Adaptive Path Blog

I was having a conversation yesterday and mentioned that I occasionally designed mobile phones. The woman I was talking to then proceeded to tell me about the big problem with her phone, that sometimes when she talked, her face hit the buttons and caused the phone to start dialing or beeping and generally disrupting the call. I started to say, “Well, that’s really an industrial design problem…” but caught myself. Maybe it was unavoidable from an ID standpoint. Perhaps they didn’t have the manufacturing budget for better buttons, for instance. Maybe there was something that could be done from the interaction design side, like, say, making it difficult for the pressed keys to do much while a call is in progress.

Each discipline can only go so far with the constraints they work under, and we have to watch each other’s backs and cover for the flaws of each other. Users don’t care whose fault it is that a product works poorly, only that it works poorly. All the disciplines need work together to figure out solutions to product flaws, with visual, interaction, and industrial design blending their strengths together. The visual design should make the interaction design look good, which in turn makes the industrial design look good, which makes the visual design look good. (Mix up the order as you will.) Focusing on the connective tissue between disciplines makes products holistic.

This is the essence of experience design.

Share This

As I previously posted, I’ll be speaking in Europe soon, first in London at MEX 27-28 May and then in Malmö at From Business to Buttons 12-13 June.

In between I’m arranging meetings with some of our European partners/clients in London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. I’m also hoping to meet up with folks in the local UX communities to geek-out on our mutual passion: experience design.

If you’d like to get together to talk about possible projects with Adaptive Path or simply to chat about the industry email me at kim at adaptivepath dot com.   

Share This

In the spring of 2007, I co-lead a project that explored Internet access on mobile devices. At that time, uptake for mobile Internet content in the U.S. was dismally low. Recruiting participants that engaged with the mobile Internet for more than a few minutes once or twice a week proved extremely challenging. In order to collect the type of data needed to inform the design process and improve the user experience, we designed a PC Internet deprivation research study. Eight lucky participants used only their mobile phone to access the Internet for four days.

I co-wrote this case-study about the project with Mirjana Spasojevic of the Nokia Research Lab in Palo Alto and Pekka Isomursu of Nokia Design and presented it recently at CHI in Florence, Italy. The case study describes details of the research methodology as well as design insights and implications for development of mobile applications and services.

A lot has changed in the year since this study; the release of the iPhone in June of 2007 and Google’s Android platform in November 2007 were watershed moments for the mobile Internet – improving the experience and opening up opportunities for usage that simply didn’t exist before.

Despite these advances, I still believe most Internet experiences on mobile devices are broken and compromised, overburdened by interaction models and metaphors from the PC that simply don’t work on small devices. Yet so much of how we understand the Internet – and computing – is based on the PC legacy.

What has been exciting me most about mobile these days is that exact challenge… figuring out what metaphors and models to keep and what to leave behind as we try to prism Internet content through a myriad of devices.

They Call it Surfing for a Reason: Identifying Mobile Internet Needs Through PC Deprivation (pdf)
Copyright ACM

Share This

As Roland mentioned in an earlier post, last week we had a lunch time visit from Andrew Blau, the Global Business Network’s head of practice. It was a great talk, and the team started sketching all these ideas they had in relation to what was discussed.

GBN is best known for their scenario planning practice, wherein they work with a client to create a set of stories (usually 3 or 4) about the client’s business 10 years out. These stories are purposefully diverse, so that they can help the business prepare for any number of possible futures.

It made me think about the role of futures in our experience design work. Design is an inherently futurist activity — planning and sketching things that don’t yet exist. We’ve begun to engage directly with futurist notions in our work, whether it’s tangible futures (designing the poster that will trumpet our success), concept videos (what will it be like to interact with mobile devices in 3-5 years), prototypes, and more. What I realized is that, in our practice at least, our application of futures thinking pretty much stops 3-5 years out. I scrawled the following on a whiteboard, as I considered how our experience design work and GBN’s scenario planning work complements one another. Be warned, it’s barely half-baked!

I found myself wondering if experience design is in it’s nature limited to crafting futures no more than 3-5 years out (what we generically call Visioning). If you get out much farther than that, your ties to designing for actual human engagement get pretty thin, because there are so many variables that you’re needing to design for multiple possible futures, which is quite taxing.

Now, I don’t know if I believe that experience design is limited in this fashion… Even we are working on a concept video for 2018. But I wanted to get this out there because I think there’s a lot of opportunity to explore the intersection and integration of experience design and futurism, the role that experience design can have in charting paths for organizations. I’d love to hear what you think!

Share This

It’s hard to believe that iTunes Music Store just turned five years old yesterday, that there was a time (for two years!) that the iPod (iTunes’ better-looking older sibling, the Marcia to its Jan) relied on either users slowly converting all their analog CDs to digital, or simply stealing music online.

While iPod gets all the press and adoration, it seems clear that iTunes, for all its faults, is the little app that could. iTunes is the secret sauce of the iPod experience, and the music store is, if not at the center, than at least an incredible piece of that. Imagine trying to put a major ecommerce store in the middle of another application (Word, Photoshop, etc.) and it becomes clear marvel that is iTunes Music Store.

Of course, the store itself is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to that marvel. Were it not for the amazing technical and business infrastructure backstage (which remains (as it should) mostly invisible), we’d be downloading donated MP3s. Slowly. And forget about movies, TV, podcasts, etc. The store has expanded so that the “music” in iTunes Music Store seems almost silly. iTunes Media Store is more like it. But I quibble.

Happy fifth birthday! You don’t look a day over four. Now could you please go get Twin Peaks for me?

Share This

I’ve posted the slides from my presentation at last week’s MX Conference here in San Francisco. Titled “A House Divided: Two Perspectives on Managing the Customer Experience,” this talk is an evolution of my past efforts to pull from my prior career as a professional cook.

Here, I use my restaurant experience as a lens to interpret Glushko and Tabas’ work on getting front and back stage organizations to cooperate in delivering superior experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Share This

In addition to the 2 day conference in London at the end of May, MEX is also conducting a Mobile Design Competition. Entry into the competition is FREE and is intended to be a showcase for the cutting edge of user experience designs in mobile. So if you’re company has been focusing on mobile experience design, check out the competition details. The winners will be honored at an awards reception the first night of the conference. The deadline is this Friday, 2nd May, 23:00 GMT. Remember the timezone difference for those of you not in the UK!

Share This

Join us to celebrate the release of our book, Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design. The party will be here at our offices:


363 Brannan St., San Francisco, CA
May 13th from 6-9pm


We’ll start off with some mingling, then the four authors will give a short talk followed by a book signing and more mingling. Adaptive Snacks will be providing light appetizers. Please join us! RSVP Here.


A little bit about the book:
To achieve success in today’s ever-changing and unpredictable markets, competitive businesses need to rethink and reframe their strategies across the board. Instead of approaching new product development from the inside out, companies have to begin by looking at the process from the outside in, beginning with the customer experience.


It’s a new way of thinking-and working-that can transform companies struggling to adapt to today’s environment into innovative, agile, and commercially successful organizations. Read more


Don Norman said he liked it:
“Short, but powerful. Easy to read, yet profound.
I’ve been searching for just this book: the one perfect book that summarizes the essence of modern product design. This is it. The lessons are as powerful as they are simple: The product is NOT the goal. Successful products are systems. Focus on the experience. This requires empathy, agile product management, real understanding of the target audience. This book practices what it preaches. I will use it in my courses for MBA students. You should use it for, well, for everyone. Short, simple, persuasive, and powerful.”


Don Norman
Co-Founder Nielsen Norman group
Author of “Emotional Design” and “Design of Future Things”


Buy the book on Amazon.

Share This

 I’m heading to Europe for three weeks for 2 must-attend conferences! The first is MEX, Mobile User Experience conference, 27-28 May in London, UK hosted by PMN who shook up the mobile design industry last year with their fabulously astute and thought provoking 10 point Manifesto for enhancing the mobile user experience. Our host, Marek Pawlowski, has created a different kind of conference format, bringing together 100 of the leading thinkers in mobile and challenging us to define the cutting edge of user experience. At the heart of the event is the 10 point Manifesto, highlighting the major issues facing the mobile industry as it strives to become a more customer-focused, design-led business. Now in its 4th year, MEX is attended by pioneers from the carriers, handset manufacturers, platform providers, software developers and UI designers. 

I will be leading a MEX breakout group exploring the controversial notion that “Fashion is a stronger motivator than functionality”, in the mobile handset business. Conference attendees will work together in a number of small teams to look at this issue from all the angles before re-convening for an open debate. I love this format and cannot wait to dive into deeper discussions about the issues that we face everyday as designers. 

If you are looking for some inspiration and thought leadership in the mobile user experience arena, I highly recommend attending MEX this year. Marek has also kindly offered a discount for Friends of Adaptive Path (that’s YOU!), so please take advantage of the 15% discount on attendance by registering online with the referral code AP08 or by calling Marek Pawlowski on +44 (0)7767 622957.  

I head over to Malmö, Sweden the 2nd week of June for inUse’s conference From Business to Buttons hosted at Malmö University. The conference is a mixture of strategy, design and facilitated hands-on workshops offering insights and methods of how to bridge the gap between business goals and user needs. They have Don Norman as the keynote speaker as well as other top industry professionals in user experience design including Adaptive Path’s very own Ryan Freitas and Friend of AP Jonathan Grubb, CEO of Rubyred Labs and Co-founder of Get Satisfaction.  

I will be giving my workshop Process Reboot: Change your process to create experience-driven innovations, which I first presented at DUX07 in November last year and most recently at Adaptive Path’s MX conference. I’m always reworking and improving the content each time I present, so the attendees at From Business to Buttons will be experiencing the latest and greatest. 

As designers we are often brought in to simply design a product, but many times the business strategy needs attention before we can clearly define the product we’re designing. From Business to Buttons is a great conference for helping us all find better ways to bring business strategy into the conversation of designing products. I hope you’ll attend From Business to Buttons 12-13 June for insightful presentations, workshops and discussions around business strategy and design. The folks at inUse and Malmö University have extended a discount too, please use FBTB2008 in the “special requests” section of the registration to receive 15% off the regular price. 

Since I’m in Europe for 3 full weeks, I’ll be available for meetings and would love to connect with folks while I’m there. Email me at kim at adaptivepath dot com otherwise, see you at the conference(s)!

Share This

I attended MX for the first time this year and as I was chatting with many inspiring UX managers and designers, I noticed the following common challenge in many in-house UX teams: They lack UX quality check points for marketing, advertising, and branding to create a holistic experience. I had the same challenge while I was working within the UX team at Microsoft. For the UX team to build relationships with marketing, advertising and branding, one of the tasks I had was to be a brand liaison that maintained contact between all teams. The goal was to meet and speak early and often and be a part of the product UX review/decision cycle to create holistic integration across web, marketing, and branding experience. As a solution to create UX quality check points for all teams, consider creating a UX liaison. The UX liaison should be a creative designer who can define brand and user experience language for various product experiences.

Share This