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I’m looking to collect video clips that interestingly illustrate, or comment on, experience design. Here are a couple I’ve found. If you’ve got favorites, please add them in the comments! (And if the clips aren’t on the Web, that’s okay, too… Describe them!)
Medieval Help Desk
Don Draper, from Mad Men, pitches the Kodak slide wheel
Dan noticed that on the Nov 1 episode of The Daily Show, Jerry Seinfeld brought the term “blog” to task.
“Is that the worst new word of the culture, blog? It’s so unattractive. It’s like something that you spit up and its, it has like, it congeals, and is, you know, and you kick dirt on it.”
- Jerry Seinfeld
Peter, who coined the term back in 1998 agrees with Jerry:
“I like that it’s roughly onomatopoeic of vomiting. These sites (mine included!) tend to be a kind of information upchucking.”
- Peter Merholz, August 30, 1999, email to Keith Dawson
Paul Arden, an ex-creative director from Saatchi, gave a talk at the Art Directors’ club in Iceland a few years back. I saved the text and pull it out from time to time. Much of his talk is advertising-centric. But here are some universal thoughts that I think we can all benefit from.
Aim beyond what you think you can achieve.
Most of us are content to compete locally, with our neighbors. Change your scale of thinking and compete with the world’s best.
Energy.
It’s 75% of the job. If you haven’t got it, be nice.
Don’t look at the next opportunity, the one you have in hand is the one.
It’s all my fault.
Blame no-one, but your self, if you have touched something accept total responsibility for that piece of work. If you accept responsibility you are in the position to do something about it. If you are involved don’t blame others.
Don’t seek praise, seek criticism.
When you show somebody a piece of work, ask them what is wrong, not what is right. It might help improve it. Note how most people simply want praise, what good is that to the job?
Know your clients aims.
We are trained to think advertising is all about selling products. That is often not the case. The motivation may be quite different. Always find out what a client wants to advertise for.
Do not covert your ideas.
Give away everything and more will come back to you. They are not your ideas anyway they are God’s.
Do it first, don’t ask and be prepared to take the consequences.
A new idea, is either silly, unfamiliar or both. It cannot be judged by description, it cannot even be judged as a storyboard. It needs to be done to exist. No one will sanction the cost, therefore you have no choice but to do it whatever the cost.
Draw with different pen.
Magic markers and Pentels are not the only ways to make marks on paper. Change your tools, it may free your thinking.
Compose your ad from the weakest point.
If you know a logo or a pack have to big don’t hope it will fit in the corner somewhere unobtrusively, it won’t. Start your layouts knowing that is a problem to be solved as an integrated part of the idea. Remember God is in the details.
Suppliers are only as good as you are.
Don’t hand work over to a suppliers hoping they will provide the magic. They won’t. You are the magic.
Storyboard in detail.
Every cut, every action, every angle, every word. Once you have a base you know works, you are free to make clear decisions on further input from directors.
Attend to every single detail of a commercial.
Every edit, every recording session, every dub. Trust no one. You are the only person who knows what you want or should know.
Do not ask people to like you. Earn their respect.
Find out what the client means by creativity
I realized something recently, spurred by a mailing list discussion of David Weinberger’s new book, Everything is Miscellaneous, which is about how the digitization of information is breaking down our old orders.
Here’s a paraphrase of what I wrote to the mailing list (edited so you don’t need the context):
We have to recognize that the practice of experience design is miscellaneous.Unfortunately, standard thought around design work is rooted in a typical, and, I would argue, retrograde, notion of what a practice and/or discipline is. Most organizations are stuck in classic mid-19th to 20th century thinking, borne of a manufacturing economy, where optimization arose when people were as interchangeable as the parts of the machines they built.
21st century work is going to have to be much more synthetic, mixed-up, and uncertain, largely because of the forces that Weinberger points to in his book.
I think it’s a key reason why experience designers have had such a hard time defining their work. It escapes definition.
And you know what, that’s a good sign.
As Bruce Sterling said on his blog (in response to an conversation I had with (gasp!) GK VanPatter): “this is the enterprise of the future: if you can explain what you are doing with any conventional terminology, you’ve already been outsourced to India.”
(I find this also follows on Todd’s earlier post on job titles.)
(Oh, and Andrew Hinton’s talk at the IA Summit, which, happily, he’ll be sharing [in some form] at our UX Week in August.)
Dan Saffer wrote an article on innovation for BusinessWeek. Available online (subscription required) and at your local newsstand. (Link goes to paid content area of their site.)
Innovation is traditionally understood as a combination of insight and invention, with insight being the “Aha!” moment and invention being the company’s muscle to make it happen. This is all well and good, but one crucial aspect of the definition is missing: the ability to judge the inspiration and determine whether it is worthwhile to spend the company’s resources on the invention. Without this judgment, innovation is just The New, and new isn’t always better. It’s a louder sizzle, not a juicier steak. For innovation to be truly important, it needs to resonate with consumers. Insights need to be derived from the unmet needs and desires of people, not simply the company’s feeling that it needs to innovate.
“We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern.” (emphasis mine)
– Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est
I noticed that recent articles in The New York Times stressed the importance of delivering a great experience.
In describing changes occurring at Ask.com, CEO Jim Lanzone stated, “Right now, the focus is almost entirely on improving the user experience. This is the product that, to date, we are the most proud of. It is going to have a huge impact for people who use Ask.”
Talking about the challenges he faces managing Windows Live, Steve Berkowitz (who worked at Ask before joining Microsoft) remarked, “A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by the consumer. It isn’t always the best technology that wins. It is the best experience.”
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