Adaptive Path Blog

An interview with Scott Berkun, author and public speaker on
Show Length: 20 minutes

In 1956 a documentary called The Mystery of Picasso was released, showing two hours of Pablo Picasso doing what he did best: making paintings. This film gave the public a first-hand glimpse directly into this infamous artist’s creative process. Public speaker and writer Scott Berkun and I got together for tea to talk about the film and our own experiences around creativity. As both managers of creative teams and creators of work ourselves, we looked at how our processes aligned with Picasso’s…or where we could learn from him. As the discussion unfolded, we came up with an interesting set of guidelines that enable creativity to flourish.

Listen to podcast on www.TeaWithTeresa.com

Superman is known for his strength and superpowers. He does all the work. He can save people all by himself without the help of anyone else. Why shouldn’t he do all that? After all he’s, “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” Some people may die when Superman does his work, but he is a superhero and will save the world from bad things.

Leaders on the other hand empower others. Leaders don’t do all the work on their own, but instead inspire other people to create something amazing, to work towards a cause, or to move a project or humanity to a better place. When a leader is present, everyone works and often together. Gandhi is known for renouncing violence and empowering others to do the same. Really, what good is creating anything for people if everyone is injured or dead? JFK is known so well for asking people what they can do for their country. He empowered others.  When a leader is truly leading, people aren’t left behind, but brought along and inspired into action.

In the design practice we also see these two extremes. We talk about genius design and design as the silver bullet. We also talk about participatory design and user innovation.

The distinction of these two extremes occurred to me during a leadership class I recently took. It wasn’t explicitly part of the curriculum, but it occurred to me how much time I’d spent trying to be a hero in my work when I thought I was being a leader. Trying to be a hero only worked out so-so. I’m now committed to empowering others in their work and ideas. I don’t always do this perfectly, but I sure  find I’m more relaxed and able to cause and create new things I didn’t think were possible.

What about you? In your work, are you a hero or are you a leader? What has worked? What hasn’t?

A podcast of Jesse James Garrett’s impassioned closing plenary from this year’s IA Summit is now available online via Boxes and Arrows.

Jesse’s assertion that we are all experience designers has stirred controversy within the community, and justifiably so. Professional identity is a slippery slope. However, I can’t help but feel Jesse’s important message is getting lost in these discussion threads. Arguing over the definitions of our roles and judging the value of the contributions of each does little good if it becomes divisive within our community. Instead, it distracts us from working together towards the more important common goal: to elevate the understanding of the user experience field to the world at large.

Regardless of your position on this issue, I hope you will give this podcast a listen. It is packed with inspiring messages and ideas. My hope is that it will inspire you to generate a discussion about how we can work together to pursue the ideas – not discussions about our roles, or our processes – but ideas about how we can improve broken experiences in the world, and the big problems our industry can help solve.

Getting great new experiences out into the world makes us giddy, and there is nothing we love more then being asked to contribute to the creation of new exciting experiences. In this slideshare presentation, we’ve identified five experiences from everyday life that we believe should be nurtured into existence.

Good experiences can solve many problems, from essential issues like energy efficiency to the more nuanced complexities of healthcare. The common thread running though each of these five ideas is that by addressing these challenges from the perspective of the user, we can find new approaches and unique requirements that hide from the typical business purview.

What are some experiences we’d rather avoid?
By Alexa Andrzejewski

What are some experiences we’d prefer to avoid? And what are the implications of avoiding these experiences? In many cases, the implications are only personal: If we despise airport security, we might find alternate modes of travel or travel less. But when avoiding certain experiences hurts others and even society as a whole, these are experiences that matter.

How often do we hear people expressing how much they love visiting nursing homes, for example? Although these homes are filled with people who long for company, they’re about the last places people actually enjoy visiting. They make us uncomfortable. They make us act unnaturally towards the residents, talking to them like patients or children instead of valuable human beings.

Nursing homes, hospital wards, shelters, funeral homes, prisons… We’d all prefer to forget these dismal places. Certainly, people will endure them out of benevolence or for the sake of the ones they love. And they will inevitably bring us face to face with realities we might always prefer to avoid. But does visiting people we care about have to be a repulsive experience? Designers spend hours crafting perfect retail visitor experiences using sights, sounds, scents, and furnishings to draw in customers. Is it possible that experience design could transform these “institutions” we’d prefer to forget into inviting places that keep us coming back?

Imagine a hospital ward that is clean and modern, rather than green and sterile. The rooms are tastefully furnished, and the lighting is warm and inviting. People rave about the on-site restaurant: it’s the perfect place to celebrate a successful recovery!

Imagine a funeral home that is truly about celebrating life rather than awkwardly mourning death. The surroundings are familiar and are the kind of place the deceased would have enjoyed, which may or may not be an old-fashioned Victorian parlor. As friends lift their glasses to toast and share stories of the person’s life, the room is filled with laughter and life.

Imagine a child asking his mom, “When can we visit grandma again?” He loved baking cookies with her in the nursing home’s cozy kitchen, and mom loved sitting in the coffee-shop lounge chairs by the fireplace, sharing stories and just talking to her mother like old times.

The experiences we’d prefer to forget are the experiences ripest for re-imagining. If people with an experience mindset (myself included) just immersed ourselves in these places — spending time with the elderly, feeding the hungry, even visiting prisoners — I’m sure we couldn’t stop our minds from spinning. As a society, we have a responsibility to remember the less fortunate among us. I look forward to seeing how experience design can play a part in making this happen.

It’s Easy to Buy a Car Online. Why is it so Hard to Own One?
By Henning Fischer

Planned obsolescence. I hate that phrase, but it very much characterizes the way we interact with most of the things we buy. My generation seems like it was the last one that inherited a resistance to that idea from our parents.

As much as I hate the idea, it’s very representative of how I live my life. I throw out a lot of stuff I could have repaired, and I’m kind of ashamed of it. I suspect I’m not alone. How many early 30 somethings do you know can maintain and even repair stuff when little things go wrong? Our tendency is to go ahead and replace rather than renew. We have no idea what maintenance actually entails.

But there are some things that you can’t just throw out — like cars. My problem is that I am utterly clueless about cars. What’s utterly baffling to me is that many companies barely bother designing the ownership experience for their cars. Shopping for cars online is awesome. It’s amazing to see the cool sites and features auto manufacturers put out there in an effort to get you to learn and buy. The entry experience is great.

My problem is the experience once you have the car. It’s pretty grim after you’ve parted with your money. Say hello to official and unofficial owners clubs, terrible dealership websites, and hunting and gathering information, especially if you get a used car that’s several years old. And don’t even get me started on finding a mechanic.

Why is this so hard? We’re all used to going online to learn more about our consumer electronics and how to fix them when they crash. (Hi there Windows Vista.) That’s the behavior we’re attuned to. Why isn’t there something like that for cars? I might start here:

* Instead of having me join an owner’s club, how about getting me registered for regular service reminders?

* Instead of showing me next year’s models when I log in, how about telling me about what I should be doing to care for the car I just bought?

* How about creating online owner’s manuals that aren’t just PDF versions of what’s sitting in my glove compartment? Something searchable would be a good start.

* Can you hook me up with my dealer in a meaningful way? He’s my only connection to your brand and product, but you sure don’t seem to care about me connecting to him.

* Why do I have to carry around a folder of repair records? Electronic medical records may be a long way off, but electronic car records should be relatively easy to accomplish. Service centers have all this information in their systems after all.

It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what consumers want in a post purchase experience from their car manufacturer. I bet it wouldn’t be much of a design challenge. In terms of long-term customer experience and satisfaction, it might make a world of difference.

Ever noticed how parking garages are designed only for cars?
by Andrew Crow

In the years that people have been building parking lots and structures, we seem to have perfected the art of painting lines marking the location for our cars. We have small spaces for compacts, larger spaces for SUVs, loading zones — all of which were born out of the needs of the vehicles and their purposes.

Recently, garages began expanding their technology to include services for indicating the number of empty spaces on a given floor and pay kiosks for speedy exits. All of these things are aimed at improving the experience of driving or parking the car.

What is often ignored are the needs of people once they leave the shelter of their steel cages. Remember that a person’s destination is rarely the garage itself — they need to go somewhere after they’ve parked their car. Little emphasis is placed on designing for the exit strategy (pun intended).

Sure, there are the occasional signs marking the elevators and exits, but some garages are so large people have to search for the information they need. Moreover, people end up walking in the roadways to get to these exits, placing them in competition for space with oncoming traffic.

I would like to see parking garages designed for the end use in mind. Let’s develop walkways for individuals and families to get to the elevator safely. Let’s improve the recognition of what floor you left your car on by having the elevator remind you when you step into it. Let’s imagine ways to improve way finding and reduce confusion in these gigantic cement structures.

I think we can implement lightweight changes that are cost effective and do not affect the structure of the building, while balancing the needs of the garage’s owner who wants to devote the maximum amount of space to cars. There are some quick wins like improving the design of the signage or using painted lines to mark out walkways.

Office buildings, malls and other public spaces have become more aware of the human experience. In time, I suspect we’ll see improvement in the typical utilitarian buildings, too. Until then, be safe and look both ways before crossing the road.

Improving Personal Energy Consumption
by Brandon Schauer

It takes motivation to be truly green, and there is nothing more motivating than the current economy, especially when you get your monthly energy bill and see the effects of your personal energy usage.

The trouble is that when you get that big bill, you can’t identify the areas of usage and waste. There is no basis for change other than the nagging from your Mom to not hold the frig door open.

There are at least two better approaches to helping people find more money in their energy bills:

First are experiences that motivate and guide people towards typical practical improvements, resulting in positive impacts in most situations: better insulation, more efficient bulbs. For example, the soon to launch Wattbot site promises to look at your situation from a project-based perspective.

People estimate their potential savings related to the estimated costs of a project. The net savings is a great motivator, but the challenge with this approach is to remove all the logistical obstacles AND THEN fulfill on the estimated financial results. This approach needs careful planning of an end-to-end motivating experience.

The other approach is service-based and tailored to your specific energy usage. Imagine a take-home kit that reveals the real energy drains, which are swallowing big chunks of change from your wallet. Your consumption is presented to you vividly on screen, letting you see the trends and spot areas for improvement. This home assessment results in immediate results, like unplugging that security system you never enabled. The savings are tracked, tallied, and the savings behavior becomes addictive, leading you to additional actions. The challenge here is making the Nike plus of energy efficiency. It’s gotta be drop-dead easy and highly visual.

Either way, these experiences are win-win-win. Good for your wallet, good for the utility company, good for the world.

In Sickness and In Health

by Leah Buley

Healthcare is big business, but for consumers, the experience of seeking health information and services is often a bumpy and confusing ride.

At HealthCamp, a 2006 conference where health professionals came together to look at the healthcare system from the perspective of the consumer (that’s you and me, folks), they saw a messy constellation of health plans, savings accounts, out of pockets costs, employer sponsored programs, medication info, monitoring devices, web sites, books, support groups, hospitals, primary care doctors, urgent care doctors, diets, fitness regimes, supplements, and more.

In such a complex system, where does a person even begin? Increasingly, the answers seem to be on the Internet. But as Susannah Fox from the Pew Internet and American Life Project recently pointed out, people with less education tend to have lower levels of health literacy, and are less confident navigators of the online world. How can we employ technology intelligently to empower *everyone* to track and access health care for themselves and their families?

A few ideas:

* More community-sourced conversations (in-person or online) about symptoms, treatment, prevention, and living with various conditions. (Check out PatientsLikeMe.com, which provides a forum for people to share medical information and personal histories about Multiple Sclerosis, as an isolated but successful example of this kind of community.)

* Better portability of medical records — giving people a way to own and migrate their own health information from one health care provider to another, using common technologies like mobile phones to capture and carry their information.

* More independent, location-based tools of Yelp-like reach and candor that provide honest, straight-from-the-patient’s-mouth perspectives on how and where to access care, and the quality of healthcare providers.

* Better search tools to connect and decode scientific terminology into “real language” for real people.

And rather than waiting until illness strikes, how can the experience of preventative care be improved? In Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein introduce the idea of RECAP reporting. RECAP stands for “Record, Evaluate, Compare Alternative Prices,” but the basic idea is to simply give individuals visibility into their own behaviors. Showing people data about their own activities and, where relevant, the financial or environmental impact of those activities, makes it easier to see the mounting consequences of actions with delayed costs (which, without good feedback, can often seem consequence-less).

In that line of thinking, I’d love to have better, in-the-moment feedback on the nutritional value of foods that I’m eating (without having to tote around a food scale, a calculator, and a magnifying glass for reading the nutritional label). I know there are mobile applications that do this, and that web-based and paper-based tools have been around for years, but I find they’re all too much work. Invariably I will track diligently for about a day and a half and then just forget about it.

Ideally, I would like something that detects on its own and does the tracking for me. It would show me the cumulative calories, fat, vitamins, contaminants, alcohol, nicotine, going into my body. Similarly, I’d like to see daily measures of risk and stress such as blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol.

A study I read about recently showed that people who step onto a scale regularly are more likely to maintain a steady weight because they may subtly adjust their behaviors from one day to the next in order to track to the norm. Metaphorically and literally, we can all be stepping onto the scale a lot more often, and organizations that make it easy for us to do that will deserve our respect and our business.

My first homemade business card when I left design school looked like this:

10 years later my business card is a bit less crafty, but it does have something in common with that first card, a concern with designing for anything that moves. My current card identifies me as an Experience Designer.

In my initial vision of design for anything that moves, my passion was for designing things that change, transition, evolve during the time that people spend with them. The field was younger then, and I was immersed in creating all sorts of digital artifacts with time lines, from broadcast design to game design to narrative-based interaction design. “Anything that moves” was the right level of specificity to encompass all of these interests. (It was also a bit of a cheeky play on a magazine around at that time which explored a different sort of unbounded openness, Anything That Moves.)

Currently, in the design community, there is a bunch of discussions raging about what is an experience, how is an experience made and can an experience be designed, especially by someone called an experience designer. At the end of the day, I don’t feel so strongly about what anyone chooses to call themselves and even how they describe what they do.

For me, the word experience has been a proxy for things that people participate in, and with, that take place over time–experience design, then, for things that work to move, to dance with people through the time lines of their lives.

Thus, when I think about experience, I imagine what we take with us, what we leave behind, and that layer of soapy film that can never be fully washed off.

It does matter to me, that we, as designers, care about the role of time in our designs for people. We need to care about the first time, the last time, that one time, and every time. We need to care about free time, personal time, family time, spending time, and wasting time.

Experiences may be things that at the end of the day, only people can determine. That said, I’m not willing to abdicate my responsibility at the moment of the first bite. Like it or not, the after taste is also partly mine to imagine, invent, and participate in.

In these, the worst of times and perhaps the best of times, there is much to contribute. Very few designs are timeless.

Here at Adaptive Path, I manage our Research and Development work which includes projects like Charmr, Aurora, the new event we just hosted, Managing Design Projects, and another project we’re excited to share with you soon. Separate from my work here, I’ve been pulling together an event called It’s Your Money. The event, which will be held on March 14th at the Westin Market St in San Francisco, is for recent and soon to be college graduates to come learn how to manage their finances and investments. Here’s why:

When I graduated college in 2003 and got my first job, I planned to save lots of money. But In fact, my paychecks were quickly spent on clothes, trips and many other “must haves”.

I thought I was doing a good job of managing my money by checking my bank statement every week or so. I was tracking my money, but I wasn’t managing it.

I made a New Year’s resolution in 2008 to manage my expenses. I started interacting with my purchases twice: once when I made them and a again when I categorized each expense.

I realized my car was costing me nearly $600 per month. I decided to sell it, reduced major expenses like eating out, and started to really save. After a year, I tripled my savings.

Recently, instead of being upset about the current economy, I’ve created this event to help recent and soon to be college graduates learn what I learned the hard way. At It’s Your Money, participants learn how to build a personal financial safety net, and manage their own investments.

This evening, I’ll be talking about the event on CNBC’s On The Money where I’ll be sharing my story, and what inspired this project.

Last Friday, a group from Adaptive Path went to see The Art of Participation exhibition at the SFMOMA. The show, which closed on Feb. 9th, was a collection of participatory art works, art that requires audience contribution in some form, created from 1950 to the present. It included work by Alan Kaprow (a painter associated strongly with Happenings), Yoko Ono (her Cut Piece), Fluxus, John Cage (4’33”), and Janet Cardiff. Unlike 99% of art museum exhibitions, visitors could and did interact directly with the work.

On one hand, I arranged the field trip to the SFMOMA for fun. But my not-so-hidden agenda was to challenge my understanding of “experience,” and gain some insight from my colleagues’ experience of the show.

I hear the words “interaction,” “participation,” and “experience” fifty times a day. I probably say them or type them or think them that many times, too. Don’t know about you, but when I use the same word that many times, their meaning becomes fuzzy. Worse, I start to believe I really know what the words mean. I start making assumptions. I need to check in with myself occasionally and push the reset button. Sometimes, this activity confirms my understanding. Sometimes it shifts subtly.

I’ve pulled together a couple of thoughts from the trip and subsequent discussions.

Experiences with a Big E

Teresa and I, at Peter Samis’ urging, did Janet Cardiff’s 2001 video piece “The Telephone Call.” Janet Cardiff is a sound artist who completed a video piece for the SFMOMA several years ago. You check out a video camera and stereo headphones from the main desk. Cardiff has pre-recorded a walk through the MOMA, recording all the sounds and sights there at the time. When you experience the piece, you follow her path through the museum. You literally see and hear what she did, while you see and hear what’s there now. It was the closest thing to a time machine I’ve ever seen. It was also an Experience with a Big “E.” The experience engaged me physically (heart racing, all senses firing), cognitively (trying to process two realities at the same time), emotionally (becoming invested in the story Cardiff was telling), and socially (Teresa and I interacting with each other, feeling some social awkwardness).

For me, other Experiences with a Big E include good theater, roller coasters, concerts, motorcycle riding, fun houses, playing in a band. I experience it with all my senses, in my body, in my mind, in my heart.

The Person and the Thing Behind the Glass

The show also had online pieces and installed kiosks throughout. I have rarely seen an installed kiosk in a museum that really works and engages people in the same way physically interactive exhibits, do. When you having Experiences with a Big E, the dull click of the mouse echoes through the hall with its dullness. Click… Sigh.

Yesterday, at our company meeting, I brought this up. I wondered out loud, when we say we are “designing experiences” that occur online or in a mobile device, what do we mean? Especially, when we are “designing experiences” for, as one colleague called it, the Thing Behind the Glass— mobile devices, screens, PCs, TVs, iPods or anything with a piece of plastic or glass between you and the thing you are interacting with. It was a passionate discussion. I was reminded that sometimes I have experiences online or with a Thing Behind the Glass that are, in fact, transformative. They do fire on multiple levels; sometimes my heart even races or I might exclaim loudly that something is awesome. But a lot of times, this experience happens with a lower case e – it’s subtle, it’s internal, it’s slowly transformative. It’s more of a cerebral experience.

Designing Opportunities for Experience

Recently, one of my colleagues pointed out a debate going on in the design community about the semantics of “experience design” and “designing experiences.” One designer goes so far to call the idea of “experience design,” as he says so eloquently puts it, horseshit. While I admit I love saying that word loudly over and over, I don’t get much else from black and white characterizations. Maybe I get a little over-stimulated, like a kid on fruit loops and apple juice, but not necessarily meaningfully engaged.

Human experience is messy. A layer of skin separates us from each other. I will never know what truly goes on in your head and you will never know what truly goes on in mine. With that in mind, of course the idea of “designing experiences” seems ludicrous. I do believe, though, that the value of these semantic debates is that they encourage us to think deeply and specify our meaning.

I use research tools to illuminate the human experience as it relates to a specific problem. Then, I design something with respect and attention to that experience. The outcome will support, assist, or facilitate a conversation with between human beings in a positive way. While I am not literally designing that person’s experience, I am designing opportunities for that person to have an experience.

Right now, most of the opportunities for experience I design are quieter experiemce, Things Behind the Glass. Someday I hope to design opportunities for Experiences with a Big E or some other hybrid experience that combines both.

What’s your experience with “experience?”

In December, a blind man led me into darkness. I had a cane, but it only partially helped. I felt around with my hands. I listened to the voices of the people around me, gauging their distance by their loudness, shifting so I didn’t bump into them. The smell of grass helped me understand I was in a park. When I put my hands into a basket, I touched oranges and knew it from the feel of their skin, not their smell.

I was in an exhibition called, “Dialogue in the Dark.” As the organizers explain, “In completely darkened rooms, blind people lead small groups of guests through an exhibition in which everyday situations are experienced altogether differently, without eyesight.” Prior to this, I’d never experienced blindness. Actually, I’d never experienced the loss of any sense before.

At first, my eyes strained to see, which was distracting. But when I focused, instead, upon my other senses, it was…fun, an adventure. I was experiencing the world in a fascinating way I wouldn’t have known, had I stuck to sight.

Of course, you don’t have to go into a dark room to grasp the difference between blindness and sight. But, like all good exhibits, it got me thinking…about assumptions and how often we assume that others experience the world in the same way we do. We make these assumptions everywhere: In conversation, design, and judgment.

Imagine:

You and I are sitting across a table talking to each other. I assume you hear me, and that my words mean to you what they mean to me. I assume you see the expressions on my face and understand their implications. I assume you are enjoying the hint of caramel in tea we share. When I shake your hand goodbye, I assume you feel my warm hand and know that I am calm.

Meanwhile, you can’t hear me well over the furnace, and you forgot to put your contacts in this morning, so my face is a blur. You burn your tongue on the tea so it tastes like nothing, and you only notice how cold and sweaty your own hands are when we shake goodbye. You feel guilty because you were distracted throughout the conversation; I reminded you of a childhood friend and your mind kept traveling back to old stories.

Therein lies one of the ironies of human experience: You and I are NEVER really having the same conversation. Never. Assumptions are dangerous because they keep us from listening and paying attention. Granted, we’ll never gain total understanding of one another. But, we can do a better job of understanding more. In the next few weeks, Adaptive Path will make an announcement on this blog about a research and development project that touches upon the impact of assumption in design. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll contemplate the power of assumption in your own life and work, looking for places to assume less and observe more.

Recently, I’ve been involved in some inspiring conversations about the merits and applications of different content curation models (community curation, an editorial hand, or algorithmic). Those conversations came just in time, it seems, for a raging debate about curation involving Google.

First, read the originating TechCrunch article where Marissa Mayer discusses the future potential impact of community curation on Google search results. She suggests that Google may blend algorithmic results with those suggested by large numbers of human actions.

Then, read Andrew Orlowski’s article in The Register. My favorite quote:

“That Google was impartial was one of the articles of faith. For if Google was ever to be found to be applying subjective human judgment directly on the process, it would be akin to the voting machines being rigged.”

Well, humans write algorithms. Google’s is written by humans, made wonderful by collective human behaviors. Like linking.

Then, read Tim O’Reilly’s response:

“The idea that Google’s algorithms are somehow magically neutral to human values misses their point entirely. What distinguished Google from its peers in 1998 was precisely that it exploited an additional layer of implicit human values as expressed by link behavior, rather than relying on purely mechanistic analysis of the text contained on pages.”

The human hand, revealed.

And finally, check out the pile-on: Censorship! Big Brother! Pragmatism not Idealism! The End of the Free World!

I love a good controversy. Gets my blood pumping so I can stay warm here in the office.

This past week Adaptive Path hosted a few graduate students from CCA, one of our local art and design schools. While it was a challenge getting even a few AP folks to take the time away from their consulting work, we managed to give a tour, share a project room, have an interesting discussion on “what is experience design” and (the best part for me) check out the students’ current projects in progress.

I found their use of Bill Verplank’s framework (recommended by their professors) a useful tool in thinking through their ideas. I had forgotten about this framework and thought it would be worth sharing again. Ambidextrous‘ second issue has a great article on the topic.

The CCA student visit gave soon-to-be-design-professionals an inside glimpse of a design studio and was also fun for AP staff to see what’s up with the next generation of designers. The visit was only about 3 hours of our time, a little coordination with the professor and some quick slide prep (thanks Andrew!). Not a lot to ask and well worth the effort. While we have a robust and active Summer Associate Program at Adaptive Path (AKA internship), this brief visit was another chance to expose more design students to life after college.

From this positive experience, I am posting a challenge to other design studios – internal and consultancies: (if you haven’t already) get in contact with a local design program and set up your own studio tour & student project critique! It doesn’t take much and it’s a win/win for all!