is that we’re coming home. We’ll have three major events in San Francisco, starting with our UX Intensive, a 4-day hands-on workshop addressing the essential disciplines of user experience: Design Strategy, Design Research. Interaction Design, and Information Architecture. The event takes place February 19-22 at the Hotel Kabuki, in the heart of Japantown (great parking for locals!).

We’ve got an end-of-the-year sale going on with our events, with heavily discounted pricing through December 31. (For example, all four days of UX Intensive SF are currently priced at $1,695, compared to the full registration rate of $2,495. Use promotional code BLOG for an additional 10% off.) Don’t let your 2007 training budget go to waste!

Last month, I traveled to Vancouver for our most recent UX Intensive (and even taught the Information Architecture day, as Chiara couldn’t make it). I took photos of the event, which featured a remarkable number of activities that ensure you just don’t learn about these UX methods — you practice them.

Some of my favorite pics:

Brandon sketches, and a video camera shows what he’s talking about…

There was lots of writing on walls…

Though some groups preferred the floor…

And lots, and lots of stickies…

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Conference organizers and associated graphic designers: when you are making conference badges, here is what attendees need to see (in order of importance):

1. First Name. BIG! I don’t want to have to stare at people’s badges any longer than I need to. A rapid glance should boldly display the wearer’s first name, often to just refresh my memory or as a cue if I’m looking for someone I haven’t met but want to.
2. Last name
3. Company
4. Hometown

Possibly Title should be added to this list, but I’m of two minds. One is: who cares about titles? but the other is, well, I do. I want to know what someone does in order to see what kind of conversations I’m likely to have with them.

Not so important: the name of the conference. Duh, I get it; I’m already here. Also unimportant: the sponsors. Not for the conference itself, of course, but on the front of name badges their logos are just visual clutter.

Back of the badge should have the schedule, with preferably both the title and speaker for each talk. If space prevents that, title is more important than the speaker’s name IMHO. Unless the speaker is famous, titles are easier than names to remember.

One more thing: the strap holding the badge should be adjustable. Too often it is way too long. It should hang at chest level, not at belly/waist level. Low-hanging badges can’t be seen sitting down at a table, and if staring at chests is rude, staring at bellies (or below) is probably worse.

This all seems so common sensical as I put it down, but it is amazing how often it is gotten wrong. Even by people who should know better.

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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!

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Last week I attended Connecting 07, the ICSID/IDSA Congress. I’d never before engaged with IDSA, and I quite enjoyed it. What struck me was how the issues that industrial and product designers are facing are pretty much identical to what we’re seeing in the world of experience strategy and design.

My favorite talks/speakers:

Hans Rosling, Gapminder. Hans is a dynamic speaker who is able to make statistics and data visualization fun and provocative. If you haven’t seen his TED talk, you should.

Sabine Junginger, Lancaster University. Sabine spoke on “Design Change: A Paradox” about the role that design can play in change management. This may have been my favorite talk of the event, because it both supported and challenged conventional wisdom about the emerging role of design in business. As I wrote to my colleagues:

Sabine studied under Dick Buchanan at CMU, and has a Ph.D in…. DESIGN! But, she has her head screwed on tight. She pointed out that while design is often brought in to make change, it often serves to accommodate the status quo with band-aids.
Three things I liked:

she kind of dissed design thinking, saying you can’t separate thinking from making.

she pointed out how the current design+business craziness means that the different organizational silos (marketing, product dev, IT, etc.) each bring in design to make change, but end up using design only to bolster their silos

that successful change management with design *begins* with the product… i.e., it’s essential that you use the act of designing a product to produce change… you don’t change an organization in the abstract so that it can then produce better products
- visions and strategies (and organizations for that matter) must continue to evolve. (Okay, that was a fourth thing)

Sam Lucente, HP. Sam (written about in the latest Fast Company) is in charge of design across all of HP, and has an amazing story to tell about how design is evolving and succeeding at HP. He gave good slides, some of which I photographed. I think the most important lesson from Sam was that in order for the design practice to be seen as a valuable contributor at HP, work had to begin at the most basic level — consistency and simplicity throughout the entire product line — before design could be successfully used to differentiate and innovate.

James J. Pirkl, The Generation Connection. This guy advocated a “transgenerational” approach to design. He objects to how older generations are conventionally perceived, and made the case that many suppositions about the elderly are just plain wrong. He doesn’t advocate design for elderly though… He advocates design that works for all. He showed his Transgenerational House, an embodiment of his design principles, which, honestly, looks pretty cool.

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There were lots of poster sessions at Ubicomp – but I have to give props to my friend, Mirjana Spasojevic of the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto for presenting my favorite demo/poster.

Nokia has developed an image recognition technology called Point and Find. Using the camera functionality on a mobile phone, Point and Find identifies objects through image recognition and provides users with associated information.

Similar in functionality to QR codes, Point and Find is a technology I believe has a lot of promise in unlocking the potential of the mobile web. It epitomizes the “Uniquely Mobile” design principle – it’s quick, easy, and can provide internet information without the hassle of text entry through the keypad and maneuvering internet content based on the PC search interaction model.

As with any emerging technology, Point and Find is a little buggy and identifying and enabling the actions people want to take after they identify and image will be essential in refining this technology. Nonetheless – it’s exciting stuff!

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