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Microsoft catches a lot of flack for some of their user experience decisions, but one invention that received a lot of warm feelings from the community is the new Microsoft Office, featuring the Ribbon. Jensen Harris, who has been writing about the development of the new Office UI for years now, has just signed on to present his Story of the Ribbon at UX Week.
Don’t forget, if you register by Monday May 19th, $100 of your registration fee goes to support the LIVESTRONG Foundation.
Alexa, Teresa and I recently finished a project that, from the beginning, had all the signs of trouble: a busy client team working weekends on other projects, an aggressive schedule, a tight budget and my own pre-planned vacation during the critical architecture phase. While this project had a lot of challenges, and was quite intense at times, we had fun and came up with some really well executed designs that we all love. The project ended with a very satisfied client team, too.
I was happily surprised when our client made a point of commending my team for our client management skills. At first I politely tried to diminish our part in making it such a great experience “Well you’re a great client!” and “That’s why you hire outside consultants!”, but he pursued his point by illustrating how his other vendors’ relationships hadn’t been handled the same way and more importantly, what we did right. His feedback seemed worth sharing; here’s a bit of a summary:
The Team’s Approach — There were a number of client relations techniques we used in making the project a success. Here are just a few:
Trust — We kept our eye on building and maintaining trust with the client throughout the project. We did this initially with a full day hands-on workshop that included key members from the Product Management, Engineering and UX teams. This built rapport, inclusion and unified our vision of the product and our goals for the project. We maintained the trust through frequent review periods and showing our thinking along the way (even half-baked ideas were shared).
Listening — We listened to the client’s ideas and vision, but didn’t limit our designs to how they thought that vision should be executed. We took their vision and added in our understanding of user needs, consumer behavior and context of use as the launching point for our designs.
Setting Expectations — We had an extremely aggressive schedule for this project. We set a schedule with reviews and milestone deliverables, but we communicated heavily on the idea that “things may change” and we would “see what we can get done by x date”. This prepared the client for when we delivered sketches and rough ideas instead of polished designs.
Flexibility — When the client called and asked for a redesign a few days before our last big deliverable, I didn’t let it phase me. I welcomed his need to get the designs right. I didn’t even mention the impact to the schedule/scope, I focused on simply listening to his needs. What was missing in the current designs? We immediately set a face-to-face meeting with the client and his Director to better understand their concerns. It was a hands-on design session, where we sketched through ideas on the markerboard. After that meeting, we talked about schedule impact. The question I asked was if we could slip the schedule and if not, where would we need to cut scope?
Under-promise, Over-deliver — This is a technique I try to employ with all of my projects if I can. Of course my clients reading this will now know, but hopefully they won’t hold it against me! I try to scope a project that is realistic in what my team is capable of in the time allotted, but I pad in a little time for unplanned client meetings, idea gestation periods, wait time and general unknowns. In most cases, that padding time gets used up by unforeseen circumstances, but that’s OK because we don’t go over the budget or beyond the schedule. Sometimes there are extra hours to which I try to over deliver: more screens, more scenarios, more concepts, more interaction explorations, more annotations - what ever might be needed to wow the client.
Since the schedule was so aggressive with this project, I was honest with the client and explained that I wasn’t sure how much we could deliver, but I promised a minimum amount (which was safely low). Not surprisingly, he figured out this technique mid-project and luckily he saw the value in it and we had a good laugh about it. He appreciated how flexible we were throughout the project and the only reason we were able to be so flexible was because of the extra hours I had included.
Desire for Success — Philosophically we all have to remember that everyone involved in a project truly has the best interest of the project at hand. They may not be approaching the project in the way we’d like, or they may have bad ideas, but their intentions are for a successful project. Rarely do clients or colleagues knowingly and willfully undermine a project. We need to always remember that their intentions are good.
Last but certainly not least is in how to be a good client. Dan Saffer composed a great essay on how to be a good client, but I thought I’d share a few specific traits our client possessed that enabled us to take the approach we did. These traits allowed us to deliver the best possible designs:
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!
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.
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)!
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.
Nicholas Chen of the University of Maryland presented an interesting talk on navigation techniques for for dual display e-books. Unlike the Kindle, Nicholas and his colleagues wanted to experiment with a form factor that was similar to a book or magazine. So they built a prototype with dual screens. The form factor allowed them to experiment with embodied interactions, like opening and closing the device (he referred to the interaction as “clapping”) or folding the device so that the cover and back are facing and turning it like we do a magazine (he referred to the interaction as “fanning”). They tested the device with users and came up with some interesting pros and cons.
Some of the benefits of a dual display:
Easy to read the content
Better for assessing length of the content
Helpful for finding new articles
Downside of dual displays:
Clunky - he device was heavy so opening and closing the cover was awkward as an interaction
Confusing - the single screen was simplier and less confusing
Restrictive form factor - grip required to hold device was awkward
Nicholas’s conclusion was that dual displays are better for serious reading but one display is more convenient.
Michael “Rands” Lopp, a senior engineering manager at Apple and the author of the great book Managing Humans, let slip in a talk at SxSW a little about Apple’s design process. Since, up until now, their design process has mostly been such a black box, even this tiny view (as reported by BusinessWeek) is pretty interesting.
What struck me most was this:
10 to 3 to 1
Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, “seven in order to make three look good,” which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere. They’ll take ten, and give themselves room to design without restriction. Later they whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong decision.
While it is standard practice in visual design to come up with three strong concepts to present and choose from, I’ve found that it is rare to do so in interaction design. And especially to the level that Apple seems to do it, down to pixel perfect mockups. For months. This also echos what both Alan Cooper and especially Bill Buxton had to say at Interaction08, with both urging interaction designers to plan to throw several designs away. Obviously, if Apple is any indication, this is sound advice.
A podcast from our own Todd Wilkens from the 2007 Emergence Conference at Carnegie Mellon, discussing the end of products. Listen and enjoy!
P.S. Lots of other great podcasts there too, including the closing keynote from Dick Buchanan.
“Is there such a thing as sustainable experience design?” In our internal discussions of The Designers Accord, Jesse posed this question. Not being industrial designers, we generally aren’t qualified to address product life-cycle issues such as materials & processes or transportation logistics in any meaningful way. But, as Jesse suggested, perhaps we can bring a new perspective to the sustainability conversation that other disciplines haven’t yet considered.
Experience is closely tied to sustainable behavior: People act un-sustainably because it’s often much easier or results in a better experience than doing otherwise. (It’s much more convenient and pleasant to drive my car wherever I want.) Thus, experience designers are uniquely-poised to encourage sustainability by capitalizing on what we know about human behavior as well as business strategy. We have the capacity to:
Make sustainable experiences more compelling than the alternatives. How can we make doing what’s best in the long run more attractive in the short run? (e.g., Make transit a better experience than driving.)
Understand and appeal to people’s motivations, values and aspirations. As ethnographers, we know how to tap into the subconscious motivations that unwittingly shape behavior. How can we appeal to these tendencies at points of decision so that right choices become the most natural choices?
Harness the power of information to help people make better decisions. As information designers, we know how to make the abstract concrete and make hidden costs visible, visualize the future, and tell stories. The right information can not only influence decisions when presented at critical moments, it can also shape underlying attitudes and values — a necessary component of lasting change.
Promote a service-mindset vs. a product-mindset. As Liya Zheng put it in her post on Service Design and Sustainability: “Think about how to appeal to consumers and businesses with a complete solution that goes beyond the product itself, and where possible, minimize the use of products by delivering great services.”
Communicate the business value of sustainability. Green sells! Businesses for whom green is central to their identity, value proposition or business strategy are more successful than businesses that adopt a cause just because they ought to. As design strategists, we can help companies find ways to turn sustainability into profitability.
But while it’s easy to identify how we COULD contribute, the tricky part, especially for us as consultants, is finding real opportunities to exercise these skills. While design educators can shape future generations of designers and business-people, and in-house designers can shape their company’s culture and product/service strategy, we’re often brought in for specific, often screen-based projects that seemingly have nothing to do with sustainability.
Does it really make sense, as the Accord calls for, to have a sustainability conversation with every client? How can we avoid coming across as pretentious do-gooders?
What best practices can we promote in our interaction design work (e.g., strive to reduce computer use by promoting more energy-efficient means of information access such as mobile)?
How can we identify clients and projects where the skills outlined above can be applied?
These are the questions we’re left wondering about and debating. If anyone has any thoughts or perspectives, we’d love to hear them.
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